The Mothers Vardis Fisher
1943 reprinted in 1976 285 pages
available new on the internet

One would think that there are no different ways to treat the story of the Donner Party but this book was published in 1943 and, based on the title, The Mothers, should have provided an interesting perspective. That would be the story as told by the women, who have generally been ignored, and highlight their contributions to the survival of the Donner Party. That’s the reason I bought it.

The reader has to understand that it’s a novel, meaning that the basic story we all know has been fleshed out with conversation, thoughts and little stories. We’d expect that as the story unfolds a theme would be developed showing the women as the heroes. To develop the theme there would be conflicts to overcome, culminating in a climax and ultimately, the denouement. That’s the normal progression of a novel. If you know the story of the Donner Party you can readily imagine those stages of the novel’s progression.

Let’s see.

The book opens with Charles Stanton ready to head off for help at Sutter’s Fort with some of the Donner Party wondering if he will come back. This foreshadows the disunity and dissension of the party. Their hopes rest on Stanton coming back with food but some are cynical about even that. A few pages later James Reed was banished following a knifing. There are several arguments and part of the actual story was changed. The interactions and conversations show the Donner Party to be made up of the nastiest group of people you’d ever want to meet. Even before the party reached the Sierra the members would not share or help each other.

The Mothers does not present the women as heroes. Instead, they are argumentative, fickle, judgmental, nasty, and selfish. We have nasty people confronted with problems, with only a bit of sermonizing at the end about how the mothers’ characters maybe enabled them to survive. We never see if there was personal growth, nor how the growth developed to overcome the challenges. The challenges were overcome, of course, but only by the rescue parties, an outside force.

A large part of the book describes the Forlorn Hope episode but then it goes back to the lake camps and suddenly the women come to the fore and saved everyone, but there is no evidence. “Mothers in this bitter winter had work to do” and apparently they did it but how or what is a mystery. Vardis stops relating episodes of nastiness but there is no trigger for that to change their personalities.

For example, suddenly there is just a description of people you might like to meet. Philippene Keseburg had more food than the others and she doled some out from her “hoard.” Here, “hoard” is the word used. It’s a bit perjorative so it’s a backhanded compliment to Philippene. That was a “fatal softness in her own character” and was a handicap in her fight against death. The compliment is even more backhanded when Vardis says she did not have the stuff of which pioneer women were made. That’s used as counterpoints to Vardis’ imagined descriptions of the other women’s personalities. Philippene “was no hard, cunning realist like Peggy Breen or Lizzie Graves. She had neither the intelligence nor the clear unfaltering courage of Margaret Reed. She did not have the phenomenal patience and devotion of Lavina Murphy.

“Of the five mothers, the one most like her was Eleanor Eddy. Eleanor was as brave as any other, but she did not have the ruthless fighting heart of Peggy and Lizzie or the mature vision of Margaret… Under her gentleness there was steel but she did not tell herself, in the way, in the way of Mrs. Graves, that her children must live, even if everybody else in camp died.” Here we maybe have the theme, that the personalities of these mothers saved the day but it’s never born out by actions. There is one exception when Eleanor Eddy secretly put a pound of bear meat into Wm. Eddy’s pack. Vardis says that meat saved Eddy who then saved the Forlorn Hope which then started the rescue parties.

Maybe the women are the heroes because they were opposite the men. Here is a description of Spitzer who has just exhumed Dutch Charly and taken his clothes. “.. he was a lazy parasite who refused to gather wood or help keep the fire burning. All day he would sit by the fire… Today she was heartily sick of this man. There he stood by the fire, in his own and a dead man’s clothes, staring at the flames…"

The book really celebrated a couple of non-mothers, Milt Elliott and “Bill” Eddy. Just taking Eddy as an example, according to Vardis he was the long suffering hero of the story. He is patient, self-sacrificing, and strong (killed a bear). He shared food even when he didn’t have much. He helped others even after they had rejected him or refused to help his family. He even forgave Franklin Graves for leaving someone to die, “I wouldn’t fret about it… Our job now is to save our families. That’s what the lord would tell us to do. He wouldn’t want us to waste our strength fretting over an old man who is dead. Forget about it Frank; we have a job to do.” In Vardis’ mind this is an attractive characteristic. According to Vardis, Eddy initiated the Forlorn Hope too and he does various acts of heroism.

As a novel the book imagines the interactions and conversations of the Donner Party episodes, for example Stanton’s leaving to go to Sutter’s Fort for help with Wm. McCutcheon. Lewis Keseburg wonders in German, “Will they ever come back?” His haggard wife, Philippine replied in German, “McCutchen should. He has a wife and child.” “Stanton won’t. Why should he?” replied her husband.

One vignette highlights the character of John Snyder by looking at his thoughts just prior to his getting knifed by James Reed. Vardis takes us into Mr. Snyder’s head, “Snyder, accustomed for twenty-three years to flattering attention, had imagined that he alone had been weighed and found wanting. That notion put him an ugly mood, and day after day the mood persisted and deepened, until it was a bitter corrosive in his mind. The life about him only added to his ugliness.” Since that’s made up, we can wonder why the author chose to characterize Snyder in that way as perhaps a cause for the knifing.

As if there wasn’t enough dissension, the author makes up extra conflict. For example, Vardis has “Charley” Stanton swearing for the first time as the party tries to climb the pass. They won’t leave anything behind. “By the God Almighty!” he roared. “I’ve never in all my life seen such damned people! Here you are facing starvation and death, and you insist on dragging all your junk along with you!” It could have happened but there was so much drama already that this doesn’t really add to the story. The arguing continues for some time. Certainly if “Charly” was going to swear for the first time it would have been a thousand miles back if the people were as nasty as Vardis portrays them.

Vardis imagines all kinds of things in an attempt to flesh out his characters. Wm. Eddy is impulsive and hot-tempered. His wife was quiet, thoughtful and restrained. “They adored one another.” Philippine Keseburg’s husband abused and flogged her. “She loathed his small greedy soul…” Franklin Graves’ wife “was the real boss of his big family…” William Foster “was a strange man… In some ways he was only a child, credulous and impulsively generous; but in some ways he seemed to be a very wise and thoughtful man. Under his good nature there was a vein of madness…” At times one might think Foster “could be forced to do inhuman and unpredictable things.” Of course, later he shoots two Indians for food.

Other things are made up for no discernable reason. During the Forlorn Hope episode Pat Dolan went crazy which did happen. In this telling everyone is moving easily around under the blankets making the set-up sound like a large tent. Then four people sit on Dolan’s arms and legs. Dolan curses, slobbers and writhes – Vardis’ descriptions. He bites his tongue and lips so that blood flows down his beard and so that no one can understand him. At another point when Wm. Eddy approached the door of a cabin at Johnson Ranch the girl who answered the door is named Harriet Johnson. Her name in real life was Harriet Ritchie. Why change that detail?

In some ways details of the story are accurate, for example floundering in the snow or details of killing an ox but in others it’s bad guesswork. Saying that Stanton and the Indians went to the summit in the snow to see conditions and “An hour later, Stanton and the Indians returned.” The actual effort requires going up and down 1,000 feet in elevation and six miles through the snow. In another story Wm. Eddy went out hunting and stumbled across the Donners which is also not accurate.

There are good descriptions for example of the peril, as the party slept at the bottom of the pass in a storm,

“This storm was heavier than the former one. Within an hour two fresh inches had been laid on the sleeper, and before daylight the depth upon them was almost a foot. Now and then they stirred in their sleep and the new whiteness shuddered above them; but nobody awoke to thrust out an arm or a head. In these strange mountains, far from their foal, with the food almost gone, their strength sapped, and their hope burning faintly like the embers pulsing and darkening in the pine stump, they lay in their beds and were covered by the winter until there was no sign of life here. The beasts were white mounds; and the two silent Indians were swallowed by the deeper night where they sat.”

Finally, there’s a bit of 1943 American culture which does not fit will with modern sensibilities. Wm. Eddy is out hunting. Taking his position behind a clump of willows, he peered out, knowing that these naked and snake-eating redskins could not be far from him… Bill supported his rifle… and took careful aim… With as cream that rang over the camp and burst in echoes down the gorge, the Indian leapt high into the air… and plunged headlong over the precipice.

“Bill waited a little while, but he knew the other naked devils would be running for their lives. When he returned to camp, he said he had blown hell and daylight through one of the thieves… This was the last time the Diggers came prowling upon this camp.”