The Snark | The Forlorn Hope

Torturing Characters the Donner Party Way – The Agony in the Snow

It’s 1846, and a group of families set out west along the brand-new California Trail, full of big dreams and bad maps. They were supposed to reach the golden valleys of California before the Sierra Nevada closed with snow. Instead, thanks to delays, bad luck, and the infamous “Hastings Cutoff” (a shortcut that was anything but), the Donner Party got trapped in the mountains with winter closing in. The snow piled higher than the roofs of their cabins. Food ran out. Their cattle died in drifts.

Imagine being snowbound with dozens of starving people, listening to children cry through the night, your only meal a strip of boiled hide. At one point, they even resorted to boiling their shoes to make a greasy, hideous soup – chewing on leather softened just enough to pretend it was food.

By December, the choice was brutal: stay put and starve, or send out a desperate mission. Seventeen men and women volunteered to strap on crude snowshoes, pack what little rations were left, and march 100 miles over the Sierra Nevada to seek help. They were later called The Forlorn Hope. The name alone sounds like something lifted from Shakespearean tragedy, but the reality was worse.

The Descent Into Horror

The snow was so deep they sank to their thighs with every step. The cold gnawed bone-deep. After just a few days, their meager food was gone. Starvation set in fast: lips cracked, skin blistered, stomachs cramped. People began hallucinating. Some wept, others raged. The weakest collapsed in the snow and never rose again.

Then came the moment everyone dreads to imagine. One by one, the bodies of their companions lay still in the drifts. The choice was laid bare: die alongside them, or cut strips of human flesh to chew just enough to keep walking. They chose to eat.

But the horror didn’t stop there. Some members of the group broke under the pressure. A few turned back – choosing the familiar misery of camp over the madness of trudging forward. That decision is in some ways more haunting: the surrender, the return to starvation, the knowledge that they were walking back into death rather than crawling toward the slim chance of life.

By the time seven skeletal survivors stumbled into a settlement, they had endured thirty-three days of hell. Of the original seventeen, ten were dead. Their eyes were sunken, their feet shredded, their souls carrying memories no person should have to bear. The mountains had devoured them and spit a handful back.

The Roll Call of the Forlorn Hope

Here are the seventeen who left the cabins at Donner Lake on December 16, 1846 – and their fates:

• Harriet Pike – survived.

• Mary Graves – survived.

• William Eddy – survived.

• William Foster – survived.

• Amanda McCutchen – survived.

• Noah James – turned back; died at the lake.

• Charles Stanton – died early, exhausted.

• Sarah Foster – died on the trail.

• Jay Fosdick – died on the trail.

• Sarah Graves – died on the trail.

• Nancy Graves – died on the trail.

• Patrick Dolan – died on the trail.

• Antonio (Teamster) – died on the trail.

• Lemuel Murphy – died on the trail.

• Milton Elliott – died on the trail.

• Salvador (Mi’wok man) – murdered and eaten.

• Luis (Mi’wok man) – murdered and eaten.

Seventeen left. Only seven survived. And yes, you’re probably wondering about Salvador and Luis there at the end.

Salvador and Luis

They were two Miwok men (sometimes called “Indians” in the period accounts) who had been working as laborers and guides with William Eddy and William Foster earlier in the trip. They were part of John Sutter’s world at Sutter’s Fort, and when the Forlorn Hope set out, Eddy and Foster insisted the two Miwok accompany them as extra muscle and to help find the way through the mountains. But unlike the others, Salvador and Luis had not volunteered – they were essentially dragged along.

When the group’s rations collapsed and cannibalism became the unspoken rule, Salvador and Luis refused to take part. They would not eat human flesh. That refusal instantly marked them as “outsiders” inside the desperate group.

Accounts say that when Eddy warned them that Foster planned to kill them for food, Salvador and Luis slipped away from camp one night and tried to escape into the woods. They made it a few miles before being caught, too weak from starvation to get far. Foster shot them both where they lay in the snow. Their bodies were butchered and eaten.

It’s one of the ugliest ironies in the whole Donner saga: the two men who hadn’t even wanted to be on the Forlorn Hope, who resisted crossing the line into cannibalism, ended up literally sacrificed. And worse – they were murdered, not just scavenged after death.

This detail is a razorblade: it turns survival from a story of endurance into a story of betrayal. It’s no longer just “nature vs. humanity,” it’s also humanity vs. humanity.

Why This Matters to Writers

Now, you might be asking: why linger in this gore-streaked tale? Because the Donner Party’s Forlorn Hope trekkers shows us something every writer should know – torture isn’t just about violence. It’s about choices that shred the human spirit.

• Physical agony is just the start. Hunger, exhaustion, cold – all of these wear characters down. But it’s the grinding, day-after-day attrition that makes the suffering feel real. Don’t let your characters collapse in a single scene. Make them crawl, slowly, toward destruction.

• The worst choices are between bad and worse. Do you walk forward into cannibalism, or turn back to certain starvation? That’s a decision without mercy, and it reveals who your characters really are.

• Turning back can be the cruelest fate. Readers will accept that some die. What lingers is the one who gave up – the character who chose to sink quietly back into the inevitable. Despair can be a harsher torment than death.

The Forlorn Lesson

If you want your fiction to cut deep, study The Forlorn Hope. It’s not the gore that makes it agonizing – it’s the humanity. Starvation. Surrender. A sliver of survival carved out of hopelessness. Writers often think they’re torturing their characters when they kill them off. The Donner Party reminds us: the real torture is making them live through it.

The Snark