Good: In Chapter XV Hastings discussed “The Equipment, Supplies, and the Method of Traveling.” First, “All persons, designing to travel by this route, should, invariably, equip themselves with a good gun.” (Indians and/or buffalo.) Second, “It would, perhaps, be advisable for emigrants, not to encumber themselves with any other, than those just enumerated as it is impracticable for them, to take all the luxuries, to which they have been accustomed and as it is found, by experience, that, when upon this kind of expedition, they are not desired, even by the most devoted epicurean.” Hastings’ guidebook had bad information and good. A copy of the book, owned by Jacob Donner, much-handled, was found in the saddlebag of one of the travelers.
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Hastings’ book promoted the land and climate of California as ideal companions for hardworking “Americans.” His book was read by one of the drivers of the Donner family wagons. Hastings’ “little work,” as he called it, was inspirational to those wishing to escape the crowded conditions and poor economy of the east and Midwest. ”Īs for Indians, Hastings’ wrote, with no irony, that they “in numerous instances, abandoned their old haunts, and re-established in other portions of the country, but for what cause, it is difficult to ascertain, with any degree of certainty, for the sites which have been thus abandoned, appear in many instances, to possess advantages much superior, to those which have been subsequently selected.” “At times, I sympathize with these unfortunate beings, but again, I frequently think, that perhaps, are thus ridden and restrained and if they are thus priest ridden, it is, no doubt, preferable, that they should retain their present riders. In his “guide” he depicted Indians as lazy and Mexicans as dishonest, blaming much of the latter on the priests of the Roman Catholic Church.
“How different are the priests of California from those of the same denomination of christians in our own country?” To make up for the lack of “excrescences,” Hastings regaled the reader with lengthy and snarky anecdotes regarding “Californians,” gamblers and drunks all. The book had almost no practical advice, in spite of the crowing in its preface of providing “a description of the different routes and all necessary information relative to the equipment, supplies, and the method of traveling” with the caveat that “all excrescences have been cautiously lopped off, leaving scarcely any thing more than a mere collection of interesting, important and practical facts.” Hastings, at age twenty-three, had made a trip west in 1842. The author was Lansford Warren Hastings, a young real-estate entrepreneur from Ohio who had financial and political interests in California. To get from Illinois to California, the Donner-Reed party had relied, in part, on a bestselling book called The Emigrant’s Guide to Oregon and California. The first woman spoke in a hollow voice very much agitated and said ‘are you men from California or do you come from heaven?'” Dan Rhoads, one of the rescuers wrote, “They were gaunt with famine and I never can forget the horrible ghastly sight they presented. The first of the lost souls, located near Truckee Lake in the Sierra Nevada, had been found on February 18. The last surviving member arrived at Sutter’s Fort more than a year after the original party had departed from Springfield, Illinois.
On Apthe nearly three month-long rescue of survivors of the now-infamous Donner-Reed Party ended. The Emigrant’s Guide to Oregon and California “Remember, never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can.” - Virginia Reed
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