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The Donner Party (sometimes called the Donner-Reed Party) was a group of American pioneers led by George Donner and James F. Reed who set out for California in a wagon train. Delayed by a series of mishaps and mistakes, they spent the winter of 1846–47 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. Some of the migrants resorted to cannibalism to survive. The journey west usually took between four and six months, but the Donner Party was slowed by following a new route called Hastings Cutoff, which crossed Utah's Wasatch Mountains and Great Salt Lake Desert. The rugged terrain, and difficulties encountered while traveling along the Humboldt River in present-day Nevada, resulted in the loss of many cattle and wagons, and splits within the group. By the beginning of November 1846 the emigrants had reached the Sierra Nevada, where they became trapped by an early, heavy snowfall near Truckee (now Donner) Lake, high in the mountains. Their food supplies ran extremely low, and in mid-December some of the group set out on foot to obtain help. Rescuers from California attempted to reach the emigrants, but the first relief party did not arrive until the middle of February 1847, almost four months after the wagon train became trapped. Of the 87 members of the party, 48 survived to reach California, many of them having eaten the dead for survival. Historians have described the episode as one of the most bizarre and spectacular tragedies in Californian history and western-US migration.〔McGlashan, p. 16; Stewart, p. 271.〕 == Background == During the 1840s, the United States saw a dramatic increase in pioneers: people who left their homes in the east to settle in Oregon and California. Some, like Patrick Breen, saw California as a place where they would be free to live in a fully Catholic culture,〔Enright, John Shea (December 1954). "The Breens of San Juan Bautista: With a Calendar of Family Papers", ''California Historical Society Quarterly'' 33 (4) pp. 349–359.〕 but many were inspired by the idea of Manifest Destiny, a philosophy that asserted the land between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans belonged to Americans and they should settle it.〔Rarick, p. 11.〕 Most wagon trains followed the Oregon Trail route from Independence, Missouri, to the Continental Divide, traveling at about a day〔Rarick, pp. 18, 24, 45.〕 on a journey that usually took between four and six months.〔Bagley, p. 130.〕 The trail generally followed rivers to South Pass, a mountain pass in Wyoming, which was relatively easy for wagons to negotiate.〔Rarick, p. 48.〕 From there, wagon trains had a choice of routes to their destination.〔Rarick, p. 45.〕 Lansford W. Hastings, an early immigrant, had gone to California in 1842 and saw the promise of the undeveloped country. To encourage settlers he published ''The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California''.〔 He described a direct route across the Great Basin, which would bring emigrants through the Wasatch Mountains and across the Great Salt Lake Desert.〔 Hastings had not traveled any part of his proposed shortcut until early 1846, on a trip from California to Fort Bridger. The fort — a scant supply station run by Jim Bridger and his partner Pierre Louis Vasquez — was in Blacks Fork, Wyoming. Hastings stayed at the fort to persuade travelers to turn south on his route.〔Rarick, p. 47.〕 As of 1846, Hastings was the second of two men documented to have crossed the southern part of the Great Salt Lake Desert and neither had been accompanied by wagons.〔〔There are no written records of native tribes having crossed the desert, nor did the emigrants mention any trails in this region. (Rarick, p. 69)〕 The most difficult part of the journey to California was the last , across the Sierra Nevada. This mountain range contains 500 distinct peaks over high,〔Rarick, p. 105.〕 and because of their height and proximity to the Pacific Ocean they receive more snow than most other ranges in North America; the eastern side of the range is also extremely steep.〔Rarick, p. 106.〕 Timing was crucial to ensure after leaving Missouri to cross the vast wilderness to Oregon or California that wagon trains would not be bogged down by mud created by spring rains, nor by massive snowdrifts in the mountains from September onwards, and also that their horses and oxen would have enough spring grass to eat.〔Rarick, p. 17.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Donner Party」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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