UBC #23: Excavation of the Donner-Reed Wagons/#24: Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age

[truepenny]

UBC #23
Hawkins, Bruce R., and David B. Madsen. Excavation of the Donner-Reed Wagons: Historic Archaeology Along the Hastings Cutoff. 1990. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1999.

This is the write-up of a very small and relatively unprofitable (i.e., they found, essentially, some bits of wagon, some ox bones, and a lot of buttons) archaelogical excavation, undertaken because the sites were going to be flooded by lake control efforts.

I found it interesting for several reasons.

1. Archaeologists (as Calvin says in one Calvin and Hobbes strip) have the most mind-numbing job on the planet. The archaelogical team were working in horrible conditions (their carefully distanced, third-person, academic descriptions of the mud flats are worth the price of admission) for very little reward--but they're meticulous and professional, and you can tell that they still think this is all pretty darn cool.

2. I'm interested, in a sort of inchoate way, in the American pioneer movements of the nineteenth century, and the historical chapters on the Hastings Cutoff and the Donner-Reed party, and the survey mission of Captain Stansbury, are like a pinhole camera.

3. Also, because with the morbid and creepifying, I'm interested in the Donner party and its dreadful fate. This book is not about that, but the authors point out that the reason the group got stranded in the mountains was because they took the Hastings Cutoff (allegedly a short-cut) and it delayed them and decimated their animals. Also, the intraparty politics and psychodramas ... this makes it kind of clear that cannibalism was really the only logical conclusion to the Donner-Reed party's progress across the continent.




UBC #24
Vicinus, Martha, ed. Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973.

Yes, this book is thirty years old. Yes, scholarship on Victorian women has advanced in all kinds of ways since. However, comma, this isn't bad as a general introduction. It's very readable, and the essays are a broad spectrum of approaches. Governesses, W. S. Gilbert's female characters, menstruation, art, prostitution, working-class women, John Ruskin and J. S. Mill (Kate Millett, who is beautifully snarky), theories of evolution, sexual psychology, and then an annotated bibliography. I learned things I hadn't known, thought about things I had known in new ways. So, you know, the book did its job.

Comments

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

I think I first encountered the Donner-Reed Party in one of Bernard DeVoto's books. He built the story up so carefully that the end seemed to be nothing but the inevitable result of Those People, in That Place, at That Time.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

The Hawkins book is very bitter about DeVoto for the savage glee with which he slandered Hastings (who was apparently not nearly the evil mastermind DeVoto makes him out to be). Not having read DeVoto (although he's probably going to get added to Emplusa's Inifinitely Expandable the list, I can't say personally.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

I can't say for sure about Hastings, either; the cut-off was pretty much wrong, but it's entirely possible, given the general level of ignorance about western routes (these people didn't have the benefit of USGS topographic maps, after all) that he didn't realize just how wrong it was, and how desperate the consequences would be--but it's worth noting that DeVoto was a man of powerfully strong Opinions. He can, for example, find not one good thing to say about Mormons, and if he ever slips and does say something positive about them, he makes up for it by finding two bad things to say. He's probably not as bad an example of the historian's prejudices invading his history as Francis Parkman, but those prejudices are there. He's still well worth reading, simply for the entertainment value--and so is Parkman.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

If I've understood Hawkins et al. correctly, the problem with the Hastings Cutoff was that it just did not work for wagons. It seems to have been strenuous but doable for parties on horseback or with mules. But ox-drawn wagons (especially James Reed's lunatic Pioneer Palace--a two storey wagon! what was he THINKING?) were a pre-packaged disaster.

I will keep in mind your comments on DeVoto. *g*

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

I imagine Reed was thinking things in the west were going to be just like what he was used to, which, along with good intentions, is something you can use to pave the road to Hell.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Also, as you're probably aware, DeVoto was a major Mark Twain fanboy. Not that I could ever bring myself to see that as a Bad Thing.

Hastings

[(Anonymous)]

Hastings' book An Emigrants guide to California has been reprinted. It makes interesting reading, His description of the route is very sparse and his description of California is exaggerated beyond belief,He does however suggest very strongly the importance of setting off early. Since another party lead by Hastings did get through it is possible the Donner Read party might have suceeded too,Though there isnt much information available about how the other party were provisioned, what previous experience they ahd and the number of fit men compared to the number of women and children.
Factors which undoubtably contributed to the downfall of the Donner Party

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

psst.

Gmail is choking on me; I'm not ignoring you.

Messages as the internets permit.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

But...but finding buttons IS exciting when you haven't found anything else for weeks and weeks in the sun.

Okay, I am weird. And I didn't go into archy for my day job, in the end.