The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic FateHoughton, Eliza Poor Donner
History
The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate
Houghton, Eliza Poor Donner
Donner Party; Overland journeys to the Pacific
"Me and Frances started to find you this morning, but we wasn't far
when we met Jacob in the wagon, and he stopped and asked us where we
was going. We told him. Then he told us to get in by him. But he didn't
come this way, just drove down to the river and some men lifted us out
and set us in a boat and commenced to paddle across the water. I knew
that wasn't the way, and I cried and cried as loud as I could cry, and
told them I wanted to go to my little sister Eliza, and that I'd tip
the boat over if they did not take me back; and one man said, 'It's too
bad! It ain't right to part the two littlest ones.' And they told me if
I'd sit still and stop crying they would bring me back with them by
and by, and that I should come to you. And I minded.
"Then they taked us to that house where we sleeped under the carpet the
night we didn't get to the Fort. Don't you remember? Well, lots of
people was there and talked about us and about father and mother, and
waited for grandma to come. Pretty soon grandma come, and everybody
talked, and talked. And grandma told them she was sorry for us, and
would take you and me if she could keep Leanna to help her do the work.
When I was coming away with grandma, Frances cried like everything. She
said she wanted to see you, and told the people mother said we should
always stay together. But they wouldn't let her come. They've gived her
to somebody else, and now she is their little girl."
We both felt sorry for Frances, and wished we could know where she was
and what she was doing.
While we were talking, grandma kept busily at work, and sometimes she
wiped her face with the corner of her apron, yet we did not think of
her as listening, nor of watching us, nor would we ever have known it,
had we not learned it later from her own lips, as she told others the
circumstances which had brought us into her life.
Some days later Georgia and I were playing in the back yard when Leanna
appeared at the door and called out in quick, jubilant tones:
"Children, run around to the front and see who has come!"
True enough, hitched to a stake near the front door was a bay horse
with white spots on his body and a white stripe down his face, and tied
to the pommel of his saddle was another horse with a side saddle on its
back. It did not take us long to get into the house where we found
Elitha and our new brother, who had come to arrange about taking us
away with them. While Elitha was talking to grandma and Leanna, Georgia
stood listening, but I sat on my new brother's knee and heard all about
his beautiful spotted horse and a colt of the same colors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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