 In 1846 a wagon party led by George Donner began a perilous journey across the continent. A new and untested route resulted in many unexpected hardships and delays. The wagons were late reaching the Sierra Nevada, the last barrier on the route to California. Disaster awaited the 87 men, women and children of the Donner party. Early autumn snowstorms trapped the wagons and they were forced to construct makeshift camps for the winter. The result was extreme suffering and starvation. By the following April when the last of several rescue efforts ended, nearly half of the wagon party members had perished. The ordeal drew national attention sparked by rumors of cannibalism. Still the tragedy remains a mystery including the location of the various winter camps. This is the story of one effort to shed new light on one of the most dramatic events in the history of the American West. I'm tickled to see that they're doing this. And this is a real highlight in my life. It gives me goosebumps, you know. It's really, really exciting. It's just a wonderful story, I think. It's a really familiar story to all of us. They tried to get over some mountains and they didn't make it. Some of them didn't make it. It's just incredible, obviously, to think what they went through and now to see it almost touch it. The first thing you think of might, Lord Almighty, how those people ever did it. How these people do it. Marvel that they got as far as they did. I mean it's just mind boggling. It was, you know, one of the world's greatest adventures. I mean you couldn't have written fiction as exciting as their adventure. It's symbolic of the movement West. And that's part of American mythology. Imagine snow 20 feet deep and starving children. I'm a mother now, too. And I can't imagine what it'd be like to watch children dying in front of you. The thing that bothered me was the children not having enough to eat. They had to put up with a lot, you know, shortage of food. It's too bad they had to start eating each other. They have to stoop to eating cannibalism. Cannibalism. Cannibalism. Cannibalism. Cannibalism. Cannibalism. It's all kinds of tales that they became cannibalism. This is the tackiest souvenir we can find. It's kind of sick, but I think it's funny. Every ounce of dirt has been dug. I done dug it. A lot of people ask, why are archaeologists interested in this site? And we answer that, well, you know, you can read a lot about history from history books. But historians will tell you that what you read has to be read with a little bit of scrutiny. That people approach history with different bits of information and different perspectives. And in fact, that's reflected in the Donner story. So the archaeology work is meant to complement and help clarify and strengthen the historical record. The first job of the archaeologist is to try to validate what has been passed down through oral tradition and through history. Is this the spot? If so, where were the camps? Were the camps located where history tells us they were? And beyond that, to try to provide a little bit better picture of what life was really like here for the folks that spent the winter here. The Donner Party project is an interdisciplinary project. We have made use of historians, we've made use of deneroconologists, we've made use of geologists, as well as archaeologists to try to collect as much information as we can about the Older Creek Camp. And what we have is a joint project between the U.S. Forest Service and the University of Nevada, Reno. And the project was prompted by the Forest Service proposal to do some work at the site here to improve it for handicapped users. Well, when we heard about that, we wanted to get involved as archaeologists because we wanted to make sure that we weren't going to inadvertently be destroying or disturbing any evidence of the Donner Party that might have survived. What we have in front of us here is this stately pine tree. As you can see at the base of it, there's a fire scar. There's also a fork of the tree that there's just a remnant of that tree now surviving. There's also a large rock at the base of it. This tree was pointed out as being the tree that George Donner supposedly constructed a shelter against this forked pine, built a fire against the tree and tried to survive that winter. What we were charged with our task at hand in beginning this project, first and foremost, was to verify archaeologically whether or not this tree here is indeed the site of the George Donner camp. The site has been so designated since back in the 1880s, so we're looking at about 110 years or so when basically people have believed in this cultural landmark here, almost as a sacred cow. But what the archaeologists are tending to deal with are very small fragmentary objects. Everything that was visible and recognizable was carted off first by the rescuers who came in 1847, the valuable things they took. In subsequent years during the Gold Rush, travelers talk about stopping at the camp and picking up souvenirs. That activity has gone on ever since. So the archaeologists don't have a pristine, complete time capsule to deal with. We're having to deal with the things that people either didn't see, didn't notice, or didn't think were worthwhile to take. This site was probably well picked over before we even hear just casual collecting and what have not. It's been reported that visitors would come out here and camp at night right by the tree in the 1870s. Right now we're in the last couple of buckets. We're just getting dozens and dozens of flakes. You can see that. The artifacts Barbara has here are Indian artifacts left from the several thousand years of Indian occupation of this site. And these are primarily flakes, as we call them, chips of basalt that are the remnants of the Indians manufacturing stone tools. So so far what we're finding at this excavation unit is no evidence of the Donner party, but a lot of evidence of the Indian occupation. Archaeology is a lot different from Indiana Jones. This is real romantic. We're still waiting. Kind of soon to tell much of anything at this point, but we shall see. I think morale is a little low because we haven't found anything historic. No beads or eyelets, no compact surface, no artifacts. Pockets full of bottle caps and pearl tabs and junk. Everybody wants to find something. A little notoriety. Certainly. I would like to find a whole axle. A whole axle. Tampson Donner's diary. An intact pistol. I'd like her to find a bone with a bite in it. I don't know. They think this might possibly be a grave mound or something. I definitely don't want to find bones. If we could find a coin of some sort, dating that general period or preferably earlier than that period. I know things can be maybe a little trying over there at the George tree, especially about three o'clock in the afternoon when you're just baking. And it's just like, you know, one more hard surface after the next, after the next, after the next. But I'd like to say one thing that no matter what the outcome of this dig is, we, either way, we are in an all-win situation. We really are. And it may not seem like that now. It's like, if we don't find the George Donner tree in their campsite, it's a failure or something. And if we don't find it, what we are in the position of doing is what we are going to turn immigrant trail research on its ear. And so that in itself is really an important thing. For 150 years or whatever, people have been saying that this indeed is the site. They're saying, indeed, this is the trail. And if we don't, we will know whether or not this is the site by the end of this session. Today is the end of week number three. So there'll be two more weeks after this for us to begin to really piece this together. The early on, we started out quite a ways away. Down absolutely nothing. We put in units closer. We found absolutely nothing. Finally, you can see the area there where we have flagged off with the orange ribbon. Finally, we say, all right, enough is enough. Let's go right to the heart of the matter. We're going to excavate right in the center of where this camp should be located. What have we found there? Nothing. Not a single historic artifact at that location. We were trying to test out the historical record and the archival record through archaeological means. Basically looking as archaeology as an independent and collaborative source of information, sometimes which serves to clarify the historical record, sometimes which serves to refute the historical record. If the scars result of fires from the Donner's camp, we would have expected, first of all, to have found tremendous amounts of charcoal. The diaries indicate that these people had fires burning almost 20 hours a day to keep warm. We should also find lots of little artifacts, perhaps some bone, food, refuse and so forth. We've excavated entirely around this tree, as you can see, and not a thing. So I think we're fairly convinced that while this may, this tree was here at the time of the Donner Party, it does not appear to be one in which the Donner's themselves camped up against. Now, that basically then answers our first and major research goal, which is this is not the site of the George Donner Tree. And we feel that we have evidence to support that. We're going to need to support that because, again, for 110 years, historians have regarded this. If anything was sure on the route of the immigrant trail, this was a sure thing. As the president of the Oregon-California Trails Association told us, he said, you are attacking the sacred cow. We've literally taken the heart out of the beast of the cow, and we are taking some of the glimmer away from this tree, to be sure. But we don't want to kill it. Again, this sacred cow is a symbol of the events that we're going on here. And we'd like to still recognize this as a cultural artifact that has been so for 110 years or so. Literally, we don't want to kill the tree. Also, in our excavations, we've disturbed a lot of roots on this tree, and this tree is over 500 years old. It survived a lot of things, I would hope, that our research efforts here would not serve to kill this cultural artifact, this debunked sacred cow, as it were. In the past, archaeologists doing pure research and metal detectors, people operating metal detectors, sometimes irresponsibly, have not always seen eye-to-eye. Our goals have not always been compatible. But we've just gotten a really positive response from metal detector clubs, who would like to come and offer their assistance in research. So that has been a really innovative aspect of this project. Metal detectors and archaeologists haven't really been close friends, because archaeologists think the metal detectors go in and they dig up sites and destroy sites, which I'm sure we could do if we were treasure hunting. But in this particular case, it seemed logical because we're dealing with a historical period, and we're looking for iron, and so in order to, you know, it was logically, I felt they should have metal detectors and found out that this just was not in common use. What we do want to do is to punch through that rock straight and just to make sure that we don't have boners on. Yeah, really. Musket balls popping out of here right there. Well, alright. Did you see that musket ball they found? You're kidding. Oh, you are kidding me. With the metal detector? Hallelujah. This is a lot better than finding the bottle tops and bottle caps and things that are littering this site that mark the more recent use of this area. Just finding one object doesn't buy anything. You want to find a lot of things, and the weight of evidence leads you to a time period. We talked about it yesterday. He came over here to look around and we said, you know, let's just go back and look at that meadow again. You just never know. That was the best potential we've had so far, and let's just go cover it a little more systematically. He's got an inch and a quarter down. I'm going to try and cut a plug so that I will have it in the center of whatever. Do you want to see it? We have a cut nail. Not a hand wrought nail, so it's post done. That's the first one I found. Piece of square nail. Where was it? Right there. Would you start cleaning it out again? Yeah. Oh, hello. Did you find another something? Yep. It's a something. Interesting. Yeah, that could literally be from almost anything. Part of the carriage bolt. We found one other bolt before, so that's, I think we're on the track. It's a piece of glass. It's a little piece of glass. It's a type of rivet that was used to fasten clothing. 1964 nickel. We've only moved 100 yards from the Georgetown tree out into the meadow, and we're really starting to find things now. Big bolt. A snaffle bit. It's great. It was exciting. We almost didn't find it. A piece of the tongs. They used these as kind of a bracket. That's a pretty large drill bit. It's got a tapered end. Oh, thank you. Very interesting. This is a different looking tail. I think it's a cut nail. I bet it's a square nail. Probably a clenched nail is as good as anything. That's my bottle. That's my material. I'll be darned. I get to join the musket wall club now. We found one up here earlier, at least this big, maybe a little bigger. It was almost under the marble. We found it right here out of this hole in the middle of the texture. Two of them. Two musket balls. Yeah, musket ball. Plot 62. Looks like a musket ball. A musket ball. Another one. Another one. Yay, Kirk! This is really promising, as far as an array of artifacts that gets us back into, feasibly, into that 1840s period. Since we're just going to use some of them. These are percussion caps that have been fired. They were the immediate follow-up to the old flintlock musket. We know historically that at least some members of the Donner Party had percussion weapons because they're mentioned. This just came out of our unit. This is a rim piece of ceramic, and the design is called shellware. It's very diagnostic as far as time goes. Shellware is pearlware. It would be very consistent with an 1840s occupation, such as that of the Donner Party. As I was traveling around, I came across a round object. Well, as I started uncovering it, here I see an 1831 cent coin, and it just was ecstatic. Now, yesterday and today, we found the coins. One dating 1830 and the other one today 1839, which was just like rejoice. I mean, it was just wonderful to, you know, if you want something to date a site, what better thing than a coin with a date on it, you know? The kind we need makes it exciting. Finally, at last. They also found a pewter button, too, about this big around. We haven't found a fire hearth, and that's a little bit discouraging. The diaries tell us they had fires going 24 hours a day. We should be able to find good evidence of that fire. And we haven't found it. We found scattered charcoal throughout the units we've been excavating, with no concentration, but it may be explainable by the fact that we have such tremendous rodent activity in the site here. And it's highly likely that almost every square inch of this meadow has been moved around over the last 140 years by rodents. So a fire hearth may well be dispersed now all over this meadow area. Okay, what do we got here? Glass? We got glass. We got charcoal. We got bone. We found like 25 tiny little pieces of bone, some of them no bigger than this in the screen yesterday. We're also finding in hundreds and hundreds of pieces of very, very, very small pieces of bone. This bone appears to have been burned. It appears to have been broken up almost to the point of grinding. In other words, the pieces of broken bone indicates to us that whoever was camping here was on famine fair. And that directly then points to a donor occupation, although we have to be careful when we say that. But we know that another immigrant camp might not have this appearance, especially in terms of the burned bone. All of these things together would certainly suggest that this may indeed be a correct location of at least one of the other creek camps. Now the big question of course we have is whose camp is whose? We've got an indication of things across the meadow. We've got some things here. History tells us that George and Jacob camped real close together and the Teamsters camped across the creek. Okay, well, is this meadow the creek? Is that George and Jacob over there, or is it George or Jacob? Is this the Teamsters? Those are the kinds of things, the questions we want to try to explore more fully with the additional work. What we're finding during the course of this research is their assistance has been absolutely critical. There's no way we could have accomplished what we've been able to accomplish without the assistance of metal detectors. We're all learning. It's just been a real good experience and I think it's been a real breakthrough in the future when they're dealing with historical sites where there's metal involved that they will be using metal detectors first. When will you have tests on the bone fragments that will tell you yes, these are human or no, these are not human? This could be months down the road. Unfortunately, the question of cannibalism and the question of what goodies are we finding tends to make the top of the story. And this is a story we're trying to turn around in terms of what we're doing here is we're trying to clarify some very important aspects of history. The unfortunate side is that the cannibalism gets the press or gets the print as far as books about the Donner Party and the real heart of the story seems to get lost. Whether or not cannibalism actually did take place during the Donner tragedy I'm not even willing to speculate about. Certainly written accounts would suggest that it probably did. Archaeologically, given the fragmented nature of the bone that we have found and the disintegrated state of most of the remains we probably would not be able to add any additional information to that. But certainly it has to be considered as one reason why the Donner tragedy has maintained the visibility that it's had over the years. It's kind of an archaeological principle that you always find the most interesting remains just as you're preparing to leave. And this was definitely true here. We know we're leaving tomorrow and that's kind of a little disheartening that we didn't find these things sooner in the dig instead of towards the end. We spent so much time over at the George Donner Tree and found nothing. Nothing at all except the Batman ring. Our concern now is that as usual the most significant finds are found if not in the last day, the last week of the archaeological project. And we've been finding some things that are really pretty interesting and probably of interest to collectors. And that's the downside of this is that now that we're wrapping it up we're going to be walking away knowing that there's more work needed at the site but our project is coming to an end. Basically we would hope that the message that comes across is we're here trying to research significant events in history and these significant events of history the information that's contained with the artifacts that are still in this ground belongs to all of us. So this is our concern and we're hoping that we can put this across in a positive way and through public education people can realize it's much better to know about the larger picture in the history of this rather than to possess a coin or a musket ball which then is depriving the rest of us of that information. Well at this time now we have completed all the excavations that we anticipate doing here for the near future. There's still potential to do more digging but we really would like to not dig the whole site while there are more things there we'd like to leave them for the future because chances are 50 years from now archeologists will have a whole lot better array of techniques to use to explore the past and so we want to leave a portion of the site for them.