Donner Party
Snowbound pioneer group
The Donner Party was a group of American pioneers who became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountains during the winter of 1846–47 while attempting to reach California.
Nearly half the party died, and the survivors famously resorted to cannibalism.
The name now evokes desperate measures in dire circumstances: This camping trip is turning into the Donner Party.
Pioneers' covered convoy
- westwardToward the sunset
- emigrantsPeople leaving their country
- overlandVia land routes
- migrationMovement to new territory
settlers · pioneers · trailblazers · Missouri · oxen · provisions · departure · delay
Extreme nutritional deprivation
- cannibalismIntraspecies flesh consumption
- desperationUtter loss of hope
- rationingLimiting distribution during scarcity
- enduranceSustained effort capacity
resilience · fortitude · resourcefulness · shelter · foraging · rescue · survivors · provisions
wagon train
Pioneers' covered convoy
migration · settlers · pioneers · trailblazers · Missouri · oxen · provisions · departure · delay · fateful
starvation
Extreme nutritional deprivation
- cannibalismIntraspecies flesh consumption
- desperationUtter loss of hope
- rationingLimiting distribution during scarcity
endurance · resilience · fortitude · resourcefulness · shelter · foraging · rescue · survivors · provisions · frostbite
snowbound
Confined by winter weather
altitude · Sierra Nevada · summit · elevation · winter · blizzard · snowfall · drifts · blocked · impassable
death
Cessation of life
- fatalitiesLosses of life
- lossBeing without something
- sufferingSustained experience of distress
disaster · calamity · victims · mourning · grief · hardship · misfortune · ill-fated · doomed · perished
- Wild Westcowboy, howdy, sheriff, giddyup, lawmen
- Expeditionsexpedition, Antarctic expedition, Arctic expedition, expeditions, Arctic exploration
- frontier lifehomesteaders, farmer, homesteading, shepherd, pioneer women
- 1840s-1850sOregon Trail, California Gold Rush, Mexican-American War, Manifest Destiny, Underground Railroad
- doomed voyagesTerra Nova, Titanic, Edmund Fitzgerald, Lusitania, Challenger disaster
- Old Westcowboy, cowboys, cowgirl, sheriff, sheriffs
party, partying, parties, dons, partied, partygoer, donned, donning, multiparty