Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/124

Rh on the Pacific Coast. These exploring parties started from Astoria, Oregon, and experienced the greatest privations and hardships in these trips, the Indians of that time being most hostile and determined in their opposition against the approach of white settlers. The war between Great Britain and the United States breaking out, the Hudson Bay Company took possession of Astoria, and in 1812 a party of traders under the command of Mr. Reed, accompanied by Pierre Dorian, an interpreter, with his wife and two children started on a expedition into the "Snake Country." For almost a year nothing was heard of this little party, until the following summer, when they arrived at Walla Walla, and the accounts given of the hardships of this tribe and the heroism of Mrs. Dorian hardly have a parallel.

In the summer of 1846 a band of settlers started for California, and their experiences and adventures fill one of the darkest pages of our early history. The party consisted of J. F. Reed, wife and four children; Jacob Donner, wife and seven children; William Pike, wife and two children; William Foster, wife and one child; Lewis Kiesburg, wife and one child; Mrs. Murphy, a widow, with five children; William McCutcheon, wife and one child; W. H. Eddy, wife and two children; Noah James, Patrick Dolan, Patrick Shoemaker, John Denton, C. F. Stanton, Milton Elliott, Joseph Raynhard, Augustus Spiser, John Baptiste, Charles Burger, Baylis Williams, and a man by the name of Smith, one by the name of Antoin, and one by the name of Herring. They were well supplied with wagons, teams, cattle, provisions, arms, and ammunition. On reaching White Water River, on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, they were persuaded by one of their party to take a new route to California. This brought upon them the greatest suffering, ultimate disaster and the annihilation of almost the entire little band. Many animals