The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party

by Daniel James Brown

Death—especially before the Civil War—was an up-close and personal kind of thing in nineteenth-century America. It came visiting so frequently that no one could ignore it or hide from it. Every villager in the northern half of the country was familiar with the slow tolling of church bells, and many knew how to read in the rhythm of the bells a coded language announcing how old the victim was and of which gender. At any given time, almost any woman knew another who was dressed in formal mourning clothes, sometimes for months or years on end. Every child was familiar with the sight of somber funeral processions winding through the streets. And it was often the corpse of another child that he or she saw passing slowly by. In the first half of the century, depending partly on where they lived, and how well, between a fifth and a third of all children died before the age of ten.