Quotes from Ethan Rarick

On a journey into the unknown, perfect progress is perfectly impossible.

They could neither go back nor remain in place. Like their wagons, they had no brakes, no way of stopping the high-stakes journey on which they had wagered their lives and fortunes.

Clyman trying to warn Reed about the desolation he had just seen in the Great Salt Lake Desert. Remembering the conversation years later, Clyman said he told Reed to "take the regular wagon track, and never leave it—it is barely possible to get through if you follow it, and it may be impossible if you don't.

Of the eighty-one people who had been trapped by the early autumn snow at the eastern edge of the Sierra, thirty-six had died and forty-five had survived. No one remained at the high camps. For the Donner Party, the journey was finished.

Tamzene Donner was a woman at peace with the vagaries of life: "I am as happy as I can reasonably expect in this changing world.

On a journey into the unknown, perfect progress is perfectly impossible. Edwin

In 1859 a woman was raped by five apparent Indians, although she was able to identify her attackers as white men because, in the words of a government report on the incident, "They had not taken the precaution to paint the whole body." We