Originally Posted By: Susan

In that time period and for centuries before it, women had few options: wife, mistress, maid or [censored]. Why do you think women literally put their lives on the line via being mail-order brides? Why do you think the early-days LDS women put up with multiple wives? Between lack of great physical strength and sociological conditioning, it was a matter of survival, period.

Why do you think women suffering from PMS or menopause were put in insane asylums? I'll bet it was because they had become less useful and it was the easiest way to 'trade them in' on a newer model. Women were chattel, property.
Sue


The male and female definitions of strength are different. Men see activity and ability to lift a heavy weight a few times as strength. Women are more about endurance and even through the maximum weight lifted might not be as great the total amount of weight they lifted is, in the end, greater.

Not uncommon to see a woman with a forty pound kid on a hip and a load of laundry in their other hand. A man who tries it has to go lay down on the couch for the rest of the afternoon.

Quote:
If this group had recently arrived from a Norse culture, where
skiing and sledding was predominant, I think several of the
party would have skied over the pass and got help, early in
the year. A few bachelors would have been perfect for this.


A considerable time before they got stuck in the snow, when it became clear that they wouldn't have enough food, they sent a couple of men on horseback to bring back more. They showed up not too long after they made camp at what would become Donner Lake.

While they didn't have any skis one of the men made snowshoes and the strongest of the men and women tried to make it across with six day's starvation ration. On that trip they got lost in a snowstorm, people froze to death, and they ate the two indians, Lois and Salvatore, but word got out.

One of the major issues was that people assumed that the group had a normal compliment of oxen to eat. They didn't know that the salt flats and indians had reduced the numbers available. Hard to replace the food on the hoof a full sized oxen represents with what you can haul on a horse. Even counting the horse.

The other thing is that the weather was extraordinarily difficult. The number and intensity of the storms broke records.