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.



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.

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.
Donner Lake, on this side of the pass? So, they did not
accomplish their mission?
I remember Mr Reed, after being expelled, rode his horse
the long way around and got help.

[i]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. [/i]
So I did remember correctly about the Indians.
None of this party ever made it all the way to civilization?
Edit: I see "word got out", so they made contact.

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 narrator said they had lost cattle to Indians, but I
assumed they had (early on) enough to supply their own
recon party. I never heard of preps, like making snow-shoes
or jerking meat. Did they wait too long, before sending the
recon party?
Are you saying that the locals, near the Pacific Coast,
knew they were stranded, but said "Let them eat cattle".

This casts a whole different light on things.

The other thing is that the weather was extraordinarily difficult. The number and intensity of the storms broke records.
Yes, that was a killer. There is a lesson. It is a big risk
waiting for a spell of good weather, because it might or
might not come.

I have often wondered which came first here: did men have greater burst strength and therefore take the "strength" roles, or did the biological imperatives of pregnancy in women force men into the strength role, with greater burst strength evolving through natural selection?

I was speculating that role assumptions made over *very* long periods - far into pre-history - might have shaped their behavior in ways that run counter to current assumptions.

Hike4Fun - Perhaps a time line will make things clearer. Rereading it I find I misspoke some of the details. Oh well, just goes to show how history is always a recollection of a recollection and humans aren't inerrant. The story has a lot of twists and turns and the various accounts vary in detail so it is, IMHO, pretty easy to lose track.

What was to become known as the Forlorn Hope, the attempt to make it over the summit on snowshoes, was an epic tale unto itself. Both success and tragedy. Early on two of the seventeen turn back.

The best time line I have found. I found it handy to refer back to it while reading various accounts:
http://www.utahcrossroads.org/DonnerParty/Chronology.htm

Another version that adds some details that are less well documented:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_Party_timeline

The home page of the site is a good place to start. So far this is perhaps the best site I have read:
http://www.utahcrossroads.org/DonnerParty/index.html

The "Donner Party Myths and Mysteries in Brief" was very interesting to me because it touches on how historic events grow, mutate, transform as they are retold and how sorting fact from embellishments added to sell newspapers can be difficult:
http://www.utahcrossroads.org/DonnerParty/Briefmyths.htm#Forlorn%20Hope

Archive.org has a few books on the Donner party of which some of these books have details not found in newer books.

There's a great stage performance that I caught in Vegas last year called "Defending the Caveman". While mostly a great comedy, I found the premise of the whole argument made great sense, as did my wife. In fact, I would almost call it revelatory.

There's still a grand biological reason why young men are drafted into war. As I learned from my now college age daughters, it is far easier to mold the mind and will of a young man than it is a young woman. At 18, both my daughters were convinced they knew far more about the world than I could understand. It amazed them how much I learned about the world by the time they were 21!

One conclusion I tend to support for a whole host of reasons is that young men are just plain dumb compared to older married men and young women, and older women are the most intelligent in general. After all, they seem to live the longest, even today. Surely "smarts" must have something to do with this?

Tell a group of experienced thirty year old guys that you want them to charge across a hundred yards of flat sand toward machine guns in bunkers and your going to see a distinct lack of enthusiasm. You might inspire a 17 year old kid with tales of heroism for a noble cause but it rarely works once they are over 25. Rared still if they have any combat experience. It wasn't the grizzled veterans and grognards that came ashore that day.


There was a reason that when planning the D-day invasion of France that the vast majority of troops in the initial waves were young and had never been in combat. They had been trained to the nines and practiced until the actions were automatic. But most of the experience in the initial waves was in the senior NCOs even the officers were mostly inexperienced.

Which raises the question of how they got the senior NCOs to go. Easy, the NCOs are highly motivated to try to keep the young guys alive. They know frontal attacks are meat grinders but they also figure they can make a difference. And, cynically, they know if the kids don't carry the day they will have to. When the landing on Omaha faltered it was the NCOs who got small groups moving. Which is why the waves of inexperienced troops had been salted with more experienced ones.

Young males just aren't very good at contemplating and judging the likely outcome of their actions.

I was there when an older boy rode down a hill while standing on the seat of his bike to impress come girls. After hitting the curb and bouncing off a tree the girls noticed him. Hard to miss the ambulance and blood.

I saw what happened when a young guy lit himself on fire with barbecue lighter fluid. He figured it would look cool, impress the ladies, and go out like it does in the movies. Two weeks in the burn center, months of skin grafts, and a year of physical therapy later he was mostly back to normal.

I agree that generally the females are smarter. Smart enough to let the males think that they are.

Well, that and I think the senior NCOs had enough sense to know that the job had to get done anyways. Mature men with families will fight hardest if they are between their family and the threat, perhaps harder than even well trained young men can. If the senior NCOs had family back home and realized what kind of danger losing the war would mean for their loved ones, you can bet they would fight the hardest, dirtiest, meanest battles using the most brutal and effective methods possible. They say the Japanese fought hardest when we hit Okinawa and really threatened homeland invasion.

Most young men don't think that far forward, though. What you hear from the vets that survived hard battles is they fought mostly for each other. That makes sense too I reckon.

I don't reckon there are too many womenfolk that would willingly go kill other women and children if they were ordered to. Perhaps that is another reason why men are told to do it instead. I am fairly certain most of the boys that dropped bombs on Dresden knew what they were doing. I can't imagine any woman I know being able to face that reality.