Why did more women than men survive?

This is a complicated question with no simple answer, but here are some major factors:

1) Men led more dangerous lives. Some, like John Snyder, Mr. Wolfinger, William Pike, Luis, and Salvador died violently. Also, more men went out on snowshoes to get help; most of these men died.

2) The men had done heavy labor along the way -- clearing the road through the Wasatch Mountains, for instance -- and when they reached Donner Lake they set to work felling trees and building cabins. During the winter they were expected to continue doing "men’s work," like shoveling snow and chopping firewood. Basically, the men started the winter in worse physical shape, and their customary activities further weakened them.

3) Women have less muscle and more body fat than men. They need less food, have more stored energy, and may have an advantage in some cold situations, although this last is by no means certain.

4) All the women traveled with at least one family member, which gave them not only a support system but also something to live for. Having a family was also a factor in men’s survival; all the adult males who survived the entrapment were fathers, and all the bachelors (single men 21 and over) died.

5) When things get tough, men tend to want to go out and do something to fix the situation. The strongest men went with the Forlorn Hope snowshoers. The ones left behind couldn’t do much but wait; they certainly couldn’t fix the weather, and as they weakened from hunger they were less able to perform their expected tasks, like hunting, cutting firewood, or shoveling snow. I believe that the men were more likely to fall prey to feelings of hopelessness and despair. Milt Elliott returned from the Donners at Alder Creek reporting that "it was very sad down their & it made a man feel awful bad when he could not do any thing to fix them any better." Some of the men, like Jacob Donner and James Smith, seem to have just given up. James F. Reed wrote, "James Smith was about the first who died of the boys. He gave up, pined away, and died. He did not starve."

6) The women, on the other hand, still had their usual roles of keeping house and tending children. Women seem to be better at putting up with things, at accepting the fact that a situation isn’t fixable and trying to make the best of it. This gives them a psychological advantage in scenarios like the Donner Party, when people are at the mercy of factors beyond their control. In addition, it’s not as damaging to a woman’s self-esteem to have to be rescued.

In the 1990s Donald K. Grayson, an anthropologist, and Stephen A. McCurdy, a physician, independently performed statistical studies of Donner Party mortality rates. The full length reports of their studies appear in professional journals but synopses are available on the Internet; see Jared Diamond’s "Living Through the Donner Party" in Discover 3:13 (March 1992), p. 100-107, which describes Grayson’s work, or the summary of McCurdy's study.

For Donner Party mortality/survival figures by gender, see the Statistics page.