Deeper Into the Donners

TRUCKEE, Calif. — The clues are covered by snow now, 158 winters removed from events that haunt these hills and the history books.

Back before railroads and interstates and ski towns, the families of George and Jacob Donner hunkered down here during the terrible winter of 1846-47, snowbound in a pine-ringed meadow a couple miles north of the old pioneer trail now flanked by vacation homes.

We all know the Donner Party story -- or at least think we do. A wagon train of 81 emigrants is trapped in the Sierra. Desperate rescue attempts flag, nearly half die and many survivors resort to eating the dead.

But the soil still holds secrets. Those long-ago tales of cannibalism have endured for generations without scientific proof.

Intent on bringing a full account of the Donner Party to light, a team of archeologists has over the last two summers combed a 10-by-20-foot checkerboard of earth with the meticulous care of homicide detectives.

They've deployed ground-penetrating radar and turned to DNA tests more common in murder cases. Forensic tracking dogs sniffed the site. Call it CSI: Donner Party.

A bounty of evidence emerged, tiny fragments that look innocuous to the layman but unlock long-ago stories for archeologists. They unearthed shards of 1840s hand-painted china, antique buttons and a chunk of slate from a child's chalkboard. A link from a woman's gold chain surfaced. So did pioneer wagon hardware and pea-size musket balls, some dented as if chomped by teeth during a meal.

There has also been bone, thousands of beige crumbles no bigger than a bottle cap, lurking amid the charcoal stain of an old campfire hidden by time and topsoil. The unsettled question, of course, is whether it is the butchered bone of humans.

That mystery, and more, lured Julie Schablitsky and Kelly Dixon to this pristine meadow beside Alder Creek.

The two archeologists, both in their mid-30s, share a love of the hunt -- and a studied wariness about the mix of truth and myth surrounding the Old West. The historical record of the Donner Party is a prime target, tangled by conjecture and the conflicting memories of survivors.

Put simply, Schablitsky and Dixon hope to reinvent the Donner Party. Cannibalism has dominated the story ever since the first lurid newspaper reports of 1847. Though the search for ironclad proof remains a core aim of the archeologists, their overriding mission is to expand the historical narrative of those awful four months in the snow.