Donner Party Deaths Show Women Are Hardier

Women are twice as likely as men to survive extreme cold and hunger, based on new research of the Donner Party, 19th century pioneers who resorted to cannibalism to survive winter in the Sierra Nevada.

Increased body fat, a lower metabolic rate and a temperament that is less prone to aggression, makes females the hardier sex when it comes to surviving disaster, said archaeologist Donald Grayson of the University of Washington.

In analyzing death patterns of the Donner Party, Grayson found that women who were older than 5, but younger than 50, and part of large families had the highest survival rate. Of the group's 52 males about 56 percent died, while only 29 percent of the 33 females died.

"I found it especially interesting that so many men died so early," Grayson said. "They just went like flies."

The group was marooned in the mountains for six months, from October to April. Of the 25 men who died after reaching the Sierra Nevada, 14 died by the end of January, while all of the 10 females who perished died in the later months.

Results of Grayson's study were published last year in the Journal of Anthropological Research.

Eighty-seven pioneers, led by George and Jacob Donner left Springfield, Ill., by wagon train in August 1846 bound for California's Sacramento Valley. The group was delayed traveling an untested route between Wyoming and Nevada, and found itself starting over the mountains in eastern California just as the winter snows hit. Only 40 survived the ordeal.

Camped out in log cabins from late October to April, the pioneers ate their draft animals, pets and a "soup" made from boiling animal hides and bones to keep from starving.

By February, Donner Party diaries show that to stay alive pioneers were eating their dead and the practice had almost become routine.

"Mrs Murphy said here yesterday that she thought she would Commence on Milt & eat him . . . it is distressing . . . Satd 27th beautiful morning," wrote Patrick Breen, a 40-year-old survivor.

The demographics of the Donner Party provides a solid case of "natural selection in action," Grayson said. Unlike most cases of famine, the pioneers' struggled with both extreme hunger and intense cold.

Another difference: Donner Party men did not take control of resources, but shared food and shelter with their families, Grayson said.

Age, the size of one's social group - and most of all, sex, - the archaeologist said, were key in determining who lived and died.

Women have a greater percentage of surface fat that insulates them against cold, Grayson said. Females also consume energy less quickly than men - an adaptation that aids pregnancy - thereby holding an extra store of energy that can later be tapped.

Such assets may have helped women survive an attempt by 13 pioneers to snowshoe out of the mountains in late December. Five women and eight men made the 33-day trip. Six died - all men.

Basic personality differences, namely a female temperament that relies more on cooperation than aggression, also meant the difference between life and death, Grayson said. Two of the Donner Party men died as a result of murder before the group reached the mountains. One man who had no wagon or draft animal died when he was denied access to transportation. Another man was accidentally shot and killed.

Grayson said he's witnessed female survival traits on his own archaeology excursions in the deserts of Oregon and Nevada.

"When our vehicles broke down or got stuck in the desert the men were good at things calling for short-term aggression - wrestling the car out or carrying back lots of food," Grayson said.

"But if . . . muscle power didn't help, the men just got angrier and angrier, whereas the women didn't lose their tempers," he said. "The Donner diaries showed that the women held things together for the long term."

The pioneers' death statistics, including women's higher survival rate, fit exactly with modern analyses of human mortality, Grayson said.

As expected, the youngest and oldest members of the Donner Party were most likely to succumb. Of the 16 children under age 5, 10 died, and of the five adults between 49 and 69, none survived.

Those in the largest social groups - and females tended to be among them - were also more likely to make it out alive. Eleven of the men who died were single, all between the ages of 20 and 39, Grayson said. In contrast, all nine members of the Breen family, who ranged in age from 1 to 40, survived.

"Just being together provides tremendous support," Grayson said. "There's a sharing of resources and a psychological support you get from needing to help and being helped."

Faced with the same famine and cold temperatures, Grayson believes today's Americans would suffer a much worse fate than members of the Donner Party.

"Those people were really tough," the archaeologist said. "When you look at most flabby, out-of-shape Americans, they wouldn't even make it to the Sierra Nevada."