Salvador Unknown (abt. 1818 - 1847)

Died Jan 1847 at about age 29 in Bear River, Nevada Territory

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Salvador was a guide for the Donner Party wagon train to California that became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in 1846.

Biography

Salvador Unknown was a member of the Donner Party. See Donner Party.

Salvador was one of two Miwok American Indians who were guides for the infamous Donner Party in 1846. The Donner Party was trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains by snow for 111 days.

Salvador and Luis left with the Forlorn Hope, a party of 17 men, women, and children who set out on foot in an attempt to cross the mountain pass. When Patrick Dolan died, some of the group began to eat flesh from Patrick Dolan's body, except for William Eddy, Salvador and Luis. William Eddy eventually ate human flesh, but that was soon gone. They began to take apart their snowshoes to eat the oxhide webbing, and discussed killing Luis and Salvador for food. William Eddy warned the Native Americans and they left. After several more days and 25 days since they had left Truckee Lake, they came across Salvador and Luis, they had not eaten for nine days and were very weak and dying. William Foster shot Salvador and Luis for food. They are the only two from the Donner Party that were definitely known to have been killed for food.^[1]

Sources

1. ↑ King, Joseph A. "Luis and Salvador: Unsung Heroes of the Donner Party." The Californians 13:2 (1996), 20-21.

See Also:

• Donner Party - Teamsters
• Dixon, Kelly, Shannon Novak, Gwen Robbins, Julie Schablitsky, Richard Scott , and Guy Tasa (2010), "Men, Women, and Children are Starving: Archaeology of the Donner Family Camp". American Antiquity 75(3):627-656
• McGlashan, Charles (1879). History of the Donner Party: A Tragedy of the Sierra Nevada: 11th edition (1918), A Carlisle & Company, San Francisco
• McNeese, Tim (2009). The Donner Party: A Doomed Journey, Chelsea House Publications. ISBN 978-1-60413-025-6
• Rarick, Ethan (2008). Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-530502-7
• Rehart, Catherine Morison (2000), The Valley's Legends & Legacies III, Word Dancer Press, ISBN 978-1-884995-18-7
• Stewart, George R. (1936). Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party: supplemented edition (1988), Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-61159-8
• Unruh, John (1993). The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–60, University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-06360-0