Gabriel Conroy
497 pages (large print) 1875 1882
Bret Harte

Searching around for this and that (which is the technical term for the DSHS research department’s primary function) for the Heirloom, our DSHS resident historians came across the subject “Donner Party fiction.” That was something they’d never considered since there are so many Donner Party books, many of which have been reviewed in the Heirloom and occupy space on the DSHS website’s book review page, to keep a curious reader busy.

Hunting around in Donner Party fiction we found the only novel Bret Harte ever wrote, Gabriel Conroy. Harte uses the basic idea, and Sierra winter setting, to craft a story that spans some years during the California Gold Rush. The DSHS department thought some Heirloom readers might be interested. Interestingly, Gabriel Conroy was mentioned in last month’s October, ‘25 Heirloom in America’s Wonderlands when that book’s author was talking about Donner Lake, a “ghastly tale of cannibalism is told of the survivors, and the whole tragedy is embalmed in Bret Harte’s novel of Gabriel Conroy.”

Bret Harte (1836-1902) was a famous writer of Gold Rush era short stories. He’d come to California with his mother and tried teaching and prospecting but those didn’t work out. Writing Gold Rush stories did work out. Harte became internationally famous and one of the highest paid American writers. His most famous stories are “The Luck of Roaring Camp” and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat.” His writing helped develop the classic Western stories and characters. His character descriptions were based on real people and his description of Gold Rush life were realistic.

Gabriel Conroy uses the Donner Party as the foundation of the story of Gabriel coming to California. On the very first page there is the foreshadowing of disaster.

“Snow. Everywhere. As far as the eye could reach—fifty miles, looking southward from the highest white peak,—filling ravines and gulches, and dropping from the walls of cañons in white shroud-like drifts, fashioning the dividing ridge into the likeness of a monstrous grave, hiding the bases of giant pines, and completely covering young trees and larches… Snow lying everywhere over the California Sierras on the 15th day of March 1848, and still falling.

“It had been snowing for ten days: snowing in finely granulated powder, in damp, spongy flakes, in thin, feathery plumes, snowing from a leaden sky steadily, snowing fiercely, shaken out of purple-black clouds in white flocculent masses, or dropping in long level lines, like white lances from the tumbled and broken heavens. But always silently! The woods were so choked with it—the branches were so laden with it—it had so permeated, filled and possessed earth and sky; it had so cushioned and muffled the ringing rocks and echoing hills, that all sound was deadened. The strongest gust, the fiercest blast, awoke no sigh or complaint from the snow-packed, rigid files of forest.”
That’s pretty realistic and it goes on for two more pages.

Then there is notice on a tree:

“Captain Conroy's party of emigrants are lost in the snow, and
camped up in this cañon. Out of provisions and starving!

Left St. Jo, October 8th, 1847.
Left Salt Lake, January 1st, 1848.
Arrived here, March 1st, 1848.
Lost half our stock on the Platte.
Abandoned our waggons, [sic] February 20th.”

In the opening scene a man, “haggard,” “ragged,” has gone scouting and returned.

“Here he stopped, or rather lay down, before an opening or cavern in the snow, and uttered a feeble shout. It was responded to still more feebly. Presently a face appeared above the opening, and a ragged figure like his own, then another, and then another, until eight human creatures, men and women, surrounded him in the snow, squatting like animals, and like animals lost to all sense of decency and shame.

“They were so haggard, so faded, so forlorn, so wan — so piteous in their human aspect, or rather all that was left of a human aspect,— that they might have been wept over as they sat there; they were so brutal, so imbecile, unreasoning and grotesque in these newer animal attributes, that they might have provoked a smile.”

Harte is telling the story of a party of emigrants trapped in the snow in a canyon. They’ve left a notice in a tree some distance away but any rescue will be up to them huddled in shelters under the snow. Harte imagined what it would have been like and translated that imagining into evocative descriptions, “they were men and women without the dignity or simplicity of man and womanhood. All that had raised them above the level of the brute was lost in the snow.” To add realism Harte writes conversations in the vernacular.

Reading books about the Donner Party one comes away with what happened in recitations of dates and short diary entries or reminiscences cleaned up years after the fact. Since almost all are non-fiction there is no description of what people thought, personal interactions, or what the atmosphere was like. Harte solves that by imagining the conversations, interactions and descriptions there must have been. In the descriptions of the trapped people he says they fought, quarreled, swore, wept, sighed, and fainted all in one sentence. We can imagine the Donner Party did too.

In this opening scene the man who went out scouting has come back to report and then left for another mound in the now. Those to whom he’s reported then talked about having no food and that the scout must have a secret source of food, maybe they should kill him. Another topic was that someone they picked up on the trail must be the source of bad luck. Then they eagerly listen to a party member describe a dinner he once had. It all seems so real – people desperate, trapped and how at least some must have acted in their desperation. We’re also primed to see the worst of humanity: accusations, thievery, and even murder.

The man who was the scout, Phillip, talks to his apparent girl-friend, Grace, saying they must leave and leave behind those too weak. They can send help back, but they must go to survive. That sets up the rest of the story which takes place in Gold Rush camps. Phillip and Grace escape leaving behind everyone else including Gabriel Conroy and Olly who are Grace’s brother and sister.

Phillip leaves Grace at a miner’s cabin and heads back to the trapped party as part of a rescue expedition. Apparently at least some people survive although there are allusions to cannibalism. A doctor in the group died but not before giving Grace a mining claim he had. Some of his property is buried to keep it safe. It will be rifled.

From there the story is a story of California, Spanish land grants, vigilantes, forgery, accusation of murder, aliases, coincidences, providential earthquakes, and trying to keep track of who is who among a long cast of characters.

Now things get confusing. Grace disappears but will reappear some hundreds of pages later with a different name. Phillip turns out to have a different name too and was a member of the army. Gabriel survives entrapment in snow along with his sister, Olly, and since Grace is nowhere to be found Gabriel takes over the mining claim. The claim sits on a Spanish land grant with the mining interest taking precedence over the grant. The owner of the grant will turn out years later to be Grace. Throughout the book, before that person is identified finally, the story about her is that she is a “half breed” who had been brought up by a Californio (Spaniard) after her mother died. She only looks like a “half breed” because of what she’s been putting on her skin.

Coincidence plays a big part in the story to help move the plot along as is the case in many 19th Century novels. For example, when Gabriel rescues a woman on a stage that is almost washed away by a dam break, it will turn out that the woman was the wife of the doctor who died on Gabriele’s wagon train and gave the property to Grace. Gabriele and the woman will get married. Phillip will turn out to be a lawyer and have even a third name.

Knowing that many 19th Century novels were full of coincidences that lay out convenient solutions to plot points, we keep reading in order to find who is really who, what the various relationships are, who is what to whom, who will suddenly pop up after a few hundred pages, and how it all strings together. Harte does bring it all together.

There some illogic from time to time. For example how did Phillip run into a rescue party and how did the rescue party know it was needed? How was he intending to rescue people on his own? How did the rescue party know where to go? Here there is a footnote by Harte solving all that. He says the Donner Party rescue parties were guided by clairvoyance. There is the notice in the tree which is also illogical. Who would put up the notice expecting someone to come by and read it?

Bret Harte’s observations of life in the gold diggings provide the reader with a view into 19th Century California life. Lots of people changed their names to start over in California. Land grants were important and there were fights over them. Harte’s observations bring out interesting details. The rooming house has cloth and paper room partitions and ceiling. When a visitor knocks on one door heads pop out of all the other doors in the hallway. You can just imagine the detail.

In another description, “It was the first sound that for an hour had interrupted the monotonous jingle of his spurs or the hollow beat of his horse's hoofs. And then, after the fashion of the country, he rose slightly in his stirrups, dashed his spurs into the sides of his mustang, swung the long, horsehair, braided thong of his bridle-rein, and charged at headlong speed upon the dozen lounging, apparently listless vaqueros, who, for the past hour, had nevertheless been watching and waiting for him at the courtyard gate.” It’s easy to “see” what Harte describes.

There are also the less savory details of 19th Century California in the prejudices of the time: “half breed,” women as the “deceitful sex,” “Niggerhead Tobacco,” “They might forgive you for killing Mexican of no great market value, but they ain’t goin’ to extend the right hand of fellowship to me after running off with their ringleader’s mustang,” “savage customs of her race,” “Greasers,” and “You gentlemen are so critical about complexion [sic] and colour…”

Then there is 19th Century writing which uses a richer vocabulary than we use today, “Gabriel had nursed many sick men, and here was one who clearly ought to be under the doctor's hands, economising his vitality as a sedentary invalid, who had shown himself to him hitherto only as a man of superabundant activity and animal spirits. Whence came the power that had animated this fragile shell? Gabriel was perplexed; he looked down upon his own huge frame with a new and sudden sense of apology and depreciation, as if it were an offence to this spare and bloodless Adonis.”

Finally, just for fun, there is an allusion to “a truly magnificent plan of bring the water of Lake Tahoe to San Francisco by ditches…” Long time Heirloom readers will remember Alexi Von Schmidt and his plan to do exactly that. See the February, ’21 Heirloom.

Gabriel Conroy is available on the internet for free.



"All that had raised them above the level of the brute was lost in the snow”