Daniel James Brown

And so when the Snowshoe Party had reached Johnson's Ranch and told their tale of what was happening in the mountains,

A gentleman named Reason P. Tucker, and this is a gentleman who was my great-great-uncle, led the first expedition up into the mountains to try to get to the lake camp and the Alder Creek camp where the Donner family was to try to get them some kind of relief.

The problem was the snow was still deep and still falling on and off.

And so they could take supplies on pack animals up to the snow line.

But from that point on, traveling east now back towards where the Donner party was entrapped, all they could take was what they could carry on their backs.

And of course, they had to feed themselves, these rescue parties.

And so by the time they reached the encampment at Donner Lake,

there was not that much help they could provide.

They handed out little bits of dried beef, but they didn't have the kind of resources that people would need there to continue to survive.

So about all they could do was take the healthiest of them and try to lead them back out of the mountains.

And so the first Retsu expedition was fairly successful than that.

They took a number of

particularly children, young, relatively young, healthy people back out of the mountains.

And at this point, cannibalism hadn't actually begun to happen at the camps, but it was about to begin.

So there was a first rescue expedition.

And then we mentioned earlier that James Reed had been exiled from the party.

Santa Head had made it through the mountains before the snow to California.

So, yes, Reed was leading the second rescue expedition up into the mountains.

And he came across the first relief party coming back down out of the mountains.

And lo and behold, there was his wife, Margaret, and some of his children.