Daniel James Brown

There's another sort of co-conspirator here is Jim Bridger, the proprietor of Bridger's

He also had a vested interest in people taking this southern route so that they would pass through his fort on the way to California.

So he also talked up this supposed shortcut.

You know, it's not entirely clear to me why George Donner doesn't actually, well, he gets injured fairly soon after they get to the mountains.

He doesn't seem to particularly exert a great deal of leadership as far as I've been able to tell.

And so, you know, I don't have a crisp answer for that.

He was willing to do it.

Right.

You know, being a captain of one of these expeditions was kind of like being the sole law authority.

Right.

They had quite a bit of authority over discipline and so forth.

I think that's true.

I mean, people, as I mentioned earlier, people didn't particularly like James Reed.

James Reed had a reputation for being somewhat haughty and authoritarian.

and ill-tempered.

And so, it makes sense that they would have chosen somebody like George Donner who could theoretically pull people together.

This turned out to be a very fractious bunch of men and women also with very independent spirits.

Many of them were descendants of people who had fought in the revolution.

They believed very strongly in their individual rights and their individual prerogatives.

And so as we will see as time goes on, they weren't a group that was going to naturally knit together very well.