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Updated: June 29, 2025
Women shunned him, and children stoned him as he walked about the fort. The California Star printed in full the account of the Fallon party, and blood-curdling editorials increased public sentiment against Keseberg, stamping him with the mark of Cain, and closing the door of every home against him.
To this lonely wretch her coming seemed like an angel's. She was cold and wet and freezing, yet her first words were, that she must see her children. Keseberg understood that she intended to start out that very night, and soon found that she was slightly demented. She kept saying, "O God! I must see my children. I must go to my children!"
It was in his cabin that, after losing all her loved ones, the heroic Tamsen Donner met her end. Many thought he killed her for the one horrid purpose. * * Many years later Keseberg declared under oath to C. F. McGlashan that he did not take her life. See "History of the Donner" Party, pp. 212, 213.
One could not but feel that he was poor, yet he courteously but positively declined the assistance which, privately, I offered him. In bidding him good-bye, I remarked that we might not see one another again on earth, and he replied pathetically, "Don't say that, for I hope this may not be our last meeting." I did not see Keseberg again.
She finally consented to wait until the morning, but was determined that nothing should then prevent her lonely journey. She told Keseberg where her money was concealed, she made him solemnly promise that he would get the money and take it to her children. She would not taste the food he had to offer. She had not tasted human flesh, and would hardly consent to remain in his foul and hideous den.
Started on foot, with provisions for ten days and travelled to head of the valley, and camped for the night; snow from two to three feet deep. Started early in the morning of April 15 and travelled twenty-three miles. Snow ten feet deep. April 17. Reached the cabins between twelve and one o'clock. Expected to find some of the sufferers alive. Mrs. Donner and Keseberg in particular.
Murphy, too ill to leave her bed, and Keseberg, too lame to walk, by reason of a deep cleft in his heel, made by an axe, would have to stay alone in that abode of wretchedness? Nor could we know our mother's anguish, as she stepped aside to arrange with Mr. Eddy for our departure. She had told us at our own camp why she would remain.
Keseberg is a powerful man, six feet in height, with full bushy beard, thin brown locks, and high forehead. He has blue eyes that look squarely at you while he talks. He is sometimes absent-minded and at times seems almost carried away with the intensity of his misery and desolation. He speaks and writes German, French, Spanish, and English; and his selection of words proves him a scholar.
Murphy, his mother-in-law, to see if any property remained there worth collecting and securing; he found the body of young Murphy who had been dead about three months with his breast and skull cut open, and the brains, liver, and lights taken out; and this accounted for the contents of the pan which stood beside Keseberg when he was found.
His eyes did not turn from my face; his hand between mine lay as untrembling as that of a child in peaceful sleep; and so, unflinchingly Lewis Keseberg passed the ordeal which would have made a guilty man quake.
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