Although this cart party is among the remainder of the period, on our appearance the fortification was clamoring. A bunch of catchers emptied their packhorses before the general store, the men filthy and unkempt in their old buckskins and coonskin covers. Kids went through the road, yelling with giggling. About six Indians mounted on incredibly vivid Appaloosa and paint ponies rode gradually through the dusty roads, men wearing Western attire complemented with the plumes and dots of their kin relaxed in the sun outside the pens.
Word spread rapidly of a bar at the general store. Yet, I was generally keen on a hot supper. I’m now so burnt out on my cooking. I had scarcely settled at one of the scarred tables in the eating corridor with a tin plate inundated with runny stew when I saw a man dressed as a catcher or mountain man in the trademark all around worn buckskins, his hair long and white and his wrinkled face as tanned as calfskin. His name was Lionel Farnsworth. Dissimilar to every other person, he was going east, not west. Also, he was voyaging alone, a perilous recommendation in such a meagerly populated region. He revealed to me he’d effectively ventured once to Oregon and twice to California and knew the path better than almost anybody.
Farnsworth’s assessment of the Hastings Cutoff—the course Donner plans to lead the gathering through—was very inauspicious. As Farnsworth would see it, the landscape was excessively unpleasant for carts and unwelcoming to animals. Donner turned out to be with me and he was not satisfied to hear that Farnsworth thought the highway an exercise in futility. He continued to attempt to convince Farnsworth of the blunder of his reasoning, clarifying that Hastings himself planned to meet them at Fort Bridger and had vowed to direct them right to California, however, the elderly person was not influenced. He told Donner they should keep to the old course. Yet, he would have would be wise to karma attempting to convince a tea kettle to sing an aria.
Indeed, when Farnsworth discovered that I wanted to take a similar course (though without carts and a lot more modest gathering) he attempted to work me out of it, as well. After much goading, it came out that the cruel territory wasn’t the just or even the fundamental, justification of his disdain of the course. He conceded that he’d seen one other gathering of Indians, the Anawai, in his movements close to Truckee Lake, yet he cautioned me not to meet with them. At the point when I revealed to him I’d never known about the Anawai, he said that wasn’t unexpected as the clan was little and thought to be very disengaged. He guaranteed that they were especially savage, and indeed occupied with a horrible custom, which he had witnessed for himself: human penance.
I was shocked. Human penance is very uncommon among the fields clans. Old societies toward the south, the Mayans and Aztecs, are known to have rehearsed custom human penance, yet from what I’ve perused it’s practically incomprehensible north of the Rio Grande. I requested that he depict what he’d saw precisely. For clear reasons, I accepted he had misconstrued what he’d seen.
He disclosed to me he’d seen around twelve Anawai fighters take one of their conquers into the forested areas. The courageous battled to move away, however, they held him tight. They took him a long way from their camp and attached him to a tree, restricting him hand and foot, and afterward left him to his destiny although he had shouted out after them. Farnsworth believed that he had been imploring them to release him.
A significantly upsetting scene, no uncertainty. I could comprehend why Farnsworth had been scared. All things considered, it didn’t seem like a penance custom to me. From my readings on the point, I realized that those picked to be forfeited frequently think of it as an honor and go eagerly to the raised area.
I disclosed to Farnsworth that what he’d seen sounded more like discipline. It was amazingly reasonable this fearless had effectively got himself ousted from the clan. Yet, Farnsworth demanded that that was not the situation. He professed to know why they did it, as well: The Anawai feared “the devil that lives out by Truckee Lake” and was making a penance so it would let most of them be.