Sex and Death on the Western Emigrant Trail: The Biology of Three American Tragedies by Donald K. Grayson (review)

This volume represents a culmination of Donald Grayson's approximately 30 years' interest in the demography of death for unfortunate emigrant groups who were devastated by winter storms while trekking west during the mid-19th century: the Donner Party (1846–47) and the less well-known Willie and Martin Handcart Companies (1856). For each, Grayson presents an extensive background review for the three emigrating parties, followed by a detailed analysis of mortality patterning, with emphasis upon age, sex, and size of traveling kin group.

Chapter 2 provides, in exquisite detail, the history of the Donner Party's origins, travel route, and encampments during the fateful winter of 1846–47. In brief, a wagon train, of typical compositional fluidity, left Independence, Missouri, in early May 1846. By August 11, when the decision was made to follow the challenging "nigh" route that cut west from the southwest aspect of the Great Salt Lake, it included 23 wagons and 87 people who were largely midwestern middle class, with hired men attached as servants. Of those 87, 40%–46% would be dead by the end of March 1847.

By contrast, the Willie (4th) and Martin (5th) Handcart Companies, described in chapters 5 and 6, consisted of Mormon migrants from the British Isles and Scandinavia. The Mormon Church organized these converts into groups of five who, together, would drag their 60-pound handcarts with food and possessions the entire 1,300 miles from Iowa City, Iowa, to Salt Lake City, Utah. Their extreme winter trials began west of Fort Laramie, Wyoming, in mid-October and extended into November. Already weakened from inadequate rations, 16% (71/442) of the Willie Handcart Company died; 18% (113/618) of the Martin Company succumbed by the time the survivors reached Salt Lake City.

Grayson uses these historical data to inform his model of the demography of death by analyzing survivorship for the three groups. The title boldly declares that the book is about "sex" and "death," reflecting Grayson's perspective on the biological differences between men and women. He argues against the use of "gender" rather than "sex," due to his assumption that the gender-based behaviors relevant to the cases are biologically determined. Thus, he argues, in situations of extreme stress, cultural coping behaviors fall away and the basic human biology of us all emerges.

Grayson's "natural" experiment thus involves similar environmental stressors on groups who differed by social status, religion, and ethnicity, with the cold and famine stressors being of different durations across the handcart companies and the Donner Party. Outcomes are the death profiles, by age, sex, and size of familial support networks. Referring to general demographic patterning, Grayson predicts that the young and the old will generally be more vulnerable, as will the males due to their genetic propensity for "risky behavior." He concludes that the human biological buffers that protect individuals within extremely stressed cold and famine conditions are (1) being of the female sex, (2) being neither very young nor very old, and (3) supportive family structure.

The volume's organization could be more cohesive, in that the expectations chapter (chapter 3) follows the background of the Donner Party and thus separates the handcart company discussions, relegating them to an apparent subsidiary role. I would have favored an explicit research design, employing multivariate nonparametric statistics to reveal variable interactions. Lacking are contextual details about mid-19th-century gender roles and ethnicity, as are the differential effects of social status. Thus, our cultural selves are given relatively minor weight except when invoked for post hoc explanations. Grayson would argue that his analysis has focused upon groups so stressed that cultural buffers have been removed to expose the basic biology that unites our species. Others may not be so convinced, in that his emphasis upon biological variables seemingly dictates the form taken by...