--- In overlandtrails@yahoogroups.com, Kristin Johnson wrote:

> Stockton's party seeing "human bones still unburied" is
> very intriguing -- can you steer me to your sources? I'd be very
> interested to read any early descriptions of the Donner camps.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Kristin Johnson
>

Good question! The best answer I can reconstruct now from my notes is that I made an error--transferring Clymer's account of Kearny's visit to the site to the conditions there when Stockton's party came along a few days later.

I know there is no mention of the Donner camps in "A Sketch of the Life of Co. Robert F. Stockton"--which doesn't even help with the route other than they followed Kearny. And it isn't from Giffin's "Trail-Blazing Pioneer: Col. Joseph Ballinger Chiles"-- which says Stockton returned east via Santa Fe. My recollection is my first clear evidence that Stockton even travelled via the Humboldt was the report in the "Brunswicker" that they had met the Mormons east of Salt Lake--and there is no description of the Donner camps in that newspaper.

It may be what you shared about the bones is the best evidence I have--that I can't add anything more.

Wendell