The Indifferent Stars Above is not merely a nonfiction historical account of the Donner Party migration as the U.S. moved to expand it's frontiers, but it is a deeply enriching story of survival. Daniel Brown strips the mythologized category of the emigrants and the Donner party from the American embellished view of American Pioneers and instead paints the real atrocities that were faced on a daily basis by the unit of emigrants as they moved their way through Utah, Oregon, and California. Brown dedicates his anthropological foundation to the story of Sarah Graves and begins his historical account with the initial source; bones. Brown interestingly finds a link between his father's uncle George W. Tucker and Sarah Graves, the Donner Party Bride. He notes that is unlikely that they knew each other …show more content…
As contraceptives did not exist, the use of lamb gut for the stitching of condoms was expensive to manufacture and the flawed knowledge of fetal formation led to the creation of poisonous tonics made of deadly nightshade as a means of terminating pregnancy. It is important to note that pregnancy would be a risk during this travel as sustenance was limited. Outside the realities of this emigration, pregnancy often defined marriage between a man and woman. As the units of emigrants moved through this undiscovered land, the encounters with native Americans became hostile as all but a few lacked specific skills and experience for traveling through mountains and arid land, and had little knowledge about how to deal with Native Americans. Brown details the use of the Hastings Cutoff, written by Lansford Hastings. Although this offered a rough mapped outline for the perceived cut for the travel of the emigrants, it lacked essential information on the arid land and climate that would lead to the eventual death of 39 of the emigrant