Eating People

Now, everyone who thought they were going to get sexual tips, you can leave this site right now! When I titled this Eating People, that's exactly what I meant.  We just came back from the site where the Donner Party was marooned for the winter from October 1846 until April, 1847. This was unplanned, and when the wagon train occupants ran out of food, they turned to cannibalism.  "Donner" is still a code word in American western history for eating people.  If you are horrified, think about how much more
horrified the uptight 19th century Americans were.  Some members of the Donner party became infamous, and a few were persecuted their entire lives especially the man suspected of murdering for his next meal.  Others were able to put the event behind them and became leading citizens of California.  Still other survivors were haunted their whole lives with what was probably PTSD.   In that record breaking winter, there was at least twelve feet of fallen snow on the ground and drifts even higher.  Even if they could have reached the ground to try and bury the dead, it was frozen solid.  Thus, the bodies weren't buried, and it was pretty apparent to the rescuers in April of 1847 how the 48 left alive of the 87 who got stranded managed to still be breathing when rescue arrived.

The Donner Party expedition was a comedy of errors, misjudgment, and ignorance from the beginning,  The wagon train dawdled across the plains even though they got a 'late start' on the journey to California.  Then, they took a 'short cut' off the newly blazed Emigrant Trail even though they were repeatedly warned not to do so by experienced mountain men and guides.  They rested as the fall progressed for days at a time, and finally, Mother Nature threw a 100 year winter at them.

When they reached the base of the mountains, there were multiple attempts by the entire party to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains at what today is known as "Donner Pass".  Each time, the group was unsuccessful, and the snow continued to pile up.  When it became clear they would be wintering at 7000 feet in elevation, they didn't immediately collect as much food as possible before being snowed in.  Then the game animals stopped moving around and hibernated.  These people didn't even manage to master fishing in the lake.  One factor which is difficult to calculate as to how much it attributed to this tragedy is these people were terrified.   Early on even before they were in dire trouble, they began to bicker and quarrel.   They resorted to murdering one another over trifling issues, and as a group showed a total inability to pull together for the common good.  

In the depth of winter, the strongest members of the Donner party tried to 'walk out' over the pass to get help.  Many of these people became stranded in the snow, and they definitely resorted to cannibalism to survive. Meanwhile, hampered by the bid for California independence, and the Mexican American War, it was hard to find rescuers on the Western side of the Sierra Nevadas who would even attempt the trip

You can see the glacial boulder that formed the 4th side of this cabin

over the mountains in the dead of winter once the plight of the Donner wagon train became known. Rescue was attempted in fits and starts.  The families left at the Donner Lake camp ate the oxen hides off the roof of one of the cabins in desperation.  This picture is a representation of what one of the three cabins built for the winter looked like.  The plaque in the above picture is mounted on the glacial boulder that was the fourth wall of the Murphy cabin.  

Eventually, the last living person at the Donner camp was rescued in April of 1847.  Supposedly, he had a pot of human flesh simmering over the fire when the rescuers arrived.

The Donner party cannibalism was originally downplayed in the Eastern newspapers because of the building fever of westward migration.  The year after the Donner disaster, migration was dampened, but the slacking off of emigrants had more to do with the Mexican American War rather than the Donner horror story.  Nothing however could have contained the westward migration once the news of the California gold discovery reached the East.

Americans love lurid stories, and George McGlashan, a 19th century Truckee newspaperman, recognized a good story when he heard one.  He interviewed every single surviving member of the Donner Party repeatedly, and over years of interviews, each person old enough to recall the terrible events of that winter confirmed many instances of cannibalism.  In 1879 McGlashan documented it all in a book which further spread the notoriety of the Donner wagon train.  Since that first book, several more have been written over the past 150 years. In the 1880's, McGlashan was the person responsible for spearheading the establishment the memorial we visited which eventually became a California State Park.

In terms of who survived, no one under the age of 6 was left alive at the end of that winter.  No one survived who was over the age of 49.  More women than men survived.  Historians have reasoned more women survived because they stored more body fat.  Best survival rate was among the children between the ages of 6 and 14.  Children were fed human remains first, and cannibalism  may have enabled their survival. The facts are still murky about who ate whom.  No gnawed human bones were found in the remains of the fireplaces.  There were no carefully preserved recipes handed down to the next generation.  As McGlashan became more intimate with the survivors, however, it became apparent each group resorted to eating human flesh to survive.

Today, the notion of eating human flesh just makes us shudder.  There have certainly been human civilizations who had cannibalism embedded in their culture often as a practice during war or as a religious ceremony.  There are suspected cannibalistic tribes still in New Guinea or the depths of the Amazon rain forest. Cannibalism  is such a taboo in the 21st century there are no recipes or helpful cooking hints to be found.  No one considers human flesh the ultimate delicacy.  There is no butchering chart.  You won't find wine pairings or side dish suggestions.  However, the reality finally accepted by the starving Donner party members was meat is meat.  They chose survival rather than the moral high ground, and I strongly suspect each of us would too if found in their dire straits.

The ultimate irony is the spot where the Donner wagon train was stranded is gorgeous.  The pass they couldn't cross ultimately became the pass the Pacific Railway was built across as the race to build a transcontinental railway finished up right after the Civil War.  Interstate 80 was built over this pass. If you want to see what it looks like today, here are the pictures.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/115478608971584948192/albums/6065713509372425361?authkey=CPDg29nn2cLuRg