August 12, 2008 • 10 mins
While stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountains, members of the Donner Party resorted to cannibalism in an effort to survive the harsh winter of 1846. Learn more about the fact and fiction of the Donner Party legend in our HowStuffWorks article.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined as always by staff writer
Josh Clark. Hey, Candice, how's it going there now? Our
(00:22):
listeners can't see you that they should know. You're very meaty,
and if ever I were hard pressed and forgot my
lunch tea, I I don't blame you for that. I've
often looked at myself and thought, you know, if it
really came down to it, I could eat myself. Just
take a bite out of your arm pretty much. You know,
I'd start with the arm. It seems logical. I since
(00:43):
I'm so medy, it's tough for me to bend over
and bite my own thigh. So yeah, I'd start with
my arm. It just makes sense. I don't think I
eat myself, no, and I wouldn't eat you either. You
being a redhead, I imagine you're pretty spicy, plus your
little ropey. Actually, I don't imagine there's much to eat
on there. Moving along, cannibalism. It's a hot topic, apparently
(01:04):
because we're talking about it. Um. You know, there's a
few different kinds of cannibalism. Okay, well, um, there's endo cannibalism,
which is eating people in your own like kin group,
you know, family members, that kind of think. Usually it's
a way of ingesting power and keeping it in a lineage,
or showing respect, that kind of thing. It sounds that
could be easier just to inherit Grandma's diamonds and wear them.
(01:26):
But you're suggesting I eat her. Yeah, yeah, yeah, actually. Um.
And then there's in exo cannibalism. I'm sorry. Exo cannibalism
is the exact opposite, eating people outside of your your
kinship or your kin group. Um. And usually it's a
out of disrespect vanquished foe, somebody you you defeated. You're
(01:47):
saying I'm gonna eat you, dude. That not only am
I going to kill you, I'm gonna eat you too, um,
which is just bad for everybody except for the person
who's eating the other person. Then the third one is
survival cannibalism. This is like tea. Yes, that's precisely what
it is. It's it's people. It's probably the worst form
of cannibalism. I don't mean to to put any kind
(02:08):
of um, you know, Western values on the practice of cannibalism,
because you can only judge a culture by its own
standards cultural relativism. But the thing is survival cannibalism uh
takes place outside of cultures that have some form of
ritualization of cannibalism. These are people who are under the
most dire of circumstances and to survive themselves have to
(02:30):
ingest human flesh. Uh. There's one really notable uh example
that happened in the US, Uh, the Donner Party. Right,
this is true, Okay, So so clear this up for
me then, um, as I understand there's discrepancy over whether
or not the Donner Party actually eight one another there
was any cannibalism involved. As the cannibalism factor fiction, it's fact.
(02:55):
It's fact, and there's a bit of a story behind it.
It's not as simple as you know. Girl never boys,
hungry boy eats girl. Let me paint a picture for you.
April eighteen forty six, We've got a bunch of gung
ho Americans blazing a trail for the wild West. They
were en route to San Francisco from Springfield, Illinois. They
(03:17):
were going to take the California Trail. It was George
Donner and his brother Jacob, and they met up with
James Reid, and they were thirty three of them together.
They were called the Donna Read Party, not to be
confused with the Donna Read Party, known at the time
for their tasteful high heels and strings of pearls, right,
which was kind of weird during westward expansion. Indeed, there
(03:39):
were new vacuum cleaners involved at that point in time,
and anyway, so the Donna Read Party let me not
clip any of my syllables off there, the Donna Reads
set out, and like any good westward expansion story, as
they pushed west, they picked up more people, and they
had thirty three members originally, and they just kept mushrooming
and mushrooming, and more and more were joined, and later
(04:01):
on the party would break apart into factions because some
people heard of the shortcut called the Hastings cut Off,
and they decided that they were tried. I was supposed
to shave some time off their trip, which was going
to take six months. It ended up taking them two years. Yeah. No,
it wasn't an entirely unfounded decision to split off and
take the Hastings cut off, right, because they were actually
(04:23):
going to meet up with the guy who discovered this
new pass, Lankford Hastings. So I mean, it's not like
they were like, yeah, I heard about this, you know
that kind of thing. They like the guy was there
waiting for him, um, and they were going to meet
up with him, and he was going to take him
the rest of the way right And it would have
been perfect except that he left before they got there,
and so they decided they would try the path on
(04:43):
their own. And it was very very treacherous, and to
make matters even more ominous along the way, Hastings left them. No,
it's saying things like this trail is much worse than
I thought. Turned back, now, save yourselves. Well back at
ground zero, where the rest of the donner Re party
was camped out, people were just sort of hanging tight.
They were laying low because it was winter at this point.
(05:05):
It was very very cold. They were in the Sierra Nevados.
It was very hard to diversh the terrain and things
reading a little bit dire. People were getting old, they
were getting hungry, and they were starting to die, and
so a group decided that since they were the strongest
and the hardiest, they were going to branch off too,
for Lauren Hope exactly. The for Lauren Hope group also
(05:27):
called the Snowshoet group because they made little snowshoes for
themselves to set out in the snow. So they go
off looking for help. The people back at camp they're
doing everything they can just to stay alive. Like they've
literally had to settle in for the winter. They aren't
trying to move any further as a large group. Oh
now they're down to their pack animals. They're starting to
eat their horses. Then they started hunting, and because it's winter,
(05:50):
it's very hard to find prey, So then they turned
to eating their dogs, which I found curious that you
would eat your pack animals and then hunt and then
eat your dogs, because I love my dogs, but compared
to a good pack animal, all three of them are
totally useless. Um. And then the hunting part, why would
you do that in between? Why wouldn't you hunt first
and then maybe the dogs and then the pack animals
(06:12):
and then humans. I can't really speak to their logic,
but after the dogs, they tried boiling their blankets and
gathering twigs from the forest and making a very strange
glue like soup. I might have even tried that first. Well.
And then this is where it gets really really juicy.
The first human died, and this is corpse lying there.
People are looking at it and just you know, starting
(06:32):
to wonder and that they ended up leaving him behind.
They did, yeah, they did not. Not two times in
a row though, No, because at this point the Snowshoe
group for Lauren Hope back with them. Now the same
thing has happened. The first person has died, and they've
decided times are this rough, We're gonna go ahead and
show down. So they start some some ground rules. They
(06:54):
decide that they're not gonna eat anyone they related to,
and they're not going to kill anyone for food. If
someone die, their fair game, quite literally, thank you for them.
People were dropping left and right there you go. But
then things got heated up a little bit when a
young guy, like an actual young person died. Jay Fosdick
and Mrs Foster went ahead and cut him up and
(07:15):
hate him and fed him to the Native American guys,
I understand, right, And Jacks father did not like that,
and he shot them and killed them, which is totally
against the rules as well, I imagine exactly, so things
are really falling apart by this point, I think when
they ate the first fight of flesh, things had fallen
apart fully. Well, it gets even worse, well because then
(07:38):
people start fabricating stories about what rules they did and
didn't break. And eventually, when people start coming back to
camp and the rescue workers finally move in to rescue
all the disparate groups that exist all across this here
in Nevada's by now they find that one guy is
like cooking people. Louis Keysburg. Yeah, he was like the
(08:00):
rescue parties came in groups and could only take a
certain number of people out at a time, right, um,
and he was left behind but I think four other
people and uh, when the rescue party finally came back
to get him, he was sitting there, fat and happy,
with several delightful dishes featuring human flesh cooking around him.
And the real kicker of the whole thing was that
(08:23):
there were two perfectly good ox legs, uh sitting there
and he was eating the humans. So he he chewed
them peck animal and apparently dogs and and you know,
the glue like soup and just went right to the
to the cannibalism, because I guess he liked it, and
he was accused of murdering the people. He said, no, no, no,
they died of starvation. And what's more, I didn't like it.
(08:44):
I didn't like eating it, but I sure ate them up.
And at this point in time, the media had gotten
wind of the Donner Reed party and they started publishing
all sorts of grizzly details of the journey. And you know,
I really have to sympathize with them, because their conditions
were rough. People were dying left and right. Who knows
what was going through their minds. Who knows if if
they were even in their right minds at this point
(09:06):
in time, And a lot of the legends died with
them because people found that it was very painful to
talk about. And what's more, they tried to do the
right thing. Even after they had eaten these people, boiled
their flesh and and you know, washed down their gullets
with snow, what have you. They tried to give the
bones a proper burial. And because of that, there's not
a lot of anthropological evidence that cannibalism did exist. So
(09:29):
we're going off of these oral accounts, right which I
think they're pretty much concrete. I mean, I don't think
people would say, you know, we ate other people when
you didn't. Not not in this society. Wow, you can
make that decision for yourself when you read how the
Dinner party worked on how staff works dot com. We're
moral this than thousands of other topics because at how
(09:50):
stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think.
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot
com
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined as always by staff writer
Josh Clark. Hey, Candice, how's it going there now? Our
(00:22):
listeners can't see you that they should know. You're very meaty,
and if ever I were hard pressed and forgot my
lunch tea, I I don't blame you for that. I've
often looked at myself and thought, you know, if it
really came down to it, I could eat myself. Just
take a bite out of your arm pretty much. You know,
I'd start with the arm. It seems logical. I since
(00:43):
I'm so medy, it's tough for me to bend over
and bite my own thigh. So yeah, I'd start with
my arm. It just makes sense. I don't think I
eat myself, no, and I wouldn't eat you either. You
being a redhead, I imagine you're pretty spicy, plus your
little ropey. Actually, I don't imagine there's much to eat
on there. Moving along, cannibalism. It's a hot topic, apparently
(01:04):
because we're talking about it. Um. You know, there's a
few different kinds of cannibalism. Okay, well, um, there's endo cannibalism,
which is eating people in your own like kin group,
you know, family members, that kind of think. Usually it's
a way of ingesting power and keeping it in a lineage,
or showing respect, that kind of thing. It sounds that
could be easier just to inherit Grandma's diamonds and wear them.
(01:26):
But you're suggesting I eat her. Yeah, yeah, yeah, actually. Um.
And then there's in exo cannibalism. I'm sorry. Exo cannibalism
is the exact opposite, eating people outside of your your
kinship or your kin group. Um. And usually it's a
out of disrespect vanquished foe, somebody you you defeated. You're
(01:47):
saying I'm gonna eat you, dude. That not only am
I going to kill you, I'm gonna eat you too, um,
which is just bad for everybody except for the person
who's eating the other person. Then the third one is
survival cannibalism. This is like tea. Yes, that's precisely what
it is. It's it's people. It's probably the worst form
of cannibalism. I don't mean to to put any kind
(02:08):
of um, you know, Western values on the practice of cannibalism,
because you can only judge a culture by its own
standards cultural relativism. But the thing is survival cannibalism uh
takes place outside of cultures that have some form of
ritualization of cannibalism. These are people who are under the
most dire of circumstances and to survive themselves have to
(02:30):
ingest human flesh. Uh. There's one really notable uh example
that happened in the US, Uh, the Donner Party. Right,
this is true, Okay, So so clear this up for
me then, um, as I understand there's discrepancy over whether
or not the Donner Party actually eight one another there
was any cannibalism involved. As the cannibalism factor fiction, it's fact.
(02:55):
It's fact, and there's a bit of a story behind it.
It's not as simple as you know. Girl never boys,
hungry boy eats girl. Let me paint a picture for you.
April eighteen forty six, We've got a bunch of gung
ho Americans blazing a trail for the wild West. They
were en route to San Francisco from Springfield, Illinois. They
(03:17):
were going to take the California Trail. It was George
Donner and his brother Jacob, and they met up with
James Reid, and they were thirty three of them together.
They were called the Donna Read Party, not to be
confused with the Donna Read Party, known at the time
for their tasteful high heels and strings of pearls, right,
which was kind of weird during westward expansion. Indeed, there
(03:39):
were new vacuum cleaners involved at that point in time,
and anyway, so the Donna Read Party let me not
clip any of my syllables off there, the Donna Reads
set out, and like any good westward expansion story, as
they pushed west, they picked up more people, and they
had thirty three members originally, and they just kept mushrooming
and mushrooming, and more and more were joined, and later
(04:01):
on the party would break apart into factions because some
people heard of the shortcut called the Hastings cut Off,
and they decided that they were tried. I was supposed
to shave some time off their trip, which was going
to take six months. It ended up taking them two years. Yeah. No,
it wasn't an entirely unfounded decision to split off and
take the Hastings cut off, right, because they were actually
(04:23):
going to meet up with the guy who discovered this
new pass, Lankford Hastings. So I mean, it's not like
they were like, yeah, I heard about this, you know
that kind of thing. They like the guy was there
waiting for him, um, and they were going to meet
up with him, and he was going to take him
the rest of the way right And it would have
been perfect except that he left before they got there,
and so they decided they would try the path on
(04:43):
their own. And it was very very treacherous, and to
make matters even more ominous along the way, Hastings left them. No,
it's saying things like this trail is much worse than
I thought. Turned back, now, save yourselves. Well back at
ground zero, where the rest of the donner Re party
was camped out, people were just sort of hanging tight.
They were laying low because it was winter at this point.
(05:05):
It was very very cold. They were in the Sierra Nevados.
It was very hard to diversh the terrain and things
reading a little bit dire. People were getting old, they
were getting hungry, and they were starting to die, and
so a group decided that since they were the strongest
and the hardiest, they were going to branch off too,
for Lauren Hope exactly. The for Lauren Hope group also
(05:27):
called the Snowshoet group because they made little snowshoes for
themselves to set out in the snow. So they go
off looking for help. The people back at camp they're
doing everything they can just to stay alive. Like they've
literally had to settle in for the winter. They aren't
trying to move any further as a large group. Oh
now they're down to their pack animals. They're starting to
eat their horses. Then they started hunting, and because it's winter,
(05:50):
it's very hard to find prey, So then they turned
to eating their dogs, which I found curious that you
would eat your pack animals and then hunt and then
eat your dogs, because I love my dogs, but compared
to a good pack animal, all three of them are
totally useless. Um. And then the hunting part, why would
you do that in between? Why wouldn't you hunt first
and then maybe the dogs and then the pack animals
(06:12):
and then humans. I can't really speak to their logic,
but after the dogs, they tried boiling their blankets and
gathering twigs from the forest and making a very strange
glue like soup. I might have even tried that first. Well.
And then this is where it gets really really juicy.
The first human died, and this is corpse lying there.
People are looking at it and just you know, starting
(06:32):
to wonder and that they ended up leaving him behind.
They did, yeah, they did not. Not two times in
a row though, No, because at this point the Snowshoe
group for Lauren Hope back with them. Now the same
thing has happened. The first person has died, and they've
decided times are this rough, We're gonna go ahead and
show down. So they start some some ground rules. They
(06:54):
decide that they're not gonna eat anyone they related to,
and they're not going to kill anyone for food. If
someone die, their fair game, quite literally, thank you for them.
People were dropping left and right there you go. But
then things got heated up a little bit when a
young guy, like an actual young person died. Jay Fosdick
and Mrs Foster went ahead and cut him up and
(07:15):
hate him and fed him to the Native American guys,
I understand, right, And Jacks father did not like that,
and he shot them and killed them, which is totally
against the rules as well, I imagine exactly, so things
are really falling apart by this point, I think when
they ate the first fight of flesh, things had fallen
apart fully. Well, it gets even worse, well because then
(07:38):
people start fabricating stories about what rules they did and
didn't break. And eventually, when people start coming back to
camp and the rescue workers finally move in to rescue
all the disparate groups that exist all across this here
in Nevada's by now they find that one guy is
like cooking people. Louis Keysburg. Yeah, he was like the
(08:00):
rescue parties came in groups and could only take a
certain number of people out at a time, right, um,
and he was left behind but I think four other
people and uh, when the rescue party finally came back
to get him, he was sitting there, fat and happy,
with several delightful dishes featuring human flesh cooking around him.
And the real kicker of the whole thing was that
(08:23):
there were two perfectly good ox legs, uh sitting there
and he was eating the humans. So he he chewed
them peck animal and apparently dogs and and you know,
the glue like soup and just went right to the
to the cannibalism, because I guess he liked it, and
he was accused of murdering the people. He said, no, no, no,
they died of starvation. And what's more, I didn't like it.
(08:44):
I didn't like eating it, but I sure ate them up.
And at this point in time, the media had gotten
wind of the Donner Reed party and they started publishing
all sorts of grizzly details of the journey. And you know,
I really have to sympathize with them, because their conditions
were rough. People were dying left and right. Who knows
what was going through their minds. Who knows if if
they were even in their right minds at this point
(09:06):
in time, And a lot of the legends died with
them because people found that it was very painful to
talk about. And what's more, they tried to do the
right thing. Even after they had eaten these people, boiled
their flesh and and you know, washed down their gullets
with snow, what have you. They tried to give the
bones a proper burial. And because of that, there's not
a lot of anthropological evidence that cannibalism did exist. So
(09:29):
we're going off of these oral accounts, right which I
think they're pretty much concrete. I mean, I don't think
people would say, you know, we ate other people when
you didn't. Not not in this society. Wow, you can
make that decision for yourself when you read how the
Dinner party worked on how staff works dot com. We're
moral this than thousands of other topics because at how
(09:50):
stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think.
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot
com
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