The Backstory: Cannibalism on the wild frontier

The Netflix hit film Society of the Snow is the true story of South American athletes trapped in the snowy mountains after a plane crash…with some surviving by eating their dead teammates. Now we look at the Donner party of pioneers in 1846, trapped in 22 feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains…and the even more gruesome way some of them survived. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Did you catch Society of the Snow on Netflix? Of course.
It's the true story of a rugby team from Uruguay
fifty years ago whose airliner crashed in the snowy mountains
of Argentina. They survived by eating their dead teammates. Well,
in eighteen forty six, the Donner Party of Pioneers headed
west and were stranded for the winter in the Sierra
Nevada Mountains. They had an even more gruesome survival story.

(00:24):
I'm Patty Steele. What would you do next? On the backstory?
The backstory is back. If you watched the recent Netflix
hit movie Society of the Snow, maybe you asked yourself
what you'd be willing to do to survive. It's a
true story about a rugby team from Uruguay in nineteen

(00:46):
seventy two whose plane crashes in the Andes Mountains and
cannibalism becomes the only way to survive. It's the ultimate taboo,
but it begs the question would you be committed to
survival at any cost? Well, that's a question that faced
a group of pioneers who took off from Illinois and
Missouri in the eighteen forties and headed west. Two families

(01:09):
The Donners, headed by George Donner, and the Reeds, headed
by James Reed, hit the trail with nine covered wagons.
It was an incredibly difficult undertaking. They expected to cover
as much as fifteen miles a day, getting to California
in four to six months, but timing was everything. They
had to leave early enough to make it past the

(01:29):
Western Mountain ranges before winter set in, and late enough
to avoid getting bogged down in the mud from spring rains.
And they also had to make sure to travel when
there was still enough spring grass for their cattle and
horses to feed on along the way. Okay, it's May twelfth,
eighteen forty six. The two families, around thirty two people

(01:53):
in all, with everything they owned packed into those wagons,
left for a new life in the West. They eventually
met up with other folks looking for a new life,
making it a group of eighty seven pioneers. The early
part of the trip when his planned, and by June
sixteenth they covered four hundred and fifty miles. After another month,

(02:13):
the group made the fateful decision to break off from
the traditional Oregon Trail route and try a new trail
called the Hastings Cutoff. It was being promoted by a
merchant named Jim Bridger. He suggested using a trail that
would actually take them across a steep and craggy set
of mountain ranges, as well as across the Great Salt
Lake desert. Bridger had a trading post on that route,

(02:37):
so he had a vested interest in steering them in
that direction. Most other groups opted for the known route,
but the Donner and Reed families and others traveling with
them took the bait. The first mountains they hit were
insanely difficult to cross with all those creaky wagons, and
the group was only able to travel about a mile
and a half a day at that point. By August twentieth,

(03:00):
they finally could look down from the mountains and see
the Great Salt Lake and the desert beyond, but it
took almost two more weeks to travel out of the mountains. Meantime,
the men started arguing about whether they'd chosen the right trail.
Worse yet, food and supplies began to run out for
some of the families. The unity they once had started

(03:21):
to crumble under the weight of hunger, exhaustion, and fear.
As they began to cross the Great Salt Lake Desert.
In the heat of the day, the moisture underneath the
salt crust rose to the surface and turned it into
a gummy mess. In some cases, the wagon wheels sank
so far into it it was right up to the

(03:43):
wheel hub or axle. The days were ferociously hot and
the nights freezing. After three days, the water was gone.
Some of the animals were so weak they were abandoned,
and in some cases so crazed with thirst they bolted
off into the desert. The journey across the eighty miles
of Great Salt Lake Desert took a week, but it

(04:04):
was pure hell. As autumn wound down, things started to
get even more complicated. More vicious fights broke out. James
Reed got into a battle with another man and wound
up stabbing him to death. Some in the group thought
Reed should be hanged, but instead they banished him, allowing
him to leave the camp, but without his family or

(04:24):
any supplies, although his stepdaughter secretly gave him a rifle
and some food. And yet another bit of bad luck,
the pioneers were attacked by unfriendly natives who killed or
stole many of their remaining animals. On the upside, they
received some supplies, as well as the assistance of two
friendly native guides who would travel with them. They just

(04:46):
needed to get past the biggest mountain ranges before winter.
By early November, the group had reached the Sierra Nevada
Mountains and the last one hundred miles, but this was
the most difficult part of their journey. That's where they
were trapped by an early heavy snowfall. The blizzard lasted
eight days. This is a region with hundreds of peaks,

(05:08):
some topping out at twelve thousand feet, and an area
that gets as much as five hundred inches of snow
every winter. Each family built a small hut made from
sticks and strips of ox skin covering the roof. Most
of their cattle were either dead or dying. Families became
so desperate for food they were forced to eat the

(05:29):
ox hides that had been used as roofing. Now they
were stuck in massive snow drifts high in the mountains,
more snow fell, their food supplies were almost gone. By
mid December, a group of seventeen decided to leave, wearing
snow shoes to try to get help. What they did
in the meantime was horrific, but for some it was

(05:50):
the only way to survive. For those trying to get help,
supplies ran low. After several days without any food, one
man proposed that someone should volunteer to die in order
to feed the others. At first, they suggested a duel
or possibly a lottery to choose who to sacrifice, but

(06:14):
trapped in the snow, they started dying naturally. That's when
the others began to eat the body parts of the
first victims. The next day, they stripped muscle and organs
from the other three bodies and preserved them by drying.
When that food ran out, the group secretly discussed killing
and eating the two native guides. Those guys heard about

(06:35):
the plan and escaped, but nine days later were found
in weak condition, shot and butchered for meat. They finally
reached a settlement for help, and it wasn't much different
back at the camp. The first relief party didn't derive
until the middle of February eighteen forty seven, almost four
months after the wagon train was trapped by that early blizzard,

(06:56):
and what rescuers found was disturbing. One said he spoke
with a woman who told him her family was considering
eating one of the wagon drivers they'd hired for the trip.
That man's mutilated body was later found. In another case,
the first two members of the relief party saw a
man carrying a human leg. When he saw them, he
threw it into a hole in the snow. That hole

(07:19):
contained the mostly dismembered body of George Donner's son, who
had died of natural causes, but his young wife, while
refusing to eat her husband's remains, was feeding them to
her children. The rescuers noted that three other bodies had
already been eaten. Ironically, when the first of those rescued
reached civilization, George Donner's twelve year old step grandson broke

(07:42):
into a food storage container and ate so much he
foundered himself to death. Of the eighty seven members of
the party, forty eight survived the ordeal, although their pain
didn't end there. Some got death threats, some were shunned
by people who couldn't get past what they'd done to Sura.
On the other hand, some including the Reed family, went

(08:04):
on to actually create the life they'd dreamed of before
heading West. James Reed, who'd been banished for killing a
man who'd attacked him, and his wife, found his way
back to his family and settled with them in California.
During the gold Rush of eighteen forty nine, he became
super wealthy. The state of California eventually recognized the Donner

(08:26):
story as the most dramatic of the full story of
Western migration. They built a memorial on the site of
one of those cabins in the Donner Camp, which had
all been burned in the immediate aftermath, and that site
has hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. Their story
tells us that the sheer strain of survival can bring

(08:46):
out both the best and the worst in people, and again,
much like with Society of the Snow, you have to
ask yourself how far you'd be willing to go to
save your children and yourself when put to that kind
of existential test. I'd like to thank Judy Cohen for

(09:14):
suggesting this incredible story. If you have a story you'd
like me to take a deep dive into and share,
please dm me on Facebook at Patty Steele or on
Instagram at real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstories
a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Duran Group

(09:37):
and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser, Our
writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.
Feel free to reach out to me with comments and
even story suggestions on Instagram at real Patty Steele and
on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the
Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces of history you didn't

(09:59):
know you needed to know.