Terrifying & True | Donner Party Cannibalism: Gruesome Story Survival - Weekly Spooky: Scary Christmas Stories | Terrifying Tales to Creep Your Holiday

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Snow seals the cabins to their rooms. The first storm
of eighteen forty six hits and doesn't let go inside.
Family simmer raw just to survive. Outside the pass is gone,
nothing but white and wind. By spring, rescuers will learn

(00:27):
what hunger left behind. This is the Donner Party. What
you were about to beat you is believed to be
based on witness accounts, testimonies, and public record. This is

(00:50):
terrifying and truth. Truth. Before we sink our teeth into
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Tonight winter slams shut on the Sierra Nevada and an

(01:54):
American dream turns feral. It's eighteen forty seven. Lured by
the Hastings, cutoff families reach Truckey or Donner Lake on
October thirty first. By November fourth, a blizzard seals the pass.

(02:17):
Cabins vanish under the snow. Meat is all but gone,
rawhide boils, while the wind screams and people begin to die. Desperate,
A group of them, known as the Forlorn Hope, step
into the white on December sixteenth, sporting crude improvised snow shoes.

(02:43):
Rescuers later fight thirty foot snow drifts and stumble onto
the scene, a scene they'll never forget. Tonight we explore
human choices in impossible cold. This is the stark truth
of the Donner Party. In the spring of eighteen forty six,

(03:16):
nearly ninety American pioneers, men, women, and children set out
in covered wagons from Springfield, Illinois, bound for the fertile
promise of California. They were ordinary families chasing an American
dream of new land and a better life, a part

(03:40):
of the Great Overland migration sweeping the eighteen forties. Among
them were George Donner, a sixty year old farmer leading
his family west, and James Reed, a prosperous forty five
year old businessman with a young family. They joined a

(04:01):
larger wagon train on the now infamous Oregon Trail. Full
of optimism as they rolled out of Independence, Missouri in May.
The journey was arduous but familiar, follow the wagon rutted
trail across prairies and over the Continental Divide before winter.

(04:27):
Through the early months, the Donner and Reed families enjoyed
the adventure. Twelve year old Virginia Reed later recalled riding
her pony across the Platte River valley, gathering wildflowers by
day and singing around campfires at night. By summer, the

(04:49):
wagon train had made steady progress into what is now Wyoming.
Reaching Fort Laramie, spirits were high to t The endless
plains and towering rockies beyond felt like entering a new
world full of wonder Yet ominous signs of trouble lay

(05:14):
ahead on the unmapped frontier. As the group pressed on
toward the Continental Divide, they faced a fateful decision. A
self styled trail guide named Lanceford W. Hastings was promoting
a new short cut route to California that year, Hastings

(05:38):
claimed his Hastings cut off could save hundreds of miles
by veering south of the usual trail. On July twelfth,
the Donner Party received a letter from Hastings urging them
to take his new trail and warning of difficulties ahead
on the old route. At Fort Bridger, a remote trading

(06:03):
post in Wyoming, the party had to choose stick to
the proven path north via Fort Hall, or gamble on
hastings untested cutoff through Utah's unmapped wilds. In a cruel
and tragic turn of events, Hastings had never actually taken

(06:25):
wagons over his own shortcut. Unbeknownst to the emigrants, he
was using them as guinea pigs. Jim Bridger, the fort's proprietor,
had financial interest in the new route and downplayed its risks,
even hiding letters from earlier travelers that warned the cutoff

(06:49):
was impassable. Persuaded by hastings glowing promises and Bridger's assurances,
the Donner Party elected to try the short cut on
July thirty first. It was a decision that would doom
them almost immediately. The Hastings cut off proved far more

(07:13):
difficult than advertised. The trail west of Fort Bridger vanished
into a maze of canyons and mountains. Hastings himself had
ridden out ahead guiding another group, leaving only handwritten notes
tacked to trees for those behind. One such note told

(07:37):
the Donner party to wait for Hastings to show them
a better path. James Reid rode ahead with two others
and caught up to Hastings, only to have him point
vaguely toward a dauntingly high ridge as the way forward.
The short cut led the wagons into the rugged Wasach

(08:00):
mountains of Utah, forcing the emigrants to literally carve a
road as they went. Progress slowed to a crawl, sometimes
only a mile and a half per day, as all
able bodied men hacked through the dense brush, felled trees,

(08:22):
and heaved rocks to clear a passage. Precious weeks ticked
by while the party labored through the Wassach ranges tortuous canyons.
When the exhausted families emerged from the mountains, they faced
the next ordeal, the Great Salt Lake Desert. In late August,

(08:47):
they found another tattered note from Hastings warning of a
stretch ahead, with two days of difficult travel with no
water or even grass. In reality, the barren salt flats
were far wider than Hastings admitted. The Donner party pressed

(09:10):
into the white desert, hoping to cross in forty eight hours.
It took five hellish days. Blistering sun by day and
freezing cold by night tortured them on the Alkali plane.
Thirst crazed oxen collapsed in their yokes. Some wagons had

(09:35):
to be abandoned mid desert, left to sink in the salt.
Nine of James Reed's ten oxen ran off into the mirages.
Maddened with thirst. Cattle and horses died or vanished by
the dozen. When emigrants finally staggered to the next water source,

(09:59):
they were backed, uttered, demoralized, and nearly out of supplies.
Any faith in hastings easy route had evaporated. Their shortcut
had become a devastating detour. By the time the Donner
party straggled out of the desert and rejoined the main

(10:21):
California trail near the Humboldt River on September twenty sixth,
they had lost at least a month of time. Winter
was closing in and they still faced three hundred plus
miles and the Sierra Nevada ahead. Quote never take no

(10:43):
cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can, Young
Virginia Read would later implore to others. A hard lesson
wrung from bitter experience. Now dangerously behind schedule, the party

(11:07):
hurried along the Humboldt River in present day Nevada. The
strain of the journey began to unravel the group's unity.
Food was running low, and tempers flared. Along the Humboldt,
an elderly Belgium emigrant named hard Coop was forced out

(11:27):
of a wagon by the hard edged Louis Kesberg, told
to walk or die soon. Hard Coop, his feet swollen
and bleeding, fell behind and was left sitting by a stream,
never to be seen again. The others, desperate to save themselves,

(11:51):
refused to turn back. For the old man, it was
a chilling abandonment, a sign of vanishing social order. Other
human decencies soon gave way to suspicion and violence. One
day in early October, as tensions spiked, James Reed quarreled

(12:16):
with a teamster, John Snyder, who was savagely beating Reed's oxen.
When Snyder turned his whip on Reed. Reed stabbed him
in the chest with a knife, killing him in front
of the train. The only law on the trail was

(12:37):
the emigrant's own, and the wagon company meted out judgment.
Some cried for Reed's hanging on the spot. In the end,
they decided on exile. Reed was banished, forced to ride
ahead alone in the wilderness without his family. Reid's wife

(13:01):
and children, now without their patriarch, continued onward in the
Donner party's care, a fragile arrangement as food grew scarce. Meanwhile,
rumors of murder swirled. A traveler named Wolfinger had lagged

(13:22):
behind to cash his wagon, accompanied by two acquaintances. Those
men returned alone, claiming Piute warriors had killed Wolfinger, but
months later one would confess on his deathbed that Wolfinger
had been murdered for his money by his own companions.

(13:48):
Such was the breakdown of trust. Even before reaching the Sierra,
comrades had turned on each other for survival and greed.
By late October, the Donners, Reeds, Graves, Breen, and other
families trudged on with whatever Oxen remained, nervously eyeing the

(14:14):
looming Sierra Nevada Ahead, the air was cooling, the nights
grew bitter. Winter was on the doorstep at last. On
October thirty first, eighteen forty six, the Donner Party reached

(14:35):
the foot of the Sierra Nevada at Truckey Lake, which
now is known as Donner Lake. Terribly late in the season,
a few sparse cabins built by earlier travelers stood near
the lake at six thousand feet elevation. If the party

(14:57):
could cross the high pass just a few two miles beyond,
they would descend to the safety of California's Bear Valley.
They attempted the ascent immediately, only to be met by
a sudden, blinding blizzard. An eight day snow storm blew

(15:17):
in and buried the mountains in deep snow, blocking the trail.
The emigrants, with wagons and exhausted oxen, could not break
through the snow pack. After several desperate tries, they had
to turn back to the lake. Winter had trapped them.

(15:41):
It was November fourth, and snow already lay five to
ten feet deep in some drifts, a harbinger of the
brutal months to come. The party hunkered down by Trucky
Lake to wade out the winter. Utterly unprepared for what

(16:02):
lay ahead, they hastily built camp three primitive cabins of
pine logs with dirt floors and thin canvas or ox
hide roofs. Holes in the walls served as doors. One
cabin was occupied by the Breen family, another by the

(16:26):
Eddies and Murphy's, the third by the Reeds and Graves.
Louis Kesberg cobbled together a lean to against the Breen
cabin for his family. Five miles back at Alder Creek,
the Donner families, who had fallen behind, set up a

(16:48):
separate camp, fashioning tents out of wagon covers. Even as
they built these shelters, snow continued to dump relentlessly, powering
higher with each storm. Before long the cabins were buried
to their roofs. To enter or exit, the emigrants had

(17:11):
to dig tunnels through snow or climb out of holes
in the drift. The world became silent and white. Outside
was a frozen wasteland of drifts. Inside the dark, smoky shanties,

(17:31):
hunger and fear set in game was nonexistent. The deep
snow had driven off any deer within a few weeks,
all of the oxen and horses were slaughtered for food.
They butchered the animals and rationed out thin strips of beef,

(17:54):
trying to make the meat last. There was no salt
or season. They even tore apart their wagons for firewood,
burning everything that could possibly feed a flame. Children went
to bed crying in hunger. Mothers grew gaunt and hollow eyed,

(18:17):
unable to feed their babies. As November passed into December,
meat ran out. The only food left was what one
man grimly referred to as poor beef without bread or salt,
and soon not even that. Snowstorms pummeled the lake camp

(18:43):
one after another. By mid December, snow lay eight to
ten feet deep around truck Ye Lake. It was, in
the words of one survivor's letter, the camp of Death.
The emigrants were starving, entombed in snow, and utterly isolated.

(19:08):
Weeks had passed with no word from the outside world.
With no reason to believe help would come, they began
to consider unthinkably desperate measures. Inside the cabins, the pioneers

(19:33):
began to eat anything remotely edible. They boiled strips of leather,
ox hide, strips, shoe leather, even boiled cowhide rugs into
a glue like soup. To gag down. They gnawed on

(19:53):
bones and bark. Mice were caught and eaten. Candles made
of tallow were consumed when nothing else was left. In
his diary, Patrick Breen described these quote hungry times in
camp on January seventeenth, eighteen forty seven. He noted that

(20:19):
quote provisions scarce hides are the only article we depend on,
and prayed, quote may God send us help. By that point,
rawhide strips simmered into a foul jelly was truly all
they had. Breen recorded that one neighbor, missus Elizabeth Graves,

(20:45):
had plenty of boiled hides, but quote refused to give
any to Missus Reed. Even when Reed's four young children
were on the brink of starvation. Charity was dying along
with hope. Frigid weather and malnutrition took their toll. Deaths

(21:09):
became frequent. One by one, weakened emigrants succumbed to starvation
and illness. The first to die at the Lake camp
was sixty year old Bayliss Williams in mid December. Others
soon followed Franklin Graves, Lavina Murphy's little Son and Moore.

(21:35):
The living had no strength to bury the dead in
the frozen earth. Instead, corpses were dragged into the snow
and lightly covered. All around the cabins were the loosely
buried bodies of those who had been friends and fellow travelers.

(21:57):
Imagine the psychological horror of that scene. The survivors could
see where the bodies lay under the snow, grim mounds
that tempted and repelled them in equal measure. Isolation preyed
on their minds. Trapped and cramped filthy shelters, gnawing on

(22:22):
boiled hide strips, Some pioneers fell into despair and delirium.
Patrick Breen wrote on Christmas Eve that the prospect is appalling,
though he still hoped Almighty God would deliver them. Christmas

(22:43):
Day came and went without celebration, as there was nothing
to celebrate. New Year eighteen forty seven dawned bleakly. Breen
noted that quote, we pray the God of Mercy to
deliver us from our present calamity. Still the snow fell

(23:07):
and no help came. Inside one cabin, fifteen year old
Mary Graves watched her mother and siblings slowly waste away
years later, she described how the cries of hungry children
tortured the parents, who could do nothing but whisper comforting

(23:31):
lies that food would come tomorrow. In another cabin, Louis
Kesberg's wife gave birth prematurely. The infant died, mercifully spared
from this world. Antonio, a young Vacquero traveling with the Reeds,

(23:54):
died of malnutrition. Franklin Graves, the family patriarch who had
helped build the cabins, lay down and never woke. With
each death, the survivors confronted an unthinkable question that had
been approaching for weeks. Would they eat the bodies of

(24:19):
their dead to survive. Patrick Breen's diary entry of January
twenty sixth, eighteen forty seven hints at the desperate, dark atmosphere.
Quote people are getting weak living on short allowance of hides,

(24:44):
he wrote, Peggy, his wife, very uneasy for fear we
shall all perish with hunger. By early February, even the
boiled hides were nearly gone. Our hides are nearly all
eat up, Breen recorded on February tenth, starvation loomed. It

(25:10):
was around this time that some of the emigrants began
to talk openly of cannibalism. Breen noted on February fifteenth
that Missus Graves not only hoarded her hides, but she
refused to let Missus Reed have any, and even stashed

(25:30):
rawhide strips on her roof to keep them from others.
Self preservation had overridden community. Each family now looked out
for itself. Dignity, morality, humanity. All were in deadly peril

(25:51):
as much as the people themselves. Unbeknownst to those huddled
at Trucky Lake, a brave subset of their party had
already made the awful choice to survive at any cost.
Back in mid December, with food almost gone, fifteen of

(26:14):
the strongest emigrants, ten men and five women, had snow
shoot out in a desperate bid to find help. This party,
later dubbed the Forlorn Hope, included Mary Graves, her newlywed
sister Sarah Faustick, William Eddie, the pregnant Isabella Breen, and others.

(26:40):
They fashioned crude snowshoes from oxbows and rawhide, and set
off on December sixteenth over the pass. They had no
real option. It was escape or die in camp. The

(27:05):
Forlorn Hope soon found themselves in an almost unimaginable hellscape
atop the Sierras. The snow drifts rose up to thirty
and fifty feet in places. The air was thin and frigid.
The sun's glare off endless snow fields burned their eyes blind.

(27:29):
Stumbling over the high pass, they became lost in deep
mountain wilderness. Within days, their meager rations were gone, and
they began to collapse from hunger and exhaustion. One by one,
members of the Forlorn Hope dropped dead from cold and starvation.

(27:56):
The survivors, driven mad with hunger, faced the ultimate taboo
around Christmas. They set aside their revulsion and consumed the
flesh of their fallen companions in order to stay alive.

(28:17):
Mary Graves later recounted cutting up the bodies of her
own father and brother after their deaths with numb horror.
They dried strips of human flesh in the sun in
order to preserve them. As Patrick Breen would later write

(28:38):
in his diary about the scene, quote, the Donners told
the California folks that they commenced to eat the dead
people once all else was gone. The act of cannibalism
gave the snowshoe survivors a brief strength to continue, but

(29:00):
it also broke something inside them. Shortly after, one member,
William Foster, proposed an even worse crime, killing the two
native guides who had accompanied them from California, Luis and Salvador,

(29:22):
for food. These Miwok men employed by John Sutter, had
been helping the party, but they refused to partake in cannibalism.
When they learned the others were contemplating murdering them, they
quietly slipped away into the woods. Horrified for days, the

(29:48):
seven remaining emigrants staggered on. When another man, j Faustick,
died at night, the survivors cut and ate him too.
After more agonizing days, with nothing else to eat, they

(30:09):
came across the two meewalk guides, Luis and Salvador, who
were they themselves on the brink of starvation. After nine
days alone, In a moment of human darkness, on January ninth,
William Foster raised his rifle and shot both Louis and

(30:35):
Salvador in cold blood. The others butchered the bodies and
consumed their flesh, committing outright murder as well as cannibalism
for survival. The killing of the Meewok men was not

(30:55):
even hidden or punished. Later, as one has the Storian
noted Foster quote was not greatly blamed for it, a
grim reflection of the eighteen forty's attitude that Native American
lives seemed to matter little. Such was the moral collapse

(31:18):
wrought by desperation as well as prejudice. In a tragic irony,
Miewok villagers ultimately saved the Forlorn Hope. On January twelfth,
eighteen forty seven, the half dead survivors stumbled into a

(31:39):
native camp in the foothills. The indigenous people recoiled at
the sight of these gaunt specters. The pioneers were so
ragged and frostbitten that the Meewalk initially fled, thinking they
were evil spirits. Gaining compassion, the villagers cautiously approached again

(32:06):
and offered the starving strangers some food acorns, pine nuts, grass,
whatever they had. This simple charity likely saved the last
seven of the Forlorn Hope. Mary Graves, William Eddy, and

(32:28):
the others owed their lives to the very people. One
of their party had slain. On January seventeen, Rescuers, guided
by the meewalk found the emaciated, forlorn Hope survivors and
helped carry them to a ranch in California. It had

(32:51):
taken thirty three ghastly days, but against all odds, they
made it out, and now at last the alarm was raised.
The rest of the Donner Party was still trapped in
those mountains, if any of them were even alive. News

(33:21):
of the starving emigrants in the mountains spread rapidly through
the settlements of northern California. Though it was the dead
of winter and the nation was at war with Mexico,
several rescue parties formed to save the Donner Party. The

(33:41):
first Relief group, seven hardy frontiersmen, set out from Sutter's
Fort on February fourth, eighteen forty seven. They struggled through
rain swollen rivers and chest deep snows. Two men turned back,
but the rest pushed on. Climbing The snow choked pass

(34:06):
was arduous in places, drifts had reached over thirty feet tall,
and the rescuers themselves were near collapse. On February eighteenth,
eighteen forty seven, the First Relief finally crested what is
now known as Donner Pass and approached the camps at

(34:30):
Truckey Lake. What they found defied belief. As the rescuers
neared the cabins, they began shouting and were met with
eerie silence at first. Finally, a gaunt woman emerged from

(34:52):
a hole in the snow. It was missus Lavina Murphy,
so skeletal and ragged that the men were taken aback.
Staring at the strangers, Her first words were recorded as quote,
are you the men from California? Or do you come

(35:14):
from Heaven? To the dying survivors, the relief party must
indeed have looked like angels or apparitions. When the rescuers
began distributing food, they had to do so in very
small portions, for the emigrants were so starved that a

(35:36):
normal meal could kill them by refeeding shock. All around
the cabins were buried in snow. The stench of decomposed
hides and filth was overpowering. Inside one cabin, the men
saw human remains evidence that cannibalism had already occurred at

(36:02):
Truckey Lake. Thirteen people had died and lay in makeshift
graves in the snow near the cabins. Many of the
survivors were mentally unstable, blankly stammering or weeping. The Murphy
children told rescuers how their mother had been boiling ox

(36:25):
hide into a disgusting jelly to feed them. Tamsen Donner,
still stranded at Alder Creek with her husband, had carefully
maintained an illusion for her little girls, telling them the
boiled hides were milk porridge so they would eat it

(36:48):
without crying. The rescuers urgently tried to lead as many
survivors as possible back over the pass. Twenty three weeks
and skeletal people left with the first relief, including the
Red children and the Donner girls, but many others were

(37:10):
too feeble to travel. About twenty one people remained at
Truckey Lake Camp and another dozen at Alder Creek. With
the Donners knowing more help was behind them, the first
relief promised to return and hurried back down the mountain

(37:31):
with their charges. Tragically, even this salvation was perilous. Several
of those being rescued died on their way out, too
far gone to recover. Among them was William Hook, a
twelve year old who over eagerly ate too much and

(37:56):
died on the trail, the others struggled down, half conscious
and snowblind. The Reed children, saved by their father's return,
had survived without ever resorting to cannibalism. As Virginia Reed
proudly noted, hers was the only family that did not

(38:21):
eat human flesh. In early March, a second relief expedition,
led by none other than James Reed himself, finally arrived
at the camps. Reed had raised funds and volunteers in
California after fighting off sickness and even joining a battle

(38:42):
in the Mexican American War, and now charged into the
mountains to save his family. Reed found that many survivors
had descended further into desperation during the interim. Human remains
were found in the cabins, confirming that those left behind

(39:04):
had eaten the dead indeed. On February twenty sixth Patrick
Breen noted, matter of factly in his diary quote, the
Donners told the California folks that they commenced to eat
the dead people. Four days ago at the Alder Creek camp,
George Donner was dying from an infected wound, and Tamsen

(39:29):
Donner was tending to him faithfully. She could have left
with Reed's party, but refused to abandon her husband. In
his final hours, Reed evacuated his own wife, Margaret, and
their children, along with many others seventeen people in all.

(39:53):
The March trek down was catastrophic. Caught in yet another blizzard,
Reid's second relief became scattered in what became called Starved Camp.
A group of refugees was accidentally left behind in the snow,
mostly children. When Reed realized not all had kept up,

(40:18):
it was too late to turn back. Fourteen people, including
five children, were stranded left in the storm, with only
two of Reed's men, Charles Katy and Charles Stone, to
help them. Those two men soon abandoned the children to

(40:40):
save themselves, each carrying one child and leaving the rest.
The little ones were found huddled in the open, half frozen,
eating tattered rawhide strips from a rescuer's snowshoe fringe to survive.

(41:00):
It was an appalling scene of neglect and misery. Then
occurred one of the truly heroic moments of the tragedy.
A third relief party, including a large, strong settler named

(41:24):
John Stark, arrived at Starved Camp in mid March Stark
discovered nine children and two women barely alive, abandoned in
the snow. The other rescuers with him were inclined to
each grab a single child and retreat, possibly leaving the

(41:47):
rest to die. Stark flatly refused. In an extraordinary act
of compassion and strength, he carried the starving children two
at a time on his back, shuttling back and forth,
determined to take everyone to safety. It was painfully slow,

(42:14):
and he was a giant in strength by one account,
but all nine children survived thanks to Stark's resolve. One
rescued child later credited the deliverance to quote nobody but
God and Stark and the Virgin Mary. Such a display

(42:37):
of selflessness and courage stands in stark contrast to the
horrors surrounding the Donner Party in that moment, John Stark
single handedly kept the flicker of humanity alive. By April
of eighteen forty seven, more than four months after the

(42:59):
party became came snowbound, a fourth and final relief mission
braved the mountains. These last rescuers arrived at the camps
to a grizzly tableaux at Truckey Lake. Only one man
was found alive Lewis Kesberg, lying amidst the remains of

(43:24):
his former companions. The rescuers recoiled at the sight of
half consumed bodies and severed limbs scattered around the cabin
where Kesperg lay. They discovered a pot filled with boiled
human flesh on the fire. Kesperg, gaunt and wild eyed

(43:48):
with an injured leg, had been completely alone, literally living
on human flesh for weeks. He had also gathered up gold,
coins and jewelry belonging to the Donners. Enraged, the rescuers
threatened to lynch Kesberg on the spot for murdering Tamsen

(44:12):
Donner and others. Kesperg swore he had not killed anyone,
insisting Tamson had arrived at his camp after her husband died,
only to expire naturally overnight. He admitted he had cashed
some of the Donner's money at her request in order

(44:36):
to deliver to her surviving children. Whether or not this
was true, the men found his story suspicious, but in
the end they spared his life and brought him down
the mountain, the last survivor of the Donner party. Of

(44:58):
the eighty seven men, women and children who had been
snowbound in the Sierra. Only forty eight survived to reach California.
Almost half the party had perished, most from starvation and exposure.
The survivors were primarily women and children, among them all

(45:23):
seven of the Breen children, all four of the Reed children,
and all three of George Donners little girls. The Reed
family remarkably suffered no fatalities. Margaret Reed had kept her
children alive without cannibalism until James Reed's return. The Donner

(45:46):
family tragically was devastated. George and Tamsen Donner both died
in the mountains, leaving their orphaned daughters to be raised
by relatives. When the story of the Donner Party's ordeal
hit newspapers in June and July of eighteen forty seven,

(46:08):
it shocked the nation. Sensational reports focused on cannibalism and
alleged murders. One newspaper described Kesperg as a ghoul who
relished human liver and accused him of killing Tamson Donner
for food. In California, Louis Kesberg became a pariah, widely

(46:32):
reviled as a bloodthirsty cannibal. He actually filed a defamation
suit against one of the rescuers for their accusations. A
court later found no proof of murder, awarding him a
token one dollar in damages, and even one of Donner's daughters,

(46:54):
Eliza Donner Houghton, defended Kesberg's actions as driven simply by
miss necessity, but not evil. Yet Kesberg lived under a
shadow for the rest of his life, shunned as the
man who ate human flesh and quote liked it. History

(47:15):
perhaps unfairly cast him as the villain of the tale.
In truth, virtually all the survivors except the Red family
and a few others, had eaten the dead to survive,
as historian George Stewart wrote, an ordeal by hunger. None

(47:35):
of them, not even Kesberg, could be morally condemned for
that final resort quote, for it was the result of
necessity under extreme duress. It is telling that no charges
were ever brought against any Donner Party survivor for cannibalism

(47:57):
or violence. The world under stood on some level that
these ordinary people had been driven beyond the bounds of
sanity by hunger and fear. Public reaction to the Donner
Party was a mix of horror and grim fascination. The

(48:19):
incident quickly became legend a cautionary tale about the dangers
of westward migration. It did not, however, stop the wagon trains.
The California trail only grew busier in subsequent years, though
no emigrant ever dared take the Hastings cut off again.

(48:44):
In fact, the Donner disaster likely saved later lives by
starkly illustrating the importance of sticking to known trails and
hurrying along to beat the snow. Emigrant guide books thereafter
all warned of the fate that befell the Donner Read party.

(49:15):
In the aftermath, the survivors tried to put their shattered
lives back together. Virginia Read later wrote to her cousin, quote,
thank God, we have got through, and we have got
through with our lives. She ended her letter with the
hard earned advice quote, never take no cut offs and

(49:38):
hurry along as fast as you can. Virginia and the
Read family settled in San Jose, California, and went on
to prosper, their terrible winter becoming just one chapter in
a long life. The Breen family also survived, intact, all

(50:00):
nine of them. Little Isabella Breen, an infant during the ordeal,
lived to be ninety years old, the last survivor of
the Donner Party, passing away in nineteen thirty five. Many
of the orphans were adopted by California families. The legacy

(50:22):
of trauma, however, lingered. The survivors had faced unspeakable choices
that haunted them in nightmares. Years afterward. Mary Graves, who
had eaten human flesh out on the forlorn Hope track,
wrote quote, I often dream of the dead. They do

(50:45):
not disturb me as they used to. The experience marked
them forever. Today. A stone monument stands at Donner Lake,
its pedestal base twenty two feet high, the height of
the snow pack that terrible winter. Nearby. Tree stumps cut

(51:07):
by the emigrants at head height above the ground, visible
once the snow melted, silently testify to the depths of
the snow and desperation of that camp. The very landscape
bears their story. Historians have identified the shallow graves the

(51:30):
camp site, even recovered physical artifacts like bones with cut marks.
The tale of the Donner Party endures as the most
haunting episode in the history of the Westward migration, a
story of ordinary people driven to extraordinary extremes. What makes

(51:55):
the Donner Party story so terrifying is not just the cannibalism,
but the slow unraveling of all moral certainties. These were devout,
hard working Americans, people with children, who believed in God
and civilization. In the span of just a few months,

(52:18):
they went from singing hymns around campfires to considering murder
for a few strips of flesh. As Patrick Breen wrote
on February twenty six, eighteen forty seven, quote Hungry Times
in camp, Missus Murphy said here yesterday that she thought

(52:41):
she would commence on Milt and eat him. I don't
think she has done so yet. It is distressing. The
very fact that such words appear in a pioneer's diary
chills the soul. Missus Murphy was a widow and mother.

(53:02):
Hunger had pushed her to the verge of killing a
young man for food. This is the true horror of
the Donner Party, the way desperation can erode the bonds
of kinship and conscience. And yet, remarkably, even in this

(53:23):
horror we find acts of tremendous bravery and decency. Missus
Murphy did not ultimately harm Milton Elliott. The rescue parties
did not abandon the most hopeless, and people like John
Stark emerged as heroes. The Donner tragedy forces us to

(53:46):
ask how thin the line is between civilization and savagery,
and it shows that even in humanity's darkest hours, light
and virtue can flick back to life in the end.
The Donner Party story is terrifying and true in equal measure.

(54:10):
It's a cautionary saga of hubris taking an unproven shortcut
and of nature's unforgiving power. It's a tale of human
beings pushed to the brink, confronting the prospect appalling of
their own extinction. We remember the Donner Party for the cannibalism,

(54:32):
but we should also remember it for the courage of
those who endured, and for the lessons their experience taught.
As survivor. Virginia Read reflected years later, quote, I have
not written you half of the trouble. Thank god we
are alive. Her family salvation came at a terrible price,

(54:58):
the loss of friends, the loss of innocence. But they
did survive, as did nearly half of those snow bound emigrants.
So when we think of the Donner Party, we should
look beyond the gruesome headlines of cannibalism. We should picture

(55:19):
families huddled together in the dark, a mother giving the
last scrap of dried hide to her crying child, a
father saying prayers over the body of a child he
couldn't save. Picture the moment when rescue finally arrived, the

(55:40):
gaunt figures emerging into the blinding light, weeping with relief.
The story of the Donner Party is a human story,
not a horror movie. It is about ordinary people facing
the endurable, in that it speaks to the depths of

(56:04):
human endurance and the will to live. As the snow
thawed in the spring of eighteen forty seven, the pass
opened and the tragedy in those mountains came to an end.
But the tale of the Donner Party remains evergreen in

(56:24):
American memory, a testament to the extraordinary resilience of the
human spirit. Terrifying and true. Indeed, the Donner Party's ordeal
reminds us that under extreme conditions, moral norms can crumble,
yet even then, acts of love and sacrifice can shine through.

(56:51):
It's a story we recoil from, yet we cannot forget it.
And when future pioneers headed west, they heeded the Donner
Party's legacy, never delay, never stray from the path, and
never underestimate the wilderness. Terrifying and True is narrated by

(57:17):
Enrique Kuto. It's executive produced by Rob Fields and bobble
Toopia dot com and produced by Dan Wilder, with original
theme music by Ray Mattis. If you have a story
you think we should cover on Terrifying and True, send
us an email at Weekly Spooky at gmail dot com,
and if you want to support us for as little
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(57:39):
slash Join. Your support for as little as one dollar
a month keeps the show going. And speaking of I
want to say an extra special thank you to our
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And they are Johnny Nix, Kate and Lulu, Jessica Fuller,
Mike Escuwey, Jenny Green, Amber Hansford, Karen Wee, Met Jack Ker,

(57:59):
and Craig Cohen. Thank you all so much and thank
you for listening. We'll see you all right here next time.
On Terrifying and True.

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