Further Reading For The Donner Party
The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party by Daniel James Brown
Desperate Passage: The Donner Party’s Perilous Journey West by Ethan Rarick
Info
The Donner-Reed Party was a pioneer wagon train which set out for California in May of 1846 and became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the winter of 1846.
That’s when the cannibalism started.
Due to a series of navigation mistakes and weather delays, the wagon train fell behind schedule and was struck by early snowfall near Truckee Lake in what is now Northern California. By this time they had suffered great losses of equipment, wagons, and cattle. A small group set off on foot to find help and when they returned found that the pioneers had resorted to cannibalizing the bodies of the dead when their food supplies had run out. They had at first survived on what little plant life they could among the record snowfall in the area, and then survived on eating whatever materials their clothing and equipment was made of that they could choke down but weakness and malnutrition was taking over and edible bodies were stacking up, leaving them with no other options if they intended to survive this.
Of the 87 members of the party, only 48 survived the trip and most of them had survived on human flesh. Last Podcast is no stranger to cannibals. But previously covered cannibals, like Jeffrey Dahmer and Albert Fish, are individuals that conspired to eat humans out of a depraved, horrifying personal need. This was an entire group of people driven to cannibalism out of a need for survival.
Episodes: 331 & 332
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