Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The Demise of the Donner Party
42 Plays3 months ago
In this episode, the American dream turns into an infamous nightmare for the members of the Donner Party, a group of pioneers traveling to California in the 1800s. After facing multiple setbacks along their journey, their wagon train become stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. As the snow accumulates and their supplies dwindle, the Donner Party must commit unthinkable acts in order to survive.
Sources:
The primary source that I (Siera) used for this episode was a book written by Eliza Houghton, the daughter of George Donner. Her book is entitled The Expedition of the Donner Party and Its Tragic Fate, and it can be found for free on archive.org. Archive.org also contains several other books recounting the tragedy. For a quick introduction to the Donner Party, you can start with the articles below:
https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/donner-party
https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-should-know-about-the-donner-party
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Setting the Scene
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, I'm Sierra. And I'm Kaylee. And this is True Crime and Punishment. On today's episode, Sierra will be walking us down the path of the Donner Party. Yeah, so this is a path that you do not want to follow, my friends. This is a pretty well-known story because it's historical. It took place in the 1840s, so there's a lot of information out about it. So I'm going to give you a very condensed version of the events. However,
00:00:26
Speaker
In the description of this episode, I will be putting the main book that I looked at, which was actually written by the daughter of George Donner. It's called The Expedition of the Donner Party and Its Tragic Fate, but there are other books as well that you can look at. And then of course, history dot.com has a lot of information if you just want to do a quick internet search. There are lots of different places you can go. So the Donners, who were they and what happened to them?
00:00:48
Speaker
So Donner Party does not refer to a happy event, it means the group of people. This was a group of American travelers who were going to California yeah via wagon train, and they met with some very, very, very unfortunate circumstances. Out of the 89 people who left,
00:01:08
Speaker
In that party, only 45 survived the journey. So what happened to the Donners on their trip? We'll start with who was in the party. Now, not everybody, obviously, because there were a ton of people, but the main people we're going to focus on are George and Jacob Donner. They were brothers and they took their families with them. Eliza was one of the Donner children who went. And then also James F. Reed was another prominent member of this party. And he is also one of the people who was able to actually help rescue the people that were trapped. The Donners heard about California and how it was a land of opportunity. It was supposed to have really good farmland. It was a great place to travel to. Specifically, they read Travels Among the Rocky Mountains Through Oregon and California by Lansford W. Hastings.
00:01:56
Speaker
Remember that name Hastings because Hastings is going to be a problem. and reading problem a problem After reading his reports, Mr. Reed, James F. Reed, and the Donners were like, yes, we should totally go to California. This is going to be amazing. So they packed up their families, they got their wagons, and they started off on their way. They departed on April 15th of 1846.
Journey Begins & Early Challenges
00:02:21
Speaker
And it was actually really cool their first night when they first made camp. The members of their reading society, the Dawner's reading society that had started reading the different pamphlets about California, came up to them and camped that first night with them just to tell stories and sing songs. And then they left, Eliza Dawner relates. Then they rode away in the moonlight and our past was a sweet memory. Our future, a beautiful dream. Unfortunately, that beautiful dream did not stay beautiful for very long.
00:02:49
Speaker
That's some lovely words, but given that I know what happens, it's chilling. It's very chilling. And the thing is, so Eliza was around four years old at the time of this event. So a lot of her book was researched from other survivors as well. And then of course her own recollections as a child, but added in with other accounts and different journals and diaries that a lot of other sources will reference, like ah J.Q. Thornton's journals, and then also Paul Breen's journals as well.
00:03:15
Speaker
So she is giving some of her own memories of the event and like how she and her family were feeling about it but then also pulling in other historical sources she recalls especially that her mom even from the beginning seemed a little bit sad and a little bit concerned.
00:03:29
Speaker
heading into this trip and like leaving their home. she was She was excited to support her husband's dream, but I think her mom would get more of a foreshadowing kind of that intuition that things were gonna go wrong. Did that make sense? I feel like a child definitely would better remember the emotional aspects as opposed to the specific aspects of a journey. So it's interesting to have um a recollection with the emotion still attached to it, especially because when you do historical research writing, you don't really get to say or with any authority what the emotional feeling was, you have to kind of make that decision for yourself or creatively imply. So that's really interesting. I definitely recommend her version as well. And like I said, she still researched and drew in a lot of historical information as well.
00:04:11
Speaker
but it's yeah definitely interesting hearing her emotional perspective. So on May 11th of 1846, the group reached Independence, Missouri, and there they met Mr. J. Q. Thornton, whose different journal entries have been used in historical research of these events. They also met ex-Governor Boggs and his family, and they were waiting for Alfonso Boone, the grandson of Daniel Boone. They also- That's a great name, Alfonso Boone.
00:04:38
Speaker
Alfonso Boone and the grandson of Daniel Boone. Unfortunately, he doesn't come into play much in the story, but I just thought that was such a cool detail. He sounds like the Tony Hawk oh ah of the day Daniel Boone. So they met Thornton, who was waiting for Boone and Boggs, and then they were going to go and try to join the wagon train of Colonel Russell, who was heading west.
00:04:59
Speaker
And when the Donners and the Reeds heard about that, they thought, oh, that would be a good train to try to join. So they also headed that direction. They actually headed ahead of the of Thornton and Co. to go and meet Colonel Russell. They reached that wagon train on May 19th. And according to Mr. Edwin Bryant, who wrote his own memoir called What I Saw in California, they were joined by nine wagons from Illinois belonging to Mr. Reed and Maseer's Donner.
00:05:24
Speaker
so Jacob and George Donner, highly respectable and intelligent gentlemen with interesting families. They were received into the company by a unanimous vote. So they joined this larger wagon train under the command of Colonel Russell and George Donner, Eliza's father, actually rose to prominence in the wagon train pretty quickly. He kind of took on a lesser leadership position just helping with the wagon train as they were traveling. They were later joined by ex-Governor Boggs and Thornton and all of their companions.
00:05:53
Speaker
Now, the wagon train, this is not the official Donner party that we hear of in the stories. This is still a much larger wagon train. Throughout the course of their journey, groups would come onto the wagon train or leave the wagon train for whatever reason. Their first major problem that this larger wagon train encountered was on May 26th. They came across a river called the Big Blue that they were hoping to cross, but it was too fast and rising up too high, way too quickly for them to actually go across.
00:06:24
Speaker
And this was where ah George Donner kind of started getting into that position of being an influential member of the wagon train. He and Mr. Reed were part of a committee that was kind of charged with figuring out what they should do and and how they should proceed around this difficulty. Eventually they created a craft that they named the Blue Rover.
00:06:41
Speaker
which consisted of basically two 25-foot canoes with a way to stabilize and hold wagon wheels. And they had to transport each wagon across the river one at a time. And they finally got them all across without losing them, thankfully. Wow. Yeah, I know. I can really stomach having to like pack the the trunk of a car for a trip, the thought of having to carry wagon wheels. Sorry. No, it's I'm reading all these things and I'm like, I can't believe these people still wanted to do this. It's impressive, honestly.
00:07:11
Speaker
I'm going to say like the fact that you find it impressive, or like, like why would you want to do this? Considering the things that you spend your summer doing, and like the amount of physical labor that you do, like for me, it's like I'm a lazy person, so it's just like, yeah, there's no way I'm carrying anything across a river, bucko, that's not my thing.
00:07:27
Speaker
Are we going to be like, wow, that just seems like a lot of work. Like, just let that clue you into, first of all, how lazy I am and how, how much work this truly is. No, it really is. Cause like commercial salmon fishing, the way we do it, we have, you know, a lot of modern technology that helps us, but that we have, we set nets. So we use trucks and we have a lot of equipment that we can use. Well, not a lot of equipment, but we have equipment we can use to make it easier.
00:07:49
Speaker
I cannot imagine wagons and oxen and horses and just dealing with all of that. No, thank you. A lot of things they had to deal with and take care of and just keeping all of their animals alive, all of the people alive. They were very well furnished before this trip, or at least they thought they were. From what I understand from the book, obviously Eliza is trying to portray her family in the best light possible, but it seems like they really put a lot of thought into the
A Fateful Decision: Hastings' Shortcut
00:08:16
Speaker
preparations for this trip. Yeah, I mean you'd have to if you're about to pick everything up and have we gotten into exactly why they were making this trip yet? They were reading different accounts like Hastings' account of the bounty of California and how good the land was there and it just seemed like a really great opportunity for them to go and start a new life. And it's actually interesting, one thing I appreciate about George Donner that I forgot to mention at the beginning, He had two wives, the first wife passed away, so he had children from that marriage, and then he married his second wife, whom he went on the trip with, and he had their children. Eliza is the product of their second marriage, but he had land in Illinois, and he actually deeded his land to his adult children. He divided it amongst them, but he kept several acres for the kids that were going with him to California.
00:09:01
Speaker
in case they ever wanted to come back. So although he and his wife were going on this journey and obviously they were taking their kids with them, he was wanting to leave the option for them to return back to Illinois if they wanted to.
00:09:12
Speaker
Like he wasn't like, we're all in this together and you're not, like you know, yada, yada, yada. He was giving them options where if this isn't for you, you can go back to Illinois. Yeah, that's cool. You're not stuck in California just because, well, we're moving to California. That speaks to a father who wants the best for his children and can acknowledge that it may not be what he's doing currently or may not be there forever. So I think that that's a good detail to include, I think. Adds a little bit more humanity to George Donner.
00:09:38
Speaker
Now on June 2nd, 1846, there was a group of people in the big Russell wagon train that were heading to Oregon. And they had a few people that Eliza described as belligerents and that the whole big wagon train was moving too slowly for them. So they were starting to kind of cause trouble.
00:09:54
Speaker
So the Oregon group said you know what we're gonna be faster on our own We're just gonna split off and so everyone was like okay. That's fine. Goodbye We're gonna keep heading to California then on June 8th He's sometimes called Captain Russell or Colonel Russell in her book I think he was called captain because he was the captain of the wagon train and but on June 8th he actually resigned because of health issues and then also another source I read said that he and a few other people thought they could get there faster if they just split off from the wagon train so that in addition to his health cost him to resign and George Donner also resigned from his leadership position because it had kind of been under Russell and then ex-governor Boggs took over the wagon train.
00:10:30
Speaker
Now, on July 19th, they received an open letter from Lansford W. Hastings. Remember, his work that he had published about California was one of the things that had inspired the Donners and James Reed to go to California.
00:10:46
Speaker
So Hastings wrote this letter kind of again as an open letter to all Americans that were traveling to California, which at this time was not a state. And he was warning them that because of the war going on between Mexico and America, American em immigrants likely would not be welcomed in California if the normal route they were going through and they would need to go in another way.
00:11:08
Speaker
He urged those on the way to California, I'm quoting from Eliza's book now, he urged those on the way to California to concentrate their numbers and strength and to take the new and better route which he had explored from Fort Bridger by way of the south end of Salt Lake. He also emphasized the statement that this new route was nearly 200 miles shorter than the old one by way of Fort Hall and the headwaters of Ogden's River.
00:11:36
Speaker
So he's saying, you might not get into California right now at this route because of the unrest. And also, this other way is shorter. Yeah. Remember that I said Hastings was going to be important? And a problem? This is where he becomes a problem. He becomes an important problem. A big important problem. Honestly, I feel like this story, there there is some criminal activity that takes place. But honestly, while I was doing my research, part of me felt like Hastings.
00:12:06
Speaker
might be not necessarily a criminal, but we're gonna have to talk about him toward the end. He's definitely liable for some things. Liable, thank you. That is the word. He's not necessarily a criminal, but I think blame for a lot of stuff can be laid at his door. Anyway, so the people- You know I love blaming people for stuff. Oh yeah. Sorry, that was a little too- I'm padding.
00:12:28
Speaker
No, I didn't say that was exactly as emphatic as it should be, given my personal history. All right, back to the Donner party. All right, the proposition, according to Liza, seemed so feasible that after cool deliberation and discussion, a party was formed to take the new route. My father was elected captain of this company. And from that time on, it was known as the Donner party.
Struggles on the New Route
00:12:52
Speaker
This is where George Donner takes the leadership role of this part of the wagon train that splits off to head via the Fort Bridger route to California. J.Q. Thornton was a member of the original wagon train who did not follow the Donner party. And he wrote, the Californians were much elated and in fine spirits with a prospect of better and nearer road to the country of their destination. Mrs. George Donner, however, was an exception.
00:13:19
Speaker
She was gloomy, sad, and dispirited in view of the fact that her husband and others could think of leaving the old road and confide in the statement of a man of whom they knew nothing, but was probably some selfish adventurer. This is why you need to listen to your wife. Like I said, I think Mrs. Donner had that an intuitive sense that something was not quite right. And you can kind of tell.
00:13:43
Speaker
like Not to get too much into the woo woo side of things, but you know, I believe that you can tell when a situation isn't right. Not always, but sometimes there's, there's them something that just kind of checks your heart. It's kind of like.
00:13:57
Speaker
Look into that. Yep. And Mrs. Donner definitely had that, I think. But she's going to support her husband and take care of her kids and go on this trip. And so they did. Now Hastings in his letter had said that he was going to stay at Fort Bridger and kind of help direct companies and give them advice for the road. But on July 25th, when the Donner party arrived at Fort Bridger,
00:14:19
Speaker
Hastings' agent was there, not Hastings himself, and he told them he had gone to pilot another train, but had left instructions for others to follow his trail. And so they followed his trail. Oh no. On August 3rd, they reached the crossing of a Weber River, which breaks through the mountains into a canyon, and there they found a letter from Hastings stuck in the cleft of a projecting stick near the roadside according I don't trust this man I just gotta say never trust a man who sticks letters and sticks by the roadside or whatever like yeah in a canyon by a rushing river like I was reading this and I'm like I cannot believe this I know there's only so many ways you can preserve messages because you're out in the elements and stuff can get rained on or swept away but just a letter that's it yeah I'm just
00:15:06
Speaker
Anyway, I mean, I mean, whatever.
00:15:11
Speaker
But again, from Eliza's descriptions, it sounds like the donors didn't just rush in and do things. They tried to think things through and even trying to put myself in their shoes. It's hard to know what I would do in this situation, and aside from turn around and go back to Illinois. And we also have the the the blessing of hindsight that they did. Right. And they did. so Of course, it's easy for us to say like, I wouldn't trust no letter in a stick. um But yep, I don't know. Now, the letter told any travelers coming up that they should just wait there at the river and then Hastings is gonna come and he'll help them find another way. But the note also mentioned that there could be another trail. So three men from the Donner party decided, you know what, we're just going to ride ahead and we're going to go and try to find Hastings and see if we can just go and talk directly to him. James Reed was one of these three men who went and he returned alone eight days later. And he said that he and the others did overtake Hastings and his wagon train, but Hastings refused to leave that wagon train. But he took them to a summit of the ridge of the Wasatch Mountains.
00:16:19
Speaker
and he kinda pointed out the trail that they should take. So as we can see, this is all very professional, very precise communication. Reed and then the other two men whose last names were Pike and Stanton went back to join the wagon train. But while they were going back, Mr. Reed lost the other two and he got to the wagon train and he's like, I don't know where they are. So a few people went out. He lost them. They just, honestly, there's going to be a theme of people just getting left behind or lost. Not a ton of people. You'll see what I'm talking about. but
00:16:50
Speaker
I guess it wasn't as uncommon as I was expecting for people to just fall behind or get lost while on the road. I guess so, because it's like, what do you do? You're staying lost yourself, go looking for them. You really can't just leave behind everybody else to go say the one or two people who have probably gotten themselves lost. Yeah, exactly. You have to weigh the consequences and think about your family too, for those who had families. You got to put your family first before everybody else even.
00:17:17
Speaker
Yeah, because it's the concept of the collective good, like the good of the collective versus the good of a couple or the good of a few. I remember my first time in life having to be confronted with that concept. I was on a competitive synchronized skating team and it was drilled in our heads, our coach would say, if somebody falls, you close ranks and leave them behind. If they can catch up, they will. But if they fall, don't check on them. Don't stop, keep going or you'll lose points.
00:17:42
Speaker
um So wow it was, if if you fell, even if it wasn't your fault, you let go, you let them fall, and then it was their job to get up and find you again. So. Yeah. So Reed makes it back to the camp. Pike and Stanton, the other two who had gone ahead with him, were somewhere in the woods. So they sent people out to search for them, but the rest of the camp broke up and they started on the route that Reed thought he remembered from what Hastings had showed him. There were times. Oh, Ebbers is on thought.
00:18:11
Speaker
And there were a lot of obstructions and things in their path. Sometimes the men would have to make a road and forge ahead, clear debris, and it was a very exhausting trip. Finally, searchers did find Pike and Stanton, the other two messengers who had gone to find Hastings. But Pike and Stanton said, nope, we're kind of going the wrong way. We need to go back to where we started at the river and take this different route.
00:18:32
Speaker
Now this is where some panic kind of started to set in within the Donner party. They were kind of worried we're in these mountains and we don't want to get lost or separated. But Eliza says, it was with difficulty that my father and other cool headed persons kept the excited families from scattering rashly.
00:18:49
Speaker
into greater dangers because some of them were like, that's it. you know We're just going to strike out on our own. But Mr. Donner and the others said, you know no, we need to just stay together. We'll backtrack and we'll go the other way. It's going to be OK. So they start going on this other direction. But as they're going, they're realizing we do not have enough supplies.
00:19:08
Speaker
for this journey and for how long it's taking us. So they sent Stanton, who was one of the messengers who had gone to see Hastings, and they also sent someone named McCutcheon to go to Sutter's fort and get more supplies. Meanwhile, the rest of the group pressed on and they got to a well to refill their water. And there they found, according to Eliza, a bewildering guide board, flecked with bits of white paper showing that the notice or message which had recently been pasted and tacked thereon had since been stripped off in irregular bits. So Mrs. a Donner realizes that's probably another note from Hastings. So she's trying to find the pieces of paper and pick them up. Other people start following her lead and they search all around for the pieces of paper and then she very laboriously puts the pieces of paper together
00:19:53
Speaker
to try to read the message. And the message was saying that there was a desert in front of them, but they just had to ride hard for two days, and then they would get to water. So they started crossing over said desert, only it took them longer than two days. They're going over. Of course a day. They're not finding any water. They did see a mirage of a lake, which distressed everyone because they were so excited. And they're like, that's probably Hastings and his group up at that lake.
00:20:21
Speaker
No, it's just a mirage. 36 head of cattle were left on that desert. Some died. Some just got lost. And all the ones that were lost belonged to James Reed, except an ox and a cow, which according to Eliza would not drive together in the wagon. They wouldn't work together to pull a wagon. So some people who were kind. They loaned him cattle and they helped him and his family kind of continue on the path. Now, according to Eliza, while people were hunting for Reed's cattle, those who rode onward, however, discovered that we had reached only an oasis in the desert, and that six miles ahead of us lay another pitiless barren stretch.
00:21:00
Speaker
english who days ride my hoof English and dismay now filled all hearts. Husbands bowed their heads, appalled at the situation of their families. Some cursed hastings for the false statements in his open letter and for his broken pledge at Fort Bridger. They cursed him also for his misrepresentation of the distance across this cruel desert. He had said only two miles, traversing which had wrought such suffering and loss. Well, yeah.
00:21:28
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, was the letter signed from Hastings? Because and to be fair, you're right. The board, the paper on the board did not say it was from Hastings. So it could have been somebody else. Either way, this person's a liar. Yeah, so liar and a cheat or just super bad with directions. Like I understand being bad with directions and math and all of that. But I also would not then take it upon myself to give people precise measurements if I know myself and know that I cannot make those measurements.
00:21:57
Speaker
That's true. Unsubstantiated information shouldn't be shared. Yeah, and we don't know whoever left that paper. Maybe they didn't have a whole wagon train with them. Maybe they didn't have as many wagons or as many children traveling with them. We don't know. So maybe it wasn't even like a wagon train. Yeah, could have just been so a single rider or something like that. Yeah, like a scout. Someone just trying to check for paths. I don't know. So they were stuck realizing they still had further to go. But at this point, they had gone so far going back to Fort Bridger would not have been a good option for them.
00:22:29
Speaker
So they continued on.
Conflict & Consequences
00:22:30
Speaker
A couple of wagons had to be left behind because the dry atmosphere had damaged the woodwork and they were no longer drivable, but the company as a whole pressed Ford. And then we start getting into some more issues that affected the daughter party. On October 5th, 1846, James Reed had an altercation with a Mr. Snyder, John Snyder,
00:22:53
Speaker
Reed had teamed up with someone but by the last name of Eddie the last cattle that Reed had and then he was also being loaned some from Eddie and their cattle had gotten tangled up with John Snyder's cattle and John Snyder was upset and he was starting to like hit the cattle and he was arguing with the men and Mr. Reed told him, we're gonna settle this later. But Snyder took that as a threat. And he's like, oh no, we're gonna settle this right now. And so he took his whip and he struck Reed with it over the head. So then Mrs. Reed sees this and she's like, oh no. So she runs to try to separate them. And so Snyder's whip hits her on the shoulder. And then of course, you know James Reed is like, uh-uh. And so he draws his hunting knife.
00:23:41
Speaker
And then as Mr. Snyder is getting ready, he's trying to hit James Reed again, Reed stabbed Snyder with his hunting knife and the left breast. And 15 minutes later, quote, John Snyder, with his head resting on the arm of William Graves, died. And Mr. Reed stood beside the corpse, dazed and sorrowful. Ouch. I mean, that's where you're your heart is, so. Yeah.
00:24:07
Speaker
Yeah, and the fact that it took 15 minutes for him to pass away like that must have been excruciatingly painful. And Eliza takes a little bit of time to describe everyone's different reactions. Reed obviously was not overjoyed by this set of events. He was trying, you know, he maintains he didn't have any malicious intent. He was just trying to protect himself and his wife.
00:24:25
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, he was coming at him with a whip. Yeah. And what to to be fair, I don't know. I don't want to say to be fair. I mean, he wasn't like he hit the man's wife and stopped. Correct. Yeah, he was you would think that if you're trying to hurt, especially in the 1800s, if you're trying to hit a man and you even if his wife was trying to get in between them, one would think that you would pause if you actually struck a woman, especially in the 18, whatever the frick this was, and he stopped, but he was gearing up for another blow, not saying he should have stabbed him.
00:24:53
Speaker
I am saying that I can see how this escalated, especially if Reeb was upset that Snyder had hurt his wife. It's still tragic. And I'm sure tensions were already high because they're <unk>re still in the desert at this point, right? but I think they were out of the desert now. They had found water and everything. They were moving forward. But everybody was tired and they were frustrated and Reed had actually just come back from an unsuccessful hunting trip and he and the man he had gone with had been shot at by Native Americans that were nearby. So he was already feeling frustrated from the day. I think Snyder was already frustrated. Everyone is getting frustrated. This journey is taking longer than they were expecting. They feel like they've been duped by Hastings. At this point, the wagon train had been very spread out like George and Jacob Donner were not
00:25:34
Speaker
near Reed where these events took place. Reed actually had to ride ahead to their portion of the wagon train to let them know what happened. Speaking of which, what did happen after he killed Snyder? So Snyder passes away and the entire Reed family is taken to a different tent and kind of guarded by their friends because that part of the camp is split. The majority, according to Liza, declared the deed was murder and they wanted some form of retribution for what happened. But other people were saying, well, you need to consider the circumstances. You know, Reed was acting in self-defense. You can't just hold him accountable for murder. But at the same time, everyone said something needs to be done. A man was still killed. So eventually what they decided was that Reed would be banished. He would go on ahead and leave the wagon train and the people in the wagon train would look after his family. And then, you know, he could rejoin them later. And Reed did not want to do this. He did not want to leave his family, but his wife was worried that worse things would happen. So she said, nope, you just go and then you come back and get us. And hindsight is 2020, this actually did end up to be quite providential for the survivors of the Donner party. So it actually did work out in their favor that Reed was banished. Could you imagine, you know, you're married, you have, and imagine they had children. They did have children. And having to say,
00:26:50
Speaker
Well, you killed a man who was attacking your family. And so you have, to even if it wasn't intentional, um that he was attacking his wife or that he had hit his wife. And then in punishment, well, you get to leave your family here and just trust us that we won't do anything to it.
00:27:07
Speaker
Yeah. um Now they did have friends who were already defending Reed. That's true. So I'm sure he knew there were people who would look after his wife and the Reeds had started this journey with the Donners. Like they were friends with the Donners. So I think he also knew I think that was part of the reason that he stopped by George Donners tent before his wagon before he left the rest of the way to let him know what had happened.
00:27:28
Speaker
And actually, Walter Herron, who was one of George Donner's helpers who had been assisting him on this journey, he had decided to go with Reed. And he said, I'll go with you so that you're not traveling by yourself. See, that's that's better, because I'll hold on it out in the loneliness. Yeah.
00:27:44
Speaker
you definitely do not want to be alone, which was the case with a certain Mr. Hardcoup. He was an older man who at the time was traveling with the Kessenberg family. And I'm saying Kessenberg because I saw three different pronunciations for this name, and I'm not sure which one is the one they use. So we're going to go with Kessenberg. And this is a name you do want to keep in mind, Louis Kessenberg. He is a very questionable character in this entire narrative.
00:28:09
Speaker
He is often the one that is you know demonized in a way, which we'll get into why he is later. Eliza certainly does not seem to have a very great view of him. I read one source that said part of it is because he was an immigrant from a different country, and so people were already you know predisposed to think ill of him. But I also think he was just shady, and I'll get into why.
00:28:31
Speaker
Hey, two things can be true. That is true. People could be unjustly have unjust stereotypes against you, but sometimes you can also just not be a nice person. And I think that was the case for Kesselberg. They had a Mr. Hardcoop traveling with them. He was an older man, considerably older, and he was having some difficulties because I when they would walk through like the sandy portion of the desert in order to lighten the load they made everybody even the kids get out of the wagon and walk and mr. Hargroop was trying to do that but he was just finding he was wearing down he was exhausted and Eliza says the first night after leaving gravelly ford he did not come into camp with the rest.
00:29:07
Speaker
The company, fearing something amiss, sent a man on horseback to bring him in. He was found five miles from camp, completely exhausted, and his feet in a terrible condition. The following morning, he again started with Kesselberg, and when the section had been underway only a short time, the old man approached Mr. Eddie and begged for a place in some other wagon, saying he was sick and exhausted.
00:29:29
Speaker
and that Kesselberg had to put him out to die. So this old man is trying to keep up with the wagons, but he's just falling behind. And this is where I was starting to realize, I guess it's not that abnormal for people to fall back from the wagon train and not be noticed as they're falling back, which I would, I don't know. I feel like that would be hard, but at the same time, there are a lot of people. The Donner Party consisted of about 89 people.
00:29:51
Speaker
When you consider the amount of people, like, well, part of my family owns property up north and part of their property is they own a good chunk of wood. And when the cousins all got old enough to, there's a lot of us, old enough to go on hikes to these woods, we would always send older cousins like my, I'm on the older end of the cousin spectrum. We would have a couple and we would post one in the front one in the back and then one towards the middle of the little hellions that are running, running loose if we would ever go hiking like that but as the cousins got older we would let them kind of go on their own and we've lost kids in those woods because even if we have somebody um it's one of the reasons now we have someone in the front in the back because we would send somebody in the front and by the time we would get good clip in you turn around be like we're so and so this is a narrow path and fairly not deeply packed wood and so if someone is lagging behind it's pretty easy to lose somebody if you're not being vigilant about that and that's in ah that's ah that's a hike in the woods for a bunch of like teenagers and children
00:30:45
Speaker
So imagine adding cattle and horses and like livestock and people and the noise. yeah How much easier it would be to kind of like notice somebody's not quite as close. It sounds like it would be more on your your wagon to like make sure that everyone's kept up. Kesselberg decides that Mr. Hardcoop is just too slow.
00:31:02
Speaker
And he's part of his responsibility in his bag and train. He's like, well, I don't care. I guess I would shouldn't say you're at liberty to do so, but no, it's wrong. um It's well not compassionate. Yeah. And it's going back on your word, but I can see how that would happen.
00:31:16
Speaker
Yeah, and it happened again. Hard Coupe fell behind again. And when the camp had stopped and they were realizing his absence, three men, William Pike, Milton Elliott, and William Eddie, proposed to go out on foot and go and find him and just carry him to the wagons, but the wagons would need to wait. Then Mr. Graves and Mr. Breen,
00:31:35
Speaker
who bring his journal entries are used for a lot of events as well. He's also a historical source that is commonly referenced. They said that they couldn't do that. let me Let me quote Eliza. They said in language so plain and homely that it seemed heartless that it was neither the voice of common sense nor of humanity that asked the wagons to wait there in the face of danger while three foolhardy men rushed back to look for a helpless one whom they had been unable to sucker on the previous day and for whom they could make no provision in the future even if they should succeed then in snatching him from the jaws of death. So essentially they were saying, we can't keep stopping or going back. There was some threat of attacks from Native Americans who were mostly just raiding cattle. So it's not like the people necessarily were going to die, but there's still you know but potential danger from that. And they just didn't want to be staying in the same place for so long. And they said, we can't
00:32:27
Speaker
pause the wagon train and even when George Donner was asked about it, you know, he didn't like the idea of leaving Hardcoot behind but he also acknowledged by the time he was hearing of all these events, he had probably already died out in the elements because it was taking so long for them to make a decision about whether or not to go back and rescue him. So they did eventually make the choice to just continue on and that was not the first of their troubles.
00:32:50
Speaker
During that same trying week, according to Eliza, a Mr. Wolfinger mysteriously disappeared. Now he and Kessaberg's wagons had been at the back of the wagon train and their wives had been going on ahead, walking with everybody else. And then they fell behind and some searchers went out and they finally found Kessaberg and he was coming with his wagon and he's like, oh, Wolfinger's close behind me. he's He's going to be up here soon. but He was not up there soon. He was not close behind him. Mr. Wolfinger's wife was like, please just go and try to find my husband. She was super concerned. So the men went and they found his wagon empty with the oxen unhooked and feeding on a trail nearby. And it didn't look like it had been robbed or that there was any sign of a struggle or that anything had happened. So some people thought, well, maybe some Native Americans came and they killed him and hid his body. Some people thought maybe Keseberg.
00:33:44
Speaker
had something to do with it because he happened to know that Mr. Wolfinger had money on his person and maybe he could have hidden the body. But then three days later, two individuals by the last names of Reinhardt and Spitzer who had not been missed. Again, people were not with the wagon train and somehow didn't get noticed.
00:34:00
Speaker
They came into camp and Mrs. Wolfinger was startled, I'm quoting Eliza here, to recognize her husband's gun in their possession. They explained that they were in the wagon with Mr. Wolfinger when the Indians rushed upon them, drove them off, killed Wolfinger and burned the wagon, which the people who had been searching for it didn't notice the wagon being burned. Eliza says, my father made a note of this conflicting statement to help future investigation of the case.
00:34:25
Speaker
So we're seeing there's some stuff that's a little bit sketchy. It's not quite making sense here. Yeah. They are reaching the Sierra Nevada mountains and they are having to figure out how to get
Trapped by Winter
00:34:37
Speaker
across. They have Mr. Stanton appointed as the leader to take them on the route across the Sierra Nevada mountains.
00:34:44
Speaker
And as they're preparing for this journey, tragedy strikes them again on October 20th when Mr. Pike is accidentally killed by his brother-in-law. There was an accidental discharge of a gun and so he passes away and things are just getting, you know, people are starting to get a little bit stressed. I feel like I should have made a spreadsheet of people on this journey.
00:35:05
Speaker
they there actually is I found a chart online that like lists all the people who died and the different ways that they died so we might take a look at that a little bit later as well just for clarity to help sort through everything unfortunately there's a lot of dying and a lot of just a lot of bad things that happen here there and everywhere so on October 22nd they decide to break camp And George and Jacob Donner took their wagons to the back of the train because they wanted to give their cattle a little bit more time on this journey. And they also wanted to be by families who might need extra help getting up the mountains. They crossed the Truckee River and encamped at the top of a high hill.
00:35:42
Speaker
And they experienced a brief raid from Native Americans there, but that was the last time they experienced a raid and they were fine after that. And amazingly, no cattle were harmed that time in that particular raid. So after they've camped and they're starting to proceed on their way, one of the Donner Wagons, actually the axle broke and the wagon tipped over and all of the contents spilled on the youngest two Donner children, Georgia and Eliza. And they were able to get Georgia out of the back of the wagon, but they couldn't find Eliza at first.
00:36:12
Speaker
and they were afraid that she was getting smothered by everything that was in the wagon. So- That's horrifying. Very horrifying. And that was something I had never considered, like thinking about, what if the wagon's tip and all the stuff falls? Like, I never thought about that, but it happened. And so George and Jacob Donner, her uncle and her father, they're rushing to the wagon, they're trying to get to her and they finally pull her out. and She was fine, but she wouldn't have been fine if she had been in there for much longer. I think she would have suffocated, yeah. I consider suffocating in things that aren't, I don't know, I guess, water.
00:36:41
Speaker
Yeah, there's just like stuff like that's crazy yeah a bunch of stuff and supplies and thankfully while they were crossing the desert They had had to take their heaviest Trunks out of the wagon to lighten the load so thankfully that had not been in the wagon otherwise those girls could have gotten crushed but Still, it was a very scary event and it slowed them down because now they had to fix an axle. And while they were fixing the wagon, the Donners, who were now you know at the very back of the wagon train and delayed because of this incident, they received news from messengers that Stanton, who was leading the group through the mountain range, that the wagons had tried to start crossing the Sierra Nevada Mountains despite the snow. It had started snowing. The snow was starting to get very thick and heavy.
00:37:22
Speaker
and the wagons could not get through. So they started going, but then people in the wagon train were getting separated from each other. The wagons were getting stuck in the snow. And some of the men were saying, honestly, we might need to just build log cabins. We might need to wait it out through the winter. The snow on a mountain range you've never been on just seems like a bad idea. Terrible idea.
00:37:43
Speaker
And it's November at this point, so it's definitely going to be snowy. So it's only gonna get worse. Yeah, and it's only gonna get worse. So the men hear this news. They're already not happy about this. They're trying to fix the axle, and in the process of trying to fix the axle, Jacob Donner accidentally hits his brother's hand with the axe as they're chopping wood. And yeah, so... The children? Nope. Jacob, they're both adults. Jacob and George Donner, the brothers who are the heads of the Donner group,
00:38:14
Speaker
They're trying to replace the axle and so Jacob Donner hits his brother George Donner's hand. And George is trying to play it off because his brother's obviously worried so he's like, no, it's not that bad. But then Eliza in her book is like, but it was really bad and it was gonna have consequences later. Could you imagine how awful you would feel?
00:38:30
Speaker
I know what I gathered from the book, which obviously Eliza is going to have a very high view of her parents anyway, but it sounds like George Donner was a very nice man who was just in a very bad set of circumstances. Same for his brother, same for Jacob, but if I had hit my brother's hand with an axe while we're trapped in the middle of nowhere in the snow trying to cross these stupid mountains to get to this stupid California. Oh my word. We've been for days. It could be awful. Again, these people, they had tenacity. Could not be me. I would have died of dysentery three days in.
00:39:02
Speaker
the merciful way to go at this point. Oh. To call it dysentery merciful. I know how the story ends, and that's the really accurate way of looking at it, but that's so sad. It's so sad. So even though George is trying to play off, like the injury's not too bad, and you know, yeah, sure, we have to kind of camp here, and that's not great, but you know what? We're going to be fine. You could tell that these events were starting to get to him. Eliza says, Father's face was very grave. His morning caress had all its wanted tenderness, but the merry twinkle was gone from his eye.
00:39:31
Speaker
and the gladsome note from his voice. For eight consecutive days the fatal snow fell with but few short intermissions. Eight days in which there was nothing to break the monotony of torturing inactive endurance, except the necessity of gathering wood, keeping the fires,
00:39:48
Speaker
and cutting anew the steps which led upward as the snow increased in depth. Hope well nigh died within us." Wow. Yeah. And it gets worse. There were some men in the party, at least three of them who were kind of at this point where they just mentally gave up and they said, we don't want to gather wood for fire. Like we can't do anything. Let's just die. Not to the point where they kill themselves, but they were just kind of giving up mentally. What's passive suicide, if anything?
00:40:13
Speaker
um just like let's just give up yeah And Eliza says the out of door duties would have fallen wholly upon my Aunt Betsy's two sons and on John Baptiste, who had joined their group, and on my cripple father, had the women lost their fortitude. They, however, hid their fears from their children.
00:40:28
Speaker
even from each other and help to gather fuel, hunt cattle, and keep camp. Girl boss. Girl, I know. Sometimes people, you know, they talk about how, well, women in this day and age weren't allowed to do anything. And I mean, obviously they didn't have, they couldn't vote and stuff like that at this at this time, but they still, I think we underestimate how strong they were just because they weren't allowed by society.
00:40:50
Speaker
to be as vocal or as involved in and politics and things like that. They were still very strong and they were still pillars of their community. Like they, yeah they put in the work and it's just so it is very inspiring and sad. reading it up But like the amount of effort that they went through to take care of their husbands, their family, their community, it should be admired. Absolutely. So The wagon train was divided into about two camps. The donners were a little further down. The other camp was by a lake, which was in theory a better spot to be. But both camps had the issue that they were running out of supplies. They had to try to survive by finding cattle that had been frozen in the snow and they would try to get the food from the cattle. But that was hard because the snow was starting to build up and get all crusted over and they really had to struggle to find that. And so belts were getting tight.
00:41:37
Speaker
People were starving. Everyone was getting cold. It was a miserable, miserable
Desperation & Cannibalism
00:41:42
Speaker
time. So on December 16th of 1846, a group formed and they called themselves the Forlorn Hope.
00:41:50
Speaker
decided, you know what? We're just going to make a last ditch effort and we're going to try to get across the mountains to go and get help because we just can't stay here. And we've got to get someone because there are children here at the camp. There are other adults who just can't make the journey. Like we need to get help and we need it fast. So this group consisted of William Eddie, Patrick Dolan, Lemuel Murphy, William Foster, Mrs. Sarah Foster, Jay Fosdick,
00:42:15
Speaker
Mrs. Sarah Fosdick, Mrs. William McCutcheon, because her husband McCutcheon had gone with another person to afford earlier on in the journey. So he was not with them when they had stopped at these camps. Mrs. Harriet Pike, Moss Mary Graves, Franklin Graves, Sr., C.T. Stanton, Antonio and Lewis and Salvador. And this was their last ditch effort to get help. Meanwhile, while they were gone at the back of the camps, Jacob Donner, Samuel Shoemaker,
00:42:42
Speaker
Joseph Reinhardt and James Smith died just from exhaustion and the conditions. So thats different George Donner's brother, the one who hit him with the axe died. He did. He was older than George and he already had been suffering from poor health even before he made this trip. So it's actually quite admirable that he made it as far as he did. But the stress of the trip and just his poor health, the bad weather, like it all just it became too much. accidentally bloodd jaming your brother with an act probably doesn't do great things for your mental fortitude no i'm sure his stress i'm sure his blood pressure was through the roof poor man Now back at the camp, John Baptiste and Noah James were two men who had stayed at the camps and they were hunting for cattle. They were trying to find cattle that had died and was frozen in the snow to get food, but they, according to Eliza, told Mr. and Mrs. Donner
00:43:25
Speaker
we shall go mad we shall die it is useless to hunt for the cattle because it was hard to find them even if they were trying to break through the snow they couldn't get far enough down to get to the cattle and then they told mr and mrs donner but the dead if they could be reached their bodies might keep us alive now george donner and his wife were adamant against this according to eliza they said no part of a hide meaning the cattle still remains when it is gone we will perish if that be the alternative Now, while this was George and his wife's stance at the beginning, not necessarily everyone in the party agreed with this philosophy. We're gonna go back to where the forlorn hope is. So this was the Donners back at their base camp. They were telling people there, no, we should not eat the bodies of our dead companions.
00:44:12
Speaker
We're gonna tough it out, try to get to that cattle if we can. But the group that was known as the Forlorn Hope, they're up in the mountains on their own. They had some limited supplies with them, but they did not have a lot, and they're starting to die off due to exposure. Mr. Graves, who was up there, was told by Mr. Eddie that he was dying and replied that he did not care, but he did call for his daughters Mrs. Fosdick and Mary Graves, who were part of that company. According to Eliza, he showed that he was still able to realize keenly the dangers that beset them. Remembering how their faces had paled at the suggestion of using human flesh for food, he admonished his daughters to put aside the natural repugnance which stood between them and the possibility of life. He commanded them to banish sentiment and instinctive loathing
00:45:02
Speaker
and think only of their starving mother, brothers, and sisters whom they had left in camp, and avail themselves of every means in their power to rescue them. He begged that his body be used to sustain the famishing, and bidding each farewell, his spirit left its bruised and worn tenement before half the troubles of the night were passed.
00:45:24
Speaker
So, Graves is giving the go-ahead for cannibalism in this instance. Do you think that's true? Or it was a story told after? Well, it was definitely a story told after because Eliza was not part of the Forlorn Hope. So here is what I'm going to say right now. There is some debate about whether the cannibalism was just legend added to the story of the Donner Party or whether it was real. I think there is a good chance that at least some of the cannibalism did happen. And I mean, there's evidence of cannibalism on the bodies that were discovered. But as far as the whole story and whether or not people were actually killed to be cannibalized, that is up for debate.
00:46:03
Speaker
I think it's very likely that members of the party ate people who had already died. I don't know that murder was ever committed for the sake of eating people. That is an accusation that was made specifically against Kesselberg, but I don't know that that is true. Did that answer your question? Yes. Okay. Yeah. So this particular incident, I don't know.
00:46:22
Speaker
Could be made up could just be a story told after it could be something the survivors told to make themselves feel better for having to eat human flesh We don't know if everybody ate human flesh according to Eliza all but the Indians that were in their group because they had a couple of Indian or Native American guides Obey the mandate and we're strengthened and reconciled to prepare the remaining flesh to sustain them a few days longer on their journey So, it is commonly reported that people in both the base camps and the Forlorn Hope did eventually succumb to their hunger and needed to engage in
Rescue & Survival
00:46:54
Speaker
cannibalism. However, I will point out that research shows that not all of the em immigrants engaged in cannibalism. A lot of the immigrants stranded at Truckee Lake
00:47:03
Speaker
which later became known as Donner Lake, would eat different meals from their dogs, from the animals, but they tried not to eat people. Some were forced to cannibalize on their frozen comrades.
00:47:17
Speaker
According to, now this is according to history dot.com, not according to Eliza's book. All told, roughly half of the Donner party survivors eventually resorted to eating human flesh. So, yeah some did, some did not. We're not going to get too far into the whole harrowing tale. What we need to know is that people were stranded in the camps, people were stranded in the mountains, people were slowly dying off due to exposure, and eventually people were succumbing to their hunger and were resorting to cannibalism. We know we had 45 survivors, so people were rescued. But the rescue process took a long time. It happened for over two months of people going in and out to get them out of the mountains. Now, one person who was responsible for rescuing a lot of people happened to be... James Reid. He went back with other people to rescue the different members of the Donner Party and bring them back to safety. And that very likely might not have happened if he hadn't been banished from the wagon train because he had the resources and the food and the supplies to be able to sustain him and his strength to go and rescue people. Points to him for not being vindictive, that's all I'm gonna say.
00:48:23
Speaker
Well, I think it helped that his family was still with the party. So he's like, I have to go back and get my kids. I'm here for my kids and my wife. The rest of you have to figure it out. That's true. Interestingly, the Reed family was one of the only families that did not lose any family members. Like the Donners, eventually George Donner and his wife also perished.
00:48:44
Speaker
and Jacob Donner's wife also perished, and four of the children from those two families died. And then William Eddy, he survived, but his wife and children passed away. But James Reed's family, and then the Breen family as well, all of their kids survived. The spouses also survived. But they were the only two families, I think, that survived completely intact.
00:49:04
Speaker
Kessiburg was the last person who was eventually rescued. So these different rescue parties would go over the mountains, bring people out. It took several different rescue parties to get all of the survivors out. Now, Kessiburg was found on April 17th. And according to reports, he was surrounded by human bones and a pod of what looked like some internal organs. And according to the reports, he did confess to cannibalizing other survivors.
00:49:33
Speaker
Now, here's something that is interesting though. He has been accused, although it has never been proven, of killing Tamsen Donner, who is the wife of George Donner. This is Eliza's report of what Keseberg stated. So he had admitted to some cannibalism, but the wretched man, according to Eliza, was accused by this party not only of having needlessly partaken of human flesh,
00:50:01
Speaker
and of having appropriated coin and other property which should have come to us orphaned children, but also of having wantonly taken the life of Mrs. Murphy and of my mother. Some declared him crazy, others called him a monster. Kesselberg denied these charges and repeatedly accused Fallon and his party of making false statements.
00:50:19
Speaker
He sadly acknowledged that he had used human flesh to keep himself from starving, but swore that he was guiltless of taking human life. He stated that Mrs. Murphy had died of starvation soon after the departure of the third relief, the third rescue party, and that my mother had watched by my father's bedside until he died. He had eventually succumbed to infection from the axe wound, and of course, starvation and exposure, all of those things contributed to his death.
00:50:44
Speaker
After preparing his body for burial, she had started out on the trail to go to her children. In attempting to cross the distance from her camp to Kesselbergs, she had strayed and wandered about far into the night and finally reached his cabin wet, shivering and grief-stricken yet determined to push forward. She had brought nothing with her but told him where to find money to take to her children in the event of her not reaching them. He stated that he offered her food, which she refused.
00:51:09
Speaker
He then attempted to persuade her to wait until morning, and while they were talking, she sank upon the floor completely exhausted, and he covered her with the blankets and made a fire to warm her. In the morning, he found her cold in death. So that's his report. Other people believe that Samson had come to his cabin and that he had killed her.
00:51:26
Speaker
Hmm. It's up to speculation. He doesn't sound like the greatest guy judging by the whole hard coop situation, the suspicious death of Wolfinger, but we don't know. We cannot say for certain. Now he did apparently come into possession of money that was supposed to go to the Dawner orphans, but he claimed that he was going to give it to them. So maybe he just didn't have a chance to. We don't know for sure.
00:51:49
Speaker
I don't know. what What do you think? What are your thoughts? Well, it also says later that Captain Fallon, who was in charge of the rescue party, had found $225 in gold coin taken from concealment on Kesselberg's person and $275 additional taken from a cash that Kesselberg had disclosed after the captain had partially strangled him and otherwise brutally treated him to extort information of hidden treasure. Kesselberg did not deny that this money belonged to the Donners, but asserted that it was his intention and desire to take it to the Donner children as he had promised their mother. So I don't know. The fact that he had money concealed on his person and he wasn't talking about it right away makes me a little suspicious that maybe he might not have killed Mrs. Donner, but he definitely, I think, saw an opportunity to get some money and keep it for himself. I don't know that I would accuse him of murder because, again, we just don't know. Yeah, I think you're right. I wouldn't go as far as to say that he murdered Mrs. Donner, but I would be hard pressed to think that he was going to give that money back.
00:52:45
Speaker
yeah But then on the other hand, you can also say, well, he wasn't telling people because maybe they would take the money themselves. XYZ, like, who knows, really? But it does seem to be kind of interesting. I can see why people are suspicious of him, especially with how he treated hard coop and what was it? Wolfinger? Yeah, there's something a little bit hinky about his morals throughout. As far as we can tell, most people, if they cannibalize anyone,
00:53:11
Speaker
it was after someone had already passed away. However, it is said that William Foster kind of went crazy and he shot Lewis and Salvador, who were their Indian guides with the intent of cannibalizing them. So he is the only person that we know of who has been accused of actually, and where multiple people say, yes, he purposefully killed someone for the purpose of cannibalization. I don't know. It's a guy like that seems like bad juju all around.
00:53:37
Speaker
My suspicion, and I can't prove this for sure, is that Salvador and Luis were starting to get nervous when the other people started being like, yeah, you know, we can eat this dead remains because and according to Eliza's account, they were the only two who did not eat human flesh. They're like, nope, we're not going to do that. And according to her book, they said that they were Lost and that they couldn't guide them any further and they were trying to leave the group So I'm wondering if they were just trying to get away because they were uncomfortable So they weren't necessarily actively guiding the group any longer but then later Foster took matters into his own hands and
00:54:10
Speaker
I mean, either way, it sounds like he he definitely killed them. Yeah, even if whether or not I was for cannibalization purposes or to keep them quiet. He was officially a murderer. Yes, yes. He's our only I guess I should say official murder other unless you want to count James Reed's incident was Snyder as murder, I would still call it self defense.
00:54:28
Speaker
I would call that self-defense, perhaps a little overzealous in the intent, but again, situations weren't good. And I could see how that ended up. And in reality, it was self-defense regardless of how you look at it, because he didn't intend to kill that man just to kill him. Right. Whether or not it was necessary force. And it turned out to be a good thing, I guess.
00:54:46
Speaker
Yeah, because he was able to come back and be one of the many rescue parties that came. So eventually, 45 survivors were rescued.
Reflections & Ethics Discussion
00:54:53
Speaker
And it's really sad. i'm I was reading part of Eliza's story and she says, the report of our affliction spread rapidly and the well-meaning tender-hearted women at the fort came to condole and weep with us and made their children weep also by urging, now do say something comforting to these poor little girls who were frozen and starved up in the mountains and are now orphans in a strange land without any home or anyone to care for them. which I understand being sympathetic and wanting to comfort the children, but I feel like reiterating all of their pain for them right then and there maybe wasn't the most comforting approach, especially since Eliza clearly remembers probably not the exact words, but yeah, definitely. not like sad little orphan kids babies come come gather around and cry for them and then when she was finding out that there was you know people were talking about how people had been eating her dad and her mom so like that too because according to records George Donner and Tamsin also showed signs of being cannibalized after their deaths so just hearing that kind of stuff that's not something you should be talking about around a child or like even growing up I think she was hearing those reports and that's part of what spurred her
00:55:57
Speaker
She was hearing all of these awful stories about the Donner party. And so she wanted to do the research and find the whole story, which her book goes into way more detail than what I have covered in this. Like I would definitely recommend reading that because you get her perspective and you get a lot more details. You get more details about life on the road of a wagon train as well. And then of course, just the events themselves. And she draws a lot from Thornton and Breen, who again, like I said, a lot of their journal entries have been cited as evidence in other reports of these stories. So a lot of good information there.
00:56:25
Speaker
So I know you're already familiar with this story. Is there anything else you would like to add to the what the parts of the account that I shared? Anything else that struck you about the story? Particular people involved? One thing that always struck me it was the amount of cannibalism that took place after the rescues. And it just seems like there were multiple rescues and yet a lot of people had to resort to cannibalism in that time. So it's just, I don't want to say it was pointless because it definitely prolonged the lives of some of the travelers. But there is something to be said about how far this went.
00:56:53
Speaker
Yes. And how much of it could have been avoided. Yeah. Which I'm wondering, do you think, this is where we're kind of moving into the speculation portion, perhaps, do you think some of it could have been, yes, they knew people were coming back for them, but maybe they doubted people would come back for them. Do you think they were starting to just go crazy? I don't think I would have trusted that they were coming back, especially having seen as much just go wrong as they did. I think holding out hope might have been important, but if they couldn't be sure, or even if they could be sure, but they didn't know when, I think at that point you can excuse cannibalizing those who have passed on. Right. And say, well, maybe I had to eat a person yesterday and they came today, but I didn't know that yesterday. I think that's where if you murdered someone and then the next day you will rescue. I think that's like ah that's a common trope I think in fiction where someone finally does something it's selfish but it preserves them and so it's kind of like oh I feel bad about doing it and the next day a rescue crew is landed or something like that. So it's just kind of like, you don't know, so it's morality gray. And I don't like those very much, but I do know the amount of cannibalism that took place is always crazy to me. Do you know if the children had a partaking cannibalism or if it was just the adults who've been left behind? That is a great question. And I actually do not know the answer to that. In short answer to your question, I do not know if the children partook. And honestly, if they did, I doubt that their parents would tell them, you know, like, I feel like they would just give them that food without telling them where it came from.
00:58:13
Speaker
That's my suspicion. But I want to read- That's what I would do. ah Yeah. um Well, I think it's very possible the kids could have engaged in cannibalism, but just not known where the food came from. Eliza said in her like introduction to her book,
00:58:27
Speaker
Who can wonder at my indignation and grief in little girlhood when I was told of acts of brutality, inhumanity, and cannibalism attributed to those starved parents who in life had shared their last morsels of food with helpless companions? And she talked about how the parents were just focused on their children and trying to make sure that they survived. So I think any food that, you know, did last, they were careful to give food to the kids, but it could have ended up being human flesh as well. We don't know what was going through their minds. And like you said, if they knew for sure that help was coming because the rescue efforts took over two months, that's 60 days. That's a long time to be in the snow stranded alone.
00:59:06
Speaker
But it does appear that the Daughter Party members went to great lengths to avoid eating their own dead, at least at first, according to this article that I'm looking at. They would boil animal hides and shard animal bones like they tried, at least at the start, to be able to stave off resorting to eating human flesh, but they weren't able to the whole time, or they didn't. Yeah.
00:59:26
Speaker
i mean The entire thing is just, it's crazy. And the entire thing is just so regrettable. Can you imagine it being, um, I can't remember what his name was. Um, the man who told his daughters, eat me, like essentially, like, can I die? Go ahead and eat me. That is like, think of other, think of the rest of our family. I, I commit, I compel you to, I command you to, in a fatherly sense, to, to take part of my body. And it's just, I don't know if I could do it. I don't think I could. I don't think it's either. I mean, but that's easy for me to say right now because I am safe. I am warm. I am full. I would like to think.
00:59:57
Speaker
that I would have the strength and fortitude to not do it because, well, hold on, we'll get into our thoughts on cannibalism at the very, very end. I want to back up. I was going to say, I don't think I would have the strength yeah to cannibalize.
01:00:12
Speaker
We'll have different perspectives on that. We'll get into that. so But I wanted to bring up Hastings first one more time. I want to bring back Hastings because like I said, he's not a criminal, but I think he's somewhat liable. I just find it so interesting. His story seems like a cautionary tale because you know he's this adventurer and I think in his mind, he's being helpful to all of these wagon trains coming after him.
01:00:30
Speaker
but just thinking about the unintended consequences of the advice that he was giving people. It's so tragic because his little shortcut ended up giving them this whole other route that was very prolonged. And yes, the people in the Donner Party could have made other choices, but in the moment, like who's to say what choice was right or what was wrong or what the best route was, they had never gone that way before. But I just find it so interesting that he could just give them that advice and then it would turn out so badly.
01:01:00
Speaker
And whoever left that piece of paper on the guideposts talking about how there were only so many miles through the desert when there were actually many, many more. It's just a series of unfortunate events from people who were trying to be helpful, but ended up, you know, not being helpful at all. The road to hell was paved with good intentions there, I think. It's very sad. And it's um back to Katelyn Sierra going, it's so sad for Tim. And it's like, I don't care about being judged for saying this, but it's so difficult to think about being put in that position.
01:01:28
Speaker
And at what point do you say, well, all right, survival over anything else. And I have a different perspective on survival. I've always talked about how when it comes to things getting difficult.
01:01:39
Speaker
if I have no one else to live for like, I think if I had like a spouse or children, I would feel differently. But I've always said like, Oh, if the apocalypse ever happens, I'm going out and I'm walking into the exploding sun. I'm not trying to find a bunker. I'm not trying to live. It doesn't matter to me. And that's not in a Oh, I wish I was dead kind of way. It's in a I don't really care to live through that. Yeah, to be painful. Yeah, like, again, I'm not strong enough to to face a massive amount of opposition. There's also the fact that I don't have good health.
01:02:06
Speaker
So trying to stay alive in a situation where my quality of life, honestly, if it was between me and some average Joe who's got a good quality of life, it's not worth it for me to try and like... live through all that. So but to to think about desperation to have your your entire family in a situation like that. Have your kids there, your spouse and then to be separated from your kids and have to watch your husband die and then try to walk and find your kids and then you either are killed or die. And somebody eats your body has a bucket of intros outside like no, I cannot imagine and then to watch people get rescued and have to stay behind. Yes, that's what gets me. I would that would be the hardest thing I think for me. Oh, and then to send your children before you.
01:02:45
Speaker
Yeah, and you know, can you trust the people you're sending them with what's going to happen to them? Yeah, so many, so many questions. It's a lot of trust to put in other people. And I think that's the scariest aspect of this is when you're on this path, you have already seen the worst of humankind.
01:03:00
Speaker
You've seen someone die and you had to consider, is this murder? You've seen people die for more health and just trying to figure out, well, where do I draw a line in the sand? At what point does my survival rise above what's considered decent? So no, like, is there anything you want to talk about before we get into like the ethics of cannibalism? Well, maybe one thing kind of playing off that hole where they didn't trust anybody or they're worried about their own survival, thinking back to Mr. Hardcoup and how the wagon train had to make that difficult decision. No, we're not going to go back and look for him again. We're just going to keep going. They have already seen people have to be left behind for the sake of the greater good.
01:03:31
Speaker
So I would definitely if I were when I was waiting in those mountain camps waiting for rescue I would definitely be worried about and are my family and I on that list like are we considered worth going back for so yeah definitely have a lot of questions and fear that's such a difficult thing to think about because we've never really discussed the concept of the greater good what we can consider to be too much or too little for the greater good. And I think I have a kind of pessimistic outlook on the greater good. But yeah, having to kind of come to peace with the fact that, you know, their intention right now, they can be looking at me and say, Oh, yeah, we'll come back, but there could be another storm, snowstorm of something could happen and get in the way, it could at some point become disadvantageous to come back for me. It's an impossible situation. And no one can say for 100% certainty how they're going to respond. So we can talk about how we think we respond. So how do you think you would respond in a situation where cannibalism is the only way to not be starving to death? So here's the thing. I had to think about it because I was even talking with my sister about it because I was, you know, doing research for the case. And, you know, we were trying to think, what would you do in those circumstances?
01:04:29
Speaker
And I decided, like I was thinking it through, and I'm like, well, would it be wrong because it's all the only thing you have to survive? But the more I was thinking about it, and this is where my Christian views come in, I do believe very honestly that man was made in the image of God. We had to get special permission from God in Genesis 9 to be allowed to eat animals.
01:04:47
Speaker
Before that, man did not eat animals. He only ate plants, and then God said, now you may eat certain animals. So if we had to get special permission just to eat an animal, eating human flesh is just far, far off the table. And I know that, especially the case of the Donner Party, as far as we know, with the exception of the two Native American guides, no one was killed and then cannibalized on purpose.
01:05:09
Speaker
that we know of for sure. They had all died from just extenuating circumstances and then been cannibalized. But even then, I just think we have lost a lot of the respect for human life in society today and just kind of the sacredness of it, but I really do think that it is important to acknowledge just the value of the fact that man was made in the image of God. That being said, part of me is afraid that while I might have that high and lofty view of humanity, if I were in those circumstances, starving, not able to think straight, would I be able to hold to those values? Or would I bend on those values in order to survive? And again, like thinking of the parents in the Donner Party, they need to survive so they can take care of their kids. So I personally think that for me, I would try to not
01:05:55
Speaker
participate in cannibalism because I do think it's wrong. But at the same time, if I saw a parent doing that, I would understand where they're coming from. You know what I'm saying? Or someone who's just, they're starving and they're trying to survive. I could see where they're coming from. yeah What about you? What would you do? Um, I don't really know the, this is again, I don't think I would try and survive. um I think I said it in the Sonya Bean episode that if I was ever forced to eat human flesh, I would be living, but I would not feel alive inside. I think if I were ever put in a situation where I needed to survive for whatever reason.
01:06:27
Speaker
like I was necessary to survive all of others and my options were to either die or eat human flesh. At that point, if it was someone that I did not know, I could probably do it. But if it was somebody that I did know, I don't think they would ever, i I would genuinely rather die myself than think, this is a loved one. This is someone I know. This is a person. I wasn't going to mention this episode. I actually told myself I wasn't.
01:06:51
Speaker
You know what I'm about to say? I'm a vegetarian. I don't even eat animal meat. and It's partially because I don't really like animal meat like as ah as a taste thing. i just doesn't It doesn't taste good to me. It tastes like blood. I don't like it. I also have arthritis in my jaw, which makes chewing tough things very difficult for me. so A chickpea doesn't fight back as much as a kind of steak does.
01:07:08
Speaker
But part of it is i I do feel kind of bad about the processes of slaughter for animals. And it's not that I'm like judging people who do eat meat because I've cooked meat since I've stopped eating meat. It doesn't bother me on that level. It's just the fact that I can't even bring myself to eat animal meat makes me think that if ever came down to it, there's no way on God's radar that I would be able to force myself to eat people meat. Yeah, and then again, like you said, I believe human life is sacred in any capacity, there's a sacredness to human life, some religions, there's a sacredness to animals, and they don't eat animals either. So we apply that to human life and human life only. But I don't think I would judge people morally for it. And I think I probably would fall into the camp that if I was dying, and we were like, my family was in a situation where it was life or death, I be i do not care. If you eat my body, just leave my face alone. And like,
01:07:53
Speaker
take a leg and go from there. and It wouldn't bother me. like I genuinely think I'd be up in heaven looking down like, I'm so sorry you have to do that, but I'm glad that I can sustain you. Yeah. I was thinking like, I wouldn't be offended. Like, let's say you and me and Naomi were stranded in, I don't know, we were stranded on Mount Everest. I don't think I would be offended if you guys were like, ah, we got to do it, Sierra, sorry. Like if I were already dead, obviously, if you killed me to eat me, then I'd be offended. No, I think like the quality but the pattern of life that we would follow on that mountain top with you, me and Naomi, I would be the lowest on the totem pole of getting out of there alive. Because like I said, I don't have a family other than my nuclear family.
01:08:25
Speaker
And they're all mostly grown. They would miss me. My friends would miss me, but I would be okay. like My soul would be at peace. I'm also in poor health, so it makes the most sense to put me at the bottom of that totem pole because it's less likely that I'm going to live anyway. like And then I'm sorry, Sierra, you're in the middle of that one. Nope, that's all right. Because while she has a family, and she's in good health, and she's benefiting society, Naomi does have a child. Yeah, she has a baby. And so we would say, you know,
01:08:49
Speaker
we would put ourselves in that order and say like she gets to go home to her child if that is the case she's listening to this right now and i'm probably sitting on her couch and she's looking at me like you're disgusting don't ever speak about me eating people but let's be real would the three of us go to mount everrest no because we know our limits my broken bones would never It's all hypothetical. But no, I don't think I would cannibalize people at the end of the day. And the thing is, it's easy for us to sit here and talk about it and hypothesize, but the fact of the matter is the Donner Party, they were in that situation. Oh, yeah. Like we can talk about it. Yeah. Yeah.
01:09:23
Speaker
And even when I, the comment I made about my Everest, about how we wouldn't put ourselves in that situation, that is not reflecting negatively on the daughter party. They didn't put themselves in that situation either. I believe i've heard heard people say like, well, why i drink? too They didn't make that choice. yeah Thinking that was what was going to happen. They didn't arrogantly go for saying, Oh, well, we know better. They listened to someone who said they knew better. yeah they listened you that was hastings who said and maybe hastings was able to do it with a small we don't know much about the data set maybe hastings had led a smaller group hastings had more experience there were so many things that even if he
01:09:53
Speaker
i think he was wrong to get that advice obviously but it wasn't given maliciously he didn like what did he gain from a bunch of people dying in in talk Yeah, no, absolutely. At the end of the day, it was no one's fault. No one maliciously intended to cause these circumstances. It was just a set of very unfortunate circumstances and people had to make difficult decisions within them. That's brutal. It's, it's rough. And I think, you know, so many things went wrong. And I think a lot of things did, but unfortunately, fortunately, some things went right.
01:10:19
Speaker
and they were able to be rescued even if it was at a great loss of human life. But I really don't think the cannibalism aspect is all that bad, except for the case where the Native American guides were killed potentially for cannibalistic purposes. yeah um Either way, them being killed was wrong. but yeah There was no need. It was not self defense. He just shot them. It was not at all justified. I think we would both agree that killing someone to sustain yourself from starving to death is wrong. Absolutely. There's no way that either of us would say, Oh, well, it's okay to kill that guy. So we can have something to eat. No, that's what they did. And even people who were kind of pushed to that, I think we can underestimate how crazy you could go being on that trail for as long as they were. Well, and that was the other thing I was kind of thinking about when you talked about how many how much cannibalism went on at the camps while they were waiting for rescue. I'm wondering if part of that was just them literally going crazy. Oh yeah, it's like solitary confinement. You're sitting there waiting for someone to come back for you and you're starving. Wow, that was a long... I think that might be your longest case ever. I think it is, yeah. but I didn't do this one because we'd still be recording in three hours. I think you did a great job. I think you gave all the necessary information. You got a lot of names in there, kept them straight too, which is more than I can do sometimes.
01:11:26
Speaker
so And again, I condensed this a lot. There is so much more information out there. And I'll be linking again, the book that I referenced predominantly and then some other sources as well. There's so much out there on this case because it's so old. So again, it's infamous. Yeah. Oh, people try to travel to California and die in Utah and eat them. Yeah, that's crazy. This probably will be our last cannibalism case for a while. I think I think we should put a wrap on cannibalism for now.
01:11:52
Speaker
cut back on cannibalism. That's hard that's our that's our our goal for 2025 is to cut back on cannibalism. Don't eat people, that's all I'm gonna say. My younger sister asked me if I would ever try human flesh in the case of I had an amputated limb because she heard of a man whose leg was cut off and he asked to keep it so that he and his friends could try some. And I told her, no, I don't think I would. Again, I think there's something sacred about, you know, the but a body is just a body, but we are made in the image of God. And I just feel like eating flesh for the sake of eating flesh, human flesh is not a good thing. But that has happened.
01:12:29
Speaker
I have a cool way of doing it. i mean yeah no one' che would you if you ever had I'm answer that question real quick because I think it's a very interesting question. I wouldn't, but the reason isn't for moral reasons, it's because I don't like the taste of meat and I don't need to know what I taste like because I'm sure I won't like it and I don't need that kind of self-worth issue. Yeah, what if you taste your language and you're like, oh, I taste disgusting. like what do you And what if someone likes the way I taste? Like, that's a problem. It's like, by recall I was like, hey, I had to get my like thumb amputated because I broke it and I didn't go to the ER. Whoops. Do you want to come try? There's not much meat on the thumb, but you know what I'm saying. Do you want to come try? Oh my goodness. Yeah. sope that's ah That's a hard task for me. Because what if I'm delicious and you can never have it again? Oh my goodness. I'm going out and on the record and think there's no way I'm delicious. Don't even think about it.
01:13:17
Speaker
For my safety, I must say. I must give this disclaimer. Do not consent to being cannibalized. Oh, man. Would you ever? Would I ever was? This is so gross. But if you had children, would you eat your placenta? No. Nope. You wouldn't like put it in like little capsules? I have seen that. I've heard because aren't there supposed to be like health benefits to it? I don't know. I just feel like. You won't do it for fun, I hope.
01:13:45
Speaker
I don't know. i I guess I would consult with my doctor and see if it's going to be of enough benefit, but i don't that I don't know. I don't think I could. My opinion on that is if it was really that beneficial for my health that my body would reabsorb it in some capacity. God would have built that into my biological yeah baby carrying system like, oh, the placenta is reabsorbed because the nutrients are good for you. When you give birth, the placenta comes with the baby. like It's out. It's gone. You don't need it. Yeah, think I think it should just stay out.
01:14:13
Speaker
Like that's medical waste at that point, bruh. I don't need it. That's a biohazard. I beg thank you so much for feeding my baby, like keeping it connected and circulating his blood through its body for me. That's great. Now you're going in a medical waste bag. Love you bunches. So I guess we have officially ruled out pretty much any form of cannibalism then. I don't, would that even be considered cannibalism though? Eating the placenta? That's not the- Autocannibalism, yep. It's eating yourself. That's a thing. I didn't realize that was a term, but I guess that makes sense considering the story of the- I don't know how quickly I knew that was a term either.
01:14:43
Speaker
Kaylee, should I be concerned? No, or perhaps I'm a vegetarian because I have dark urges. Oh my goodness. I don't. Once again. He thinks you death protest too much. I mean, I have said multiple times that I'd sooner die than try and live through any hardship, so I really feel like we're probably okay here. And you live so far away from me now anyway, so it's not like I can come after you. That's true, I'd be safe, so.
01:15:05
Speaker
And even if I was on a rampage, I don't think eric said I would meet my friends. So strangers never go hiking with Kaylee. If I'm going hiking, something is wrong. If I'm taking my arthritic hips and spine out on the trail.
01:15:20
Speaker
be prepared to call it a helicopter shall we exit the cannibalism highway yes please safety and sanity and like all right so now we talk about something well i feel like we spent the last 20 minutes talking about casual things yeah now we wrap up with a thought yesterday Well, as of the day we're recording this, yesterday was Sunday, and part of the reason we didn't record on a Sunday was because of me. We had a Christmas inspiration at our church in the evening, so that took a lot of preparation because our church was hosting it, but it was very beautiful. A lot of gorgeous music, it was just a very fun time, and then we had, because we're Baptists, we have to eat food after. had
01:15:55
Speaker
fellowship time with cookies and treats. It was quite lovely. It was a lovely, it was a very nice way to start the Christmas season. My church had a Christmas celebration last night as well. It's not their primary Christmas celebration, but they try and do one earlier in case people are traveling, so they want their church family to be able to feel like they're celebrating together. so They do one a little bit earlier, and it was nice. They had a bunch of like singing groups. They had a beautiful acapella performance, which I don't always take acapella very seriously, but I did last night. What is a good thing that happened in my week? I had one earlier and I was like, I'm gonna talk about that. Oh, I'm gonna talk about something funny.
Community & Personal Stories
01:16:30
Speaker
Oh, I earlier this week was thinking about how thankful I am for my um friends and my family. o um Because just, I don't know, it's been it's been a heavy week, past couple weeks, I'm trying to get some stuff in my life in order and it just didn't work out. So disappointments were rife. And our friend group has started doing this thing called the weekly waffle, which was Sierra's idea, which I think it came from like a Tiktoker. Yeah, it came from a reel, but it's not original to me. But yeah,
01:16:55
Speaker
But we're every week on Wednesday, our friends all record a little video clip or several little video clips depending on the week and kind of reconnect and take a second to kind of keep each other up to up to date on what we're doing. And so I've been really enjoying Wednesday waffles. We have one person in the group who never gets them out on Wednesdays. That's my sister.
01:17:14
Speaker
And it's because she she, out of all of us, I think has the most demanding schedule, but it's also very into her personality. She's still in school and she's working on getting her master's and also working ah several hours a week on top of that. But our friend Emma sent us a video last week that was a couple of years old. And it was a video of me and Sierra, and we're sitting on our friend's couch. And it just, I think it so beautifully demonstrates the differences in our personalities.
01:17:39
Speaker
Did you end up watching that video? I did watch the video, but I forgot what I was looking at. Like, what were we reacting to? I think we were watching a movie and according to our friend, she said she thinks it was alien, which neither of us had seen. Right. And I'm not sure what scene it is, but I remember the situation is I was about to drive Sierra home.
01:17:59
Speaker
so she's standing by the door like with all of her stuff in her hand like staring at the tv open mouth in horror and i'm sitting on the couch wrapped in a blanket because i never get the one time i guess and i'm laughing absolutely just laughing uproarously and sierra's horrified and i think that's a pretty good and approximation of how we process things yeah This is really funny because it was just like there was a scene where I guess another jump scare happened in series. I'm just I kept laughing. So yeah, that's a fictional movie. It's not like we were laughing at actual things, but it was just and it was funny and it made me laugh. And I remember that day. That was a very good day. Yeah. We're all just kind of hanging out and.
01:18:39
Speaker
watching a movie. So thankful for my friends. And I don't know what our schedule is going to be like recording wise for the next month or so I'm traveling. And then after I'm back, Sierra is traveling and a couple weeks after that. Yeah, I'm getting settled in a new country. So it will take a bit of adjustment. So but we but I've already wrecked our consistency. ah That was my bad this week, but it it used to be me. So I'm just glad it stopped me anymore. So but we will do our best. You will get episodes just might not be consistent. Yeah, expect unexpected. We also just had our Spotify creator wrapped. Oh, I didn't look at that. It was interesting. We had more people listen than I thought. Oh, that's cool. I'm sorry to all the when I keep saying that like there are two people listening. There's more like 20 something people listening. Oh, yeah.
01:19:28
Speaker
So if you're still here, considering this is a really long and
Listener Engagement & Future Topics
01:19:32
Speaker
waffly episode, Spotify has ah an option where you can leave a comment and give your thoughts on episode. I'm going to ask that if you have a comment, give us a comment. We'd love to hear from you. If you have a case recommendation or you want us to clarify something, or I don't know, you want to tell us we pronounced something incorrectly. Yeah, tell us how to pronounce Kessiger, if you know.
01:19:51
Speaker
Yeah, that'd be great. So yeah, it'd be interesting. And then if you have a specific case you'd like us to look into, or, or whatever, you just want to say hi, or if you want to say that we suck, I don't know, please don't say that. I sound tough, but I'm actually rather insecure. We'll take constructive criticism if there's something that you're like... Oh yeah, to the chick who told us several months ago that one of our mics sucked, we listened and we got a new mic. So thank you. But yeah, I think that's it for this week. So your pleasant thing from the week was your string inspiration and mine was, I don't know, watching the video.
01:20:23
Speaker
of us. I'm being reminded of of how compatible we are even if we're not the same. so Lovely. In the future, the next episode will be... The next episode will be about Kitty Genovese. It's an episode that we recorded previously, and so I'm editing it right now. A more journalism-focused episode, and we'll talk about Kitty Genovese and the results of a report of her death. so Until then, be aware. Take care. And we'll see you next week. Don't eat people. Bye! Bye!