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SYSK Selects: How the Donner Party Worked · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Hey, they're friends. It's me Josh, and this week I've
0:04
Speaker 1: selected for s y s K selects our episode on
0:08
Speaker 1: the Donner Party, which was pretty grim. I mean, we
0:11
Speaker 1: all know about the Donner Party, but once you start
0:13
Speaker 1: to learn the details of the whole thing, it's pretty grim. Anyway,
0:18
Speaker 1: I guess I would say enjoy this normally, but yeah, okay,
0:22
Speaker 1: go ahead, enjoy this episode in a grim way. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know, a production of My Heart
0:29
Speaker 1: Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:38
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark with me as always a Charles W.
0:41
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, and that makes this stuff you should know.
0:46
Speaker 1: M I don't. I'm fine. Good. How are you doing?
0:50
Speaker 1: I'm great, dude. I watched PBS today at work, which
0:54
Speaker 1: is always fun when you get to watch TV via
0:58
Speaker 1: the computer and work. Yeah, paid for it. Yeah, man,
1:02
Speaker 1: I remember I watched American grind House once at work
1:06
Speaker 1: while we were doing the exploitation I did do. Actually,
1:09
Speaker 1: it was awesome. I watched the PBS is American Experience,
1:13
Speaker 1: which is an awesome show. I've been around for years,
1:17
Speaker 1: and I watched there obviously. I watched the one in
1:19
Speaker 1: the Dinner Party. Oh, is that the one you watched?
1:21
Speaker 1: I gotcha. I just saw there was one on the
1:23
Speaker 1: Johnstown flood that I which I would have known, I
1:25
Speaker 1: would have watched it. Oh yeah, I mean I'll still
1:29
Speaker 1: watch it. I still want to learn. You're not gonna
1:31
Speaker 1: you only watch PBS at work for money? Yeah, you're right. Um.
1:35
Speaker 1: I was doing a little research and I came across
1:38
Speaker 1: something called hugh Fou or wofu play on Hulu. You know,
1:43
Speaker 1: a play on tofu that's designed, um to taste like
1:48
Speaker 1: human flesh. Oh, I was going in an entirely different direction.
1:52
Speaker 1: There is a big um. Yeah, no, this is this
1:56
Speaker 1: is about canniballism. Now there's a big media put on it.
2:01
Speaker 1: It made the Daily Show. Um. All sorts of articles
2:06
Speaker 1: came up about whufu. There was a spokesman, there was
2:09
Speaker 1: a website, UM, and it was the tofu that's that
2:14
Speaker 1: tastes like human They were saying the reason why they're
2:17
Speaker 1: doing it so anthropologists could better, um understand their subjects
2:22
Speaker 1: when they were investigating cambalism. And there's plenty of people
2:25
Speaker 1: out there who just wanted to try it. Well, how
2:27
Speaker 1: did they know? How did they flavor it like human? Well?
2:31
Speaker 1: They didn't. It turns out the whole thing was the
2:34
Speaker 1: total farce. But if you still look today, Um, it
2:39
Speaker 1: was on the snop sport. It's not definitively yes, but
2:44
Speaker 1: no one's ever had it. And apparently while you could
2:47
Speaker 1: access the website, you you couldn't buy. You got an
2:49
Speaker 1: error message whenever you tried to check out or whatever.
2:53
Speaker 1: But um, it was pretty funny that everybody got taken
2:56
Speaker 1: on that. I thought I'd mentioned. Yeah, I did too,
3:00
Speaker 1: And if you look in Urban Dictionary, Um, that's still
3:04
Speaker 1: there's no mention of it being fake or fictitious. Yeah,
3:07
Speaker 1: I think and loath to say it, but it was
3:11
Speaker 1: Wikipedia that that initially said it's fictitious. To me, I
3:17
Speaker 1: feel dirty. Um, but Chuck, we talk about Hoofu or hufu,
3:22
Speaker 1: depending on what region of the country you live in.
3:25
Speaker 1: Um to talk about the Donner Party, which is one
3:29
Speaker 1: of those very rare instances in the history of humanity
3:34
Speaker 1: where we can say, pretty much without doubt, people ate
3:38
Speaker 1: other people, and they did so under some of the
3:42
Speaker 1: most horrific circumstances that humans have ever endured. This group
3:46
Speaker 1: of people went through Holy hell. Yeah, it's pretty rough there. Yeah,
3:52
Speaker 1: I can just keep going for the rest of the episodes.
3:55
Speaker 1: How bad it was? Um and uh. I learned a
4:00
Speaker 1: lot from this article, a lot of new surprising stuff,
4:03
Speaker 1: and it's pretty cool. Like, did you know that it
4:06
Speaker 1: took two years when it should have taken six months?
4:09
Speaker 1: Not true? What are you talking about? It took one year? Okay? Yeah?
4:14
Speaker 1: Well did you know that the Donner Party was originally
4:16
Speaker 1: the Donna Reed Party and the the Reed Party split
4:20
Speaker 1: off and made their way without event onto um Fort Sutter, California.
4:24
Speaker 1: No problem, that's not true either. What are you talking about? Yeah,
4:28
Speaker 1: this is not the best article on our site, I
4:31
Speaker 1: must say. And I read it and then I did
4:34
Speaker 1: my own research and was like, wow, how did you
4:37
Speaker 1: miss some of this stuff. We'll get to the bottom
4:39
Speaker 1: of that and we'll we'll make sure it gets changed.
4:42
Speaker 1: I've already sent an email actually about that, did you
4:44
Speaker 1: an angry one? Well, just like, how could this be
4:48
Speaker 1: on our site? It's so wrong and it's so easily
4:52
Speaker 1: figured out. It's not like rocket science. It's like it
4:56
Speaker 1: took two years. No, look at a calendar. It took
4:58
Speaker 1: one year. So a caddie one, yes, okay, it was
5:00
Speaker 1: a little caddy. Um. Well, let's talk about the Donner party.
5:04
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what's known what's not known. So Donna
5:08
Speaker 1: Donna Reid. Donner was a wealthy farmer in his sixties.
5:14
Speaker 1: Reid was Irish American businessman, had some dough as well.
5:19
Speaker 1: He financed the trip. Oh did he I believe? So? Okay,
5:23
Speaker 1: But George Donner was the official guy in charge. Yeah,
5:27
Speaker 1: James Reid thought that he was going to be in charge.
5:30
Speaker 1: Um and kind of was in a way. But they
5:34
Speaker 1: did elect Donner the captain because Reid turned off people
5:39
Speaker 1: with his his RV. Essentially, he had a a macked
5:43
Speaker 1: out wagon that everyone else is really piste off about
5:47
Speaker 1: because it was double decker and it had a stove
5:50
Speaker 1: in it, and it had bunk beds, and it was
5:53
Speaker 1: like apparently like made a big commotion among the other
5:56
Speaker 1: people because they're like, oh, who's this guy with his
5:58
Speaker 1: big wagon? And this is even before for the chuck
6:00
Speaker 1: wagon was invented by Charles Chuck Goodnight. Do you want
6:04
Speaker 1: to go ahead and tell that story, Well, there's not
6:07
Speaker 1: much to tell. Charles Chuck Goodnight was a cookie on
6:09
Speaker 1: the wagon trails, uh, and after the Civil War he
6:13
Speaker 1: had gotten very tired of not having a decent meal,
6:17
Speaker 1: so he bought an old government wagon and converted it
6:20
Speaker 1: into a kitchen, which became the first chuck wagon named
6:24
Speaker 1: after him. And uh, from that, if you follow it
6:28
Speaker 1: further and further, you get diners and food trucks. Chuck wagon. Yeah,
6:33
Speaker 1: very nice, gosh, very slick. So the Donna Reed Party, Uh,
6:40
Speaker 1: like a lot of people back then, said you know what,
6:42
Speaker 1: you know where? It's at this place called California that
6:44
Speaker 1: I've heard so much about. And this is prior to
6:46
Speaker 1: the gold Rush. Um this there was a movement towards
6:50
Speaker 1: populating California, basically wrestling wrestling control of California away from
6:56
Speaker 1: the Spanish just through sheer numbers, by having a bunch
7:00
Speaker 1: of white folks show up and basically saying, Mexico, you
7:04
Speaker 1: can't you can't control this land anymore. It will be
7:06
Speaker 1: too expensive and costly. We're taking over because we live
7:10
Speaker 1: here now, That's right. And Lansford Hastings was one of
7:12
Speaker 1: the main dudes behind this movement. He was an attorney
7:15
Speaker 1: from Ohio. He went to California forty two and dreamed
7:21
Speaker 1: of wrestling this land from the Mexican Uh, from Mexico
7:25
Speaker 1: and saying, and governing California himself, well he dreams. He
7:30
Speaker 1: did so with a guy named John Sutter who was
7:33
Speaker 1: a German born Swiss immigrant who had taken Mexican citizen
7:37
Speaker 1: citizenship to get a charter a land grant from the
7:42
Speaker 1: Mexican government, and he used it to form New Helvetia
7:47
Speaker 1: or New Switzerland a k a. Fort Sutter, which is
7:51
Speaker 1: now Sacramento Swiss German Swiss born with Mexican citizenship. Yeah,
7:57
Speaker 1: I love it. Who was a trader? Only the can
8:01
Speaker 1: do stuff like that exactly only in California, you know.
8:04
Speaker 1: But Hastings will come back up in a very big
8:07
Speaker 1: way because it's pretty much all his fault. Uh. So
8:11
Speaker 1: they basically set out for for California in May, while
8:16
Speaker 1: they set out from Springfield in April, but Missouri in
8:19
Speaker 1: May is when they had the whole gang together, the
8:23
Speaker 1: big wagon train. So we're going west, we're following the
8:27
Speaker 1: California trail. Everyone goes that way. Everyone actually that year
8:32
Speaker 1: made it except for the dinner party. Oh yeah, yeah,
8:35
Speaker 1: all the immigrants going to California checked in, okay, except
8:38
Speaker 1: for these these sad folks, and um, it was really
8:43
Speaker 1: all because of one fateful decision to tell the truth. Um,
8:48
Speaker 1: they were just like any other uh wagon train, just
8:52
Speaker 1: like any other pioneers. They weren't trailblazers. They were following
8:55
Speaker 1: trails that they learned of and um, they were well equipped.
9:00
Speaker 1: They weren't stupid, no, no, but they did make one
9:03
Speaker 1: faithful decision, like you said. Um. Hastings was his first name, Lanford.
9:09
Speaker 1: Lanford Hastings comes up in a big way because a
9:12
Speaker 1: lot of people laid the disaster, the calamity of the
9:16
Speaker 1: Donner party, at hastings feet, because he was also a trailblazer,
9:22
Speaker 1: and he came up with a fanciful thing called the
9:24
Speaker 1: Hastings cut off. That's right, a shortcut essentially. Yeah. He
9:28
Speaker 1: wrote a book called The Immigrants Guide to Oregon in California,
9:31
Speaker 1: which Donner had on the seat of his wagon, and
9:35
Speaker 1: there was a very brief sentence about the shortcut, the
9:38
Speaker 1: Hastings cut off, that was supposedly going to cut off
9:42
Speaker 1: about three fifty four hundred miles of a full three
9:47
Speaker 1: weeks off of the trip, which is a big chunk
9:50
Speaker 1: for a six month trip that's definitely worth the the
9:53
Speaker 1: trip that they cut off. The problem was, Hastings had
9:56
Speaker 1: never taken this route himself and had certain never taken
10:00
Speaker 1: a wagon over it, but that didn't stop him from
10:03
Speaker 1: claiming that all of the roads were high and hard
10:07
Speaker 1: and level, that there was plenty of water and grass
10:09
Speaker 1: for the livestock um, and that there were no aggressive
10:13
Speaker 1: Indian tribes in the area. Yeah, he basically painted it
10:16
Speaker 1: out like a pleasure cruise because he was trying to
10:18
Speaker 1: get as many people as possible to California. He actually
10:22
Speaker 1: would go and hang out, like on the way to Oregon,
10:24
Speaker 1: on the Oregon Trail and be like, you don't want
10:27
Speaker 1: to go there, you want to come down to California.
10:28
Speaker 1: Because he would lead people. Yeah, so this is why
10:31
Speaker 1: he came up with the Hastings cut off. And it
10:34
Speaker 1: was a dangerous gamble and the Donner Party said, well,
10:37
Speaker 1: we want to shave three weeks off of our trip. Well, yeah,
10:41
Speaker 1: part of the Dinner Party, uh went left, part of
10:44
Speaker 1: him went right. The part that went right did just fine.
10:47
Speaker 1: And you don't hear about them. They're not the Dinner
10:49
Speaker 1: Party any longer. I don't know what they're what they
10:52
Speaker 1: called themselves, but it wasn't The Reds was not the Reds.
10:56
Speaker 1: The Reds stayed with the Donners. Uh, and they went left,
11:00
Speaker 1: went on to Fort Bridger, Wyoming. They were going to
11:02
Speaker 1: meet up with Hastings there, and they got there a
11:06
Speaker 1: little late, and and Hastings was no longer there, but
11:10
Speaker 1: he uh sent a message. Oh, he left a note
11:15
Speaker 1: somewhere along the trail along the Hastings cut off saying, Uh,
11:19
Speaker 1: this may not be as good as I thought. You
11:21
Speaker 1: should probably turn back. Well. Yeah, and before that, this
11:24
Speaker 1: other dude um named Climbing, was headed east from California
11:29
Speaker 1: by way the Hastings cut off, and he said, don't
11:32
Speaker 1: go this way. He said, you're you're never gonna make
11:35
Speaker 1: it alive. Your wagons aren't gonna make it, and you
11:38
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't even make it, so don't go that way.
11:41
Speaker 1: So but they continued, they continued, they found the note,
11:45
Speaker 1: and when they found the note, read went uh spent
11:48
Speaker 1: five days looking for Hastings to kill him, to talk
11:52
Speaker 1: to him about what the deal was. He just said
11:54
Speaker 1: he wanted to talk to him. Yeah, he wanted to
11:56
Speaker 1: kill him. Uh. He did find him, actually, and he
11:58
Speaker 1: didn't kill him. Uh. In Hasting said, I'm not coming
12:01
Speaker 1: back with you to lead Uh sorry, but hey, I'm
12:05
Speaker 1: up on this High Bluff and there's another route, and
12:08
Speaker 1: that one looks a lot better, and so they went
12:11
Speaker 1: that way instead, which was still the southern route under
12:15
Speaker 1: the Great Salt Lake. But um, it was not a
12:19
Speaker 1: good move and that's what started the beginning of the
12:23
Speaker 1: end for the Dinner Party. Two miles a day. Yeah,
12:26
Speaker 1: at that point, in thirty six days, they went sixteen miles,
12:30
Speaker 1: which is horrible considering that, um, they averaged about twelve
12:34
Speaker 1: miles a day normally. Um, they ended up going an
12:38
Speaker 1: extra hundred and twenty five miles and it added three
12:41
Speaker 1: weeks to the trip rather than subtracting three weeks to
12:44
Speaker 1: the trip. They also lost four wagons, which is a
12:48
Speaker 1: big deal in a wagon train. Yeah, they lost a
12:50
Speaker 1: lot of oxen of their cattle as well. And uh,
12:55
Speaker 1: that's where they lost some of their first members because
12:59
Speaker 1: since they were in the desert eighty miles stretch of
13:02
Speaker 1: desert on the trail, yeah, the salt desert, so you
13:04
Speaker 1: got the heat during the day and then it was
13:06
Speaker 1: very cold at night. And this was in August that
13:09
Speaker 1: this was like m hm. They eventually met back up
13:12
Speaker 1: with the California Trail, but they thought, oh man, that
13:15
Speaker 1: was rough. But now we're all set because we're back
13:19
Speaker 1: on the original trail. So that that time that it
13:22
Speaker 1: took him, I mean that extra three weeks, wasn't it.
13:26
Speaker 1: That wasn't went Dinniman. They were going slower than they predicted. Yeah,
13:29
Speaker 1: and it's important to know right here, during that Hastings
13:32
Speaker 1: cut off route where they started to encounter like a
13:35
Speaker 1: lot of hardships, they sent this dude named Stanton. He
13:38
Speaker 1: was a bachelor from New York UH and he was
13:41
Speaker 1: one of the only like single dudes there. They sent
13:44
Speaker 1: him out for provision. So he took off for a
13:48
Speaker 1: period of time and did come back with five mules
13:51
Speaker 1: loaded with food and two Indian guides Lewis and Salvador
13:56
Speaker 1: to help him out. So they weren't a part like
13:58
Speaker 1: the article says the original UH train either. He came
14:03
Speaker 1: back with the provisions with Stanton. UH. During this time,
14:06
Speaker 1: read got in a fight. It was basically the first
14:09
Speaker 1: incident of road rage. His wagon became entangled. His big
14:13
Speaker 1: like RV wagon became entangled with a guy named Snyder.
14:17
Speaker 1: They fought, Red killed Snyder with a knife. They had
14:21
Speaker 1: a little kangaroo court and first said they should hang
14:23
Speaker 1: him and then said no, you know what, just pack
14:26
Speaker 1: your stuff and get out of here. And so he
14:27
Speaker 1: did the next day without his family. He left. So
14:32
Speaker 1: he's crazy. There's two stories going on. Now you've got
14:35
Speaker 1: the dinner party and the Red family. Then you've got
14:37
Speaker 1: read who goes on his own makes it to California.
14:40
Speaker 1: Actually just fine. Well he was no worse for the
14:44
Speaker 1: wear at least, So wow, the dramas high. Already, the
15:10
Speaker 1: drama is high. They they the amount of time, all
15:15
Speaker 1: the setbacks, all the problems that they encountered, conspired to
15:19
Speaker 1: put them back on the California Trail after the disastrous
15:24
Speaker 1: hastings cut off um And right at the eastern edge,
15:28
Speaker 1: so that would be the but the Nevada side maybe
15:33
Speaker 1: of the um Sierra Nevada Mountains in November at the
15:38
Speaker 1: first snow storm, and it was a pretty bad snow storm,
15:42
Speaker 1: and they thought, we can't make it through these mountains
15:44
Speaker 1: in the middle of winter. It's November. Let's just hunker
15:46
Speaker 1: down here. And it would turn out to be one
15:49
Speaker 1: of the worst winders, one of the harshest winners on
15:52
Speaker 1: record that they were unknowingly honkering down for. And they
15:57
Speaker 1: made camp two very famous camps there's the Donner Camp
16:00
Speaker 1: at the edge of a little lake in the area,
16:02
Speaker 1: truck Ee Lake. And then there was the Alder Creek camp,
16:06
Speaker 1: which apparently was uh founded because of a broken wagon wheel,
16:10
Speaker 1: is six miles back either back along the trail, and
16:13
Speaker 1: that's where the two groups camped in the Donner Party.
16:17
Speaker 1: If I may a reading from the diary of one
16:20
Speaker 1: of the members of the Donner Party, November Party, like
16:24
Speaker 1: you're surprised. November one. It was a raining then in
16:29
Speaker 1: the valleys and snowing in the mountains. So we went
16:32
Speaker 1: on that way three or four days till we came
16:34
Speaker 1: to the Big Mountain, or the California Mountain. The snow
16:37
Speaker 1: was then about three ft deep. There there was some
16:40
Speaker 1: wagons there. They said they had attempted to cross and
16:43
Speaker 1: could not. We set out the next morning to make
16:45
Speaker 1: a last struggle, but did not advance more than two
16:48
Speaker 1: miles before the road became so completely blocked that we
16:51
Speaker 1: were compelled to retrace our steps into Spare. When we
16:54
Speaker 1: reached the lake, we lost our road, and, owing to
16:56
Speaker 1: the depth of the snow in the mountains, were compelled
16:58
Speaker 1: to abandon our wagons and pack our goods. Upon Oxen
17:02
Speaker 1: so this is early November and they are in bad
17:06
Speaker 1: shape and basically the wagons can't even pass anymore. So
17:10
Speaker 1: they set up these camps, are like, we gotta hunker
17:12
Speaker 1: down for the winter, and ultimately they ended up in
17:15
Speaker 1: an area where there was through the winter thirty ft
17:20
Speaker 1: of snow. Not over time like that was the snowpack
17:24
Speaker 1: was thirty ft deep. Yeah, I mean, it's still one
17:26
Speaker 1: of the worst winners on record, like today, not just
17:29
Speaker 1: for the time. And these people, this group of fairly
17:33
Speaker 1: green hornish people from back east, are settled down in
17:37
Speaker 1: one of the most dangerous spots in the country at
17:40
Speaker 1: the time, at least climate wise, yeah, meteor logically dangerous.
17:46
Speaker 1: Provisions started to run out another diary entry, November six.
17:52
Speaker 1: We have now killed most of our cattle, having to
17:54
Speaker 1: stay here until next spring and live on poor beef,
17:56
Speaker 1: without bread or salt. It's snow during the space of
17:59
Speaker 1: eight days with little intermission. After our arrival, Mr Curtis
18:03
Speaker 1: remarked that in the oven was a piece of the
18:04
Speaker 1: dog and we could have and we could have it.
18:09
Speaker 1: Raising the lid of the oven, we found the dog
18:11
Speaker 1: well baked and having a fine savory smell. I cut
18:14
Speaker 1: out a rib, smelling and tasting found it to be
18:16
Speaker 1: good and handed the rib to Mr McCutchen, who, after
18:20
Speaker 1: smelling it sometime tasted it and pronounced it the very
18:23
Speaker 1: good dog. So apparently that was, you know, the Dinners
18:27
Speaker 1: dog or the Reeds dog. It was one of the
18:29
Speaker 1: main Fellas dogs. You know, was met that fate. Yeah,
18:33
Speaker 1: I hadn't. I didn't read that he was delicious. Uh well,
18:36
Speaker 1: I imagine if you're dying of starvation, anything that's going
18:40
Speaker 1: to be delicious. They ate their shoes strings, they ate
18:43
Speaker 1: the kids would sit in front of the fire and
18:45
Speaker 1: pick off pieces of the hide skin rug and eat that,
18:49
Speaker 1: and then they eventually ate the hide from the roofs
18:52
Speaker 1: of the cabins because there are actually cabins at the lake.
18:55
Speaker 1: There were no cabins at the creek, but they weren't,
18:57
Speaker 1: you know, they weren't much help against this kind of know.
19:00
Speaker 1: In fact, apparently they were completely packed in at one
19:03
Speaker 1: point and couldn't even get out of the cabin. It
19:05
Speaker 1: was like the thing that happened to um Mr Burns
19:08
Speaker 1: and Homer Simpson. Yeah, when the the camping tripper was
19:14
Speaker 1: at the ski trip, it was the corporate retreat right, boy,
19:18
Speaker 1: that was a good one. Um. They also they boiled
19:22
Speaker 1: their blankets into like kind of a pasty glue. Apparently
19:26
Speaker 1: you said they're shoelaces, right, They ate their shoelaces, Yeah,
19:29
Speaker 1: because I think they were made of like animal hide
19:31
Speaker 1: or something, bark, twigs, anything they could get their hands on,
19:34
Speaker 1: anything that might have any kind of protein they were eating. Yeah,
19:37
Speaker 1: they boiled the bones so much for soup that they
19:41
Speaker 1: became just brittle. So they ate the bones of the
19:43
Speaker 1: animals because they could like bite into them. So it's, um,
19:48
Speaker 1: it's pretty rough. They also, it should go without saying,
19:50
Speaker 1: they ate their pack animals. They managed to hunt for deer,
19:54
Speaker 1: which is pretty good in thirty ft of snow to
20:00
Speaker 1: hunt deer in the middle of winter and successfully. Hats
20:03
Speaker 1: off to them for that. Yeah, they got other things.
20:05
Speaker 1: They got birds here and there, like ducks and owls,
20:08
Speaker 1: and uh, I think they got a wolf one time.
20:10
Speaker 1: So they were able to the forage here and there.
20:13
Speaker 1: But everybody, everyone's clearly starving by this time, and it's
20:18
Speaker 1: the writings on the wall to the parties at these camps.
20:22
Speaker 1: So they select a group of um, well, the strongest people,
20:26
Speaker 1: including the two Indian guides, and I think it was
20:30
Speaker 1: the strongest fifteen people equipped them with homemade snowshoes and
20:34
Speaker 1: set them out to walk across the Sierra Nevada Mountains
20:38
Speaker 1: in the middle of winter with almost no food. They
20:42
Speaker 1: had six days starvation rations per person um. And they
20:47
Speaker 1: were called the forelearn Hope that was the name of
20:50
Speaker 1: the group, or the Snowshoe Group. And I just want
20:54
Speaker 1: to point out that this is some of the most
20:56
Speaker 1: beautiful land you'll ever see in your life. So it's
21:00
Speaker 1: you know, it's not like they were in a goolag
21:03
Speaker 1: in Siberia. I mean, this was like gorgeous Sierra Nevada
21:08
Speaker 1: mountain range in this lake. You know, it's it's absolutely amazing.
21:12
Speaker 1: So it must have been a bitter pill, you know,
21:14
Speaker 1: to be that close. So they're only like a hundred
21:16
Speaker 1: and fifty miles away at that point and just stuck, yeah,
21:19
Speaker 1: and dying. I think even beyond the beauty, the fact
21:22
Speaker 1: that they were a hundred and fifty miles from their
21:23
Speaker 1: destination dying, like you said, that's rough. It was them
21:30
Speaker 1: the Forlorn Hope Group, where cannibalism first came up because
21:35
Speaker 1: they all ran out of food very quickly. And apparently, uh,
21:40
Speaker 1: six days in a guy um named Charles Stanton. Who
21:44
Speaker 1: you mentioned Stanton, didn't you. Yeah, he was a bachelor,
21:47
Speaker 1: one of the early heroes. He was saying, hey, you
21:49
Speaker 1: guys go on without me or um, you know, take
21:53
Speaker 1: me with you as provisions maybe, and everybody said, no,
21:56
Speaker 1: we can't do that. It's crazy, stop that, um, and
22:00
Speaker 1: they left him to die, right. Yeah. A couple of
22:03
Speaker 1: days after that, they thought, hey, maybe Stanton wasn't so crazy.
22:07
Speaker 1: Let's figure out well, let's let's all let's explore the
22:11
Speaker 1: possibility of cannibalism. And they did. They discussed it, and
22:15
Speaker 1: apparently at first they decided that they were going to
22:18
Speaker 1: draw lots draw straws and then whoever is like the
22:24
Speaker 1: custom of the sea, whoever drew the short of straw
22:27
Speaker 1: was going to die, and whoever drew the second short
22:31
Speaker 1: of straw was the person who had to kill him.
22:33
Speaker 1: And this one guy I can't remember his name, drew
22:35
Speaker 1: the straw the shortest straw, but nobody had the heart
22:38
Speaker 1: to kill him, so they kind of just waited instead
22:42
Speaker 1: for the next person to die, and they proposed dueling
22:45
Speaker 1: to at one point, like, let's do a shootout whoever dies,
22:50
Speaker 1: we'll just eat them. But it was very grim. Um.
22:54
Speaker 1: Another another reading perhaps, Yes, this was in December actually
22:59
Speaker 1: right for Christmas, sadly, and this melancholy. And this is
23:02
Speaker 1: from the Snowshoe group, the Forlorn Hope. In this melancholy situation,
23:07
Speaker 1: they consulted together and concluded they would go on trusting
23:10
Speaker 1: in Providence rather than return to the miserable cabins. They
23:14
Speaker 1: were also at this time out of provisions and partly agreed,
23:17
Speaker 1: with the exception of Mr Foster, that in case of necessity,
23:21
Speaker 1: they would cast lots who should die to preserve the remainder.
23:25
Speaker 1: So it's coming, yea, they know it so UM I
23:30
Speaker 1: think A couple of days after Um they started talking
23:35
Speaker 1: about cannibalism. The first guy died. His name was Um Antoine. Yeah,
23:42
Speaker 1: and Antoine Um was eaten by the Forlorn Hope group. Um.
23:50
Speaker 1: He was the first one, but definitely not the last.
23:53
Speaker 1: There was a guy named Jay Fast, Yes, he was
23:57
Speaker 1: the next in A lady named Mrs Foster cut the
24:00
Speaker 1: meat from his bones, boiled it and served it to everybody,
24:03
Speaker 1: and everybody ate. But the one thing that was um
24:06
Speaker 1: agreed upon was that relatives wouldn't eat relatives. Uh. So
24:14
Speaker 1: there was a guy named Jay fos Dick who was
24:16
Speaker 1: who died next and he was um butchered and cooked
24:20
Speaker 1: and served by a lady named Mrs Foster his fan
24:24
Speaker 1: but his uh. One of the things they agreed upon
24:27
Speaker 1: was that relatives wouldn't eat relatives, right so uh but
24:32
Speaker 1: apparently his father was part of the um. The Forlorn
24:36
Speaker 1: Hope group to yeah, he wasn't having it huh. And
24:39
Speaker 1: then things apparently started to turn on the two Indian
24:41
Speaker 1: guides who um the group started discussing murdering and eating them,
24:48
Speaker 1: and one of the other Forlorn Hope groups said, hey,
24:51
Speaker 1: we're talking about doing this. You guys might want to
24:53
Speaker 1: take off. So the Indians apparently had trouble believing it
24:56
Speaker 1: at first. Um. They finally said, oh wait, that's right.
25:02
Speaker 1: You guys are white man. I forgot you totally would
25:05
Speaker 1: do that. And they disappeared into the woods. Yes, but
25:08
Speaker 1: they were later found. They tracked them by their blood,
25:12
Speaker 1: so apparently they weren't in great shape and they found them.
25:15
Speaker 1: This is where it gets a little hinky. Um. Some
25:17
Speaker 1: accounts say they found them dead and ate them. Some
25:20
Speaker 1: accounts say they found them alive and like passed out basically,
25:25
Speaker 1: and they shot them both through the head and then
25:29
Speaker 1: ate them either way. They ate them, as you know,
25:35
Speaker 1: even though there's no anthropological proof. Yeah, we'll get to that. Yeah.
26:02
Speaker 1: So this whole all of these events take place over
26:05
Speaker 1: thirty three days the forlorn hope. Yeah yeah, um they
26:10
Speaker 1: and I imagine the cannibalism. It came in starting on
26:14
Speaker 1: day nine, Um, no day ten or eleven, and then
26:19
Speaker 1: after that they had two more days of this and
26:24
Speaker 1: they finally made it to Fort Sutter and said, hey, um,
26:29
Speaker 1: we got big problems. We need your help. Let's start
26:33
Speaker 1: sending out some rescue parties. How many it was like
26:35
Speaker 1: seven of them? Uh yeah, seven made of the original fift.
26:40
Speaker 1: So all right, so that story is going on. You've
26:42
Speaker 1: still got the Donner party back at the camp by
26:45
Speaker 1: the lake and the river, and you've still got read
26:48
Speaker 1: who made it to Sacramento to Sutter Sport. He tried
26:52
Speaker 1: to get supplies and men to take back to to
26:56
Speaker 1: rescue his family, and the Mexican American War prevented that
27:01
Speaker 1: from happening. He was essentially forced to kind of join
27:04
Speaker 1: up that effort, and he couldn't get any of the
27:07
Speaker 1: men anyway, because they were everybody was fighting in the war.
27:11
Speaker 1: So uh. He would later go on to be part
27:14
Speaker 1: of the second relief party that went to go find them.
27:18
Speaker 1: So we'll pick that up when we get there, right
27:20
Speaker 1: Because meanwhile, while the forlorn hopes engaged in this horror
27:24
Speaker 1: in the woods, the same stuff's going on back at
27:27
Speaker 1: the UM camps on the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevadas. Um.
27:33
Speaker 1: It took a little longer, I believe, but eventually UM
27:38
Speaker 1: people started to eat the dead. Yeah, that had died
27:43
Speaker 1: of starvation, right, that's true. So, like I mentioned, there
27:47
Speaker 1: were some rescue efforts. There were four groups that went
27:50
Speaker 1: from California, because word got back and they even started
27:53
Speaker 1: writing about it in the paper in San Francisco that
27:56
Speaker 1: these people were stranded in the Sierra Nevadas. So uh.
28:01
Speaker 1: In February five, there was a quote we concluded, we
28:04
Speaker 1: could go or die trying for not to make any
28:07
Speaker 1: attempt to save them would be a disgrace to us
28:10
Speaker 1: into California for as long as time lasted. And that
28:14
Speaker 1: was one of the members of the very first relief
28:17
Speaker 1: group of seven men, fifty pounds of provisions headed out,
28:22
Speaker 1: but Reid was a part of the second group, right.
28:24
Speaker 1: The first group didn't leave for thirteen days after the
28:28
Speaker 1: forlorn Hope came to Fort sutter Um and then Yeah,
28:32
Speaker 1: read led the second group. So one survivors were brought
28:36
Speaker 1: back by the first group, seventeen by the second group.
28:39
Speaker 1: The third group UM rescued four and then they had
28:42
Speaker 1: to leave four people behind, including a guy named Lewis
28:46
Speaker 1: Keysburg and Um. When the fourth group came back, Louis
28:50
Speaker 1: Cuthberg was the only person alive. Suspiciously, well yeah, he
28:55
Speaker 1: was accused um almost immediately of murdering the other three
29:00
Speaker 1: people and eating them. Uh. He was said to have
29:03
Speaker 1: been discovered surrounded by the disfigured and cannibalized corpses of
29:09
Speaker 1: the other three people. That in the frying pan there
29:13
Speaker 1: was like lungs and livers, buckets of blood. Basically, he
29:16
Speaker 1: was in this um crazy place that he had created
29:21
Speaker 1: himself through cannibalism, completely off his rocker at that point.
29:25
Speaker 1: But the big kicker was that there were three uneaten
29:28
Speaker 1: oxen legs and that when asked, he had said that
29:32
Speaker 1: he oxen didn't have a very good flavor, so he
29:35
Speaker 1: had resorted to eating the other people. But they had
29:37
Speaker 1: died of natural causes. He hadn't murdered them. So when
29:41
Speaker 1: the rescue party comes and gets them, Keysburg has kind
29:44
Speaker 1: of kept the arm's length, like no one's talking to him.
29:47
Speaker 1: They don't want to have anything to do with them.
29:49
Speaker 1: When they made camp one night, he apparently was looking
29:53
Speaker 1: at the snow and saw like a little piece of cloth,
29:56
Speaker 1: and um tugged at it. It It was in the snow,
29:58
Speaker 1: tugged at a little harder, little more, and all of
30:00
Speaker 1: a sudden, Um, he jars loose his dead daughter, the corpse,
30:06
Speaker 1: the frozen corpse of his dead daughter, who had last
30:08
Speaker 1: seen sending off with his wife on the third rescue party.
30:13
Speaker 1: So he had it pretty rough one way or another. Yeah.
30:16
Speaker 1: He sued for defamation later on and the right when
30:19
Speaker 1: he got back. Yeah, the courts awarded him one dollar
30:22
Speaker 1: and demanded that he paid the court cost on top
30:24
Speaker 1: of that. So he lived the rest of his life
30:27
Speaker 1: pretty much a hermit. Well, yeah, he was derided as
30:31
Speaker 1: a murdering cannibal who enjoyed it. He denied that the
30:36
Speaker 1: rest of his life. Um, and other people denied too.
30:40
Speaker 1: Like first they would say like, yeah, we we resorted
30:43
Speaker 1: to cannibalism here and here and here. Then later on
30:46
Speaker 1: someone would say, no, we didn't actually Um, that was
30:49
Speaker 1: just sensationalized. Well, yeah, there's a big question so like
30:54
Speaker 1: of whether the there actually was cannibalism in the Dinner
30:58
Speaker 1: Party or if it was all sensationalized and fabricated by
31:02
Speaker 1: the newspapers. The big question is is if if the
31:07
Speaker 1: Donner Party hadn't resorted cannibalism, why would they lie. Well,
31:10
Speaker 1: the answer to that is they wouldn't lie about resorting
31:13
Speaker 1: to cannibalism. And the reports are probably true, but in
31:17
Speaker 1: the great tradition of William Errands, you need to see
31:21
Speaker 1: it to believe it. As far as cannibalism goes, most
31:24
Speaker 1: people don't genuinely dispute that the Donner Party did engage
31:29
Speaker 1: in cannibalism. But the problem is there is a lack
31:33
Speaker 1: of forensic evidence. Like you said, they ate the bones
31:36
Speaker 1: and bones of animals like the dog, you know, horses, deer, foxes,
31:42
Speaker 1: that wolf. All these bones have been found at the campsites,
31:46
Speaker 1: but they haven't found any human bones. So there's a
31:49
Speaker 1: lot of explanations for that. Um. We know for a
31:53
Speaker 1: fact that some people who came upon these scenes after
31:56
Speaker 1: the dinner party had left, ordered like these these things
31:59
Speaker 1: to be cleaned up and buried. Makes sense. Um. Other
32:03
Speaker 1: people have suggested that the Donners didn't um, didn't try
32:07
Speaker 1: to process the human cadavers like they did the animal
32:11
Speaker 1: bones and kind of very gently, so they wouldn't have
32:14
Speaker 1: left butcher marks on the bones. Um. And then others
32:18
Speaker 1: say that if they didn't cook the bones like they
32:20
Speaker 1: did the animal bones, and those bones would have disintegrated
32:22
Speaker 1: a long time ago. Then lastly, the argument against it
32:25
Speaker 1: is that these things of cannibalism, like you said, happened
32:29
Speaker 1: here and here and here and here. We only know
32:31
Speaker 1: of one legitimate Donner site that's been excavated. The others
32:36
Speaker 1: haven't been found. They can't find them. Yeah, so it's
32:40
Speaker 1: possible there is evidence out there and just hasn't been discovered.
32:42
Speaker 1: But the point is, why would these people, if they
32:45
Speaker 1: did actually say this, and these are their journal entries,
32:48
Speaker 1: why would they say that they engaged in cannibalism if
32:50
Speaker 1: they hadn't exactly so read. In the meantime, made his
32:54
Speaker 1: way back with a second relief group. Was convinced that
32:58
Speaker 1: his family was dead, but was very surprised and relieved
33:03
Speaker 1: to find that they were alive. So can you imagine
33:06
Speaker 1: this reunion that happens when his like eight two year
33:11
Speaker 1: old son was still alive eight year old daughter. They
33:14
Speaker 1: were one of two families that didn't have any deaths. Yeah,
33:17
Speaker 1: the Reeds suffered no deaths, and I believe the Breens
33:23
Speaker 1: did not suffer deaths. All of the Donners died, every
33:29
Speaker 1: single one of them, which is pretty sad and um.
33:33
Speaker 1: Out of the group, I think two thirds of the
33:36
Speaker 1: women and children survived, two thirds of the men died,
33:39
Speaker 1: and everyone over fifty died. That was Yeah, fifty was
33:45
Speaker 1: pretty old back then, especially for those kind of conditions.
33:49
Speaker 1: So there you have it, the Donner Party. Basically, what
33:53
Speaker 1: that did was halted a lot of immigration to California
33:57
Speaker 1: for a while until word of gold came around, and
34:01
Speaker 1: then they said that was it. Screw it. I'll take
34:03
Speaker 1: my chances. It was like a year before the first
34:07
Speaker 1: gold Rush, and then there was the Movement of eighteen
34:11
Speaker 1: forty nine, the big gold Rush of eighteen forty nine,
34:14
Speaker 1: and that was that. I think read what the one
34:16
Speaker 1: of the read wife sent a letter out afterward that
34:19
Speaker 1: was like, don't be afraid to come out here, you know,
34:23
Speaker 1: just don't take any shortcuts and hurry. It was basically
34:27
Speaker 1: don't listen to Hastings, and Hastings was like the whole time, dude,
34:31
Speaker 1: he was being cursed, like on a daily basis. He
34:35
Speaker 1: was vilified and cursed and that pretty much scrapped his
34:40
Speaker 1: reputation as a trailblazer and uh, anyone to be trusted.
34:44
Speaker 1: And that was the end of him. I couldn't find
34:47
Speaker 1: anything up about the rest of his life, but I
34:49
Speaker 1: know that he was pretty well disgraced by that. He
34:51
Speaker 1: went on to be like a merchant and like he
34:55
Speaker 1: lived in a life after that, but he apparently was
34:58
Speaker 1: remorseful for the rest of the life. That's Langford hastinks.
35:03
Speaker 1: I guess if you want to know more about him,
35:05
Speaker 1: you can type his name L A n G F
35:09
Speaker 1: O R D H A S T I n G
35:11
Speaker 1: S in the search bar at how stuff works dot
35:13
Speaker 1: com and it will coincidentally enough bring up as this
35:16
Speaker 1: article on the Donner Party. And I said, search bar
35:20
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, right, this soon to
35:22
Speaker 1: be changed article on the dinner party, and uh, yeah,
35:26
Speaker 1: since it's gonna be changed soon, maybe give us a minute. Um,
35:30
Speaker 1: but I said howster works dot com and search bar,
35:33
Speaker 1: which means it's time for listener mayl Yes, this is
35:38
Speaker 1: back to the future. Josh Okay, Josh Chuck exclamation points.
35:45
Speaker 1: I just listened to the Zero podcast and heard your
35:47
Speaker 1: cries for help from across the ages. We all heard you, guys,
35:51
Speaker 1: go get into the way Back Machine, but I think
35:53
Speaker 1: only a few of us realize that you never came out.
35:56
Speaker 1: I could tell that something had gone wrong by the
35:58
Speaker 1: tone of your voice as you near the end of
36:00
Speaker 1: the show. I know that you are trying to send
36:02
Speaker 1: us a message. You are stuck in fifth century India.
36:06
Speaker 1: I hope you have found somewhere safe to bunker down.
36:09
Speaker 1: Do not try to fix the way Back Machine on
36:11
Speaker 1: your end. Jerry and I are working on a way
36:13
Speaker 1: to fix the broken flux capacitor remotely and bring you back.
36:17
Speaker 1: We hope to hear you return to us on a
36:18
Speaker 1: podcast soon. And one final warning, do not, under any
36:22
Speaker 1: circumstances use the way Back Machine while you are still
36:25
Speaker 1: strapped inside the way Back Machine. The last thing we
36:29
Speaker 1: need is an inception style time travel within time travel scenario,
36:34
Speaker 1: and that says uh Max Prince Godspeed from Max Prince
36:39
Speaker 1: assistant to Dr Emmett Lathrop, Doc Brown. Nice a little
36:45
Speaker 1: bit of fun there. I've been enjoying the heck out
36:48
Speaker 1: of a sog preneer that I've been eating morning, noon
36:51
Speaker 1: and night. Oh yeah, man, I get enough of this lavash.
36:54
Speaker 1: Well yeah, if you have a bit of amusement for us,
36:57
Speaker 1: I found that highly amusing. Um. You can tweet to
37:01
Speaker 1: us at s y s K podcast. You can hit
37:06
Speaker 1: us up on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash Stuff
37:08
Speaker 1: you Should Know, and you can send us an email
37:10
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37:16
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