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How the Donner Party Worked · Stuff You Should Know

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