The Donner Party

It's a delicious story! Lip-smacking good.

I'm going off memory from what they taught is school as a kid, but I believe they made some costly logistical mistakes -- took an untested shortcut in Utah which wasn't really a shortcut, and which ended up costing them more time and travel. By the time they reached the Sierra Nevadas, it was October.

No way can you traverse those Sierra Nevada mountains in October. Imposing, technically challenging, and ice-cold.

*taught us in school as a kid^^

You should watch the PBS documentary by Ric Burns - it is very compelling.

Fab facts: Lewis Keseberg, a member of the party who seemed to take most to cannibalism and was rumored to have killed Tamzene Donner and feasted on her liver, later opened a restaurant (I think in Sacramento). Someone brought their 70-year-old mother on the trip, who promptly died (early enough on the trip that she was not eaten. RIP). When they started going hungry, they drew lots to see who should be killed and eaten; they couldn't bear to kill the guy who drew the long straw, but when a few of them began to die off, the guy who drew the long lot was still the first to be eaten; I was amused by this - seems like they all had their eye on him once he drew the lot.

Anyway, it's all become a bit of a macabre joke, but the documentary is heart wrenching. They were just a bunch of thoroughly unlucky bastards.

The only party I was ever invited to was the Donner party. And then they gave me the cold shoulder!

The Donner Party Diet Breakfast: Jacks Lunch: Franks Dinner: Patties

A few of them were forced to dine on their own parents.

Mercy! I'm out.

Did they eat them raw?

Desperate Passage by Ethan Rarick is an excellent account of this tragedy.

The little doll that Patty Reed carried all the way to California is kept in a museum at Sutter's Fort.

R9, yes. Like sashimi.

What is a cannibals favorite way to celebrate?

Here is Truckee where they got snowed in.

[quote] And it wasn't even a one night/moment tragedy like the Dyaltov incident

What’s the Dyaltov incident?

I saw a documentary on the Donner party. It was like watching a slow-moving train wreak. It said if they had been about 8 hours faster they would have been over the worst of the Sierras and could have made it. One family always claimed they were the one family who didn't end up eating human flesh. Mama fed them their dead ox. Sure Mama, that was ox meat, all of it.

Raw Like Sushi

Bumping because of Rush Limbaugh's idiotic comments

[quote] A few of them were forced to dine on their own parents.

But I hate my mother's guts.

Maybe Don Jr and Ivanka will dine on daddy and stepmom

There’s a Donner Party movie on right now on the Weather Channel. Anyone know if it’s any good?

I recall reading that the guide, to whom they paid a good deal of money would make more money by going over Donner rather than taking the safer southern route. It was an early snow and he gambled with people's lives and lost.

Total tragedy

I've seen nearly every horror movie in existence and none of them ever scare me at all. But reading about the Donner Party on Wikipedia kept me awake for a week. Unimaginable horror.

And as someone mentioned upthread, this wasn't just a horrible event. This was people living, day-to-day, for months in an atmosphere of total physical and psychological horror. The survivors were deeply scarred for life.

R24 If you think that's bad you should read about what happens at military black sites like Gitmo