Terrifying & True | The Donner Party: Cannibalism and Survival in the Sierra Nevada

0:03 Snow seals the cabins to their rooms. The first storm of eighteen forty six hits and doesn't let go inside. Family simmer raw just to survive. Outside the pass is gone, nothing but white and wind. By spring, rescuers will learn what hunger left behind. This is the Donner Party. What you were about to beat you is believed to be based on witness accounts, testimonies, and public record. This is terrifying and truth. Truth. Before we sink our teeth into Tonight's terrifying and true, I want to say a huge thank you to our sponsor, save A Rista Coffee. When you're a coffee lover that doesn't want to stay up all night, at least not from the caffeine. Save Erista has you covered with half calf and decalf options that are bold and flavorful. And if you head to savorista dot com right now and use promo code spooky at checkout my listeners, get twenty five percent off your first

1:38 order and every purchase directly supports the show. So head to savorista dot com and type in promo code Spooky. Tonight winter slams shut on the Sierra Nevada and an American dream turns feral. It's eighteen forty seven. Lured by the Hastings, cutoff families reach Truckey or Donner Lake on October thirty first. By November fourth, a blizzard seals the pass. Cabins vanish under the snow. Meat is all but gone, rawhide boils, while the wind screams and people begin to die. Desperate, A group of them, known as the Forlorn Hope, step into the white on December sixteenth, sporting crude improvised snow shoes.

2:43 Rescuers later fight thirty foot snow drifts and stumble onto the scene, a scene they'll never forget. Tonight we explore human choices in impossible cold. This is the stark truth of the Donner Party. In the spring of eighteen forty six, nearly ninety American pioneers, men, women, and children set out in covered wagons from Springfield, Illinois, bound for the fertile promise of California. They were ordinary families chasing an American dream of new land and a better life, a part of the Great Overland migration sweeping the eighteen forties. Among them were George Donner, a sixty year old farmer leading his family west, and James Reed, a prosperous forty five year old businessman with a young family. They joined a larger wagon train on the now infamous Oregon Trail. Full of optimism as they rolled out of Independence, Missouri in May.

4:15 The journey was arduous but familiar, follow the wagon rutted trail across prairies and over the Continental Divide before winter. Through the early months, the Donner and Reed families enjoyed the adventure. Twelve year old Virginia Reed later recalled riding her pony across the Platte River valley, gathering wildflowers by day and singing around campfires at night. By summer, the wagon train had made steady progress into what is now Wyoming. Reaching Fort Laramie, spirits were high to t The endless plains and towering rockies beyond felt like entering a new world full of wonder Yet ominous signs of trouble lay ahead on the unmapped frontier. As the group pressed on toward the Continental Divide, they faced a fateful decision. A self styled trail guide named Lanceford W. Hastings was promoting a new short cut route to California that year, Hastings claimed his Hastings cut off could save hundreds of miles by veering south of the usual trail. On July twelfth,

5:49 the Donner Party received a letter from Hastings urging them to take his new trail and warning of difficulties ahead on the old route. At Fort Bridger, a remote trading post in Wyoming, the party had to choose stick to the proven path north via Fort Hall, or gamble on hastings untested cutoff through Utah's unmapped wilds. In a cruel and tragic turn of events, Hastings had never actually taken wagons over his own shortcut. Unbeknownst to the emigrants, he was using them as guinea pigs. Jim Bridger, the fort's proprietor, had financial interest in the new route and downplayed its risks, even hiding letters from earlier travelers that warned the cutoff was impassable. Persuaded by hastings glowing promises and Bridger's assurances, the Donner Party elected to try the short cut on July thirty first. It was a decision that would doom them almost immediately. The Hastings cut off proved far more difficult than advertised. The trail west of Fort Bridger vanished

7:20 into a maze of canyons and mountains. Hastings himself had ridden out ahead guiding another group, leaving only handwritten notes tacked to trees for those behind. One such note told the Donner party to wait for Hastings to show them a better path. James Reid rode ahead with two others and caught up to Hastings, only to have him point vaguely toward a dauntingly high ridge as the way forward. The short cut led the wagons into the rugged Wasach mountains of Utah, forcing the emigrants to literally carve a road as they went. Progress slowed to a crawl, sometimes only a mile and a half per day, as all able bodied men hacked through the dense brush, felled trees, and heaved rocks to clear a passage. Precious weeks ticked by while the party labored through the Wassach ranges tortuous canyons.

8:35 When the exhausted families emerged from the mountains, they faced the next ordeal, the Great Salt Lake Desert. In late August, they found another tattered note from Hastings warning of a stretch ahead, with two days of difficult travel with no water or even grass. In reality, the barren salt flats were far wider than Hastings admitted. The Donner party pressed into the white desert, hoping to cross in forty eight hours. It took five hellish days. Blistering sun by day and freezing cold by night tortured them on the Alkali plane.

9:30 Thirst crazed oxen collapsed in their yokes. Some wagons had to be abandoned mid desert, left to sink in the salt. Nine of James Reed's ten oxen ran off into the mirages. Maddened with thirst. Cattle and horses died or vanished by the dozen. When emigrants finally staggered to the next water source, they were backed, uttered, demoralized, and nearly out of supplies. Any faith in hastings easy route had evaporated. Their shortcut had become a devastating detour. By the time the Donner party straggled out of the desert and rejoined the main California trail near the Humboldt River on September twenty sixth, they had lost at least a month of time. Winter was closing in and they still faced three hundred plus miles and the Sierra Nevada ahead. Quote never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can, Young Virginia Read would later implore to others. A hard lesson wrung from bitter experience. Now dangerously behind schedule, the party

11:07 hurried along the Humboldt River in present day Nevada. The strain of the journey began to unravel the group's unity. Food was running low, and tempers flared. Along the Humboldt, an elderly Belgium emigrant named hard Coop was forced out of a wagon by the hard edged Louis Kesberg, told to walk or die soon. Hard Coop, his feet swollen and bleeding, fell behind and was left sitting by a stream, never to be seen again. The others, desperate to save themselves, refused to turn back. For the old man, it was a chilling abandonment, a sign of vanishing social order. Other human decencies soon gave way to suspicion and violence. One day in early October, as tensions spiked, James Reed quarreled with a teamster, John Snyder, who was savagely beating Reed's oxen.

12:23 When Snyder turned his whip on Reed. Reed stabbed him in the chest with a knife, killing him in front of the train. The only law on the trail was the emigrant's own, and the wagon company meted out judgment. Some cried for Reed's hanging on the spot. In the end, they decided on exile. Reed was banished, forced to ride ahead alone in the wilderness without his family. Reid's wife and children, now without their patriarch, continued onward in the Donner party's care, a fragile arrangement as food grew scarce. Meanwhile, rumors of murder swirled. A traveler named Wolfinger had lagged behind to cash his wagon, accompanied by two acquaintances. Those men returned alone, claiming Piute warriors had killed Wolfinger, but months later one would confess on his deathbed that Wolfinger had been murdered for his money by his own companions.

13:48 Such was the breakdown of trust. Even before reaching the Sierra, comrades had turned on each other for survival and greed. By late October, the Donners, Reeds, Graves, Breen, and other families trudged on with whatever Oxen remained, nervously eyeing the looming Sierra Nevada Ahead, the air was cooling, the nights grew bitter. Winter was on the doorstep at last. On October thirty first, eighteen forty six, the Donner Party reached the foot of the Sierra Nevada at Truckey Lake, which now is known as Donner Lake. Terribly late in the season, a few sparse cabins built by earlier travelers stood near the lake at six thousand feet elevation. If the party could cross the high pass just a few two miles beyond, they would descend to the safety of California's Bear Valley.

15:07 They attempted the ascent immediately, only to be met by a sudden, blinding blizzard. An eight day snow storm blew in and buried the mountains in deep snow, blocking the trail. The emigrants, with wagons and exhausted oxen, could not break through the snow pack. After several desperate tries, they had to turn back to the lake. Winter had trapped them. It was November fourth, and snow already lay five to ten feet deep in some drifts, a harbinger of the brutal months to come. The party hunkered down by Trucky Lake to wade out the winter. Utterly unprepared for what lay ahead, they hastily built camp three primitive cabins of pine logs with dirt floors and thin canvas or ox hide roofs. Holes in the walls served as doors. One cabin was occupied by the Breen family, another by the Eddies and Murphy's, the third by the Reeds and Graves.

16:31 Louis Kesberg cobbled together a lean to against the Breen cabin for his family. Five miles back at Alder Creek, the Donner families, who had fallen behind, set up a separate camp, fashioning tents out of wagon covers. Even as they built these shelters, snow continued to dump relentlessly, powering higher with each storm. Before long the cabins were buried to their roofs. To enter or exit, the emigrants had to dig tunnels through snow or climb out of holes in the drift. The world became silent and white. Outside was a frozen wasteland of drifts. Inside the dark, smoky shanties, hunger and fear set in game was nonexistent. The deep snow had driven off any deer within a few weeks, all of the oxen and horses were slaughtered for food.

17:49 They butchered the animals and rationed out thin strips of beef, trying to make the meat last. There was no salt or season. They even tore apart their wagons for firewood, burning everything that could possibly feed a flame. Children went to bed crying in hunger. Mothers grew gaunt and hollow eyed, unable to feed their babies. As November passed into December, meat ran out. The only food left was what one man grimly referred to as poor beef without bread or salt, and soon not even that. Snowstorms pummeled the lake camp one after another. By mid December, snow lay eight to ten feet deep around truck Ye Lake. It was, in the words of one survivor's letter, the camp of Death.

19:02 The emigrants were starving, entombed in snow, and utterly isolated. Weeks had passed with no word from the outside world. With no reason to believe help would come, they began to consider unthinkably desperate measures. Inside the cabins, the pioneers began to eat anything remotely edible. They boiled strips of leather, ox hide, strips, shoe leather, even boiled cowhide rugs into a glue like soup. To gag down. They gnawed on bones and bark. Mice were caught and eaten. Candles made of tallow were consumed when nothing else was left. In his diary, Patrick Breen described these quote hungry times in camp on January seventeenth, eighteen forty seven. He noted that quote provisions scarce hides are the only article we depend on, and prayed, quote may God send us help. By that point,

20:33 rawhide strips simmered into a foul jelly was truly all they had. Breen recorded that one neighbor, missus Elizabeth Graves, had plenty of boiled hides, but quote refused to give any to Missus Reed. Even when Reed's four young children were on the brink of starvation. Charity was dying along with hope. Frigid weather and malnutrition took their toll. Deaths became frequent. One by one, weakened emigrants succumbed to starvation and illness. The first to die at the Lake camp was sixty year old Bayliss Williams in mid December. Others soon followed Franklin Graves, Lavina Murphy's little Son and Moore.

21:35 The living had no strength to bury the dead in the frozen earth. Instead, corpses were dragged into the snow and lightly covered. All around the cabins were the loosely buried bodies of those who had been friends and fellow travelers. Imagine the psychological horror of that scene. The survivors could see where the bodies lay under the snow, grim mounds that tempted and repelled them in equal measure. Isolation preyed on their minds. Trapped and cramped filthy shelters, gnawing on boiled hide strips, Some pioneers fell into despair and delirium.

22:29 Patrick Breen wrote on Christmas Eve that the prospect is appalling, though he still hoped Almighty God would deliver them. Christmas Day came and went without celebration, as there was nothing to celebrate. New Year eighteen forty seven dawned bleakly. Breen noted that quote, we pray the God of Mercy to deliver us from our present calamity. Still the snow fell and no help came. Inside one cabin, fifteen year old Mary Graves watched her mother and siblings slowly waste away years later, she described how the cries of hungry children tortured the parents, who could do nothing but whisper comforting lies that food would come tomorrow. In another cabin, Louis Kesberg's wife gave birth prematurely. The infant died, mercifully spared from this world. Antonio, a young Vacquero traveling with the Reeds, died of malnutrition. Franklin Graves, the family patriarch who had

24:00 helped build the cabins, lay down and never woke. With each death, the survivors confronted an unthinkable question that had been approaching for weeks. Would they eat the bodies of their dead to survive. Patrick Breen's diary entry of January twenty sixth, eighteen forty seven hints at the desperate, dark atmosphere. Quote people are getting weak living on short allowance of hides, he wrote, Peggy, his wife, very uneasy for fear we shall all perish with hunger. By early February, even the boiled hides were nearly gone. Our hides are nearly all eat up, Breen recorded on February tenth, starvation loomed. It was around this time that some of the emigrants began to talk openly of cannibalism. Breen noted on February fifteenth that Missus Graves not only hoarded her hides, but she refused to let Missus Reed have any, and even stashed

25:30 rawhide strips on her roof to keep them from others. Self preservation had overridden community. Each family now looked out for itself. Dignity, morality, humanity. All were in deadly peril as much as the people themselves. Unbeknownst to those huddled at Trucky Lake, a brave subset of their party had already made the awful choice to survive at any cost. Back in mid December, with food almost gone, fifteen of the strongest emigrants, ten men and five women, had snow shoot out in a desperate bid to find help. This party, later dubbed the Forlorn Hope, included Mary Graves, her newlywed sister Sarah Faustick, William Eddie, the pregnant Isabella Breen, and others.

26:40 They fashioned crude snowshoes from oxbows and rawhide, and set off on December sixteenth over the pass. They had no real option. It was escape or die in camp. The Forlorn Hope soon found themselves in an almost unimaginable hellscape atop the Sierras. The snow drifts rose up to thirty and fifty feet in places. The air was thin and frigid.

27:22 The sun's glare off endless snow fields burned their eyes blind. Stumbling over the high pass, they became lost in deep mountain wilderness. Within days, their meager rations were gone, and they began to collapse from hunger and exhaustion. One by one, members of the Forlorn Hope dropped dead from cold and starvation. The survivors, driven mad with hunger, faced the ultimate taboo around Christmas. They set aside their revulsion and consumed the flesh of their fallen companions in order to stay alive.

28:17 Mary Graves later recounted cutting up the bodies of her own father and brother after their deaths with numb horror. They dried strips of human flesh in the sun in order to preserve them. As Patrick Breen would later write in his diary about the scene, quote, the Donners told the California folks that they commenced to eat the dead people once all else was gone. The act of cannibalism gave the snowshoe survivors a brief strength to continue, but it also broke something inside them. Shortly after, one member, William Foster, proposed an even worse crime, killing the two native guides who had accompanied them from California, Luis and Salvador, for food. These Miwok men employed by John Sutter, had been helping the party, but they refused to partake in cannibalism.

29:36 When they learned the others were contemplating murdering them, they quietly slipped away into the woods. Horrified for days, the seven remaining emigrants staggered on. When another man, j Faustick, died at night, the survivors cut and ate him too. After more agonizing days, with nothing else to eat, they came across the two meewalk guides, Luis and Salvador, who were they themselves on the brink of starvation. After nine days alone, In a moment of human darkness, on January ninth, William Foster raised his rifle and shot both Louis and Salvador in cold blood. The others butchered the bodies and consumed their flesh, committing outright murder as well as cannibalism for survival. The killing of the Meewok men was not even hidden or punished. Later, as one has the Storian noted Foster quote was not greatly blamed for it, a

31:07 grim reflection of the eighteen forty's attitude that Native American lives seemed to matter little. Such was the moral collapse wrought by desperation as well as prejudice. In a tragic irony, Miewok villagers ultimately saved the Forlorn Hope. On January twelfth, eighteen forty seven, the half dead survivors stumbled into a native camp in the foothills. The indigenous people recoiled at the sight of these gaunt specters. The pioneers were so ragged and frostbitten that the Meewalk initially fled, thinking they were evil spirits. Gaining compassion, the villagers cautiously approached again and offered the starving strangers some food acorns, pine nuts, grass, whatever they had. This simple charity likely saved the last seven of the Forlorn Hope. Mary Graves, William Eddy, and the others owed their lives to the very people. One of their party had slain. On January seventeen, Rescuers, guided

32:40 by the meewalk found the emaciated, forlorn Hope survivors and helped carry them to a ranch in California. It had taken thirty three ghastly days, but against all odds, they made it out, and now at last the alarm was raised. The rest of the Donner Party was still trapped in those mountains, if any of them were even alive. News of the starving emigrants in the mountains spread rapidly through the settlements of northern California. Though it was the dead of winter and the nation was at war with Mexico, several rescue parties formed to save the Donner Party. The first Relief group, seven hardy frontiersmen, set out from Sutter's Fort on February fourth, eighteen forty seven. They struggled through rain swollen rivers and chest deep snows. Two men turned back, but the rest pushed on. Climbing The snow choked pass was arduous in places, drifts had reached over thirty feet tall,

34:12 and the rescuers themselves were near collapse. On February eighteenth, eighteen forty seven, the First Relief finally crested what is now known as Donner Pass and approached the camps at Truckey Lake. What they found defied belief. As the rescuers neared the cabins, they began shouting and were met with eerie silence at first. Finally, a gaunt woman emerged from a hole in the snow. It was missus Lavina Murphy, so skeletal and ragged that the men were taken aback.

35:04 Staring at the strangers, Her first words were recorded as quote, are you the men from California? Or do you come from Heaven? To the dying survivors, the relief party must indeed have looked like angels or apparitions. When the rescuers began distributing food, they had to do so in very small portions, for the emigrants were so starved that a normal meal could kill them by refeeding shock. All around the cabins were buried in snow. The stench of decomposed hides and filth was overpowering. Inside one cabin, the men saw human remains evidence that cannibalism had already occurred at Truckey Lake. Thirteen people had died and lay in makeshift graves in the snow near the cabins. Many of the survivors were mentally unstable, blankly stammering or weeping. The Murphy children told rescuers how their mother had been boiling ox hide into a disgusting jelly to feed them. Tamsen Donner, still stranded at Alder Creek with her husband, had carefully

36:37 maintained an illusion for her little girls, telling them the boiled hides were milk porridge so they would eat it without crying. The rescuers urgently tried to lead as many survivors as possible back over the pass. Twenty three weeks and skeletal people left with the first relief, including the Red children and the Donner girls, but many others were too feeble to travel. About twenty one people remained at Truckey Lake Camp and another dozen at Alder Creek. With the Donners knowing more help was behind them, the first relief promised to return and hurried back down the mountain with their charges. Tragically, even this salvation was perilous. Several of those being rescued died on their way out, too far gone to recover. Among them was William Hook, a twelve year old who over eagerly ate too much and died on the trail, the others struggled down, half conscious and snowblind. The Reed children, saved by their father's return,

38:09 had survived without ever resorting to cannibalism. As Virginia Reed proudly noted, hers was the only family that did not eat human flesh. In early March, a second relief expedition, led by none other than James Reed himself, finally arrived at the camps. Reed had raised funds and volunteers in California after fighting off sickness and even joining a battle in the Mexican American War, and now charged into the mountains to save his family. Reed found that many survivors had descended further into desperation during the interim. Human remains were found in the cabins, confirming that those left behind had eaten the dead indeed. On February twenty sixth Patrick Breen noted, matter of factly in his diary quote, the Donners told the California folks that they commenced to eat the dead people. Four days ago at the Alder Creek camp, George Donner was dying from an infected wound, and Tamsen Donner was tending to him faithfully. She could have left with Reed's party, but refused to abandon her husband. In

39:39 his final hours, Reed evacuated his own wife, Margaret, and their children, along with many others seventeen people in all. The March trek down was catastrophic. Caught in yet another blizzard, Reid's second relief became scattered in what became called Starved Camp. A group of refugees was accidentally left behind in the snow, mostly children. When Reed realized not all had kept up, it was too late to turn back. Fourteen people, including five children, were stranded left in the storm, with only two of Reed's men, Charles Katy and Charles Stone, to help them. Those two men soon abandoned the children to save themselves, each carrying one child and leaving the rest.

40:47 The little ones were found huddled in the open, half frozen, eating tattered rawhide strips from a rescuer's snowshoe fringe to survive. It was an appalling scene of neglect and misery. Then occurred one of the truly heroic moments of the tragedy. A third relief party, including a large, strong settler named John Stark, arrived at Starved Camp in mid March Stark discovered nine children and two women barely alive, abandoned in the snow. The other rescuers with him were inclined to each grab a single child and retreat, possibly leaving the rest to die. Stark flatly refused. In an extraordinary act of compassion and strength, he carried the starving children two at a time on his back, shuttling back and forth, determined to take everyone to safety. It was painfully slow, and he was a giant in strength by one account,

42:19 but all nine children survived thanks to Stark's resolve. One rescued child later credited the deliverance to quote nobody but God and Stark and the Virgin Mary. Such a display of selflessness and courage stands in stark contrast to the horrors surrounding the Donner Party in that moment, John Stark single handedly kept the flicker of humanity alive. By April of eighteen forty seven, more than four months after the party became came snowbound, a fourth and final relief mission braved the mountains. These last rescuers arrived at the camps to a grizzly tableaux at Truckey Lake. Only one man was found alive Lewis Kesberg, lying amidst the remains of his former companions. The rescuers recoiled at the sight of half consumed bodies and severed limbs scattered around the cabin where Kesperg lay. They discovered a pot filled with boiled human flesh on the fire. Kesperg, gaunt and wild eyed with an injured leg, had been completely alone, literally living

43:55 on human flesh for weeks. He had also gathered up gold, coins and jewelry belonging to the Donners. Enraged, the rescuers threatened to lynch Kesberg on the spot for murdering Tamsen Donner and others. Kesperg swore he had not killed anyone, insisting Tamson had arrived at his camp after her husband died, only to expire naturally overnight. He admitted he had cashed some of the Donner's money at her request in order to deliver to her surviving children. Whether or not this was true, the men found his story suspicious, but in the end they spared his life and brought him down the mountain, the last survivor of the Donner party. Of the eighty seven men, women and children who had been snowbound in the Sierra. Only forty eight survived to reach California.

45:10 Almost half the party had perished, most from starvation and exposure. The survivors were primarily women and children, among them all seven of the Breen children, all four of the Reed children, and all three of George Donners little girls. The Reed family remarkably suffered no fatalities. Margaret Reed had kept her children alive without cannibalism until James Reed's return. The Donner family tragically was devastated. George and Tamsen Donner both died in the mountains, leaving their orphaned daughters to be raised by relatives. When the story of the Donner Party's ordeal hit newspapers in June and July of eighteen forty seven, it shocked the nation. Sensational reports focused on cannibalism and alleged murders. One newspaper described Kesperg as a ghoul who relished human liver and accused him of killing Tamson Donner for food. In California, Louis Kesberg became a pariah, widely reviled as a bloodthirsty cannibal. He actually filed a defamation suit against one of the rescuers for their accusations. A

46:43 court later found no proof of murder, awarding him a token one dollar in damages, and even one of Donner's daughters, Eliza Donner Houghton, defended Kesberg's actions as driven simply by miss necessity, but not evil. Yet Kesberg lived under a shadow for the rest of his life, shunned as the man who ate human flesh and quote liked it. History perhaps unfairly cast him as the villain of the tale. In truth, virtually all the survivors except the Red family and a few others, had eaten the dead to survive, as historian George Stewart wrote, an ordeal by hunger. None of them, not even Kesberg, could be morally condemned for that final resort quote, for it was the result of necessity under extreme duress. It is telling that no charges were ever brought against any Donner Party survivor for cannibalism or violence. The world under stood on some level that these ordinary people had been driven beyond the bounds of sanity by hunger and fear. Public reaction to the Donner Party was a mix of horror and grim fascination. The

48:19 incident quickly became legend a cautionary tale about the dangers of westward migration. It did not, however, stop the wagon trains. The California trail only grew busier in subsequent years, though no emigrant ever dared take the Hastings cut off again. In fact, the Donner disaster likely saved later lives by starkly illustrating the importance of sticking to known trails and hurrying along to beat the snow. Emigrant guide books thereafter all warned of the fate that befell the Donner Read party.

49:15 In the aftermath, the survivors tried to put their shattered lives back together. Virginia Read later wrote to her cousin, quote, thank God, we have got through, and we have got through with our lives. She ended her letter with the hard earned advice quote, never take no cut offs and hurry along as fast as you can. Virginia and the Read family settled in San Jose, California, and went on to prosper, their terrible winter becoming just one chapter in a long life. The Breen family also survived, intact, all nine of them. Little Isabella Breen, an infant during the ordeal, lived to be ninety years old, the last survivor of the Donner Party, passing away in nineteen thirty five. Many of the orphans were adopted by California families. The legacy of trauma, however, lingered. The survivors had faced unspeakable choices that haunted them in nightmares. Years afterward. Mary Graves, who had eaten human flesh out on the forlorn Hope track, wrote quote, I often dream of the dead. They do not disturb me as they used to. The experience marked

50:50 them forever. Today. A stone monument stands at Donner Lake, its pedestal base twenty two feet high, the height of the snow pack that terrible winter. Nearby. Tree stumps cut by the emigrants at head height above the ground, visible once the snow melted, silently testify to the depths of the snow and desperation of that camp. The very landscape bears their story. Historians have identified the shallow graves the camp site, even recovered physical artifacts like bones with cut marks.

51:37 The tale of the Donner Party endures as the most haunting episode in the history of the Westward migration, a story of ordinary people driven to extraordinary extremes. What makes the Donner Party story so terrifying is not just the cannibalism, but the slow unraveling of all moral certainties. These were devout, hard working Americans, people with children, who believed in God and civilization. In the span of just a few months, they went from singing hymns around campfires to considering murder for a few strips of flesh. As Patrick Breen wrote on February twenty six, eighteen forty seven, quote Hungry Times in camp, Missus Murphy said here yesterday that she thought she would commence on Milt and eat him. I don't think she has done so yet. It is distressing. The very fact that such words appear in a pioneer's diary chills the soul. Missus Murphy was a widow and mother.

53:02 Hunger had pushed her to the verge of killing a young man for food. This is the true horror of the Donner Party, the way desperation can erode the bonds of kinship and conscience. And yet, remarkably, even in this horror we find acts of tremendous bravery and decency. Missus Murphy did not ultimately harm Milton Elliott. The rescue parties did not abandon the most hopeless, and people like John Stark emerged as heroes. The Donner tragedy forces us to ask how thin the line is between civilization and savagery, and it shows that even in humanity's darkest hours, light and virtue can flick back to life in the end.

54:04 The Donner Party story is terrifying and true in equal measure. It's a cautionary saga of hubris taking an unproven shortcut and of nature's unforgiving power. It's a tale of human beings pushed to the brink, confronting the prospect appalling of their own extinction. We remember the Donner Party for the cannibalism, but we should also remember it for the courage of those who endured, and for the lessons their experience taught. As survivor. Virginia Read reflected years later, quote, I have not written you half of the trouble. Thank god we are alive. Her family salvation came at a terrible price, the loss of friends, the loss of innocence. But they did survive, as did nearly half of those snow bound emigrants.

55:10 So when we think of the Donner Party, we should look beyond the gruesome headlines of cannibalism. We should picture families huddled together in the dark, a mother giving the last scrap of dried hide to her crying child, a father saying prayers over the body of a child he couldn't save. Picture the moment when rescue finally arrived, the gaunt figures emerging into the blinding light, weeping with relief. The story of the Donner Party is a human story, not a horror movie. It is about ordinary people facing the endurable, in that it speaks to the depths of human endurance and the will to live. As the snow thawed in the spring of eighteen forty seven, the pass opened and the tragedy in those mountains came to an end.

56:19 But the tale of the Donner Party remains evergreen in American memory, a testament to the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit. Terrifying and true. Indeed, the Donner Party's ordeal reminds us that under extreme conditions, moral norms can crumble, yet even then, acts of love and sacrifice can shine through. It's a story we recoil from, yet we cannot forget it. And when future pioneers headed west, they heeded the Donner Party's legacy, never delay, never stray from the path, and never underestimate the wilderness. Terrifying and True is narrated by Enrique Kuto. It's executive produced by Rob Fields and bobble Toopia dot com and produced by Dan Wilder, with original theme music by Ray Mattis. If you have a story you think we should cover on Terrifying and True, send us an email at Weekly Spooky at gmail dot com, and if you want to support us for as little as one dollar a month, go to Weeklyspooky dot com slash Join. Your support for as little as one dollar a month keeps the show going. And speaking of I want to say an extra special thank you to our Patreon podcast boosters, folks who pay a little bit more to hear their name at the end of the show.

57:51 And they are Johnny Nix, Kate and Lulu, Jessica Fuller, Mike Escuwey, Jenny Green, Amber Hansford, Karen Wee, Met Jack Ker, and Craig Cohen. Thank you all so much and thank you for listening. We'll see you all right here next time. On Terrifying and True.