The donner party. Beyond Cannibalism: The True Story of the Donner Party 2019-12-28

The Best Documentary Ever

Crossing the Great Salt Lake took its toll on the cattle and supplies; the party was three weeks behind schedule and low on supplies as they approached the Sierra Nevada Mountains. En route down the mountains the first relief party met the second relief party coming the opposite way and the Reed family was reunited after five months. Hunting and foraging were impossible and soon they slaughtered the oxen that had brought them from the East. You can even eat bees and scorpions as long as you remove their stingers first. There were many things that she did that are admirable. The Donner party stranded in the Sierra Nevada Range, 1847 On October 5th at Iron Point, two wagons became entangled and John Snyder, a teamster of one of the wagons began to whip his oxen. However, the Mexican War had drawn away the able-bodied men, forcing any further rescue attempts to wait.

The Tragic Story of the Donner Party

Patriarch James, 46, was the leader of the party for some time, but he was banished in Nevada when he fatally stabbed oxen teamster John Snyder during a dispute. Numbering about thirty-two members that ranged in age from infants to the elderly, the expedition pointed their nine brand-new wagons west on a journey that would lead them into history. However, once again the author of this article infers the Donor-party resorted to cannibalism. Many members of the group were dying. Commenced snowing last night, and snows a little yet. By the end of October, most of the wagons reached the shores of Truckee Lake now Donner Lake in northern California.

The Best Documentary Ever

The company split and the majority took the longer northern route. On March 3rd, Reed left the camp with 17 of the starving emigrants but just two days later they are caught in another blizzard. Starvation began to take its toll. It was October 28, 1846 and the Sierra snows had started a month earlier than usual. Snow drifted as high as twenty feet. Next, burn the hair off your prey, skin them, gut them and throw them into a stew pot with water and any grains, vegetables or flour you might have on hand.

The Best Documentary Ever

Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Remains of Donner-Reed wagons on the Salt Flats It was now 10 August and the new way looked shorter and less troublesome. Of the 89 men, women and children who entered the Sierra Nevada Mountains in October 1846, only 49 made it out the other side to safety. Cloudy; looks like the eve of a snow-storm; our mountaineers are to make another trial to-morrow, if fair; froze hard last night. Poorly led, they dawdled along the way, quarreled viciously, and refused to help one another.

The Best Documentary Ever

His wife Tamzene, though in comparatively good health, refused to leave him; sending her three little girls on without her. He never rejoined the group. The route—which headed west from Fort Bridger through the Wasatch Mountains, around the southern end of the Great Salt Lake, across the Salt Desert and on to the Humboldt River—was untested by wagons. Shortly before, the Donner family had suffered a broken axle on one of their wagons and fallen behind. All of those who traveled the old route ended their journey safely. Thus, the bone remains at the site indicate an avoidance of cannibalism. He was reportedly found with a cauldron of cooked flesh and discarded bones.

Donner Party

I can proudly boast that we have a piece of history; the Donor-Reed party passed through and camped on our property. We had a bellicose, expansionist president, , who schemed up a convenient war with Mexico, which owned much of the land we were to take in the West. George Donner, a sixty-year-old farmer was chosen as the wagon train's captain and the expedition took his name. November 20, 1846 Came to this place on the thirty-first of last month; went into the pass; the snow so deep we were unable to find the road, and when within three miles from the summit, turned back to this shanty on Truckey's Lake; Stanton came up one day after we arrived here; we again took our teams and wagons, and made another unsuccessful attempt to cross incompany with Stanton; we returned to this shanty; it continued to snow all the time. Two days after they started out it began to rain.

What happened to the survivors of the Donner Party?

This grand expansionist movement came at a critical time, when America was fixated on extending its borders. The reason people flocked to Tamsen is because she totally refused, to her detriment and eventual death, to abandon her husband, George, the elder of the Donner brothers. Some of the men tried to hunt with little success. Hopeless, they retraced their steps where five feet of new snow had already fallen. And, even though people can survive for up to three weeks without food, Brown said, extreme hunger can make you crazy. Two days after the Snyder killing, on October 7th, Lewis Keseberg turned out a Belgian man named Hardcoop, who had been traveling with him.

Donner party

By Christmas Day, the travelers had been without food for four days. The survivors then stripped, roasted, and ate the flesh of the dead and tried to regain their strength. And along with paper, cardboard can counter hunger pains by taking up space. The relief party soon departed with four more members of the party, leaving those who are too weak to travel. Seven five women and two men survived to alert the community at Sutter's Fort of the Donner Party's plight. Before leaving Illinois, James Reed had heard of a newly discovered route through the Sierra Nevada Mountains that promised to cut as many as 300 miles off their journey.