Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 331: The Donner Party Part I - Salt of the Earth

Episode Date: September 8, 2018

It's the beginning of our journey into the American Frontier as we cover the tragic and brutal saga of the Donner Party. Join us on this episode as we cover the hard journey west, the ill-advised shortcut through the Great Salt Desert, and the hardships the party encountered plus quite a few bad decisions that eventually led to cannibalism and murder. Learn more about SimpliSafe today at http://simplisafe.com/lastpod Start your 4 week trial at http://stamps.com with promo code: left

Hey, what's up, everyone? How are you? Ben Kissel with Marcus Parks. Hi, hi. So exciting news. We're getting some, what do we call it, advertising, right? Not products. Not products. But we are going to get some advertising. And in order to help us out, it would be awesome if you could click the link in the description of this episode, fill out a little survey so we know what you want, so the advertisements can actually be worthwhile and not drive you completely insane.

And the information is confidential. We don't take emails or names or anything. You're not going to get any kind of weird list or anything like that. It just helps us out. Awesome. Thank you all so much. Hail yourselves and enjoy this episode. There's no place to escape to. This is the last time. On the left. Why?

Love your glade. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? What age do you think prospectors get the voice? What do you mean? Do you think it's just 16 because they talk about how like in frontier times, like the little boys and little girls, once you're 12 and 13 years old, right, and you're on the same tray, you're going out to California.

These are the people you're going to be with for the rest of your life. This is your wife now. You just, it's the first person you look at. Even if it's like bent back girtha, you are now, that's your wife. What's wrong with that? But they go out there and they make, they make love out in the dunes or in the salt flats, wherever they're at, because that's where you go to sneak off. Even though it was a very kind of, like at the time, it was very kind of

evangelical and very Christian. Nobody liked talking about sex, but people were still having sex. Do you think it's the first time you nut next to a wagon that you're like, Becky, this is the most wonderful time I've ever had. She's like, yeah, baby. I don't know what they talk like is a different time. I don't know. And then he turned to them and then all of a sudden, as he nuts,

he's goes, there's gold in them. I see. Well, so it was sort of a coming of age voice. All right. That's an interesting way to start. This is the last podcast on the left. I am Ben Kissel, Marcus Parks. How are you buddy?

I'm good. That's good. We have prospector, Henry Zabrowski. I eat my head and they ain't no gold in them. No, all right. So why are we talking about prospecting? You may ask yourself. We're going in the way, way back machine.

We're going to talk about the journey of the Donner Party. It's a history episode. I'm so excited. Now, this isn't like a party, though, right? It's not like an actual party. Is that my understanding? No, it's not. No, it's not.

It does. It is fun to think about it like that because you can hear the bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Donners are having another party. Everybody's like full stiff burlap, just slapping their weird, jerky-like parts on top of each other. But actually, welcome. It's back to school, right?

That's what this is. This is a back to school episode. And partially, it's got to do with the fact that, like, you know, you read about the Donner Party, I think it's very similar to when we first did Resputin, where it's like, I've heard about the Donner Party. I was raised by television, so I just imagined it was like five people in one wagon, and that was it.

Right. But there's actually, like, a lot more stuff. Yeah. More than one wagon, huh? This is one of the most harrowing, brutal stories that I've ever read in my life. And I would say one of the most terrifying. All right, cool.

It is truly frightening. And one of our sources that we'll get into really spells it out in a way that, like, I had nightmares last night. I had full-on Donner Party nightmares that were very disconcerting. All right. The journey of the Donner Party was the American Frontier's most infamous expedition, consisting of

87 Eastern settlers bound for the promise of a better life in California in the year 1846. Oh, everything's going to work out fine. I can already tell. You can tell. It's got a happy ending. However, what promised to be a relatively simple dream would eventually turn into a hellish nightmare of disease,

starvation, murder, and cannibalism. Ooh, we're getting into some Donner territory here. But I love about Donner Party now revisionism, because now we're obviously once generations of books get written, is that, like, you know, a lot of the more modern books be like, everyone wants, all they want to speak about is the cannibalism in this story. But what about the plight of the pioneer in general?

And we're like, no, no, no, no, no. We want to talk about the cannibalism. Well, that's strange to have starvation and cannibalism. I guess they didn't get the ethos. Of course. No, starvation always precedes cannibalism. And this year, you're getting into anthem, pomorphhagy, which is just the eating of peoples, which

is a lot of the, what we'd like, the Papua New Guinea tribes will often eat the bodies of their enemies. Remember cannibal holocaust? Of course. Yeah, that's anthem, pomorphhagy. Like, there's actually another great Italian horror film called, like, Anthrophagous. Anthem, pomorphhagous.

Make the name so they can't say it. That's how you do it. But then you just point at the cover with the girl with the, it's got to be, it has to be a nude woman covered in blood. And then all of a sudden, you're like that one. You're like, anthem, pomorphhagous. But before we get into the Donner Party story, let's acknowledge our sources.

There's the Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown, Desperate Passage by Ethan Rarick, special thanks to research assistant Rachel for tackling that one, and the American Experience documentary about the Donner Party that was made by the lesser known of the Burns Brothers, Rick. Is that like George Burns? No, Ken Burns, Jesus.

It's Rick and Gamamora. Honestly, I'm just going to say it's a boring Thanksgiving. I don't know why. I know they know a lot of stuff. This is a metal story. This is a very, as we get into this, you're going to see, because that's a part of it, it's very, very intense.

But I feel historians always want to do the thing where every video about the Donner Party starts with the prairies. Once filled with the buffalo, wild prancing buffalo. Their sight here was once absolutely amazing. Get to the cannibalism. Can you get to when they eat the people? You are being uncouth, sir. That is not the most interesting part here.

Do you know that the buffalo, there were many here before? Now there's only 10, 11, 12. When do they kill each other? By the way, the indifferent stars above is fucking fantastic. It combines the harrowing story of the Donner Party with other stories of survival and the sciences behind the whole catastrophe. It is a brilliant nonfiction book.

And it's also interesting if you're interested in Frontier America. But we're not going to get into a ton of that, because as fascinating as wagon manifests are to me, I would imagine that's not why most of our listeners are here today. Well, if you want to know a lot about that culture, watch a great movie, Shakiest Gun in the West. It stars Don Nott, and it is full of humor, and it's incredible.

Well, absolutely. If you want to go to Williamsburg, Virginia, and spend a day, that's great. Go there. But that's not what this podcast is going to look like. No. I want to say thank you, Marcus, who did hold back, because there was a part of me that was a little afraid.

As soon as we started up being like this podcast, this episode just can't be about all the different types of shovels that they use. Yeah, you guys were arguing about that, and I was like, I kind of want to know the different types of shovels. If you want to know, read the indifferent stars above. There are many a wagon manifest on there,

and it's fascinating to know exactly what they brought with them and what they had to jettison along the way. And Williamsburg, Virginia has absolutely nothing to do with our episode here. If you really want to know the history, go to Independence, Missouri. I don't know. I don't know.

I was never a frontier boy. I was never one of those that was a big old West kind of person. I like sci-fi. I like robots. But the idea is now going back. That's why Westworld was so good, because it, for me, brought all the learning together by making the Cowboys robots, and now I'm interested.

You might like this Great Will Smith vehicle, Wild Wild West, if you're really into that. See, the frontier people, these are my ancestors. Like, these are my people, the ones that went out West just because, because they fucking wanted to. And also, they probably had no choice, because even my ancestors that came to America in the first time were probably criminals.

Yeah, of course. And naturally, when they're in their little wagon, they're like, man, it's really cracking in here. I think we're breaking a wheel. They're like, no, that's Rickety Steve Parks. Every time he moves, it just sounds like the Earth is working. I always ruin the surprise birthday party. Hey.

I also thought was really nice about indifference of the stars above, was that it really did paint the picture of the pioneers in a way that I didn't really. Like, I obviously know that they were not like the way we see them in movies. They're not always like just stalwart men with their bucks and women mending clothes,

and it's not all just, like it's all what you see in the movies. But they were radical people. They were very, very intense, fiercely independent in a way that people that nowadays say that they're fiercely independent don't actually know what that means, where it's just like, especially the Grace family, where those guys were just being like, fuck it. It's like, we just build houses wherever.

It's like, if they're in a house there, it was like, oh, man, it's kind of cold outside. They just build a house, which is very difficult. And it's not like Monopoly. Just put it there. It's really difficult. All right. No, the Grace family, they were so independent

that it was not only, I'm going to build a house, but I'm going to travel two miles east from you to build my house, because I don't want you fucking with my shit. All right. I don't want it. I don't even want one of your fine shovels. Can we just please? Yeah, well, that was four miles.

That was four miles. However, even though we're not going to get in a wagon manifest, some history is needed for context, as you can't really understand the scope of the Donner Party's mistakes and the indifferent evil of the people who led them astray without knowing what was going on in America at the time. So America in the 1840s was beset by a crippling economic

depression and outbreaks of typhus and malaria, long before anything west of Missouri was more than what was then known as an unorganized territory. Well, unorganized territory. It seemed to be pretty organized by the people that were living there already. Right. We went and kind of just occupied.

But a part of it, too, was that you were so nuts. People were just so hardy, where they would just be like, yeah, you know, one of the problems will move them with Ohio terror toys. You get the shakes disease, which is that you'd go out there and they'd live in the swamp, and they'd get bit by bum mosquitoes, and they're just like, and it was just a matter, of course,

is that if you lived in Ohio, eventually you got a disease where you would just violently shake your fever. And it would come back and forth. It would come back three or four times a year, and you're like, oh, there it goes. Grable's now. And it's like, Grable's like, come on. And then he's like, you see his eyes go.

And he just starts, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, oh, it must be time to pick the rice fields. Like, they know that. And they act like it was fine, like it was normal. But it turned out it was rampant malaria. Yeah, sure, yeah. So to escape economic hardship and disease, thousands of settlers traveled west to California and Oregon.

And since some of these lands were at best vaguely ruled by governments thousands of miles away, some looked at what Texas had done just 10 years earlier and said, fuck, I can do that. Oh, sure. If they did it in Texas, they can do it anywhere. That's true. Texas's got a very special spirit.

I know that. We absolutely do. I know it. Now, one such man was Lansford Hastings, a former lawyer turned explorer who had written a book called The Immigrant's Guide to Oregon in California. How bad do you have to fail as a lawyer to just have to be like, I've got to go out west?

Well, it's straight up just being like. You must have really screwed over. I'm an explorer now. Like the idea of that you just leave and ramble and then you're an explorer and it's like, there's got to be some kind of desert rat out here that needs a lawyer. One of you has got to have committed some kind of murder.

But this man, you can say yes, he's evil. Yes, he's exploiter of many, many different types of people. Yes, he was a person that viewed the dollar bill as over any sort of loss of human life. But technically Lansford Hastings, these are the type of guys that really made this country. They actually were. I mean, they were the ones that got them all out there.

And we're going to get into how they did it. While that Immigrant's Guide was helpful in some respects, Lansford had an ulterior motive for writing it. See, there were a fair amount of white settlers trickling into California, but Lansford wanted more. His goal was to flood California with whites, overwhelming the existing Mexican population with sheer numbers, effectively spawning

a bloodless revolution. No, no, are they all actors or why are they going out there? That's a little wild. Well, the East, what it was with the East is the East was spoken for. All of it would like, it was overcrowded. All of the land was pretty much spoken for. Yeah, it was rampant with typhus and malaria.

Typhus was a huge problem. And so people were just kind of going out west. But not, a lot of people were, more people were going to Oregon, you know, the whole Oregon Trail Bowl. Right, the video game. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot more people were going to Oregon. But Lansford, he wanted people to come into California, because even though Texas had gained their independence

from Mexico 10 years earlier, it was very, very bloody. Interesting. And of course, since Hastings was the man who had led all these people there, he thought who would be better to lead a new government as emperor than Hastings himself. That's crazy. You know what makes you super, like,

appropriate for the job is if you have the idea. Being an emperor starts with an idea. And then all of a sudden, you secret your way all the way to have it a little crown. Even if you're just emperor of your man cave. That's all you need. It's like when Dick Chady was actually in charge of finding the vice president for W.

And then he was just like, yes, I'll do it. Thank you, Mr. Chady, for all the hard work. What a search. You know, he got one of those dividing rods that he was just like, no, no good, no good. Where's it pointing? It's pointing towards, it's me. I also got to say emperor that's a little bit classless,

because Sam Houston, at least he had the good sense to just call himself a president after gaining independence from Mexico. All right, well, there you go. The Republic of Texas, not the empire of California. Oh, wait. Whoa, yeah, and that's where California's always been wrong. But if Hastings wanted his flood of whites,

he had to make California sound like an easy street paradise. He said the road out west was not without its dangers, but it was still smooth. And that nobody had to worry about Indian attacks anymore, because all the Indians were dead from disease. In fact, the entire ground around the abandoned villages were carpeted with human skulls.

And he touted that as a positive. I can see your great, great, great, great uncle getting up one day and being like, we got to go. Pack up the wagons. There's skulls in them dark hills. And they're like, no grandpa Marcus. No, and he's out there just dancing with the skulls. Skulls are friends.

You can make them say anything you like. Always complimenting you. If Lansford was smart, if he wanted a flood of whites, he should have had a pop-up Roy Orbison concert. By law, we have to go watch that. Get a couple of fiddle players going. Got Roy Orbison, a Steely Dan, should get him out there. Because especially if you want just stepfather,

so we'll talk to you about how good their double pain windows are, that's how you get them out. Oh, yeah, whites are like Pepe La Pew when it comes to Steely Dan. We smell a whiff of that. We got to float over there, see what's going on. I'm just seeing what's going on. Well, Hastings also had little secret weapons,

something that was mentioned so briefly in his guide that one could almost consider it an Easter egg. Hastings' book told of a then-unknown shortcut to California. Because we used to have to go, they used to have to go all the way around, right? Yeah, they had to go up north and then back down. They had to go through pretty much like Wyoming,

kind of dipping in Nevada a little bit. And then the Oregon Trail would continue off north and go right, and then the trail to California, like down to Sacramento, would go left. And Hastings said that the most direct path would be to leave the tried and true Oregon Trail route, go through the Wasatch Mountains and cross the great Salt Lake Desert of Utah, thereby cutting considerable

time from the journey. He said it was about cutting 400 miles off the journey. Okay. Problem was, Hastings had never actually traveled the route himself. He just looked at a map and figured since it looked easy on paper, it's probably gonna be easy when people got there.

I'm just really happy that his great, great, great, great grandson has now started the company ways. Which is good. Yes. But this is a true example of the magical axiom, the map is not the territory. You actually can, that is the lesson to be learned here, is that he just looked at it and he's like,

oh yeah, you can do this. And at the time it was just like, it was just a salt desert. And now it's known kind of as the great Salt Lake Desert. But at the time he was trying to brush it off, being like, it's just kind of a minor salt desert. It doesn't sound good. And it's like, it's not, no man, it's not. He told him it was about 40 miles.

All right. Now the Old West was filled with shit like this that led to disaster. Like for example, back in the late 1800s, greedy land prospectors told folk out east that Oklahoma was a paradise. Which was a lie. But, it's fine, it's fine.

But they made it sound like it was the best farm land that ever existed. So that led to over-settling. And over-settling led to over-farming. And that partly led to the Dust Bowl, which was the biggest environmental disaster America has ever seen. I remember that the Packers won that game.

That's the ice bowl. You kissle, you are just the living end. I mean, there was a lot more to lead to the Dust Bowl, like, you know, the Great Depression and all that. But still, like these, the Old West was just filled with hucksters that had no foresight whatsoever as to what their policies and what they were doing was gonna affect in the future.

But it lent to the power of the American dream. These hucksters fed off of the energy and a weird loop of the people that wanted to go west in the first place. And the idea of manifest destiny, the idea that we're supposed to go and conquer the Pacific Coast, that it's our fate. And then everyone's out there trying to be like,

we can get it with a rucksack and a pile of coal and a couple of canvas shoes. I could go out there and I, too, could be an emperor of California. Yeah, and then there's just millions of people being like, we're already here, sir. Sir, we're here already. Boom, boom, boom.

Just muscat, muscat fire over the ridge. Yeah, by this point, I think the Mexicans, like Spanish settlers, they'd been in California for about 300 years at this point. 250, yeah, 300 years. So it was a well-established place. And as far as the pamphlets and all the lies and ruses went, people fell for this shit all the time.

One such man was a wealthy, overconfident investor and entrepreneur named James Reed. To read, Hastings' book was gospel and the promise of a shortcut, combined with his own arrogance, led to the deaths of dozens. In my mind, dream casting for James Reed, Richard Dreyfus. Ooh, actually it was pretty good.

See, even though history now attaches the name Donner to collapse catastrophe and cannibalism, it was actually James Reed who should take the lion's share of the blame for what happened in the winter of 1846. Unbelievable, I'm gonna take most of the blame. That's unbelievable. Yeah, it's the Reed Party.

All right. See, the road out west was extremely dangerous, but not necessarily fatal to the majority of those who traveled it. It's estimated that only 4% of the people who took wagon trains in the 1840s died. And many of those were children who didn't really stand much of a chance

no matter where they were in those days. Can I read an excerpt from indifference starves above of all the different ways children can die on the wagon trail? This is fucking awful. Yeah, yeah. How do they do it? Yeah, this is amazing.

All right. The number of ways in which their children might come to harm along the trail was staggering. And women who had to drive a team or repair a wagon were unable to devote much time to watching out for them. Children fell under wagon wheels and were crushed to death or crippled for life. They watered off into the tall grass

and were never seen again. Occasionally, they were abducted by Native Americans. Much more frequently, they drowned when swept away by rivers their families were trying to forward. Drowning incidents were so common, in fact, that some mothers wrote their children's names in indelible ink on labels and sewed the labels into their children's clothes.

It didn't prevent them from drowning, but it sometimes allowed the grieving mother to identify a body that has been in the water too long. Children were bitten by rattlesnakes, struck by lightning, trampled by unreally oxen or horses, pummeled by hailstones as large as turkey eggs, and shot by the nearly daily accidental discharges

of the guns that their fathers carried. They died of measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, influenza, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, malaria, infected cuts, food poisoning, mumps, and smallpox. The one that I'm not really sold on is they just walked into the tree or they just walked into the grass. Yeah, dude.

And then the parents are like, there's no way we can go in there. Yeah. We're doomed. He's just lost forever. It's not there's no way we're gonna go in there. You can't really can't imagine the vastness of these lands. And I could absolutely, when we were kids,

we'd say we're going off into the pasture, we'll see you later. There was definitely trails and areas that were like you stay in that area, watch out for rattlesnakes. Right. But that's the thing is that a child could very easily become completely lost

and you just never, ever find them again. I can absolutely see this happening. It could be a fun adventure for that kid though. I mean, it would be a fun adventure until they starved to death or were just killed by a rattlesnake or they eventually would starve and then they'd probably collapse

and then a coyote would probably find him and then eat him alive. You ever seen Jungle Book? Jungle Book is a different story he was taken care of by the animals. We had it in different animals. Our animals are not like Jungle Book characters. They show up and they're like, oh, that's funny.

They'll be your friend for a while and then all of a sudden they're just chewing on your fucking belly. Right. And then Mowgli was just skeleton. Well, as I said, 4% of people died. To put that into perspective, that was still, by my calculations,

about 20,000 bodies buried or just simply left on the trail. Hundreds, if not thousands of miles away from a doctor. But to be fair, it's not like a doctor would really help that much anyway. No, dude, doctors are fucked up back then, man. As per the indifferent stars above, here's a rate card for a typical frontier doctor.

Medical advice, $1. Opening an abscess, 50 cents. It's going down, I like this. Tooth removal, 50 cents. Nice. Enema's a dollar. A dollar? You gotta get him out, doctor.

I've been saving all my tax shit, all my jerky shits, up and selling my goods. You come and get him with an enema, doctor. Enema, more like my friendema. Okay. Toes and fingers amputated, $5 each. Arms, $10 each. And legs, $20 each.

Man, they really jacked up the prices because there's a finite number of arms and legs. So they know they got you over the barrel. That's how they get you. Unbelievable. That's how they get you. But also, the physical taxing, to saw somebody's leg off, that's hard.

Yeah, and the emotional trauma, I think maybe you want 20 bucks reimbursement. Well, if we're gonna get into later, I'm not sure, some of these guys didn't really suffer that much emotional trauma. But if you really wanna hear what this was like and what the amputations were like and the type of tools that they use,

go back and listen to our, I think it was Battlefield Ghosts episode, where we got into what Civil War-like field doctors would have to go through to amputate limbs and such. It's not like the Hurt Locker, it's different. No, no, no, absolutely not. Kissel, are you gonna go back and listen to the episode? No, I remember what you were talking about.

Well, because of Ken Burns' Civil War documentary, he did actually do pretty good intense work on the doctors and the bone piles in the hospitals. Yeah, he got into it, but he didn't get into it in detail. But we got, I think it was Civil War Battlefields, I think, yeah, but no, I love those episodes, I just love my history episodes. And the Donner Party, they were not

the only ill-fated wagon train, and most of the ill-fated wagon trains met with disaster because of shortcuts. One ill-fated wagon train, led by the brother of the West's most famous mountain man, Joseph Meek, left a trail of shallow graves in its wake, stacked six bodies deep in some places due to a typhus outbreak.

What is typhus? I don't know, I know it causes fever, and then you, I think it causes fever, and then your brain essentially boils, and then you die. Cool. They just dance. They just dance. Yeah, it's just one of those fucking awful,

old-timey diseases that probably were, I know it's caused by extremely unsanitary conditions, which is why it happened, and wagon trains a lot. Like, say, if society were to collapse, and we were to go into some sort of post-apocalyptic scenario, typhus would make a huge comeback. Well, I hear if you get the vaccination for it,

you just get it, and that doesn't make any sense to me. I am picturing the former pro wrestler Typhoon. Yeah. Every time I hear Typhus, I just think of a fat hairy man in a onesie, but. I think it's good for you, because then it keeps, you can be scared of it. You can see why they were scared of it,

is that imagine Typhoon showed up in the middle of the night while they were all asleep and just killed all the kids. Ah, okay. Well, more than 50 people died on the Meek expedition, actually more than what died on the Donner party. Really? And even that wasn't as bad as another typhus outbreak that killed thousands in the Gold Rush of 49,

when so many people died along the trail that you could find a grave every 200 feet in some stretches. And sometimes when the man of the family died and the rest of the train couldn't spare anything to help, or their weight in the wagon was too much for the oxen to pull, the wagon train would just leave the women and children on the side of the road, just hoping that they could survive

until the next wagon train came along. Oh, that's definitely gonna happen. They're gonna be totally fine. That's where you wanna be. This societal structure was very interesting, because it's true, because it was a sexist society, especially in the 1840s. Women were just viewed as either,

they were essentially housekeepers, unless you're some husbands, obviously, people really did love each other, and there were good families, of course, like that. But as soon as your husband was dead and you were a free agent, it's not like a Bobby Bonilla wherever it's clambering to get you.

Right, it is a mandatory Bobby Bonilla reference. It is like, you're just stuck on the side of the road, and people have to, out of their goodness of their hearts, take you on. And a lot of times, because it was also very interesting how that the dichotomy between men's experience on the road, versus women's experience on the road,

where women have way more of a common experience than they would sit and talk and share information, where men were very more, I mean, obviously, they were more bristly and protective of their privacy and wouldn't speak. So a lot of it was just very like, you were just kind of left your own. So hopefully a coven of naughty women

from somewhere in St. Louis that were just leaving their husbands found you, and then you had to go wash each other in a stream. I don't think that that happened too often. A little known fact, though, the gale there with her kids, side of the road, that's where they were left, they started their first Tim Horton,

and Tim Horton now, you'll see them at most rest areas, does have a Tim Horton for you. It's the only place you'll see them actually. I've never seen a Tim Horton not on the side of a highway. I saw them, they were all over the place when we went to Canada. Ah. In Canada, that's where they are.

That's their home, where they belong. Well, leaving the women and children on the side of the road, I mean, that makes it sound like the wagon trains were some sort of cruel machines that would abandon people at the very first opportunity. They did every, they made every effort they could to help these women and children. But you had to make, at some point,

these people had to make a choice between their own family and other people that they'd probably known for a week, two months at most. Like, a lot of these people were strangers up until they hooked up at certain choke points. Well, maybe do the national lampoon's vacation move, take, strap them to the roof. That's what the kids, the kids might like going on the roof.

But now that's the thing is that a lot of times what they would do is the wagons would be pulled by oxen. And of course, like these oxen, this is for a lot of times, like it's a 2,500 mile journey. And so the oxen could only pull so much weight. So a lot of times they would let the women and children walk beside the wagons and they would just fall further and further and further behind.

And then eventually would just be like, all right, see you later. And then when they get there, when they get to the camp at night, sometimes they would catch up and then they'd see them. Sometimes they wouldn't. And then they were just gone forever. Yeah, dude, fuckin' rough out there for people.

It was not easy going. No, but that was the 4%. The 96% of the people that survived at the very least followed one very important rule. See, the most popular jump and off point for the journey west was Independence, Missouri. And it seems like you couldn't turn a corner without a well-meaning doomsayer

telling you to never set out for California later than April 1st. Whoa, I couldn't help it. I noticed you got a wagon all full of your stuff there. It's nice. Yeah, it's great stuff. Fill with corn, fill with, you got a nice stove in there looking heavy.

Yeah. You look at a calendar recently? I don't even know what a calendar is. Oh, that's funny, because I just invented it. It's April 5th. You know you fuck, right? Oh, man. I'll be here taking this corn

because there's corn up in them narrow wagons. And I'm gonna take it and put that corn so it's up in my wagon. See? You get to shovel. Yep, I'm gonna get back to eating my Vienna sausages. Great camping food. Oh, the best, yeah.

Now the absolute latest one could leave and hope to somehow make it to California before the snows made the Sierra Nevada Mountains impassable was May 1st. My birthday. Yeah. And remember James Reid, the arrogant guy with the guidebook and the shortcut

and thought everything was gonna be hunky-dory? He left two weeks after May 1st. Did he not run into the character that Henry just played? He ran into a lot of people on the way that said, turn back. Why do no one listen? Why does no one listen to those people? Pure arrogance.

That's what he said about James Reid is that he was very arrogant, he was aristocratic, he was haughty, and he actually left out from Independence, Missouri with a luxury wagon. It was like two stories, had these really nice couches, like a stove up top. It was the dumb, he approached everything in the dumbest way possible.

You ever seen Deadwood? Yes, I've seen a little bit of Deadwood. Remember the widow Garrett's husband? And he's like, I think it would be a fine adventure to come out here to Deadwood and get some gold. And then he ends up getting killed by Dan in the head with a rock. Spoiler, that's like the fourth episode.

Yeah, I mean honestly, I don't want it to be too much of a spoiler when it comes to Deadwood. They say the C word a lot, a lot. But that was very interesting, because well, his wife suffered from sick headaches, so she had migraines. And so he was trying to convince everybody, because they were really well established where they were.

He had made a fuck ton of money, he wanted to go west because everyone had kind of sold this idea that California was where you would definitely be a millionaire. But this was the kind of shit that I didn't realize, right? Where it was like, as I was reading, like, oh, there's, when I first thought it was the Donner party, I just assumed it was just like one family.

But it was the Reed family left with the Donner party. There were multiple families all together, which I didn't really understand. And it became the Donner party later on. But James Reed was the one who basically led the first go. And the Donner brothers were a part of that, also well to do, but a little bit older. But what I did like them, they all said about these guys,

especially about the Graves family as well, was that they are, these are not soft, the rest of them were not soft people. James Reed was slightly soft, but he still was like a self-made man who believed in a lot of his own views. And he came by his money the hard way. Well, no, I mean, James Reed actually wasn't soft. He was a veteran of the Black Hawk Wars.

He had served alongside Abraham Lincoln. Like James Reed was actually a tough motherfucker. Anyone who went out, like everyone who went out there, like if you were soft, you died really fucking fast. And so the Reeds and the Donners, they hooked up in Independence, Missouri. And so the two families set off on a 2,500 mile journey across untamed America,

was only supposed to take four months. It would be almost a year before either family reached California and only one of those families would arrive intact. The other would lose eight members before rescue finally came. All right. And here, and actually what is very interesting is actually, I talked to my mom and I found,

I have an old letter from one of the frontier families that I belong to that went across this great country. And it was very interesting. It's a historical piece, actually. Cause I wanna, is it cool if I read it on the show? Yeah, go ahead, yeah, this is amazing. The Zabrowski family line went west? Yes.

To Manhattan. We lived in St. Nile and we were west of St. We already were in St. Nile and we went west to Pennsylvania. Dearest Aunt Gorski, since jump off at St. Louis, we've been on the trail for nine on 20 days. Reckon we've traveled 65 miles as the crow flies. Nug supplies are holding.

That old man Cracker says we are about to be amidst some groovy rocks that got some swirls on them. So my cousin and I are a feared of the Nug supply made dwindle before the sweet embrace of Oregon territory. Then on to Alta, California. We are excited to see Mexicans and are assured by many that they do not have horns and poison sacks

as some of the older members of our party have read in scientific papers. When the food supply is dwindle, I've already chosen our team, sir, John Dundlemore is the subject of my hunger. Many are insisting I am mad by choosing this man this early, some so passionate in their cause, they say I should, quote,

have my berries smashed by a rock. But every day I see John tugging on our wagon, his rump flexing in the Utah sun, his brow wet with exertion. Much like a moist roast that you would make, Ant Gorsky, the more I think, gee, Willikers, I want to cut off a chunk of that piece of shit and put it in a hot dog bun.

What was the name of the relative that wrote that wonderful letter? Henry Zabrowski, senior. Henry Zabrowski, senior, 1846. All right, they were classy, they were classier back then. They were. So the first bad omen for the Donner Reid party

came with a blind, consumptive grandmother that the Reeds had brought along, died while the settlers were building a ferry to get them across a flooded river. Because she's like, I don't want to die with my parents, like if you leave, I'm never gonna see you again, I'm gonna die anyway, just bundle me up into a wagon and then I'll die eventually

and then just fucking throw me in a hole. We gotta think about space here, there's not a lot of it to go around, okay. It was a pain in the ass and it sounded like, honestly, her death was a bit of a relief but everyone was also very sad because the children go and look upon her bed

and wish she was there, but you know that bed was probably pretty gross. This old woman just hacking a flood, just bouncing up and down on the trails. Oh, kill me, kill me, like you begging the kids. I don't want to think about the beds too much. Well, this whole mess, the ferry and the funeral for the old lady who is definitely

never making it to California, that set the Donners and the Reeds back five days, which wouldn't have been a big deal had they left on time. But since they hadn't, this one delay at the very beginning of their trip would result in their doom. Oh my goodness, why did they have a five day funeral? Well, I mean, they had to build a ferry

for their wagons to get across a flooded river. I see, dude, that was the problem. Across the Big Blue River, yeah, yeah. You don't understand. But still, they took a couple of days off for the funeral in the morning. You gotta get to work. It was sacred, bodies were sacred at the time period

and as things go on the trail, you find out they become less and less sacred, but when they were, like, you gotta remember, every step is a pain in the ass. It is, it was raining. They're up to their fucking knees in mud. They're having fun for a while, but then eventually it gets immediately like,

what is this shit? If you have to go over any sort of hill that the ox can't get over, you gotta get the ox over one at a time. Then you have to go and get their wagons over, where it's like you have them hitch it up where you save two that will go and go over the ridge with the wagon on it.

Then if you get to a river that you can't go over yourself, then you gotta build a whole fucking thing to float the wagons on and you gotta build it. It's an error, you can't go to, you're not Elon Musk, you can't just pull a thing out of your behind like your fucking Looney Tunes cartoon and all of a sudden you got a fucking inflatable raft. Yeah, I would have stayed in Oklahoma.

That's my official decision here. Well, you would have had to go south. Can I just stay? They started in Missouri. There's like two states between Missouri, like you have to go through Missouri, then you'd have to go through Kansas and actually at that point in history,

Oklahoma was still a reserve for the Cherokees, I believed. It wasn't until the late 1800s that the government opened up the Oklahoma Territory to white settlers and that's where the term Sooners comes from because there was a date, like a cutoff date where they said like, all right, like on this date you guys can run, you can make your land claims, but then a couple of sneaky Oklahomans,

they went on the land early, they kinda snuck around all the guards and they were called Sooners. Once again, sir, we are here, we are already here. This is not land for sale, sir. No, no, no, you see, in my mind, I just make y'all a figure of my imagination. I am real.

No, you're screaming, it's fake. That's sad, there's one way to put it, huh? Well, besides all of just the actual dangers, people got on each other's fucking nerves on the trail because they didn't know each other, they didn't know these people and sometimes personalities clashed and the Donners and the Reads,

they found that they weren't starting a clash before they even got out of Kansas. I'm sure. So they're like a couple hundred miles out and already they're like, I fucking hate this guy. I'm sure there was their version of a Timothy McVeigh who's like, play bad company off bad company by bad company again, please.

Look at what song they've been listening to. It's all, it's the same fiddle music again and again. Right. It's just like, I can't hear how green the grass grows and which tall, one more time. But even so, the journey was more or less smooth sailing across what came to be known as the States of Wyoming and Nebraska.

In fact, Tamzin Donner, the matriarch of the Donner family, famously wrote, If I do not experience something far worse than I have yet done, I shall see that trouble is all in getting started. Oh, that's very inspirational. Tamzin Donner, 1846. Thank you for letting me know the year once again.

Cut to 1847. Uh-oh. And all the while, the wagon train kept picking up more folk. There were the Murphy's, the Breen's, the Eddies, and the aforementioned Graves family who were chicken and bee farmers with nine kids. Hey, all right.

It's easy to get a chicken and bee farm going. What you do is you get daddy, cover them in honey. Right. You start running around, chickens and bees start to attach themselves to them and then you bring them back to where the food is and there's this guy going, Oh, well, well.

Oh, well, well, well. Which is also where the term from, where it's technically it's the original term is you get more chicken and bees with. Oh. Than vinegar. And yeah, you go there and that's how you build a farm. It was old time.

It's old time. Can we just agree that the Eddie family is definitely the one that's always in the bathroom. Just eating all the ham sandwiches. I wish I could get inside the wagon My butt won't fit. Actually the eddies were the cattle family They were one of the biggest livestock families in the end because as the other thing too is that it wasn't just wagons

A lot of these people were like driving 30 40 had a cattle all throughout that you know from one side of the country to the other Well, that was a part of it. I didn't realize about the Donner party Yeah, it's fucking 80 people deep and they've got all of these animals and they have every single stitch of everything They own in these wagons. Yeah, and he really did believe in themselves. They were like, we're just gonna bring a whole house Across the mountains and they're like, well, it's it's insane what they did. Yeah, like oh, yeah, man Like in fact like Sarah Graves. She just married this guy named Jay Fosdick She looked at this entire journey as her fucking honeymoon Well, you know what? It's I guess he dodged a bullet

That's easy to do. I don't even know well And they would talk about how they would have to keep watch for Native Americans at night And what they would do is that that would be the only time they get to spend alone And she'd get to go and they get to spend the one time they like what man and wife loved to do in the 1840s Which is hold hands Wow, well, he got real lucky with her. Oh, yeah, actually there was one whole Passage in the indifferent stars above where they talked about like all the different like Sperma sides that the women used to trade with each other all the sorts of like sponges they would make people fucked a lot

Oh, I'm sure people fucked a lot And they also said that they did not know that they were pregnant until the quickening of the baby Which meant that they'd feel the baby kick And so if you kind of maybe thought you were pregnant because a part of what they would say it's like you'd have the same symptoms Your breasts would swell your your menstruation would stop that sort of happening You be one of the big cures for a baby that if you don't want to be pregnant on the trail is vigorous exercise It's essentially having big Pete grab you and just bounce you up and down in his fucking shoulder until the baby stopped Being inside you anymore. Oh, yeah, this exercise. Oh, yeah, man. First term abortion was very common on the trail

Okay, well at night, you know this this stuff it wasn't all bad times because at night Jay Faustic was actually known for pulling out His fiddle and this right here, you know, they made notes of what tunes you play. This was one of the Donner Party's favorite tunes And they'd get up on the back of the wagon train and they'd dance and they'd slap their knees and everyone would laugh And it would be a wonderful time out on the prairies of wild. Wow. I'd definitely be eating a lot of those Vienna sausages But this is the Ken Burns vibe we're going for yeah, you can kind of just see Yeah, it would be like and in addition to the families were a whole host of teamsters that used to drive their wagons There were servants that were cooks and just various other single men all looking for a way out west names are all Well, I wouldn't say I'm the only searching for trim out here on the trail

Yeah, and possum pelt Get out of here In all 87 people would be a part of what history came to know as the Donner Party of those 87 46 of them would be dead of either starvation disease accidental gunshot wound in two cases and at least for others murder

And the horrible thing was it didn't have to be that way Even though the people of the wagon train would eventually elect George Donner as the leader of the party because everyone liked him They called him uncle James Reed was the guy who made all the big decisions shadow government James Reed is Cheney and yeah, that's why we call him the Bush years instead of the not instead of the Cheney years interesting and James Reed he'd had warning first of all the Native Americans weren't quite Blanketing the ground with skulls as much as Hastings had claimed the day after Tamsen wrote her optimistic letter Pawnees stole a big chunk of the settlers cattle

Then just as the settlers had stolen five of them back the Pawnees attacked Killing one of the settlers with an arrow and taking another prisoner before another search party ran the Pawnees off Just as they were stripping their prisoner naked presumably for some sort of horrible torture Okay, they do it They did a real bad torture to these guys and partially it was because they said normally the Native Americans were like Largely indifferent to the settlers. Yeah, it would go they would they'd they had new shit like they had cool toys and trinkets They would go and try to trade for them for the most part And then like they'd make off with a couple of horses every once while they come steal some oxen basically the younger

They said that younger Native American men would kind of make sport of maybe just going and grabbing some shit from them Basically because they're fucked, but we're gonna see later on a circle like vultures in the third leg of their trip Or it's like a bunch of Native Americans are tracking them for a while just being like oh these white people are fucked Yeah, but then later on You can see how helpful that they were to that certain tribes were to the settlers because really that's and that is really something that Another episode that I really want to do later on Is just pretty much like the Old West like the Native Americans in the Old West and the difference between all the different tribes Like they were as different from each other as countries are to us some very aggressive

It could be extremely cruel and some very peaceful and very helpful and loving To anybody that came across their past now. I'm just really excited to play in the new red dead Spider-man's pretty good is it good you should get spider-man all right. He's just a teenager and I feel I don't like I don't like Celebrating he's like he's post-college. He's graduated. He's working for Octavia. I've even worse. Oh, he's a 23 year old Well after the Pawnee attack came the explicit warnings on June 27th Reed ran into an old friend named James Cleiman that Reed had served with in the Black Hawk Wars Alongside Abraham Lincoln. What do you mean? He ran into him was like, what are you doing out here? Actually? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you get out here. What are you doing out here? Like freaking Groundhog's Day? Ned? Ned Ryerson?

James? James Cleiman from the Black Hawk War? You don't so-and-so get over here. How is that possible? Dude, I mean Cleiman showed up and he's covered in muck. He's just like, Reed's like, oh, we're taking the Hastings cutoff to go take a look at it I'm gonna forget my make sure to do my Richard Dreyfus. Nah, we're taking the Hastings cutoff. We gotta see what they're doing up there We heard the jargon in California, and I know for a fact I'm gonna go be a milly there, and he's just like, don't fucking do it Yeah, cuz Cleiman had just come through the cutoff and not only that, but he'd just come through the cutoff with Lansford Hastings on Lansford's first trip through the cutoff since writing about it And they came out on the other side like they were coming from California back in in Nevada, and they got through it and they were like, oh

God that was fucking awful, and there was just two guys on horses and the Donner party That's like, you know, I think nine wagon trains or nine wagons And so Cleiman comes through and said you cannot cannot go through there with all these people with families and wagons And that's the thing is that Cleiman told them it's like there's a maze of canyons That's the Wasatch Mountains then there's the horrific heat That's the Salt Lake Desert then you're gonna get to the Sierra Nevadas That's craggy snow-covered cliffs and Reed he just ignored this guy's advice and this guy was like an experienced mountain man He knew what the fuck he was talking about, but Reed just pressed on calling the Hastings cutoff quote

The Nyer route. Yeah, it's the Nyer route. Nyer. Nyer route? You know, like the time is NAH Meaning like it's like it would just be the it was the soonest possible way to it was the fastest possible way To get to California. I don't think so buddy Just listen to the guy who gives you the ominous warning just once in your life. Well, Reed's confidence was buoyed even further on July 17th when he received a form letter from Lansford Hastings See Lansford he'd sent a rider up and down the organ trail Telling settlers that he was waiting for them at Fort Bridger and would escort them all through the cutoff And that actually that is somewhat to Lansford Hastings credit because once he came down and got through the trail

He's like, oh fuck these people aren't gonna make it through on their own He waited there He hired a very he hired like a very intense mountaineer guy to help him go look he goes He wanted to go look at the cutoff of himself finally, so he went and he looked at anyone Oh, no because you couldn't get wagons up there Yeah, he's like what I'll do is because I'm still trying to build a bunch of people to come my way So I can get people over to California is that well, I'll take them through and don't worry I'll handle the whole thing. It'll be like there's no way they'll fail with me in charge

And then it turns out he wasn't really good at it Well, no, that's the thing. He actually did make it through with him in charge Yes, well the other people did yeah, yeah, yeah, they made it they did actually make it through well like let We'll get into that later But yeah with when Lansford was in charge people did make it through It was just when Lansford wasn't in charge that things didn't go too well You know, I don't know a lot about the technology of the time, but if you could create a giant robotic spider Like in Wild Wild perhaps the legs would be able to get over the mountain

That would be very useful. We're talking about a steampunk Donner party. Yes, you'd be an incredible anime. I would love to You'd think that you know these people they're on the organ trail You'd think they just keep going down the regular road at this point because if Lansford Hastings is sending back Messages and saying you need me to guide you through this you think they're like, all right. Well, you know what? We're on track to get to California by September, you know, that's long before the snow starts So we're gonna get to California by September. So let's just keep going But thing was is that everybody was really fucking sick of each other at this point Hmm, and they were pretty tired of being on the road. They've been on the road since what is it may and it was now July

So they thought all right Let's just take this unproven shortcut that we have been warned is dangerous and let's shave about 350 miles off the overall trip Hmm, the only person who objected one person objected Matt was Tamsen Donner She said it was really fucking stupid to follow a stranger through an area They'd already been told by someone. They trusted was impossible to get through. Mm-hmm, but she was a woman So they didn't care and so she tried it. It was very sad because she hit it on the head She's like you guys just read this in a pamphlet None of you have any idea what we're about to go do the other trail everybody else is doing it

We're the only ones going left. Why are we going left because we're on tears man? I don't care What if we just stay here? Because I'm the first thing now Tamsen there was always there was a first person who went down the organ trail as well We And so at what came to be known as the parting of ways most of the wagons Turned right on the established trail while nine wagons turned left Towards Fort Bridger and the Hastings cut off and on that day July 19th The group elected George Donner as their leader and thus the Donner party was born. All right

But when they arrived at Fort Bridger Hastings wasn't there He'd already gone ahead with a bigger wagon train Furthermore there had been more warnings down the road from friends See a journalist who had been riding with the wagons had ridden ahead to check out the trail And he'd seen just as climb and had that it was a terrible idea to lead a whole wagon train down the cutoff So he sent a letter to Fort Bridger telling them to turn back or stay put or who gives a shit just don't go down this road Before Bridger was the last outpost before California And if the Hastings cut off became popular then the guy who ran the trading post there would stand to make a lot of money

Hmm. It's all about fucking money. This whole thing is about money So he kept the letter to himself and contributed to the deaths of 46 people just to sell a few more pelts Oh Pelt well, I mean they were quite cool. Yeah, and look at me and I'm a person. I'm I am born with pelts So I don't need to purchase any so for me. I would be immune to this restaurant But I would be the ideal con customer because I am virtually peltless. Yeah Absolutely, maybe they have one of those fun things where with words. It's like a plastic toy, but it's also filled with gum You know those we see those on the road all the time be flattened the pennies. Oh, I love the flat in the penny machine

Only cost fifty-one cents. It's just really weird Yeah Well things immediately started going wrong on the shortcut for the Donner party Two days out a 13 year old was riding his horse when the animal stepped into a prairie dog hole and threw the boy Oh, and when the boy landed he broke his leg sending the bone through the skin And they were like essentially this is like a death sentence This is a very bad thing to happen having a kind of break like this where it's not easy to set because infection comes In and gangrene happened quite often

Mm-hmm. Let me think of that Paul George video the basketball player. Do you ever see that? Yeah? Yeah Oh my god ESPN was like, what's watching again? I don't think we have to but so the party sent back for help to Fort Bridger and pretty soon an experienced Mountain man showed up with a bundle of amputation gear ready to remove whatever limb needed removing It's me the bone splitter It's me the bone splitter Finally another job for the bone splitter I think you like it too much man

But just as the man was about to get started on the amputation The parents who couldn't stand to hear their children's cries because he's freaking out because this guy this Grizzled bearded mountain man is walking towards him with wide eyes a bone saw on one hand a meat saw on the other And he's just can't wait to give him this little boy's thigh. Oh my goodness And so because since the kid was screaming freaking out the parents like couldn't stand it So like don't do it. Don't do it. We'll take care of it ourselves Don't cut off his leg and they paid him $5 for his time The man and they said the mountain man. He's like left like dejected

He was like he was disappointed that he hadn't been allowed to show off his amputation skills He worked really hard on those amputation skills There's a bunch of chickens with no legs on his farm. I mean he is really focused. What is it? You can't give a bone splitter blue balls What am I gonna do with this now? I guess I'll just go hack off a bunch of feeder cows You know, honestly, it is a nice little methadone for me

As far as the ride went it wasn't all that bad for the first few days because Hastings He was only a few days ahead with the larger trains So there were wagon they were wagon ruts for them to follow But then the donors found a note from Hastings stuck in some sage brush The note said that the road up ahead was actually pretty terrible if not downright impassable So they should send a rider up ahead to Hastings for advice on a better route And the rider did find Hastings but Hastings refused to come back Instead, he just climbed up to a high peak like pointed in a general direction and said that way would be

Theoretically better So why don't you try that way and then you'll come back around and then you'll meet back at the wagon train up No, uh out west. I just don't know if anyone has any clue what they're talking about. They really don't Some of them do like the mountain the mountain men at the time were the only ones who truly knew as far as like settlers went Like of course like every Native American tribe. They not only knew the land Like it was you know a part of them. They also knew how to survive the only ones out of the whites And also there were also a few black mountain men Uh, the they were the only ones who truly knew how to survive and they were the only ones who truly knew the terrain

And then there were assholes like landsford Hastings. They were like, I'll go out there. I'll figure it out Right. I'll make it up as I go along. I figured it out up to this point Like a why what's more I can do with mountains mountains And then you have James Reed. It's like it's unbelievable I'm gonna have a fabulous time. We're gonna go. Don't worry about it. We're gonna we're all gonna get together All of this whole thing is gonna be the easiest trip we've ever done. How's your headache, honey? It's still there Good That's good

Oh my this path that was supposed to be theoretically better It proved to be even worse Ah taking them 16 days to navigate the treacherous cliffs of the wasatch mountains It was supposed to take a week. Mm-hmm And even so Reed still had the audacity to name the trail they blazed after himself Calling it reeds gap Okay, I was thinking about calling it a fun little thing. We'll call it reeds Let's say

Is that too bad? Is that bad? I'm sorry guys. I didn't mean to go blue. I was just trying to have fun with it I'm trying to lighten the moon. Everybody's fighting Wow reeds gap reeds gap. Oh my goodness, but the worst of the shortcut was still to come Now eventually they got through the wasatch mountains. Oh now we're definitely in reeds taint Oh man, this is getting really rough once we get to reeds balls. I know we're screwed. Well, this is uh, this is like Very hard. Yeah when they came through the going through the wasatch mountains That's like we're gonna do a little bit of yada yada, but it was like Shockingly difficult

They had to go and bring and it took a 16 it was 16 days of driving the oxen up the mountains them falling back Having to get one or two over the thing Having to lift the wagons again like a chunk by chunk. They're going like yeah, they're doing it yard by yard Yeah up the mountain. Yeah, they're moving they're moving boulders. They're having to clear out thick brush with axes I mean it was horrific work And when they eventually got through and they were able to rejoin Hastings original trail They found another note. Oh, but this one was barely readable all they could make out was Two days two nights hard driving cross desert reach water

Geez and when they got over the next hill They were faced with the great salt desert of utah and dude it is Is just piles of salt. Yeah, it is louis anderson's dream out there You go out there You are just covered in salt and it gets in your eyeballs and it gets in your mouth And there's no water to drink no water like there's no drinkable water Like they tried drinking water a couple times. It just made them violently ill. Oh, wow. It's margarita country That's what it is

It is margarita country That's a great idea. And that's where jimmy buffett always dreamed of as a little place where no rim would be unadored Oh, I was supposed to be a 40 mile stretch taken only five days Okay, but it was actually closer to a hundred and ended up taken over two weeks. It's a big difference there Yeah, lots of the oxen and cattle died from thirst while others just took off in search of water Numerous wagons had to be abandoned in the thick desert gunk mud That was created when water rose to the surface during the daytime Needless to say the donner party spent their entire time in the desert terrified miserable and near death

by accounts Everyone was caked with urine and feces while the women stank of stale Ninstral blood and yeast infections Their faces were burnt and red and their lips were split and bleeding By the time the donners rejoined the established trail since leaving it at the parting of ways It had been 68 days Those who had stayed on the tried and true organ trail They had reached the same point in 37 days. Wow

Oh my god, it makes me want to punch myself in the face. Yeah, why does it take this jackass-y path? And to make matters worse It was later discovered that the shortcut instead of being 350 miles shorter was actually 125 miles longer. No, no when I said shortcut I meant shortcut in the way that you're going to die younger It's like that kind of a shortcut Oh, oh Oh, I should I should have clarified. Yeah, the original train that they'd been a part of Had passed through that point a month before. Oh my god. Yeah, needless to say

Tensions were running high Specifically towards James reed. I don't really understand why everybody's mad at me as far as I'm concerned We should be mad at the desert. It's really the desert's problem Right. I mean, honestly, we chose to do this. I choose the human brain is what I blame Is this even for having ideas? I blame ideas It all came to a head on a sand hill when the teamster for the graves family john snyder Got his reins tangled up with the reeds oxen Which is really sad because john snyder was like the fun guy of the group. Yeah, john snyder big strapping

Handsome single man. That was their dalliance with all the ladies. They were all he was looking Really close to you to marry sue graves. They were really close and he was the one that would do the wagon dance He would they would pull down the the flap of the wagon and he'd do his shuck and jive dance on top of it They all clap and everyone loved them. Well after the reins got tangled Both guys jumped off of their wagons, you know, john snyder jumped off his and reeds teamster jumped off heads Of course, they got to an argument and snyder brought out a whip and bonked reeds teamster in the head with the butt of it So james reed completely lost his shit

stepped in And stabbed snyder some say in the chest some say in the neck Either way john snyder bled out right on that sand hill you think about that the next time one of you Fuckers want to come for me come at me james reed. I'll tell you what I stab a motherfucker. I stab a motherfucker. I let him bleed I drink his blood you motherfuckers James reed has a temper I guess, huh? Well, I mean everybody had a temper at that point But the thing was ever since they crossed the continental divide there was no law to speak up

There was no government So it was up to the party to decide what to do about this Now a lot of them wanted to hang reed because after all he got him in this mess and like henry said Everyone loved snyder. Hmm, but cooler heads prevailed And it was decided that reed should be banished from the group on only his horse Which that time damn near as good as a death sentence But that night his daughter snuck away and gave him a couple guns and some crackers You remember at this point like

Kind of detract this when they came over those mountains they had to get rid of most of their stuff And when they did realize is that right before going over the wasatch mountains They realized they didn't have enough food to make it to california. They already knew that they didn't have enough food So guys had to be sent ahead as well So it's like all of this shit's kind of culminating the the whole thing's falling apart It seems like so the very thing they take the leader and they know like they didn't hang him They wanted to see him hang him because what's so much from the gig get the Whoa, everyone's getting really excited. It's entertainment. We can hang him

He's watching him dancing on the rope But there was like there's obviously they knew that there was A finality when they watch him get on his horse and just go out into the fucking desert And then he's gone the guy that was leader Yeah is now gone But now that reed was gone the donner party was bereft of any leadership Even if the leadership was bad. So the party started to break down One old man named hardcoup couldn't keep up and was abandoned to his death in the desert

Oh, this uh this story is fucked up the hardcoup story Yes, the story is like he was an older man. He was one of the single ones He got sick and he got old and he couldn't walk anymore And at this point all of the food and all of the supplies were out of the wagons because they had to make the wagons as light As possible so that whatever oxen were left could take could move the wagons They're going and he's just like no one will take me. No one will take me into their wagon And they're like you gotta just walk old man. We're walking you got to walk too And they just talk about it

So what we talked about with the with the women when they're left alone as they're going He's just slower and slower and he's they're just watching him fade behind them as he's walking and walking And there are a couple people like the donners themselves felt really guilty because they didn't have enough food in order to serve They give them food and they're like they we they try to look back and the last time they saw him He was just sitting on the desert ground his feet cracked and bleeding Just too exhausted to move and then they just left him in the rearview mirror Yeah, and that night when the old man finally got left behind They were camping and there were a couple of guys on horses

And they're like you guys need to go back and find him and give him some food or help them or something And they were both like no, they were like they were like why what what's the point? Maybe help up the old man. He's gonna die. I mean they're like what what's the point? We're gonna give him food and he's gonna survive for what another six hours It's a kindness to let him die Geez This stuff too with the oxen just leaving when they were just sitting there at night and the oxen were so thirsty They bolt and like they weren't talking about like them wandering through the white salt deserts

Like just trying to find these animals that would help them and they can't they come back And they're just going crazy from hunger and then one of my favorite little bits was that the september On september 13th is that they stopped and the company they said one of the guys that was keeping a journal said There was this place that reed called it in his diary mad woman camp and he offered no explanation But the only thing they can assume is that the women and the men had completely divided at this point And that the women were just mad Just being like fuck these men and they went and they camped on their own just all like super upset while fucking all of the men stood in silence

Wondering what the fuck it is. They're gonna do well after The old man was left behind Paiutes started raiding their camps stealing or just playing killing oxen and horse Uh oxen and horses like they just started killing oxen with poison arrows. I think they killed like 20 that way Just cuz just because they wanted to then they stole 30 had a cattle and the settlers At night they could hear the paiutes laughing at them from the cliffs, which is just salt in the world Fuck dude. Yeah, like you could because you could just hear like Hey, you just get roasted. Yeah

Like during your time period. It's just like don't do this Why are you doing this? Imagine getting roasted as you're dying. Yeah. Now. What's so funny about this? What is so funny about all of this? Oh, it seems that uh, that white man down there is so big that when uh, he dies They're gonna need a separate coffin for his feet I heard that. All right God Then the murder continued

Now two settlers said that the paiutes had killed a german named wolfinger But what they'd really done was murder him for his valuables when his wagon lagged behind And this is another interesting thing that I didn't know about wagon trains Is that it wasn't like they were all in this really tight formation the entire time Like sometimes there'd be a span of like a mile or two in between the wagons They just all kind of knew that they would reach a point and they would all like kind of come back together like And they kind of it was like kind of an accordion where it would stretch out during the day and then come back together at night That is interesting marcus. Thank you for sharing that perspective on wagon trains

This is another interesting thing about wagon trains wagon trains are fucking fascinating. I'm still waiting to hear about the shovels. That's all I know But now we're into wagon trains. There's three different types of shovel There's your wife shoveled the one you fuck. There's your daughter shovel you used to dig and there's your digger shovel you paid to dig Now these people they weren't completely abandoned A scout had actually gone ahead for some supplies And it brought back a couple of miwok indian guides named luis and salvador To help with the rest of the journey even though this was much to the detriment of luis and salvador

Dude, I want to hear their story. I want to hear what they went through because they showed up and you could hear the Through the book like I don't talk about it like this, but you couldn't hear the forehead slap When they come and see what they have signed up for where they see this whole group of starving sick beaten people That now have to go do because that's the other thing the sierra nevadas the last leg That's the hardest part of the entire fucking trip. Yeah, it's like they they just did they They increased they doubled the hardness and difficulty level of the rest of the trip in the middle of it

Only to lead to what is then the worst part Three weeks after they're supposed to be there three weeks Then they were supposed to be there and that's six weeks after they should have been there And james reed had made it to california Emaciated in near-death the crackers had only lasted so long, but he had his gun so he was able to shoot game Ah now james reed knew that his party wasn't doing well But he also knew that even if they got caught in the snow on the other side of the sierra nevadas He thought they had enough livestock to hold him over till spring

No, but but and when james reed left they did But what he didn't know is that the donner party had lost virtually all of their livestock since he'd been banished They lost 30 had a cattle. I mean that is thousands of pounds of meat right there Hmm Now james reed still wanted to take a few men back through But he was informed that the mexican-american war had just begun over the annexation of texas And there were no men left at the fort that james reed had arrived at to go back over this sierra nevadas Oh my so reed if who if you'll remember was actually a decorated war veteran

Signed up for service and rode south to victory. So he just went to fight in the war He just went to war. Okay. I'm reading the writing on the wall here. I guess time to go back to war. All right. That's fine with me It's fun. I'm actually best at war. You guys are gonna love me. I really know how to decorate a wagon Wow, well read. I mean he was a he was an absolute he was a veteran He was a decorated war veteran. He knew what he was doing And I couldn't quite figure out Exactly what reeds motivations for going to war was because people are kind of split on it Like it's either that he rode south to war

Uh in order like so he knew like as long as the mexican-american war was going on There weren't gonna be men to find his families was like I must go and do my part to bring this war to an end or is like well Family's not gonna be through till february Let's go to war. I gotta do I gotta fill my time with something. So let's go check out this war See how it's going. Maybe a little bit of both Well, one thing he said that it maybe he tried to conscript himself to join the war to get men to come with him As a guarantee to make sure he has his whole family, but I mean he fucked off

He's got such a great history of leading people to paradise Well, meanwhile the donner party had arrived at what was then known as truckie lake near the site of modern day Reno, Nevada And it had been a long terrible journey But the donner party had just one more obstacle to go the hardest part the sierra nevada mountains Now it was late october Which usually was fine But the snow had already begun on october 7th a month earlier than usual

They reached this spot Which was like a common grouping area before going over the mountains And they said they woke up one morning and they saw that there was snow On the peaks and everyone And we're like, oh shit. We are not in good shape Like everyone got a me a ripple of fear went through the whole camp of what was left of them Yeah So an advanced party tried to make it through the pass

But a sudden storm came in on their way and buried them in snow up to their oxen's chest Before they knew it they could go no further. They tried again the next day But it was just too late. They had missed their shot by two days Wow They had no choice but to turn back and they're on the shores of what came to be known as Donner Lake would they pass into one of the darkest chapters in american history? Cool. All right. We have made you wait for dessert because

Next week we're going to be talking a lot about cannibalism. Well, I'm very excited because it's a it's a topic It's because a part of it obviously it's very contested as to whether or not the donna party actually did eat each other Um, and I think that it's then been since proven. It is uh, true Yeah A lot of people ate each other back in the day Out of sheer hunger We're going to talk about really what the the harrowing experience it was Is to be stuck in the mountains while it's snowing

For an entire month where you are not prepared for it. You have no clothes. You have no food. You have no shelter You are just in cloth Um, and that's it. You have a good and then they build shit as they go But to me this is what gave me nightmares. I had nightmares about being stuck Underground covered in snow while you're trying to you're doing a fire into snow. Yes, we've recovered this body It's a zebrowski. He's wearing his big johnson t-shirt It's a satirical t-shirt that was very popular in the 90s with some little juvenile children You got a euphemism or puns relating to their big johnson

Yeah, that's where we're gonna pick up next time, you know when the donors and when the donors go through The donor party goes through, uh, the worst winter on record at that time Wow, it is at every point. It is almost as if God wanted this to happen. It's fucked up It's also a lot about the resilience of the human spirit up to a point because a lot of these guys Especially the graves the graves are my favorite family of the whole crew because I love the father I love the father franklin graves who will cover a little bit more in the second episode

Man, oh man, though. It is rough to be the new boyfriend, which we'll find out Yeah, all right. Well, let's not give it all away. No, we're not gonna give it all away But uh, yeah, it's uh, this is uh, among the most harrowing stories that I've ever read most terrifying and one of the most fascinating Uh, so yeah, we will See kids history can be fun. That's what we always say. Well, here's another interesting thing about wagon trains Wheels now most of them most of the carts have them now ben if you didn't know what's that uh, the yoke Uh of an oxen. Uh, you know that will go around its neck. Uh, these can be refashioned And to snow shoes not pardon me pardon me. It's actually the ox bows not the yoke

They can be fashioned into snow shoes They can also be fashioned into really nice southwest wall hangings, which I have seen in certain arizona homes Yes, yes, um beautiful. All right everyone. Well, thank y'all so much for listening. That's the donner party part one doesn't seem like a party to me We've done this But thank you all so much for listening I check out our patreon if you haven't done that yet. Thank you all so much for giving to that Henry and I will have an interview coming out pretty soon here Um, and let's see anything else as far as social media. We're on instagram. We just went over a hundred thousand

So we're really doing it. Um on instagram LP on the left on twitter Check that stuff out And if you guys want to come see us live if you're over on the east coast, we're going to be playing washington dc On november 4th, uh, we're going to be playing the death becomes us true crime festival Uh, but yeah tickets are available online You can find those uh, if you just google last podcast on the left washington dc Or last podcast on the left, uh death becomes us

We hope to have a very special guest for that show. That's gonna be very cool. We hope to have that all worked out by then But yeah, we hope to see you soon and we're also going to be announcing A bunch of uh live dates. We're hoping to announce a tour here real soon here in the us So stay tuned for that. Yes. Awesome. All right everyone. Thank you so much for listening. We love you. Hail yourselves Hail satan. I'm so excited. You know what? Because probably the most basic part of me now is it's the excitement for halloween It's coming not only am I getting married soon, but a part of it's also it's like it's just nice that it's it's it's like happening We're getting this spooky season, man. Whoo. Whoo. Yeah, it was kind of random that you just brought up halloween, but I love it I think about it all time

Okay, everyone, Thank you solutions. Hail me