Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 332: The Donner Party Part II - The Forlorn Hope

Episode Date: September 14, 2018

On the conclusion to our series on America's most famous cannibals, we cover the horrifying journey of the group known as the Forlorn Hope, the awful lengths people at the base camp went to for survival, and the murders that happened as a result of both. 

There's no place to escape to. This is the last time on the left That's when the cannibalism started What was that? Man oh Man am I hungry you know when it comes down to it's like because with the Donner party right you're eating people right All stuff and then they said it's like you know starvation begins to occur Technically seven eight nine days after you haven't eaten sure sure like that's when starvation starts to happen Your muscle starts getting dissolved, but like I'm hungry now right and I like

45 minutes ago. Mm-hmm, and if there was anything near me, I mean like honestly I would just so you're saying that you would just aggressively eat people if you were part of the Donner party with no concept Of the fact that you actually look like a hairy turkey preemptive strike Like they will just see you stuffed with an apple in your mouth Guys looking at what I'm here to build into fire. Why are you guys all just staring hypnotically at my room? This is the last podcast on the left. I am Ben. Oh kissle with Marcus. Do you say Ben? Oh kissle? Become Irish I converted last night. I had just the right amount of Jameson and I'm officially

Irish All right, and of course we have had a reservoir ski this story is still haunting me I feel like there's a lot of people who are talking about this episode I mean like you know we do serial killers aliens and ghosts and obviously we'd like to cover many things Macleod on the show And I think that when we dip into history people sometimes forget like when you look back at it again Like upon reading in different stars above It's just nothing but screaming It seems like it. Yeah, it is the most brutal story

We've come across besides the what's at the the cement-bound girl. Do you remember that Japanese story with the girl that was tortured? Like the Japanese cheerleader murder or something like that. I mean cement cement girls. Yes cement girls unit 731 also I guess that remind me you saying Japanese reminded me of that as well. That was also pretty horrific history History episode, but this what we're about to cover now is this is among the most harrowing tales in American history and there are quite a few harrowing tales in American history This is gonna get nasty folks. So we are on to it. It's the Donner party part two the bloody conclusion Well actually not so bloody because their bodies were completely frozen by the time you got to the time they got to the bodies They were completely. Okay. Let me rephrase the frozen bloody conclusion. Very good. Thank you

But Alfred Packer was another famous cannibal, which we kind of talking about like kind of cannibalism in the frontier times It was actually not that it was common. No, but it happened quite a bit. It happened twice. That's Twice too many. I'm gonna say I'm documented. How many times did it happen five to six, right? Honestly, though, that's a lot of time It's one time. It's too many times. Okay But Alfred Packer was we were gonna go to the Harold Schechter wrote a whole book about Alfred Packer But it's very difficult to kind of pin down the details of what exactly went down because there was just all we have is Alfred Packer's story But that's a really good thing to look into if you want to look into like how fast it could take one dude to kill five other

Guys to eat them and then live off them for two and a half months in the middle of the fucking snowstorm All right, so when we last left the Donner party They had failed to traverse what came to be known as Donner pass on their way through the Sierra Nevadas to their planned destination of California on the day of November 3rd 1846 the advanced team had been met by a snowstorm on the mountain above Truckee Lake They camped out for the night, but when they awoke they were all buried in snow yikes He went to sleep and apparently one of the lead dudes because like a grown man because at this point I mean it's been hot out there for a pioneer. All right. They're out there. They get stuck in there

They're like, okay, we're gonna make a big push. They were so tired They're like, okay We're just gonna sleep for the night because they were carrying the babies and we got so cold all of the women all the men were carrying all The children which was half the camp right there were wait trying to get them that they couldn't do it So they went to sleep and then the first one to wake up woke up screaming Thinking that he was the only one left on the mountain because snow had covered Everyone and they all just woke up like, huh, huh, like if you've ever woken up in a yard after drinking all night Well, I think if you wake up screaming that they just call that a frontier rooster

Truckee Lake also sounds like a place that you would go with your friends during your Jinko phase And you smoke a really bad swag weed, but you're like hanging out at Truckee Lake Me and Dee were talking about how about if we just made a band that was all bass? So the team decided it was best to head back down and the snowstorm that had begun the day before Extended itself for a further eight days Now before we truly get started on the tales of cannibalism and I say tales in plural It's important to know just how terrible the winter of 1846 into 1847 actually was Besides all the other hardships the Donner party encountered

They were caught in the middle of one of the coldest winners ever recorded not just in the Sierra nevadas But in the entire Western hemisphere. Yeah, they were the middle of a thing called La Nina, which is Spanish for La Nina, I do remember that it's a great Chris Farley sketch I would say this could have done without that If you're on if you're in this camp, you're just like really snowstorm and then you have to laugh You have to look at your friends like this is Like Clark Griswold my mandatory Clark Griswold reference where he just starts freaking it You just have to start laughing and like get me my boss tied with a bow

And then it cuts a Clark Griswold chopping off Beverly D'Angelo's beautiful dress Fucking spoke don't do that as it's written about in the indifferent stars above which again comes at the highest Recommendation it's so fucking good. It's so fucking good Here's some of the other tragedies that occurred that same winter in Nebraska 600 Mormons died of exposure Hypothermia or starvation in a series of harsh blizzards in Ireland The cold that winter was one of the main factors that led to the great Irish potato famine Which killed over a million people? Wow?

And that's just the deaths in Oregon the Columbia River froze Solid and think of the fish Immediately became fish sticks That crazy, and you know the potato famine all they had was potatoes. Mmm. That's interesting It is we learned this one one episode. I forget what it was like five years With the potato I've been telling puffin a lot of history As far as what the Donners Experienced they endured no less than ten blizzards in the five months that they were either just outside or

Actually in the Sierra Nevada mountains walking or living in snowfall that went up to 20 feet deep in some places Whoa, they didn't listen to Anybody they didn't take a bit of advice This is what happens when you don't if you're gonna pull people right ask them what to do you fucking listen to Happens well how yeah, I mean who how many people in the Donner party could you say you deserve this? It's entirely your fault, and how many people were just following orders the guy whose fault it really was He'd already left he took off Well, he had been banished

Yeah, so yeah James Reed and he had made it through the Sierra Nevada's he made it through to the other side But out of the other people they were just kind of going along with it We're gonna follow what this guy James Reed says he seems to know what he's talking about Also, I'm sick of every person that I look at so let's please just part ways as soon as we possibly can So James Reed was the only person fighting in that war in Texas just thrilled to be there It was in California when California just thrilled to be there because he's at least not dying at the Donner party Well, he was doing his duty, and when you further read into it You find out that he went to war because he had to do it in exchange for land in California

I had a sign basically he had a volunteer for the war and then also got land as like payment afterwards And so he went just kind of figured at this point all they'll be fine Yeah, because I figured I was fine. They're like, oh, they'll they will have gotten through at this point, but then they were fucked Yeah, yeah, and he also figured I'm gonna I'm gonna need when my family does get through I'm gonna need to secure a future for them I'm gonna need to secure land and and all that type of stuff his family is still there Yeah, his entire family is still on the other side of the lake Okay, so in the advanced party returned to Truckee Lake the search for shelter began now the Brains who were the largest family They were about the only ones to get somewhat lucky in that respect as they happened upon an abandoned cabin

Hey, all right Others were able to build their own cabins like the foster Eddie and Pike families who squeezed 16 people into a structure they built into the side of a large rock near Truckee Lake where three-quarters of the party shelter So what did they do? Did they would chop down the trees and all that kind of stuff? Yeah? Yeah, buddy. Yeah, this is it. You don't go to Amazon There's no like clickety-click and the shit shows up. They had to build all the shit So they yes the Breen family. Yes, they found a cabin, but I'm gonna use a Quotation marks cabin and say that that was also built by somebody else that was stranded in a snowstorm

And so it was just kind of half made they still had a remake a whole roof By first killing half their oxen and skinning them and then putting pine bows over the top that to keep whatever heat gets in Same thing with his other thing. They just built it. They just these are hard men. These guys are hard big wreck I will say this flex seal it's a flex seal it works It's a different time well three quarters of the party They were at Truckee Lake the other quarter of them made their camp about five miles away at Alder Creek Hmm that was where the Donner party stayed and as if just having their name cursed for no real reason for Generations to come wasn't bad enough

The Donner suffered perhaps more than any other family really yeah, dude more than I scream themselves to death Yeah, more than like the shits family and the fucks family and the crappers No, they lived a whole lifestyle of Toilet money and and fuck money because think about it We're every time you legally say the word fuck the fuck family gets two cents. I didn't know that Now things went wrong almost immediately for the Donners when one of their wagons tipped over and was damaged Hmm in the course of repair George Donner cut his hand which got infected and George would have to deal with a useless

gangrenous limb for the entirety of his time in the wilderness good Lord dude It was like so he cut his hand like first thing and so first of all I'm good. It's good Don't worry guys. It's fucking good and they're like, okay. Sure. Okay, dad and he went out to get firewood And he can't use the hand right so they're like no will help you like I'm fine I'm a strong man Meanwhile the affections crawling up his arm and it keeps this it's just so fucking I see so it's him one arm Covered like holding lumber and the crook of it Dragging it through the while his helpless family is just staring at him

See that's the interesting thing of masculinity it can be not good Yeah, and I think he's using this is it's not it's like when Henry was talking about how his father didn't believe in brushing His teeth. Mm-hmm, and then I said I haven't wiped my ass in 13 years. I'm such a man But that's what these guys were all about. They're all men is like no your arm is falling off And that is why the majority of people who died in the Donner party were men. Oh, mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, and George Donner see the Donner family. It wasn't just George Donner and his kids It was George Donner and his kids and George Donner's brother Jacob and his family But Jacob was they said what did they say that he was not necessarily weak? He was frail, okay?

He was frail. He was sickly. Yeah, he was a reader. He was me He's going in like oh like these like so we're sleeping on these pine needles. You're like, yes This is the softest thing for miles. Oh I like need a memory foam talk I even try to get my mandatory seven hours. Absolutely well to make matters worse for the Donners They tried building a cabin But the snow fell so hard and fast that they were forced to abandon the construction and set up what they thought were three Temporary canvas tent structures, but they would stay in those tents for the duration. Oh, I can feel it

I used to get frostbite all the time as a kid because I was like, I don't need a jacket I knew it was like three degrees in Wisconsin and frostbite. I could just feel the pain that these people were having Which with you Wisconsin people? I don't know anything with our friend Adam works. Yes. They were short. Yes I know it's a point of pride. Okay. Can we have something? Well others were no better off than the Donners a lot of them lived in lean twos or in the cases of the single men They were pretty much just exposed to the elements Geez the single man got the Ross deal of all really yeah, dude They were just left out there because they were the higher to help these are the guys they hired to help them

And so they would have to be which I still don't really understand how the hiring structure still holds in this scenario But they were still technically working for the Donners and helping them put up the tents and put up all the cabins It and then they're like, okay. Thanks. Bye. Bye, and then they have to go to their quote-unquote home Which was just laying in the dirt 20 yards from where the cabin was. Yeah, how are they getting paid every other Friday? How are they working? Why would they just be like no, we're gonna start sleeping in the house? No, well, there just wasn't enough room and there was also some propriety because the house was filled with children Okay, so yeah, but that's those are easy to kill with a rock But I feel like at this with scenario you'd kind of be like well

What if I just kill you and your whole family and I have to cabin which is where again to why I'm not a part of a wagon train. Yeah Well, not only was everyone living in these terrible structures But food was scarce from the very beginning Since most of the oxen and cattle had been runoff killed or just plain died There were only a few left for the duration of the winter and the livestock they did have were also starving So the meat had barely any nutritional value Hmm, and even then once they butchered everything the meat. They had was gonna run out in just a few weeks Now to understand the desperation here

You got to understand how many children were involved in this entire scenario Okay, out of the 81 people left in the Donner party a full half of them were children Geez and most of the people on the expedition were parents So there was definitely a primal instinct at work there, right? I tell you what man Have you ever been on a Disney cruise though or one of these like like carnival cruises where they allow kids? No, we're stuck on there with like fucking half kids and you're on there at the ocean for like two weeks Yeah, man. I tell you what those kids go overboard real easy Screaming and shit. We're not Florida classy, so we haven't been on a lot of Disney

And even though kids were used as a labor source much more in those days to the point where laws had to be passed to limit the Workday of kids eight and under to less than ten hours a day really happened about five years before the Donner party See, I mean even though all that was happening parents who didn't turn their kids over to the factories They didn't love them or want to protect them any less than parents do in modern times Yes, I mean before you cared about them because they were great workers right and they can fit their hands in little gears And you know and they needed less shoes and you can put you can dress them in just a wrap like a weird little sack And just throw them in there and the best part is that to make more kids you get to do your favorite thing in the world Which is fuck yeah, and then make your own little workforce

That's what a lot of the farmers did that's right And you know and it kind of worked both ways because some of them had so many kids because the child mortality rate was so Ridiculously high, but in some cases like just for example like the Brains Every kid they had survived so they had like so they were Which one of you is gonna die we showed up with like nine kids It's like they live through the Donner party catastrophe, and then they die two weeks later getting run over by a fucking wagon I mean how many times kids are fine. All right. This does not sound very fun. I'm just gonna say that No, no no so as the resources of the camp dwindled a man named Franklin Graves took charge and began leading escape missions

Now the first one failed to even get through the pass as did the one after that And the weeks crawled by with no relief from the weather and most of the single man had already been reduced to eating mice and Strips of buffalo hide from their robes isn't that sound familiar ladies What all the single man out there, man What's wrong with that's all that's all they had to eat. That's all they're good for a man get a job That's what I say single man get a job for what's happening out there mice doesn't seem that bad It's yeah, it is beef jerky. It's not beef jerky. First of all It's not necessarily as bad what it's bad about eating mice is that mice that it was all they had to eat

I mean you're talking. I mean how much meat is on a mouse? That's a what's one of those age-old questions Do you remember Pudgy I Pudgy was great. He was chubby. Yeah, but I mean but those are just and that's and there's like what I think there was something like Six or seven of these single guys. Yeah, they're eating mice and it's not and it's absolutely not Beef jerky that they're eating like they're eating rugs. They're eating their clothes And they have to boil them down until they become this jelly that you can consume this is gray Just flavorless stuff you scrape at the bottom of the pot and you just put it in your mouth

And also these are full-grown men. These are hardened a lot of them veterans How are you doing all this shit? And it's like they are fighting over mice Yeah, this is not like they would see one and go run off like it's Wendy when I throw a fucking toy And this is like a full-grown frontier man And there's something about that that's very frightening to me Yeah, there's a bunch of full-grown men with axes fighting over tiny animals It's got to be weird being like Henry come over here take a look at my dump and then you're like look at it It's got a members only logo on it because they had to meet eat their members only jacket

Which probably doesn't taste very good. Yeah, they're just ray on now that none of that's leather anymore, right? Yeah, and that the buffalo hide stuff that they were eating normally. They would use that as glue. Oh my god All right, so not not good. Yeah, once again. Yeah, okay at no point is anything gonna be good here I'm no no it's only gonna get all bad Keep getting worse until the end. They don't set up a six flags or anything like that. No, there's no there's no fun turnaround Okay, this does not become a resort. So is it safe to say this is the high point? Are we at the high point? Yeah, we're at the high point right now. Do you know when caddy shack when they're about to lose the golf course, huh? Imagine it's that the entire time

All right I am now mentally prepared and you mentioned six flags and that was something that I kept thinking about when I Was researching this how boring was this? Oh my god, buddy. I mean you got it I mean this there is nothing to do. You're constantly starving. Yeah, there's no activities You're not gonna be gabbing with the people like it's just survived, but that's the thing It's not even like just survival because there's nothing to survive on it's not like you're forging horrible You know who these guys needed? Ryan Styles

Ryan Styles could make enjoyment out of anything and I'm in there doing party quirks Who's line is that anyway shut up? Well, what's more the extreme cold meant that everyone's bodies had to work harder to stay warm which burned more calories Which meant the people's bodies unwittingly started to cannibalize themselves Before they started cannibalizing anyone else And finally in mid-December about six weeks and Franklin Graves couldn't stand to look at the gaunt faces of his family any Longer and decided he would lead a team through the mountains at any cost

This guy was a fucking badass. He was I like Franklin Graves a lot because he was like fuck this It's like my family's not dying out here like this So the first thing he did was like like we need goddamn Snowshoes and we're turning into it and like just got his family working just like everybody get up right doing this We're making snowshoes and then kids would go on to make shoes from then on which I think was an important way to start As long as the kids weren't the snowshoes. No, I'm fine with Why did it take him so long to be like I've had enough of this like what was white? Why not just do that initially?

Because they couldn't figure out how to do it like they couldn't figure out like how are we gonna get through all this snow? Because it was damn near impossible to get through this. Yeah, and well, not even they thought might be done They also thought like maybe we'll figure a way out of this Maybe a rescue team will come I see but then it became apparent that nothing was gonna happen Also, it's fresh powder snow, which is very difficult to move through so they couldn't really figure that out And also another weird thing in this is that technically they're supposed to Follow a certain type of order in their own minds. They have against what we talked about. It's a sense of propriety George Donner was technically in charge and

He was kind of out for the count on the other side of the camp like they were I forgot like how far away for they five miles Oh, long. Yeah, they were five miles away So technically they had no leader and so they were supposed to have somebody who kind of coalesced everything and Donner was gone Just dying in a tent so Franklin Graves said fuck it. I'll be a leader Okay, we're gonna do it like this and the party that Franklin Graves led Would be known to history as the forlorn hope Not a good sign There's no and there's no B&B there now called the forlorn

The forlorn hope no where actually where they are right now is now truckie, Nevada right right north of Reno Okay, very beautiful beautiful country so there so graves and 16 others 10 men five women and two children Set out through the pass on their homemade snowshoes and there was no coming back from this one They would either succeed or they would die But they did have guides Charles Stanton had already been through the mountains three times before and they still had the Miwok guides Lewis and Salvador They had only a small amount of beef no extra clothes and no tents But they thought this would be enough because the trip was only supposed to last six days. Oh, that's it

That's easy, man. I do six days all the time six days is only part of the week Sure small amount of beef is also going to be the name of my comedy special The forlorn hope ended up stranded in the mountains for a month and a half Oh my god, not good. So where are we at on the fuck scale? All right from like I forgot to DVR We'll last night Oh my god, there are spiders in my colostomy back I would say they're at about a six and a half right now okay. Yeah, about a six and a half This is the story of the forlorn hope

Oh again bad omens mark their departure the day before they left Bayless Williams the servant of the reed family had quote-unquote Lost his mind and died after being ill for weeks having completely given up any hope of survival Okay, now Williams was the first of many to be buried six feet deep in the snow Because the ground was already too deep to even reach too frozen too deep too deep Yeah, but no is 20 feet deep cheese and pretty soon the Donner party wouldn't have the energy to even do that with their dead So the forlorn hope knew their journey would be difficult But they didn't really know how horrible it was gonna be until they actually got out into the deep wilderness The snowshoes worked but the act of sinking down your foot and having to pull it back up again with every step was

exhausting Yeah, and right now you're thinking. Oh, that's not a big deal like oh, I walk through snow I do all this kind of bullshit, but it's number one. You're on a mountain. Yeah number two It is fucking to the death this walk us to the death You are starving and you were bored the only thing you have to concentrate on is the movement of your feet Which is eventually gonna make you kind of go insane Yeah, and also realize the gravity of how fucking difficult this is. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, this one's almost impossible Yeah, I mean to put it in a perspective just think about how big a pain in the ass

It is to just walk like two or three blocks in a heavy snowstorm Yeah, then multiply that by a thousand then no mountain Had the fact that you haven't had a real meal in months Geez and that was just the walking there was also the snow blindness as brown lays it out Snow blindness occurs when ultraviolet be raised reflect off the snow and damage the person's cornea And the higher the elevation is the worse it is it makes you nauseous It gives you a split and headache and eventually it blinds you and if the exposure is long enough The blindness can be permanent and the Donner party didn't have the slightest idea how to fight it

Yeah, I've done without that. Yes, indeed. You know what happened was that they didn't have sunglasses No, they didn't make this look good Why normally this is like not a thing to think about they didn't know what it was Yeah, they're just walking all of a sudden they're going fucking blind I'll tell you what and if you think that's hard try running a podcast network Yeah, man, they should have gotten one of those military grade sunglasses that you can run over with a truck She got an 1846 they should have just ran. I mean just put it in their Amazon wish list. Yeah, definitely They should all be watching the same

Infomercials at the same level of drunk that you do would 4 a.m. And then they would have been fine Yeah, well, it's a good reminder that we're not living in the worst times. No, we absolutely are not But we're all flush with tactical flashlights. Oh, yeah But as difficult as the snowshoes were they were essential in the first part of the journey as the only two without them Turn back in the first day. Hmm bringing the party down to 15 But they hadn't made it three days before they would lose another member But this time the loss would have grave consequences for both the forlorn hope and the people back at Truckee Lake Okay, see even though Lewis and Salvador had crossed the pass before

They'd never taken the path that they were now walking on and that was paired with the fact that the two barely spoke English Why don't they go on the treaded path ever because they can't see the wagon trail? Yeah Because it's covered in snow. Nice. So normally the wagons have ground a path into the rock But they can't see it now And so they're just walking around in their hands and they're fucking half blind as well, right The forlorn hopes main guide was Charles Stanton, but Stanton's fatal flaw was that he was only five foot five I'm being triggered on purpose. It is put in there. You're saying yes. He has little legs I'll put this and I'll read this in the outline. That meant that he has little legs

First of all, I was planning on reading it this way No No, I won't you go back to the block Charles Stanton was very handsome The reason why he died first was because he'd already been up and down the mountain pass three times Oh, he's what a short man could do. He was too good. Oh, I see. That's why you died He was also more susceptible to snow blindness than many of the others And this was only the third day and that time they'd only made it 14 miles and they had 50 more miles to go

Geez Stanton started falling behind catching up to the group at night then on the fifth day as all the others Stood to leave the camp Charles Stanton sat down with his pipe and told him he'd catch up later You know where you guys you guys get down to the end of the hill. I'll be right behind you Hey before before you go Mary Sue Mary yeah, yeah Can you just tell me how seven ends the movie seven the movie seven the it's the It's Brad Pitt's wife's head is in the box wrath I'll catch up to you. Okay strange. You know what the movie seven is

I just need to know I just needed to know it's been plaguing me I haven't got around to seeing it. There's so many there's so much content It doesn't come out for like 200 years. So yeah I Charles Stanton never caught up his body was found five months later in a hollow stump nearby Because remember He had a sense of humor Okay, so remember you ever climb out of the stop maybe he couldn't climb out of the stop

Okay, so remember these people they were not intense at all right They were sleeping outside every night in temperatures that ran from the low 20s to the high teens with mountain winds Making it even colder Wow, and it was snowing almost constantly with only a few breaks And when the Sun finally came out during the day giving them just a little bit of warmth It melted the snow which made it even harder to walk through. So they're walking through a slushie. Yeah, basically Yes, I mean it was either I can feel a tiny bit of warmth on my skin and have to go through a hell slog Or I can be freezing cold and able to walk on like the hard crust of frozen snow, right, right? Now since Stanton died the party had no choice but to follow Lewis and Salvador. Oh man

Poor Lewis and Salvador and if this movie was made in 1978 it would be played by Cheech and Chong I love them and they were not they were not happy no to be in this scenario They were absolutely not happy to be stuck with these people now these guys they did know the land a little better But for the most part they were just as lost as the rest of them. I had Charles Stanton survive just a few more days He may have prevented the party from making a mistake that would cost most of them their lives Again again See the party had got through the six mile valley and it come upon a ridge if they would have climbed it They would have found a road that went down to Bear Valley

Which would have relatively easily led them to the nearest settlement Johnson's Ranch if they would have done that The journey would have taken them nine days at most just a couple more than they had estimated Which would have brought the rescue parties to the camp at Truckee Lake a lot faster Which would have prevented all sorts of tragedy. Yeah, dude It was right over the ridge all they had to do was peek over the ridge and they would have seen where there was oh my god And now do we know if Charles Stanton? He was the one who smoked the pipe and do we know if he was baking cookies in in the stump at this point Do we know if Charles Stanton became like the first Kiebler?

Oh, this is how we're roasting the dead let them roast the dead not us But instead of climbing the ridge the forlorn hope turns south to the easier path and went downhill They then descended into a 3000 foot deep canyon having no idea where they were going or what they were doing total nightmare Yeah, dude, we're moving towards the level of fucked of I've left my keys outside I left my keys inside and I just got out of the shower. I walked out the door thinking there was an intruder now I'm locked outside and I'm new wow The beef they had brought was almost gone and the real hunger was about to begin

The food ran out on December 22nd and on December 23rd and Irishman named Patrick Dolan had a suggestion I've got a bit of an idea I've been looking at your feet and I've been wondering what it'd be like to burbacue him Is that tool blunt for you? I guess you're just gonna never we both Patrick Dolan thought that the best idea was to draw lots to see who would die so that others may live Now this may strike us as premature because they'd only gone a few hours without food at this point I think hey, it's always good to play it. Yeah But you got to remember these people were not only fighting for their lives

But for the lives of their families plus it's not like these people were eating steaks three times a day Right their food was nothing more than small pieces of lean salted beef with less nutritional value than a strip of old trapper No So a piece of paper was torn into strips and the men took turns drawing for their doom Uh-oh and the unlucky soul who drew the long one was the man who had suggested they do it in the first place Patrick Dolan so isn't this ironic? What do you think? It's like rain on your wedding day That is the most Irish thing I've ever heard in my life

Such bad luck, but when it came time to do the deed the group discovered that none of them had it in them for cold-blooded murder Yet, uh-oh But as William Eddie who would by the way we him Eddie he suggested a duel instead of drawing lots We'll leave any has said a lot of very intense things. Will you find out like Eddie's nuts? He's a hero of the story, but he's fucking crazy What if we do a snowball fight and the person covered in the most amount of snow is the one who gets eaten Okay, you know what I'm thinking is we tickle each other until the first one pees their pants I know it's weird, but the first one I pissed our pants. We kill that guy

But William Eddie he was the one that pointed out he's like, you know what we don't have to kill Anybody one of us is gonna die sooner or later, right and the odds were definitely for sooner First of all, they knew from Charles Stanton's description of the terrain ahead They knew they'd made a wrong turn somewhere, but they had no idea When they done it or where they done it. Yeah, you probably don't want the five-foot-five guy being like the scout Hey, you know we can jump onto a tree higher. We are used to we're used to things being harder So we are brave Now in addition to that none of them had enough energy to even leave the camp

They'd made the day before hmm the first to go was a young Mexican herdsman named Antonio last name unknown Okay, no one noticed he'd even died and tell us hand fell in the fire and He made no attempt whatsoever to pull it back out again Wow, yeah after Antonio died the tragedy just kept coming in the midst of a storm One of the men was chopping wood But when he brought the handle back for a chop the head flew off and was lost forever in the snow Oh, now they had no way to chop wood. God every just what you don't want It's crazy. Yeah, so looking for any source of heat the settlers

I think this was actually like Franklin Graves suggestion because Franklin Graves had grown up in Vermont So he actually knew a little bit about surviving in the snow The settlers formed a tent using themselves as post And they used what few blankets they'd brought as a roof and they used the only source of heat they had each other The next person to die was the last one you'd expect to go Franklin Graves. Oh He was among the hardiest men in the entire Donner party much less the forlorn hope But he too succumbed to the cold as he lay dying

He told his daughters who were two of the five women in the group that they should eat him lest they die the same death as him Now another important thing to know about these people's mindset is that they thought all these guys were dying from hunger They were actually most likely dying of hypothermia, but these people had no fucking clue what hypothermia was right Well, they felt like they were dying of hunger. Yeah, that was kind of where it was going They felt like they were dying of hunger. And so they didn't really understand why people die anyway, but hypothermia is a bitch Yeah, for sure. And that's why these people couldn't understand the behavior Patrick Dolan exhibited before he died See a lot of people who reached the later stages of hypothermia exhibit a behavior called paradoxical undressing

See when hypothermia begins the blood vessels constrict so more heat is funneled to the body's core But when the person reaches the final stage the opposite happens the vessels open back up and the victim is suddenly Overheated and so they do what any of us would do and we're too warm and they take off their clothes Yeah, naked out there man. Yeah interesting and interestingly that what I find really interesting in modern times This is why so many urban cases of fatal hypothermia are actually mistaken for sexual assaults Oh and paradoxical undressing is exactly what Patrick Dolan did on Christmas Day 1846 Right, and I'm sure he was not the first naked man on Christmas Day

So after stripping Dolan tried crawling out of the makeshift tent into the snowstorm that had been raging all day Oh, they tried holding him back, but he made it out and this is another sign of hypothermia It's a syndrome called hide-and-die or terminal burrowing It's thought to be a primordial instinct to run for protection and roughly half of all hypothermia victims do it So the group managed to get Dolan back in the blanket circle But by that afternoon he was dead and the hunger was getting worse Their livers have begun to break down and their bodies started producing acetone making their breath smell like nail polish Then more of them started losing it a 13-year-old boy named

Lemuel Murphy managed to capture a mouse while he was trying to find dry wood, and he just popped it in his mouth and ate it alive Because at this point they're all kind of like they're trying to keep their cool Yeah, he's pretty intense. You know, they got Antonio chilling like a Bud Lime in the snow next to him They're just trying to like we're gonna get through all of this right He goes as he eats the food the problem is this about 36 hours into starvation The hunger pains begin to leave because the your body starts to readjust like it makes it so because Basically hunger pains come from the glucose levels in your brain reach a certain point where they're like, okay, you got to eat You got to eat. We're gonna make it really difficult for you to not eat

You're gonna eat whatever the fuck comes across but then after a while your body readjusts and makes it so the hunger pains go So at this point, they're actually feeling not good But they're feeling better than they were because the body started to eat their muscles and their fat Which is kind of why it's like we can live for like three weeks with no food Right soon as you eat it kicks the system back in yeah So Lemuel Murphy he eats his fucking this mouse and then it makes him go fucking cuckoo Venan's interesting Well, you hear those stories with the Holocaust survivors when they were being they were fed a bunch of food and then they

Would die from eating that happened to one of the donors. Oh really yeah, okay, not good So after can I just say it's not good You're right so after the Lemuel Murphy ate the mouse He started attacking everyone else biting on their arms and just yelling one thing over and over and over again Yeah, what did he turn into a shaggy dog? He died at 2 a.m. And his body was rolled out of the circle into the snow There were now three bodies laying in the Forlorn Hopes camp That's when the cannibalism started

Yay! He did! That's when the cannibalism started. I said it. I said the thing. I said the thing. He set the line. And that's when the cannibalism started. I said the line. I did what you wanted me to do. That's from the intro of the show. I know I know it is. I did the thing that they wanted me to do. Rise from your grave. And that's when the cannibalism started. Oh shit. Yeah, I remember these. Oh, I love it. Awesome. So the morning after Murphy's death, it was decided there was no other choice so they began butchering the three bodies that lay frozen in their camp. Okay. So they did have to choose so they had to organize who was going to get who. Okay. Because no one wanted to eat a member of their

own family. Geez. At first they removed the heads, hands, and feet of the cadavers which is common among cannibals as it helps to dehumanize the meat. They seem pretty good at it? Like right off the bat? Well, I mean, it's almost like, again, like a primordial type of urge. Like because you're looking at it and you're thinking like, I can't eat a person so I've got to make this look less like a person. That's why I don't like going to pig roast where the pig is actually on a spit because it's horrifying. Yeah, it makes you feel weird. No, not me, man. It's the opposite. I like seeing the face. I know, I know. I understand. That's what a real, that's a non-hippocrates way of looking at me. I understand. I understand a feat. I actually will agree. I am a hypocrite when it comes to that.

They then opened the torso and brought out the liver, heart, and kidneys. And those, that's, and of course, like that's the most likely thing to do because that's the most nutritious meat by this point because their muscles are all gone. Right. Three of the survivors were either the sibling or spouse of each of the deceased. So the party divided into three groups so no one would accidentally eat the flesh of their kin. They found some dry firewood and the meat was roasted on sharpened steaks. What they said too is that again, their hunger pains had sort of left. Right. And so for a while this was like, they were doing this rote butchering and it felt like butchering an animal. So it was a little bit more like, okay, we can do this. It was fine, but it was slow going.

But they said when the smell of the cooking meat hit their noses, they became ravenous with hunger. I mean, it just smells like fucking beef, sweet, delicious pork, beautiful pork meat. Yeah, interesting. The only ones who didn't partake in the meat were Lewis and Salvador because they looked at this whole thing like this is an abomination of the highest order. Right, right. So the forlorn hope sat in the snow and ate all of them avoiding eye contact and weeping at what they had to do to survive. Wow. Now it is true that they would have probably survived a couple more weeks without the human flesh before they starve to death. But before we judge, it is almost assured they would not have had the energy to continue. They just would have sat

around that fire, trying to find dry firewood until they just starved to death. Well, this is a small exaggeration, but not that much of an exaggeration. When I was 380 pounds, I did sit in the ponderosa booth after about my fifth plate and I did begin to cry because it got quite sad. It's a little different. Yeah, it was one of those aha moments and then I realized I couldn't tie my shoes. That's another moment I realized. This is like the opposite, this is the complete opposite of the Donner party. Yes, eating well fat is actually, while obese is actually sadder than, I don't know if that's true. I've eaten some sad sides. So after the butchering, they got a little bit of luck. The snow stopped and the temperature

dropped, meaning the snow was easier to walk on. Okay. So they cut long strips of flesh from the deceased and dried them over a fire for the further journey. In the end, only four days worth of meat could be harvested from the starved bodies and still they were weeks left to go. Geez. That is kind of what they brought up in the book that was interesting. It was like the way he said it, way brown said it, it was almost a little suspicious. It was like, if you really look at the stats of Franklin Graves, you'd expect a yield of 66 pounds. No, I remember that passage and I remember thinking like, I really respect this guy for doing the math. He called somebody up. He asked him what how much meat it would yield. I respected it.

Yeah. So maybe they weren't very good at getting the meat off the bones. No. Well, okay, think of it this way. Like compare it to the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the Andes in the 70s alive and all that. Those guys were all athletes. They were a rugby team. Right. So there was quite a bit of very good meat left on those guys. So they were able to get some choice cuts, not to be too indelicate, but they were able to get some pretty choice cuts of meat from these guys. The Donner party, by the time they had, by the time they had started to butcher, you know, Franklin Graves and such and the other two, there was very little meat left on their bones. So you think that organized sports would have really helped them?

Yeah, actually, yeah. Because they had a little bit more muscle. But it's also the proper, the proper diets. They had been walking for 2000 miles. They had gump bodies. They had that like the long muscles of walking for a long time and they've not been eating a lot of fat. So that without fat in the meat, you can't properly process the nutrients in the meat. So it's very, very dry. Now after the meat ran out, the only thing they had left to eat were their shoes. So they roasted their shoes and then moved on totally barefoot. And what's more, a lot of them barely had any clothes on their back at all because the clothes had started to rot from all the wetness. And they were walking through these tree branches constantly and the branches because the clothes

were rotted, they just ripped more and more and more. I mean, they were half naked walking through like the Sierra Nevadas in the teens. That's crazy. A few days after eating their shoes, the hunger once again became too much. That's when the first mention of outright murder came. William Foster was the one who suggested that the group kill and eat Lewis and Salvador. Let's kill those guys. Interesting. Which is just that inner like plodding of people pulling each other to the side being like, you see him over there? All right. Imagine him in a taco. Just listen. Listen. I'm being crazy. I'm being crazy. But imagine him on a salad. These are the only, these are the guides, right? That were helping them out the whole time?

Well, they are. Yeah. Yeah, they were. But I mean, this is another thing about survival scenarios is that you always go first for the ones you know the least. Right. Yeah, they're strangers. Yeah. Lewis and Salvador are total strangers. So it's like, yeah, let's eat those guys. We don't know anything. We don't know those guys. So let's kill them and eat them so we can live. So our families can live. Now, we don't know if the two guides overheard everyone talking about this or if one of the dudes who is against it, again, William Eddie, he may have told them about it. But by the next night, Lewis and Salvador got in the fuck out of there. That makes a lot of sense. So they could have just left at any time. I am wondering why they

were still there at all. I mean, some sort of like, you know, human feeling for these people. Yeah, they saw how fucked they were. And so they were helping them and they knew how to live off the land. They could, they've been in these mountains before. They kind of understood a little bit of what was happening. I'm certain that it was still fucked for them. They understand you can live a little bit longer without eating. And he watched, they watched them all eat their families like a weekend. They're like, oh, shit, these guys are for serious. And I really think that the writing was on the wall. When people go off and like, you see people like miming, like putting a stick in, like, like, you know, and roasting them over a flame, people looking

through recipe books, people collecting whatever it is. And like, I'm certain they read the room. Let's get the fuck out. Absolutely. Time to skip town. And they survived. Yeah. No, no, no. There was a glimmer of hope in my voice. And now that's all gone. That's all gone. Yeah. Don't have any hope at all. Get rid of it. The group is called the Forlorn Hope. Cool name for a bar or diner. But yeah, maybe not a great name for a group. Then there was some luck. The group had traveled below the snow line. So there was now at least the possibility of deer. So they all split off into groups. William Eddy, Mary Ann Graves, they finally found a deer. Just see William Eddy with antlers

on his head and be like, they'll think I'm a deer. No, listen, Mary, I've got a great idea. Well, I'll put the antlers on there. I'm gonna go out there. I'm gonna spread up in my asshole and I'm acting like I'm super, super horny for deer. I go, give me, give me wet, wet, buck, buck, give me the buck, give me the buck, buck. So Eddy barely able to hold the gun, much less fire it, brought up his flintlock and by some miracle was able to hit the deer. Wow. He and Mary Ann followed the trail of blood until the deer collapsed. And when they came upon the dying animal, Eddy slid its throat and they both fell to their knees to greedily drink the blood that gushed from the wound. This is good. This is good. This is good. It's like a rosé, but deer blood.

They went full Richard Chase in this situation. I will eventually pay probably several thousands of dollars in my, in my lifetime, like later on, to do this with the chef. You are like Gary Busey in surviving the game. You know, dude, we can, we can do this like we can just go back to the ranch and we can do, I've seen this done many times. I'm not drinking the blood. That's what Henry wants to do. Yeah, we can do that for you. We're not doing it. What are you even talking about? Yeah, we can do it. I experience things differently than you two. I experience things deeper. Yeah. Significantly than you two. Yeah, you hang the deer up. I want to feel the rush of life from that animal into my bodice. It's not how it works. Yeah, sure. We just, we kill a deer,

we hang it upside down, slit the throat like we normally do, but instead of having it flow into the blood bucket, you can just have a flow on you. Like a fat, hairy, god. Give me the bone. Give me the bone. The thing was, that was just Mary Ann Graves and William Eddy. There's still all the rest of them still out there in the wilderness, all looking for their own deer. That night, as Jay Faustic and his wife, Sarah, searched for deer. Jay, the man who had played fiddle for everyone back in Nebraska, slipped out of consciousness and died. Well, Sarah Graves had now lost both her father, Franklin, and her new husband to the Forlorn Hope journey. When she ran into the fosters on the way back and told them what happened, they didn't wait a second before asking if they could

eat them. They jumped right in. They were like, so we can have them then. And she's just like, yeah, I mean, maybe give me like a second. They're like, I just want to look at his dick. I want to see if it's big enough for me to eat it into a bun. It's disgusting to me. Oh my goodness. Wow. So they were all about it, the fosters. Oh, the fosters were all about it. Okay. Like she just looked at them and said like, yeah, you can't hurt them now. Go ahead. So the fosters butchered the body on the spot for convenience of conveyance and brought the torso, legs, and arms back to the camp on their backs. My God. And even though William and Marianne had brought venison back to the camp, the fosters still impaled Jay Faustic's heart on a steak, roasted it, and ate it up. Now,

I don't want to be crassier, but did they tie his arms like a little backpack around their neck? No, they butchered it, meaning they cut off the arms, they cut off the legs, and put them into like little pallets and put them on their backs. So he could carry the torso, and she could carry the limbs. Yikes. But then they said it was the same, it's the smell that did it. They said the overcoming smell of the meat cooking. Right. They were like, all right. So they'd already eaten what was left of that deer. And then Sarah Graves had to sit separate while they didn't just then double down and ate her fucking husband right in front of her. Well, maybe she turned away or whatever. But it was just like, it's fucked because they stuck a heart on a stick like it's a

marshmallow and started cooking and eating it. All them is going like loving it up. Right. I mean, I know there's really no respectful way that, well, no, there is a respectful way to eat a human body. I guess it seems a little bit rude the way that they did it. No, they weren't all sitting around laughing and singing campfire stories. It was still a very rude group. We don't know what they were doing. We don't know. It was still very, very grim. I see. Okay. The party was now down to seven. Five women and two men. They kept going, and finally they reached the bottom of the canyon. But that had come at a price. Since they'd all eaten their shoes, everyone's feet were cut up by sharp rocks and were swollen from the snow. They were only 20

miles from their destination, but the worst was still to come. So now we're moving into the spiders have gotten down the tube. They are inside of you. They've discovered that they can lay eggs. All right. Again, Foster suggested murder. He had his eye on Amanda McCutcheon. But again, Eddie objected saying, she's a fucking mother. So Foster said, fine, let's kill the grave sisters. They need to kill Foster. They're like, let's kill the grave sisters. They don't got any kids. And actually, and now, shit, Sarah don't even have a husband anymore. So what does it matter? Let's just kill any of them. At what point did Foster say, like, you know what, I'm actually really enjoying this.

He seems way too into this. He is, I feel like it's a strange thing that comes over the group where the human meat is easier. And so the human, because it's right there, and they say there's something that changes with what's it Anthropophagy, Anthropophagy, or Arthropophagy, whatever, Anthropophagy, where there's a, when does the lines crossed, right? It's the, you start dreaming about eating human as people, like when you're that level of hunger, you're dreaming about it. And also, there's a thing that happens to your brain when it travels from, you're my friend, Kissel. We hang out, and we drink beer, and we'll smoke weed, and we have fun, and we ride on planes

together, right? To Kissel, you're at least 150 pounds of meat that I can consume, where I'm looking at you, and I'm actively made hungry by your body. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's, this is really getting scary for me here. I don't know, I don't know if a little guy like you could handle all this meat. Ah, you'd be surprised what I could do. No, Marcus would be too stringy. Henry, you're probably, actually I'm probably, Henry and I are probably the best tasting. You're too stringy, Marcus. Oh, do you think so? Who's got the, who's got the biggest tightest butt in this room? Oh, I vote Marcus. You just messed up, buddy. Well, as far as how Foster was thinking,

there was another thing that Brown talked about in Different Stars, was how humans turn feral. Well, and this happens a lot in, you know, places where food is very scarce. Like in, like the Siege of Leningrad, people started eating children. First, they just started eating anything. And it's like, it's one of those things where, you know, you watch a post-apocalyptic movie, and you wonder, it's like, wow, how are all those people feral? Like, how do they actually get to that point? There's actual science behind that. People act like that. Once you take everything away from a group of humans, society and any sort of societal norms completely break down, and we turn into the most dangerous animals on the planet. All right. But after Foster suggested

that they eat the grave sisters, fucking Eddie stepped in again. Okay. He drew a knife and said that he would kill Foster if he didn't fucking drop it. Nice. That's one version of the story. Okay. The other version is even worse. The other version says that Foster even went so far as to lure Mary Ann away from the camp so he could kill her before Foster stopped him. Mary. I'm over here. I'm here with Deborah. Wait a second. What's that? Yeah, it's me. Everybody loves me. Ray Romano?

Come over here, Mary. Certainly not going to eat you with my father. What's he doing out here? You know, considering how weak everyone was, it was probably more likely that Foster just suggested it, and Eddie, like, weakly pulled out a knife and was like, I'm gonna fucking stab you if you say anything else. Okay, right. So everyone is very weak here. Everyone's very weak. Yeah. But eventually, Foster would get his murder, although the victims would not be in their immediate group. A couple of days after the murder threat,

the party, by chance, ran into Lewis and Salvador. Yeah, dude. And if they were doing the Cheech, if it was Cheech and Chong behaving it, they have since found a pine cone that they're smoking, and they're having a great time with two big titted women that they think are big titted women, but it's just clods of dirt that they put together. Now, stories vary as to how it all went down. Some say the party came upon Lewis and Salvador laying by a stream, too weak to move, near death. Okay. And it's said that since they were near death, Foster took out his flintlock and shot both of them in the head. All right. The others say that Lewis and Salvador, who were Miwoks, by the way, I mean, these guys,

they knew the land, and even if they didn't know the land, they sure as hell knew how to survive on it. So it's possible they were doing just fine and were killed as healthy men. Either way, Foster murdered them, and that night, they all dined on their organs. Oh, goodness. Ironically, though, it was actually a Native American tribe who saved the Forlorn Hope. Of course. Of course, it was. It's like they show up with Alfred Packer. Yeah, they fucking killed Lewis and Salvador. They immediately butchered them up, and they were cooking them and eating them immediately, and then they wandered into the camp of the Mayudu tribe with the fucking their bodies of the Miwoks who were there like allies in their backpacks while they're being taken care of.

Yeah. Yeah. Two days after they killed Nate Lewis and Salvador, they just wandered into the camp. It seems like they never really, did they ever have to eat people? Yes. Okay, they did. Because at this point, it seems like they're always like two days away from food, get the deer, going to fight in a tribe. No, they did. They needed some sustenance if they were going to survive. Because remember, they're in the extreme cold, their calories are getting burned very quickly. And also, I mean, these people, the amount of physical energy that they're exerting, it's not hiking. They're climbing mountains. They're climbing up straight cliff faces. They're going down. They're walking through craggy rocks. It's not point A to point B.

It's point A to point C to point E. There is no straight line here. These people are doing horrific work. You know what I'm going to say? They could use a chocolate mint cliff bar, which are really, really tasty. And I don't even live an adventurous lifestyle. Yeah. And when they got to the camp, they were in such bad shape that the children freaked out and cried when they saw them. That's not good. They showed up. Because the way they were described is that they're way they spent their nights where it's just like they would sleep and you just hear like screaming from hunger. And so when they showed up, they're like, they were fucking desert beasts. Yeah. Like Bob from Dawn of the Dead. They

seemed like zombies. They did have a hunger for human flesh. Yeah, they were like zombies. I mean, they're all gaunt. You know, they look like walking bloody skeletons. Wow. And so the tribe brought them in, fed them a paste of acorns, and they all slept in warmth for the first time in months with the flesh of two Miwaks still stored in their packs. Good lord. They probably didn't tell the tribe that they had just eaten two Miwaks. I would hope not. It probably wouldn't have been a bad idea to tell them. I think so. You want to keep the human chest in your backpack close to your chest. That's a secret. But it wasn't over yet. The next day, they set off towards Johnson's Ranch. Johnson's Ranch, I mean, that's where they were going in the first place. Okay.

Johnson's Ranch was the first settlement once you got out of the Sierra Nevadas. And as soon as they set out, just a fucking torrential downpour. Could have done without that. They were shoeless and bleeding, and in some cases, pretty much naked. They stopped every hundred yards or so to rest, but after two miles, six of them just couldn't go on. I mean, these people, it had been a six-week-long, 70-mile journey through the mountains in the middle of winter, and their bodies just gave out. They have to be, I mean, they must freeze, right, with all the water. The only one to make it to the cabin at Johnson's Ranch was William Eddie. Yeah, he's got it again. They really do. You mentioned Unit 731, and there was that scene where they

froze the woman's arm and smashed it with a hammer. They must have felt very similar to that woman. I'm sure they were not comfortable. So William Eddie, after being laid down in a bed, he told him that six others were near death down the road. Eddie's greatest source of pain was the other salvation, because the ranchers followed William Eddie's bloody footprints back to the rest of him. Wow. Yeah, dude. He was just leaking a map. And out of the 17 that had originally set out from the Donner camp a month and a half before, seven made it there alive. But now that people knew dozens were trapped without food over the mountains, the rescue operations began. Hey, all right. But guess what, man? This was six days. This whole thing was supposed to take six

days. They were gone for a month and a half. So those motherfuckers were just sitting there and had no clue what was happening. And they also had no clue what they were going to see when they arrived at this fucking camp. Right, because back at Truckee Lake, the horror was just beginning. In the time it took for the Forlorn Hope to reach Johnson's Ranch, people had begun dying back at the original camp. The single men who only had mice and strips of buffalo hide for sustenance were all dead, except for one. And Jacob Donner, George Donner's brother, had also died, because he'd pretty much just given up from the moment it all started. I see. Well, they said that was really sad, was that he just went and he just laid down. Like, when he was

that there's a, it's interesting about the story too, is that you see what this kind of situation brings out in people, because like Franklin Graves had made him a fucking hero, and it made him go do what he could to get to save his family and change it for everyone. But Jacob Donner, not saying that it was bad, like I'm not blaming him for anything, but he was already so sick that when he got there, he just died. And they talk about this all the time. There's a decision that you make at some point. And a lot of times, in the book, it brings up a good, like people can die on the inside first. And then that's it. Yeah. Kind of like Johnny Depp in the not well-known film, but wonderful film, Dead Man. If you get a chance to watch that. Very good movie. Yeah, yeah.

Now, Margaret Reed, who had lost everything when her husband was banished from camp, this is James Reed's wife. She fed her children boiled ox hides. And eventually, she could only feed him the discarded bones from oxen the others had eaten. Oh, well, essentially, it'll do a thing again that I'll do. You can boil bones down to the point where you can just bite them and eat them. Sure. Then you get the marrow, I guess. Yeah. By February, 14 of them were dead. But at the same time, the first of four rescue missions had set off from Johnson's Ranch, calling themselves the first relief. It sounds like Kenny Rogers' band. First poop of the day. That's what it sounds like. Yeah, first poop of the day. But I do miss this.

Groups of guys. Right. Giving themselves a name. I love it. I love it. Yeah. Because I wonder if that starts first. Yeah, we're putting together the first. You want to join the first relief, boy? Can we be the how about it, boys? Yeah, I want us to be a mountain boys. We're the mountain boys having fun out in the mountain. Oh, yeah. And the first relief, oh, they were a ragtag group of do-gooders and mercenaries. I love it. And of course, it's it's farm-aid followed Willie Nelson performed. Yeah, there was Jotham Curtis, Septimus Mutri, and a German known only as Greasy Jim. I never wash my hair because there's no reason to. Why let anybody hold me? It's too easy to fall in love these days. I prefer to be single. Greasy as a part of so.

They were all paid the kingly sum of three dollars a day, and they arrived two weeks after set now. So even they doubled the trip time. They knew it would take two weeks. They knew it would take two weeks. Well, they were reasonable. And they did run across some like they ran across some troubles, but compared to everything else, like these were all guys who knew what they were doing. Right. They knew how long it was going to take them to get there. They knew what they were doing. They got there two weeks later. When they arrived on February 18th, they discovered the camp was under almost 20 feet of snow. It was so deep that when a person had died in a cabin, the survivors had to dig inclines in the snow from the door to drag them out.

And because of that, corpses just scattered the camp. This to me is the most thing like a horror movie, a part of where this starts, is that they come over the ridge and they're expecting to see fires going. They're expecting to see people kind of like whatever, because they don't really know. And they walk in and it's just dead bodies everywhere. You can see almost nothing because they were essentially completely covered in snow. Yeah. And the guy just came and he was like, this can't be where the camp is because they went exactly that's where they told him it would be. And he just like was like, hello. And like one frail woman like crawled up from the snow. And like and she was like and I think what she said was, you men from California are from heaven.

Yeah. Trick question. California is happen. Tell me about it. I love it 70 degrees and sunny. 22 people were brought out by the first relief. Most of those were children, but scores were still left behind. Now Margaret Reed and four of her children were included on that first trip, which was actually like relatively not that bad. Only two people died on that one. That's it. Yeah. Okay. But one of those was three year old Ada Kesselberg. It took the first relief a day to convince Ada's mother to leave the little girl behind. The man who finally convinced her later wrote that the child's spirit had went to heaven. Her body to the wolves. And as the first relief crossed the pass, they met the second relief on their way to the lake. Hey, all right.

That group was led by none other than James Reed back from fighting in the Mexican American war. It's unbelievable. People didn't believe me that I would be a part of this entire expedition. I said, I'm going to come back from Mexico, go back to the mountain. You can't even believe it's incredible what I can do. James Reed, he had never forgotten his family. But after he lost a battle, he left the war and traveled to San Francisco. And he actually he managed to raise $1,000 to the rescue attempt. And he also gained the support of the Navy got a few men from them. Okay. James Reed went to San Francisco was like, Listen, there's a whole there's 80 people trapped on the other side of the mountains. Could you please help? So James Reed, I mean, he's coming

through. Huh. So when Margaret Reed saw her husband, she fell to her knees. He ran to her. They embraced. He found out four of his children are alive. There's still a few more back. There's still there were still two more back at the camp. And so he reunited with his wife, which he hadn't seen in like four months, only a couple minutes before he said, I got to keep going. I got to save the other kids. Oh my goodness. But once Reed arrived, he'd found the cannibalism had already begun. He did it again. Oh my gosh. Is that when the cannibalism started? No, the cannibalism. Okay, that's when the cannibalism started. Yeah, he did it again. This time at the Donner at the Donner camp. I love it. So James Reed, he went into the Murphy cabin and in there,

he found nod human bones strewn upon the floor next to clumps of inedible human hair. Laying in the beds with a weakened children in the care of a woman named Levina Murphy. It had been the children who had eaten the dead. Really? One man wrote that the survivors looked more like demons than human beings. My goodness. That's a lot, right? Because like kids kind of scare me anyway, just in terms of just their potential. You don't know what's going to happen with them. You know, again, go on a Disney cruise and tell me that you don't experience fear of children. But the idea of children that have gotten a taste for flesh and them all just being like, sounds like immediately looking at you like you're a pile of sausages with an add on.

Terrified. And the Donners had resorted to cannibalism as well. Their children had eaten the corpse of Jacob Donner and George reportedly wept as he watched his children eat the flesh of his only sibling. Wow. The second relief brought out 17 from that whole scene, three adults and 14 children. There's was possibly the most harrowing journey of all. Although there was no way they could have known their fate rested in where they decided to pitch camp on just one night. As Brown wrote in The Indifferent Stars Above, the place where the second relief pitched camp was just about the perfect spot for experiencing the worst blizzards the Sierra Nevada had to offer. And interestingly, less than a hundred years later, Walt Disney chose this spot for a sugar

bowl ski resort boasting the most snowfall of any resort in California. Oh Walt Disney. Great corporation. Wonderful man. And, you know, just down the road, this is how bad the weather is there. Now, there is a meteorological lab placed there specifically to measure extreme weather conditions. And this is where they decided to stay for the night. They had no idea, of course, like that's the thing about the Donner party, like again and again, like it's just they just had no idea. They just had no clue because no one had ever been in the mountains at that time here. They weren't supposed to be there because the Native Americans knew to not be there. Yeah, because it sucked to be in there. Of course, they would have been there.

Yeah, it was like the shining. Yes, yes, very good. Very good, very good. They ate each other up. Now the storm came. Now the storm came on March 5th. It was so cold that one of the men leaned too close to the fire and didn't notice until the flames had burned through four shirts down to his skin. There was so much snow that the fire pit actually just it just kept sinking down. Eventually, it made it down 10 feet and it formed like this big pit that all 17 of these people used as a burrow. Of course, they soon ran out of food. Right. And Elizabeth Graves, another Graves, was the first to die leaving behind a young child. Now that I think about it, it really was the Graves family that got the raw deal. Really? It really did. They were good people.

Yeah. They were hardy people. They worked really hard. They were strong. They were moral like kind of tent poles for the entire party. And they just got fucked up. Yeah, and really like it. And at most points, it was either them trying to help other people or it was just bad luck. Okay. And this is so they're on. This is the second relief. This is the second relief. The first relief already made it back. So they're only only two people died on the first relief. So there's already like a contingent of the Donner party that has made it to Johnson's Ranch. They're safe in California. Okay. This is the second relief. Remember, this is three people, like three adults, 14 children. Jeez. So after Elizabeth Graves died, it was decided that Reed should go ahead

to Johnson's Ranch and send back for help. One adult was left behind in what came to be known as Starved Camp to watch over 14 children. Then after the first night, it was 13. And it was Mary Donner, seven years old, who first brought up cannibalism. Seven years old? Well, it's the thing. There were two bodies up above. Mary Donner, she'd already eaten her uncle. And she told the others, it's not that bad. How scary is that? You look at a little girl, a sweet little girl. She's like, we can just eat the other little more. It's easy to do. All you got to do is um, um, um. And then uncle Jacob goes in your belly. She's like, oh, God, help us out. Kill the little girl. Kill the little girl. Well, I mean, she also kind of

learned it from the camp because another woman, I think it was Jacob's wife. One night, they were cooking and Mary asked her, it's like, what are we, you know, what are we eating? And she said that the woman like with a smile on her face was like, what do you think we ate last night? Shoemaker's arm. Oh my God. We kind of had to make it fun for the kids. I would rather have Damien from the Omen as a child. These kids are crazy. Yeah. Now, by the time the rescuers returned, the children had stripped Elizabeth Graves' bones of the majority of the flesh, eating the heart, the liver, and the breasts. They had eaten the kid who died as well. That was Isaac Donner, Nancy Graves, another Graves. Although she didn't know it at the time,

she'd eaten her own mother. Geez. Now, when another rescue party found pretty much what was a cannibal hole, many of them were leaning towards just leaving them there to die. Yeah, dude, because it's just like, let the snow just take them. Like this is a whole nightmare. This is a whole thing that maybe should just be swept away by time and the weather. But at the same time, like you got, it's still families, and yes, they've become writhing demons, but they got to go to California to be actors. Right. Of course, naturally, yeah. But three men step forward, saying they wouldn't have any of it. Okay. And they carried the children all the way back to Johnson's Ranch. One dude, John Stark, rescued nine children all on his own. He would carry a kid a few steps,

and they'd go back for the next one, and then carry her a few steps, and then go back for the next one and the next one for miles upon miles. This guy deserves a statue. For some reason, I just feel like every time he grabbed a child, it's like when you try to pet a chihuahua that's not yours. I'm trying to help you. And John Stark's family went on to carry the Knicks in the same exact way. Well, love John Starks. Meanwhile, things were getting even more grim at Truckee Lake. Lewis Kesseberg, who up till this point was no more than like just a background character with an injured foot, was slowly becoming one of the story's main villains. I feel like it's got something to do with the foot, because early on, so when they arrived at

Truckee Lake, Lewis Kesseberg was a guy that he couldn't do very much because he stepped on a sharp branch, which is awful. I mean, you think about this shit. I feel like out of all the suffering going on, though, he's like, guys, I did step on a sharp branch. Yeah, so this is a bit of an irony to me. It's for me. This is my right foot, which is my favorite foot. But I think there's a part of it that fed into this insanity, because he was really useless early on. So I think he sat and watched and became more and more demented as the weeks went. Maybe the infections can make you a little nutty, too. Maybe. So one night, Lewis Kesseberg took one-year-old George Foster into his bed. By the morning, little Foster was dead. We don't know if the kid died

of natural causes or if Lewis Kesseberg just smothered him. But either way, Kesseberg took the body from his bed and hung it on a peg on the wall, like it was little more than a suckling pig. Soon after, George Foster's father arrived with the third relief. And when he discovered that Kesseberg had eaten his infant son, he almost killed him, but decided instead that he'd had enough of murder. You think you've had your fill of murder, Mr. Foster? Yeah, he told me if I see in California, I'll kill you, but I ain't gonna do it here. Wow. And consequently, George Foster left Kesseberg there to be rescued by the fourth and last party, led by quote-unquote flamboyant mountain man named William La Grosse Fallon. I love him. They call me gross. That's

only because of the way I dress. Let's go, boys. Up over that mountain, tippity-tap. I love this guy. The fourth relief left on April 13th, 11 months after the Donners and the Reeds had left Independence, Missouri. That's great. The third relief had taken the majority back and only four remained. Levina Murphy, who had watched over the cannibal cabin, Kesseberg the ghoul, and the last two Donners, Tamsen and George. All right. Because George, he'd never recovered from that cut, but he'd survived the entire time. And Tamsen, she'd completely refused to leave him at every turn. Now, the fourth relief knew there probably wasn't much of a chance of bringing back all four. Now, Tamsen and Kesseberg, they were healthy enough

when the third relief left, but the other two were almost certainly dead. What the fourth relief was actually after was loot. Oh, yeah, because that was a lot of shit. Like, these people had brought a lot of stuff. They brought gold, they brought silver, they brought fabrics. We didn't talk about this, but the Graves family had their entire family fortune buried and built inside of their wagon. They had like thousands of dollars of silver like stuck in their stuff. And they knew that will go. And essentially, the deal was is that you get to keep some of the shit and you get to bring back whoever's left. The four of the ghoulish members that are left, the most evil and dimension and sick and broken. You just have to go bring those back. And the gross was just like,

this is not the creepiest thing I've brought back to my apartment. Once the fourth relief got to the camp, what they found was most likely a murder scene. Although it must be said that there's some debate as to the veracity of the flamboyant mountain man's account. Okay. He said when they arrived, there was no one to be seen. But the camp itself was strewn with mutilated arms, legs, skulls, and limbless torsos. One of the guys who had been there, I think his name was Reason, Reason Tucker. He said that he'd been there on the second relief. And there'd definitely been bodies there when he'd left. But then that at least been whole. It's kind of like a battlefield scene. This was closer to a slaughterhouse. That was at the lake. When they went to Alder Creek,

where the Donner camp was, it got even worse. They said when they got to George Donner's tent, they didn't find George Donner. They just found his head. Oh my God. It had been split open and the insides had been scooped out and the brains were in a nearby kettle simmering. And Kesaberg was the culprit. It's me again. I do it again. They called me the chef. What can you do? And when the fourth relief finally found Kesaberg, he was not shy in any way about saying that he was the last survivor and that he'd ate all the rest of them. But he also made sure to say that Tamsen Donner's flesh was the best he'd ever tasted. Oh, well, that's good. Good, good. Oh, tell me, you better yelp it. But Lord, he denied murder and Kesaberg said that Tamsen had died

pretty soon after George. Supposedly after George's death, Tamsen tried to leave because she said, I got nothing here left for me. Like, I'm going to go find my kids. I have to go see my kids. I don't care. I'm going to go. But what Kesaberg said was that she didn't get very far before she fell into a creek. She got wet. She caught a chill and died that very night. And Kesaberg claimed that her last wish was that he should take the last of the Donner silver to their children in California. Of course it was. Absolutely. Definitely. All of this is true. The indifference stars above, if Jeffrey Dahmer would have just read this book, his defense would have been like, Judge, I was hungry. You have to understand. You don't even understand where I was at. I was doing

intermittent fasting. You can only eat 10 hours a day on that. Now the fourth really, of course, they didn't believe a goddamn word of it. Right. Kesaberg, he did have some money in his pockets, but the group knew that wasn't all of it because they had an accounting of what was there. So they tied a noose around Kesaberg's neck and choked him till he gave up the goods. He showed him where he'd buried the rest of the silver. And after the men were paid, they were on their way with Kesaberg following behind Lewis Kesaberg, who ate more human flesh than anyone else during the winter of 1846 1847 was the last survivor of the Donner party camp. He died a free man decades later known till his dying day as Kesaberg, the cannibal. It is definitely a sketch.

To me, this is a sketch where it's like the guy that goes up because it's closer to because we rewatched a cannibal, the musical this week. It's great. It's really funny. It really holds up. But it's the same bit where it's like the guy goes up with six people and he's just all fat coming back. I don't know what happened to those guys. It's some kind of accident. I'm not real sure. It's like Kesaberg just kind of he got to see the abyss. This is a part of me that like I'm not jealous in any way, shape or form. But there's like a thing where you look at it and the idea of like strangely put that caveat in there does lead me to believe you are slightly jealous because I wasn't thinking you would be. But then you did say you're not. So something about

being able to just give a little gander into the abyss of pure insanity and see what it's like to kind of get into. Kind of rub your hands all over it and really get it up to your fucking eyebrows, getting your hair. It's not a WEN fair. This isn't a Comic Con. I'm just saying it must be interesting to be able to go all the way to those depths and then just like be in California. And now you're just a guy going to the store and now you're just living this life and you're just doing your day to day. But you fucking ate a child six months ago. What do you mean my Ralph's card isn't valid? What do you mean? That's so crazy. So did they interview? Because I would love to hear what this guy had to say. He denied it all. He said no I didn't do it. He's like

preposterous. Preposterous to think that I would ever do anything like that. He's like burping up a nipple or something. Out of the original party of the Donners and the Reads, all five of George Donner's children survived. Jacob Donner's family would not be so lucky. Out of all of them, Jacob Donner, his wife, all the kids, only three out of the nine survived. The Reads, however, despite losing everything when James was banished, didn't lose a single one. That's incredible. Thanks to the resourcefulness of their mother. Winners win. Yeah. The Brains, they didn't lose any either, although I would say they owed their greatest share of gratitude to John Stark. In fact, that's what the mother said. She says, I have no one to think but God, Stark, and the Virgin Mary.

Look at that. And two of them did nothing. Technically, two of them fucked up everything else. They said the snow, they did all the bullshit. No, as far as the rest of them went, the rest of the Donner Party survivors, a lot of them, they lived full lives. They were quite successful. Horrible PTSD. Oh, I'm sure. Naturally. Yeah, like I was at Nancy Graves. If you even mentioned the Donner Party, she would immediately think about eating her own mother and she would burst into tears. Another of the Graves sisters, she couldn't cry anymore after she got rescued. She said, if I could, she's like, if I could, what was the quote? I think it was something like, if I could forget what had happened, I might be able to cry again. But since I cannot, I cannot.

There was another one, like there was one other woman that, one of the Reeds said that she couldn't have Christmas dinner without thinking about the Christmas that they had on Donner Lake. Because after the Donners were rescued, it was no longer a truckie lake. It was no Donner Lake. It was Donner Lake. And it was interesting on Christmas days. They did talk about how like, because they saved some stuff. They had these like little celebrations inside of the tents where they saved some beans, they saved a little bit of meat. They managed to kill a grizzly bear at one point and it divided it up, which was very, very, that was an intense fucking battle. Like there's, there's so much here for a movie that has yet to really be like expressed. It's like just the,

the revenant style of going out and killing a grizzly bear, essentially with their fucking hands and then dividing the meat up was very intense. Very intense. Yeah. And yeah. And that's why we keep saying like, go read the indifferent stars above, because our two episode coverage on this, we're skimming the fucking surface on what this story actually is. I mean, this story, there's so many, like there's so many stories, like the grizzly bear story, where like one dude shot like single-handedly took down 800 pound grizzly. And there are tons of stories like that, stories of heroism, stories of cowardice. And that's why this, the Donner Party story is so fucking amazing. And then even what happened to some of them afterwards is a great story. Like, it's like Sarah

Graves, remember her? She lost both her husband and her father on the Forlorn Hope journey. Her life just kept getting worse. Worse. Well, not worse. Well, worse. Yeah. Well, I mean, her second husband, he got lynched as a mule thief. Can't do it. What is going on? Yeah, got lynched as a mule thief. Stealing mules? I mean, how the hell, didn't Rasputin used to steal horses and stuff? Yeah, but that was Russia. That was fun. That was fun. He was having a fun time. But what do you do with a stolen mule? Everyone's like, you didn't have a mule yesterday, we're missing a mule, and now you have a mule, you're a mule. Well, you take the mule from far away, and then you bring it to

where you are, and tell all your neighbors, I bought a mule. Yeah, you go and you put a hat on it, a little jacket, and you say, my son, it takes offense at what you're saying when it's apparent. Oh, man. No, in the Old West, you steal anyone's means of conveyance, and you're fucking dead. Oh, sure. No, I understand. Like, you are 100% dead. Cal rustlers, too. Oh. And Mary Ann Graves, Sarah Graves' sister, she married one of her rescuers, but he was murdered in 1848. And she actually sat there and cooked meals for her husband's murderer. Why? So he wouldn't starve while he was waiting to be hung. Because that's what actual, quote unquote, Christian morals are supposed to be, which is that you care for people. Well, why was he killed, do we know?

I can't remember why exactly why he was murdered, but yeah, I mean, it was murder. It was straight up murder. But others totally leaned into this. Like, a lot of them gave accounts to the press, and Eliza Donner, she published a memoir, but she also denied all accounts of cannibalism which we know very much to be true. Right. And even was it Kasseberg the cannibal, he was rumored to have opened a restaurant in Sacramento. Although this claim, I must say, the claim is highly dubious. Really? Of only, man. Because like, I'm unfortunately, I would go. I would definitely go just to check it out. Of course we'd all go. Yeah. And so the saga of the Donner party comes to a close. And if there's any lesson to be learned from taking a shortcut,

you've never seen how to buy a man, you've never met, it's this. Do you want it done fast? Or do you want it done right? Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Dad. I kind of want it done fast. You know, it's not bad if it's slightly wrong. This was like way wrong, and it was longer. So that's, that's. But that's the thing, they tried doing it fast. And because they tried doing it fast, they fucked up. You gotta take your time, you gotta put in the work, and then eventually it's gonna pay off. I feel like you would really like basketball when Jerry West was the star. Fundamentals. Fundamentals. Fundamentals. I love the way that white people teach basketball. Honestly, guys, this story is so fucked. It's so like,

you get to the end of it and you're just like, I am hungry. I'm also, when I was watching it. No, actually, I'm not gonna say that. I'm not gonna say that at all. Neither one of us, at no point did, when I was researching it, did I think like, I was like, ooh, cheeseburger time. You were like, when Donald Trump goes overseas to meet with a dictator and he's like, I could go for a parade. We could kill some drug dealers. Every time we research, every time you guys do all the research on this, you just come away and be like, I get it. I could do that. Because I jump into their heads. You know what it is, is that I was, I will say that's a part of this kind of story too, is that I definitely was

reading it outside. I was like, I took a break from working in the office over here, and I went to go read the book outside, and it transports you to that place. It's very scary, especially in the very end, when you were talking about being in the, like the snow hovels, and they're stuck down there and you have no other way out. Those are the types of, like, when I have reoccurring nightmares, my nightmares that I'm stuck on the side of a mountain and I can't get down. Man, I would love to see you get arrested, like, on live PD, reading the book. Just be like, don't take my book. No, it's my book. So you're loitering. You're loitering, sir. Wow, awesome. Well, that is totally crazy.

That's insane, right? I'm surprised. I didn't realize how many people actually survived. Yeah, half of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is really impressive, considering they didn't have shoes in the middle of the frickin' winter in the, in the mountains. Yeah, I mean, it was just the, the amount of suffering that these people went through cannot be understated. I understand, again, I wore a very light jacket. I walked all the way to Hollywood video, and it was, it was seven degrees, and it was very cold. I will say there is a part of this that is, it's kind of uplifting in a way. There is. There is. We, we can survive a lot. Yeah. Humans are actually not that frail. Like, we can pull through and do shit. You just have to

want something. You have to want to survive. You have to have something to live for, and they all had that. They were, the frontier people were filled with dreams. Yeah, no, absolutely. It doesn't happen today. No. In today's America, no one survives this. We are not, we're not capable. Yeah, even the preppers, I think, would probably, it's like, oh, yeah, the preppers are like, oh, you're going to survive without your tactical bath? Try. Exactly. The preppers just, they love freeze dried foods. They're eating like kings in there. I've seen extreme preppers. All right. Well, let's wrap it up here. Thanks so much for giving to our Patreon. Henrietta had a great interview this week with Caitlin Doty. She is a, she runs a, what's,

what's the name of her? The name of her book is Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. And basically, she runs a mortuary, and we talk a lot about death and mortuary science, and it's quite fascinating. I hear that book is fucking great. Yeah, she was awesome. It's really great. It's a very good, it's a, it's a fun read, and you learn a lot about funerals. Yes. And of course, you can find all of us on, on social media and things like that. We, what do we have? Do we want to announce anything? Do we have anything to announce? Not quite. We're still, we're coming to DC. Go check out, we'll come to DC in November for the Death Becomes Us Festival. Google for that. Or use Bing. That's what I'm using now. I'm also using Bing. You still have a Gmail address.

And we're also, we're going to be announcing a big tour here coming up soon. We're going to be returning, uh, we're going to be returning to a place we've been before. Bigger, bigger tour. Bigger, bigger tour. Everything might be bigger. I'm very excited for this. I'm excited to hit the road. Yes. I miss my boys. Uh, follow us on Twitter or whatever the fuck it is you want. I guess at LP on the left for all that shish. All right, everyone. Hail yourselves. Hail Satan. Hail Dean. Hail me. Mugu's deletions. Don't eat a child's brain. Try not. Don't. Don't. Do. The map is not the territory. Remember that always.