Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 94 - The Donner Party: Cannibalism, Cholera, and More Horribleness
Episode Date: July 2, 2018The story of the Donner Party is one of the most disturbing tales of western migration during the time of Manifest Destiny, the common 19th-century belief that the United States was destined to expand... across the entire continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Well, the destiny of many of the members of the Donner Party was to spread their actual bones around a frozen Sierra Nevada mountain camp as they were eaten by other members of their party. That's what they manifested. Theirs is a fascinating tale of bad decisions that led to much worse decisions that led to, well, cannibalism. Learn about their tragic journey and also about life for settlers as they traveled West in the mid-19th century, today on Timesuck! NOTE: Working through some volume issues as we make changes. Sorry! My new free Behind the Bit Pandora station with Chad Daniels talking about our favorite bits! https://www.pandora.com/station/play/3978690913982414208?ag=17920720304261509 Timesuck is brought to you today by AmeriGas! Go to MyTimeSuckGrill.com between now and July 4th and enter your name and email to register to win a free Weber Spirt II – E 210 grill ($400 value). Timesuck is brought to you be Leesa! We love Leesa! Get $160 off when you go to Leesa.com/timesuck Timesuck is also brought to you The Great Courses Plus! Do yourself a HUGE favor and get a month of SO MUCH amazing, interesting, and informative content for FREE: https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/timesuck Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Want to try out Discord!?! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions: https://badmagicmerch.com/pages/contact Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG, @timesuckpodcast on Twitter, and www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna be a Space Lizard? We're over 2500 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits. And, thank you for supporting the show by doing your Amazon shopping after clicking on my Amazon link at www.timesuckpodcast.com
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Ever had to eat a human being? No. Well, then there's one thing you don't have in common with some of the characters from today's tale
The Donner party just under 90 mid 19th century settlers looking to make new lives themselves in central California
They left late from Missouri headed west not taking off until mid May if you've ever played the old Oregon Trail
Video game, you know, that's a no-no, you pick April, not May, always April. I know the Donner party took the California Trail for you history buffs, not the
Oregon Trail, but May still too late. I had to play a free online game of the
old Oregon Trail last night because of this episode. It's still pretty fun.
Holds up. Lindsey got lost, Penny got sick, and Monroe died. Sorry, Monroe. But the
rest of us we made it west, And why do we make it west?
Because we left in April.
It greatly reduced our odds of getting stuck
in a mountain snowstorm and having to eat each other
to survive.
After leaving a full month late,
the Donner party lost another full month,
heading west on the California Trail,
taking a new route across the great salt lake desert
called Hastings Cutoff,
which was supposed to shave a few hundred miles
off their journey, and it did shave off some miles.
It also added several weeks to a month because of treacherous conditions.
No wagon road at all in places, a terribly long stretcher, waterless salt flats of northern
Utah that nearly killed all of their supply animals.
And then after all that, things got real ugly.
The Donner party made it to the last big mountain range of the trip to Sierra Nevada's,
a few weeks too late, and they got stuck in one of the heaviest winter snowfalls in the
mountain ranges recorded history.
Blizzard after blizzard, hit the sellers, and after being snowed in at a rickety, quickly
built camp at shitty cabins and shittier tents, the rations long depleted, the travelers made
a few desperate escape attempts that failed miserably.
And then some of them made the more desperate decision to eat their dead.
And a few made the even more desperate decision to kill fellow party members in order to eat them.
Life was hard in the mid 19th century, the journey west, especially hard, and it was hardest on the Donner party.
More so than on any other group of pioneers who helped settle what is now the American West of the Continental Divide. Past the Continental Divide and we dig deep on this go west young
man, but don't eat anyone cannibalistic chapter of Time Suck. Happy Monday, Time S suckers, happy forts you live, you're listing on the fourth.
Kind of a patriotic episode, Americans doing what they needed to do to make it West and expand
our nation.
Work and wait.
It's time for time suck, time for brain candy, time for self improvement without straining
your noodle while being entertained.
Are you not entertained?
So relax, calm the fuck down and enjoy yourself. And if it sounds a little different today
This is like a little transition week. I'll explain all that next week. I'm getting back from vacation
I have some have some changes here in the suck dungeon where we're recording today
Very excited about and just easing into this week. So I will get back to a to a sweeter sound next week
If it sounds a little different
than you used to this week.
I'm Dan Cummins, aka the mother sucker, the master sucker, master Dan, the man Cummins
the fourth prophet in Nimrod, Bojangles, long lost, fifth testicle and lots of other weird
shit.
You wonderful meat sex refer to me as when you send in your messages and you are listening
to time suck.
Welcome to the cult to the curious.
Hail Nimrod.
Hail slash begun slash man. I think you're very sexy. Lucifina. you are listening to Time Suck. Welcome to the Cult of the Curious, Hail Nimrod, Hail Slash, Begon, Slash, Man,
I think you're very sexy, Lucifina.
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Well, the Wrathland summer pack is real time suck.
It's not actually brought to you by Cheeketeele's Wrathland Academy.
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July 6th. Link in the episode description. Okay. Thanks as
always for the reviews and ratings continually spread in the
suck. I am very thankful, very happy to be back from vacation.
Thanks for helping build this community. Every solid rating
review you leave. It does help us so much. Very excited.
Flat Earth tour coming to Orlando next week. Love that club'm be at the improv July 12 to the 14th at the
improv. I believe there's a few tickets left to the live podcast on the 15th with Tom
and Dan from the mediocre time. And then so Cal comedy store and LaHoya, California, July
20 to 22nd. Another great club. Old school, no fucking around. This is how standups
you'll be seeing club date no high. Oh funny, July 27th to the 28th. And August, I'll be
at side splitters in Tampa, second to the fifth Palm Beach improv, 10 to the 12th is
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Now let's go 19th century.
Let's get cannibalistic.
Let's suck on the poor Donna party who were already sucked on way too hard.
And thank you, space lizards, for voting in this fantastic topic and sharing it with
the rest of us. Hail Nimra.
Life in America in the mid 19th century, right? It was way better than it had ever been
before for the average American, unless you were slave, but absolutely terrible compared
to now. If you were a slave, but absolutely terrible compared to now.
If you were a slave, it was,
I'm guessing just as terrible as ever.
I'm sure that goes without saying,
but I feel compelled to acknowledge that.
In 1842, Massachusetts became the first state
to pass laws limiting how many hours a child labor
can be forced to work.
Check this out.
The new laws limited a child
under the age of 12's workday
to a maximum of 10 hours.
Good news, little Billy.
You only have to work 10 hours a day now.
No more double shifts in the coal mine for you, little buddy.
We're taking care of the kids now.
That's incredible to me.
This limit was only legalized in Massachusetts.
New Jersey, back in the same old thing.
Back to work, little Billy, lazy little brat.
Look at that, tears in his eyes after only working 14 hours
in the slaughterhouse today.
God, kids are getting soft nowadays.
Kids, man, when I was eight,
I worked 27 hours a day, nine days a week,
and I never cried once.
Of course, I didn't cry.
I couldn't afford to waste the water
and dehydrate myself and possibly stop working.
The first telegraph is sent between Baltimore
and Washington, DC on May 24th, 1844.
No more wagon carried letters, at least not for that one route.
If you had to send a message to any place other than Baltimore or DC from any place other
than Baltimore or DC, a horse or boat is probably taking it.
The railroads were still just picking up steam.
Pun intended.
The rules for what would morph into modern day baseball are defined in 1845. I know
that has no real bearing on today's tale, but I found it interesting. Cities are growing
rapidly. The nation's population nearly quadrupled between 1814 and 1860 to over 31 million,
swelled by an influx of immigrants. Ireland's great potato famine began in 1845, sends over
thousands upon thousands and thousands of immigrants to Eastern American shores,
turning New York City into the nation's largest metropolis.
Industrialization is booming.
And with all the recent immigrants,
jobs are starting to become scarce in certain East Coast cities.
It's good lands getting gobbled up,
especially if you came to America to farm
and to not work in a city.
The gold rush a few years later,
it would bring a lot of people looking for fame and fortune,
West, but even prior to the gold rush, a lot of Americans just saw endless opportunity and head now west
You can get some land and build a new life for yourself. You can start over
I have always believed the humans live largely on hope if future possibilities seem hopeful life is good
If the future looks grim you just can't see a way to either improve your life or maintain the good life
You've got feelings of doom and gloom set in.
You give someone hope for a better tomorrow and they can overcome a whole bunch of shit.
The Donner party would head west from Missouri in the spring of 1846.
So what the hell was going on in America specifically in 1846?
Well, in 1846 the times they were changing big time.
January 5th, 1846, United States House of Representatives changes its policy towards sharing the Oregon territory with the United Kingdom
They decided to no longer share it
Decided to belong only to America. I either forgot about that or never knew that was a thing a various trappers
From various nations have been living on a regular basis in the land that now encompasses Oregon, Washington, Idaho, parts of Montana, Wyoming, since at least the 1830s.
Lewis and Clark had originally explored the area for the US government between 1804 and 1806.
Lewis and Clark sucked for another day for sure.
A previous 1846, the UK and the US had shared control of the land since the Treaty of 1818 was signed.
That treaty covered a lot of land that nothing to do with Northwest, UK and the US had shared control of the land since the Treaty of 1818 was signed.
That treaty covered a lot of land that nothing to do with the Northwest, in addition to the
Northwest.
It was a treaty that resolved a number of North American territorial boundary issues between
the UK and the US.
A who gets what deal to divide up a lot of land already been lived on by American Indians
who have no idea that their land A doesn't belong to them anymore and B is being governed by
people they've never met. While claiming the Oregon territory for itself, the United States,
one congressman, congressman asserted, had the right of our manifest destiny to spread over
our whole continent. Good old manifest destiny, man. I believe that American expansion in the west
was both inevitable and justified. Hey, Indians, get ready for a reckoning.
God wants us to take your shit.
And if you're not cool with that, fuck you and everything you stand for.
Was the gist of a manifest destiny.
The decision to get pushy with the UK could have easily led to war with the British through
the Hudson Bay Company, at the mouth of the Columbia River.
The British had a reasonable claim to the disputed territory of modern day Washington at
the very least. In contrast, the only part of the Oregon to the disputed territory of modern day Washington at the very least.
In contrast, the only part of the Oregon territory, the US could legitimately claim by
settlement, was the area below the Columbia River, where it now separates Washington,
Oregon.
Above the river, there was only eight recently arrived Americans as recently as 1845,
eight, eight very brave or very stupid people.
I do not have that explorer DNA.
Can you imagine going to a new world,
meet people from cultures that could be extremely hostile,
walk out into un-mapped land.
I don't like it when my GPS doesn't work.
You know, you're going to have to wear no idea
what dangers you might encounter.
Fuck that, you find out, you know.
You find out, you do it first.
You find out if it's safe, you report back to me.
I'm the guy who only swims in the ocean,
and I've only done this a few times
for a few seconds at a time,
when there are a lot of other people around
and they are farther out in the water,
and that's very intentional.
I think that if a shark is gonna get somebody that day,
I rationalize it's gonna be one of those other people
surrounding me.
I use them as human shields.
They don't know it.
They're just swimming and enjoying their lives.
But in my mind, human shark shields.
And yeah, I don't know if I'll ever be going out there again.
Thanks to that time sucker update a few weeks ago when I found out the sharks do in fact
sometimes bite your ween off.
Okay, so despite virtually no American presence, expansionistic 11th president James Poke,
he coveted the organ territory up to the forty ninth parallel
that's the modern day board with canada
poke was uh... was on also on the verge of the war with mexico and is drive to
take that nations northern provinces the american south west
and he had no desire to fight the british and mexicans at the same time so
even though some of his fellow democrats in the congress
uh... in congress pushed him to be more aggressive
demanding that Americans
control the territory all the way up to the 54th parallel, which is approximately where Edmonton
Alberta is today.
He compromised with the British avoided war, agreed to accept the 49th parallel as a
border.
The Hudson Bay Company already had decided to relocate its principal trading post from
the Columbia River area to Van Coover Island, leaving the British with little interest
in maintaining their claim to the area.
And so that's how we got.
I'm glad we didn't take it up to the 54th parallel.
I had to travel so much farther to find decent Poutine.
And if we had it, Vancouver would just feel like another Seattle.
And Seattle's great, but we don't need two of them.
We already have Portland.
So in a sense, we already have two Seattle's.
An easy, easy Portland suckers.
I know you're not Seattle, Jr. I love you.
Shadow in Portland will always hold special places
in my heart.
The new boundary not only gave the US more territory
than I had any legitimate claim to,
but it also left poke free to pursue his next objective,
a war with Mexico for control to Southwest.
And the US wouldn't waste much time
in kicking off that war.
The Mexican-American war, also known as the the Mexican War broke out a few months later.
The first US conflict fought primarily on foreign soil and it would last until 1848.
Prior to this war, Mexico claimed what is now present at Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico,
portions of present day Texas in addition to all of California.
May 8th, 1846, the first major conflict of the Mexican war occurs north
of the Rio Grande at Palo Alto, Texas, and US troops under the command of major general
soon to be 12 presidents, Zachary Taylor, route a larger Mexican force. Zachary had been
ordered by President Polk to seize disputed Texas land settled by Mexicans war declared
by the United States against Mexico on May 13th. Now, this is just a little over a decade
after that battle. The Alamo fought for control of Texas that we talked about in the Texas Ranger suck
while back.
Texas itself barely had barely gained independence from Mexico back in 1836.
And who remembered by the way, the president, Polka, done so much shit.
Yeah, it doesn't so much the concrete of what we now know is the American West.
I'll be honest, I literally couldn't have named one thing Pope did prior to this week.
Actually, if you asked me to name as many presidents as I could a week ago, I'm pretty sure I
wouldn't even remember that Pope was a president.
He only served one term, 1845 to 1849, but he got a lot of shit done, man.
His vice president was George M. Dallas.
Never heard of him.
Dallas, Texas, maybe named after him, maybe not.
Founder of Dallas, John Neely Bryan, founded the town in 1841.
When Dallas was just a pencil, they named the senator, and not. Founder of Dallas, John Neely Bryan, found in the town in 1841 when Dallas was just a
pencil vane to Senator and he didn't give a reason for the naming or it was lost to history.
And I don't think George Jefferson, foot in Texas.
Anyway, poke, born and pined Villan North Carolina.
Former congressman from Tennessee, lived in Nashville, didn't serve two terms because
he declined to attempt re-election.
He was in poor health by the end of his presidency and died of cholera, less than three months after leaving office in 1849 at the age of 53,
which is we find out later in this suck is a terrible way to go out. Oh, man, so it's brutal.
He, he'd get us so much land before he died. On June 10th, 1846, the Republic of California declares
independence from Mexico four days later, the bear flag of the Republic of California declares independence from Mexico four days later the bear flag of the Republic of California is raised at Sonoma and the US Army had south to new Mexico
So a whole bunch of Americans are looking to get in on settling these new territories in 1840s to get in while the Gittens good
Or is too short says get in where you fit in
Pretty sure too short says that Grab the best pieces of land, you know,
get some prime downtown locations
while the new towns are being built.
And there was so much land to be had.
Millions of acres are untouched
by Western settlers.
And they're able to get land super cheap
because of the distribution preemption
act of 1841, which recognized
squatters rights allowed settlers
to claim 160 acres of land in the new territory
after residing on the property for 14 months. A claim it could purchase the property. It checked
this out. Buck 25 in acre, dollar 25 in acre, even if it's a waterfront. That is about $35
in acre and today's dollars. Not going to find decent land that cheap east of Mississippi in 1847.
The average value of land settled in America at that time was already over 10 bucks an
acre.
So way cheaper, way cheaper if you head out west.
And that alone makes me understand a lot of the drive to head west.
Man, imagine if you're living in Boston, Philadelphia, you and your kids, even the ones who should
be in grade school are working 12, 14 hours a day for next to nothing in some shithole
factory making.
I don't know, shit holes, whatever shit hole factories make.
Sleeving to some slum apartment with 37 members of your immediate family.
But if you can make a West, you could possibly grow some crops and sell them.
You know, you maybe have a little store your own, but with your own hands, you could have
over a hundred acres to yourself.
You know, you, well, you can have it to yourself along with the 19 kids, you and your wife,
our wives have had to actually work the land.
But still, you know, you get to live there for free.
If it takes you a few years to save up that buck 25 and eight,
or so be, you still get to live there.
You're still not paying rent, you're not paying a mortgage,
buy it a little of the time, whatever.
You don't have much to lose.
Your life is already shitty.
So the government's practically given land away in the West
because there's almost no one out there.
Remember, in 1845, eight American citizens
and what is now watched in state,
if they're gonna hold their newly claimed territory,
they desperately need to populate it
with American citizens.
So people start heading west for new opportunities.
Little Billy won't have to work 12 hours a day
instead of going to fourth grade.
Now, little Billy can work 12 hours a day
on his papi's farm and still not go to school, actually, but you know, whatever.
Hooray.
After the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Pacific fur company was the next to head west
in 1810.
Company employees through a lot of trial and error figured it to be getting to what we
become the Oregon Trail.
And then due to the war of 1812 with Britain, a lot of what they discovered would be kind
of put on hold, put on pause for about a decade.
And then missionaries started heading out looking to convert American Indians to Christianity,
former trappers head out, looking to live on their own out the wilderness,
you know, start showing up in the Oregon territory around 1824.
And by the early 1840s, early pioneers began following fur trapper routes.
The Oregon Trail was truly established, ending it either Oregon City now,
a suburb of Portland or Fort Astoria, all in the Willamette Valley, you know, present day Historia.
Uh, yeah, Oregon, that's actually on the Oregon coast near the mouth of the Columbia River
where Goonies was filmed, a lot of random trivia, you know, Goonies got a lot of that.
But right now they got to do what's right for them because it's their time, their time
up there down here.
It's our time. It's our time down here.
Major stop on the trail before Oregon City was Fort Hall Idaho near Polka,
Tello, established in 1837 by the Hudson Bay Company. My maternal grandfather's last name is Hall.
And because his grandparents were home stethers in central Idaho, I always thought there was a
good chance I was related to the halls of Fort Hall. No. The fort was named after some dude named Henry Hall,
partner of the Boston firm Tucker and Williams
and Henry Hall, who had a stake in the trading company.
So damn it.
You know, sometimes you learn things
that you're bound to out by.
By 1843, traffic really picked up along this trail
and what was later dubbed the Great Migration of 1843.
Somewhere between 700 and 1,000 Americans
had to west that spring.
These settlers had an extra rough
because the wagon trail wasn't quite finished.
It had to disembowl their wagons
and their present day, the Dowls Oregon,
because there was still wasn't a consistent road
and by road, I mean, a flat area of dirt
wide enough to fit a wagon.
You know, made it all the way to Oregon,
sitting in the Lamont Valley.
By 1846, the Barlow Road was finally completed
and now you could take a wagon all the all the way to Oregon, city of the Millamit Valley. By 1846, the Barlow Road was finally completed, and now you could take a wagon
all the way from Missouri to Oregon,
about 2,000 miles of trail.
And how long did that journey take?
It took between four to six months.
The great immigration of 1843,
left Elm Grove, Missouri, just outside of Independence,
just outside of Kansas City on May 22nd, 1843,
and made it to the end of the trail five months later.
And what a journey it was.
immigrants had to sell their homes, businesses, any possessions they couldn't take with
them.
They also had to purchase hundreds of pounds of supplies, including flour, sugar, bacon,
coffee, salt, rifles, and ammunition, thick slabs of smoked bacon, keep as long as it
was protected from the hot temperatures.
One way to preserve bacon was to pack it inside a barrel of brand.
Also eggs can be protected by, you can protect eggs, excuse me, by packing them in barrels
of cornmeal.
And as the eggs were used up, the meal was used to make bread.
Coffee was another important staple.
They needed to cover in wagon, a covered wagon, excuse me, strong enough to withstand
the elements yet small and light enough for a team of oxygen or mules to pull it day after day, week after week, month after month.
Some nice wagons had rudimentary beds inside, other pioneers such as blankets and a tent
or under the wagon itself, sleeping bags, you know, and blow up mattresses and exist
yet. And sadly, a lot of pioneers died in their sleep, most likely from broken hearts,
and definitely because they weren't sleeping on Lisa's mother fucking mattresses.
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each other. And where were the beds they did have in the wagons, you know, if they even
had one. Most of the wagons were about six feet wide, 12 feet long. They usually made a seasoned hardwood covered with
large, oiled canvas stretched over wood frames. In addition to food supplies, the wagons
were laden with water barrels, tar buckets, extra wheels and axles. Families who own cattle
would bring them along to kickstart their new ranch out west, eat along the way. Nothing
like making you making your dinner walk alongside the trail beside you, right?
Some families also brought along a milk coward to you, bring your own milk, butter, bring your own cheese factory
along for the journey. It's not like you're gonna hit up a travel center or find a 7-11, not gonna
be able to grab a late night ham and cheese hot pocket if you get hungry before bed. No matter how
you prepared the journey was still dangerous.
Man, about one in 10 of the roughly 400,000 settlers who were head and west in the trail
did not make it.
Most died of diseases such as dysentery, cholera, smallpox, or flu, or accidents caused
by inexperience, exhaustion, and carelessness.
It was also not uncommon for people to be crushed beneath wagon wheels, which sounds fucking
terrible. We're actually only shot to death.
A lot of people drowned during perilous river crossings.
Travelers often left warning messages to those journeying behind them.
If there was an outbreak of disease, bad water or hostile American Indians, nearby, usually
those warnings tended to come, I would say, later than 1846 when there's more people
traveling.
As more and more settlers headed west, the Oregon Trail became a well-beaten path
and an abandoned junkyard of surrendered possessions.
It also became a graveyard for tens of thousands
of pioneer men, women, and children,
and countless livestock.
Let's talk about how some of those people died
before we dig into how the donors traveled
and you know also died.
Historians record about 360 immigrant deaths at the hands of American Indians from 1840 to
1860 in various skirmishes.
And 18 August 5th to 1854 Shashowni Indians ambushed and killed 18 of the 20 members of
the Ward family immigrant party attacking them on the Oregon Trail in Western Idaho.
Only two young boys survived.
Killings led to the US military,
abandoned in several of the forts
they built along the trail in favor
of using military escorts for future wagon trains.
The next year, a US Army party set out to get revenge
and eventually killed or arrested
over a dozen tribesmen,
many of whom had nothing to do with the killings.
Tough luck for those dudes, man.
Look, I know you had nothing to do with killing that family,
but you do look kind of like the dudes who killed a family. So we're gonna have to cut you down.
Someone's gonna pay today and it's not gonna be us. A few sellers were killed by bank robbers,
using a new branch, the Oregon Trail to flee eastward, a gold robbing gang led by brothers Henry
and Jack Trisket arrived at the mining town of Sailor's Diggins, Oregon, in August 1852.
Later called Waldo, now ghost town, Sailor Diggins was one of the biggest cities in the
territory, is also a drunk, violent, and lawless town.
The Trisket gang headed right for a saloon, and after a long day of drinking, one of the
men randomly pulled out a gun and shot a passer by dead.
Other carnage ensued, and the Trisket gang ended up shooting 17 more people dead.
Good God.
I have to do a suck on the trisket gang man, including several women in a child.
17 holy shit.
What a way to die if you just barely made it to Oregon.
Right, five, six months of horrific travel.
You're already lost grandma to being too old for the wagon train.
Little Billy just passed away from cholera.
And then he gets shot up by some drunk bank robbing assholes.
What a bunch of bullshit. And cholera man, that get shot up by some drunk bank robbing assholes.
What a bunch of bullshit.
And cholera, man, that was a big one. That was a big killer.
One of the biggest dangers facing travelers on the Oregon Trail, right?
We got to talk about how it got poked.
cholera was a waterborne disease that could cause death within a day,
even in the hardest, hardiest of souls.
Shabin, sometimes if you're already weakened from the hardships of travel,
you could catch some cholera at breakfast and you could be dead by lunch.
Trail stories are full of cholera deaths with most taken place on the Platte River in Nebraska,
Wyoming, because most of the river was brackish.
Wagon trains would camp at the fresh streams draining in and out of the river, and these
streams were prone to cholera as they were used by hordes of travelers for bathing and
camping.
There was no natural filtration.
I'm sure that people with PN taking shits and the creeks, maybe not the creeks.
That's probably kind of weird.
Probably taking shits in the woods.
But there's probably a couple guys who wanted to take a shit in the creek and they did it.
There's no law against it out there.
Thousands died agonizing deaths due to plat-river at collar, man.
Most were dumped and unmarked, forgotten graves.
And how does this disease, it's all been eliminated in the United States since 1911, thanks to modern sewage and water treatment. How does it kill you? Basically, you shit
yourself to death. Seriously, cholera-related diarrhea can hit very quickly after the
bacteria enters your system. And you can shit out a quart of pale, milky white cholera fluid
an hour. And this butthole vomiting made even worse by the constant face mouth vomiting
you are also doing. You can vomit from both face and butthole nonstop for hours. Vomiting
dry heaving abdominal muscles and cramping agony as you dehydrate. All of this can lead to
severe dehydration within hours. It's like a vicious hangover that kills you. Yeah,
and then it just keeps getting worse. As dehydration sets in your electrolyte levels are quickly thrown off, electrolyte imbalance can lead to severe muscle cramps
brought on by the rapid loss of sodium, chloride, potassium.
But you've ever been woken up the middle of the night by a horrific calf muscle cramp.
Well, now imagine both calves and hamstrings and lats, pecs, etc. All cramping like that.
The worst cramps you've ever had as you start to throw up blood because you've torn
your softwaist lining from continual, violent vomiting.
And in some cases, you've also quite literally shit off your butthole.
Pioneers would shit so hard for so long their anus with dislodged from their digestive
trek.
There are numerous records of people hearing a popping sound like a champagne bottle
losing its cork as someone's butthole was violently shot off of their colon. It was common
enough to earn the nickname McGill's pop after one unfortunate settler, Donovan McGill,
you know, had his butthole pop off. It was it was heard and witnessed by a large group
of other wagon train travelers. Careful with the water, right? I don't want to hear McGill's
pop later this afternoon.
And no, you're not long for this world.
Now I'm kidding about McGill's pop.
To my knowledge, you cannot actually
shut off your own bow home.
But with color, I bet you felt like you were about to.
Following the diary, involving dehydration,
a massive cramping came severe, a hypoelemic shock,
which can cause death in a matter of minutes.
You can also experience seizures
in altered state of consciousness.
Fallen to a comb before death,
it was a terrible way to go.
And speaking of an altered state of consciousness,
check out this particular trail death.
A long hard journey is on the trail,
often led, you know, left pioneers in fragile mental states,
which could lead to mental breakdowns.
One tragic example involved westward traveler,
Elizabeth Markham.
One day while traveling along the Snake River, somewhere around Idaho, Markham decided she was done traveling. She declared
her husband Samuel and her five kids that she will not be preceding any further. No
moths. Her husband was forced to take the wagons and the kids, lever behind, though he later
sent their teenage son John back to retriever and then shit gets real dark. Elizabeth later
returns on her own, tell Samuel that she had to beat John to death
with the rock, her own son.
You know, as mothers do,
when they've had enough wagon training
and their son tries to get them to do more wagon training,
fairs fair, frontier justice.
Samuel raised back to rescue his son,
John promptly realizes why if it set fire
to the family supply wagon?
And you find your standing in the fire light
with a dementia expression.
Well, other pioneers are putting the fire out.
Well, accounts differ as to what happened to John.
Some saying he was never harmed.
Other saying he was beaten, but he lived, and then of
course, other saying that he died.
Amazingly, Samuel and Elizabeth Markham,
along with the kids, continue on to organ after that.
They have another child, Edwin, who would become an
acclaimed American poet.
So who knows about that account? A little out there, but I don't know if I believe it.
This one might be a little bit urban legendist. However, a poet named Edwin Markham really
was born in Oregon City 1852. From 1923 to 1931, he'd be the poet laureate of Oregon.
His parents did divorce shortly after his birth, but his biography
does not include his mom beating his older brother to death with a rock. I think that would
be likely to show up. Or would it? Or would it? I mean, I guess that would be a really
inappropriate thing to add to biography, you know? Tonight we honor Edwin Markham, a man
who's poem Lincoln, a man of the people was selected to be read as a dedication of the
Lincoln Memorial. A man who wrote letters to and received letters from correspondents such as Franklin,
Delano Roosevelt, Alistair Crowley, Jack London, Ambrose Beas.
He was a teacher, an artist, an American of renowned, and also years before he was born,
his mother beat his older brother to death with a rock while traveling along the Oregon
trail after going batshit crazy.
After this terrible
death beating and subsequent burning of the family wagon, his father and mother were able
to work things out for the time and go back to making whoopee which did result in Edward's
birth. I don't know how you how you really kind of worked that in. They're also as I said,
a fair amount of random trail mishaps western historian John Unra recorded one such death
in plain terms saying one inebriated 1853 immigrant
misjudge rain swole and buffed low creek drove his wagon in and was never seen again.
That is a fucking hilarious destiny.
Hey John, you've had a lot of whiskey today, but why don't you sleep it off?
Why don't you try again tomorrow?
I'm good.
I know.
Damn, I never ever came in John Wessler
on Carl's and Whiskey or no.
All right, John, think maybe you want to try
the shallow area, about 50 yards below the deep pool
you're driving towards.
Don't buy some of your mixed fuel.
If any man can cross a river or whatever
in the every place is John.
Drowned.
There were also a number of firearm accents,
fear of American Indian attacks,
led settlers to load up with a staggering amount of firepower.
1,1846 Oregon Trail Expedition Diary describes
their 72 wagon train party as carrying 260 pistols and rifles,
nearly a full ton of lead,
and over 1,000 pounds of gunpowder.
Which would be great for a train militia.
However, many of the trailers had no training,
experienced with firearms leading to countless people
who either shot themselves or others by accidents.
Now to be fair,
a lot of people who didn't head west
also died similar deaths.
You know, people died horribly
and often in mid-19th century America.
Life expectancy was only roughly 37.
I mean, think about the doc holiday
in Billy the Kid sucks, we've already done.
How many people died of tuberculosis in those tales?
I feel like every third person
was killed by consumption.
It's getting everybody.
And that was just one of the many incurable diseases
back then, not counting all the heart attacks,
random accents, the doctors, the empties.
You know, could save people from today
that they couldn't back then,
where decades away from penicillin still hard to say just exactly how shady life
was even back then because they're on good records of who died of what and how often because
although a census did exist following through with registration a record keep was left
to local governments and most of them weren't very good at doing that, you know, most of the
towns are pretty newly formed, they had better shit to do, more pressing matters to deal with and keep in track of who died of what.
So, uh, so that gives us some solid context of the journey west in mid 19th century America.
Now, let's look directly at the journey of the, uh, journey of the Donner party and happen to today's time suck timeline.
Shrap on those boots soldier.
We're marching down a time, some time line.
So May 12, 1846.
The Donner Party begins their journey.
A group of nine wagons containing 32 members of the Reed and Donner families and their
employees head out from Independence, Missouri.
Now, the leader of the party is George Donner, a six year old pervert who had brought two 10 year old girls. He intended to marry once he made
it across the continental divide and away from America's rigid 19th century morality loss.
When things got rough later, Donner would eat one of his intended brides in the Sierra Nevada
Mountains and he would marry the other. They'd have a child together, a woman who would
be come married herself, take the name Susan Parton, a great,
great, great grandmother of country singer, Dolly Parton, and that is a crock of horse
shit.
Uh, George Donna was a six-year-old, moderately successful farmer who had been born in
North Carolina, then lived in Kentucky, Indiana, Texas, in Illinois.
Yes, nothing to do with Dolly Parton.
Uh, with him, where his 44 year old wife, Tamzin,
and their three daughters,
and also Georgia's two daughters for previous marriage.
Georgia's 56 year old brother,
his younger brother, Jacob also joins the party
with his wife Elizabeth, two teenage step sons,
five kids under nine,
and a variety of unemployed who they'd hire
to help them on the journey.
A lot of them, they'd have a lot of teamsters, actually,
early teamsters to help travel them out there.
And that's just so crazy, me man.
I cannot imagine wanting to head west in a wagon at the age of 56 or 60.
I can't imagine now at 41 no way.
Maybe at 30 for sure at 21, but hell no, it's 60.
Oh, Farming must not have been going all that well for George.
He and his brother must have really needed the money.
Apparently though, they actually really didn't.
They just possessed adventurous spirits.
You know, they hope to make more money, sure,
but mostly they just really believe
in that whole manifest destiny thing.
They really thought it was their duty.
It was their fate to help expand America.
Make name for themselves at West.
No way I could do that.
I just finished up, you know, research this episode.
The day after getting back from a week long vacation,
you know, it's a national park. You know, I spent six nights, you know, research this episode, the day after getting back from a week-long vacation, you know, so National Park, you know,
I spent six nights in a tent, one tent
with my wife, Lindsay, two dogs,
Penny and Ginger, two kids, Koderman Row.
We got hailed on a few times,
temperature dropped into the 30s and few nights
because we can't, around 7,800 feet elevation
in near the, the bank of Lake Yellowstone.
And while I had a great time,
I was ready to be done when it was over.
We actually had two more nights reserved
and we just bailed.
I didn't catch any fish.
So plenty of critters and geysers, fuck it.
Let's get back to our real beds
and let's get back to a place not infested by mosquitoes.
Lindsey literally got bit over 50 times.
50.
Over, I don't remember the exact count.
I remember it was over 50.
Queen of the suck, I didn't know life.
We slept on air mattresses.
I was able to refill them.
And then you only got too low using electricity from the F-150.
We were able to charge our cell phones.
You know, the kids watched a few movies off an iPad.
We used to quick start, fire starting bricks.
You know, we had pre-cut kindling.
We was able to buy for a few bucks from camp,
get the fire going charcoal lighter.
You know, if the wood got damp,
I had a two burner coal and campfire propane grill
for cooking. We had LED LED head lamps to see with.
We were 150 feet from a heated bathroom.
You know, we were 10 minute drive from warm showers.
We didn't have Wi-Fi, didn't have cell coverage,
didn't have a heater, we weren't sleeping in a bed,
in an RV or a camper.
And so what we were doing is now considered roughing it.
We were technically roughing it.
And at 41 years old, by the end, I thought,
there's no fucking way I'm spending
another full week in a tent ever in my life.
My back and hipstake from crashing on the air mattress,
I'd lay in bed when I woke up to go to bathroom
like 4am, I would just keep laying there trying to somehow
fall back asleep even though I had to pee so bad.
Cause I didn't want to walk 150 feet through the cold
to take a piss in a heated bathroom.
I made a decision that if we ever go to a big trip again,
we're getting a camper in RV.
We're gonna have running water, heat in a bed.
We can do a tent for a night or two, but that's it.
And that was just one week, one in a national park campground.
There was a supply store, a half mile walk away.
If I really wanted to, I could have walked over
and threw a hot pocket in the microwave.
I could have had a little microwave with pizza, burrito.
I could have had a lunchable, premade sandwich,
any number of candies or Patriots.
Within minutes, any time, seven days a week
between 7 a.m. and 9.30 p.m.
and that's just at the one store.
And here's George and Jacob Donner taking their families
essentially on the worst fucking camping trip
you can imagine.
One that is supposed to last for around five months.
They basically did do like one of the worst
camping trips in history by it.
It was all said and done.
And they're doing it at the age of 16, 56, Jacob,
and 56 also has two teenagers and five kids
under the age of nine, what a nightmare.
I love my two kids, I also love having my sperm tubes tied up
so I can never have another one, right?
These guys, they have no battery powered lights,
no Coleman propane grills, no pre-cut kin,
and no cooler full of cold beer and beef.
They sure shit don't have an F-150, no air mattresses.
And unlike me, who was in one place the whole time,
they have to set up camp and break it down almost every damn day.
That's hard work.
Man, fuck the past.
It would be so hard not to throw yourself off a cliff
if you ended up getting sent back into the 1800s.
Right? Compared to what we know now, it just sounds so shitty.
Ah, along with the donors, we're the reads. The head of the reads clan was James F. Reid. back into the 1800s. Right? Compared to what we know now, it just sounds so shitty.
Along with the donors, we're the reads.
The head of the reads clan was James F. Reed, 45 year old native of present day Northern
Ireland who'd settled in Illinois in 1831.
He'd work as a store clerk, a minor, very southern odd jobs, even fought alongside future
president Abraham Lincoln.
His name rings a bell.
The Black Hawk War.
A brief set of scrimmages with American Indians lasted a few months,
took place in Illinois and Michigan territories, took the lives of 77 sellers and soldiers
and over 1000 American Indians.
Lincoln didn't actually fight these scrimmages, but he did serve in the military while they
occurred.
James was accompanied by his wife, Margaret, 13 year old stepdaughter Virginia three kids under nine. His daughter Martha Jane and Sarah Keys, a little older
daughters, a Margaret seven year old mother, who was in the
advanced stages of consumption died on May 28th.
First death of the daughter party trip.
She was buried by the side of the trail.
That probably didn't sting too bad for James.
He's probably looking forward to a fiveish, you know, month trip
with his family, but not looking forward to spending that much
time in the wagon with his mother-in-law.
If anything, her early death was a good omen for him.
In addition to leaving financial worries behind, his business weren't doing well.
Reed hoped that California's climb would help Margaret.
He would long suffer from ill health.
The Reed hired three men to drive the ox teams.
Another was a handyman.
Handyman, sister came along as a cook.
These families started this, you know, their big journey, dangerously late into the season.
A month later, as I said before, man,
they were the last major pioneer train of 1846 to head west.
And their late start would partly sell the seeds
of their gruesome doom.
Within a week of leaving independence,
the reads and the donors joined up with the group of 50 wagons,
carrying a variety of other families,
nominally led by William H. Russell.
Several other families were joining along the way, like Levina Murphy, 37-year-old
widow who had seven kids, her oldest two kids, had families of their own, also
coming along. You imagine that. I mean, truly. Can you imagine being your 37? And
you're already the matriarch of a numerous branches of your family tree.
You had no spells to help you. You're hitting on that fucking five-month wagon train
journey, relying on your son-in-laws
and your kids to help set up and break down camp every day for months on end.
Again, life just comparatively terrible, 1800s.
Travel on the California Trail followed a tight schedule.
Travelers needed to head west, late enough in the spring for there to be grass available
for their pack animals, but also early enough so they could cross the treacherous western mountain passes before winter.
The sweet spot for departure was usually sometime in mid to late April.
Just like in the Oregon Trail game, man.
I'd say I can't believe they started so late, but honestly, it does sound like something
I would do, you know, I probably just like, yeah, it'll be fine.
Yeah, it's not what we hit a little snow, little snow never killed anybody.
What, look, worst case we hole up in a cabin and eat each other, we'll be fine.
And yes, even though I've been speaking mostly about the Oregon Trail up until now, because
we have more data available regarding the westward trail of the Oregon Trail, the Donner Party
again, not heading to Oregon, they were heading to California.
As early as 1841, pioneers deviating south off the Oregon Trail, uh, would head to north
central California along some new trails, wouldn't be until 1844 that anyone would make it
to California with their actual wagons, uh, according to historians crossing the treacherous
Sierra Nevada mountain range with wagons was quote a motherfucker.
I'm paraphrasing.
The Stevens Murphy party had finally proved that wagons could successfully
negotiate the rugged Sierra Nevada, the donors would try and get over in 1844, although the
company barely averted disaster after almost becoming snowbound themselves before reaching
the safety of the San Joaquin Valley. By 1845, the trail wasn't established migration
route and where did this trail go? Well, started in Missouri and initially was part of the Oregon
trail following the plat, you might shit yourself to death with Collar River and then it Fort Bridger cut
off from the Oregon Trail. Fort Bridger being a supply station run by Jim Bridger and Pierre
Lewis. Jim Bridger might recognize his name, famous Frontiersman, Mountaineer, Trapper, Army
Scout, Guide, possible topic for a future suck. If you watch the Revenant movie, that movie
with the Caprio, where he gets attacked by Bear and he's left for dead, you know, by some men
on an expedition with him. The teen who was trying to take care of him in that movie is
called Bridger. That's Jim Bridger. That's a young Jim Bridger. He really did as a
teen, leave a man named Hugh Glass behind after volunteering to stay behind with him.
A guy who was torn up by bear who did live and come back and find everybody,
a little bonus trivia there for you time, suckers.
Fort Bridger was located on the black forks at the Green River,
Southwestern Wyoming, 115 miles from Salt Lake City, Utah.
At this point, you could travel northwest to Fort Hall,
you know, in present day Idaho, following Oregon Trail,
or do you get head west towards the area around present day Salt Lake City?
Jim Bridger, by the way, first American wide explorer who had been to the Salt to make it to
the Salt Lake area, did it around 1825, little more random trivia.
Brigham Young, early Mormon, would found the city the following year in 1847.
Army surveyors and they've been surveying it since about 1843.
So you know, Salt Lake City kind of area just barely getting going in 1846.
While there would be more choices later in 1846, the California Trail split off into
three forks from Fort Bridger, the southern route to the Spanish Trail, that goes on to
the Southern California, then there was Hensley Salt Lake cut off, and then the soon-to-be-discredited
Hastings cut off that helped doom the Donner Party that would, you know, cross the salt
flats north of the Great Salt Lake.
Hastings cut off would take you north of Salt Lake City over the Sierra Nevada Mountains
to the San Francisco Bay, but Hastings had not traveled any part of this proposed shortcut
until early 1846 on a trip from California to Fort Bridger.
Only about 75 wagons had used this route, excuse me, prior to the Donner Party.
Wasn't some well-worn, easy-to-see trail like the much more established organ trail was.
Wasn't established as the Spanish Trail or Hansi's Cut-Off in by 1850 and most of this new trail would be abandoned by later pioneers getting in on the upcoming Gold Rush.
And it was abandoned because it was a shitty trail.
Parts of the Hastings Cut-Off Trail would later be incorporated into the Mormon Trail, getting early Mormon sellers to Salt Lake City, but the trail west of Salt Lake City was shit.
So why did the Donner party take it?
Probably because they were done. They were very not smart. And why weren't they smart? Because
they hadn't rolled in the Great Courses Plus. Time suck has brought you today by the Great Courses Plus.
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But seriously, why did the donor party take the cut the Hastings cut off?
Well, you know, a brand new trail far more unknown than the rest of California trail will
because they started late and they were desperate for a short cut and more on that in a bit.
By June 16th, the company traveled four and 50 miles with 200 miles to go before Fort
Laramie, Wyoming.
Fort Laramie, Fort Laramie, excuse me, 210 miles north of Denver, less than 50 miles west
of the Nebraska border.
I might recognize that from the Oregon Trail game.
They've been delayed by rain and a rising river, but Tamson Donna wrote to a friend in Springfield saying,
indeed, if I do not experience something far worse than I have yet done, I shall say that
the trouble is all in getting started. Yeah, well, I wouldn't work out that way for a later.
Young Virginia read James 13 year old stepdaughter recalled years later that during the first part of
the trip, she was perfectly happy. She does not mention wanting to eat anybody at that point.
No talk at all of who looked the tastiest, no mention of wanting to load up on barbecue
sauce to the next stop because one of the Reed kids looked, quote, ripe for roasting.
No one in the party had said anything at this point from what I can gather like, hey,
James, if you had to guess which one of your kids would be most delicious for a pot roast,
who would it be?
Under like 20th at the little sandy river, most of the wagon train opted to follow the
established trail via Fort Hall and present day Idaho that would skip present day Utah,
drop down through northern Nevada and cross the Sierra Nevada.
It's a little further north to where the Donner party would cross.
Uh, months later, when they found out what happened to the Donners, they must have been
super happy with his choice.
They made it West just fine.
And then the smaller group, uh, you know then the smaller group opted to head to Fort Bridger
with George Donner is their leader.
The Reed family also opted for Fort Bridger.
This group will become to be known,
excuse me, as the Donner party.
Fortunately, no one in this party
had any real pioneering skills
and they would definitely not be happy
with their choice a few months later.
July 28th, 1846, the Donner party makes it to Fort Bridger. Right before the Donner party arrives, landsford Hastings, Hastings, excuse
me, creator of the Hastings cutoff had left leading 40 wagons to head back over his new cutoff.
He left some guidebooks to Fort Bridger explaining that his route was a smooth trip, devoid of
rugged country and hostile American Indians. And it was shortened the remaining journey
by 350 miles. Water would be easy to find along the way, although a couple days crossing the 30, 40
mile dry lake bed would be necessary.
So easy peasy, right?
James Reed thought so.
James Reed was very impressed with the information hastings that left behind.
He's strongly advocated for the hastings cutoff.
He convinced George Donner to take the cutoff, which he may not have done had he read a warning
left for him and the Donner party by journalist Edwin Bryant.
Bryant who would later become an early mayor of San Francisco, the man Bryant street is
named after had reached a portion of the Hastings cutoff a week ahead of the Donor party and
was concerned that it would be too difficult for the wagons in the Donor group, especially
with so many women and children.
He left letters warning several members of the group to not take the shortcut
for Bridger. And for some reason, maybe just because a simple forgetfulness,
Jim Bridger never gave those letters to the Donna party.
Brian would later testify that he felt Bridger deliberately concealed letters.
Why he would conceal them is not clear.
Uh, I can only imagine how sick Brian must have felt when he heard what happened to
the group. He tried to warn on July 31st 1846, the party left for Bridger after four days of rest
and wagon repairs, 11 days behind the leading Harlan Young group that, uh, the Hastings
was leading, Donna hired a replacement driver.
The company was joined by a few additional members camped around the fort.
And sometimes people just hang around these forts along the way for some reason.
Maybe they're, their party something broke down. You know, they need to join in with somebody else.
Maybe they're just, you know, some people trying to get work trying to hook up with a new party.
The party turns south to follow the Hastings cutoff.
Within days, they found the train to be far more difficult than the Hastings described.
They had locked the wheels of their wagons off and to prevent them from just rolling away from them down steep inclines.
Several years of traffic on the main Oregon trail had left an easy and obvious path.
Whereas the cutoff, the Hastings cutoff was much more difficult to find.
Hastings did try to help.
He wrote letters, you know, giving directions that he would stick to trees along the way.
On August 6th, the party found a letter from Hastings advising them to stop until he could
show them an alternative route, you know, taken taken by the Harlem young party he was leading.
Basically, his letter was like, um, yeah, you guys, I kind of fucked up.
Why until you guys come down my new trail?
LOL.
Uh, I guess I didn't notice how it's actually not good for wagons at all.
So FML started about that, but found a new shortcut.
OMG, it's going to be fine.
Yolo.
Uh, James Reed, two other
men ride ahead to get to Hastings. They encounter exceedingly difficult canyons where boulders
had to be moved. Walls cut off precariously to rivers below a route very likely to break
wagons. Hastings had offered in his letter to guide the Donner party around the more difficult
areas, but he rode back only partway indicating the general direction to follow. He left another
note saying as much as the guys who rode a head found. I guess it says something probably like OMG
guys. Remember when I said I would come back to lead you? Well, change your plans. LOL.
Ha ha. ROTFL. Turns out I have my hands pretty full with the party I'm already leading down
a horrible trail. And we're pretty worried about not making it to the mountains in time
and dying and stuff. So you know, just follow instructions on my notes and I'll be good.
LOL, y'all know, thumbs up a motor con, fist a motor con.
Hacings instruction have been to avoid a portion of the trail that went through Weber Canyon
so the group had a choice.
Turn back, rejoin the traditional trail, follow the tracks left by the party Hacings
relating through the difficult train of Weber.
You know, Weber Canyon OR forged their own new trail in the general direction that hastings
is recommended and they decided to pick the new route hastings recommended.
Because again, their guys also wrote ahead and saw that it was pretty terrible.
And the decision they made though was also terrible because they're not now literally no trail at all.
So I guess you know, you're picking between shitty choices.
Who's to say which one was going to be worse in the end, but their choice was not good. The progress
slowed to about a mile and a half a day because all the able-bodied men from the party were
required to clear brush, fall trees. He rocks to make room for the wagons. Man, having
to build your own road as you travel, what a terrible way to travel. Stupid wagons, man,
if only the pioneers could use monster trucks
Everything would have been so much easier so many more mollots on the trail
They slowly made it their way their way through the was wasatch mountains as 160 mile long range
You can see from Salt Lake City and on August 20th they could see the great salt lake, you know, basin
There over a month behind schedule now not good took it almost another two weeks to get down from the mountains with all their wagons.
Food supplies are beginning to run out for some of the families.
Morales plummeting.
On August 25th, that's losing a wagon party member to consumption.
Damn tuberculosis.
They find another letter from Hastings.
He said that there were two tough days ahead with no grass or water for the cattle.
He was like, FML bros, there's no way you make it to California alive. Now I
am a Joe, JK, two more rough days and things get way better. Hopefully there is a decent
chance now. A lot of you will die. OMG, TMI, JK, LOL, YOLO. The donor party rest day then
set off 36 hours later. They were pot committed now, man, too far from for a brazier turnback.
They had to press on, despite terrible conditions.
This is really not going well for them.
Long before they get stuck in the snow,
it's just going horribly.
By August 30th, they make it to the Great Salt Lake Desert,
a large dry lake north of the Great Salt Lake,
noted for miles and miles of barren salt flats.
Things look really bad.
And then things get even worse than they looked.
And the heat of the day, the moisture underneath the salt crust,
they travel on rows to the surface and turn the soil into a gummy mass
The wheels of their wagon sank into it in some cases up to the hubs
The days were blisteringly hot the nights fridges several of the groups saw visions of lakes and wagon trains
Believe they'd finally overtaken Hastings after three days the waters gone some of the party removed their oxen from the wagons to press ahead to find more water
Some of the animals so weakened they were left yoked to the wagons and abandoned.
Nine of reads 10 oxygen break free crazed with thirst and bold off into the desert.
That's not good.
Many other families cattle and horses are also going missing.
The rigors of the journey result in a reputable damage to some of the wagons.
No human lives are lost.
Instead of the promise two days journey over 40 miles to the journey,
it takes it's 80 miles and takes fucking six days.
Well, nightmare.
I've driven through salt flats,
these same salt flats and it's beyond barren.
It's like a weird moon scape, kind of landscape.
I've seen the desert mirages they saw too.
Man, what a cruel trick to think you see water up ahead,
to think you see maybe Hastings and his wagon party, nothing.
Desert mirages, by the way, occur because light bends
to move through warmer, less dense air.
And the desert, refraction caused illusions
are known as inferior Mirages.
Superior and inferior refer to where a Mirage takes place.
Superior means it's above the horizon,
inferior means it's below.
This is why inferior desert Mirages usually
so up as water-like images on the ground.
And the desert, the air is at its hottest near the surface and cools as it rises.
This is why the light refracts down, we're causing the eye to see sky-like or water-like
colors below the horizon.
Stupid fucking science, making poor pioneer so bear at thirsty.
None of the party had any remaining faith in the hasten's cutoff.
As they recovered to the springs on the other side of the desert, they spent several days
trying to recover cattle, retrieve wagons left in the desert. Jesus, transfer their
food and supplies to other wagons. They sent two party members ahead on a horseback trying
to reach Stutters Fort near present day Sacramento which is going to be the end of their journey.
Gather supplies bring them back to the wagon train. Stutters Fort have been built in 1839
with the permission of the Mexican government. Remember this is still tactically Mexican territory
they're in. And is the first non-American Indian settlements of Central California. It was
originally called New Switzerland by its founder, John Sutter. John would also soon build
a sawmill called Sutter's Mill, very famous. Big fucking nuggets of gold would be found in
Sutter's Mill. And the California gold rush of 1849 would be on like Donkey Kong 49ers.
Another possible suck someday.
The remaining serviceable wagons were pulled by a mongrel team of cows, oxen and mules.
It was a middle of September.
Two young men who went and searched the missing oxen reported that there was another 40
mile long stretch of desert ahead of them.
Fuck.
I'm guessing several men punched a wagon to pound a hairy neck.
Just go, so stop sticking this desert. Despite their hatred of Hastings by this
point, they had no choice but to follow those tracks, which were now weeks old, hard to
see in places. On September 26, two months after embarking on the cutoff, the Donner Party
arrives at the Humboldt River, a river not very far from present day Elko Novata, delayed
by over a month, ran him down by the, Elco, good place to get bask food,
if you ever go through Elco Novata.
One of the rare places in the US,
you can get traditional bask cuisine.
So now, with their late start, I've eaten there,
just random, I don't know, popped in my head.
So now, with their late start, losing a month,
thanks to the short cut, it's not a short cut,
they're a good two months behind where they should be,
they're dangerously low on supplies,
they rejoin the California Trail.
Well, before they would get stuck in a winter storm,
shit is already getting real bad for the Donner Party.
There's a murder along the Humboldt group met
Paiute American Indians who joined them for a couple days
and then stole their shot,
several oxygen horses, not cool, you guys.
We really needed those horses, noxes, man.
I think that's what friends.
This will see my friend.
Well, by now, it was well in October.
And the Donner families had split off from the
reads and others to make better time.
Two wagons and lagging behind a remaining group become tangled.
A man named John Snyder angrily beats the ox of James reads hired teams to mill Elliot
when read intervenes.
Snyder turns the whip on him.
Oh shit, you're getting the whip, Reed.
You can't whip.
I like that.
You like you like you whipped? You, you like, you like getting whipped?
You like getting whipped?
You like getting whipped?
Reed did not like getting whipped.
He retaliated by fatally plunging a knife
under Snyder's collarbone, kills him.
Man, never bring a whip to a knife fight.
Well, that evening, the witness has gathered to discuss
what's to be done.
United States laws, not applicable
west of the continental divide.
It was for
a little while longer a law, well, it's actually still Mexican territory, but they weren't
following Mexican laws. Wagon trains often dispense their own justice. How crazy is that, man?
They're lawless territory. No courts, no police, just a law of the trail. And some of
you thought it should, you know, should not be legal to be able to stay out of someone
to death if they whip you. Others thought it was fine.
I feel like if you whip a grown man in the law of the sland, you get what you get.
Some said redacted in self-defense.
Others said he took things too far.
He murdered Snyder.
Should be hanged.
Confirmize his reach.
She's banished from the group.
Which actually works out well for him.
Since then he's able to write on to Stutter's fort and not have to eat anybody.
And that would actually allow him to kind of help people.
We got trapped later.
So now one of the leaders of the party has been banished
for killing a man, winters approaching,
grass is becoming scarce, animals are steadily weakening
to relieve the load of the animals.
Everyone is now forced to walk.
Worst of all, no more notes from hastings.
Maybe he left them, maybe he got lost.
Hey guys, if you're reading this congrats,
you're still alive, LOL.
Bad news, if you're reading this congrats, you're still live, LOL. Bad news. If you're reading this after Labor Day,
probably not for long,
ha, RLFL, JK.
But really, you need to hurry
if you don't wanna have to eat each other in some camins.
TDYL, yolo.
October 7th,
70 year old Belgian man,
known as Mr. Hardcoop,
can't handle the walking.
And his feet become swollen,
and start to split open in places,
and if you're not a podiatrist,
if you don't know a lot about feet, this is not good.
Ideally, you want not swollen, not cracked, open feet.
That is what you would like to have for feet.
Old hardcoop sits down by a stream unable to walk any further.
Maybe gets up again, maybe not.
The wagon train decides to leave him and he's never seen again.
A few days later, October 11th, Paiyut Indians killed 21 of the Donor Party's oxen.
Shortly thereafter, they seal another 18 oxen,
and then they wound several others.
More than a hundred of the party's cattle are now gone.
Just gamma you guys, really not cool.
We are definitely not friends, we're definitely not friends now.
You guys ruined it.
You ruined our friendship.
I really wanted to keep those oxen.
Now we're gonna have to eat each other.
We have to eat them, are you guys?
Yeah, freaking out.
Then on October 13th, another murder occurs,
which is bad.
Ideally, you'd like to have zero murders
on the wagon train trail.
It's not helpful.
Almost all his cattle dead, a German immigrant named Wolfinger
stopped to take apart his wagon and reduce his load
for the rest of the trip.
Two men, Joseph Reinhart and Augustusus Spitzer probably stay behind to help, but return
without him saying that he has been killed by American Indians.
He was not.
Reinhardt will later, before dying, confess to having killed him.
The Donner Party.
On October 16th, the rives of the Truckee River.
A river that flows right through Reno, Nevada today.
This river will lead them into the Sierra Nevada.
Everyone's walking
and almost all the rations everyone is brought to our gun by this point according to one
historian to the bedraggled half starved members of the Donner party. It must have seemed
that the worst of their problems had passed. They had already endured more than many immigrants
ever did. If only that were true. They hadn't even seen close to the worst yet. Things were
going to get so much worse.
It's now October 20th.
The Donner party, been told that the past would not be snowed in until the middle of November,
faced with one last push over the mountains that were described as being much worse to get
through than the Wasatch Mountains.
The Racktack company decides to, you know, decide whether to forge ahead or rest the remaining
cattle bit. They decide that the cattle rest up for a bit, which decide whether to forge ahead or rest the remaining cattle bit.
They decide that the cattle rest up for a bit, which is going to be not good for them.
The party gets a bit of good news though on October 25th, the immigrants, uh, food almost
depleted when one of two men, they'd sent to setters for Charleston, return, return some
setters for it in their present day sacrament only bring seven mules loaded with provisions
and two me walk Indian guides, Luis and Salvador,
plus the news that the past this year, it should be open for another month.
So yay, right?
Another party member, William McCutchen, who had accompanied him to California, is ill
and he remained in Setters Fort.
But the good times don't last long.
On October 30th, 1846, the group prepares to celebrate Halloween.
It is awesome.
The kids dress up as less hungry, less depressed,
less terrified children pretending they don't actually
need treats for their very survival.
Everyone cries a lot, no one gets candy,
someone gets shot.
It's a lot of fun.
None of that happened.
On October 30th, a man named William Foster acts
deli shoots his brother-in-law William Pike.
So that part does happen.
And William Pike dies a short time later
while handing him a rifle.
That's how he gets shot accidentally.
So whoops.
And then as a terrible omen of things to come, snow falls during the burial of this poor
William Pike and trucky canyon, a little north of Lake Tahoe.
It's come weeks earlier while there are still weeks away from making it to the west side
of the mountains.
Snow continues to fall in Halloween and during the first week in November, one family of
the brains makes it up to trucky lake.
Now known as Donner Lake, camp near a cabin that has been built two years earlier by
another group of pioneers.
They're now 6,000 feet above sea level and winter is beginning to set in.
This is bad, bad, bad.
Weather can get rough so fast once you're a mile or more above sea level.
You know, again, the family nice, you know, we can't the bridge bay on Yellowstone Lake
and that's just over 7,700 feet in elevation and shit got crazy in a hurry there. I can't have high amount of it. Man, the weather can
change so fast. We almost got snowed snowed on ourselves the last day of June. The temperature
dropped to 36 degrees overnight. We got hailed on. It would hailed hard like an hour and then
suddenly stopped. Be sunny 10 minutes later. And then again, this is the end of June. I went
on the lake once on the boat. We got trapped in a crazy hail storm on the boats.
And then it was sunny 30 minutes later.
That's June again.
In October, forget it.
It can pound snow and you can September at that altitude.
That far up on the continent, right?
When the snow started to fall in the donor party in October,
some of them had to have known they were fucked.
Two other families, yet he's in the Keysbergs,
attempt to make it over what is now known as Donner's Pass,
but they find five to 10 foot drips of snow, five to 10 feet of snow.
No way you're getting to wagon through that or horse or yourself without modern snow
gear.
Any sign of a trail has been buried until spring and they turn back for trucky lake, knowing
that if they didn't, they'd freeze to death when they stood within a day, all the families
were camped there except for the Donners who were five miles below them, half a day's journey.
Donners would remain a half mile down for the remainder of the Hellish winter.
And I guess you could get through because they did if you had actual, actual like, you
know, gear built for that kind of snow, you know, properly made stuff, which they didn't
pack with them.
Sixty members and associates of the brain graves read Murphy Keesburg and Eddie families
set up for the winter at Truckee Lake, Three widely separated cabins of pine logs served as their homes with dirt floors, poorly
constructed flat leaky roofs.
The families use canvas or oxide to patch the faulty roofs.
The cabins have no windows, no doors, just large holes to allow entry of the 60th Truckee
Lake 19th or men over 18, 12 women, 29th or kids, six of whom toddlers are younger.
Farther down the trail, the rest of the Donner party is camp closer, Alder Creek, where they construct tents to house the
remaining party members.
You know, Alder camp, man, another place that Trossies would occur.
On November 4th, it began to snow nonstop, the beginning of a storm that would last for
eight straight days.
This is after finding those five to 10 feet deep snow drifts.
I'm guessing most of the pioneers just started to cry a lot
and shit themselves at this point.
By the time the party made camp,
very little food remained from the supplies
that stand and brought back from Stutters Fort,
the oxen began to die,
their carcasses are frozen and stacked.
Trucky Lake is not yet frozen,
but the pioneers don't know how to catch the lake trout
that are living there, which I get.
Man, I was on a boat with new fishing poles
and just about every lure you can buy
and me and two other experienced fishermen struck out all day like Yellowstone fucking stingy cutthroat
One man managed to kill a black bear, but that was it. I came way too close to a black bear this past Friday, Yellowstone seriously like an asshole. I got out of my truck
Against Lindsay Lindsey and the kids better judgment by the way
Cuz I wanted to closer look at a black bear off side of the road
Took a few picks took some video jog back to my truck when I
got back, spotted a second black bear and my driver's side rear view mirror.
Some of the bits was standing exactly where I had been standing about five
seconds earlier. I had to shoot you not. I had my back to him. He must have been on
the other side of the road behind me just in the brush. If he would have been
a grizzly, I would have easily just won a Darwin award this past weekend. I
would have been dead and I would have been, you know, justice would have been served.
Forest justice.
Fuck it.
It's the internet.
I would have been the idiot of the year.
Desperation grows in camp.
Some people reason that individuals might succeed at navigating the past where the wagons
could not.
You know, after traveling something over 2,000 miles, they're less than 150 miles from
Sudders 4.
That's part of the tragedy of this.
They were so close to their destination,
they almost made it.
Today, you can drive on I-80 from Donner's Pass to Sacramento,
and it's only 93 miles via the freeway.
On November 12th, it stops snowing,
and a small party tries to reach the summit on foot,
but the powder is too deep, too difficult to get through.
They return that same evening,
over the next week, two more attempts are made
by some other smaller parties, both quickly failing. On November 21, a large party of about
22 people do make it through the past, but they get stuck a mile and a half on the other
side. They give up and they have to head back. Life at the winter camp, a trucky lake,
now donner Lake, and then the older camp is beyond miserable. Life at the at the donner
lake, the camps are cramped and filthy. It snows so much that people are unable to go outdoors for days.
They have to dig themselves out.
Diet soon consists of ox hind strips, which are boiled to make a disagreeable, glue-like
jelly, oxen horse bones are boiled so many times to make soup that the bones become
brittle enough for them to crumble and eat, be able to eat, chew up a horse bone.
Sometimes they would soften the bones,
they would charm before they eat them,
bit by bit, one family's kids start picking apart
the ox-hide rug laying in front of the fireplace
and they roast it in the fire and they eat it.
That's when you're hungry.
That's when you're really hungry
is when you decide to eat a rug.
That is a level of hunger.
I have never felt, and I hope I never feel.
How would a rug even provide you with any nutrition?
I don't think it does.
Why not just eat dirt at that point.
Just start eating the wood of the cabin.
Just cut off your hair, eat that.
Just shitting your hand and eat it.
Just eat anything that is in the sharpest poisonous
that will kill you.
Family start to catch and eat mice
that strain to their cabins.
Many become too weak to get out of bed,
occasionally someone's able to make it the full day trek now to see the
donners who were stuck in their camp.
News come back to Jacob Donner and three of his hired men have died.
One of them is the man who confessed on his death bed that he murdered that wolf
finger guy.
George Donner's hand in your days earlier while repairing his wagon was wagon has become
infected with gangrene.
He's not doing well.
On December 16th, 17 of the most able-bodied pioneers,
some kids leave camp on snowshoes,
they construct it from oxide,
and whatever else they could gather.
Their group would become known as the Forlorn Hope.
So you know, shit is not gonna go well for them.
A few members of the party are now actively dying
from malnutrition, which is probably what happens
when you start trying to live on boiled rug. I'm not totally familiar with the whole food pyramid,
but I do know that boiled rug is for sure not on it. The group is more desperate than ever.
Every member of the Snow-Shoe Party is able to scrape up six days worth of starvation rations,
which are the worst kind of rations. And here's your daily ration. What? This is only
one salty cracker and half a blueberry.
Or I'm sorry, I forgot to explain.
This is your starvation ration, which means you can eat it,
but you will still stuff.
The members of the party are malnourished.
On a custom to campaign to snow 12 feet deep at this point.
By the third day, most are snow blind.
This is forlorn hope.
Forlorn hopes.
You mean, snow blindness, by the way,
is temporary dimming of sight caused by the glare of reflected sunlight on the snow
Never had it, but I've heard of it
So now they're starving freezing and they can't see just awesome
But they press on December 21st the man named stand remains behind
Saying that he will follow the rest shortly his remains are then found in that location the following year
So turns out he was a liar now he wasn't planning on falling anyone.
He was gonna sit and die.
Around Christmas time, the four-learn hope,
that's the tongue twister, man.
If you're a Mushamouth, it is.
The four-learn hope group becomes lost and confused.
They've exhausted their rations.
After two more days without food,
one member, Patrick Dolan,
proposes that some of them should volunteer to die
in order to feed the others.
Some suggest they duel to see who dies.
Fucking death duel.
That's, while another account describes an attempt to create a lottery to choose a member
to sacrifice.
Man, they were considering fighting to not be eating in the snow.
It's crazy times.
Turns out they don't need to duel.
They don't need a lottery.
A blizzard hits.
Two men die anyway.
As the blizzard progresses, Patrick Dolan loses his fucking mind.
Strips off his clothes, runs into the woods, runs out of the woods naked.
He returns a short time later and he's dead within a few hours, which is what happens
when you run naked into freezing woods.
And then the first guy to advocate camelism, ironically, becomes the first meal of human
flesh to be eaten by the the Donner crew.
Possibly because 12 year old the male, thewell Murphy was near death himself. Some members of the group
began to eat flesh from Dolan's body. The Mwell sister tries to feed him a
bit of Patrick, but it's too late. He doesn't he doesn't want to eat Patrick. He
dies anyway. Three of the snow shurs refused to eat him, including the two
American Indians that came back from Sutter's fort. The next morning the
group strips the muscle and organs from the bodies of four dead men,
and they dry it to store it for the days ahead.
Taking care to ensure that nobody has to eat
his or her reliance is fuck.
God, man, drying out human meat to eat later.
That's so gross.
For pioneers, drying usually involves
salting slices of meat, then laying the meat slices out
for two weeks before placing it in brine
for further three weeks after which the slices would be dry with the cloth hung in a cool dry place
away from flies.
I doubt the snow she was had brine.
Guess they maybe brought some salt to salt any meat, you know, from some game they killed.
And so they would just have to dress out a human like they would a deer man, what a terrible
job that would be.
Cutting the meat off human bones, roasting it over a campfire later.
Or was anyone so hungry that it is ate at raw?
How chewy would that be?
Little human sashimi.
Imagine right now you're sitting in an office somewhere, you're around other people
in traffic.
Imagine slicing one of them up, roasting them up, eating them.
That's what these poor bastards had to do.
And I'm going to take a different look now at cannibalism
by peeking into today's idiots of the internet. [♪ Music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music playing in the background, music the ones that haven't been pulled down recently of a Rick Burns documentary on the Donner party. The first couple of comments are from Part Eight
of the YouTube videos of this.
And these first two comments are not idiotic
with my messed up humor.
I just thought they were funny
and I'm guessing some of you might think they're funny as well.
User Brian Foreman posted,
Caseburg was non on a leg bone when they found him.
He had a huge belly and couldn't stop belching.
His first words to the search party were, what took you so long?
Then he asked him if they had brought any steak sauce with him.
This has made me laugh because of the language.
Thanks, thank you, Brian.
I like the notes of him having a huge belly and how he couldn't stop burping.
That really paints a picture, man.
Not just eating a leg either.
Nine on it.
What a great word.
Nine.
Nine paints a totally different picture
than eating or chewing.
Like with nine, I pictured there's little chunks of food
and his beard, little chunks of flesh.
He's wild-eyed.
He's not just chewing, he's attacking that leg
with his mouth, he's almost randomly like he's feral.
Scraping the bones with his teeth like a fucking animal.
Really fancy picture.
User, Hetzho 68 had another one I liked.
He posted,
the green family had a stash of lemon pepper, A1s sauce,
and cattlemen's Illinois smokey barbecue sauce.
That's why they had no problem eating the flesh off
their party, especially the ribs.
I want my baby back baby back baby back baby back baby back
baby back ribs.
Again, again, I love the details.
Somebody else replied under like room mature.
I thought it was funny.
No lazy riding there, man.
Not just barbecue sauce,
cattlemen's Illinois smokey barbecue sauce.
It's the details.
Not just pepper, lemon pepper, right?
These details really make this family seem
like they were cannibal connoisseurs.
They're not just eating human flesh, they're enjoying it.
They're savoring everybody, cooking with some pride.
You know, I picture the dad hold up in that cabin
wearing some kind of family grill master barbecue bib.
You know, maybe he says something like,
stand back everybody, I'm busy grilling somebody.
In the next video, we get the dumb shit.
This is part nine of the daughter,
daughter party, that documentary from Rick Burns.
Elboy 926 post didn't mean to thumb that down.
This has nothing to do with the daughter party.
It just cracks me up, right?
Like he accidentally clicked, he,
the thumb down button on the video
and then instead of just clicking it again
to erase it, he asked a post.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that.
It's okay, it's okay, Elboy.
We don't make mistakes.
Most of us just try and correct them.
Instead of just explaining to strangers why we did something that they may not care for
and then they're not correct in it.
User Carla Thompson leaves about 10 comments in a row.
She has a lot to say about the donors, none of it very intelligent.
Here's some of it she says, and it's hard to read this because the spelling is a little
crazy.
It is morally wrong to kill people for food, but keep in mind, some of these people went
insane, may not have been thinking logically, to realize it is immoral.
Thanks for the clarification, Captain Obvious.
I like that.
It is bad to eat people, if you haven't heard.
However, if you are starving and not thinking straight, not as bad to eat people, it's not
as bad as other people eating situations if you don't know.
Brilliant, brilliant Carla.
Carla also adds, I wouldn't call the plight of the Donner Party a fairy tale by any means.
Uh, yeah, I don't think anyone has literally ever thought of their trip as a fairy tale,
Carla.
Why would you feel compelled to say that?
That goes without saying applies to that very much.
That goes without saying is the understatement of the year
when applied to that.
No one in the video comments as alluded to Donald Party's
trip, West being anything other than horrific.
It is, yeah, it is clearly not a fairy tale.
Look everyone, it's no fairy tale being eaten.
Someone had to say it.
Some of you probably think it's a fairy tale to be trapped in the winter woods and be
eaten alive, but it's not a fairy tale at all.
Then Carla leaves several posts about how it was not good, what settlers did, sellers,
and just pioneers in Americans in general, did two American Indians.
However, she makes a point that the American Indians gave settlers STDs, and that makes it
kind of even.
What?
You know, like we took your land and killed a lot of your people and ruined your culture,
but you did give us a rash on our wings.
So kind of even Stephen.
Carlos says at one point, there are knowledge as well as the natives were limited when it
came to diseases.
It's unfortunate things happen, but they do when cultures come in contact with each other.
I sympathize with natives,
but I also sympathize with settlers.
Their lives were not easy.
At worst treacherous, at every turn on Oregon Trail,
they also gave settlers some nasty
life-threatening, venereal diseases.
This odd post did make me look into this,
and I found out that syphilis the nasty disease that ravaged London in the jack the ripper episode
May have been brought back to Europe by Columbus and he may have him and his crew picked it up from having sex with American Indians
It did first show up in Europe in 1495, which is curious timing, you know three years after his
Expedition finds new the new world, what is overlooked here is consent.
I would bring that up.
The natives give STDs to early explorers
or were STDs taken from them
when the native women were raped.
Not sure, all those native women were just,
we're just happy to bed these explorers
as the second they hit the beach.
Finally, the user madhatter posts
expectantly insanity saying,
once you eat human flesh, you lose your soul.
A level when people post nonsense as fact, you know, you actually lose your
soul when you eat someone right? Yep.
Sciences have figured it out.
The second you take one bite of anyone, your soul slips away right down to hell.
We've known that since the Mike Tyson, the Vanderholy Field fight on June 28,
1997. If you watch the replay, you can see Tyson's soul goes slip under the ring, right after taking a bite
of Holy Fields here.
Fact.
It is an adventure that can't be.
All right, back to the Donner timeline.
Justin Time for Christmas.
The holidays are getting a little better
for those still can't have the Donner Lake.
Margaret Reed, wife of the bandage James Reed,
managed to save enough food for her kids to make pot of soup,
to delight her for children on Christmas.
But by January, they were facing starvation
and considered eating the ox heights that served as a roof.
Right, some people have already eaten the rug,
they're thinking about eating the roof.
Margaret Reed, Virginia, Milt Elliott,
some servant girl they met, lies the Williams, attempted to walk out,
reason to be better to try and bring food back,
then just sit and watch children starve.
And they actually do leave for four days,
but then they have to turn back.
The new year doesn't treat the snowshoeing party very well.
The snowshoors kept moving, and after a few days,
right, they'd eat in all the meat,
they'd taken from those four dead men.
They began to take apart their snowshoes,
eat the ox hide webbing their
shoes now
they're eating their shoes
and then they discuss killing the two me walk american in his long with them
the only two living members of the snowshoes
who had declined to eat human flesh up until this point by the way
but then another party member
uh... dies during the night uh... lewis and salvador
uh... the me walks they hear from one of the members uh... that they are
can be
that's the the guys are
considering to eat them and they run off in fear of their lives. Two other members take
off to hunt the next day. When they return with deer meat, the man who died the night before
is already being cut up and eaten. January 10th, the few remaining snow shurs come across
Salvador and Luis, the mewoks, who had not eaten for about nine days at this point.
They're close to death. A man named William Foster shoots the pair, believing that their flesh was the group's
last help avoiding imminent death from starvation.
Those would be the only two members of the Donner party who would be murdered to be
eaten.
The rest are believed to have died naturally, although others could have easily been murdered
and just known and confessed to it.
On January 12, the group stumbles into a Miwok camp looking so deteriorated, they scare
the shit out of the camps inhabitants who initially fled in fear when they saw
these fucking zombies walking into their camp. Then the mewocks gave them what they had
to eat, gave them acorns, grass, and pine nuts, guessing that the pioneers did not mention
anyone in the camp that they'd recently eaten. A few of these people's fellow tribe members.
You know, there was probably no, man, these are good pine nuts. Hot damn.
Really wish I had some, uh, had some Salvador to go do.
Oh, uh, this is, this is terribly awkward.
After a few days, one of the seven remaining members of the four-learn hope party, William
Eddie continues on with the help of the me walk to a ranch in a small farming community
at the edge of the Sacramento Valley.
So one of these sons of bitches actually makes it out with his party.
And then they, uh, quickly assemble a rescue party and they get the other six
survivors of the Forlorn Hope party on January 17th. They're a journey from trucky lake
and taking 33 days. And they had to eat several people in order to do it. The following month
on February 18th, seven members of an initial rescue party organized by William Eddie make it back to Donner's Lake.
When they arrive, one Donner party member named Mrs. Murphy appears from a quote, appears from a hole in the snow.
The cabins have been completely buried.
She stares at them and asks, are you men from California or do you come from heaven?
That's when you know you lost your goddamn mind.
When you don't know people from California or heaven, the relief party dulls out food
and small portions concern that they might kill the emaciated people, that their rescuing
if they overeat.
Sodden oxide roofs had begun to rot.
The smell was quote overpowering.
Thirteen people were dead and their bodies had been loosely buried in the snow near the
cabin roofs.
Fuck me.
Three of the rescue party trekked to the donors
and brought back four gone children and three adults.
The infection in George Donner's hand has spread to his arm.
The arm is so gangrenous, he can't move.
It must be an tremendous amount of pain.
23 people were chosen to go back with this rescue party,
including the wife of James Reed, Margaret,
leaving 21 in the cabins of Truckee, slash Donner Lake,
and another 12 at Alder or creek where the donors are.
To die on the way to Sutter's Fort
from this group on the way,
they run into a second rescue group
that's heading back to Donner's Pass.
This one led by the previously banished James Reed,
Margaret, his wife collapses in the snow
and weeps upon hearing her husband's voice.
March 1st, second rescue party
makes it to winter camp on Donner's Lake.
Incredibly, no one had died during the interim between the departure of the first relief party has been voice. March 1st, second rescue party makes it to winter camp on Donner's Lake.
Incredibly no one had died during the interim between the departure of the first relief
party and the arrival of the second relief party. Unfortunately, this was mostly because
they started eating the people who died before the first rescuers reached the camp. The first
two members of the relief party to reach the Donner camp a little ways past the lake.
This is what they see. They're walking, they're walking to the, you know, the, the, the donor camp. They see some
son of a bitch carrying a human leg when they make their presence known. He throws into a hole
in the snow that contain the mostly dismembered body of Jacob Donner. So that's down by the
Alder Camp camp. That's what they see when they walk up. No, no, hey, hey, hey guys, I know this
looks bad. Damn foxes. I mean wolves, I mean fox wolves,
keep eating our dead sight.
I was just taking back a leg from one of them
and putting it with the rest of the body
until we gave him a proper burial later.
So how do you explain the specs of leg meat in your beard?
I just said, you know, the fox, the fucking fox wolves.
I don't know.
Inside the tent, Elizabeth Donner has refused to eat,
although her children are being nourished now
by the organs of their father.
Yep, yep.
And these kids would live.
They would have to live with the memory
of eating their own father.
The rescuers discovered that three other bodies
that already been consumed, motherfuck,
in the other tent, George's infection,
his gangreness infection had now reached his shoulder.
His whole arm, it to his shoulder, his gangreness infection had now reached his shoulder his whole arm
It to a shoulder his gangreness his wife tamson still well at this point
But insists on remaining with her husband they wanted to leave she will not the second relief party evacuate 17 members
All but three your kids they get caught in a blizzard on the way back one child freezes to death
One of the dawner girls feet are so badly or excuse me so badly burned because they're so frostbitten that
when she fell asleep, she didn't even realize her feet are in the fire.
The relief party ended up splitting up in the blizzard and the chaos that would follow
two additional children would end up being eaten.
Their mutilated remains would be found later in the snow.
Man, how much does that suck, man?
The rescue party rescue you from a camp where people are being eaten and you just end up
getting eaten anyway when your rescue party gets stuck in a fucking blizzard.
A third rescue party reaches the camp on March 14th, George and Tamson are still alive,
but George is still too sick to travel and Tamson is still refusing to leave her husband.
Four children are rescued by this third rescue party.
On April 10th, a fourth rescue party arrives to find George Donner dead.
Tamson is not in the tent with him.
On their way back to Truckee Lake, the rescuers find the last living member of the Donner
Party, a man named Lewis Keesburg, and he tells them what happened to Tamson.
I'll give you a hint, she gets eaten.
Lewis Keesburg was born in Germany on May 22, 1814.
He's married on June 22, 1842.
Two years later, Immigrant States out for that joins the Donner party
with his wife and two young kids.
And according to Lewis,
Tamson Donner arrived as cabin on her way over the past,
soaked and visibly upset.
Lewis said that he put a blanket around her,
told her to start out in the morning,
she died during the night.
Uh, no.
The salvage party, or, you know,
the rescue party, there were suspicions
of Keesburg's story.
They found a pot full of human flesh a quote pot full of human flesh in the cabin
Along with George Donner's pistols jewelry and $250 in gold
They threatened to lynch him and then he confessed they had hidden
$273 of the Donner's money at Tamson's suggestion so that he could find it and benefit her children and
Then she died the night and once she was dead, yes, he ate her.
And apparently they bought this story, kind of, you know,
this would get a little more complicated later.
She could have easily died naturally,
or he could have killed her and eaten her.
We'll never know for sure.
On April 29th, 1847, Keesburg was the last member
of the Donner party to make it to Sutter's Fort.
And later on, no shit, he would open a restaurant
in Sacramento.
86 sellers follow George Donor across the Great Salt Lake across Hastings cut off out
of the 87 members of the Donor party.
Only 48 would make it to California.
Well, would make it to the end of their California journey.
It was the worst disaster in US wagon train history.
And that takes us out of today's time stock timeline.
Good job, soldier. You've made it back.
Barely.
The story of the Donner Party disaster
reached all the way back to New York City by the summer 1847.
Counts of the cannibalism were greatly sensationalized.
The story ran across the nation, incredibly the
dude who was banished, James Reed, the guy who stand the dude who whipped him, he never lost
a single family member, except for his mother-in-law, you know, at the start of the journey.
Other than that, all the reads made it West.
The remaining Donner children, both George and Jacob's children were orphaned, the Donners
lost all adult family members, and four of their children died.
The party's animals fared even worse.
Only three mules made it out west.
All the oxen horses and other animals died.
Various families had brought their dogs out west as well.
They all died, many were eaten.
The reeds did adopt two of the donor children.
At least that's nice.
Many of the widows who made it out remarried quickly.
Women were in short supply out west,
some of them married before summer hit.
The youngest of the Donner children,
three-year-old Eliza, would publish an account
of what happened that winter in 1911.
One young traveler, Nancy Graves, was nine years old
during the winter of 1846, 1847.
She refused to acknowledge her involvement.
Even when contacted by historians interested
in recording the most accurate version of the tale,
she reportedly was unable to recover from her role in the cann accurate version of the tale, she reportedly was
unable to recover from her role in the cannibalism of her brother and mother, Shetty to brother and
her mom. Lewis Kiesberg, the guy who probably ate tamson donner, he brought a definite, well,
did eat her, but may have killed her, brought a defamation suit against several members of the
release party who did accuse him of murdering tamsonamsen Donner, the court awarded him a dollar in
damages. Also made him pay court costs. So you can tell that the court probably was a
little suspicious that he may have done it. In 1847, story printed in the California star
described Keesburg's actions in Goulish terms and his near lynching by the salvage
party. They reported that he preferred eating human flesh over the cattle and horses and that had become
exposed in the spring thaw.
Historian Charles Muglashon amassed enough material to indict Kiesberg for the murder
of Tamson Donner, but then he interviewed him and then he concluded that he didn't think
a murder had occurred.
As Kiesberg ruled or became a hermit kept himself, I guess some business wasn't too good at his
restaurant.
Probably didn't have
fingerstakes in the menu. He became a social pariah, which routinely threatened. He told
McClashian, I often think that the Almighty has singled me out among all the men on the
face of the earth in order to see how much hardship, suffering, and misery a human can bear.
There's now a memorial to where the camp was a trap for the winter, the Donner Memorial State Park.
The top of the 22-foot tall pedestal indicates how deep the snow was a trap for the winter, the Donner Memorial State Park, the top of
the 22-foot tall pedestal indicates how deep the snow was when rescue parties arrived.
22 feet deep. What a nightmare. Amazing that anyone made it out of life. Amazing that they
were able to be rescued. Of those who died in the Donner party, 34 died that winter.
And what did we learn this episode outside of some history? Well, I think we learned
that some people, we eat another person just to say themselves and others others you know won't.
What kind of person are you? Are you the kind that we eat somebody to survive or not?
Or would you rather die? I think I would do it. I think if someone was already dead, especially
someone I didn't know well, I think I could do it. If it was my immediate family, I don't think I
could. I couldn't eat my kids. I couldn't eat Lindsay. I don't think I could eat my doodles.
I don't think I could eat my parents. I couldn't eat my parents or I couldn't eat Lindsey. I don't think I could eat my doodles. I don't think I could eat my parents.
I couldn't eat my parents or grandparents.
I don't think I could eat my sister,
or niece's, nephew, that kind of stuff.
I feel like I have a few cousins I could eat.
I could eat a few of my neighbors.
There's some people to gym.
I could definitely eat some strangers for sure.
For some reason, I picture myself
eating a, ideally a ginger.
Why is that?
Maybe because I enjoy poultry and maybe their white skin reminds me of poultry meat, but
that doesn't make sense because I think our meat would be more like beef.
Yeah, it would.
So I guess the person's color doesn't matter.
Someone lean.
That's my preference.
I like a lean steak, like a filet mignon.
I don't like a fatty steak.
I would like somebody lean a musk.
I picture them having more steak, maybe like Serena Williams.
She looks tasty to me.
Is that weird to say?
Tom Hardy.
The actor Tom Hardy.
He looks, I don't know, maybe he's just so manly.
He looks, I feel like he would make a tasty steak.
Is that weird?
I'm gonna stop now.
Who would you eat?
Discuss amongst yourselves.
It's not time for Top 5 takeaways.
Time, suck.
Top 5 takeaways.
Number one, the Donner party ended up getting stuck time. Shock. Top five take away.
Number one, the Donner party ended up getting stuck in the Sierra Nevada's mainly for two
reasons.
They left a month later than they should have and they took the Hastings cut off, which
turned out to be the opposite of shortcut.
Hastings ran along Costa Mellisa 18 days.
Number two, bad luck regarding whether also doomed the Donners.
There was a total of 10 major storm periods during the winter of 1846, 1847, beginning
on October 16th, 1846, ending in early April, 1847, and they created over 20 feet of snow.
Number three, James Reed was able to help organize rescue parties to save his family because
he made it to Stuttersfort because he stabbed a dude dude who whipped him proving that sometimes it does pay to stab somebody.
Number four, of the 87 members of the Donner party, only 48 survived to reach the end routes
end of the journey.
Excuse me in California.
Many of them had to eat the dead to survive.
Number five, new info.
Future president Abraham Lincoln damn near ended up in the
Donna party. I'm serious. While working as a lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, Abraham
Lincoln continued his friendship with James Reed. We talked about how they met years before
when they were mess mates in the black hawker war. Well, when Reed's businesses began to
fail due to a national economic downturn, Lincoln counseled his friend and just before the
wagon caravan departed for the West, helped read through bankruptcy proceedings helped him uh...
stash enough uh... money
you know stash enough cash away that he was able to purchase land in california
and many years after the dawn of party tragedy one of read's daughters revealed
that Abraham Lincoln seriously considered joining the caravan
but in the end didn't go due to opposition from his wife instead he entered
politics
kind of worked out for him.
Time sucked, tough five take away.
The Donner Party sucked.
And I just realized that politics kind of worked out,
but didn't work out for you, Bernlake,
because he wasn't assassinated.
So I guess, yeah, I've poured some of the bits
he was doomed to, probably either starve or be good shot.
But yeah, the Donner Party man, better,
ugh, getting sucked, get,
think about them, think about the Donner party
whenever you have a bad travel experience going forward.
You know, maybe it's not going well,
but is it going Donner party bad?
Have you had to eat a fellow traveler?
No, then it could be a lot worse.
Big thanks to the time-slok team,
Harmony Velocamp, Jesse Dodener, Reverend Dr. Joe,
yes, Joe, not Josh.
More on that down the road.
I'll give Joe a proper introduction.
Thanks to Alex Dugan, the Bitlixer team, Danger Brain Eric Radiker, Queen of the Suck,
Lindsey Cummins.
Enjoy that Danger Brain Chickatilla Summer Camp merch.
I hope you really like it.
Again, it's limited edition when it's gone.
It's gone.
Huge thanks to OG Bojangles, Readers, team members, and Lily Twins pointed me in the right
directions for today's suck.
If you want to meet some fellow time suckers,
head to the private Facebook group.
While we still work on getting our own private message board
on the website in the app,
the time sucker private Facebook group link
will be in today's episode description.
Next week we head south,
right around the same time frame,
a little bit later,
Poncho via gets sucked.
Who's Poncho?
A famed Mexican revolutionary and guerrilla leader
via killed more than 30 Americans
in a pair of attacks in 1916.
Whoops.
And that drew the deployment of a US military expedition
in Mexico that hunted him during an 11 month man hunt
but didn't find him.
And then he was pardoned by Mexican president Adolfo Dejajoerta
in 1920 and via retiring to live a quiet life at his ranch. And he did live a quiet life until he was pardoned by Mexican president Adolfo De la Huerta in 1920 and via
retiring to live a quiet life at his ranch and he did live a quiet life until he
was murdered and there's so much more to his story and I don't know much about
it. I don't know shit about Poncho Vía but I'm excited to learn this next week.
We're gonna tell a good tale and now it's time for Time Sucker Updates.
Updates, get your time sucker updates. First up a plea for help that I couldn't ignore.
From time suckering spaces or Jamie Bryce.
Hey Dan the man of many titles including but not limited to Reverend Doctor Suck Master
General and Suck Dungeon Master and quite possibly my spirit animal.
Yeah.
I was ready to ask you to do the unthinkable.
I hate myself already and I haven't even asked yet.
I'm only doing this because you are in the very unique position of being quite possibly
the only one who can help.
My lady and I are huge fans and space visitors.
I've been a fan of your stand up for years, but didn't know about the socket till a few
months ago courtesy of my gal.
Anyway, she and I have recently gotten together after years of never thinking it would happen.
There were so many obstacles that it seems insane to me that it's actually happening.
Well, it was happening until very recently.
We had a very stupid argument stemming
from a deep rooted insecurity
and untreated mental issues I have been struggling with
for years.
Speaking of which, thank you for the compassion you show
people like me and the suck.
It means more than you know.
My lady never misses an episode,
so if you can find it in your heart,
would you consider delivering a message to her via the suck?
I'm doing it.
We have tickets to see you in Dayton on July 28,
10 clock show. If we don't pass things up, I'll be going alone We have tickets to see you in Dayton on July 28th, 10th
clock show. If we don't patch things up, I'll be going alone and I probably won't be
in a laughing mood. So it's really in your best interest to help me out. So in the off
chance that you might actually do what I'm asking, I know it's a big ask. This is the message.
Pam, if you're listening, Jim is sorry for being an asshole wackadoodle. Let's go back
to Narnia. You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can't start where you
are and change the ending.
CS Lewis, I know we're the literal worst. Her name is actually Mallory and I'm Jamie, but yeah, we call ourselves
to him and Pam, obviously big office fans too. I know doing this would risk making you look like
the lie or something, but it would mean the world to me and just my salvage of relationship. Our
future children would owe you their lives. Thank you for being out there and suck as long and hard as you can stay curious to fan for life Jamie Bryce
Well Jamie Jim I hope you and Mallory Pam are talking if not I hope this gets you talking
Give him a call Mallory Pam
Not many guys reach out like this, you know
Sounds like sounds like he really loves you. I don't know the details of the latest ship sounds like it's new in a non-plotonic sense
I don't know what Jamie Jim do to set you,
but love doesn't come easy all the time.
So give him a chance,
here in Mount Good Luck, you two,
see one of you or both of you in Dayton,
and expect you to name one of your kids,
either Kyler, Monroe, Bojangles, or Nimrod.
Not really.
Okay, fellow Mushmouth, Melissa Fry wrote in,
saying, dear Master of Suck, I bow to your great,
that's too much. I love it. I like you, also suffer from Mushmouth, Melissa Fry wrote in saying,, your master of suck, I bow to your grade, that's too much, I love it.
I like you, also suffer from Mushmouth,
as well as pronouncing many words wrong.
I have picked up your habit of looking up pronunciations,
especially local news stations, pronounce cities,
and it has saved me so much teasing.
I just wanted you to know that you were not alone,
and then I appreciate you, you spread so much knowledge
about so much more than just what you present
from your research.
I love your podcast, so, it makes me my week.
Keep sucking your suck forever, much love,
and hail Nimrod, Melissa Fry.
Well hail Nimrod, fellow mush mouth.
I'm glad to know you're out there.
I'm glad to know you care.
Yeah, you know what?
It's cool to improve a little ways.
This has definitely helped me look things up too.
And you know, and I, and you don't have to get too worried about it.
You know, people tease whatever, let them tease,
but it's good that you're looking some stuff up
and feeling better.
And now we'll end with the sort of idiots of the internet,
idiots of the internet, excuse me, update
from the great courses plus digital marketing manager
and time-sucker, that's how we got that sponsorship,
Julie Stoltz.
Julie and I've been writing back and forth
about some stuff she found, some craziness.
Underneath a great courses plus Facebook post for real.
And so I'm just digging into it now.
I'm pulling up the Facebook as I'm talking to you guys.
And because it is crazy.
So that this one Facebook post it says debate.
This is June 29th, 7 a.m. in the great courses Facebook page.
There are a lot of conspiracy theories one can find on the internet these days. Does the modern age and technology make global conspiracies more or less feasible?
Comment below and then think critically. With professors Steven Novella to examine both the
compelling nature of conspiracy thinking and ways to determine which theories are true and which
are just pseudoscience. Take a deep dive in a critical thinking with the great courses. So that?
Well they put, then you know some people say say some nice stuff, like Sally Goldsmith is, this sounds intriguing, just who is behind this course?
Hmm, LOL. Oh, okay. So she thinks it's the great courses providing conspiracy. They're
part of the Illuminati. The great courses comes back with, uh, we're a private company
based in Chantilly, Virginia. You can learn all about us here. So, you know, trying to be
like full disclosure. Um, oh my gosh can learn all about us here. So, you know, trying to be like full disclosure.
Oh my gosh. And then instead of teaching conspiracy theories,
why not teach real history?
It is what it is, says Carol Fates.
Okay.
And then Gary Corsis says,
we're not teaching the conspiracy theories,
we're teaching critical thinking.
If you got to the bottom of the post,
you would have noticed the link to your deceptive mind,
of course, specific to learning critical thinking.
I love just trying to be, oh man, just trying to be rational.
And then the comments, oh, and then Paul Geimer says, I can't comment.
They're watching me.
And then somebody with letters, I don't even know what the fuck they are says, are concepts
of time and chronology are wrong.
Technology has always existed.
The fact that most people cannot tell you how their devices work
but think they're advanced is a conspiracy.
John Merritt says it all depends.
Everything being smoke and mirrors with technology
and betting specific plans could actually become more feasible.
Depending on its sector specific.
Oh man.
Tanya, God's girl, I'm guess, is a little bit nutty considering she goes all caps,
which is never a good sign.
She says, it shows more evidence
so that one can make up their own minds.
And to me, it is only further,
shows the truth altogether,
but there's more to come.
And it's going to be riding our faces
to see not on social media to wonder.
So I say, fast on your seat belts,
the ride's about to take a horrible turn for the worse,
for the entire human race.
And it's already begun new world order
You know what's sad about this?
These are posts on the great course like these are people who have taken the time to find the great courses and they're still just fucking dumb
God damn it
So so yes, so be afraid be afraid of what's going on in the world be glad that you're not part of the problem
Thank you for not being in it to the internet.
And thanks for the time, sucker, updates.
Thanks, Julie.
Thank you, Julie.
Thanks, time, sucker.
I need a net.
We all did.
And that's all for this week, time, suckers.
Enjoy your fourth July.
Grill up some meat.
Just don't let it be human meat.
And keep on sucking.