This Day in History: The Donner Party of pioneers departed Independence, Missouri for California on this day in 1846, on what will become a year-long journey of hardship and cannibalism.
The Donner Party (sometimes called the Donner–Reed Party) was a group of American pioneers who migrated to California in a wagon train from the Midwest. Delayed by multitude mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846–1847 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Some of the migrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, eating the bodies of those who had succumbed to starvation, sickness, and extreme cold.
"Once the party was trapped on the east side of the High Sierras, they killed and ate all the horses and oxen. They boiled the hides to make a gelatinous concoction and picked all the marrow from the animal bones. They gobbled up any mice they could catch in their makeshift cabins. Then, one by one, they killed all their pet dogs and ate them. Finally, desperate and delirious, they chewed on pine bark and pine cones. As a last resort, while watching their children and others die, they turned to the dead bodies buried in the snowdrifts." Source
Occasionally, starving people have resorted to cannibalism for survival necessity. Classical antiquity recorded numerous references to cannibalism during siege starvations. More recent well-documented examples include the Essex sinking in 1820, the Donner Party in 1846 and 1847, and the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 in 1972. Some murderers, such as Albert Fish, Boone Helm, Andrei Chikatilo, and Jeffrey Dahmer, are known to have devoured their victims after killing them. Other individuals, such as artist Rick Gibson and journalist William Seabrook, have legally consumed human flesh out of curiosity or to attract attention to themselves.
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