Bill O’Reilly’s “Something you did not know.”
One hundred and eighty years ago today, a small band of American pioneers became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. The group resorted to ghastly measures to survive the blizzard, even cannibalism.
Here’s the story of the Donner Party.
That was in the summer, in April 1846. Thousands of Americans and 500 wagons headed west from Springfield, Illinois, to Oregon. In the rear of the massive caravan was a group of 89 settlers led by brothers George and Jacob Donner.
In late July, the men received word of a shortcut that would save them hundreds of miles. While the rest of the group continued to head north, the Donners moved south.
It was a fatal mistake. Isolated, the families trekked through the brutal deserts of Utah and Nevada. In early August, they reached the base of the Sierras. Before clearing the mountain pass, the settlers were trapped by a series of historic and very early blizzards.
The group found themselves under 15 feet of snow. Can you imagine?
They converted their wagons into makeshift cabins, even building fire pits and rudimentary kitchens. They languished in these conditions for five months. For nutrition, they ate tree bark, livestock, pets, leather goods. Dead people. Some began eating the flesh of the deceased. To minimize psychological trauma, bodies were labeled so no person would consume a member of their own family.
A rescue team from California finally found the survivors, the following February; of the 89 people that went into the mountain pass, just 48 emerged.
And here’s something else you might not know: a young lawyer nearly joined the doomed voyage, but bailed at the last second because of his wife; that man was Abraham Lincoln. Remember, Springfield was his home town.
