A Brutal Winter Drove the Donner Party to Cannibalism [Murder Made Fiction Podcast]

A Series of Calamities

In 1846, the Donner-Reed Party set out from Independence, Missouri to make the journey west to a better life in California. What befell them was a horrific fate that some blamed on incompetence and others suggested embodied the dangers of manifest destiny.

In a new mini-primer for Murder Made Fiction podcast, Joe tells Jenn about the calamities that befell the group and left them stranded for the winter under 22 ft of snow with no food, which ultimately forced them to resort to cannibalism. The story includes their perilous journey across the Great Salt Lake desert, the dire conditions of the camp at Truckee Lake and Alder Creek, and the four (!) rescue attempts to reach survivors before they perished during the winter of 1946-47.

It’s a horrifying story about desperation, starvation, hubris, and the enduring will to live. It also involves the murder of indigenous people and the deaths of many children. It includes one of the most cinematic instances of surviving extreme weather that we have discussed on the podcast to date.

This is part of our Survival Cannibalism series, which includes coverage of the first two seasons of Yellowjackets (listen), the two film adaptations of the Miracle in the Andes – Alive (listen) and Society of the Snow – as well as forthcoming episodes on Antonia Bird’s Ravenous and Trey Parker’s parodic satire Cannibal! The Musical.

If you want the full primer, which goes into even more detail about the Donner/Reed/Graves families, as well as details of the “Forlorn Hope” and “Starved Camp,” as well as who we think the true villains of the story are, subscribe to our Patreon for 40+ hours and 65 episodes of bonus content.

Also: we make a lot of eating puns. So be prepared!