Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined as always by staff writer
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. Hey, Candice, how's it going there now? Our
Speaker 1: listeners can't see you that they should know. You're very meaty,
Speaker 1: and if ever I were hard pressed and forgot my
Speaker 1: lunch tea, I I don't blame you for that. I've
Speaker 1: often looked at myself and thought, you know, if it
Speaker 1: really came down to it, I could eat myself. Just
Speaker 1: take a bite out of your arm pretty much. You know,
Speaker 1: I'd start with the arm. It seems logical. I since
Speaker 1: I'm so medy, it's tough for me to bend over
Speaker 1: and bite my own thigh. So yeah, I'd start with
Speaker 1: my arm. It just makes sense. I don't think I
Speaker 1: eat myself, no, and I wouldn't eat you either. You
Speaker 1: being a redhead, I imagine you're pretty spicy, plus your
Speaker 1: little ropey. Actually, I don't imagine there's much to eat
Speaker 1: on there. Moving along, cannibalism. It's a hot topic, apparently
Speaker 1: because we're talking about it. Um. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: few different kinds of cannibalism. Okay, well, um, there's endo cannibalism,
Speaker 1: which is eating people in your own like kin group,
Speaker 1: you know, family members, that kind of think. Usually it's
Speaker 1: a way of ingesting power and keeping it in a lineage,
Speaker 1: or showing respect, that kind of thing. It sounds that
Speaker 1: could be easier just to inherit Grandma's diamonds and wear them.
Speaker 1: But you're suggesting I eat her. Yeah, yeah, yeah, actually. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there's in exo cannibalism. I'm sorry. Exo cannibalism
Speaker 1: is the exact opposite, eating people outside of your your
Speaker 1: kinship or your kin group. Um. And usually it's a
Speaker 1: out of disrespect vanquished foe, somebody you you defeated. You're
Speaker 1: saying I'm gonna eat you, dude. That not only am
Speaker 1: I going to kill you, I'm gonna eat you too, um,
Speaker 1: which is just bad for everybody except for the person
Speaker 1: who's eating the other person. Then the third one is
Speaker 1: survival cannibalism. This is like tea. Yes, that's precisely what
Speaker 1: it is. It's it's people. It's probably the worst form
Speaker 1: of cannibalism. I don't mean to to put any kind
Speaker 1: of um, you know, Western values on the practice of cannibalism,
Speaker 1: because you can only judge a culture by its own
Speaker 1: standards cultural relativism. But the thing is survival cannibalism uh
Speaker 1: takes place outside of cultures that have some form of
Speaker 1: ritualization of cannibalism. These are people who are under the
Speaker 1: most dire of circumstances and to survive themselves have to
Speaker 1: ingest human flesh. Uh. There's one really notable uh example
Speaker 1: that happened in the US, Uh, the Donner Party. Right,
Speaker 1: this is true, Okay, So so clear this up for
Speaker 1: me then, um, as I understand there's discrepancy over whether
Speaker 1: or not the Donner Party actually eight one another there
Speaker 1: was any cannibalism involved. As the cannibalism factor fiction, it's fact.
Speaker 1: It's fact, and there's a bit of a story behind it.
Speaker 1: It's not as simple as you know. Girl never boys,
Speaker 1: hungry boy eats girl. Let me paint a picture for you.
Speaker 1: April eighteen forty six, We've got a bunch of gung
Speaker 1: ho Americans blazing a trail for the wild West. They
Speaker 1: were en route to San Francisco from Springfield, Illinois. They
Speaker 1: were going to take the California Trail. It was George
Speaker 1: Donner and his brother Jacob, and they met up with
Speaker 1: James Reid, and they were thirty three of them together.
Speaker 1: They were called the Donna Read Party, not to be
Speaker 1: confused with the Donna Read Party, known at the time
Speaker 1: for their tasteful high heels and strings of pearls, right,
Speaker 1: which was kind of weird during westward expansion. Indeed, there
Speaker 1: were new vacuum cleaners involved at that point in time,
Speaker 1: and anyway, so the Donna Read Party let me not
Speaker 1: clip any of my syllables off there, the Donna Reads
Speaker 1: set out, and like any good westward expansion story, as
Speaker 1: they pushed west, they picked up more people, and they
Speaker 1: had thirty three members originally, and they just kept mushrooming
Speaker 1: and mushrooming, and more and more were joined, and later
Speaker 1: on the party would break apart into factions because some
Speaker 1: people heard of the shortcut called the Hastings cut Off,
Speaker 1: and they decided that they were tried. I was supposed
Speaker 1: to shave some time off their trip, which was going
Speaker 1: to take six months. It ended up taking them two years. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't an entirely unfounded decision to split off and
Speaker 1: take the Hastings cut off, right, because they were actually
Speaker 1: going to meet up with the guy who discovered this
Speaker 1: new pass, Lankford Hastings. So I mean, it's not like
Speaker 1: they were like, yeah, I heard about this, you know
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. They like the guy was there
Speaker 1: waiting for him, um, and they were going to meet
Speaker 1: up with him, and he was going to take him
Speaker 1: the rest of the way right And it would have
Speaker 1: been perfect except that he left before they got there,
Speaker 1: and so they decided they would try the path on
Speaker 1: their own. And it was very very treacherous, and to
Speaker 1: make matters even more ominous along the way, Hastings left them. No,
Speaker 1: it's saying things like this trail is much worse than
Speaker 1: I thought. Turned back, now, save yourselves. Well back at
Speaker 1: ground zero, where the rest of the donner Re party
Speaker 1: was camped out, people were just sort of hanging tight.
Speaker 1: They were laying low because it was winter at this point.
Speaker 1: It was very very cold. They were in the Sierra Nevados.
Speaker 1: It was very hard to diversh the terrain and things
Speaker 1: reading a little bit dire. People were getting old, they
Speaker 1: were getting hungry, and they were starting to die, and
Speaker 1: so a group decided that since they were the strongest
Speaker 1: and the hardiest, they were going to branch off too,
Speaker 1: for Lauren Hope exactly. The for Lauren Hope group also
Speaker 1: called the Snowshoet group because they made little snowshoes for
Speaker 1: themselves to set out in the snow. So they go
Speaker 1: off looking for help. The people back at camp they're
Speaker 1: doing everything they can just to stay alive. Like they've
Speaker 1: literally had to settle in for the winter. They aren't
Speaker 1: trying to move any further as a large group. Oh
Speaker 1: now they're down to their pack animals. They're starting to
Speaker 1: eat their horses. Then they started hunting, and because it's winter,
Speaker 1: it's very hard to find prey, So then they turned
Speaker 1: to eating their dogs, which I found curious that you
Speaker 1: would eat your pack animals and then hunt and then
Speaker 1: eat your dogs, because I love my dogs, but compared
Speaker 1: to a good pack animal, all three of them are
Speaker 1: totally useless. Um. And then the hunting part, why would
Speaker 1: you do that in between? Why wouldn't you hunt first
Speaker 1: and then maybe the dogs and then the pack animals
Speaker 1: and then humans. I can't really speak to their logic,
Speaker 1: but after the dogs, they tried boiling their blankets and
Speaker 1: gathering twigs from the forest and making a very strange
Speaker 1: glue like soup. I might have even tried that first. Well.
Speaker 1: And then this is where it gets really really juicy.
Speaker 1: The first human died, and this is corpse lying there.
Speaker 1: People are looking at it and just you know, starting
Speaker 1: to wonder and that they ended up leaving him behind.
Speaker 1: They did, yeah, they did not. Not two times in
Speaker 1: a row though, No, because at this point the Snowshoe
Speaker 1: group for Lauren Hope back with them. Now the same
Speaker 1: thing has happened. The first person has died, and they've
Speaker 1: decided times are this rough, We're gonna go ahead and
Speaker 1: show down. So they start some some ground rules. They
Speaker 1: decide that they're not gonna eat anyone they related to,
Speaker 1: and they're not going to kill anyone for food. If
Speaker 1: someone die, their fair game, quite literally, thank you for them.
Speaker 1: People were dropping left and right there you go. But
Speaker 1: then things got heated up a little bit when a
Speaker 1: young guy, like an actual young person died. Jay Fosdick
Speaker 1: and Mrs Foster went ahead and cut him up and
Speaker 1: hate him and fed him to the Native American guys,
Speaker 1: I understand, right, And Jacks father did not like that,
Speaker 1: and he shot them and killed them, which is totally
Speaker 1: against the rules as well, I imagine exactly, so things
Speaker 1: are really falling apart by this point, I think when
Speaker 1: they ate the first fight of flesh, things had fallen
Speaker 1: apart fully. Well, it gets even worse, well because then
Speaker 1: people start fabricating stories about what rules they did and
Speaker 1: didn't break. And eventually, when people start coming back to
Speaker 1: camp and the rescue workers finally move in to rescue
Speaker 1: all the disparate groups that exist all across this here
Speaker 1: in Nevada's by now they find that one guy is
Speaker 1: like cooking people. Louis Keysburg. Yeah, he was like the
Speaker 1: rescue parties came in groups and could only take a
Speaker 1: certain number of people out at a time, right, um,
Speaker 1: and he was left behind but I think four other
Speaker 1: people and uh, when the rescue party finally came back
Speaker 1: to get him, he was sitting there, fat and happy,
Speaker 1: with several delightful dishes featuring human flesh cooking around him.
Speaker 1: And the real kicker of the whole thing was that
Speaker 1: there were two perfectly good ox legs, uh sitting there
Speaker 1: and he was eating the humans. So he he chewed
Speaker 1: them peck animal and apparently dogs and and you know,
Speaker 1: the glue like soup and just went right to the
Speaker 1: to the cannibalism, because I guess he liked it, and
Speaker 1: he was accused of murdering the people. He said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: they died of starvation. And what's more, I didn't like it.
Speaker 1: I didn't like eating it, but I sure ate them up.
Speaker 1: And at this point in time, the media had gotten
Speaker 1: wind of the Donner Reed party and they started publishing
Speaker 1: all sorts of grizzly details of the journey. And you know,
Speaker 1: I really have to sympathize with them, because their conditions
Speaker 1: were rough. People were dying left and right. Who knows
Speaker 1: what was going through their minds. Who knows if if
Speaker 1: they were even in their right minds at this point
Speaker 1: in time, And a lot of the legends died with
Speaker 1: them because people found that it was very painful to
Speaker 1: talk about. And what's more, they tried to do the
Speaker 1: right thing. Even after they had eaten these people, boiled
Speaker 1: their flesh and and you know, washed down their gullets
Speaker 1: with snow, what have you. They tried to give the
Speaker 1: bones a proper burial. And because of that, there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of anthropological evidence that cannibalism did exist. So
Speaker 1: we're going off of these oral accounts, right which I
Speaker 1: think they're pretty much concrete. I mean, I don't think
Speaker 1: people would say, you know, we ate other people when
Speaker 1: you didn't. Not not in this society. Wow, you can
Speaker 1: make that decision for yourself when you read how the
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