Annals Of Adventure Forensics–Just What Did The Donner Party Eat? In the summer of 1846 81 land-hungry men, women, and children who were on their way to homestead the Eden of California decided to take a shortcut through the Sierra Nevada mountains. Bad idea. The party was trapped by snowstorms in the rugged mountains, and slowly started to starve. About half of the group, led by George Donner, died. And the survivors survived, according to some accounts, by, well, chowing down on the remains of their dead companions. It’s the most famous cannibalism story in American history (followed closely by the story of the whaleship Essex, told by Nathaniel Philbrick in Heart Of The Sea), and now a suspected Donner Party campsite and cooking hearth has been found in the Sierra Nevadas, near Truckee, California. And lying around the cooking area are a variety of charred bones. Ummm. Are the bones animal or human? That’s what forensic archaeologists are about to analyze, using DNA techniques. If any bones are human it will be the first physical confirmation of the horrific tale. Some of the bones look to be deer. Others are, well, suspicious. The highly trained dogs accompanying the archaeological dig–normally used to help criminal investigators find human graves–have voted. They are signaling the presence of human remains…



Donner Party Survivors: “Well, I preferred white meat, but my wife went nuts for bone marrow…”