Posted on 01/12/2006 6:06:49 PM PST by TFFKAMM
There's no physical evidence that the family who gave the Donner Party its name had anything to do with the cannibalism the ill-fated pioneers have been associated with for a century and a half, two scientists said Thursday.
Cannibalism has been documented at the Sierra Nevada site where most of the Donner Party's 81 members were trapped during the brutal winter of 1846-47, but 21 people, including all the members of the George and Jacob Donner families, were stuck six miles away because a broken axle had delayed them.
No cooked human bones were found among the thousands of fragments of animal bones at that Alder Creek site, suggesting Donner family members did not resort to cannibalism, the archaeologists said at a conference of the Society for Historical Archaeology in Sacramento, Calif.
"The Donner family ended up getting the stigma basically because of the name," said Julie Schablitsky, one of the lead authors. "But of all the people, they were probably the least deserving of it."
The sawed and chopped animal bone fragments, recovered during an archaeological dig over the past three years, do suggest "extreme desperation and starvation," the study said. One of the animals eaten was a pet dog — presumably "Uno," mentioned in some of the children's later writings.
"The Donner Party's experience was bad, but it wasn't as bad as everybody's been told," said Schablitsky, a historical archaeologist at the University of Oregon's Museum of Natural and Cultural History.
The findings by Schablitsky and Kelly Dixon, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Montana, don't necessarily disprove the accounts of cannibalism told by rescuers and survivors stranded in a fierce winter storm in the mountains southwest of Reno and north of Truckee, Calif...
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I work at the library. We suck at our stock of movies.
However, there is always the "borrow a movie from down the hall" method.
>> one of the survivors later became the owner of a successful restaurant in San Francisco...... <<
Mmmm... No thanks. I don't feel like eating Chinese tonight.
(Somebody had to say it...)
I am with you. When I have given up the ghost if my damned old flesh would keep life in anyone they are welcome to it. I would stay away from my liver though. Might be a little tough.
On an RV trip on the Oregon Trail, we stopped at a spring near (Marysville? KS?) that had a rock which was engraved by the Donner party. It was still clear as a bell.
Trail goes right by where I take my long hikes near Guernsey Wyo. along the Platte River. Wagon ruts are cut into solid rock. Must have been a lot of people come through there. Lucinda Rawlins grave is also near where I walk. She died of cholera after taking care of many who suffered and died from that fate. I must say it was a beautiful place to die.
...."Timothy, Timothy, he was looking at YOU!'
A tale of three trapped in a mine.
Please name the original artist and title if you can.
I remember the song, for some strange reason, fondly.
Maybe because it was off-beat?
We've been on part of the Trail in Wyo., but not through it all the way. Maybe next summer! Wyoming is a beautiful state.
Donner Party was good people!
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