The settling of America is a wild story.
IntellectualTakeout: How far we’ve come as a country can be seen in the incredible contrast found at the Donner Memorial State Park, where some of the members of a pioneer group survived the winter of 1846/1847 by cannibalizing their deceased comrades.
this is an incredible gem from our history
they bought in to the hastings cutoff, and everything that could have gone wrong after they broke off from the others did go wrong
the cutoff took them through the salt lake desert, and it took days longer to get across the desert than estimated
had they not lost those days crossing the desert, they would have made it through
a truly fascinating story, and testament to the tough, enduring pioneer spirit that made this country great
X7B Bow hunting zone. I’ve hunted a lot of it. Lots of it is straight up and straight down. There’s areas there that you’d be in a world of hurt with a big snow. Locally there’s lots of confusion on where they were actually trapped. Huge, YUGE Mule Deer here.
I believe that one of the diaries claimed that the deceased tasted like chicken! It also contained a secret fried human recipe that listed several special herbs and spices!
In my two weeks traveling the Southwest – mountains, deserts and strange geological formations – I marveled at the fortitude of our pioneers. Hours of driving flat, dry land and seemingly impossible switchbacks and non-existent passes before our current roads would have done in most of the country today. I can’t imagine the hardships they faced.
Good thing Mooch wasn’t there telling them what they should and should not eat
Well, as the Hawaiian cannibal chieftain said to his boy at the luau, “One man’s meat is another man’s poi, son.”
😉
We visited the monument the last time we were at Tahoe. It is an exquisitely beautiful location for a tragic and horrible story. It’s hard to imagine the suffering of those people during that long winter. They were brave people, those pioneers.