I first learned of this from the Donner Party song on Rasputina's 1996 album Thanks for the Ether. Their music is obscure and hard to find, but I do recommend them to people who like cellos and history:
Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdyqlx77gKo
Lyrics: https://genius.com/Rasputina-the-donner-party-lyrics
Album playlist (missing Donner Party track, for some reason): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkzll37266Y&list=PL2TedGVTF-...
This should be a DLC expansion for The Oregon Trail game.
After a couple of playthroughs, dying of dysentery wouldn't seem so bad anymore.
“Later, William Foster suggested murdering Luis and Salvador, two Native Americans from Sutter’s Fort pressed into service as rescuers, for food. Tipped off, the two escaped in the night but a week later, Foster tracked them by their bloody footprints and shot them, a well-documented but little talked-of chapter in the tragedy“
I learned about the Donner party a few years ago when I stumbled upon the Donner Pass when I quit my job and just took road trips around NorCal and PNW for 2 months. If you ever get a chance, I highly recommend taking the Donner Pass trail near Truckee, CA (near Lake Tahoe for those not familiar). And if you can do it during the snowy winter, a huge plus!
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/donner-pass-summit-tunne...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stumps_of_trees_cut_...
This picture showing how deep the snow was by the height of those “stumps”
If anyone’s interested, there is a great book on this story entitled, “The Indifferent Stars Above”.
Came for the map of the path. As someone who’s crossed the Donner pass hundreds of times, I’d really like to see it and perhaps ski tour part of it this spring.
Just heads-up, it's not about doner kebabs. Which is delicious by the way.
The Wikipedia article about the Donner Party is a particularly grim story but I seem to end up re-reading it every couple of years to see if I've misremembered how brutal it was (nup!).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_Party