Donner Party
The Donner Party was a group of American settlers during the mid-19th century who were famous for being trapped by bad weather and resorting to cannibalism. It was made up of 87 emigrants in 23 wagons heading to the modern-day American state of California. The nucleus of the group consisted of 31 people from Springfield, Sangamon County, Illinois, the Donner and Reed families and their hired hands. They traveled in a larger wagon train until July 19, 1846, when those emigrants who wanted to take the new Hastings Cutoff formed their own wagon train, electing George Donner captain.
The Donner Party encountered great hardships crossing the Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake Desert in the present state of Utah. By the first of November they were trapped by heavy snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. About two-thirds camped at a small lake (now called Donner Lake), while the Donner families were about six miles away at Alder Creek.
In mid-December fifteen of the trapped emigrants set out for Sutter's Fort, about 100 miles away, with only a few days' rations. They soon ran out of food. Caught without shelter in a raging blizzard, four of the company died. Their surviving companions reluctantly resorted to cannibalism. They continued their journey, in the course of which four more died. After a month of hellish travel, seven survivors -- two men and five women -- reached safety over the mountains on January 19, 1847, nearly naked and close to death.
Californians rallied to save the Donner Party and equipped a total of four rescue parties. On April 29, 1847, the last refugee arrived at Sutter's Fort. Of the original 87 emigrants, 41 died and 46 survived; about half of the survivors had been compelled to resort to cannibalism.
In 2003 archaeologists found possible confirmation that cannibalism actually took place at Alder Creek, where the Donner families camped: they recovered from a campfire pit a bone fragment of a "large mammal" bearing butcher marks from an axe. As of this writing (April 8, 2004), the bone has not yet been positively identified as human.
Cannibalism itself is not a crime, and no legal action was ever taken against the survivors. In another notorious case, the Colorado cannibal Alferd Packer was tried not for cannibalism but for murder.