60: The Donner Party: Cannibals On The Oregon Trail (w/ LoreLodge) | Red Thread
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Life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone. We take civilization and the security it affords for granted. As we've marched on through time, we've forgotten the stories born through times of hardship. Hardship created from the desperate need to stake one's claim on this earth. People are never just content, or they shouldn't be. There is always more.

A truism none more prevalent than during the waning hours of America's existence, as settlers spread across the land in pursuit of their destiny. It sounds fantastical, perhaps even romantic, but the reality was never that pretty. These settlers had to contend with disease, nature, natives,

and, of course, each other, at every turn to make their trip from east to west across the frontier over the span of months. All spent surviving from the back of a wagon. All spent in the pursuit of greatness. One such story from the time stands above the rest because it dares ask the question, the dark, sinister question that exists in the subtext alone: How far can one go to survive?

Well, the Donner Party will answer that and more. And you might not like the answer as, at the end of the day, everyone must be able to stand alone to survive. You might not like the answer, but you will like this episode because it's the Red Thread Baby. And in this episode, in what is technically, I guess, a Red Thread First, we have brought in an expert.

What an expert talking about such controversial subjects and topics. I can't believe it's taken 60 episodes, but here we are. We do have our very own expert for the first time. Friendly Geordies. Hello, Jordan. Ha ha ha!

You've come to the right place. Yeah, he's here. He's here to talk about a country. Just asking just before this started, what's the difference between North and South Carolina? We all have holes in our expertise, you know? Yeah, he's still learning. Expert means something different to him. No, Aidan Mattis from Law Lodge. How's it going, man?

I'm pretty good. This is cool being called an expert. I like this. You are an expert, definitely. More so in comparison to us here at Red Thread. So it is fantastic to have you on board to talk about this. I mean, you are an expert on Donner Party. Come on. Yeah, I've probably forgotten more about it than most people have ever known at this point. Uh-oh. Damn, what a claim. Yeah. I can't claim that one. My dad used to say that about coffee.

Awesome. No, it's super good to have you here, man. Really big fan of your content. You are highly suggested and requested, I guess, from the audience to come on. So we've been hearing about it for 60 weeks. So it's about time to bring you on. I'm glad to be here. I'm excited. Yeah, it's going to be a good one.

Yeah, it will be good. A nice change of pace to have someone that knows what they're talking about. Yeah. That'll help. So in this week's episode, we're talking about the Donner Party, which is a

Very interesting story set in the early periods of America about one group of people running across the country to lay claim to California or to find settlement in California across the Oregon Trail, which is obviously a video game. That's where everyone's going to know that term from, even Australians. Actually, Jordan, are you aware of the Oregon Trail? No, I knew you were going to ask me that. No, no, I don't know what it is. It sounds cool.

Is it? Is it just like a really beta version of Red Dead? I... It's... Well, the video game Oregon Trail is just kind of a trauma simulator. The original version was just like...

Oh, yeah, definitely. But the original version was basically it was mostly a text game. Yeah. But it was like you'd get five feet along the trail and it was like, oh, sorry, your infants died of tuberculosis. Oh, you ran out of food. Your wagon wheel broke. Your entire group is now dying of flesh eating bacteria. Educational game in quotation marks. Like that's what they framed it as. Brutal.

Brutal game. Yeah, it showed the brutality of, you know, settlers traveling across the Oregon Trail, which is... Winning the game was basically surviving the game. Yes, yeah. Right, okay. If you could get one person to the end, that counted as a victory, because every single turn, like, you could cross a river and the axle on your carriage breaks, your wagon breaks, and then your entire family drowns in that river. So...

There are a few towns in America that exist solely because wagon trains broke down and they were like, all right, well, we're stuck here. And so that became a town. Oh, that's incredible. Yep. So the founding... What? So the founding statue is just a broken wagon wheel. Yeah, I mean, it might as well be. It's usually...

Some dude who started off in Illinois or New York and had absolutely no business being out there. And they're like, well, I guess this guy who was in charge of the wagon train is the founder of the town now.

Oh, okay, so they do mythologize it. They give it like their little Jebediah Springfield story. Yeah, yeah, you're failing upwards. You didn't actually make it where you were trying to get to, but at least you ended up in charge. You made it somewhere. Yeah, you didn't die. Yeah, okay. I mean, we were talking about this before the episode. That he won the Oregon Trail game. Yeah, he did. Yeah.

Yeah. We were talking about this before the podcast started. America is an enormous place. So back then, you could have just traveled in any direction and probably when your wagon did break down, you've probably found pretty...

a nice enough place to settle surely like there was so much space to settle in if you if you weren't in the middle of a desert you were probably going to be in a very beautiful spot with wilderness all around you for many miles water beautiful wildlife uh as long and as long as there wasn't a hostile native tribe right next to you you were probably going to be fine the problem was

There were a lot of hostile Native American tribes, and in their defense, they had reason to be. Yeah, they were pretty justified at that time because wagons kept coming through their territory and breaking down. Some of them were really friendly, actually.

But unfortunately, the stuff we hear about is not the times where it was like, oh, you guys need some food and some help repairing your stuff. We gotcha. We hear about the gunfights. Yeah, and this story about the Donner Party is pretty emblematic of that. It paints a lot of situations where Native American tribes were more hostile towards the caravan passing through the territory, but also then there were very helpful tribes that would do their best

Why were people doing this? It just sounds awful. Why don't you just stay in New York or whatever? No, he's got a point. Okay, so just what? So you're going along a trail to what? Find like a buffalo prairie or something somewhere. Well, I think the difference that might be difficult to understand is Americans actually wanted to come here.

i think australians you guys are there because you had to yeah we don't talk about that we were we were sent here uh yeah but that really is kind of what it was for us is it was uh you know and that's the thing the donner party i the the donner family and the reed family the two ones who kind of are at the center of this story they started off in springfield illinois they were farmers uh james reed was actually an irish immigrant he'd already left home uh and what what was going on was

California was this weird territory out west where it was technically part of Mexico, but the Mexican government wasn't really controlling anything. It was mostly controlled by settler militias and your average magistrate who was elected by the local population. That was going to change during all of this. The Mexican-American war is part of the story because everything's part of this story somehow. But California was just this place where it was like, oh my God, it's so beautiful out there. And this is actually before the gold rush even.

So this is pre-Gold Rush. This is just people have heard about California. It is this beautiful place. There is boundless wildlife. The winters are nice and sunny and warm. The summers aren't too humid. If you are somebody living a hard life on a farm in a cold place like Illinois...

A nice farm in, you know, middle California sounds really nice to you because the weather's going to be easy. You know, yeah, it was a good place to live basically. Yeah. Talk about, Oh, just a general idea, right? Uh,

Spreading across Americans at the time of like manifest destiny, essentially like this land is there was also that we need to spread out as far and wide as possible and lay claim to this land because, you know, it's our destiny. A lot of it started because the United States claimed Washington and Oregon.

And then just south of that was California. So part of it was that the government was trying to get people to Washington and Oregon so that they could set up an actual government and hold that territory. Because at the time, there was still competition with Britain. There was still competition with Russia. So people going out there was a way of establishing a claim and saying, hey, this is ours. And what the government did was say, hey, if you go out there, you can just have land. You don't need to pay for it. It's yours. The government encouraged people directly kind of to make that trip? Yep. Interesting. Okay.

Yeah, right. Now it's making sense. Especially if I was a literate, I'd go. Yeah, I was saying if the government was like, hey, Jackson, head on over to Perth and you can have free land and a house. Yeah, and you can have Perth. Yeah. Perth can be your property. For Americans, it's on the other side of the country. It would be like our Oregon Trail.

Hey, we're not as bad at geography as you think we are. I know we're perph-ists. You're not as bad at geography as I think I am. I'm doing that for people like me out there who aren't that great at maps and stuff. I did get ripped a new one for calling Nunavut a province instead of a territory. The Canadians weren't happy with me. That was a bad one. There's so many trip-wise to trip over when we're talking about other countries and stuff.

Yeah. So yeah, I guess that answers the question. I'm very surprised to hear from you that the gold rush wasn't a factor because I, for some reason, had the thought that that might have been one of the factors leading to people. I'm going to check myself on that because I'm pretty sure I'm right. Yeah, this is just prior to the gold rush. What years were the gold rush?

It starts in 1848. 1848 to 1855 is the California gold rush. And then the Colorado gold rush is basically right after that. And then the Klondike gold rush is, I think, the last major one. That's when everybody went up to Alaska and very quickly found out that Alaska is a very inhospitable yet beautiful place. Was there gold up there at least? There was a lot of gold up there. It's just that getting to it was almost impossible.

And then they ended up in places like Nome, which is on the southern coast of western Alaska. Just it's literally as far, I think, from the capital of Alaska as New York is from Florida. Gotcha.

which is nuts. Let's just talk about the setting in a little bit more detail right now. So the time that the Donner Party kind of took formation, it was 1846 during the Westwood expansion. We've already kind of talked about what that is, but yeah, people were branching out to claim their own Californian land. Settlers spread out to the West, Oregon and California, but to do so, they had to travel across untamed land for months to get to the new land. And

Enter the Oregon Trail, which was created by fur traders off the back of the original Westwood Expedition by the Lewis and Clark Expedition across the frontier. This trail or route connected Independence, Missouri. Is that how you... Missouri? Right? Missouri. Yeah. If you ask people down there, it's Missouri. Yeah. That's the one I had always heard. That's so much better. Missouri. Why don't they just put an A at the end then? Yeah. Yeah.

It's named after Native Americans. Ah, okay. Anyway, that connected Independence to Oregon City in Oregon. The trail initially followed rivers to South Pass, which is a mountain pass in Wyoming, which was relatively easy for wagons to pass through. And then the most common route was to follow Idaho's Snake River. However, settlers had their choice of routes that promised to shave off time, which was

which will be a big factor in this story, especially if they're trying to get to California instead of Oregon, as the Oregon route would take them more north. For those traveling to California, the last 100 miles were the most difficult part of this, as it would involve crossing the Sierra Nevada, an enormous mountain range with 500 distinct peaks. And due to its proximity to the Pacific Ocean, that's our ocean, Jordan, a bit of Australian pride here,

Yes, one of the two. One of the two only oceans in the world. It also received far more snow than most other ranges in America due to the proximity to the ocean. This obviously created a very difficult environment for travelers and people trying to navigate through it. And on top of that, the eastern side was notoriously steep, which was bad for wagons.

But it was crucial. So this makes sense. It was crucial for settlers to time their trips to avoid the massive snow drifts in the winter from September onwards. And as you'll come to learn from this- It's just so awful already. Sorry, go on. It's just- God living in that time would have sucked, wouldn't it? Like, look at- I'm just looking at the photo of these two, like, clearly inbred people. And, like, they're like-

They're well off and they're still not smiling and they look unkempt. In their defense, those photographs took about 20 minutes to take. Yeah, I'd be pissed off too. That's definitely true. It wasn't as fast as an iPhone 6 game. You've got to sit there staring at the camera. Yeah. It was not an ideal situation. Dude, okay, all right.

It would be great if I could, we're always talking about this now. This is going to be an ongoing theme of this podcast, I can tell already. But Jackson and I were just talking about time travel in the previous podcast. And now I just can't stop thinking about it. But look, I really don't want to trade places with these people. Like, don't you think that that early settler time seems like one of the worst times in history to be alive?

It sounds boring. It sounds hard. It sounds like your teeth are always going to be rotten. There's arguably probably worse times to exist. 536 AD was rough. It's not up there for me. I can look at that photo and I just think they've got lice. He's wearing a suit. That's kind of cool.

I do have to be honest, like maybe it's just an American thing, but there is kind of a romanticism to it of the idea of, you know, striking out on your own and braving the elements and, you know, fighting for survival that in America today we have it all so good. You guys have bugs and things that are constantly trying to kill you. We don't even have wolves because we got rid of them. So there's not a ton of danger in our lives. Is there no wolves left?

There's some, they're mostly out west. They just reintroduced them to Colorado. Coloradans aren't really happy about that. There's some in Yellowstone National Park.

There's a weird coyote-wolf mixture coming east. That sounds cool. I was going to say, though, I do agree with you. There is something definitely romantic about setting out on an adventure. It's like your life's work, almost. It's an experience that's going to form your identity, almost. It's something that you'll look back on. But I feel like you would very quickly realize that that is a bad situation to be in within a week. Yeah, a lot of people have to use running water and things like that.

Toilets. Yeah, that's the big one for me, I think, is is toilets.

I don't want to go back to free toilet times. Yeah, there's no highway pit stops yet. Yeah. No. Sleeping in the back of a wagon under the scorching sun, things like that. Very uncomfortable. So, yeah, it's romantic to think about at a broad strokes kind of perspective. But when you actually get into the granular details, it very quickly becomes like, my God, I wish I was dead instead of doing this, probably, if I was in that situation. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, if you look at what people were taking out with them, too, like on these trips, the provisions, it was, we're talking about, I mean, it's salted beef, flour. Ah, the classic. If you were lucky, you might have a spice kit that you could bring with you. Yeah, but what spices would it have? Would it just have Oregon? That's it, right? Like, there'd be no spices in it, surely. Well, we had a pretty, we had a good spice trade here. Things were going pretty well for us. Damn.

Yeah. That Atlantic. Wow. So you can make your jerked meat taste a little bit south of the border. Yeah, basically. Okay. Some huevos rancheros. Unfortunately, Jordan, you can't take your caviar and wine on this trip across the nation, unfortunately. You're going to have to deal with salted beef and things like that. It's also crazy. Like, the meat was the majority.

The meat was the majority of the budget for doing this. I did the math earlier today because I was curious. You're talking about probably $4,000 in modern day money per person. I don't know if that's bad or not. I've got no kind of... Well, now you've got a family of nine. Yeah, I mean, that adds up for sure. But you're traveling across the nation. That's a long trip. It's going to be multiple months. So $4,000 for that. Yeah, good luck. Because how long would the trip take?

It was typically if you left in May, the goal was to complete it by October. Oh.

Just that few times. That few times? It's still like six months, isn't it? Yeah, I know. It's so much time. See, the thing is, there's no way that you're travelling around the world, even if you're going into backpacker hostels for four grand for five months. It's not happening. It's actually pretty good value. Yeah, that's a good trip. I'd do that. Yeah, it's...

It's kind of crazy thinking back about it, like what people were setting off with, too, because if you look at the guide Hastings gives people and for Hastings, he's like, yeah, you need 200 pounds of flour, 150 pounds of meat, a bunch of candles, some tools probably need to bring a gun. Oh, also, you're going to go through this pass that I actually haven't been through yet. Yeah, it's uncharted territory, essentially. Yeah.

What's wild to me, though, is I don't think I could make this trip and survive on my own or with a couple of adult friends. And these people were bringing infants and six-year-old children. That's a good point. I couldn't imagine taking kids on a trip like this. Well, I just imagine that half of them would die, right? And that's why you had nine. Yeah. That's basically what happened. Yeah, as we're going to find out. So, for more kind of explanation on the environment, the frontier itself, or what do they call it? The...

What's the word? The interior, right? That's the word for... Yeah, the interior. Yeah, the interior of America was inhabited by many Native American tribes, such as the Mandang. The tribes were at this point at about a coin flip between hostility and trade. I think you said in your video, it was like a 50-50 on whether or not they were going to be... It basically was. ...fairly hostile. We're setting the environment for this trip.

Yeah. And that also, just to be clear, that was not on a tribe by tribe basis. That was like on a which specific group of people you ran into, because there were there were tribes where it was like, hey, we're friendly. But there were 20 percent of them who were not and they did not care what happened. They were going to kill you. So it just depended on coming across a native person in general. Yeah. So it was just basically it wasn't a tribal thing. It was just whether they were deeks or not. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, Dick is subjective considering they had gone through years and years of, you know, having their land taken and things like that. Yeah, there were a lot of wars. Is that this far in? Because I thought this was just like no contact with settlers at all. So there was contact with them at this point. Yeah. So Lewis and Clark had been through in the, like the 180, I think 1803, 1804 time period.

They encountered a lot of different groups. There's a moment where basically Thomas Jefferson is like, whatever you do, don't start a war with the Lakota. And the very first thing Lewis and Clark do is get into a fight with the Lakota. But then as they move west, they encounter a whole bunch of different groups, the cause the Quapaw, the Kanza. And as they meet more and more people, a lot of these groups have never met white people before. A lot of them have only met the French or the Spanish.

But for the Americans, out West, yeah, you're having contact for the first time in a lot of cases with Lewis and Clark. 30 years later, there has been some conflict. Okay. Okay, so at this point in history, there are no uncontacted tribes left. If there are, they are very small and hiding in the mountains. We don't know about that. Okay.

Yeah. Right, right. Sorry, sorry. I just, it's interesting to get like a picture of the time because this is, we really have nothing here. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we do have stuff here. What do you mean?

No, I'm sorry, I'm just talking- when I say "we" I'm talking about me and my, um, my super ego, I guess, as Freud would put it. I'm just talking about- in terms of my knowledge of early American settler times, it's pretty much that they wore raccoon hats. Your knowledge, you're talking about your knowledge. I thought you were talking about- My specific knowledge. -Australian history. I was like, we absolutely have hundreds of years of pretty much the same kind of stuff, honestly, so.

To be fair, the average American doesn't know any of this either. They don't teach us this in school. Oh, okay. Right. It makes us look a little bad. No, it's the same over here. Like, exactly the same over here with our native... Yeah. I don't even think we learned about World War I. We were on the new stuff, World War II. We were on that new war. Oh, God. That was new information for us.

I'm surprised they don't teach you about World War I. You guys got slaughtered at Gallipoli. No, they do. They've made that our national story, which is so pathetic that they did that. They really should have picked something where we were triumphant, but they've made it, no, the time where you didn't make six inches, you know? It's the one where we learned how to do D-Day later. Yeah, the practice run. Yeah, that's it. The dress rehearsal.

All right. You taught us some valuable lessons. To begin your trip on the Oregon Trail, though, people first had to travel to Independence, as we've talked about, from the eastern states where they used to live. Most people lived in those eastern states, which was often a trip in and of itself, right? So you still had to travel from most other places to Independence, which would have been a- Yeah, several hundred miles. But obviously, this was more chartered territory at this point, so it wasn't nearly as dangerous.

Yeah, you weren't going to deal with Native American raids coming through like the Midwest. Yeah.

Independent existed as somewhat of a trading hub for the trip ahead with massive caravans of settlers stocking up for the trip ahead from Independence. So it was kind of like a hub for people traveling out from the Oregon Trail. And this is where we're introduced to the titular Donner Party, called that because the caravan itself was driven and operated mostly by the Donner family, which initially included the Donner family. They left a good life, right?

Correct? They were pretty wealthy people from what I read. They had a sizable farm in Illinois. There's no given reason for why they decided to go out west. It's assumed to be just manifest destiny. They just wanted to state their claim in uncharted territory. Yep. So the Donner family and also the Reed family, as you said, the head of the Reed family was an Irish immigrant. Yep. Yep.

Irish immigrant and a veteran fought, actually fought alongside Abraham Lincoln in the Blackfoot War. Okay, well, that's incredible. That's very, very cool. Yeah.

He does look like someone who'd know Abraham Lincoln, doesn't he? I was thinking he looked like Abraham Lincoln a little bit with his beard. Yeah. So this James Reed, the patriarch of the Reed family, you talked in the video about how much of a cool figure he is. If the Donner party was turned into a movie, you argued that he would be the main character.

Yeah, I think he is by far he and William Eddy are really the two big ones in the story. It's named after George Donner, but George Donner doesn't do much. I read, though, definitely got an ego on him. Talks a lot about how cool he is and how all the things he achieved. But at the same time, the guy was a superhero for this story.

Obviously, we'll get into it, but incredible human being. Yeah, he does a lot throughout the story. He's almost always there, even when you think, how could he possibly be involved in these events anymore? He comes back swinging somehow. But yeah, very, very cool figure. Goes on a side quest. A lot of people. There's a lot of people involved in this trip. The Donner family included George, 60, so the patriarch, the father. Yep. Tamsin, 45, which was his wife.

eliza 14 liana 12 francis 6 georgia 4 and eliza 3 george's brother jacob 56 and his family also came along elizabeth included there that's his wife

Jacob's wife, 45. Stepson's Solomon, 14. William, 12. And their five children, George, 9. Mary, 7. Isaac, 6. Louis, 4. And Samuel, 1. And the oldest daughters of George, Elitha and Liana were from a previous marriage. So many children. So many children. My God.

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Maybe we share our favorite meals in common. And now back to the episode. You can't, it's very rare to run into a family with more than two children anymore. Every single person in this time had about 12 kids. It's crazy. You had to. Yeah, you had to. Because like Jordan was saying before, half of them were probably not going to make it. Yeah. Yeah. Infant mortality was nuts. I mean, it's, you're talking about anywhere between 20 and 30% in some cases. Whoa.

Yeah. That's blown Jordan's mind. That's a lot of dead kids. That's a lot of dead kids. Yeah. If you had 10 pregnancies, there was a good chance that two or three of them weren't going to work out. Yeah. I'm going to take the controversial statement and say that's too many dead kids.

Yeah. Wow, Jackson, you really took a brave stance there. The Reed family was brought along by James F. Reed, 45, wife Margaret, 32, and four children of their own, Virginia, 13, Patty, 8, James, 5, and Thomas, 3, as well as their grandmother, Sarah, who also came along and she was 70 years old, which I don't know what's worse, traveling on this kind of trip as a 70-year-old or as a five-year-old. Both

I'm going to spoil it. Sarah made it like two weeks. Yeah, she did. It was not a good situation for her. She would have made it two weeks anyway. Who's alive as a 70-year-old back then? That's like being 130 now.

But they're not cats, you don't use dog years or whatever for... Yeah, I'm using dog years for historical figures. I think that's a good metric. The sad part is if she had just stayed in Springfield, she probably would have needed another 10 years. Damn, okay. Yeah. Beat for an old gal. To spoil it a little bit, she does die of tuberculosis on the trip. Did she have tuberculosis beforehand or did she...

Uh, it's not believed that she did. Um, also tuberculosis was a weird thing at the time. Uh, they didn't necessarily, they didn't understand bacteria yet. Uh, so tuberculosis for a long time was actually believed to be a genetic disease. And in some cases was believed to be a genetic disease that beautiful people had. Oh, so Sarah was a looker.

It was mainly based around the fact that they'd be skinny because they were dying. But yeah, maybe she might have been. It was called consumption. I thought people found overweight people attractive more so back then due to the assumption that they were eating good and so wealth was beautiful. It could go either way. Okay, coin flip. The Donners brought along Teamsters, which were basically professional wagon drivers, right? Yeah, like truck drivers today.

Yeah, so they hired Hiram Miller, 22, Samuel Shoemaker, 25, Noah James, 16, and Charles Berger, 30, as well as John Denton, 28, and Augustus Spitzer, 30. And I realize me saying these numbers after these names kind of makes it sound like I'm talking about androids. Like, this is...

Charles Berger version 30? No. Yeah, 30. Yeah. I'm obviously talking about their ages. The Reed Teamsters that were hired were Milford Milt Elliott, 28. He's the only one in this story so far cool enough to have his own little nickname in there. James Smith, 25. Walter Heron, 25. Bayless Williams, 24. And Eliza Williams, 25. Those last two, the Williams brother and sister duo, were brought along as a handyman and cook, respectively.

Oh. Yeah, a lot of people, Jordan, to kind of keep track of. I hope you've memorized them all.

Yes, yes, I've done my homework. Thank you. We'll bring them up in different elements of the story, different periods of the story when they're more relevant. But I'm just giving you a list of the main families currently and their entourages. So the party arrived at Independence and supplied themselves for the trip ahead. They likely bought oxen, which are castrated cattle, horses, mules, donkeys, sheep,

obviously intended to pull the wagons and carry people and other supplies purchased would have probably been things like workman tools guides sleeping kits uh riding tools axes firearms candles knives pretty much everything you need to survive at the time yeah and the uh the firearms would have been uh hawkins frontier rifles most likely very specific interesting what yep were they the only ones available they were just just there's

there's a lot of different guns around at the time. This is the one that was most popular on the American frontier. Uh, it was an old style, uh, rifle where you had to actually, it was a muzzle loader. Uh, we're still another 10, 15 years off from lever actions. Interesting. Okay. Just, just to paint a picture for people. And so if you were the Indians and you had a bow and arrow back then, is that sort of a fair fight or not? Uh, in a lot of ways, a bow was actually a more efficient weapon. Um,

If the other guy missed first. But also, the natives had gotten really good with guns and horses by this point, the Comanche especially. They were parallel with American cavalrymen. Why did you assume that they weren't allowed to use guns? Obviously, if they found guns, they're going to start learning how to use them. It's not like they were legally banned from using them. Yeah, but where do you find them? You just mug them. Like, oh, we sold them to them. Like a cop or something. Huh?

We sold them to them. You sold them guns? Yeah. Whose bright idea was that? I don't know. Sometimes we didn't sell them. Sometimes it was the Mexicans. Sometimes it was the French. Yeah. I thought, I knew the French had read, yeah. I knew it. I knew they'd do that. Classic French.

That was how they originally got them, though, is they were like, hey, you want these guns? Go kill the English with them. Yeah, I thought that'd be the catch. So are the French still laying claim to America at this point, or is it sort of just... Yeah, it's over. Yeah, they were gone by this point. I think they might have ended up being in charge of Mexico for a hot second for a little bit after this. I feel like in the 1860s, a French guy was in charge of Mexico, but at this point, the French are mostly gone. They're in the Caribbean a little bit. And the Spanish are way gone, yeah? Yeah.

The Spanish, Mexico is, at this point specifically, Mexico still contains California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah. And they had just lost Texas. Right, okay. 1845, they lost Texas. Yeah.

This is an important part, Jordan. The family likely used Langsford W. Hastings' guide on this trip. It was a book called The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California. This was used as a guide to plan a trip across America through the Oregon Trail. A very popular book at the time for settlers. And now looking back at it, people...

understand that it is filled with incorrect information or otherwise biased information. So this was more of a detriment as we'll come to find. And Aiden has already talked about what other things they might buy, but yeah, things like flour, salted meat, sugar, and salt.

Oh, yeah. You guys use kilograms, don't you? Yeah, we do use kilograms. So I'm going to put this in American terms. They would buy 200 pounds of flour, 150 pounds of salted meat, 20 pounds of sugar and 10 pounds of salt per adult for the entire trip, right? That's for the entire trip.

That was supposed to, at the very least, get them to Wyoming. Wyoming. Okay. Yeah. Which is about 650 miles. Okay. Yeah. The goal was not to get the whole way without restocking. It was to survive to the next fort. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The first intended stop after setting out from Independence was a place called Fort Laramie, which was 240 kilometers or 150 miles. Ah.

I that that's a mistake I made in the video. It's 650 miles. OK, that's a lot longer. Yeah, that is a lot. Yeah, that was something I was listening to today while I was like going back over the video and I was like, that's not right.

Okay. That was an incorrect thing that I said. That's four times longer, roughly. Yep. So how long would that take then? Because I've done the math here and written down this initial trip was to take around 10 to 15 days. I can actually... Wagons usually travel about 15 miles per day, but that would be a lot longer. It can give you exact dates, in fact. It would be at least 40 days, a month and a half. Okay, they left Independence on May 12th.

And they got there on June 27th. Yeah, so about a month and a half. Yep. Yeah. So to get from Independence to the first kind of fort for restocking and things like that, about a month and a half. And so this entire group left Independence on May 12th, and they had about nine wagons in what would be a 500-wagon train. That was another thing I messed up. It was 50. I don't know what I was doing. 50 wagons. Okay, 50 wagons. That's still a lot of wagons.

It's a lot of wagons. 500 is... I was looking at that thinking that's a lot of wagons. That is ridiculous. That was another thing. I'm sitting here like, did I just... Did I write an extra zero? This is back when I hand wrote my scripts. I don't know. Okay. As you can see, we got most of our information from Aiden's video. That's fine. That's good. So it was a fancy wagon trade. No, it's good.

After a week, they caught up with a main party led by a man named William Russell. Do you know, do you have much more information about William Russell?

There's not a ton of background on the guy by all accounts. He was he was a decent leader. Good man. Kind of the kind but firm sort of dude. They ran across a lot of other groups that wanted to join up with the caravan. And Russell would basically he would let a lot of men he would help those he couldn't let in. But for the sake of the rest of the group, he often would tell people, no, you've got to go your own way. Okay.

And there was a journalist accompanying Russell that described the Donner and Reid men as intelligent men with interesting families, just to give... Which was one way to put it. Yeah, how would you put it? I mean, I don't have necessarily another way of putting it. It's just like that's... I get the feeling that he gave that description because he didn't know what else to say. Yeah, I was going to say, this is probably just like a first impression, really. Like, what else can I say? They're interesting.

In this joining of the parties, the Donner Party also first met the Indian tribe known as the Kaur. Is that how you say it? Yep. Yes, the Kaur or the Kanza. Virginia Reed would write that they were, quote, not like grandma's Indians, for which she was thankful, which probably meant that they just weren't violent. Yeah, there was definitely a sense in the previous generations that Native Americans out West were exceptionally violent, which, to be fair,

There weren't a lot of good relationships between whites and Native Americans at the time. Fair assumption. It was valid for her to be grateful for that. Yeah, for sure. She was probably thinking of the Lakota. Oh, the Lakota are the more violent ones. That's the ones that Lewis and Clark got in a fight with. Right, yeah.

Okay, so the Corps operated a ferry across the Oklahoma River that they would charge $1 per wagon that got crossed by them, which is about $40 a day. That's fuck-cool. Yeah, that's pretty decent. Yeah, it's a solid price. So you needed to cross the Oklahoma River to continue on with the trail, though? Yep, you needed to cross several rivers. But yeah, the Oklahoma was one of the big ones.

So they were in a good position to dominate the market there. That's very smart. The call had been decimated by the Pawnee by the time Lewis and Clark came across them, and at this time, they numbered around 1,500. On the 24th of May, journalist Edwin Bryant was concerned that they might not make it over the Sierra Nevadas by winter. What was he thinking there? They were not moving fast enough, was kind of the conclusion that he had come to. It was like, we...

I mean, he says something specifically during this period. I have it written down. There are many of our present party who have no just conception of the extent and labor of the journey before them. And that was a polite way of saying half of the people involved here are either going to slow us down or die. Yeah, it's basically the polite way of saying amateur hour in modern terms. And to be fair, he's completely right about that.

Yeah, I mean, that's what happens when most of the party is children and elderly women dying from tuberculosis. Yeah, you read some of the stuff that Virginia Reed is saying and Tamsyn Donner. I mean, at one point along the trip in June, Tamsyn says, Indeed, if I do not experience something far worse than I have yet done, I shall say the trouble is all in getting started. Yeah, which shows a level of naivete that is probably not conducive to success in this kind of situation. No, no.

James Reed, however, wrote that Russell, so the guy who's leading the party at this time, was a kind and obliging man and that the initial trip went smooth. Although he noted that he had seen him turn away several parties. He also wrote to his brother-in-law that the grandmother, Sarah Keyes, was not likely to survive the trip and probably wouldn't even survive a fortnight. Very prophetic man because she passed away on May 29th from tuberculosis.

And you talked about in the video about how the entire party came together to attend the funeral, which made the Reed family very happy, obviously. Yeah, that was... These groups...

Early on, at the very least, these wagon trains often were very tight-knit. They all knew that they had to have each other's backs to survive. As you see, once they get further and further along and things become scarce, that changes. It becomes very difficult, of course, when you're backed into a corner. Friendship doesn't mean much anymore. But see, Jordan, doesn't that sound nice? Doesn't that sound nice, all getting together on the trail, spending time with your fellow humans? Yeah, look, that...

You know what I keep thinking about over and over again is also, this is pathetic. This is, it's so utterly, I'm ashamed to even say this, but like, what do you do if you don't have Spotify? Dude. What are you going to do? Listen to a banjo? You sing some trail songs. Some sea shanties of the prairie.

Oh, like you're going to fat camp or something. You just do those little bus songs. Nine bottles of beer on the wall. That's so much worse. Oh, God. I'd rather just everyone shut up. That's why Hastings said to bring a book. Yeah, there you go. Okay. Yeah. That actually doesn't sound too bad because I don't think that you would get car sickness in a wagon. You could probably read. Well, actually, it's far more bumpy.

Yeah, definitely more bumpy, but you don't have stuff going past you very fast. The speed is a lot slower. Also, a lot of it was storytelling. You know, you'd have James Reed would probably be telling a story about his time during the Blackfoot Wars. You know, you'd probably have other members of the party who maybe fought in 1812. You might have people who were sailors before. And so you pass the time by just, you know, passing stories back and forth. Haven't you been camping? Yeah, I've been camping, but I haven't been camping for six months.

You'd run out of war stories. You'd make new war stories. Just make shit up. Okay, so yeah, that's what happens at the end, right? At the end of it, it was just like, yeah, yeah, I killed 50 people at one time. Just make it up. It's kind of true. You know what? Honestly, I've got a friend from the third world.

He's Pakistani, right? And he says that as soon as you get out of the educated zone of Pakistan, they just start... That's what they do with their time. They sit around and they're just like, once I turned on the fire, once I turned on the shower, and fire came out of the shower, it was possessed. That shower was possessed. And everyone just sits there and is like, ah, very good, yes. That's just what happens. I think...

I think at some point when you just don't have Google or whatever, you just accept that someone says, oh, yeah, yeah, that gun's haunted. And everyone's like, oh, yeah, okay, yeah. I don't think I believe that, but I do tend to just believe things that trusted people close to me say. This man will believe anything any Pakistani tells him. Yeah, maybe he's pulling your leg, Jordan, and you're proving his theory correct by just believing him.

Look, it could happen, but how else does it go in the Middle Ages that people just genuinely think, oh yeah, over in that village there's gnomes that live over there. And everyone's like, yeah, yeah, they do. It's a much more interesting time to live, though. That's true. I'm pretty sure in Iceland they haven't totally ruled out fairies. So fairies they think are happening? These people believe in fairies? In Iceland, I believe there is still a little...

I don't know. I think it sounded like Bigfoot for us where we're like, ah, I don't know, maybe. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What about these people believed in witches, right? Probably. Oh, yeah. These reed types and, yes. So, what, they thought that if they just set up camp one day, there might be a little witch's hut close by and then they come and eat the babies or something. I don't know about that much. That's an extreme. Yeah.

But yeah, if somebody was kind of out in the forest, you know, brewing up potions and those potions make you see... Well, I would think a witch in that case. Yeah, absolutely. I would think a witch. Yeah. Well, it would be a witch if they wanted to be... Like, witch is a point of identity at this point, right? There's witches on TikTok, so... Yeah, they're not really witches. Oh, yeah, but they say they are. Oh, they sure think they are. My favorite is the people who are like, ah, yes, and I was communing with the god Loki. And I'm like, and what did you sacrifice to him?

They don't usually have an answer for that. I always think of the meme whenever I hear about something like that. I always think about the witch TikTok memes where they're talking about fighting Allah in the spiritual dimension. Yep. Oh, God, I remember that one. I love that stuff. It's so good. He's too powerful for me. I need my witch sisters to join me to fight the good fight. To, you know, fight God. Yeah. Good luck.

All right. So the group passed through Alcove Spring in Northwest Kansas in June, where they were then meant to continue on for hundreds of miles until they reached Fort Laramie. Part of the group split up on the 2nd of June, but they would eventually rejoin. On June 3rd, a 32-year-old German, well-educated, but very temperamental and questionable man by the name of Johann Ludwig Christian Kiesberg joined the party with his family. He was accompanied by his wife, 23-year-old Elizabeth Philippine,

Philippine? Yeah, it might have been Philippa, Philippi, but it

I mostly kept it in there because it was a way of distinguishing her from the other Elizabeths. There's so many Elizabeths. I noticed that as well. There's like three or four Elizabeths in this story. A few Margarets, a lot of Elizabeths. Everyone had the same name. Yeah. Elizabeth Philippine, I'm just going to say that, and their two-year-old daughter, Ada. They also had a child on the trail who they then named Louis Jr. Oh, man. Yeah. Being pregnant on this bumpy journey. Yeah.

Oh, God. Keesburg is such a villain in every possible way. I know. Look at him. He's evil. He's evil. He does have the evil eyes when you look at him. Yeah, the evil 19th century eyes. Yeah. That guy's a warlock, surely. He's like one of the few examples of potentially actual real Wendigo psychosis that's been documented. Yep. What the hell is that? What?

So it's typically understood to be a quote unquote culture bound disease, which is kind of an old medical and anthropological term that isn't exactly in vogue anymore for obvious reasons. But the Native Americans of the Anishinaabe community, the Ojibwe, these groups, they have a monster that they call the Wendigo, which to give you the really short version of it is if somebody eats human flesh.

they become a monster, and that is a monster that constantly craves human flesh and seeks it out. And the only way to cure Wendigo psychosis is death. You kill it, but you ever heard of the concept of the hunger? You eat human flesh and you get the hunger? Yeah, I've heard of it. It's like that. The idea was like, once you eat a human being, you have crossed over into a plane where you are no longer human, you are a monster.

And people get it into their heads that they believe they're the Wendigo is kind of the medical explanation. Got some form of psychosis around it. Yeah. You convince yourself that you are a monster. Which kind of makes it true in a way. Well. Confirmation bias. Well, that's incredible. Yep. Yeah. So the Wendigo is to go on about the Wendigo briefly. Like it is a, they've taken a concept of this hunger and basically they're

put it in the form of through storytelling like an actual cryptid or creature right yeah yeah easily one of the creepiest ones yeah we've got jordan wasn't here jordan wasn't on the show when we did an episode on the wendigo gotcha yeah do you do it with wendigo yeah we did do it with you

Feel so bad for that man. Haven't gooned in his name. Yeah, I mean, that's unfortunate now, but... Brutal. He couldn't have known. No, no, no, of course not. Yeah, so this man joined. They brought along two wagons and around seven teamsters and associates. Johan often went by the name of Louis Keesburg instead. Why was that? Just to make him look more friendly, I guess.

It was probably to make him sound less German, to be honest. Lewis is a name that would have been more familiar with Anglosaxons. So Johan is kind of too exotic at the time. Surely the German accent would have thrown a few little indicators there that this man wasn't an American. For sure.

Yes, my name is Luis. Another family, the Eddies, had also joined. William H. Eddy, 28, his wife Eleanor, 25, and their two children, James, 3, and Margaret, 1. And reading through the story and watching your video on it, William H. Eddy definitely comes across as the hero of the story, more or less. Oh, yeah. Yeah, 100%.

along with Reed to some, to a lesser extent, I would say William H. Eddy genuinely seems like a good man who tried to do what was right in every situation. Yes.

Yeah, there is. And what's really cool about it is the you almost you could question it, you know, like is and well, I'm sure we'll get through it. But some of the stuff that he does and the stuff he writes about, you're like, oh, is this could that actually be true? I nobody ever impugned him. Nobody said, actually, that didn't happen or that's an exaggeration. Everybody just kind of was like, yeah, that's that's what happened. That's Eddie for you. Wow.

It's nice to get a few of those every once in a while. Yeah. I mean, otherwise this story would have been full of pretty immoral people. I wouldn't necessarily say evil because they were in situations that I don't think anyone...

could even imagine being in these days. No. Definitely people that did some bad things coming up. It continued on, this giant caravan moving from the Little Blue River to the Platte River along the Oregon Trail. The writings of this time were optimistic and idealistic, especially from James Reid, who would boast about his own accomplishments mostly. And then there's a quote here from journalist Bryant on the undrinkable water and mosquitoes. Jordan, do you want to read this one?

We encamped this afternoon on a small creek emptying into the plate, the waters of which are brackish and disagreeable to the taste and not conducive to health. And yet they drank it anyway. Sometimes you have to.

Yeah, I guess. Yeah, that's true. Look, you gotta drink, you gotta drink. Brackish. What's that really fancy designer water that people buy now? Fuck, what's it called? Dasani? No, Dasani's awful. Dasani's gross. Tap water in a bottle. This is the first brand that came to mind. Fiji? Evian? The one in the glass bottle. Oh, the one from the dude with the...

Oh, okay. I was going to say Saratoga, the one that the... You guys see the video of the guy who's got the insane wake-up routine? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that guy. Yeah, it's not like they've got that out there in their frontier, Jordan. You have to keep that in mind. You're going to make do with what I will say. You're going to make do with deciding. I've...

I've been to some spots where you can get some real crisp spring water here up in Alaska. We were doing a hike up a mountain and I just was like, oh, I got to try this. Oh, my God. Water coming right out the side of a mountain is the most delicious thing I've ever tasted. Yeah, it is. Yeah. It's the minerals that makes it good. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Wait, are you saying that it was sparkling water? What? What was? The water that you drank.

Me? No, Aiden. The water coming out of the mountain? Have you had sparkling water in your life, Jackson? I assume you have. I have. No, you have. The water coming out of the side of the mountain was not sparkling. Ah, crap. It was just good natural water. Sorry to disappoint. It was good natural water that hasn't run through a Coca-Cola manufacturing plant.

See, I am one of these guys back then just being like, and you say that there's milk running out of the rivers, huh? It's just like, stupid ideas of nature. I have licked a glacier, so, you know. Jordan, have you ever gone outside and stared up at the sky while it's raining and opened your mouth and tasted that natural water? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course I've done that. It doesn't taste very good. No, it doesn't, hey? It's not great. That tastes good, it's natural water.

I don't know. Which direction is the Chinese air blowing? True. It's probably polluted from that. Yeah. Continue on with the quote, Jordan, about this. Sorry. Yes. This remark is applicable to many of the small affluence of the planet. Mosquitoes, morning and evening, have been very troublesome since we entered this valley. They collect about our animals and ourselves in immense swarms and bite with the most ravenous eagerness.

That sounds so much- Yeah, well, that's what happens. You're hanging around brackish water. That's going to be- Yeah, of course there's going to be mosquitoes everywhere at that time. Yeah. I don't know what you do after that. What, you just put horse shit on yourself and hope that works? Yeah, I guess. Yeah, they didn't have any bugs. You deal with it. Yeah, you just had to deal with it. You deal with it. They did wear long sleeves. That was part of it, which would be brutal, but at least you weren't constantly getting eaten alive. Yeah. And surely mosquitoes carried a lot more disease as well back then.

I actually don't think American mosquitoes were a particularly big problem when it came to disease. Really? Yeah, you were more going to be worried about rattlesnakes and spiders and things like that. Okay. Should you be worried about wolves or no? Depended where you were, but I mean, that's the thing. If it was just your wagon, yeah, I'd worry about wolves. One of these big wagon trains, wolves aren't going to go near that. Okay.

And bears, obviously, wouldn't. Yeah, bears are bears. At one point, Eddie somehow kills a bear during the story. Yes, which is very impressive. Somehow. Well, it's even more impressive because he's like suffering from extreme starvation at the point. I don't know how the hell that's possible. Wow. Keen. It's possible with a really big caliber rifle. True, yeah.

But I feel like if he was that weak, it would have just blown him away as well. Yeah. In the middle of June, they were approximately 200 miles away from Fort Laramie and they were experiencing no troubles at this point with their only issue stemming from some quicksand, which is, yeah, I always thought that was going to be a way bigger issue in my adult life as well. Right? Yeah. You mentioned that in your video and I was like, yeah, I always thought quicksand was going to be an issue in my adult life. That and the Bermuda Triangle. Yeah. I thought that would be more of an issue.

Hang on. Are you saying that both of you as children were scared of the Bermuda Triangle and quicksand? Yeah. In my defense, I'm a lot closer to it. What? Quicksand? Oh, the Bermuda Triangle. The Bermuda Triangle. I don't know if there's quicksand near here. But come on. Every single like 80s and 90s cartoon involved quicksand. Yeah.

Yeah, no total. Land Before Time scarred me. I think a dinosaur died. Oh, massively. And the never-ending story thing of his best friend was the horse. Oh, that was one of the most tragic things I've ever watched, I reckon. What were you scared of, Jordan, then, if you weren't scared of quicksand?

No, I was scared. I am just honestly astonished that that is just a normal human experience across the globe. Thinking that one day you'll walk out of your house and on a street in Bondi, just be like, oh no. I don't know. That was weird. And then the other one, did you guys have this? Spontaneous human combustion? Oh yeah. That was never one for me. You were never scared of that? Hey!

How could you not be scared of that, but you're scared of the Bermuda Triangle? Where does that concept even come from? Where is that fear born from for you guys? Because I don't think I've ever seen that. I think I just heard about it on a TV show or something, and I was like, ah, that'll happen to me someday. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly the same thing. I don't know how you weren't scared of that, Jackson, because I don't think you understand it's spontaneous. It just happens. But it doesn't happen. I think I always knew that that's not a thing that happens.

Okay, so basically you're just lording it over us about how much smarter you are than the rest of us. I was more afraid of growing up to be alone. More depressing. Yes, spontaneous human combustion would have been sweet relief. Yeah, that would have been nice instead. No, I was just scared of quicksand and the Bermuda Triangle, I think. And aliens, I guess, a little bit back then. You were scared of getting probed, eh? Yeah, definitely.

Look, I got to say, honestly, all of them rational fears. Yeah, for sure. Except for the Bermuda Triangle one, which I'm sure is absolutely nothing. Yeah, I don't know why I was really scared of Bermuda Triangle, because you'd have to travel there for it to be any kind of issue in the first place. Quicksand knows everything. And Aiden does have the point. He does live a lot closer. He has the right to be scared of it. We don't. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Okay, so the Platte River caused small delays for the trip as the water height would often change and restricted their movement across. A few days later, on the 18th of June, William Russell decided to step down from his role as leader. This didn't stem from any real disagreement within the group, but it was more so based on his health. The knock-on effect was that his close associates also stepped down from their positions as well. And Aidan, is this more so to do with him wanting to speed up the trip for himself? I...

I mean, Hawkins stepping down was basically or not Hawkins. I Russell stepping down was basically him just being like, I am not in a position to to lead this group. I forget who. Yeah, I mean, it was just that it was the right choice. OK, fair enough.

So through a party election, a man named Mr. F. West was to take over as acting leader. And very soon after, the group experienced their first porny raid. The raid caused one casualty, a man named Edward Trimble. They initially thought that there were two deaths, but the other man had actually been captured. And they were also able to rescue the captured man. Do you have any kind of information on how that all went down?

I don't remember the specifics, to be perfectly honest. If I if I remember correctly, he was basically just being held captive by the Pawnee. I don't think it was any sort of daring rescue operation. I'm pretty sure they just went in and got the guy. OK, but why did they capture him? What's the point?

I most so that they could extract something from the settlers, you know, basically their way of sometimes I don't think the Pawnee were involved in the slave trade, but the the Mormons ended up fighting a war with, I think, the Comanche or the the Ute over the slave trade. The Mormons were on the anti-slavery side, oddly enough. Very weird.

On the 21st of June, another family on the trail was introduced to the party. This was the McCutcheon family. However, they did not join the overall, they didn't join the group at this time, but they would later on. Yeah.

Going through Chimney Rock and Scotts Bluff, they finally reached Fort Laramie on the 27th of June. From here, emigrants that were making their way to California would normally go from Fort Laramie to Fort Bridger, which is located in Wyoming. And from there, they would head to Fort Hall in Idaho and then head southwest to California. Heading to Oregon would instead go northwest from Fort Hall to Oregon.

But a book published in 1845, well, it changed the game. The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California by Lanceford W. Hastings, which we've already talked about, but this was massive for this particular trip because the book instead showcased a new route to California that eliminated 350 miles from the trip if you were intending to go to California. That's big savings, Jordan. That's massive. Imagine how much fuel you'll save from that.

That's money back in your pocket. Instead of going northwest to Fort Hall, the book showcased a route that instead went southwest onto the Great Salt Lake through to the Wasatch Range and heading west through the desert, the Great Salt Lake Desert.

Basically, by going south of Great Salt Lake instead of north, you were able to save weeks of travel time. So this was a game changer for sure on paper. This was very attractive to settlers looking to go as quickly as possible to California because basically the Oregon Trail was intended to go up to Oregon, which is far more north than we were trying to go. This is why this was very interesting.

Saving this much time was a big deal for California immigrants, so the shortcut was immediately attractive. However, there was one big problem. Hastings had not actually made the trek himself when he published the book. The route came from a mix of him making part of the trek and then talking and hearing about the other half from another man about another trail that would then link up and complete the new route. So, very attractive route, but not actually proven to be a route that is usable.

Yeah, he didn't think to take it first. What was the reason for that? Just desperation to get the book printed? Not even desperation. Just really, he just kind of figured it would work. There was nobody that was going to sue you because if they didn't make it, they didn't make it. As in they were probably dead and couldn't sue you anymore? Yeah.

yeah i mean you're you're basically like hey guys uh i heard about this route across the desert

Do with that what you will. Hastings is a very frustrating figure in this story. I'll be completely honest. Very frustrating man. He's an absolutely dastardly villain. Like a mustache twirling villain. You talked about this in the video, but I definitely agree with you that this feels like a movie needs to be made about it. It does. Generally. Because there's just so many different interesting characters, interesting events that happen. You could definitely see this being made into a movie.

Hastings felt like he had a point to prove and he desperately wanted to show that this new trail was faster and shorter, maybe because of his own ego. So he himself planned to make the trip. He intended to leave Fort Bridger at the same time as another group that would trek the usual trail. It was successful and he did get to the destination a week before the others. Hastings was pleased with his trip and he began- A whole week. Sorry? A whole week. Saved so much time. Yeah.

Yeah, it's not as good as it initially sounded. Hastings was pleased with his trip and began to tell travelers that were heading to Fort Bridger that he was heading back in 1846 and would guide them through his new route as a means of advertising it. James Reed was impressed and decided that the group would take this offer.

And in Fort Laramie, Reed saw an old friend of his named James Clemon, who was there from California. He himself had traveled with Hastings. He told Reed plainly, hey, do not take the Hastings Cut-Off. He called the book inaccurate and warned him that his wagons would not make it. But this ultimately fell on deaf ears. I wonder why that fell on deaf ears. I'm trying to put myself in their situation. And if someone was directly telling me, yo, that route that you're going to take, awful idea. Don't take it. I'd probably just like...

take their advice and go for the more tried and true method. If you look at, if you look at Reed throughout this story for all of his, for all of the things that make the man superhuman, he was also a narcissist. So I think he probably was just like, I don't need to listen to you. I know what I'm doing.

Plus he was a superhero, so he probably could make the trip on his own, but I guess he didn't take into account that he had a lot of other people that were coming along. Yeah, that's the thing is like, he does make the trip on his own. He gets there perfectly fine, but then everybody else. Yeah. The issue was never Reed. He was perfectly fine with the Hastings cutoff. It was everyone else that was not able to make it.

So this is a quote from Clemon talking to another man about Reed. He says, quote, had known Mr. Reed previously in the sock. How do you pronounce that? Sock war? Sock. Yeah. Sock.

Mr. Reed, while we were encamped at Laramie, was inquiring about the route. I told him to take the regular wagon track and never leave it. It is barely possible to get through it if you follow it. That may be impossible if you don't. Reed replied, there is a higher route and it is of no use to take so much of a roundabout course. I admitted the facts, but told him about the great desert and the roughness of the Sierras and that a straight route might turn out to be impractical. What the fuck? Impractical. Yeah. Too many syllables.

Yeah. Yeah, so he was right. 100% he was right. He really should have heeded the warning from Mr. Clemon here. That's the problem is the one route was like along a river and this route was, hey, maybe there will be water. Yeah, go through the desert and hope for water, basically. Literally. Yeah.

The party began to travel, not heeding any warnings that they were given. On June 30th, a man, Charles Stanton, who had been lagging behind the group, encountered a group of Native Americans. The group of Lakota seemed to want something from Stanton, but Stanton was unsure of what they wanted as they did not speak each other's language. They supposedly acted menacingly, but also seemed to be enjoying teasing Stanton. So it was unsure if they were actually aggressive or if they were just kind of being pranksters, I guess. Yeah, he said something along the lines of like, you know,

If they were just joking around, I didn't find it very amusing. Right, okay. Because there was a questionable air to it, basically. They left after he offered them some tobacco, though, so he gave them a gift of tobacco and they left. Also, I gotta say, the number of times that happens in American history is mind-boggling. It solves everything? Yeah. They're just like, hey, don't kill me, I have this plant.

And then the natives are like, ah, well, I will, I will take the plant. And not kill you. Bring back more plants. Yeah. It's how, it's how Lewis and Clark solve things with the Lakota. Yeah. Yeah. Same exact story. Isn't that incredible? So is tobacco, who has that?

Well, it didn't grow that far west. Tobacco naturally grows in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, parts of Florida, and even a little bit west of that, and then also in the Caribbean. So...

It was something that the Lakota couldn't easily get their hands on. They would have had to get it through trade. They were probably familiar with it for a lot longer than the period of American settlement because the Mississippian culture had trade links that went as far as the Atlantic and as far as the Rockies. And the Lakota were part of the Siouan group, and the Siouan languages probably and the Siouan ethnicities probably do derive from a northern group of the Mississippians.

But don't worry, Jordan. Okay, well, why did they want tobacco so much? It's great. What do you mean? It gives you a buzz. Yeah. So just because that's what I was thinking. I heard this and I don't know if this is true or not, but I remember hearing that tobacco back in the day was stronger than weed. Is that true? I would think back in the day it was probably stronger than the weed of the day.

That's what I'm... Yeah, like, now, obviously, you know, you've just got Mexican cartels growing it in warehouses, and it's going to be very strong. And you also... You couldn't just... You couldn't pick up a pack of cigarettes at the local corner store, you know? So there was... You weren't nearly as accustomed to it. It was going to hit you a lot harder. To savour it, yeah. Yeah, and there weren't additives. It was just straight tobacco. Yeah. Right, okay. So this was...

literally like a peace pipe offering thing. Yeah. Yeah, literally. Wow, isn't that incredible? Alright. Sorry, sorry, it's just, yeah, I'll let you continue. If you wanted to solve issues today, it would be just like money. No one cares about tobacco enough.

I don't know, man. Don't you think, honestly, like, when lads are trying to staunch you, if you offered them a cigarette, they'd probably fuck off. Actually, you're absolutely correct. Yeah. There's so many situations at, like, bars and stuff that have been diffused by just offering the other dude a cigarette. It still happens. Just something universal about offering a man tobacco. Yeah. What the hell? Some things never change. Also, is it Australia where cigarette cartons have, like, just...

all sorts of graphic warnings on them yeah oh yeah yeah yeah we have seen the worst of the oregon trail every time we've lit one up easily it's honestly horrendous they do a very good job of scaring you but not enough to stop me i was gonna say they do a good job of scaring you but it's surprisingly ineffective because people really like tobacco

Yeah, see over here, you've got like the only brand I've ever smoked is American Spirits. And they're like totally going with, oh, they've got a Native American with a nice old fashioned tobacco pipe. And it says all natural on the carton, like, which isn't true. They get away with so much. Yeah. I can't believe that you could do that. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, so there's nothing on it that says even, you know, may cause cancer. Oh, no, it does say that. Okay. It's got a little Surgeon General's warning, may cause cancer and birth defects. Nicotine is an addictive chemical and...

Then you just buy it. Like a cartoon Indian character on the card and saying, but it also may cause a really good time. So by now. Exactly. Yeah, totally. Exactly. Yeah. They used to advertise them to kids. Joe Camel was like a, this is the Camel cigarettes, obviously, but he was a cartoon character. I did not know that that was aimed at them. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, well, there's nothing cooler than a kid smoking. It is undeniably cool. Yeah, I mean, that's what I hate about cigarettes is they objectively are cool. Like, I'm sorry. Yeah, totally. And vapes are very lame. Yeah, vapes are very lame. I'm fortunate that such cool things do cause horrible things. If only we could fix that.

So the group split up, the group that had split from the main party on the 2nd of June now rejoined on the 30th of June. They did, however, have to gingerly make their way past a large Lakota war party, which took them a few days. What did that look like, Aidan? Mm-hmm.

From the descriptions, we're basically talking about what must have been an absolutely massive number of Lakota, by the way, for the time. They were probably on their way to fight with most likely the Pawnee, but this would have basically been hundreds, potentially thousands, probably hundreds, though. Yeah.

And when they say they had, it took days to pass them. This was probably because they were running into little encampments along the way, but you would have had basically these, these little tent villages that would have been set up and just groups of several dozen Lakota and full war gear. They would have had headdresses at this point in time, they would have been wearing actual, you know, like Western style clothing for the most part mixed probably with some of the traditional like hide stuff. And I mean, yeah,

If you are a settler going along the Oregon Trail and you have the stories from Lewis and Clark and from the decades past, this would have been absolutely terrifying. There's really no way of...

putting into words how how scary this would have been and then virginia reed's just like oh they're so hot yeah there's a there's a journal entry from one of the virginia reed uh talking about how attractive the native americans were um yeah a little 13 year old virginia reed is like leave me here yeah they probably were pretty attractive uh to be honest oh yeah yeah but

Oh, the long black hair. Also, Native Americans were tall. This is the big misconception that they were short. More Southern Native Americans, like getting down into Mexico and South America, typically shorter. But the average person of the Sioux or the Algonquian or the Dene tribes would have been somebody who was probably standing 5'10 to 6'. Really? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, they had a very meat-heavy diet. The Plains natives ate a lot of bison. Was there any shorties? Was there any little midget tribes or no? Not in the Great Plains. You weren't surviving if you were small. Okay. But no, getting down to Guatemala, they're a little tiny. We got a good amount of Guatemalans where I live, and they are all remarkably small people. They make great pizza, though. No, no, you're small.

I'm average. Thank you very much. That means he's small, by the way. Anyone who says that? Hey! No, I'm as tall as the Lakota. Wait, what did you say it was? Like 5'10", 5'11"? 5'10", 6'4". Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm in that range. And I'm not going to specify what part. You're 5'10", aren't you? No, I'm 5'11". Oh, okay, yeah. Is that even a number? Hey, I'm 5'9". You're taller than me.

Okay, there you go. Well, that's a very real experience. Oh, no, are Australian feet the same as American feet? Yeah, they are. They are. Okay. 5'10". I would say 5'10 is tall. That's fine. That's pretty average. That's fair. I reckon, honestly, you can't climb tall unless you crack the magic six. Yeah. I agree with that. Yeah, you can't do it. 6'1 is tall. 6'1 is tall. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's unfortunate, though, Jordan. You are literally right on the cusp of greatness.

I'm on the cusp of greatness. Oh, God. Boys, I will tell you from up here, it is not as good. Yeah, it's unfair. You should just go out wearing heels. What I wouldn't have done for one more inch. Yeah, that's the story of my life, man. Yeah, we all would have done a lot for one more inch. One more inch? Are you kidding me?

That'd be great. I'd give up an inch to get an inch. All right. So June rolled into July and everyone was still mostly in good spirits and they came together to celebrate Independence Day, which would have been quite the sight on the frontier, obviously. No better place to celebrate Independence Day probably than, you know, on that untamed wilderness. Pretty cool.

As the party made their way through Wyoming and into Fort Bridget, they came to understand that this was their last chance to change their minds and go the traditional and safer route to their destination, avoiding the so-called Hastings Cut-Off. But honestly, everything so far was going pretty well. They had fresh, drinkable water, buffalo, and no immediate issues besides the weather, which was unbearably hot, around 100 degrees Fahrenheit or 37 degrees Celsius, which sounds like just a normal day up here in Queensland, honestly. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm sure it's toastier down there. Not too different, honestly. They made their way to Independence Rock on the 13th of July, which is an awesome name. We know that they had Hastings Guidebook and we're following it because they wrote in their diaries about reference points that they had reached, referring to Hastings book, which included the same reference points. I think there was a story or an anecdote about this, right? Where they talked about how- Oh, God.

Yeah, and this is the part that makes you go like, how did you not see this coming? Because they get to Independence Rock, which in the book is this tower. And it's like a little, it's basically a giant boulder. And at a certain point, I feel like you're getting there and you're looking at it and going, you know, this is not how this was described. Maybe this book isn't as reliable as I thought.

There's just so many of those situations that build up. And again, it's just such a risk. Like, sure, you potentially shave off a month of travel time. But without... Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I would... At this point, the most is a week. The most anybody's saved is a week. Yeah, that's not worth the risk of potentially dying and losing everything. Yeah.

The same day they reach the rock formation, Devil's Gate, and then they move through the Sweetwater Valley to the Continental Divide. What is the Continental Divide?

Uh, it is... That's a great question. I think it's the tectonic plate barrier, basically. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. No, no, it can't be that. It's too far west. It's too far east for that. Google just says, the continental divide of the Americas is the principal and largely mountainous hydrological divide of the Americas. I still don't know what that is. It's a water divide. Well, yeah, hydrological.

Oh, I guess drainage... Oh, I guess it's where everything west of that... I guess all the rivers west of that flow west. Okay. Whereas the rivers east of that would flow east. Right, okay. So it's like the great separator between the rivers? Yeah. Okay. Which is weird, because it's like it's not...

Yeah, I don't know. The Rockies aren't supposed to be there, but it's the Rockies. Okay. No, no, like the Rockies are not supposed to be there and geologists can't figure out why they're there. Wow. Because they're not

There's no tectonic plate there. Mountains are supposed to be formed when two tectonic plates come together and one goes under the other and pushes it up. And there's no plate. Oh my god. The Rockies are just there. That's another Red Thread episode that I need to do now. Why are these mountains? Why do they exist? Yeah, and they go all the way up into Canada. Do they have a potential theory? Or idea?

The only one I've heard is that they're a really old. Well, and this is the problem is like the theory is, oh, well, maybe they're a really old mountain range that was already there. And then it got pushed further east when I when the Sierra Nevadas got pushed up. But the problem is, from what I understand, geologically, they're they're younger. I shouldn't be there.

That is interesting. Wow. Yeah. I'm going to look into that after this. I'm not a geologist. Don't quote me. But that is my understanding. Maybe the continental divide caused it. Maybe. Okay, so California was not actually part of America during this time. It was a part of Mexico. It did not become a part of America until a few years later in 1850 when it became the 31st state. And like you were saying at the start of this episode, a lot of the reason why the government was sending people out this way was so that California could be governed, right?

Yeah, that was basically the idea was get people out there, put Americans there and see what happens.

For the most part, it was just ranchers. It was just Mexican ranches that were hanging out out there. There was no real law. When we talk about the Wild West, most of the movies about the Wild West take place in the 1870s and onward. Red Dead Redemption, for example, I think is the 1890s. That's the Wild West of the Cowboys and Outlaws time period that you think of with U.S. Marshals running around. This was the Wild West. There was no law enforcement.

At all. Yeah, it was just untamed land. Yep. Completely untamed. I mean, you've got parts of California, and again, California is part of Mexico. You have parts of California that have American government.

Not the United States government, just Americans who formed a government. All right. Anyway, the front of the Russell Group reached Fort Bridger by the 16th, greeted by Hastings. Hastings was focused entirely on advertising his new route, obviously. The Donna Reed Group was further behind and didn't cross the Continental Divide until the 18th.

The journalist Bryant headed off on the Hastings cutoff path with Hastings himself on that same day. Even Bryant had met a man named Joseph Walker who told Bryant he should not take this path as it was unsafe. Everyone who had experienced the route had seemed to have negative thoughts about it other than Hastings. So yeah, everyone was just talking shit about this path basically. Even Hastings during the trip is like, you know what, this was a bad plan. Literally everyone.

Bryant very quickly began to understand that this journey was not a good idea for the Donner party as he himself experienced the difficult terrain. He left letters behind for the party urging them to take the usual route instead. The letters were left at Fort Bridger and they made it clear that they needed to head over, they needed to be handed over to the Donners when they got back there, when they got there urgently.

As the Donner-Reed party continued on, they began to experience some bad luck, however. Bad water killed four of Reed's oxes and seven of the Donner's oxes. It was the same day on the 19th when they realized that they had already crossed the Continental Divide. They had gone through terrain different from what they were expecting. And as a result, they arrived at Fort Bridger on the 27th. Hastings had already left by a week at this point. So they were expecting to be received by Hastings, I guess.

Yeah, they the plan. The plan was to meet up with him because he was going to lead this this group through Hastings Cutoff. And when they got there, he was not there. And then nobody gave them the letters.

That Bryant had sent. Yeah, those letters weren't handed over because the theory is... Yeah, the prevailing theory is that Bridger and I think Vasquez or something was the other guy's name. That basically they were like, you know...

This whole Hastings cutoff thing is going to be really profitable for us. Good for business. We should, we need people to go that way. And I, and so they were like, you know, what's more important than lives, not letting people die.

Yeah, so Fort Bridger was like an old-timey fur trading outpost, I think, at that point. Yeah, it was a fur trader outpost. So the idea of this becoming a popular route to this new burgeoning kind of place that everyone wanted to go to was just too much of an attractive idea for the fort owners to really pass up on. Yeah. As the trail was getting more use...

other better ways to get to Fort Hall were being discovered. So it was getting to a point where you might not need to go to Fort Bridger to get from Fort Laramie to Fort Hall. And that would have been very bad for Bridger. Yeah. We see that all the time. Whenever a new road is built and people are able to bypass old towns and stuff, those towns eventually die out. The flow of travel...

or new routes often are the lifeblood of towns and stuff. And that much was very true back then in the 1850s as well. 1840s and 50s. Towns and stuff lived or died based on how many people were able to flow through them.

All right. So the Donner Party left Fort Bridger on July 31st, heading to California via the Hastings Cut-Off because they had not received those letters warning them that, hey, everyone agrees that this is a terrible idea. And also, hey, I'm on that road right now and it sucks. Please don't come this way. It's very bad. Please head any other way possible. So they didn't receive those letters, which would have been great to have. So they instead...

head on down through Hastings Cut-Off. They traveled into the Bear River Valley near the Great Salt Lake on the 3rd of August and headed south where they could see the Uinta Mountains looming in... Horrible spelling for how it's pronounced.

It's an aggressive spelling. It's confronting. The day after they made it to Echo Canyon, and then on the 6th of August, they found a note that had been left by Hastings, urging them to speed up and catch up with him so that he could lead them onto a safer route. He was trying to stop them from getting to Weber Canyon, which had created an issue for wagons trying to get through for another group. So he was just out there kind of trying desperately to...

preserve the reputation of his path basically by guiding people through he was like no no guys i swear there's a way through no it's yeah it's good you just have to do this exact kind of path well the the major problem is that when he had gone through on his way back from california he had done so on a horse which was easy very nice nice simple path you bring a wagon and

Yeah. It's more complicated. Breaking down over rough terrain and things like that. Yeah. Obviously very, very different to just riding solo on a horse. Yeah, like shocker. So this trip, that's why this cutoff pass wasn't very good for wagons. Just very rough terrain.

So three men, Charles Stanton, James Reed, and William Pike rode ahead to try and find Hastings so that, you know, they could join up with them, basically get, get Hastings on board. It wasn't until the ninth when they found Hastings at Black Rock, which was at the south end of Salt Lake. Hastings told the group that he was with directions on where to proceed and rode back with Reed to their party. Stanton and Pike's horses needed to rest and thus they stayed behind and eventually returned days later. At a

At a certain point, Hastings got concerned. He had not realized how far back the Donner party actually was, and he told Reed that he needed to get back to his original party. He gave Reed instructions on where to go and left him to return and convince his party not to go through the canyon, to which everyone agreed. So he was just, like, bouncing back and forth between different groups, essentially, at this point. What a lunatic. I hate this man. Uh-huh.

Oh, yeah, it's this man's ego killed so many people. Like he should have just told him, like, turn around. Obviously, this is a bad idea. Literally, the advice should have been turn around and go back to Fort Bridger. Instead, it was, hey, buddy. Yeah. Why don't you go blaze a whole new trail through that canyon? Not this canyon.

A totally different canyon. It's such a bad idea, my god. Yeah, you're right. His ego did get a lot of people killed. Yeah. It was a slow next few weeks, however, with the group needing to fully clear a trail and path. They were out chopping down trees to make way for the wagons, things like that. During this time, they were also accompanied by W.F. Graves, his family, and their team, Sir John Snyder. There was some tension at the time, as Reed most likely wanted Donna's position as captain of the group. The people kind of elected Donna, or the

Yeah. Donna family as the leader of the group, just due to, he was more, he was seen, George Donna was seen as more like charitable and kind and,

It's hard to say exactly what it was, but he was older, he was leading a larger group, he wasn't Irish, which honestly was probably one of the biggest aspects. I was going to say the biggest aspect was probably just that Reid was a bit in your face. He was a bit like a reputation for being very, you know, a bit much to handle, let's say. Yeah.

Donner, George Donner, as far as I can tell, was just kind of a guy who was trying to get there. He you don't see a ton of him putting himself at the forefront of anything. He probably didn't try to take charge. It was probably that he just had so many people with him that were part of his family and who had come along and joined the group that they just were thinking, OK, well, yeah, let's let's follow him. He knows what he's doing. Yeah.

Yeah, this is the kind of trip where you didn't want an endeavoring, you know, you didn't want Sir Francis Drake leading you. You wanted a calm, methodical individual who was going to try and just get you where you needed to go. Cool heads prevail kind of situation. Yeah.

Yeah, but still there was some tension as Reid's ego meant that he wanted the position of leader a little bit. They finally came through the other side of the Wasatch Mountains on August 22nd. The Donners camped at Jordan River. They had only progressed 100 miles or 160 kilometers in three weeks, far less than they expected. Yeah. Yeah. You're not impressed, Jordan?

Not at all. Are you guys impressed? No, I mean, that's impressive. I understand that they've had some setbacks, nonetheless. It's like, ah, it's 700 miles, seven weeks, you guys got it. Three weeks, they've gone, like, 20 miles.

So they were delayed by eight days at this point. And yeah, I mean, being delayed by any given time, like Russell had, or the journalists at the very beginning had kind of expanded upon, was very bad because they kind of had a time limit in that they needed to get over the Sierra Nevadas by a certain time before winter came, really, because the Sierra Nevadas were prone to massive snow. So that was something that would potentially and most definitely be very rough to manage.

if they weren't to make it there on time. And so an eight-day setback, very bad. But it's only going to get worse. Tuberculosis claimed a man named Luke Halloran on August 25th who was given a Masonic funeral and due to the surroundings buried in almost complete salt. Do you want to talk a bit about Masonic funerals? Because I know you've got some interesting information there. Yeah, so Masonic funerals are...

It often gets interpreted as being like an alternative to a religious funeral and that, you know, you're

you're not doing it in a Christian context. That's not what happened here. He would have been laid to rest. It would have been a typical Christian burial. And then on top of that, other Freemasons in the group would have stood there in any regalia they had brought with them. They would have spoken of the person as a Mason. It's hard to say exactly what a Masonic funeral would have looked like on the road at the time, but this would have just been an additional honor, basically. It was a way of...

preserving their memory uh for a different kind of spiritual aspect of their life and masonry actually plays into this entire story in a very interesting way because you have several moments where it's uh people basically saying on your honor as a mason i need you to do this and that totally shifts people's behavior yeah yeah i mean they take it away because it's

Yeah, again, people have a lot of misconceptions about Freemasonry where they think it's, you know, satanic and that everybody's getting together and getting naked and worshipping Lucifer for some reason. But in reality, what it is, is that you go and you take an oath that's basically, hey, these people are now my brothers. I'm going to treat them the way I would treat a brother. I'm going to go out of my way to help them to the extent that it does not put me or my family in danger.

That's basically what the oath is to your fellow Mason is I want to, I will do whatever I can to help you without endangering my own family. Gotcha. Why don't we do something like that, Jordan? You can, it's called Freemasonry. No, but we need to make a new version for us specifically. We're not good enough to be Freemasons. What the hell? What do you mean we're not good enough? I guarantee you the Australian Masons will take you.

Yeah, probably. Look, I've seen a Freemasons base in Lithgow. It would be pretty offensive if they said, nah, sorry, not you. It's like, what? What, the myth heads get to go in, do they? But not us. Yeah, but not us. I think it's entirely different over here. It's a bit fallen by the wayside over here. Yeah.

Wait, so Aiden, surely, you think that you can just rock up to a Freemasons place and say, can I have some of the robes? And they'll be like, yeah, alright. You're not far off. No. I thought it was like a really exclusive club. No. It used to be. Why is it more open now? Because there's not many of us left. Oh no. You're dying out. Yeah. Used to be, I think, 5% of American men, which is...

Like millions and millions and millions of people. Yeah. And now it's you're you've got some states with less than 10,000. Oh, my God. No. Yeah. I went to I went to get a degree in the Royal Arch a month ago, and there were, I think, a total of 14 people there.

in a giant building that was built for the sole purpose of being a Masonic lodge. Beautiful building, by the way. Why is it dying out? Why is no one taking Brotherhood seriously anymore? I mean, part of the problem is that Masonry doesn't really offer. It does offer a lot, but it doesn't make very clear what it offers. I think that's something that's been trying to be solved for decades, but there's now a big gap where you've

below Gen X, you don't have many people. It used to be a way of coming together with your community, and now there's other ways to spend your time. You don't have quite as much free time. I know for me, I have a meeting tomorrow night, and I'm trying to figure out if I have time to go because I have work. Damn. And that's just not... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, part of it is that it was really big with married men.

uh because it was a way to get out of the house and get away from your wife without needing a real excuse you're just like ah honey i have the masonic meeting i need to go and hang out with the boys for four hours yeah yeah now that's not as much of a thing anymore uh nobody's getting married until they're 35 yeah so i feel bad now i feel like i do need to join them just to bring their numbers up a little bit it's a fun time it's a great way of getting involved in your community

At the very least, though, Aiden, you're kicking the ass of the Knights Templar, aren't you? So we're... They're us. We're them. What? Yeah. Where did this happen? Oh, my God. What? So it's gotten so desperate that they've amalgamated. This is a total tangent, but one of the leading theories here is that Freemasonry developed out of the Knights Templar

the persecution of the Templars in France in the early 1300s, because in France it was completely dismantled. A lot of people were killed. A little acceptable sect of it was developed in Portugal, and those who wanted to go fight in the Eastern Crusades were allowed to go join the Teutonic Order and do that in

In England and Scotland, however, there were not that many Knights Templar. The English sort of kind of went along with what the Pope asked for them to do. The Scots didn't really care at all because there were like four Templars in Scotland. And the idea is kind of like Templars, as a way to preserve their order, came together and reworked the symbolism into Freemasonry and tied it back to Solomon's Temple.

So everything became symbolic. I thought one of you was just Catholic and one of you was Protestant or something. I know nothing about this very secretive organization. All the original Freemasons were Catholic. All of them. Okay. Yep. There you go. That's the thing. Everybody thinks Freemason grew back to 1717, which is the founding of the first Grand Lodge. We have the earliest Masonic document was written sometime around the year 1400. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah.

It is a 600 year old fraternity. See, that's kind of cool, Jordan. Yeah, but I wasn't saying to have a whole bunch of people in your comments calling me a Satanist. It's not cool then. I'm on the TikTok witch's side. I got this guy. I'm wearing a cross. I swear. I'm real. It started as an entirely religious, like a Catholic thing you said. Yeah. Well, then how does it get the idea that it's Satanist?

In, I think, 1743, a pope heard about Freemasonry coming to France with a bunch of Jacobites. So Catholic Scottish people, keep that in mind, Catholic Scottish people who supported, I think it was...

James the second or Charles the second, which I think Charles the second, they lost the war. They moved to France where they could be accepted and kept doing Freemasonry stuff. And the Pope got wind of it. And he was like, ah, what's this? And they were like, we're we can't tell you because you're not. I mean, you can come join and then we can tell you, but we we can't.

He's like, I mean, if you want to become a Freemason, you can. You just join the Lodge, but we can't just tell you what we're doing in the Lodge. That kind of defeats the whole purpose. And the Pope was like, ah, so you're gay. I'm not kidding. I'm not remotely kidding. He's the guy that argues on Xbox Live to me when I was eight years old, basically.

Yeah, it was a can can I come into your clubhouse? And they were like, well, you got to you got to pay the membership fee. And he was like, you guys are gay. That's pretty gay. That is 100 percent how it went. And they have spent the last 270 years trying to figure out, trying to fend off the accusation. No, I mean, the Catholic Church has spent the last 250 years trying to be like, no, I swear to God, it's gay. Oh, so they prosecuted the case.

Yeah, I in the 1880s and 90s, this one other like this one random French dude wrote a whole bunch of like literal fantasy novels where he was like, ah, and the Freemasons are Satanist and they do weird stuff with women in their lodges. And I also they really hate Catholics and the Catholic Pope Leo the 13th bought it hook, line and sinker. And then this guy got up on stage in front of the entire French press and was like, yeah, so I made this whole thing up.

Initially, I was mostly just screwing with the Catholics, but now I kind of feel bad for the Masons. I kind of ruined their reputation. Yeah, it's called the Taxil Hoax. If you've ever seen those pictures of Templars, their wood prints, have you seen them with their balls and stuff, like galas, I mean, not their balls? And there's a big Baphomet statue in the background and all that. All of that comes from the Taxil Hoax in the 1880s, and it's all fraudulent. Wow.

Yeah. Even the anti-Masonic movement in the United States from the 1820s through the 1850s didn't say anything about Satanism. It was, Masons are gay. And they're trying to rule the world. That's crazy. Isn't it? I mean, what does that even mean nowadays? Like, so what? Well, now there are Masons who are gay. Why does that matter? Now the Pope's got nothing on you guys. Yeah.

They just made a movie where the Pope was gay. That's right. Yeah. It's all good now.

All right. Yeah, they were masons. We got to focus again on this. There were masons on the Donner Party trail. That's the point. That's the point. Where are we? Are we still on the trail? All right. That is... So while this was a bummer, the death of Luke Halloran was a bummer. Surely it was. The issue that was plaguing everyone was currently, where's that water at? They could not find clean drinkable water. They would beg on their hands and knees for some Dasani at the moment, even though it tastes awful. Like,

Like that's how desperate they were for some water. That is until thankfully on the 28th when they found a spring with massive pits of fresh water. At the spring they also found a tattered letter almost like someone had attempted to destroy it and this letter was from Hastings saying that from here there was no water for two days. Hastings is awful. He's leaving behind like little letters declaring hey this trip is going to be awful for you guys.

It's like, oh, it's he's like, oh, it's 40 miles without water. Don't worry about it. It's 80. Yeah, he lied. Yeah. Oh, he lied about how long it would be without water. He's awful. 40 is doable. I mean, it's not comfortable. No, but it's doable. 80 is probably not doable. No. Yeah.

So because of this, because he had lied about how far the group would need to go through the desert without water, they were forced to continue to slow down, not being able to move in a straight line. But instead, they moved from water source to water source, basically sending riders out in search of these individual water pockets to then travel on to.

When Reed was out scouring for water, he came across William Eddy and his group, who had found a water source via their cattle. He rode back and the group made their way to Pilot Peak Springs, which is now called Donner Springs, on the 3rd, thankful to be out of the desert.

They were mostly moving around at the same pace, but at some point, the Donner party wagon and the Reed party wagon were miles apart. A lot of cattle was lost during the trek over the desert, with most being able to wrangle these cattle back in. Reed, however, was struggling to get his cattle back, and he eventually had to give up and trade some belongings for a cart for his family. Yeah, so who did he trade that with?

I think it was just other members of the party, if I remember correctly. Yeah. Okay. Right. So, yeah, they were losing a lot of cattle at this point, basically. They found another spring on the 12th and ultimately decided that they needed to send riders all the way to Sutter's Fort with a letter asking for provisions, promising payment when they arrived.

They were tired of moving from water source to water source. They needed assistance. So Stanton and McCutcheon were the two who rode onwards for California, which is where Sutter's Fort was, while the rest of the party continued to slowly trek along. So the idea is obviously, you know, it's going to be faster for a few individuals to get us help, basically, than continue slowly moving forward in our train. I think one of the other episodes from this that I think is like...

just painful and i if i remember correctly it was franklin graves and william eddie i eddie had helped i think graves to fill up like 10 gallons of water and eddie on the other hand at a certain point during this trek had completely run out and he went and he asked graves i believe for just a cup eight ounces and uh for his kids basically like hey can i have a cup of water so my kids don't

die of thirst and graves was like no no you can't no and william eddie was like okay i'll kill you and then graves was like all right take the water that yeah that's a convincing argument yeah i mean and the thing is like he would have eddie straight up would have shot the guy oh 100 and he wouldn't and would have been justified in doing so yeah probably yeah

imagine you you help this man you help this man fill up all these buckets of water and you're like hey can i have one one fraction of the water i helped you collect and he's like nah your your kids can die not even that like even if he didn't help like anyone is still justified to try to save their children from dying of thirst karma gets graves the graves family in the end that's the good news

So they arrived at Clover Valley on the 15th. Unfortunately for them, there was an easier passage if they just headed north from here, but instead they ended up going south as the northern pass would not be found for another few years. Unfortunate. On the 16th, they began to cross the East Humboldt Range and traveled through Ruby Valley, which covered 50 miles in three days. They then turned west over Overland Pass and then north up across Huntington Creek to the South Humboldt River Canyon.

They then rejoined the California trail below Elko, Nevada on the 26th of August. So this was basically the end of the, uh, the, uh, what do you call it? The, what was it called? Hastings cutoff. Yeah. The Hastings cutoff. This was essentially the end of it right now. They're back on the main California trail. So ultimately the decision to take the cutoff had not saved time. It had instead added weeks to the trip and,

As they spent a lot of the time traveling very slowly from water source to water source across a desert. The group now had a deep hatred for Hastings, which is understandable. Which is... Oh my god. Like, if you... You carry through the story, this is what caused their problem. It absolutely is. Like I said before, a month delay means that you're not going to make it past the Sierra Nevada before winter. Nope. So...

Very bad situation to be in. Do you think that they knew this at the time? I think, so here's the thing. At this point, they were probably under the impression that if they could make good time from this point on, they would be fine. The problem was that this year had an early winter. Yeah, which they couldn't account for realistically.

Nope. There was no way to know that. So, but if they did know that at this time, let's say hypothetically, once they got back on the California trail, do you think it's possible that they could have turned around and found somewhere closer in proximity to settle in for the winter? They probably couldn't have. They probably couldn't have turned around and found their way back to, I mean, they might've been able to get all the way back to Fort Hall, realistically. I don't

They might not have known the way, which would probably have been the bigger problem. But if they had gotten down to I mean, if you look at if I pull up the map for it real quick, the bigger problem was that they tried to cross the Sierra Nevadas. I they ended up in the vicinity of modern day Reno, Nevada.

And there are rivers there. There was grass. There were wild, there were wild animals. I, if they had stayed there, their, their oxen would have had grazing territory and they probably could have lasted the winter. I, it, that, that area does not get particularly cold, even in the winter, or at least doesn't frost as much as the mountains did.

They probably could have survived the winter if they had stayed in the area that's now Reno. Going up into the mountains was what killed them. Was the death sentence, essentially. Yeah. Now, with that... Sorry, just one question on that. You know how... Whenever you look at history, there's always that, oh, you know, if only they did this, then that would have happened. Are they stupid, or is that just what everyone would have done? I...

It's hard to say. It's hard to say. Yeah, I think that there were probably signs that this was not a good plan. One of the signs is every single person that wasn't hasting is telling them that this is a bad idea. Yeah, but what you've also got to consider is that by the time they get to the area that's now Reno, they are...

They have gone most of the way. I mean, even if you just go as the crow flies back to Missouri, they are 1,350 miles from Missouri. And they only have another, I think, 100 or so miles to go before they get to where they're going. Yeah. If you like, again, as the crow flies get Sacramento, it's 100 miles.

So they're looking at it like, oh, we're almost there. And realistically, if they could have gotten through what is now Donner Pass before the snow, they probably would have made it. So I think they...

Yeah, I wouldn't say it was stupid. I would say that they did not make the safe decision. There were a lot of contributing factors to why they were in this position, but like you said, they could have made it if there wasn't an early winter. The early winter was what did it. RNG at the end of the day. They had pretty bad luck given an early winter kind of ruined their chances of crossing the Sierra Nevada. Okay, so on the 29th of September 1846, they came across a group of... How do you pronounce that? Sorry.

I don't want to be offensive. Paiute. Paiute.

They came across a group of Paiute Native Americans. The Paiutes, although not having much experience with Americans, traveled with the group and even assisted in putting out a fire that was threatening their wagons. In the night, however, the Paiute left secretly, taking two oxen with them. So not the most positive experience, but they did help put out the fire, so that was nice as well. Yeah, the Paiute RAI...

enigmatic little bunch. They probably committed a genocide against another group of Native Americans, and then they rewrote... It appears they rewrote the story to turn the people they killed into cannibals. Okay, so they were good at cancel culture, kind of, a little bit. To be fair, it was probably a kill-or-be-killed situation, but they... The whole story of the Si Te Ka, the red-haired giants of Lovelock Cave, that centers around the Paiute. Okay. I...

it really looks like they might have committed a genocide against whoever was already there when they got there. Yeah, okay, so maybe a pretty interesting group, let's say. Yeah, it does get to a point very soon as more settlers come into the area where the Paiute are like, oh, we cannot beat these guys. We cannot beat the U.S. Cavalry. It's not diplomacy, basically, at that point.

Yeah, one of the main chieftains of the nation overall, because they had different individual little bands, and all of them were named after whatever that little band ate. To be clear, I'm not saying all of the Paiute were these terrible, awful people, but there were elements among them who, even when the vast majority of the Paiute voted for peace, decided it would be better to try and start a war with the most technologically advanced military in the world, even in the 1850s. Okay.

All right, well, why did they put out the fire then? Why didn't they just take the oxen if that was their goal at the end of the night? Probably to lull people into a false sense of security. If they hadn't helped put out the fire and they had just tried to steal the oxen, they would have gotten shot. Right, so they were more smart about it.

Yeah, it was basically like, ah, if we help them, then they won't suspect that we're going to steal the cattle. Gotcha. Okay. So the group continued across Nevada, loosely following what is now Interstate 80, which is what you said before, right?

That's pretty cool. The impact of it following Hastings' path was beginning... Sorry. The impact of following Hastings' path was beginning to affect the group, with tensions simmering and coming to a head on the 5th of October. Two wagons, driven by John Snyder and Milt Elliott, got jumbled up. Snyder was employed by the Graves family and Elliott of the Donner party. Makes it sound like a political party. The Donner family. It does. It does, doesn't it? Yeah. Everything in America is politics. Come on. Yeah, yeah.

But it's so weird that the word party, I don't know what it means anymore. It means so many things. Yeah. I liked wearing that in college. Yeah. Yeah. Can't we go back to that? Yeah. Yeah. So two wagons got jumbled up, both driven by two different people of different parties, let's call them.

Employees too, not even like family members. Not the family members, they were employees. James Reed had ridden up to the scene and gotten into an argument with Snyder when Snyder got a bullwhip handle and hit Reed across the head. There are reports that Snyder may have also hit Reed's wife, which is known as a dick move. What may have been self-defense, Reed got out his hunting knife and fatally stabbed Snyder in the chest. The group was left with a rather unique predicament.

They were no longer in America as California wasn't yet a state. So importantly, it did not have a justice system and thus the group needed to handle the issue democratically within the group. Many members, including Louise Keesburg, or sorry, Lewis, Lewis Keesburg, petitioned to hang Reed, but others thought that because it was self-defense, this was an unfit punishment. I mean, he wasn't... Keesburg is such a villain.

he's such a villain all the way he's such a dick but realistically like it wasn't just self-defense this was a unstable individual who may was potentially hitting uh hitting hitting his wife like that's fair 100 that's fair yeah i mean if somebody hits your wife you're you're kind of justified and going after yeah for sure

Ultimately, Reed was exiled from the wagon train. He was sent off on horseback with possibly no provisions, and he was forced to leave behind his wife and children. What? Yeah. Wow, they must have been so popular with the group. They probably sent him off with his rifle and his horse and some supplies. I...

Otherwise, it would have just made more sense. Yeah, why not at that point? You're basically sending him to death if that's the case. Yeah, it seems most likely they're like, hey, you can make up for this by going and getting us help.

And he went, okay. Exiled from the group, basically, but more so like probably a go to California and bring back supplies, basically. Yeah. Yeah, be useful. We just don't want you with us right now. We're angry about the death. But it's, man, being forced to leave your wife and children. Yeah. What the fuck? He probably had the option of trying to take them with him, but

it wouldn't have worked. Would have been less survivable for them. It's probably best for them to stay with the group. At this point, I believe they had had to bury their supplies in form of cash while crossing the desert. So his wife and kids were traveling basically on the charity of other people. Right. Okay.

God, isn't it like the punishment is so much more reduced as soon as the state isn't involved, is it? It's like, your punishment is, go get us some corned beef. Literally.

Yeah. The idea of a lawless frontier like that is always interesting, though, seeing what people democratically choose to be the punishment, befit of someone. It's always way more interesting than, you know, what the legal justice system- Yeah, because you can sort of guess when it gets to a judge and say they're going to be 25 or life. Yeah, I mean, the sentencing guidelines are right there. We know what's going to happen if they're found guilty. Yeah.

Yeah, but here it's just all these very unique garden variety things based on circumstance, environment, how hungry people are. Yeah. Yeah, could you imagine now if you went to court and the jury just kind of decided what the punishment was going to be? Isn't that strange? It'd be anarchy in that situation.

So within two days, James Reed caught up with the Donner family who gave him a teamster, Heron, so a wagon driver. They gave him someone to help him basically and supplies and sent him further along for help. The party went through Winnemucca, Nevada around the 6th to 7th of October and they found a note left for them about unfriendly natives in the area, which turned out to be true as Pike and Eddie had arrows shot at them while they were out hunting for food. Those would have been the Paiute.

Yeah, dangerous territory. In this AIM area, the group noticed that an older, hardworking Belgian man named Hardkoop was missing. He typically drove Louis Keesburg's wagon. What? Of course, Keesburg. He typically drove Louis Keesburg's wagon. So when they asked Keesburg what happened, he said he had left him on the side of the road all the way back. Why, Keesburg? Because he's a villain.

What a dick move. He's such an asshole. Many of the group backtracked and Hard Coop was eventually found five miles from their evening campsite. Hard Coop revealed to William Eddy that Keesburg had kicked him out of the wagon, essentially left him to die. What? I know. But that wasn't the end of it for Hard Coop as Keesburg kicked him out again on the 8th. Oh my god, dude.

Yep. Where was the fucking court system for this one? Why didn't they come together as a jury and determine that Keesburg needs to be kicked out himself? Technically, Keesburg hadn't done anything that would have been considered illegal even back home. True. He basically just fired the guy. In the middle of a desert. Yeah. Those Germans, man. Very utilitarian. They were traveling through loose sand and Keesburg said he was worried about the extra weight. Yeah.

It does get sad. Hard Coop's feet were blistered and bleeding and he was unable to keep up with everybody. He begged Eddie to go on his wagon instead, but Eddie also truthfully could not take the extra weight, even if he wanted to. Oh no. And Hard Coop was unfortunately left behind as Keesburg was unwilling to budge. They hoped he would struggle along and eventually make it to camp, but he never did. But he never did. And they never found him. Nope. Or they never saw him again. Hard Coop. Yeah. Hard Coop.

I mean, that one's on Keesburg, honestly. That 100% is on Keesburg. Oh, 100%. I mean, why did Keesburg kick him out? I don't understand. Like, the other ones make sense because they would have accounted for weight on their wagons, but I'm assuming Hardcoop was always on the Keesburg wagon, so they would have had to know about his weight and they would have had to account for it. Yeah, he was always with the Keesburgs. Also, the Keesburgs had stuff that they could have absolutely dropped. True, yeah. By, like...

If you look at, for example, Eddie, I mean, this is a guy who had to ask for a cup of water, which means that he wasn't carrying water on his cart. Yeah. Keesburg, on the other hand, he had belongings that he could have dumped, things that were less valuable than a human life, and he chose not to. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah. Evil, man. Keesburg sucks. Keesburg sucks. Keesburg's the worst.

Especially, dude, I don't know, just thinking about this hard-working older Belgian man named Hardcoop, it just instantly conjures up an image in my mind of Pinocchio's dad or something, you know? Like, he just does sound like a killing guy. Sounds like a lovable guy, and this guy's just kicked out of the desert. Yeah, it's so sad. Yeah.

There's something very German about screwing over the Belgians. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an impratertition, fair enough. Yeah. It was beef. It was just in his genetics, you know? Some kind of instinctual desire to fuck over this dude. On the 11th of October, the party came across the grave of a man named Sal who fell victim to the Paiutes. They decided to rest here for the night, but in the morning realized that the grave's horses had all been stolen throughout the night. You'd think that they would have, like,

it would have occurred to them that maybe a spot where a guy was killed by the local natives that they already knew were hostile wasn't a good spot to camp. Yeah, at least they only had their horses taken. Like, yeah, that is pretty, that's probably a death sentence in of itself. But also the fact that they didn't die was kind of good. Of all the families it could have happened to, though, the graves is a good one. This is a good one for it to happen to. It would have been better if it happened to Keesburg directly after that situation happening. But yeah, the graves are also kind of villains in this story.

The next morning, the Graves also lost a cow, the Donners themselves lost 18 cattle, and one of their party members, Patrick Breen's horses got stuck in mide and died. They continued along and camped at Love Lock on the 13th. Yeah, quicksand will get you. Or it'll get you if you're a horse. Yep. In a fit of good news, Keesburg injured his leg on the 14th, which caused him to be unable to walk. Yeah.

Very ironic. Also, by the way, Lovelock is the cave where the genocide I mentioned happened. Oh, okay. Yeah. Small world. It is justice for Hardcoop. It's good that Keesburg injured him. Oh, yeah. The spirit of Hardcoop caused that potential. From what I understand, his leg actually never fully recovered. That is good to hear.

Yeah, sucky. Eddie and a German man named Karl Wolfinger had all of their oxen's par one killed by natives as well at this time. Wolfinger needed to stay behind and cash in his supplies due to this. He was assisted by two other Germans to help, Reinhardt and Spitzer. A lot of Germans on this trip. Yeah, a lot of Germans in America. It's the largest ethnic group. Oh, really? It's not a majority. It's like 17%. Okay.

Graves had an interesting recount of this story, but little evidence to prove it, so it may not be true. Apparently, Keesburg also stayed behind to help Wolfinger, who was actually a very wealthy man, something Keesburg knew, and he may have wanted to use this to his own benefit. When they took a while in returning, riders were sent out in search of the men, and they only found Keesburg, heavily implying that he had murdered Wolfinger. What do you think? Is that for me, or...?

I don't know. On the one hand, I have a hard time believing Kiesberg with his injured leg could have taken Wolfinger, but on the other hand, totally, totally on brand for Kiesberg. Yeah, 100%. And I think he does later on turn out to have one of Wolfinger's rifles. Oh, I thought it was a pistol. Maybe it was a rifle. It might have been a pistol. It's been... I don't remember. But one of his guns. And it's like, hey, how'd you get that, buddy? Ha ha ha.

Stanton and McCutcheon were still ahead and searching for help, and they finally reached Sutter's fort. They convinced Captain Sutter to give them seven mules, supplies, and two local Native American guides named Louis and Salvador to help them. I'll be completely honest. I think Louis and Salvador's story is probably one of the most tragic parts of the story. Oh, yeah. Very sad. Definitely. Yeah, they were kind of done dirty by the group eventually.

This is where their luck starts to turn with Native Americans, though. This is when I said that it's basically 50-50. Once they hit the Sierra Nevadas, it was, for the most part, they were actually being helped quite a bit. Yeah, a lot friendlier with the Native Americans at this point. After all of that bad stuff with the Paiutes taking a lot of their livestock. Yeah.

The Eddies also had little to no food at this time. All of it was being rationed to the children while the parents themselves had nothing. Oh, well, I didn't even correct myself. It was Breen. It wasn't Graves. It was Breen who wouldn't give him the water. Oh, so it was Breen. Okay. It was later than I thought and it was Breen. Okay, so the Graves, it wasn't Graves. Okay. Anyway.

Exhaustion was killing more of their livestock too, losing six oxen around this time in the desert. On the 17th, they set up a camp on the Truckee River. They were still 50 miles away from reaching what is now the Nevada-California border. The two men who had helped Wolfinger, Reinhardt and Spitzer finally returned, but without Wolfinger. They told the group that when they were cashing in the supplies, they'd been attacked by natives and Wolfinger had been killed and his belongings burnt and lost.

They survived by hiding in some bushes. So I guess he didn't do it. Right, yeah.

Yeah, so that's true. You're right. Yeah, that's true. Like I said, there's so many details. Yeah, there is. I have completely forgotten half of them. Yeah. Around the 19th, they passed what is now known as Wadsworth, Nevada, and onto Truckee Meadows. After struggling through the desert, they stayed here for multiple days to regain some strength. Stanton, Lewis, and Salvador reached the American settlement of Johnson's Ranch in their attempts to get back to the group. Meanwhile, Reed and Heron were close to starvation. Heron was

Heron had suggested killing and eating their horse, but someone convinced him to wait a little longer to try and find some other food. All they had eaten for days was wild onions. On the 21st, they had found five beans, with Heron eating three of them. A feast. An absolute feast. What a specific detail. Only five beans. How do you find five beans? And Heron ate three of those beans. Yeah.

What a pig. You just know that Reid was salty about that. Oh yeah, I would be. Three. Why couldn't we both have two and a half each? Exactly. But also, beans. As in the beans that you get in a can.

I'm not sure what kind of beans these were. How do you find beans? I have no idea what kind of wild beans they found. Yeah, what are beans? I don't know what beans are anymore. But I highly doubt these are beans the size of a turkey, yeah? No, no, no, no, no, they would not be. They might have been like green beans, I guess, like string beans? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like snow peas.

Yeah. Jesus, imagine being pissed off at someone for eating three beans. Under the circumstances, you can kind of understand. No, totally. It's just, that's dire straits. Yeah, that's dark. That's dark when it comes down to one bean. It's one bean. That's life and death. You're on the edge of a knife.

Reed and Heron actually ran into Stanton, Lewis, and Salvador, who were camping with another group in the California Bear River Valley. Here, Heron stayed with the group because he was just so exhausted, while Reed continued on himself to start his fort. Stanton continued on to try and reach the Donner Party. While still camping at Truckee Meadows, William Pike died from a gunshot injury. Apparently, it was at the hands of a man named William Foster, and it was ruled as an accident. What happened there?

It's not totally clear. Nobody goes into detail about the story, but it seems like it was probably something as stupid as a negligent discharge. Okay. Okay. Just probably malicious things happen. Literally, probably just like, you know, accidentally pulled the trigger on his gun, which I don't know exactly what kind of gun it would have been. That's the thing. It's maybe a really early revolver. Okay.

And it was enough to kill him. That's for sure. They began to slowly make their way out of Truckee Meadows and finally onto the Sierra Nevadas around the 26th and Stanton then arrived on the 27th. A sense of urgency began to blanket over the group. They needed to push through before winter, but they were blocked by snow. So they began to make their way West broken into small groups. This was an all or nothing moment as there was nothing until Johnson's ranch. So they were, they were stuck in the elements at this point. It was like no way back, no way forward. Yeah.

Reed made his way to Sutter's fort on the other side of the Sierra Nevada. So he had made it through by this point as he had been, you know, ostracized and kicked out of the group. So he had sped on through. Luckily, he made it through in time. He explained what was happening with the rest of the party and asked for supplies to take back, which Sutter agreed to. Similarly to Stanton, Reed was given supplies and also two Native American guides.

Reed also came across the journalist Brian, remember from the start of the story, and other members of the original party here who were shocked to learn of the difficulties the party had experienced down on that pesky bypass route. The group that was at the front of the wagon train, most likely the Breen family with the Donner family at the rear, reached Little Truckee River on the 29th and then Truckee, now known as Donner Lake, the day after.

I mean, that...

That's got to be a dire feeling knowing that you're going to be surviving on those beans for as long as you can, if you can find them. Yeah, you can find more than five beans. Yeah.

Oh, man. Yeah, it's what sucks, too, is like if they had stayed at if if the main party had stayed at Truckee Meadows, they probably would have lived. Yeah, but they were snowed in now as well. Right. They couldn't go back. Yeah. And then they got up to a point where once they were up there, they did not want to backtrack. Yeah. Well, it was probably they were probably in a situation as well where there was so much snow that the wagons probably wouldn't have been able to get out.

I would assume. Yeah, it was not a good place to be. Not a good position to be stuck in, and they were stuck there. So, yeah, very quickly reality set in. The wagons could not make it over the pass, and they were stuck at the river through winter. They had not made it in time. They went into survival mode, setting up tents and places that they could sleep to be as relatively protected as possible from the elements as well as, of course, creatures.

they began to think of what they could do. They couldn't pass with the wagons, that much was obvious, but perhaps they could pass without them. Reed, who had McCutcheon join at Sutter's Fork, made their way to Bear Valley, located before the Sierra Nevada, but found half a meter of snow, which almost doubled in size by the next day. The two men stumbled across the Curtis family. They were stuck and starving. They had been driven to desperation and had even killed their dog to eat, and that meat was now running low. So the Curtis family was on the other side of the Sierra Nevada? Yeah.

Yeah, I don't believe the Curtis family was originally part of the group. I think, yeah, they had gone through with another group and just gotten themselves snowed in as well, just on the Western side. Yeah, so they were on the California side. They were on the side closest to civilization, if you can call it that. I believe that was just a husband and wife. Okay.

And they were surviving off dog meat, essentially, at this point. Yeah. So that was certainly not an ideal situation to be in. No, but it gets worse for other people. Oh, yeah. Luckily for the Curtis family, I think they were fine beyond this point. They exchanged provisions for shelter when the Native American guides with Reed realized that this mission was destined to fail, and they decided they needed to head back. The guides with Stanton, Luis, and Salvador decided to try and stay and help. Yeah.

Oh, Luis and Salvador go above and beyond. They deserve so much better than they got. Yeah, 100%. They were very helpful. Like, there was no... There was nothing... They didn't need to be there. They could have left at this point, definitely. Yeah, 100%. But they decided they didn't help. Unfortunately, we don't even know what tribe they're from, which really sucks. Do we not know a lot of information about them as individuals? No. And I gotta be honest, I mean, this is something that probably... I mean, just...

There's no way to sugarcoat it. Captain Fremont, who plays into this story a little bit in that James Reed ends up joining up with him a little bit. Fremont's militias, the term genocide gets thrown around a lot when it comes to the Native American and European American interactions. Yeah. In California, it was just there's no other way to put it. It was ethnic cleansing. Yes. And it happened like 10 years after this.

10 years after this. Yeah. Oh my God. That's, that's brutal. I mean, it's brutal either way, but knowing that there were peaceful people there that were like Lewis and Salvador, extremely helpful to these outsiders. And then they get betrayed in the worst of forms. Yeah. Fremont was a monster. That is awful.

Anyway, at Truckee Lake, there were 60 people now stuck. The Donner Party was still behind at Alder Creek. So semi-close proximity to Truckee Lake, but still a little bit further back. Those stuck at Truckee Lake broke down to the Breen, Eddie, Graves, and Keesburg families with their teamsters and associates. Isn't it funny that Breen, Family, Graves, and Keesburg were all pretty close?

mustache-twellingly not evil. Well, yeah, kind of evil, especially the Keesburg and Greger families. And then Eddie, they're just like the most heroic people pretty much in this story, the Eddie family. It's kind of wild. There's like, and you know, obviously these are human beings being pushed to their absolute limits, but you see such a distinct divide between

Between people who are like, I'm going to do everything I can to remain a good person. And the people who go, I don't care what happens. I'm survived. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, okay. I want to believe that I would be in the good guy camp, but you never know until you're pushed to your limit. To the limit. Yeah, there's not a lot of morally gray people in this story by the time you get to this point. To the limit, yeah. Because you have to make hard decisions and live by them. So yeah, there were 19 men, 12 women, and 29 under the age of 18, as well as six toddlers in this group that was stuck at Truckee Lake.

It was a cabin that was already there made by a previous party named the Stevenstown said Murphy party, which that sounds like a hell of a party. Well, this is why, this is why they named this one, the Donner party, because it wasn't really hard to call it the Donner, Reed, Keysburg, Murphy, Breen. It would have been a lot. Yeah. You got an, I think I would have gone with the Reed party more. So like he is the main character.

The Breen's were quick to claim this cabin. The rest began to construct their own on the 8th, and the Donner's also began to construct shelter at Alder Creek. It's kind of funny. The Donner's didn't want to be anywhere near the rest of them. Well, did they not want to, or were they just incapable of catching up? It's hard to say. Honestly, I think largely it was the Donner's stopped where they should have stopped. I think George Donner knew that if they went up to Truckee Lake, they were...

Putting themselves in a worse position. They were going to be in a position which was far more difficult to survive in. Yeah, they were a little bit lower. And we do see that they did fare better, at least in the short term, let's say, where they did choose to settle down for a bit.

They did not have much success hunting due to the winter snow and they instead resorted to killing their oxen to feed themselves. Reed and McCutcheon were still making their way through Bear Valley with provisions. They had 17 horses with them as well. The snow did not stop with it eventually amassing over a meter and the horses were unable to continue. The two men did not have the appropriate footwear to continue on without them. They had to give up going back to Johnson's Ranch with the Curtis family in Towell.

It wasn't a friendly ride with McCutcheon nearly killing Curtis because of how useless he was at actually leading his mules. So a bit of beef there. And if you remember, the Curtis family was the one that they found on the other side of the Sierra Nevada. They made it to Sutter's Fort on the 11th and immediately reported the issue. Everyone was on the same page. This was going to take a proper organized expedition.

But there was basically no one who was experienced enough to go on the trek due to the Mexican-American war going on at the time down south with a lot of American settlers heading south to fight.

Reed was understandably concerned his family was stuck, but Sutter tried to reassure him that due to the amount of cattle he thought that they had, that they would be fine. Little did Reed or Sutter know that they had lost dozens and dozens of oxen and cattle due to the raids and the disasters that they had experienced after Reed was kicked out of the group, essentially, and all the disasters that followed through Hastings Cut-Off.

Reed ended up going down and fighting in the war against the Mexicans instead, perhaps as a way of gaining favor with Sada enough to fight favor to warrant asking for a proper expedition. That was wild to me. This man did everything during this time period. Oh, yeah. He just goes on a side quest. Yeah. He just decides to go fight in a war down south. To be fair, like in that position, what else are you going to do?

Yeah, I mean, if he was coming from... Because he was formerly a military man as well, so maybe he had... Yeah, he had fought. He had some kind of... He felt like he had a duty, maybe. I don't know. I genuinely think, looking back, like, looking at it, I mean, imagine you're in that situation. There's basically nothing further you can do to help your family. At this point, he doesn't know how bad they have it. And...

You know, maybe if he fights well, if he distinguishes himself, well, how could Sutter say no? Yeah. Yeah. And then, yeah. So you think it was a kind of a ploy to gain favor? I think it was a ploy to gain favor and also a way to keep his mind off of it. Yeah. Kill time. Yeah. It's like you can't do anything about it. So that's awful, though, knowing that your family's on the other side without you in dangerous situation. And now you're fighting a war down in Mexico.

Back at Truckee Lake, they managed to build three cabins in the first week of October. The Keesburgs built and stayed in a shed next to the Breen cabin. Stanton, Lewis, and Salvador had now arrived and they stayed with the Reed family. And for audio listeners, there's going to be a picture on screen of this little map showing where all the cabins are and how close in proximity they are. And, you know, just to give a lay of the land, basically. They had killed most of their oxen by the 9th of November in preparation for the winter.

So the winter hadn't even started at this point, really? Like, the worst of it? Nope. My God. Adam snowed in, but that was only up in the peaks. That's absolutely crazy. It was going to get a lot worse. It was going to get a lot worse. They were unable to preserve the meat in salt because by now they were pretty much out of salt, I think. So they instead utilized the snow and froze it in the snow instead. Why did they do that in the first place?

Well, they still had salt. Salt and salt taste better. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Salted meat is much better than frozen meat that you just warm back up. They did make another attempt to cross the path on the 12th, but it was blocked by nearly over a meter of snow. William Eddy brought back some spirit to the group this week by managing to hunt and killing an 800 pound or 362 kilogram grizzly bear, as well as three ducks and a squirrel.

One's more impressive than the others there, but still. Yeah, man. That is a great haul. Oh, yeah. How many squirrels do you reckon you could smash in one eating? I reckon like five. Yeah. I don't know. They're small. I could eat a lot of squirrel. Yeah. I feel like a squirrel is going to be better in a stew. Yeah, a nice stew. Let that meat flavor permeate. Now that I think about it, there wouldn't be any meat on a squirrel at all, would they? It's mostly just deceptive because of their bushy tails.

Yeah, they do not have much meat on them. I've never eaten one. I know people who have. Ducks are pretty good eating. Yeah, that's all right. Grizzly bear. How long would that last you? 362 kilograms. That's quite a meal. That's the thing is like if it were just a few of them, that would have lasted in the whole winter, basically. But with that many people, I think there's still around 80 people. That's not a lot of bear to go around. Nothing at all.

They did not give up on attempting to cross the path though through the Sierra Nevada with 21 adults going again on the 21st with no animals or wagons. It is unsure if they were wearing snowshoes or not. They managed to make it on top of the snow and onto the other side. And at this point, they measured the snow in the pass to be about 25 feet or 7.6 meters deep.

which is not good for travel. Let's put it that way. Those back at the lake were concerned as that night there had been a big freeze. The group was okay, but stuck. Lewis and Salvador did not want to leave without their mules that had come from Sutter's Fort.

Dan had agreed with this, but only because he did not want to pay the cash if anything happened to them, as he had barely any money left. Without Louis and Salvador to guide them, the rest had little to absolutely no chance of safely making it out of the mountains, so they instead all made their way back to Truckee Lake. They were not deterred, making another attempt to cross the path on the 26th, but were stopped by bad weather.

As days passed by, the snow kept gathering and growing to the point where Breen wrote in his diary that the only animal that could get past it would need wings. And I mean, yeah, it's bad when the Native American guides, Lewis and Salvador, know basically that there's no way that anyone's getting through this. Like this is not going to end successfully. So very, very bad situation to be in. And guess what, guys? It only is going to get worse.

Things were not looking good for the Donner Party. Blankets of snow kept piling up. They were down to their last four cattle. The mules and several cattle also went missing. Oh my God. Christ. The snow had nearly reached two meters near the Donner Party. There is not much information written from the group of the first two weeks of December, just a few bits of information.

On the 14th, Franklin Graves built 15 snowshoes. On the 15th, the young but frail Baylis Williams, 24, died from malnutrition. We are unsure of the date, but sometime around early December, Milt Elliott and Noah James went to the Donner Party, but he had... Wait, went to the Donner Party, but he had not been seen since. What does that mean?

He probably that they basically they went to find the Donner party and they disappeared for a while. Gotcha. So Mill Elliott and Noah James went from Truckee Lake to the Donner party, but were not found basically. Yeah, they just kind of disappeared. As far as the people up at Truckee were concerned, they disappeared. Gotcha.

Signs of starvation and exhaustion were beginning to be seen amongst the group, with many going snowblind and becoming emaciated. Members also seemed to be going missing at this time, like Charles Berger. So 80 people, people are going to just kind of wander off and try their own luck, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Try their own luck, go hunting, try and find a pass some way out, but there wasn't anything. Never ended well for them.

On the 16th, there was another effort to cross the path. 15 of the strongest strapped on the snowshoes Franklin Graves built and attempted the trek. What would you do, Jordan? Do you think you would stick around with the group at this, you know, Truckee Lake and just wait? Or do you think you would try? No, I'd definitely fuck off. And then you'd find my frozen corpse later. Be one of the first ones gone, basically. Yeah, no, I'd bail. Immediately. Because you're just stuck in. You snowed in. And then, yeah, you just look.

sitting around and waiting to die it doesn't agree with me personally i reckon i i don't reckon i'd do it i don't think i'd do the we're doomed thing yeah i think you'd you take one look at the rotting bear car because i'm not eating that and then leave yeah i know yeah i'm gonna go try and find kfc 500 squirrels i personally would have gone back down

the other way instead. Yeah. I would've been like, I'm getting out of this mountain. I don't want to be here right now. Yeah. Why do they walk the other way? Why, why do they walk through the mountain instead of walking the other way? Like I get why the wagons weren't able to get out of the, you know, back, back down, but surely they should have walked that way that they had already come. They really thought that the snow was going to just dissipate at some point. Uh, and then they got to a certain point where they were like, ah, well, uh,

You know, if they come back with supplies, this is closer to the supplies, technically. It was a very cold and, yeah. They would have been much better off if they had gone back down the mountain. Okay. Totally. They didn't know that.

No. All right. So this group of 15 of the strongest and bravest included Franklin and Mary Graves, Patrick Dolan, Charles Stanton, Lemuel Murphy, Jay and Sarah Fosdick, William and Sarah Foster, William Eddy, Harriet Pike, Amanda McCutcheon, Louis and Salvador, and a 23-year-old Mexican man named Antonio. I'm not sure when they picked up Antonio, to be honest. Neither. Neither.

He just kind of appears as part of the party and you're like, oh, okay. He's here now. Well, there was a lot of that. Like a lot of people just kind of joined throughout the journey and then disappeared at different times as well before this horrible situation. By this point, they were all stuck together. They all carried only eight pounds of beef to feed them throughout the whole journey.

The first part of the trek was spent moving up north around Truckee Lake and setting up their first camp four miles from the foot of the mountain. They made their way through Fremont Pass on the 17th, setting up another small camp on the western side. They came across the Summit Valley on the 18th, with it being around six miles of blinding snow. They made their way down and reached South Yuba River headwaters, a key point of navigation for the group. They nearly lost Stanton from snow blindness, but even though he fell behind, he managed to make it to the camp later on that night, what is now called Soda Springs.

The next day, they only made a distance of five to six miles and set up camp again at what is now called Hampshire Rocks. They continued on the very next day, traveling less than 10 miles until they needed to camp again. The total journey was going to be about 150 miles through the mountain, but they hadn't even done 20% of the expedition yet on foot. This was...

This was a Herculean effort. This was like, disgusting. This was very, very, borderline impossible. Especially, you gotta consider, like, they were frail. They're like, you know, nutritionally not in the best of situations right now with how little they're eating. Yeah, and if you looked at the topography of this area, it is nuts.

It's just valleys and canyons and mountains and ridges. It's horrible. And all through copious amounts of snow reaching meters high. Ridiculous. Yep. I don't know how they didn't immediately die. I don't know if we're just soft now or what, but I think I would have died within the first day. Oh, we're 100% soft now. Yeah. They were built different back then. They had children walking through this, goddammit. Children! Yeah. They were wearing flannels.

How? Like that was their clothing was flannel. How? How is this possible that they survived this long? People were hardier back then. I don't understand. How do humans lose hardiness? Just like surely that's in our DNA to be hardy. Well, there's been some studies that have shown that people who are raised in colder climates are more resilient to cold. Like they literally will not feel the cold. Yeah.

Until it gets much colder than people who are raised in warmer climates. Okay, interesting. Is that the same for warm temperatures then? Yeah. So if you're from the Sahara, you're going to, you know, 100 degrees Fahrenheit isn't going to be a big deal to you. But 60 degrees is going to hurt. Okay. Like that's, it's the same thing with people from Siberia. You know, they're so accustomed to it being so cold.

that for them, it's, you know, cold isn't even that big a deal. It's when it gets hot that it's a problem. I mean, I know I spent four years going to college up in the center of Pennsylvania, which is up in the Appalachian Mountains. It's not even that high. It's like 4,000 feet above sea level. And just that four years there made me a lot more resilient to the cold than a lot of people who I know who went to school further south, who went to school at sea level, just stuff like that. I don't get cold as quickly. Okay.

I blast my air conditioning because I can't feel the cold either, but I live in Australia. So I don't know. Maybe it's a different level of cold though. Maybe you're talking about something different. What about you, Jordan? We're talking about negative 10 degrees. Okay. Yeah. I don't think that's a cold day in state college. Damn cold. That's different. Yeah.

I think I may feel that. The next day, they only made a distance of five to six miles and set up camp again at what is now called Hampshire Rocks. They continued on the next day, traveling less than 10 miles until they needed to camp again. Back at Truckee Lake, Milt Elliott finally arrived back at the main camp on the 21st, but he brought bad news. He said Jacob Donner, Sam Shumaker, Joseph Reinhart, and James Smith were dead.

Okay, so those were all the people that had gone missing, right? Yeah. Yeah. Do we know what happened to them? Like, how they died, just from the conditions? There's no details on it, as far as I can recall. Probably exposure. That's the thing, you've got to remember, I mean, at this point, they're running very low on food already. People are cold. Because again, like, you know, the party that's going up through the mountains, they're

they're the strongest ones. Yeah, the ones back at camp were weak. Yeah. And also, you gotta think about, like, if you're a... Most of the men who died early were single. They, you know, in a kind of dark way, they didn't have as much to live for. So... So if you had a girlfriend, you think that people would survive longer?

Well, if you look at this specific group, that is what happens, is the people who are married end up living longer. Is it because they had someone that was more or less looking after, like a partnership is obviously going to be more successful than someone setting out on their own? Because you've got someone to rely on, basically. Yeah, and you've also got to stay alive for your kids. True. More motivation.

Yep. Stanton was struggling at this point when the group set off again in the morning. He stayed behind, saying he would catch up later. But by the next camp at nightfall, he was nowhere to be seen. That sounds more mysterious than it does. He probably just died somewhere. Not that he was like a ghost or a figment of their imagination all along. No, he was... He just died.

But we can dream. He still hadn't arrived the next morning, so they prepared to cross Six Mile Valley without him. They crossed the valley and arrived at the North Fork American River, but here they made a big mistake. Instead of going west and following the emigrant gap, which would have taken them to Bear Valley and past the snow, they instead went south and continued to follow the river. This led them back into the mountains, camping at Underclap.

at Onion Valley. The group trekked eight miles and then uphill on the 23rd, possibly either Texas or Scotts Peak, and stopped at Burnett or Wilmot Canyon. This is where they finally admitted that they were completely and utterly lost, which can't be a good feeling after you have just spent weeks traveling through horrific conditions, knowing that you don't know which way is up, basically.

Lost, freezing and starving without any resources or food, uncomfortable conversations needed to be had. How were they going to survive in these conditions without any food? And this is the first time, well, that we know of that the concept of cannibalism was brought up. And that is why this story is kind of one of the most prolific stories of cannibalism, right? Yeah.

Yeah. I will say, when I first looked into it, I was under the impression that the cannibalism was pretty limited. It was pervasive. Yes. Across... Everybody was... Almost everybody was eating people. Yeah. I've got to ask you, Jordan, would you resort to cannibalism? What was that? I'm trying to... Because I'd love to say, oh, no, definitely not, but...

It's like, I'd like to think I wouldn't, but... Yeah, don't you think? An empty stomach be a cruel mistress. Yeah. Oh my god. My tummy had the rumblies that only hands could satisfy. It's such a horrific... What do you think it tastes like, though? Everyone says pig. Yeah, I've heard pork. That's pretty good. I don't mind pork. Yeah, pork's not bad. Yeah, I'm warming up to this idea of cannibalism now.

Okay, alright, alright. I'm hungry. It's 2pm, I haven't had lunch yet. I'm alright. It's alright to feel that way.

My brother, it's midnight. For you, yeah. Some began to note that they were out of provisions and to survive, someone would need to die to preserve the others. They discussed deciding by drawing lots or dueling with pistols. It is possible Patrick Dolan was the first to suggest this, supported by William Eddy. They did not come up with an agreed upon solution on deciding who to eat, but mutually agreed that if someone happened to die on the trip, they would be their food. Which, yeah, I mean...

Fair, fair. I mean, if they're not- Yeah, that's fine. That's just organ donation. Yeah, what's the difference, really? I get why cannibalism is such a disgusting idea or an immoral idea, but if someone's dead and you're literally going to die if you don't eat them, then it becomes a whole lot less immoral to me. That's just survival. No, that's bad. Honestly, I don't mind the pistols of dawn idea either. That's a pretty good way of doing it. Yeah, if you got a girl-

Yeah. If you gotta go- I always hated the idea of starving on a mountain shivering and then drawing a short straw. 'Cause that's too much time. It's too much time. I even said in my video, like, I'd like to think I would be able to resist that, but at the same time- Survival. Yeah. It's like, am I- am I gonna die?

am I gonna die just because I don't want to eat a person what sucks though is eating a person and then dying anyway yeah like it's such a hard thing your final moments you know that you're now forever a cannibal yeah that's again I really I would like to think I wouldn't but I could see if I had something to live for and I thought I could make it I think I would probably if I'm being honest with myself yeah

But if I had nothing to live for and I didn't think I was going to make it, I'd be like, no, I'm not dying a cannibal. But again, like dying from starvation is a horrible way to die too. Like you're inside literally eating themselves. The good news is they would have frozen before they starved. True. That is good. I guess if you knew you were going to die, you might be able to speed it up as well with like a kind of

gun or something. You got a knife. You can bleed yourself out. If you knew you were going to die. It doesn't seem like anyone did that in this situation, though.

Uh, no, I don't believe anybody. There are some people who gave up. I don't believe anyone actively ended their own life. Yeah, made the process quicker. They continued on three miles before needing to camp again at the canyons and sometime between the 23rd and 24th, Antonio and Franklin Graves both died. On his deathbed, Graves told his daughter, do anything to survive, which obviously meant eat meat. Whoa.

I mean, yeah, my daughter, yeah, I would want my family to eat me if that meant that they continued to be alive. Sure.

They remained at the camp through Christmas with Patrick Dolan also passing away during this time. The next day, Lemuel Murphy became delirious and died himself. At the same time, back at the lake, his mother was also slipping into delirium. There was some good news back at the lake, though. At the end of December, John Denton found gold dust in one of the cabins. Hell yeah. They still pocketed the gold and hoped that they could make use of it later. That's awesome. I bet they were so happy about that.

Hell yeah. Now we just got to get out of here and cash this gold in.

Okay.

Fucking Keesburg. Again, fucking villain. Fucking Keesburg. Those earlier suspicions of Keesburg killing Wolfinger were still prevalent in the minds of the other members of the camp. Even though, I guess, they already knew that Wolfinger was killed by Native Americans. Yeah. No, I was just saying, yeah, like, everybody just had a bad feeling about Keesburg. I have a bad feeling about Keesburg. Yep.

I mean, yeah, it's pretty obvious that this guy is going to fuck them over. Breen had noted that Keesburg was carrying around Wolfinger's pistol at the time, which is what you said before. The expedition group, which would be named Forlorn Hope, traveled onwards again, upwards of Sawtooth Ridge for around four or five miles. So far, they had successfully ensured that no one needed to eat their relatives' meat. Small mercies. Small mercies. They were eating each other's meat, but not a... No, you didn't need to eat your dad's meat or anything like that.

It's an awful sentence. I wish I did not say that. I take that back. I wasn't going to say anything, but. I'm delirious. Eddie, Lewis and Salvador also did not eat any human meat until at least the 30th when Eddie finally broke down from starvation and gave in. Lewis and Salvador were struggling with the idea of cannibalism due to their beliefs.

Yeah, there were a lot of Native American tribes that had very strong beliefs about cannibalism. Well, of course, because like you were saying before, like the Wendigo spiritualism itself. It was seen as the ultimate act of selfishness. Yeah. I can absolutely see

why they were struggling with that belief. Very difficult thing. But again, everything comes down to survival and eventually I think 99.9% of people are going to give in to that. Over New Year's, they trekked another six miles crossing to a point where they thought they could see Sacramento Valley in the distance. On the 1st of January, Lewis and Salvador broke down and ate human meat.

The group also noticed that Jay Fosdick was deteriorating. Foot injuries were plaguing the whole group, making travel extraordinarily difficult. On the 3rd, they had made it 7 miles and they set up a camp at Giant Gap next to the Sugar Pine Reservoir within the Forest Hill in California. They had run out of human meat by the 4th. Someone in the group, it is unknown who, suggested that Luis and Salvador, oh my god, I hate this part,

This actually makes me so sad. Someone in the group, it is unknown who, suggested that Lewis and Salvador be sacrificed. I'm going to straight up say it was definitely Foster. It was definitely Foster. He was the one that suggested it? Yeah, because in a second...

In a second, we're going to see why. Yeah. Everyone else said no, many seeing it as wrong in two ways. One, they were still alive and relatively well. And two, they had helped them navigate and stay alive and were only in this situation in the first place because they had come to help the group. Which, yes, those two points are very compelling. Maybe don't sacrifice the people who are only there out of their own goodwill. So frustrating. So frustrating that that's even a question. Yeah.

That night, Eddie went to the two and warned them of what discussions had been had earlier. Luis and Salvador were rightly scared and ran away silently in the night. I think one of the most haunting parts of the story there is Eddie later saying that when he told Luis, what about this? Luis didn't even respond. He just kind of looked at him, looked down.

hurt and walked away. I mean, yes. They're already in this situation because of their goodwill. Like, they took a chance on this group of people, basically. And now they've immediately turned around and said, we should kill those guys to eat them. Yeah. Fucking brutal. I couldn't imagine it.

Yeah, so when the rest realized that the two men had left the next day, they decided to follow the path that they had made because, you know, they were good at navigation. So we still needed them for that. So they followed their footprints, basically, to try to follow where they were going. They were also able to capture a deer at this time. So that's good. No bad, but it's better than human meat.

What's that, like 20 people dead by this point, probably? Close to that in total from this trip? Yeah.

It's getting up there. They were down to seven party members. Now five women and two men that this is the fall on group. There's still, you know, a bunch of people back at the lake.

They began the descent down the hill on the 7th going 2.5 miles west. They trekked across the North Fork America River and then up a canyon on the west and camped around a mile from Interstate 80. I mean, it wasn't Interstate 80 at the time. That's just what it is now. They were around 27 miles away from Johnson's Ranch. Back at Truckee Lake, some of the group were becoming desperate. Miss Reed was talking about trying to get through the pass with her children in any attempt to get out of Truckee Lake. Little did they know it was far worse for the forlorn group.

So Margaret Reed, 32, took her daughter Virginia, 13, William Graves, 18, Milt Elliot, 28, and Eliza Williams, 25, with her and began to trek the path on the 4th. The day after, Williams became too weak and ended up heading back.

The children, Paddy 8, James 5, and Thomas 3, were left behind to be looked after by the others until their hopeful rescue. This was ultimately a failure. They tried to make snowshoes, but no one knew how to make them really. No one had that skill. Once they saw how much snow blocked the path, they knew that they could not pass and instead headed back. They were just trapped. The Reeds back at the camp were also running very low on food. They had already killed and eaten their dog. They were left with only boiled ox hides.

Some of these hides had been used to patch up their cabin so that snow wouldn't get in. And now that they were basically using their roof as food, the cabin became unusable, which forced them into the brain cabin. Also, can I just say, I don't think that there's any point at which I could eat my dog. No, it's so... Yeah, me neither. I'd rather eat family members. I might be able to eat my dog if my dog died. I don't think I'd kill my dog to eat it. Nah, couldn't do it. No, 100%. Also, Archie does not have that much meat on him.

Yeah, it can't be that much. It can't be worth it. You know, the husky, she does anger me sometimes. To the point of... My girlfriend just goes, hey, from the other room. The husky's her dog, technically. Forlorn hope, the group up in the mountains was falling apart. On the 8th, they traveled another 2.5 miles up and down another mountain around Colfax. William Foster proposed to the group that they kill Mrs. McCutcheon.

With his reason being because, quote, she was a nuisance and could not keep up. End quote. Yeah, I think Foster just wanted to eat somebody. Yeah, he had the hunger. That's what I'm saying, man. It was definitely him. Yeah, he absolutely would have been the one to recommend killing the Native Americans.

Yeah, he was like, look at them, they're juicy. Yeah, now that they were gone, his attention turned to Miss McCutcheon. Eddie said no, and then Foster proposed that they kill Mary Graves and Miss Foster instead. So he was just throwing out anyone, really, at this point. Well, what about them? If you don't want to kill Miss McCutcheon. I feel like at a certain point, killing him and eating him would have been the right move. Yeah, absolutely.

Eddie again said no, though. Irritated by Foster's willingness to murder others, he declared that he would fight Foster before he murdered any of the women. This blew up into a physical fight. Foster had a club and Eddie a knife. Eventually, the women held back Eddie after he was successfully winning against William Foster, which kind of annoyed me. This guy was talking about killing and eating them, and they still take pity on him and choose to hold Eddie back, basically. Women. Yeah. Too sentimental.

Eddie stated that he would kill him if he ever showed the slightest inclination of taking a group member's life. Again, Eddie's a hero. Oh, yeah. He's just a hero. Eddie's like, I will kill you. And the women are like, I can fix it. Yeah. Oh, my God.

The day after this blow up, they stumbled across Luis and Salvador who were not in good health. Some accounts from this reunion say that Salvador was already deceased and Luis was very close to death. Another account, however, claimed that Salvador was still alive. Foster decided that it would be merciful to end their lives as they were just suffering and so close to death already.

If that's true, I get it. But at the same time, you have been arguing to kill and eat every single other person in this party. So I hate that it's him making the suggestion. Obviously, he just wants meat. Eddie walked away as he heard the gunshots from behind. The group then cut up the two bodies and dried the meat of Luis and Salvador to preserve it. So a very, very sad ending to the tale of Luis and Salvador. It was just heartbreaking. Very, very sad that this was their fate.

After this, they found and began to track a Native American trail. They were able to travel quicker due to this, around 17 miles in a few days, most likely moving south through Bear River. They were just a few days away from Johnson's Ranch at this point. At Truckee Lake, supplies were dwindling down to nothing. The heavy snow blanketing the ground meant that they could not go out and hunt. Eliza Williams began refusing to eat on the 21st. Why's that?

Uh, sometimes people, when they get close to death, uh, from starvation, their, their body is basically like it's time. Also, I just realized that I should probably make my, uh, my, my light red. So I'm red now. Okay. In person, right? On theme. Three hours in. That's perfect. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah.

Jordan, are you still there? Or have you fallen asleep? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm still here. How would you fall asleep? It's like morning for you. It's 2pm. This is turning out to be a lot longer than I thought it was going to be. I don't know why I assumed this would be under three hours. Hmm. The podcast based off a two and a half hour long video. Yeah, somehow.

Crazy how that happens. Jordan, do you mind taking over for a bit? My voice is going sore a little bit. Oh, you're going dry, are you? Yeah. The Reed family forced... You need a nice wet voice. Yeah, give me that wet voice, Jordan. The Reed family forced me to...

Boiled ox hide, which was described like eating glue. That takes me back to primary school. Nice. Yep. I'd do it. Kecksburg's son, Lewis Kecksburg Jr., who were born on the trail, died on the 24th. The Murphy children, William, Ladrum, and Simon all fell ill around this time too.

Ladrum 16 ended up passing away on the 31st. Elizabeth Graves also decided that a debt that the Reeds family owed was to be paid at this time as well. If they waited until they made it to safety further in California, James Reed would have to be able to pay off the debt. The Graves decided now was the perfect time to collect on the debt, though the

and they took all of the reeds possessions, including their ox hides and their food. Well, the ox hides was their food. I mean, it is the perfect time to do it. Yeah, why not? The debt collector comes. I think that I don't think that this was about the debt. No. I think they wanted to eat the reeds. Yeah, they wanted to speed it along so that they had food.

Back with the Forlorn Hope group, they stumbled across a Native American camp who at first were shocked at the appearance of the survivors and were emotionally moved by how much they'd gone through. They were treated well at the camp, given food and looked after. If only they had known how they treated Luis and Salvador. God damn it. Yeah.

They continued the following morning, following the native paths and travelling another four miles and stumbled across another village that also really looked after the group. It seemed that the villagers worked together to let each other know that the group was coming in advance so they could be treated with generosity and care. The natives gave them advice on how to get back onto the wagon trail and they continued on until they stopped on the 17th where Foster and the women were so exhausted that they could not go on.

They were welcomed into one of the natives' villages while Eddie continued on to Johnson's Ranch. Eddie arrived at the ranch around midnight. Imagine the relieving feeling that would be finally reaching somewhere with food, warmth, comfort after going through the ordeal of cannibalism in the mountain peaks. Yes. Fuck me. That's got to be a bittersweet feeling, but man, the relief.

What's crazy is that Eddie basically, like, got right back out there. Yeah. Again, hero. Hero. Yeah. Eddie came across a girl named Harriet and asked her for some food. She was so shocked at the sight of him that she immediately, what the hell happened there?

My computer just went up screen somewhere. Hang on. Now I've goddamn lost my place. Well, the good news is that Eddie asked Harriet for, you know, some help. And after bursting into tears and being like, oh my God, I can't believe you're a person. Uh, she, she did give him bread and food and water and a place to lay, uh, lay down and put up his feet, which according to one of the writers who was a little bit, uh, prone to exaggeration, uh,

His feet apparently left tracks of blood for six miles. That's a lot of blood. Yeah, that's probably too much. Probably a little too bloody. I'm thinking maybe like 60 meters. Yeah. You could trace the bloody footprints all the way back to Independence, Missouri. Oh, yeah, all the way. The community rallied together. Men gathered with supplies to try and get to the forlorn Hope Party.

They did not plan on going all the way to Truckee Lake at first. Seven men traveled to the Native American village and found the rest of the group supplying them with tea, coffee, and food. They ate so much they gave- There you go. Yeah, they do have- I told you we drink tea in the United States. He's not lying. Look, there it is in black and white.

I'm an OZ man. There is historic examples of people drinking tea over 150 years ago. We declared, well, we didn't declare war. We declared independence because they were taxing our tea. Yeah, but then you threw it all away, didn't you? Yeah, you threw it in the river. Yeah, but that was kind of like what we're doing with the tariffs right now. Yeah. Tea party 2. Screw your economy. Tax this dick. Yeah.

They ate so much they gave themselves upset stomachs. With new strength, they all made their way back to Johnson's Ranch successfully. 16 people left Truckee Lake and became the forlorn hope. Ultimately, only seven walked into Johnson's Ranch with the other nine dying on the trek. And getting eaten. And getting eaten.

With Fallen Hope saved, there was a new goal, the Truckee Lake group. It wasn't going to be particularly easy. The journey back to Truckee Lake was a difficult one, and only around 14 men were able to make the trip, and they didn't particularly want to for two weeks. Oh, not just only 14 men were able to make the trip. Those were the only men in the area who were physically capable of doing it. Everybody else was going and fighting the Mexicans. Yeah, not a great search party. Well...

a man named john rhodes was set to uh center status ford arriving on the 20th and speaking to the captain telling him of all own hope that everything was going on about everything that was going on though it's likely he already had an idea of what was going on from john reed previously a wealthy man john sinclair also sent more men supplies and went to johnson ranch himself then he took charge of the whole situation something he was able to do due to his influence and position

He immediately began telling everyone to round up available horses and spare oxen to take them on a rescue mission. He also contacted the U.S. Navy, informing them of what was going on and petitioning them for help. James Reid- What's the Navy going to do in this situation? Aren't they inland? Well, I mean, they're pretty close to the water. Lakes?

Okay. No Panama Canal yet, so. Did you say lakes? I don't know. Look, honestly, I'm guessing as well. They have to be on water, otherwise they're not the Navy. Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe they were just the only people in the proximity. Well, they're just doing a coastal search just in case they're there. They had supply lines. Yeah, supply lines, I guess. Sure. That's why he went to the Navy. He was like, hey, you got anything I could perhaps borrow to go rescue my family? Able-bodied men as well. Yeah, that too.

James Reid, who was still a volunteer soldier down south, also contacted the US Navy. At the very end of January, he made his way to San Jose and San Francisco, where he tried to round up people to help. Keep in mind, back then, these cities were very, very small. He received support. Tiny. Like less than a thousand people. Okay.

and went to present a petition to Commodore Hull explaining the issue of the people in Truckee Lake and how he needed provisions and assistance to get them out. Hull responded and said he would do anything within reason to help. It seemed to read service to the military had allowed him to more easily curry favor. Told you. A small town meeting. There you go. Also, what a perfect name for a Commodore. It is so cool. Commodore Hull. God, I wish my name was that cool.

Actually, Commodore Clark isn't. No, Commodore Jackson would be pretty cool. No, Commodore Clark is way better. I'm assuming Hull was his last name, right? Yeah, of course. It would be your last name. Yeah, well, it's pretty cool if your first name's Hull. Wait, what would yours be? Commodore Shanks Markovina? Yeah, that's... Huh? Some shitty double barrel name. Yeah, I know. That's pretty cool. Commodore Shanks, maybe.

Yeah, Commodore Shanks, that's pretty cool. And how war criminal does this sound? General Mark Avino. Yeah, that's next level. That guy committed crimes in the Congo. 100%. That's a dangerous man.

A town meeting was called by a man named Barlett on the 3rd, which many citizens were said to have attended. Ultimately, they donated around $800 to go get provisioned clothing, horses, and mules. Even those who could not attend the meeting donated, bringing the total to more than $1,000. Whoa. How much is that? Which is a lot of money back then. $50,000 now? Something like that. Yeah, let's say that. That's a lot of money. Yeah, that's enough for a rescue package. That's a big GoFundMe. Not bad. Yeah.

Meanwhile, it was not going well at the lake. The Breen family had run out of their food and they were all sharing ox hide and they just needed to last a little longer as a rescue party left this same day on the 5th of February. Over the next few weeks, while rescue efforts were being put into motion on the other side of the mountain, Milt Elliott, Angus Spritzer and Pike

And a pike child. Died. And a pike child. Sorry. And a pike child died. Are you reading this document through like a foggy window or something? Yeah, I know. You know what it is, honestly? This is what's happening at the moment. It is right before, the screen is behind a very big studio light. And it's really hard for me to do it.

I'm just, I'm staring into a light. That's what's happening. Why are you doing that? Because I can't be bothered to move it. Just turn off the light. I can't. Then the lighting will be bad. Oh my God. You guys are doing great. Yeah. Welcome to the red thread. Thank you very much. Welcome to the new red thread. New and improved red thread.

Twelve men in total went to save those still stuck at Truckee Lake. Each man took a heavy blanket, 50 pounds of provisions and tools. Eddie was part of the rescue mission, desperate to get to his family. But the same week as the rescue party left, his wife, Eleanor, and daughter, Margaret, passed away at the lake. He was so close. Dude, Eddie...

Eddie has it so rough. That is heartbreaking, man. So, his wife and his daughter. Didn't he have another daughter, though? He had a son. Oh, a son. Right. And he... That doesn't end better. Oh, okay. Never mind.

I did not read that then. Yeah, tragic. Eddie, like again, he's been a stalwart hero of the people. And so to see him lose his wife and daughter at this point, he didn't know, of course, at this point. But yeah, that's rough. That is heartbreaking. Very sad.

Back to Reid, he was given the all-clear to muster up as many men and horses as was required and was given a schooner type of boat to take him and the men to Stutters Fort. $800 of the money raised was used to contract eight men and 20 horses and mules to assist in the rescue. One of the men was Mr. McCutcheon and another was Mr. Greenwood.

Both Eddie's and his men and horses on land and reed with his men on the schooner were making progress. Eddie's party had lost two horses while attempting to cross steep Hollow Creek, but this did not slow them down until they encountered a snowstorm, which only meant that they could travel eight miles in one day. They camped through the storm comfortably with all their supplies.

They decided to split up with Eddie, taking the animals down the valley where there was less snow and it was easier on them. Two men stayed at their camp with their supplies and the others took blankets and tools and continued on foot, managing around 10 miles a day. Reed, who had stopped at Sonoma Creek for more supplies on the 9th, left the following day and made it to Lake Beresia.

Berryessa. I know that one. Berryessa. You know that one. Yeah. Berryessa. There you go. I was waiting for Aiden to jump in and tell me that I was wrong. So I'm happy I actually... No, this is California, dude. I don't know. Okay. Berryessa. American pronunciations vary so much between the coasts. Yeah, I've noticed that.

Three days later, and wherever he stopped, he continued to spread the story about what was going on. More and more people began to know through the newspaper, which was now reporting on the sensational aspect of the situation, the desperate acts of cannibalism. This could not have come from Reid.

As he didn't yet know that his friends had resorted to eating each other, this all goes to show how quickly the story was spreading. On the 15th, three of the men with Eddie refused to go any further. One of the men, Captain Tucker, offered the men $5 a day to continue on with the rescue. They continued on. That's good enough for me. Do I get free beans? Three beans a day. I'll do it. And...

At one point, they even camped at 15 feet of snow. They set fire to the pine trees along the path to mark their trail. And on the 18th, they made to the west of Fremont Pass and the headwaters at Yuba River. The snow through the pass was around 18 feet.

They continued and could only make it a few miles a day. They finally reached the lake on the evening of the 19th to the surprise of the starving and distressed group who weren't sure if they were seeing men or angels. Damn, you got to be hungry for that.

They finally reached the lake on the evening of the 19th. Yeah, that's right. It wasn't written about until now that cannibalism had also been present at Truckee Lake. Some of the rescuers wrote that they had been living off of dead bodies for weeks. It is up for debate if the Truckee group did resort to cannibalism. However, as the direct parties at the lake never wrote about it. Yeah, if I eat a body, like I'm not going to write about it afterwards or tell anyone that I did it. Yeah. No way. No way.

tucker made his way back to alder creek where the donner family were here they found jacob donner 56 two months dead and the rest of the family sick and wounded they had fed slightly better with food though but were down to their last rations 12 members of the family stayed behind at the camp

mainly with George Donner, who had a gangrenous wound on his hand and was unable to move at all. The Donner family back at Alder Creek, not at Truffle Lake, because they were down to their last rations, they had had a fairly successful, relatively successful winter as opposed to the other group. So you think it's further back?

It seems like the Donner families fared a lot better. It was probably a little warmer. They were at a slightly lower elevation. They were also in a spot that would have been a little bit better protected from the elements. And, you know, being family, they probably rationed their food a little bit better, more naturally. Yeah, were able to collaborate better as well. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

A young man named John Gdenton unfortunately became too weak to continue. After a few attempts, they saw the only thing to do was to make fire and leave him to wait for the next rescue group. Deep down, however, they knew it was a death sentence.

they also lost three-year-old ava kesaberg around the 25th as tucker headed out james reed was making his way in arriving at johnson's ranch and then leaving on the 22nd the first relief party actually left most of their provisions back at truckee lake with the plan to find the caches they had left over at the trail back but these had all been ransacked by wild animals so yeah they can't get to break oh my god no they cannot

So they ended up sending writers to find their next cache. The two outriders and Reed then found each other and Reed gave them what he could find.

to help them to help the first relief party but it wasn't until the 27th when james reed came across the rest of the party and finally met up again with his wife and two children and learned that the other two were still alive as the first relief party continued there was one incident between bear valley and stutter's fault a boy named william hook ate so much food when he got to a cache he unfortunately gorged himself to death damn that is ironic

It does happen though, doesn't it? Yeah. I mean, well, you're in that position where your stomach is so used to very small amount of food that it would be very easy to gorge yourself to death in that situation if you finally found a lot of food. Yeah.

...

Later letters from Reid suggested that they were dead bodies in the cabin that had been eaten. He moved on to the Murphy cabin that also housed Keseberg and left the food and supplies and a party member to look after them. He continued on and went to the Graves family cabin, continuing to pass out provisions. It wasn't going to be an immediate exit for those left at the lake.

they needed a few days to recoup and gain enough strength even to attempt the trek 10 days after they initially arrived at the lake reed went to alder creek to see donna the donna family most of the children were okay to travel out but george john was absolutely not and his wife tamson was not willing to travel without him it was ultimately decided that they would stay behind and be picked up by the third relief party that wasn't that far behind and reed

would begin the journey with the children two of reed's men were left here as well as to look after those that had been left behind but after a while the two men decided that they couldn't stay thames begged to take her children and they agreed but miscommunication possibly meant that they only took the children to the lake and not all the way back

They took the children of the Donner family from that section to arguably the worst place. And then just dropped them off there instead of taking them all the way back. Yeah. Why? Probably because they decided they probably couldn't bring the children back with them. Okay. Might have been to give George and Tamsin some hope. Might have been an error in judgment thinking they could get them out. But...

They did not. Okay. But surely they should have taken them back to Tamsin and George then. You would think. You would think, but... Instead of just leaving them with fucking Keesman or whatever his name is. Keester. Ah, Keesburg, yeah. Keesburg, that's it. There was only one man left at the lake from the relief party, Nicholas Clark, and he was starving and alone. The second relief party consisted of 17 rescuers.

There were only 12 remaining at the lake. Lewis Keseberg, Leviana Murphy, her young son Simon, child James, Eddie and child George Foster were at Truckee Lake, along with three rescue men. They were left with food for a few days. Reid was still under the impression that the next relief party was not far behind. James Reid and his party were travelling only a few miles a day, slowly trekking back. A storm hit on the 4th.

and they had to trek through freezing rain. Elizabeth Graves became so weak that she died overnight. By the 5th, the blizzard trapped the party and Reid suffered from snow blindness. McCutcheon stepped up and took control of the party. The five-year-old Isaac Donner passed away in the blizzard and around the same time his cousin Lewis passed from starvation at the lake. Reid was struggling with his party. Patrick Breen had stopped and refused to continue. If he died, let it be at a campfire. But...

he wanted to keep his family with him reed tried to convince him that he needed to keep going otherwise he would die but he did not change his mind breen stayed along with the family the graves children of mary donna on the same day of the 7th of march the first relief party made their way to johnson ranch the day after reed came across one of his caches and also managed to alert by noise commodore woodworth

and his relief party were nearby. Woodworth sent them some life-states. Was it just a rule that if you were a Commodore at the time, you had to have a really cool-sounding name that's worthy of the status? It does seem like it. Every single one has a historic-sounding name. Commodore Woodworth. Also, the US Navy got rid of the rank of Commodore and replaced it with, I think, Rear Admiral, which is so lame. That sucks. Commodore is such a cool word. Much better.

Rear Admiral is just like getting a surprise finger in the bum in elementary school, isn't it? Yeah, and Commodore over here is the coolest car possible. Yeah. Holden Commodore's baby. Look it up. With the Woodworth party, there was also William Eddy and William Foster determined to find their families.

There was some discussion on how to progress further at this point. Woodworth decided that they should not go further without a pilot. Eddie and Foster were determined that they needed to keep going and tried to persuade anyone to come with them. They almost went alone. But Reed knew that if they did, it would be certain death that thus convinced them to stay while he spoke to Woodworth.

An agreement was eventually made and Woodworth, through authority of Commodore Hull, agreed to pay any men that would go and bring the child $3 a day. God, it's a lot of money back then.

It's like $150. It's still nothing. What the fuck? That's so much money. What do you mean? $150 a day? Yeah, true. Actually, I would not do that. No. Screw the kids. Oh my god. It's better than minimum wage. At least here. Yeah, but it's just... The penalty rate on...

Yes, there's a very good chance of me eating everyone here if I'm going to survive. I'd want to be paid more than $150. I mean, look at how much people get paid on OnlyFans these days. It's really- Oh, my God. It's nothing. Yeah. Who's more of a hero, Commodore Hull's men who are going out and saving children or OnlyFans people? They deserve- I think we all know the answer. Yeah, they deserve more of the money. Come on.

Seven Men eventually continued on, including Eddie and Foster. There was the third relief group. That was the third relief group, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They came across the body of John Denton.

And due to his positioning, they believed he did not starve to death, but instead froze. The same day they reached to the starving Breen camp, Franklin Graves Jr. had passed away. They also quickly noticed that all of them were too weak to make the trek. And so they began the hard conversation of what to do. It was decided that the Breen family would be left behind and the orphaned children would be brought with. However- I hate this whole concept of splitting up these families. Mm-hmm.

Well, this is the part that I was going to interject with because I thought it was... I had my timelines mixed up. But this one guy, John Stark, who earlier was told, no, you can't come along. You're too heavy. Because he was 224 pounds. He was a huge guy at the time. Wait, he made this trick at 220 pounds? Yeah. But they're talking, you know, they're like, yeah, we're going to have to leave the brains behind. Try and take the kids with us. Like, I...

And what Stark says is he kind of gets up while everybody else is talking about, you know,

just leaving these people behind. And he goes, no, gentlemen, I will not abandon these people. I am here on a mission of mercy and I will not do half the work. You can go if you want, but I shall stay by these people while they and I live. Which is like just bars. Bars under the circumstances, especially when you consider that this man went along and said he was going along before the prospect of payment was even brought up.

He was like, I'm doing this because it's the right thing. And damn you all for not following me. He was giant, both in stature and heart. Yeah. The biggest dick energy. To be fair, a lot of meat on that frame. Oh, yeah. Good in multiple ways.

The third relief made their way to Truckee Lake and they found, and what they found was just agony and misery. Eddie wrote in his diary that many died and their bodies had been eaten by the survivors. So there absolutely was cannibalism at Truckee Lake then. Oh yeah. It's like, it's up for debate, but it's not up for debate. I mean, how else would they? Like, here's what I'll say. An archaeologist would tell you it's debatable. As a historian, they ate each other. Yeah. Human nature.

That's the difference between those two fields. Those survivors he came across were Tamsin Donner, her daughters, Louis Kinsberg, the Levina, Murphy, Nicholas Clark, Simon Murphy, and John Trudeau.

George Donner and a child of Jacob Donner were still at Elder Creek. This was not a happy reunion. Eddie was informed that his son had died and had been eaten by Lewis. I told you. He's everywhere. He can't keep doing this.

What was said between the... Huh? I said someone needs to eat him. Yeah, why didn't he get eaten? Why didn't he get killed or something? He wronged every single person in this story in one way or another and no one decided... I've had enough of Keesburg.

What was said between the two men will remain a mystery, but it is known that Eddie said to Keesburg that once they were out of the lake, if he ever saw him again, he would kill him. I mean, that's a pretty hard line, but still, I don't understand why. If you have murderous intent, like you really want to kill this dude, why wouldn't you just do it there? Get it over and done with. Oh, there's more to the quote. He said that he felt it would be dishonorable to kill a man so close to death. Whoa.

Yeah. He was like, I would kill you where you stand, but it would be dishonorable to kill somebody who's almost dead. Actually, that does go kind of hard. Like, hey, Kiesberg, go back, get strong, strengthen up, and then I'm coming for you, bitch. Literally, he was like, I want this to, I want to kill a man, not a corpse. That is hard. Yeah, I'm into that. Yeah.

hundred percent reed actually had to talk him down eventually uh later on like years later eddie was getting uppity about it and like all right i'm gonna go kill keysburg and reed was like hey hey hey you have a new wife you have new kids don't throw it all away it's a vow the vow it needs to happen yeah we need to get them in the ring right now sort it out 150 years later

200 years later. There's another horrifying story about Keesburg that emerged from the time. All of the witnesses were under the age of 10, but apparently Keesburg took George Foster to bed one night, and the next morning he was dead. George Foster's mother accused Keesburg of killing George, and then Keesburg apparently took the child and actually hung his corpse on the wall. Three children. Wait, wait, is that true? Do you have more to add to that, Aidan? There's not much more to add. That's what happened. But that's confirmed to be true?

I the the people who witnessed it never recanted it that's fucking oh my god I don't know what to say that's that's horrific it's all horrifying I mean I get doing horrible things in survival mode like eating other people but that is an act of madness oh Keesburg was just demented yeah that's not survival no

all right continue three children all under the age of seven still remained at the camp and tans and donna begged eddie to take them with him she had one thousand five hundred dollars and offered all of them to them for his safety george john was still also alive and thames and stood her ground to stay with him eddie told her that the next relief party was going to arrive for a little while but they still wanted to stay beside him they also left keysburg and one child

The blame for this being put on Clark is instead of carrying the child to safety, he instead carried treasure. What is the empire? He decided to carry out money and goods he felt he could sell instead of saving the life of a child. Also, why would you leave behind Keesburg with one child? He's known for killing children and eating them.

Because he wanted to carry treasure, dude, didn't you, Reed? Oh my god, we left this child behind with the child eater and he got eaten! Yeah, oh my god. At least I've got this nice shiny goblet or whatever the fuck he took. What do they mean by treasure at this point? What do they have? I honestly don't totally remember. I'm imagining a pirate's treasure chest with little garnets in it, but I know that's not... People had valuables, jewelry, some gold coins, like...

Yeah, okay. Yeah. Fuck, that's giving people with Clark a bad name. I don't like that. Admit this from the story.

Eddie's rescue group made their way back to where Breen and John Stark were, and they eventually caught up with Woodworth and everyone else on the 15th. Eddie told Woodworth about those left at the lake, but the response was essentially, we can't go back and save them. They would be risking more lives to save the lives of five people. By the 19th, they made their way back to safety. And to be fair, let's think about who those five people were. Yeah.

Yeah, Keesburg, one child. Who were the other three at this point? Tamsin and George, who were both going to die. George was going to die, and Tamsin chose to stay back. Yeah, well, they both kind of chose to stay there at that point. I mean, George was measured. I think it was Samuel...

Hook, maybe? Yeah, who was this last insane person that decided to stay with the child-killing cannibal? Let's see. The only people remaining were Lavinia Murphy, Louis Keesburg, Tamsin Donner, George Donner, and Samuel Donner. So one of the younger Donners. Lavinia Murphy was basically a walking corpse. Keesburg was Keesburg. Tamsin wasn't leaving George. George couldn't leave. The only person who they possibly could have rescued...

Who would be worth it would have been Samuel Donner. He was the one that was left there because someone took treasure. Yeah. Yeah. That's awful. Like, I get the other four because... Well, wait, why did Keith stay? Wouldn't he have been... Like, he's been eating a lot of meat. Wouldn't he have been able to get out? He still had the leg injury. Ah, right. Yeah, okay. Fair.

Also, I think they probably didn't want to rescue him. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't. Fuck that guy. By this point, everybody was pretty convinced this guy had murdered at least six people. That's insane. Alright, so I'll wrap this one up with the final part of this document. It wasn't until April 17th when the next relief party made it to the lake. So that's a few months later, right? That's probably a

Uh, yeah. Two months later? I think about a month and a half. Okay, yeah. So, two months later, when the snow had kind of thawed, I guess, and it was more easy to get through at this point, it took them only a few days to travel there, and when they did arrive, they did not find anyone. Searching the cabins, they discovered human remains mutilated lying everywhere. Limbs had been cut from bodies and the flesh eaten from the bones. I'll give you one guess who conducted this massacre.

As they continued on to the older creep camp and the Donner camp, they stumbled across a bunch of possessions and valuables. These were located next to George Donner, whose skull was cracked open with his brain exposed. Oh, not just exposed, eaten. Like had pieces taken out and eaten. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, I'll give you a hint. It wasn't the one year old child or whatever. It wasn't Samuel Donner who had, uh, it was not Samuel Donner. No, no.

Right near George Donner's body was a complete frozen ox. This confused the rescuers. The obvious question being why these human bodies had been eaten when there was animal meat seemingly available. Hmm.

Keesburg was eventually found in one of the cabins. He was laying next to human remains and had a pan filled with liver and eyes. Everyone was highly suspicious of how others, especially Tamsin, had died, but ultimately they could do nothing about this. Continuing to look around, the rescuers found the body of Laveena Murphy, who was missing her liver and eyes. Putting two and two together, they realized that this is who Keesburg had been eating. Laveena had died multiple months ago.

Despite their suspicions of Keesburg Oh no no no Hang on really quick It wasn't Lavinia Murphy It was Lemuel Murphy's liver Wait how does that work He had been dead for three months They believe that Keesburg dug up the body That's way worse Wait so was Lavinia Murphy She was left back there She was dead still yeah Was she also missing her liver and eyes then No it was he ate Lemuel For some reason

Dude, so he went through all the people, the fresh bodies, including George's brain, and then on to bodies that had been buried previously. While there was an ox. Right there. So... He could have eaten steak. Yeah. But he chose to eat human flesh. Oh, that's fucked.

Despite their suspicions of Kessberg, can you even call them Kessberg? He was laying next, I mean, suspicions, he was laying next to a pan filled with human flesh. They couldn't prove which, they couldn't prove that he killed Tamsin. Okay.

They allowed him to leave the lake ultimately. This marked the final rescue and the horrors of the Donner Party were now finally over. Ultimately, of the 87 people who were a part of the Donner Party, 41 people died during the harsh winter of 1846 to 1847, most dying on the mountain as well as at the lake. So hang on, what happened to Keesburg?

I have good news about Keesburg. I have great news about Keesburg. So he actually, when he did make it back, he was accused of murdering Tamsen by several of her children, some of the remaining Donners, and also some of the men who rescued him. Basically, everybody was like, hey, this guy killed people. And he sued for defamation. He won his lawsuit.

Yes, he sued them for defamation. He won his lawsuit, but the judge awarded him just $1. The judge was basically like, you know what? You win, but you get nothing. He did somehow manage then to buy a hotel. He became a rather successful businessman. He said this is good news. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. He's coming. But then...

Eventually, the hits to his reputation from all of this, because no matter how hard he tried, he could not shake being the cannibal killer. Eventually, he lost his business. He had no family and no friends. And he not only died completely broke and alone, but he is buried in an unmarked grave in a hospital cemetery.

Okay, that's good. Why a hospital cemetery? Because he died in a hospital. He died in Comfit, okay. Yeah. A geriatric old man, yeah? Yeah. Unfortunately, he did actually make it to old age. Yeah, no, that's not justice. I'm sorry, that's not justice. At least nobody knows where he's buried.

I wish they did so that they could eat him. That's true. That's a good point. Yeah. That's justifiable. It's just something far worse needed to happen to this man. He killed seven people. Yeah. At least. Children. Yeah, children. No, no way. No, no, no.

And not that long as well. It's not even just the ox. It's just like a few days later, they're at the lake and he's just eaten all of them. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you said, there was meat there. He could have had a steak and he still continued killing and eating. Do we know for sure that he didn't go, like he didn't kill more people and eat them when he returned? We don't.

I mean, there's as far as I'm aware, there's no evidence of that. He would have had a much he would have had a hard time because he that leg injury never healed. Okay. Okay. He's game for the rest of his life. Yeah.

There's always the claim, though, that eating human flesh turns your ravenous towards human flesh. So I was interested in seeing. It definitely seems like that was the case with him at the lake when he was able to do that. Oh, definitely. So I'm wondering if that hunger persisted throughout the rest of his life, as morbid as it sounds. Yeah. I don't think it's just him either. I mean, him, William Foster, I think Elizabeth Graves. True. True. William Foster did have a... As soon as he started eating human flesh, he started wanting to kill every single person to eat them. Mm-hmm.

And Elizabeth Graves kept trying to take the only food that the Reeds had as repayment for a debt that they couldn't possibly pay back if they were dead. So I think she was trying to eat them too. She wanted them dead so that she could eat them, right? So you think there is truth to that theory that there is some level of hunger that is born? Yeah, whether it's psychological or physiological, I don't know, but...

It doesn't make sense for it to be physiological. It has to be some kind of psychological element where you associate it with relief in the moment. You finally get that food eventually in cannibalistic moments. Obviously, most cannibals are born from the desperate need for food in the first place. Once you finally get the bite of that, it becomes such a breaking of a taboo as well as a mix of relief from finally getting food that there has to be some kind of positive response

link in your brain to that moment, basically. And then you just keep wanting that feeling like a drug. That's a good call. I think it's more likely psychological than it is physiological. I agree. I definitely think that. So then I guess eventually he would...

Maybe like any addiction, eventually it would subside through not doing it. Probably. Maybe. I don't know. Very interesting. If you can manage to hold off long enough, then yeah, probably. All right. We've been going for almost four hours. That's insane. I did not expect that, even though I should have, like you said. Do you have any final anecdotes that you want to add to this that the audience might find interesting in particular? Man, I mean...

As far as this story goes, not that I can think of. I mean, obviously, if you want to catch the whole thing in a very straightforward, more academic context, it's the videos on my channel. The most interesting thing about this story is just how many other things it's tied to.

I mean, from the Mormons to this this weird story about Lovelock Cave. Sarah Winamucka actually mentions in a book that the white people killed each other in the mountains a few years ago that she heard this conversation when she was a child. So there's all these weird different ways it ties into everything.

And I just, I don't know, it's such a cool story. Like, it's dark, it's morbid, but at the same time... But it feels like the most kind of, like, movie-esque story of the frontier that I think I've ever heard. It has heroes and villains. It has character development. Like, that shouldn't exist in a true story, and yet it does. Yeah. So, no, this is one of my favorites. I love weird history. Yeah, but that's...

I don't think I have anything else. We were pretty exhaustive about it. Very exhaustive. It's hard because you want to be exhaustive with these kinds of topics because you want to be true to the story. But yeah, probably a better idea next time to leave some stuff out maybe for a podcast. You want to hear some really weird stuff about California that happened right after this? We have a video on it too, but go look into the gorilla sightings in the 1870s. What is that?

All right. Now you've got to tell us that now. Sorry, this podcast is going to have to stretch out to five hours. We need to know. OK, just the brief version of it. The brief version. Again, I have a video on it that goes into all the details. But the in the 1870s, there are these reports about gorillas being sighted in California. Now, the problem with that is that nobody actually had seen a gorilla yet this far west. Like there had been no photographs of gorillas. What do you mean this far west?

Yeah, there have been no photographs of gorillas. Do you mean like this far west of Africa? Mm-hmm. What? Yeah, there were no photographs of gorillas in the United States at this time. So wait, they didn't have any perception or idea of what a gorilla was at all? They had the gorillastrations.

Okay, so they knew what a gorilla looked like, so they could fake it. Yeah, but those drawings are not particularly accurate. They look more like Bigfoot. So there's just these weird series of quote-unquote gorilla sightings that happen in California and Oregon in the 1870s up through the 1910s. And then it all culminates with the Battle of Ape Canyon. But

But I'll leave that for another time. Okay, that's very interesting. I'm going to look into that later on. Hang on, so what? Do people suggest that this is Bigfoot? Yeah, it's going to be Bigfoot. It's like early, basically early accounts of what is believed to be Bigfoot. Yeah, I mean, if it's a story, stories from back in the 1800s and stuff, that's way more compelling than like modern era Bigfoot sightings because obviously, dude in a suit. But like, who would be doing that? Who would be walking around in a gorilla suit back in the 1800s?

Exactly. I mean, there was no concept of it. Yeah, you don't have a concept of wanting to make the suit in the first place. He was a really hairy dude. Maybe. I don't know. That's very fascinating. I'm going to look into that. Jordan, any last words from you before we move on and leave? I'll just finish with this. What a fascinating tale of human endurance.

Yeah, I mean, that's a positive spin on it. That's your one way to put it. You know, it could have been far worse. Every single person could have died. I am ultimately surprised that there were as many survivors as there ended up being. Look, the maths works out. Every single person that you kill not only feeds you, but it's one less mouth to feed.

You're going to get to a point of sustainability. It's kind of like when there's too many sea monkeys in your little thing that you get from the news agency. What? Yeah, great comparison. Okay. Kind of though, right? Sure. A lot of things just naturally meet their equilibrium. If you really zoom out at that and look at it just as like a biological thing that happens, cannibalism makes a lot of sense. Cannibalism is just equilibrium. It's equilibrium.

Except for, and then you just get to the point where it's like, you know, this Keysburg character. Yeah. Look, I understand that babies have just a little bit more meat than a squirrel, but you probably could have endured that. It's really a tragedy of the commons situation here. Yeah. It's a really what, what?

A tragedy of the commons situation here. You know, you got these resources, but no regulation, and then one guy goes and ruins it for everybody. Uh-huh. Yeah, there was no need for him, was there? There really wasn't. Like, everything else in the story is pretty damn understandable. Yes. If somebody had thought to shoot Louis Kiesberg earlier in the story, a lot of things would have gone better for a lot of people. Yeah, totally. Well, you know what? Now that I think about it, it's that...

Classic thing of, I don't know, one in every, I don't know what the numbers are, but likely there's going to be a sociopath somewhere in the ranks. Especially with 100 people. It's got to be like, yeah, yeah. It's got to be one in 100, surely. At least one in 100, surely. I mean, the guy was, like, they knew early on that the guy beat his wife. Like, there were signs. Oh, yeah. We didn't really go over that, but yeah, he was very clearly abusive. He was a piece of shit. I mean, you can just tell by looking at a photo of him that he is.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just like, isn't that so telling, isn't it? One photo and you think, I want to be next to him on a bus. The butterfly effect. You could have either shot Louis Keesburg and a lot of the situation would have ended up differently. Or you could go even further up the road and shoot the guy who wrote the book, whatever the book was. Oh yeah, Hastings. Now that would have solved all the problems, wouldn't it?

Yeah, Keesburg's awful, but Hastings is the real villain of the story. Well, the villain in the sense that he initially, like, he directly caused it. I don't think there was nearly as much malice on his part than there was from Keesburg. But, yeah, I mean, it's hard to argue that if he had just not written that book and tried so desperately to get people to use his shortcut, this all could have been avoided.

Well, I'll tell you what, Aidan, you probably should come on the podcast another time. There is, just for your information, Jackson, there's our version of that, which is still to this day the first proper European settlement of Australia, which was these desert islands off the coast of West Australia and this Dutch ship lay waste there. And that story...

is seriously one of the most fascinating stories I've ever heard in my life. Very similar dynamic to this. Fascinating in the sense of human survival, like what they go through. Yeah, but also because they kind of just created little tribes and had wars with each other on these tiny little tribes. It became this little small planet almost. And like, I won't spoil the ending, but the ending is, it's just like,

Is this... Are you sure this happened? This isn't a movie? Like, there is an incredible deus ex machina at the end. It's astonishing. They turned back time and they survived. Yeah, okay, well, not a dumb movie. Not a blockbuster. Paul opened up and their future selves came through and said, you know, here's what you need to survive. LAUGHTER

I predict that the actual answer is they finally make it over the water and realize that Perth is no better and they want to go back. And that's the incredible tale. Yeah. All right. That's going to do it for this episode. Please go check out Aiden's channel, Lore Lodge. Aiden, would you like to shout out any more, anything else from your channel in particular that people can check out?

Uh, yeah, I mean, uh, I appreciate the shout out. Also, you know, if you're into weird historical stuff, whether it's mysterious or just, uh, you know, kind of fun, uh, we have a series on the Viking settlement in Vinland and what happened to it. Uh, we've also got stuff on that, uh, that weird situation at Lovelock cave. And then we cover a lot of missing person stuff. And we also have our show history unhinged, which is its own channel that we do with, uh, Stephen Bell from history of everything, which is basically just, uh,

me and another historian sitting and talking about weird stuff that happened in history, often while drinking.

Fantastic. Yeah, that's a podcast. Oh, yeah. If you're not already a fan of Lore Lodge and all the stuff that Aiden does, which it sounds like a lot of our audience is because, again, highly requested, please go check him out. And very entertaining videos. Very, very good videos. Thank you. I appreciate it. Go check it out. They do great stuff. Jordan, obviously, Jordan's got channels as well. Friendly Jordies as well as Jordan Shanks. Go check him out. He's also live touring across Australia at the moment.

You're back home at the moment though, aren't you? For, I'm going to say 20 hours. So where are you next?

I am at, oh, nice. I'm at Katoomba next, which no one listening to this podcast would know where it is, but it is lovely. Yeah. If there's one listener out there at Katoomba, well, this episode is not going to be out by them, but you know, he was in your town. So that's cool. Go check. Yeah. Go check out. Links below. You can check out, buy tickets to his live show. If you're Australian, highly recommend it. Your show at the moment is on aliens. So that's right up our audience's alley. Go check that out.

You would love it if you came. Patreon.com/theofficialpodcast as well as official.men for early ad-free access to all of our shows, including the official podcast and Red Thread, of course. The support means a lot. You guys have been fantastic, very supportive, especially throughout these multiple changes over the last year. That really does mean a lot for your continued support, like more than words can describe, really.

Please go check those out if you're really enjoying the shows. A lot of sweet comments at the moment. I read them all and I really do appreciate it. They love you, Jordan. They love you. My grandmother watches the show and has since the beginning and she said she loves you completely. You are the best host so far in her opinion. Well, I'll tell you what, I am very happy about this. I don't know when this occurred, but I think it's just in my early 30s. All of a sudden, really old women started liking me.

And I see that as a great compliment. Honestly. She's probably not going to appreciate you anymore after calling her extremely old. A really old lady. Way to just ruin that entire demographic. I was trying to get to say something nice about them, which is that they're very lovely ladies. Like anyone that is from the generation where you wore gloves to go to the cinema, better people than us. Absolutely. Well, this one's for you, Nan.

Thanks for that. We'll see you next time. Didn't have to say really twice, you know. All right. Bye, guys. Bye. Future Jackson cutting back in here at the end of the episode to let you all know how much we really do appreciate all the support you guys have given Red Thread over its run, as well as during all of the changes that have befallen the series. So,

Really do appreciate it all. I'd love to make the show even better and build a stronger community around it. So please keep leaving feedback below in the comments or hey, we also have a fan run subreddit where I usually lurk and read suggestions and feedback at. You can head over to reddit.com slash

slash red thread podcast and join the conversation over there meet some like-minded people also you can ask us questions for future episodes that we'll read out on the episode we're going to start doing that over at patreon.com slash the official podcast and official.men so you'll get a sneak peek at what's coming next on red thread we'll make a post each week basically uh

showing or saying what the next thread is and then we'll solicit uh questions from the members and read them out on future episodes or that episode in the future uh so you'll get your question read out on the episode and we'll answer it it'll be a fun little conversation uh one way through a screen thanks for the support really do appreciate it we'll see you next week bye

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