Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History(45)

Given the large number of bodies present at the Truckee Lake and Alder Creek campsites, and the short amount of time during which cannibalism occurred, there would have been no need to process human bones in the same manner in which animal bones had been processed previously. Essentially, that’s because once cannibalism began at the camps there would have been ample human flesh for the ever-dwindling number of survivors to eat—more than enough to make cooking and re-cooking the human bones completely unnecessary. For similar reasons, once Louis Keseberg was the only person left alive at either camp, between the human bodies and the livestock carcasses uncovered by the melting snow, he would have had plenty of food (grisly though it was) on which to subsist until his rescue by Fourth Relief a month later.

Because uncooked bones would not have been preserved in the acidic soil of the conifer-dense Sierras, there would be no human bones for archaeologists to uncover. Therefore, the absence of calcined human bones from the Meadow Hearth only proves that human and animal bodies were not processed in the same way. The evidence does not place the practice of cannibalism by members of the Alder Creek Camp into doubt, nor does it have any bearing whatsoever on the cannibalism that took place at the Truckee Lake Camp, within The Forlorn Hope, or at the Second Relief’s Starved Camp.

The good news was that someone at Appalachian State yanked the press release and deactivated the global web link. A week later, ASU’s University News website featured a revised version of the original release, minus the grandiose claims of its predecessor. The newly titled report, “Professor’s Research Demonstrates Starvation Diet at the Donner Party’s Alder Creek Camp” was a far more straightforward story on the preliminary findings of the research team. Those who had written the revision also chose not to address the previous boo-boo.

The actual research paper (published three months later in the archaeological journal American Antiquity) turned out to be a fine piece of science. Yet it is likely that very few people outside the archaeology/anthropology communities will ever read it, and this presents its own problem.

According to Kristin Johnson, since 2010 the claims of “no cannibalism” have made it that much more difficult for Donner Party historians to present a factual representation of the events that took place. “Unfortunately, people’s memories seem remarkably retentive when it comes to misinformation,” Johnson told me. “And once a falsehood or garbled story gets out, it’s difficult to dislodge. ‘We found no evidence for cannibalism at Alder Creek’ becomes ‘There was no cannibalism in the Donner Party.’ ”

Even the media seemed less excited about the prospect of returning to the long-held Donners-as-cannibals stance, although the New York Post scored points with their headline, “ ‘Cannibal’ Doc Eats Her Words.”

Although the 2010 media flap had certainly sparked my interest in writing about the Donner Party, I had come to Alder Creek in 2014 for a completely different reason. In brief, historians like Kristin Johnson had begun to doubt the claims of some of the 2003–2004 archaeological team that the Meadow Hearth had once been the camp of Donner Party leader George Donner, whose body had been discovered, still wrapped in its sheet, by General Kearny and his men in the summer of 1847.

“That just didn’t work for me,” Johnson told me, and I asked her why.

“The site didn’t really fit the sources. There were no tree remains nearby. There weren’t all that many artifacts [excluding bone fragments] and few indicating a female presence. Initially, I thought the dig site was more likely Jacob Donner’s camp, since there were seven males and two females in his family.”

But that conclusion didn’t sit well with her, either.

Johnson began working with Kayle’s owner John Grebenkemper. The two Donner Party detectives examined old photos of the tree stump locations and shared relevant documents including maps, articles, memoirs, and letters written by Donner Party members. Grebenkemper, a retired computer whiz with a Ph.D. from Stanford, wrote a program to coordinate historic photos with the current topography of Alder Creek. Once their analysis of the data was complete, they arranged for the area to be examined by a pack of grave-sniffing pooches, including Kayle.

In addition to George Donner, 34 members of the Donner Party died in the winter camps or trying to escape them—mostly from starvation and/or exposure. In 1990, anthropologist Donald Grayson conducted a demographic assessment of the Donner Party deaths and came up with some interesting information.

On the not-so-surprising front was the fact that children between 1 and 5 years of age and older people (above the age of 49), experienced high mortality rates (62.5 percent and 100 percent, respectively), primarily because both groups are more susceptible to hypothermia.

What I found fascinating was that 53.1 percent of males (a total of 25) perished while only 29.4 percent of females died (10). Additionally, not only did more of the Donner men die, they died sooner. Fourteen men died in between December 1846 and the end of January 1847, while females didn’t begin dying until February.

Another intriguing detail is that all 11 Donner Party bachelors (over 18 years of age) who became trapped in the Sierras died, while only 4 of the 8 married men, traveling with their families, perished during the ordeal.

The explanation for why more Donner Party males died than females is probably a combination of biology and behavior.

The biological component relates to the physiological differences between males and females, and nutritional researchers believe that three significant differences come into play during starvation conditions: 1) Females metabolize protein more slowly than males (i.e., they don’t burn up their nutrients as quickly as males); 2) Female daily caloric requirements are less (i.e., they don’t need as much food as men); and 3) Females have greater fat reserves than males, thus they have more stored energy that can be metabolized during starvation conditions. Also, much of this fat is located just below the skin (i.e., subcutaneous), where it functions as a layer of insulation, helping maintain the body’s core temperature during conditions of extreme cold.