The Unspeakable Horrors of the Donner Party скачать в хорошем качестве

The Unspeakable Horrors of the Donner Party

In the summer of 1846, eighty-seven people — including forty-three children — left for California. Forty of them died. And the cannibalism that everyone fixates on is probably the sixth or seventh worst thing about this story. The Donner Party has been reduced to a simple label: stupid pioneers took a shortcut, got snowed in, ate each other. But the real story is far more disturbing than that comfortable version allows. It's a story of manufactured disaster, racial murder, Indigenous people shot at for offering food, and a four-month starvation that ground through boiled leather and family pets long before anyone touched a human body. This video strips away the myth and walks through what actually happened — from the fatal decision at Fort Laramie, through the five-day death march across the Great Salt Lake Desert, to the snow-buried camps at Truckee Lake and Alder Creek, and the killing of two Miwok guides whose murders most retellings skip entirely. The Donner and Reed families were not desperate frontier gamblers. They were prosperous Illinois farmers traveling with spring-cushioned wagons and iron stoves. Their catastrophe was not born from poverty or ignorance but from a promotional book full of lies written by a lawyer named Lansford Hastings, who had never driven a wagon through the route he was selling. At Fort Laramie, mountain man James Clyman personally warned James Reed not to take the Hastings Cutoff. Reed ignored him and chose the book over the man who had walked the ground. That single decision, made in comfortable weather with full stomachs, killed forty people. 📍 TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 — Cannibalism Was the Sixth Worst Thing 1:18 — Rich Families, Not Desperate Pioneers 2:41 — The Book That Killed 40 People 3:31 — The Warning James Reed Ignored 4:01 — Into the Wasatch Mountains 5:01 — Five Days Across the Salt Desert 5:31 — Last on the Trail: Manufactured Lateness 6:31 — The Killing of John Snyder 7:32 — Left to Die Before the Snow 8:32 — Trapped: The Pass Is Sealed 9:32 — Breen's Diary: Storm After Storm 11:02 — The Slow Descent Into Starvation 13:32 — The Forlorn Hope Sets Out 15:32 — The Camp of Death: Christmas 1846 16:29 — The Murder of Luis and Salvador 17:25 — The Miwok Village Feeds Their Killers 18:32 — The Rescue Parties 20:24 — Keseberg: The Man Who Carried Everyone's Guilt 23:32 — The Washoe Were Watching 24:57 — Shot At For Offering Food 26:32 — Virginia Reed's Letter 28:32 — Never Take No Cutoffs 📚 SOURCES & FURTHER READING: https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-... https://www.nps.gov/cali/learn/histor... https://www.britannica.com/topic/Donn... https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructu... https://yourtahoeguide.com/2014/08/la... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_... 📋 ABOUT THIS VIDEO: This video examines the Donner Party disaster of 1846–1847, covering the journey from Springfield, Illinois through Independence, Missouri, Fort Laramie, Fort Bridger, the Wasatch Mountains, and the Great Salt Lake Desert to Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake) and Alder Creek in the Sierra Nevada, California. The 87-member party included the families of George Donner, Jacob Donner, Tamsen Donner, and James Frazier Reed, who followed the disastrous Hastings Cutoff promoted by Lansford Hastings' 1845 emigrant guide despite warnings from mountain man James Clyman. Trapped by storms from October 31, 1846, through April 1847, survivors endured four months of starvation under 10–20 feet of snow. Patrick Breen's diary documents conditions at the lake camp. The Forlorn Hope snowshoe party of 17 departed December 16, 1846, with only 7 surviving, including the murder of Miwok guides Luis (Eema) and Salvador (Queyuen) by William Foster. Four relief parties organized from Sutter's Fort between January and April 1847 evacuated survivors. Of the original party, 40 died and 47 survived, with nearly half the group being children under 15. Archaeological work by Donald Hardesty, Kelly Dixon, and Julie Schablitsky at Alder Creek confirmed camp locations and found evidence of extreme resource depletion. Washoe people observed the trapped emigrants throughout the winter and were fired upon when offering food. Lewis Keseberg, the last survivor removed, was scapegoated as "the cannibal" for the remaining 48 years of his life despite acquittal on all murder charges. The disaster occurred during the Mexican-American War amid Manifest Destiny expansion into Mexican California. #DonnerParty #AmericanHistory #WestwardExpansion #Cannibalism #ManifestDestiny #CaliforniaTrail #DarkHistory #SierraNevada #History #TrueHistory #SurvivalHistory #OregonTrail