Shelsman
25/04/2005, 12:12 PM
From The Sunday Times:
April 17, 2005
DNA to identify victims of wagon train cannibals
John Harlow, Los Angeles
DNA tests being carried out on the remains of pioneers from a doomed Wild West wagon train may establish whether a Victorian gunsmith from Sheffield was eaten by fellow travellers.
John Dutton, 28, signed up with an 81-strong party led by George Donner, a prosperous farmer, that set off in April 1846 on a 2,500-mile trek from Springfield, Illinois, bound for San Francisco.
The pioneers came to grief in blizzards in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains the following winter and began to die of cold and starvation. The Donner Party, as the group is known, has become synonymous with disaster and despair to generations of American schoolchildren and has spawned memorials, films and even a musical.
Dutton volunteered to set off over the mountains on snowshoes as part of an expedition called the Forlorn Hope, but covered only a few hundred yards before his strength ran out. He is said to have sat down in the snow, lit his pipe and “died without complaint”.
The Forlorn Hope lived up to its name: lost in the snow and maddened by starvation, members drew lots to decide which of them would be killed and eaten so that the others might survive.
The loser was Patrick Dolan, a wagon driver from Dublin. Two Indian guides who refused to eat human flesh were hunted down, shot and eaten as well.
According to the accounts of some survivors, Dutton’s body was discovered later. Among the items found in his coat pocket was a poem he had written shortly before he died, in which he reminisced about his youth in Britain.
By the time his body was dragged back to the camp, the pioneers had started dismembering other corpses and roasting arms, legs and hearts. The parts were carefully labelled so that nobody would eat a member of their own family.
More than 30 people were eaten before the survivors were rescued in the spring, when the gruesome tale became a Victorian media sensation.
Some survivors changed their names, living on quietly, but one who boasted openly of how many people he had eaten then grew rich in the gold rush and opened a successful restaurant serving “a variety of rare meats”.
Last summer archeologists set out to obtain the first forensic evidence of the horrors. They collected samples from the ashes of the camp including musket balls, buttons and fragments of large bones that had been sliced with a cleaver and rolled around in a stew pot. DNA taken from the bones is being analysed at a laboratory in San Francisco.
The archeologists Julie Schablitsky, of the University of Oregon, and Kelly Dixon, from the University of Montana, hope to find enough human DNA to match against genetic material from descendants of the Donner Party, many of whom hold regular reunions.
Schablitsky said the research was being carried out both in the interests of science and for the sake of the families of the people who had died.
“It is a very hard task,” she said. “But we have promised that if we can identify the particular remains we shall turn them over to the families.” Any other remains will be reburied.
-A pretty bad way to go if you ask me.
April 17, 2005
DNA to identify victims of wagon train cannibals
John Harlow, Los Angeles
DNA tests being carried out on the remains of pioneers from a doomed Wild West wagon train may establish whether a Victorian gunsmith from Sheffield was eaten by fellow travellers.
John Dutton, 28, signed up with an 81-strong party led by George Donner, a prosperous farmer, that set off in April 1846 on a 2,500-mile trek from Springfield, Illinois, bound for San Francisco.
The pioneers came to grief in blizzards in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains the following winter and began to die of cold and starvation. The Donner Party, as the group is known, has become synonymous with disaster and despair to generations of American schoolchildren and has spawned memorials, films and even a musical.
Dutton volunteered to set off over the mountains on snowshoes as part of an expedition called the Forlorn Hope, but covered only a few hundred yards before his strength ran out. He is said to have sat down in the snow, lit his pipe and “died without complaint”.
The Forlorn Hope lived up to its name: lost in the snow and maddened by starvation, members drew lots to decide which of them would be killed and eaten so that the others might survive.
The loser was Patrick Dolan, a wagon driver from Dublin. Two Indian guides who refused to eat human flesh were hunted down, shot and eaten as well.
According to the accounts of some survivors, Dutton’s body was discovered later. Among the items found in his coat pocket was a poem he had written shortly before he died, in which he reminisced about his youth in Britain.
By the time his body was dragged back to the camp, the pioneers had started dismembering other corpses and roasting arms, legs and hearts. The parts were carefully labelled so that nobody would eat a member of their own family.
More than 30 people were eaten before the survivors were rescued in the spring, when the gruesome tale became a Victorian media sensation.
Some survivors changed their names, living on quietly, but one who boasted openly of how many people he had eaten then grew rich in the gold rush and opened a successful restaurant serving “a variety of rare meats”.
Last summer archeologists set out to obtain the first forensic evidence of the horrors. They collected samples from the ashes of the camp including musket balls, buttons and fragments of large bones that had been sliced with a cleaver and rolled around in a stew pot. DNA taken from the bones is being analysed at a laboratory in San Francisco.
The archeologists Julie Schablitsky, of the University of Oregon, and Kelly Dixon, from the University of Montana, hope to find enough human DNA to match against genetic material from descendants of the Donner Party, many of whom hold regular reunions.
Schablitsky said the research was being carried out both in the interests of science and for the sake of the families of the people who had died.
“It is a very hard task,” she said. “But we have promised that if we can identify the particular remains we shall turn them over to the families.” Any other remains will be reburied.
-A pretty bad way to go if you ask me.