Sunday, April 17, 2005
DNA to identify victims of wagon train cannibals
DNA to identify victims of wagon train cannibals - Sunday Times - Times Online:
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."
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
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."
