TIL of the Donner Party who were a group of pioneers including women and children who had to resort to cannibalism after an early snowfall cut off their destination, just one mountain pass over.

tetris11@lemmy.ml · 2 months ago

TIL of the Donner Party who were a group of pioneers including women and children who had to resort to cannibalism after an early snowfall cut off their destination, just one mountain pass over.

teawrecks@sopuli.xyz · 2 months ago

AFAIK everyone in the US learns about this as part of their middle school curriculum.

tetris11@lemmy.ml · 2 months ago

Ah okay, IANAA - it was new to me

tetris11@lemmy.ml · 2 months ago

How is it taught out of interest? I feel like there are many lessons to learn from it, though mostly that none of us are above our baser nature when the situation is dire

teawrecks@sopuli.xyz · 2 months ago

We’re talking about maybe a day of my life over 20 years ago lol. I remember it being taught that it happened, but I honestly don’t remember if they emphasized how desperate for survival they were. I think it’s easy for some Americans to associate “Donner Party” with “crazy man-eating lunatic cult of the wild west” due to only retaining surface-level information on the topic.

GrumpyDuckling@sh.itjust.works · 2 months ago

Usually when they cover western expansion. However, U.S. history taught in school is mostly propoganda.

temporal_spider@lemm.ee · 2 months ago

Here is an excellent video that goes into the matter. https://youtu.be/O5xMpsYdzgg

Kathrin@trouth.eu · 2 months ago

@tetris11 Dollop about it: https://omny.fm/shows/the-dollop-with-dave-anthony-and-gareth-reynolds/396-the-donner-party

ecvanalog@lemmy.world · 2 months ago

An upcoming comic book called The Goddamned Tragedy is going to do a fixtionalized version of this.

TIL of the Donner Party who were a group of pioneers including women and children who had to resort to cannibalism after an early snowfall cut off their destination, just one mountain pass over.

TIL of the Donner Party who were a group of pioneers including women and children who had to resort to cannibalism after an early snowfall cut off their destination, just one mountain pass over.

Donner Party - Wikipedia