The Grisly Journey of The Donner Party • Puppet History

[Music] welcome one and all to the season finale of puppet history online university today we'll be taking an ever whining look at yet another chapter in the heavy heavy book we call history while our guests ruthlessly compete for the coveted title of history master i am obviously your beloved host the professor thank you ryan bergara are you ready yeah i'm ready season finale bro yeah a whole full eight episodes of you calling yourself beloved still doing it hey man i didn't write it special guest joyce louis jean are you ready i'm ready to learn professor

oh i love to hear it then let's crack in now before we start doesn't moving suck what would you say is the worst part of moving getting my hose to move my stuff i just get really unsettled when all my my little things aren't in their little home yet and i can't sleep until it's done so usually i won't sleep for a week oh that's hard i sleep anytime for any reason any place today's story is about a move that really sucked imagine you and your entire family packing all of your earthly possessions onto wagons

in illinois and walking across the entire country to california it's 1846 and you'd better slip some dr scholes in your shoes because we're joining the donner party oh no no oh god no no no yeah we are that's not good have you guys heard of these folks no you know what i hear it it ends very well for them would you say it ends well or medium well they're all gonna die probably oh joyce that's a very good prediction there i'm gonna give you a little jelly bean for being that astute oh there it is

in 1846 the united states of america was stretching her legs and by that i mean continuing to encroach upon the land of the continent's indigenous people it had been 40 years since lewis and clark reported say there's a lot of stuff over there and wagon trains were starting to beat a path west it was a dangerous trek with some calling the oregon trail the nation's longest graveyard as nearly 10 percent of folks who set off on it died on route from independence missouri where many wagon trains started out travelers had to cover 2200 miles of

prairie mountains and desert before crossing over to the other side of the sierra nevadas it was critical to get past that mountainous barrier by the end of october otherwise settlers ran the risk of being stranded in the punishing cold and snow despite the risks more and more settlers were embarking on the grueling months-long journey across the continent every year one such group was the springfield illinois family the donners i didn't know they came from illinois that's cool i love this little claim to fame good pizza george and jacob donner were brothers with big families who

wanted a piece of that sweet california real estate george's wife tams and donner was even hoping to open a girls school once they reached the promised quote land of milk and honey the donners were joined by the family of james reed a real winner of a businessman who had declared bankruptcy and set his sights on cali for a chance at a fresh start the donners and reeds left springfield on april 15th by may 12th the group had made it to independence missouri and joined up with a larger wagon train though most travelers with their sights

on california had left independence a week earlier the tardy start didn't bother the party much there was still plenty of time before the sierras would be covered in snow by july the large wagon train with the reeds and the donners made it to fort bridger wyoming so far they were making great time traveling across the great plains at a clip of 18 to 20 miles per day with still plenty of provisions left i assume slim jims and m m's yeah that's crazy could you imagine nowadays if someone said uh how close are you to getting

to my house and they're like oh eta says august i'd be like don't come over fort bridger however presented a decision point the donners and reeds could continue with the larger wagon train which would be taking the california trail north of present-day utah or they could be sneaky little cheats and take a stab at a shortcut a young lawyer from ohio named lansford hastings had written a book called the immigrant's guide to oregon and california inside he proposed a new route for part of the journey called hastings cut-off the route allegedly shaved more than 300

miles off of the trip by going south of utah's great salt lake instead of the usual north it wasn't an easy journey but some figured it could mean arriving in california a whole month early tempting joyce would you take it oh yeah i'm a lazy [ __ ] so i definitely take the shorter route it seems sort of ludicrous to claim that it shaves 300 miles off of the trip yeah that's quite the shortcut i don't do math i'm cute i don't know earlier in the trek while debating which path to take james reed was

paid a visit by his friend crusty old explorer james clyman our first question whoa what did james climb and say to read about the shortcut hey if you take the hastings cut off you'll only need half the supplies it is simply that superior b lansford hastings doesn't know what he's talking about he in fact has never taken this cut off himself or c if you're taking the hastings route i would like to lead your group okay decision time i have no idea what the answer is that's okay ryan what did you put i put a

less supplies bro okay and joyce i picked b lester he sings doesn't know what he's talking about well let's find out what happened let's see what we got here well well well if it isn't my friend and mountain man james climate ah mr james reed i hear you're moving west i sure am in fact you're an expert on wilderness maybe you could help me out with something see i'm considering a shortcut that mr lansford hastings wrote about ah the hastings cutoff i'm familiar uh it sounds pretty promising huh lansford hastings couldn't pour piss out of

a boot if the instructions were written on the heel in fact he's never even taken this cut off himself i advise you strongly stick to the known california trail don't take the shortcut hoping it will save you time because it will not well i might just be a bankrupt businessman and you might be an exploring mountain man but i'm gonna go with my gut on this one thanks anyway a-hole a point for joyce yes seems like james kleinman knows that there's some climbing ahead if you take that uh shortcut ryan that was a wonderful pun

and we'll give you a pun point for that oh thank you that's probably worth nothing yeah that does not add to your total score but it is a pun point and that is a delight kleiman was insistent that hastings makes wastings and that the supposed shortcut wouldn't save any time nevertheless read figured quote there is a nire route and it is of no use to take so much of a roundabout course including the donners and reeds a total of 87 people from the wagon train chose the hastings cut-off electing george donner as their captain i

always feel like in a lot of these scary movies someone's always like hey don't do that thing and they're like okay no and then they did yeah or it's like the guy that they you know they'll stop at a gas station on the way to where they're going and he's like yes be careful please turn back humans tend to kind of want to do something that they're told not to do like it's like when you tell like a bro like well i bet you can't drink that shot bro next thing you want to do shot

bro drink that shot you know i'm gonna drink that shot what do i look like someone who doesn't drink that shot oh professor you party professor oh you know i party [Music] the donner party as they were now officially known left fort fridger on july 31st the cutoff soon proved to be more difficult than anticipated at utah's wasatch mountains the land was so wild that the party had to build themselves a road it took 16 days for the wagon train to move 36 miles and by the end all people and animals were exhausted how far

were they into this shortcut when they realized oh this road is pretty unsuitable we have to fix it i don't know but i mean if you think about how insistent they were about taking this you got to imagine they're only digging their heels in even more as they go they're probably like well we built a road build a whole road for the other hoes i couldn't do it i'm not that giving and loving i guess that is a nice little present for the other hoes on august 22nd the group was finally through the wasatch mountains

hooray now they had to cross the 80-mile wide salt lake desert reed's cattle stampeded all cattle-like and the group wasted a week searching for them how hard could it be to find a cow in the desert yeah i know imagine if someone was lost in that desert and they were like hallucinating over like not having water and then they see a cow walk past the travelers also lost four wagons and plenty of critical supplies in the desert things were so dire two men rode ahead to bring back supplies likely one can assume more slim jims

and m m's finally on september 26th the donner party made it through hastings cut off and rejoined the california trail open-ended question the shortcut was advertised to shave 300 miles off the total journey how many miles did it actually save um zero yeah you gotta write this down and guess oh i'm my mother's child i say all my answers out loud you go first whatever ryan you got three three okay it'd be cool if it was three and drawing i put a negative 100. okay oh wow well we're gonna give a point to joyce because

you're actually closer the shortcut saved them nothing it added 125 miles holy [ __ ] that's crazy baby and even worse it also ate up around three weeks of time the wagon train was now the last group of people trying to make it to california that year no one would be coming up behind them if they ran into trouble i wonder if they'll run into trouble oh gosh i wonder on top of and likely because of all this demoralizing stress the group was starting to fall apart on october 5th morale sank even lower when two

wagon teams became tangled while climbing a hill in the ensuing argument failed businessman james reed stabbed another man to death oh wow oh so what happened to james reed ay they stabbed him back b they banished him or c they took all of his rations we stabbing hoes no that's too much man uh ryan what do you got i put c no more trail mix for you and joyce actually put c no more rations oh we got one last round of sea dogs for the season recurring joke that we keep bringing back it's a classic

bit from this season and everybody loves it it's generous to call it a joke well points to no one as the answer is b despite calls to have him killed reed was merely banished from the party reed's family however stayed with the group awkward yeah yeah they didn't go with him no they were just like later dad yeah they were like get out of here dad gang gang dad i gotta go to california and become a tick tock star on october 19th one man who had ridden ahead for aid in supplies charles stanton rejoined the

group along with two indigenous americans from the miwok tribe around the last week of october the donner party had finally made it to present-day reno nevada unfortunately for them they could see the sierra nevada mountains already had some snow cover probably quite pretty huh yeah snow on the mountains no i see i just got caught up in reno i imagine i'm imagining present-day reno no disrespect to reno but it's a great place to be drunk it's a lovely town i vacation there we go on vacation professor could we yeah oh i'm excited about that joyce

have a jelly bean for that one yeah put it on my google calendar or something well i would i would plan it by this point to reduce strain on their already exhausted animals the party had either buried or lost almost all of their personal belongings with only the bare essentials i assume slim gyms and m ms the group of 81 remaining members began the trek across the sierras on october 31st 1846 the party reached truckee lake stanton and the two miwok natives scouted ahead and suggested they press on the rest of the party however decided

to rest until the next morning by the lake that lake is now known as donner lake that's nice now if you're ever standing by a lake or the woods or something and a plushy time traveler of sorts comes up to you and says in the future this will be named after you you might think cool i'm going to do something historic right here i'm telling you right now maybe hold off on that excitement yeah yeah i mean that's actually that actually kind of goes for most things that are named after people if you guys had

anything named after you what would you want i'd want like a like a sex shop in a small town yeah that's sweet yeah i actually now that i think about it i have always said that if i ever got really rich i would buy a part of my campus but i wouldn't buy like a building i'd buy a trash can i'll tell you this uh you probably don't need to be rich to ask your old university to put your name on a trash can yeah i don't know it's pretty prestigious you gotta find a good

one too don't find like the shitty one people throw up in that's probably that's ideally the well i know my pausing just killed any momentum we had in our story that dear history lovers is because that's precisely what happened to the donners they got to the lake and they could go no further now a quick heads up we're going to be digging into some pretty grim stuff here so settle in and you might want to bring a snack i'll get my pillow that halloween night a storm began to dump snow on the pioneers the next

morning the families attempted to press on but the snow was too deep every effort was made to keep moving but more snow kept falling and the path back the way they came had also been blocked by you guessed it more snow the settlers constructed shelters and prepared for their worst nightmare they would have to spend the winter in the sierras with not nearly enough supplies by this point they had already been traveling for over six months and covered 2400 miles so how far away from their final destination was the donner party when they became snowed

in a 1 000 miles b 500 miles or c 100 miles okay ryan what do you got i got b and i would walk 500 miles is that different enough lawyers let me see puppet lawyers yeah okay it turns out we don't have any puppet lawyers back there okay well joyce what did you pick um i picked c 100 miles point to joyce they were only a cosmically tragic 100 miles away from their final destination now it's widely thought that if they'd left one week earlier or not lost so much time on hastings cutoff the

donner party would have made it to california easy peasy donner lake would still be truckee lake and this episode would have been about attila the hun or something just five days away five days away and they could have took a big nap oh some of them will be taking the biggest nap soon an everlasting one if you will [Laughter] on november 20th one of the travelers patrick breen did what a lot of us do during stressful times he started a journal breen wrote quote we now have killed most part of our cattle having to stay

here until next spring and live on poor beef without bread or salt it snowed during the space of eight days with little intermission after our arrival here so he's more of a straight to the facts kind of journal or not like how do i feel about this he's not a poet things got even more dire in a hurry only nine days later breen wrote quote killed my last oxen today we'll skin them tomorrow gave another yoke to fosters hard to get wood was he saying it's hard to get hard or uh look i'm not commenting

on that last line he just said it was hard to get wood understandable it's hard right now for us too it's obviously about a fire guys you dirty dirty folks it's hard to get wood right now where did i get one hard to get wood i can't go to the store that's true you can't it's hard to get wood you know what it is it's hard to get wood jesus christ apart from what they brought food was scarce they had no traps with which to catch animals most of which had moved to lower elevations anyways

attempts to fish the frozen lake also failed by december breen estimated the snow to be eight feet deep and the party knew they needed help fifteen people ten men and five women set off in search of civilization in homemade snowshoes on december 16th led by stanton and the two miwok natives maybe start using that journal to start taking some notes on who's going to be the most uh nutritious of the group yeah like well jerry's a vegan so i feel like i wouldn't taste good given like the amount of garbage i put into my body

you do eat a lot of taco bell which look not a lot yes a lot the rescue party would come to be known as the forlorn hope party they carried hardly any rations with them and by december 21st the rescue party was out of food and even worse their guide stanton had gone snow blind meaning his corneas were sunburned howie jesus christ your cornea can't get sunburned yes no that's too much no die i die stanton told the others to go ahead as he sat on a log and smoked a pipe rescuers would later discover

him and wouldn't you know it he somehow survived whoa just kidding he was bones jesus christ yeah he was a skeleton the forlorn hope party continued on by christmas eve one of the men franklin graves was knocking on death's door graves pulled his daughters mary and sarah close to him what did he tell them a to never give up their trust in the lord be that somewhere deep in the rocky mountains he had cached a trove of treasured items including a magical lamp that only a creature about the size of a human hand could get

to and inside the magical lamp was a genie capable of granting any wish up to and including turning a seemingly everyday item into a secret time machine but that if you wished for that the genie would be a total prick about it so maybe be careful what you wish for or c to eat his body for food [Laughter] all right ryan what do you got see feast on my bones okay and joyce a trust in the lord well unfortunately we have to give a point to ryan well you know it's gonna happen we have finally

arrived at what made those donners so very famous on december 26th mary and sarah ate a bit of their dad quote averting their faces from one another and weeping oh god sounds awful did they cook the dad did they or did they eat this guy uh raw oh to eat somebody are you having a hard time this hope party didn't get any less forlorn one night a 23 year old named antoine passed out and stretched his hands such that it fell into the fire though someone pulled antoine's hand out at first when it happened again

they let it burn then they ate antoine he didn't die he passed out and he passed out and his hand fell into the fire they were like well that was a good thing that we pulled his hand out of the fire but uh it smelled pretty good huh get his hand out okay let's see wait a second i'm speechless wait a second they were just like yummy yummy yummy in my tummy let me eat antoine i think specifically if you look back at their journals it does say verbatim yummy yummy yummy in my tummy let

me eat antoine the two miwok natives refused to partake in cannibalism and abandoned the group good for them yeah yeah that seems like a vibe on january 9th william foster found and shot them so their bodies could be eaten oh [ __ ] god all right well you know what that must knocker deserved to die three days later the seven surviving members of the forlorn hope party reached a miwok village and probably didn't tell them all the details of their journey with the help of the villagers on january 17th the forlorn hope party made it

to the pioneer settlement at johnson's ranch thank goodness these awful murderers were finally safe jesus christ and they got there with the aid of the people that they killed that's true the rest of the donner party meanwhile were still snowbound in the mountains and things weren't great the oxen and horses were long gone the settlers boiled their hides into gelatinous goo and ate that even though it had almost no nutritional value they cracked open bones to eat the marrow then turned to munching on mice and dogs and finally resorted to chewing on pine cones and

tree park one man lost his mind and ran out into the weather pulling off his clothes he died of hypothermia while things were bad unlike their compatriots in the forlorn hope party the survivors by the lake had thus far managed to avoid what was on everyone's mind snacking on folks on february 19th a rescue party of seven men reached the lake as one of the rescuers wrote quote we raised a loud hello then we saw a woman emerge from a hole in the snow as we approached her several others made their appearance they were gaunt

with famine and i never can forget the horrible ghastly sight they presented the first woman spoke in a hollow voice very much agitated and said are you men from california or do you come from heaven oh that's scary yeah i don't at that point i'll take my [ __ ] and walk away i'd be like yeah i'm about to say if someone someone whispers that to me and they look like a skeleton i'm doing an about face and going right back to where i came from the rescue party could only accommodate so many and took

23 of the trapped including 17 children across the sierras more deaths happened along the way meanwhile the remaining stranded only became hungrier and with but one option left they took it on february 26th breen wrote in his journal mrs murphy said here yesterday that she thought she would commence on meal and eat him i don't believe that she has done so yet it is distressing the donors four days ago told the california folks that they would commence to eat the dead people i'll suppose they have done so air this time very matter of fact i'm

describing cannibalism yeah not a good sign what would your journal entries be uh in response to that i'm curious um it's time to get the [ __ ] out of here i am taking a nap um these people are crazy i'm going to eat tree bark you write the screenplay of what happened so far in the donner party and then you say give these rights to my uh lineage that hopefully survives somehow you get to tinseltown and you're like i've written a script and also invented something called a movie exactly yeah a second rescue party

didn't arrive at camp until march first oh who led the second rescue party a james reed the guy who stabbed a man to death b william foster the other shitty murderer who killed the two miwok natives or see rutherford b hayes the future president of the united states what the [ __ ] professor how the hell am i supposed to know you didn't even give me no study notes no nothing all right ryan what do you got i went with a that reed a-hole the read-a-hole and joyce i want c future president please be right

joyce we got a little jelly bean for ryan the answer is a the man who the party had spared from the gallows of course he was a clear choice for a rescue mission as his family had been stuck with the group the second group of rescuers took 17 survivors some of whom like the first group died on the way out i don't know if that guy deserves a redemption arc but i mean people were saved so hey at least it wasn't foster yeah at least it wasn't foster well speaking of william foster he was with

the third rescue team no when he reached the lake on march 13th he was met with some bad news what was that bad news oh man oh please be right all right ryan the bad news he received was a bow and arrow to the dome oh that'd be great uh and joyce i put everyone is dead well let's find out just a bit further men these people are counting on us oh oh thank god you're here we're in dire straits of course i am already aware of that i know those straights well well there are

11 of us still alive so um how many do you want to take back well to start i'll take my son where is the lad oh um oh oh well the little bit of egg on my face well not egg i guess uh look um i ate him oh we've all been there you you what now i gobbled him up oh well i guess if he died naturally he did he died naturally of being murdered by me jesus [ __ ] christ dude dang i didn't know he had a son but i guess everybody has

a son at like the age of eight during this time period holy moly that was bleak huh so i'll give a point to joyce on that one because uh yeah you know uh certainly people were dead yay um all right well that third rescue trip took six people back leaving five people to wait for a fourth rescue party remaining was keysberg the child eater a four-year-old boy lavinia murphy who was william foster's mother-in-law george donner who was badly wounded and tamsen donner george's dutiful wife and the woman who had wanted to start a girls school

in california well the final rescue party made it to the lake on april 17th for history point how many of those five remaining settlers were still alive and a bonus point if you guess who two or how many of them oh i know it was i wasn't supposed to say that out loud i am so haitian okay all right ryan i'm just guessing here but one i mean if you had to pick one who would it be uh maybe the kid i don't know oh the little boy that's sweet and joyce i picked one and

i think the the children eater oh let's find out the scene that awaited the final rescue expedition was gruesome almost beyond description george donner was dead his head split open to provide access to his brains a kettle of diced up human flesh sat next to three uneaten frozen ox legs there were two other kettles of blood and a pan containing fresh human lungs and liver sitting amongst this depraved buffet was the lone survivor keysberg he insisted everyone else had died naturally though freely admitted to having eaten them when asked why he hadn't eaten the ox

legs keysberg reportedly replied frankly that humans tasted better well you know uh honest i suppose ryan i'll give you one point and joyce i'll give you two points because you guessed the correct survivor what a great story a total of 42 people died that winter of the 87 people who faithfully set off from fort bridger on hastings cut off 47 survived while the story of the donner party was certainly harrowing it couldn't stop the drive of manifest destiny when gold was discovered in california in 1848 the rate of people crossing the country only increased even

the survivors of the donner party didn't attempt to dissuade others virginia reid who was only 13 at the time wrote to her cousin back in illinois quote i have not wrote you half of the trouble but i have wrote you enough to let you know what trouble is don't let this letter dis hasten anybody never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can man that's crazy our generation couldn't even handle the fire festival uh anyway that's uh the end of the story what do you guys think overall i'm disgusted i'm flabbergasted um

and i laughed a lot so i had a great time well good well that concludes our final history lesson a nice spooky one for october very fun uh i'm gonna go tally the scores to see who receives the coveted cup and the title of history master while i do that please enjoy this special performance from a snowman from the shores of donner lake wow well i wonder if he's gonna sound like that funny little snowman from frozen oh that'd be great i will say joyce you you beat me fair and square which is more than

most people on the show could say you know it's hard because you know sure i'm a lot of people's daddy but i also really love history oh wow look at this whoa it's an actual show i wasn't expecting that totally going to have a big drink of wine after this hello how are you why is this snowman's crotch talking to us i'm here to sing a little song for you is no one else disturbed that there's a mouth where his penis should be that it has a mustache and everything what what i hope you like

my sound yes baby he has teeth too what the [ __ ] is going on you better sing baby you better sing another beautiful winter here at donner lake well it's a good gig of being a snowman they roll me up every year i look at that little funny carrot nose it brings folks so much chair but the thing that makes me special a little secret of my own when i'm the only man i know i know who's full of other people's bones you know i'm not too sure how i got its name but donald

takes a beautiful scene in fact i'm not too sure of plenty other things my boyfriend got these fancy splays i guess some snow's just gory which is why i'm so unique i'm the only man of snow i know who's got a [Music] packing a five of those eleven toes and climbing foods are magical and when the spring brings a warming sun be sure to watch a step on your morning run cause i need the only man i know i know who's got somebody else's tongue bring it home i i'm full of other people's bones yeah

yeah yeah that's he did say that wow spirited performance um with that out of the way uh it's time to see how we did and there is no surprise party here joyce is our history master and so she has rightfully earned the coveted cup ryan thank you for trying choice go claim your reward oh thanks for being a great guest this entire season ryan you know what professor huh i actually think you're telling the truth there oh my god we had a blast huh all jokes aside yeah no it was a fun time i took

one class at the university and a bad [ __ ] who got the award that's what i'm talking about gang i mean i don't think we should hang out outside the show yeah no oh my god it's so cute welcome back look there's a little thingy the professor well look you earned it joyce i cannot thank you enough for sitting through and laughing with us in our grizzly grizzly tale today yes i'm so happy you guys are amazing i'll come back any time to be oh good we will have you back thanks for watching season

two of puppet history we'll see you again soon i'm sure bye folks speaking of hearts i'm packing five of those elevators and clavicles are magical when the spring brings the warming sun sure to watch you step on your morning run cause i'm the only man of snow i don't got somebody else's tongue