ILP+Speech+(Harrison)

**The Donner Party** A ship in the 1700s called the //Peggy// sits idle and storm-wrecked on the Atlantic Ocean. A scream pierces the silence as the insane sailors murder a slave for food. A plane in 1972 full of Uruguayan rugby players falls out of the sky; its tail separated, its wings torn off, and it lands in a remote section of the Andes. They were there ten weeks without food. But perhaps the most famous is the group of eighty or so emigrants traveling to California in 1846 who became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. They had taken a horrible route, led by Lansford Hastings, which added a month to their travels. And by the time they got to the mountains, the peaks of the Sierra Nevada were already tipped with snow.  As the snow came down, the members began to build cabins after a few failed escape attempts. The families quickly slaughtered their remaining livestock and stored away all the meat and bones, but this would only last a while.  In mid-December, a month and a half of being snowbound, Franklin Graves, after him and his family making improvised snowshoes, called for another escape attempt. Fifteen people, including Franklin himself and his two oldest daughters in their twenties, took six days rations of beef jerky and assumed they were to be out of the mountains in that time.  Two Miwok Indians, Luis and Salvador, as well as Charles Stanton, would lead the fifteen people, or as I like to call them: the Snowshoe Party. But the terrain of the mountains looked incredibly different when it was covered in snow, and on the fourth or fifth day into the journey, the Snowshoe Party did one of the worst things they could do: they took a wrong turn.  On the fifth day, Charles Stanton died leaving no body, and soon starvation was setting in on the surviving fourteen, suffering from snow-blindness, hypo-thermia, hyperthermia, and other things. Starvation. It’s a scary thing. When you’re starving, not hungry, not “haven’t eaten in a day,” but truly cheeks are concave, you can count every rib from a mile away starving, it most definitely gets to your head. It’s a feeling you can’t ignore. It’s constantly on your mind and even invades your dreams. And eventually, you lose your humanity and turn into a true animal. A savage. There is one account of a mouse scurrying out of its hole across the snow. The members chased after it, clawing at each other to get to it first. It was thirteen-year-old Lemuel Murphy who got to it. And he grabbed it, stuffed it in his mouth, alive and everything, and ate it, //crunching// on its bones as it squirmed between his jaws.  The members set up camp later as snow continued to come down. This would later become to be known as the Camp of Death. Antonio, the Mexican drover, died with his hand in the fire, and soon after was Franklin Graves, telling his two daughters on his deathbed to use his body for food. Later, Patrick Dolan, insane and babbling, went running out in the snow, stripping off his clothes. Lemuel Murphy started to mumble to himself as his sister, Sarah Foster, tried to soothe him. Dolan came back later, fell down in front of everyone, and died with his back to the sky. Lemuel went later, lying in his sister’s lap. And then the decision was made.  The five women stood back, daring not to look, as the men hacked off the hands, feet, and head of the bodies, trying to dehumanize their meal. They then roasted it and one by one, making sure no one had to eat their kin; the members gave in and ate. All except the Miwoks, Luis and Salvador, who turned their backs on the whites.  The next day, they set off again, the dried meat in their packs. They stum-bled for days, completely lost, scaling nearly vertical rifts. At one point, they found they no longer needed snowshoes and abandoned them. Insanity was starting to settle in and the gun William Eddy held became very tempting to fire.  William Foster approached Eddy once and proposed they murder Luis and Salvador for food, saying they were only Indians. They idea was dramatically silenced when a knife was pulled and later that night, Luis and Salvador slipped away leaving only eight.  By now the Party’s feet were bloody and swollen, leaving footprints of blood behind them. Foster again, his eyes pooled with craziness, came to Eddy and said that they should kill Amanda McCutchen, saying she was only slowing them down. Then he changed his idea to killing the sisters, Sarah Fosdick and Mary Ann Graves. Again, Eddy refused and threatened Foster. He backed down again.  Jay Fosdick died and the savages immediately went after the body, Sarah Fosdick, now a widow did not take part, but had to bear seeing her husband’s heart roasted on a stick.  And we come to one of the most horrifying parts. The party came across the dying Miwoks, Luis and Salvador. Foster shot them both after bluntly telling them he was going to kill them, murdering them and the party stripped the bones of their flesh and heartlessly moved on.  All seven were eventually rescued and told of the people still trapped in the mountains. A rescue party known as the First Relief headed out to get the trapped people, bringing some down. Several days later, the Second Relief, led by former party member James Reed, made his way up to the mountains. On the way back, they discovered animals had eaten their food and destroyed their supplies. Reed took whoever was able make it, including his family, and headed out, leaving the rest by a fire, awaiting the rescue Reed was going to bring. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> Slowly the fire melted the snow and the group sank down into a pit with it. Up above were the dead bodies of a few people who had already died including Elizabeth Graves. After starving for days, little Mary Donner could take it no longer and suggested they eat the bodies. Patrick Breen, using the steps they had carved into the snow, made his way up and brought down meat to roast. Everyone ate. When the Third Relief found them and brought them up, eight-year-old Nancy Graves horrifically screamed at what she saw. She realized she had eating mother. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> Of the eighty or so people in the Donner Party, only about half survived. All the adults Donners died, leaving the children orphans. The Graves family suffered greatly, both parents dead and without money. The only family that didn’t eat human flesh was the Reed family. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> And what are left are the empty, flimsy cabins, the wind still howling in the mountains like a mourning mother. Bones hidden beneath the snow, as well as lost treasures. Both things to be found next spring. The ordeal was finally over. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> And if the old saying is true and history repeats itself with its odd pattern, then I can guarantee something like this will happen again. <span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">**—Harrison Pyros**