On December 16, 1846, a party of 17 men, women, and children stranded at the Truckee Lake Camp fashioned snowshoes and attempted a break-out. Early on, two of them who had started the trip without the makeshift footwear decided to turn back. The group of now 15, which also included a pair of Miwok Indians who had joined the company in Nevada, would become known as “The Forlorn Hope,” and they would be making their attempt through the heart of a storm-blasted winter in the country’s snowiest region.17 According to Kristin Johnson, sometime around January 12, the survivors stumbled into a small encampment of local Indians who gave them what food they could spare (mostly seeds and acorn bread).18 They guided the wraith-like figures partway down the mountain, but they did so warily. The pitiful travelers were not only frozen, but some of them had become seriously unhinged.
On January 17, 1847, Forlorn Hope member William Eddy reached the Johnson Ranch (no relation to Kristin Johnson), located at the edge of a small farming community in the Sacramento Valley. By the time he staggered up to one of the cabins, Eddy looked more like a skeleton than a man. The skin of his face was drawn tightly over his skull and his eyes were sunken deeply into their sockets. His appearance sent the cabin owner’s daughter away from her own front door shrieking in terror. Several horrified locals reportedly retraced William Eddy’s bloody footprints into the forest and discovered six more survivors—a man and five women. The Forlorn Hope had departed the Truckee Lake Camp 33 days earlier with barely a week’s worth of short rations. Eight of them eventually perished—all males, and according to Kristin Johnson, “there’s no question” that seven of the dead were cannibalized.
Nearly 160 years later, science writer Sharman Apt Russell wrote about the results of a 1944–1945 Minnesota University study on the effects of semi-starvation.
Prolonged hunger carves the body into what researchers call the asthenic build.19 The face grows thin, with pronounced cheekbones, atrophied facial muscles account for the ‘mask of famine,’ a seemingly unemotional, apathetic stare . . . the clavicle looks sharp as a blade . . . Ribs are prominent. The scapula(e) . . . move like wings. The vertebral column is a line of knobs . . . the legs like sticks.
Had modern physicians been present to monitor the surviving members of The Forlorn Hope, in all likelihood these unfortunates would have exhibited most of the physiological signs of starvation: low resting metabolic rates (the amount of energy expended at rest each day), slow, shallow breathing, and lower body temperatures (which would have been present even without the frigid conditions).20 Another bodily response to starvation is low blood pressure, a condition that can lead to fainting, especially upon standing up. Like the lethargic movements that characterize starving people, these physiological changes are the body’s involuntary attempts at conserving energy.
Changes in the starved body occur at the biochemical level as well, and in the case of the Donner Party, catabolic biochemical pathways would have internally mimicked the cannibalistic behavior to come, this time at the cellular and molecular level.21 In other words, their hunger-wracked bodies would have begun to consume themselves. At first, carbohydrates stored in the liver and muscles would have been broken down into energy-rich sugars. Fat, an energy-packed connective issue (which also functions as an insulator and shock absorber in places like joints and around organs like the kidneys), would have been metabolized next. Depending on the individual, these fat stores could have lasted weeks or even months. Finally, proteins, the primary structural components of muscles and organs, would have been broken down into their chemical components, amino acids. In effect, during the latter stages of starvation, the body’s system of metabolic checks and balances hijacks the energy it requires, obtaining it from the chemical bond energy that had previously been used to hold together complex protein molecules. This protein breakdown (in places like the skin, bones, and skeletal muscles) produces the wasted-away look that characterizes starvation victims.
Besides physiological and behavioral effects of starvation, researchers have identified changes that occur in groups experiencing food shortages or famines. In 1980, anthropologist Robert Dirks wrote that social groups facing starvation go through three distinct behavioral phases. During the first phase, the activity of the group increases, as do “positive reciprocities.” This can be thought of as an initial alarm response during which group members become more gregarious as they confront and attempt to solve the problem. Although emotions may run high, communal activity increases for a short time. The second phase occurs as the physiological effects of starvation begin to exhibit themselves. During this time, energy is conserved and the group becomes partitioned, usually along family lines. Non-relatives and even friends are often excluded. Acts of altruism decline in frequency with a concurrent increase in stealing, aggression, and random acts of violence.