Soon after the alcohol-thwarted rescue, the Peggy’s first mate appeared below decks, informing his captain that the men had already eaten the ship’s cat, their uniform buttons, and a leather bilge pump. They had decided to draw lots, with the loser served up as dinner. The captain waved the mate away with a loaded pistol but the man returned moments later to report on the lottery results. By an incredible coincidence, the slave had drawn the short straw. Although the “poor Ethiopian” begged for his life, the captain was unable to prevent the man’s murder, later writing that as they prepared to cook the body, one sailor rushed in, tore away the slave’s liver, and ate it raw.
Three days later the line jumper was said to have gone insane and died. Then, in a demonstration that the crew of the Peggy had lost none of its well-honed survival skills, they tossed their mate’s body overboard, fearful of the harmful effects of consuming a crazy man. Soon another round of straw-drawing took place, but this time the most popular and competent sailor drew the stubby stick (in this case an inked slip of paper). After making a final request that he be killed quickly, the man’s drunken shipmates acted accordingly and gave him a 12-hour reprieve, during which the doomed man reportedly went deaf and lost the remainder of his mind. Just before the Peggy’s second homicide/buffet was set to commence, a rescue ship was spotted. Now, though, the crew feigned sobriety long enough that they were actually rescued (although they nearly forgot the evening’s main course, whom they had locked below deck). In an appropriately downbeat end to the story, the reprieved man reportedly never recovered his hearing or his sanity.
Lost in the Sierra Nevada mountains with no food, the members of The Forlorn Hope also drew lots to determine who would be killed to provide food for the others. Patrick Dolan, a 35-year-old bachelor from Dublin, was the loser. At this point, though, no one had the heart, or possibly the strength, to carry out the killing. Someone suggested that two of the men fight it out with pistols “until one or both was slain” but this proposal was also rejected. Two days later, and before they could reconsider their options, a snowstorm rendered these choices unnecessary. Three of the group members, including Patrick Dolan, died during the night.
The next morning, according to historian Jesse Quinn Thornton, after one of The Forlorn Hope survivors was able to light a fire, “his miserable companions cut the flesh from the arms and legs of Patrick Dolan, and roasted and ate it, averting their faces from each other and weeping.” Parts of the other corpses were eaten over the next few days, but it wasn’t long before the survivors ran out of food again.
By now the survivors of The Forlorn Hope were exhibiting another symptom of starvation: They were bickering amongst themselves. A 30-year-old carpenter, William Foster, reportedly suggested that they kill and eat three of the women (presumably not his own wife), but when this idea failed to take hold he proposed that they shoot their Indian companions, Luis and Salvador, instead. The two men registered their votes by slipping away from the camp. Foster and the others eventually came upon them somewhere along the trail and there are several versions of what happened next.
In most accounts, Foster murdered the men, about whom little is known except that they had risked their lives on multiple occasions to save the stranded pioneers. In another version, Salvador was already dead when the hikers discovered them and Luis died an hour later. But however these men died, there is agreement on what happened next. According to John Sinclair, the alcalde (municipal magistrate) of Sacramento, who later presided over hearings related to the tragedy, “Being nearly out of provisions, and knowing not how far they might be from the settlements, they took their flesh likewise.” Foster, who survived the whole ordeal, was never prosecuted, nor did he garner much blame for the incident. Most descriptions of the murders portray Foster’s actions as being those of a decent man deranged by starvation.
Back in the mountain camps, more people were dying, and by the midpoint of The Forlorn Hope’s dreadful trek, four men at the Alder Creek campsite, including George Donner’s younger brother, Jacob, had perished.