In 2003–2004, an archaeological team from the University of Montana and Appalachian State University unearthed the remains of a campsite at Alder Creek that would become known as the Meadow Hearth. It contained artifacts like cooking utensils, fragments of pottery, and percussion caps—small, explosive-filled cylinders of copper or brass that allowed muzzle-loaders to fire in any weather. Each of these items dated to the 1840s. There were also thousands of bone fragments, and given the Donner Party’s reputation, interest soon centered on whether or not any of these bones were human in origin.
Six years later in 2010, the researchers had completed their analysis of the artifacts and were preparing a scientific paper that would detail their findings. Now, though, and before their paper could be published, a spate of articles and news blurbs announced that the scientists had uncovered physical evidence that led them to seriously question the very act for which the Donners had attained their infamy.
“Analysis Finally Clears Donner Party of Rumored Cannibalism,” read one media report, while Discovery News informed its readers that the “Donners Ate Family Dog, Maybe Not People.” The original subtitle, “Did ethnic prejudice spur the now infamous legend of the Donner Party’s cannibalism?” hinted at an intriguing new explanation for the notorious and long-held accusations. The subtitle resulted from the author’s mistaken belief that Louis Keseberg, the most notorious Donner Party member, was Polish (he was German) and that a prejudice against Poles had led to claims that he became a subhuman cannibal when the going got tough.26 Even the New York Times got into the act. “No Cannibalism Among the Donner Party?” read the bet-hedging headline in a Times-associated blog. My personal favorite was a headline from a blog post at The Rat: “Scientists Crash Donner Party.”
So how did this information come about? And was there any truth to it?
Initially, the archaeological team working at Alder Creek uncovered a thin layer of ash that they eventually determined to be the remains of an 1840s-era campsite. What became known as the Meadow Hearth dig also revealed concentrations of charred wood and deposits of burned and calcined bone fragments. The latter occurs when bone is subjected to high temperatures, resulting in the loss of organic material, like the protein collagen. What’s left is a mineralized version of the original bone and, importantly, one that is more resistant to decomposition than it was in its original form. Calcined bone also provides anthropologists with strong evidence that the bones in question were cooked.
All told, the university researchers collected a total of 16,204 bone fragments from the Meadow Hearth excavation, a number that makes it far easier to understand why it took them six years to analyze their data. Unfortunately, not everyone was as patient as the scientists had been.
On April 15, 2010, the Office of Public Affairs at Appalachian State University (ASU) issued a press release titled “Appalachian Professor’s Research Finds No Evidence of Cannibalism at Donner Party Campsite.” Posted on ASU’s University News site, it began with the following statement:
Research conducted by Dr. Gwen Robbins, an assistant professor of biological anthropology at Appalachian State University, finds there is no evidence of cannibalism among the 84 members of the Donner Party who were trapped by a snowstorm in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the mid-1840s.
The piece mentioned Robbins’s preliminary results and how the osteologist “had been asked to determine whether or not the bone fragments were human.” Robbins, they said, analyzed 30 bone bits as a grad student and 55 more several years later while working at ASU. After using an array of histological techniques, she concluded that the bones had come from cattle, deer, horse [probably mule], and dog, but that none of the fragments could be identified as human in origin.
Next, the ASU blurb writers trotted out their big gun—statistics:
A power analysis indicated that, statistically, Robbins and [fellow researcher] Gray can be 70 percent confident that if cannibalism made up a small fraction of the diet (less than 1 percent) at the site in the last few weeks of occupation, and if humans were processed in the same way animals were processed, at least one of the 85 bone fragments examined would be human.
With statistics firmly on their side, the PR scribes at ASU loaded up, took careful aim at their own feet, and fired off this bold statement:
The legend of the Donner party was primarily created by print journalists, who embellished the tales based on their own Victorian macabre sensibilities and their desire to sell more newspapers.