Cooking hearth found near site of cannibal camp

ARCHAEOLOGISTS in the United States have unearthed a cooking hearth in the Sierra Nevada where they believe members of the Donner Party gathered for meagre meals in the months before starvation led to the country’s most famous tale of cannibalism.

Government and university researchers said bone fragments found there appear to be large enough to allow for DNA testing to determine if they are human. They also found lead shot, musket balls, jewellery beads and wagon parts.

If some of the bones are human, they would be the first physical evidence to back up survivors’ accounts that some members of the party, a group of families travelling west in the spring and summer of 1846 to claim free land in California, resorted to cannibalism to survive being trapped during the winter.

The party took an unproven "shortcut", and was delayed on the trail in Utah and Nevada. The 81 men, women and children reached the Sierra Nevada in late October and were trapped in the snow at two camps. About half the pioneers died, and some survivors ate the flesh of their dead companions in order to stay alive.

By then they had eaten their dogs and even boiled leather to eat the resulting glue to fend off starvation.