ABSTRACT
One of the best known and well-documented incidents involving survival cannibalism took place in the High Sierra Mountains of California, where a group of citizens, separated from society at large, facing incredible hardships and repeated disasters, resorted to cannibalism to avoid starvation. The Donner Party attempted to cross from Wyoming to California in 1846–1847, and was stranded in the mountains during one of the harshest winters on record (Stewart, 1960). There are also some well-documented incidents involving emigrating Mormons who faced hardships and starvation, but for whom no cannibalism occurred during their journey from Missouri to Salt Lake City (Stegner, 1964). The events that took place with the Donner Party were similar to those that took place in another disaster, which will be described in Chapter 4, involving an amateur rugby team from Uruguay whose plane crashed in the High Andes in the winter of 1972 (Read, 1974).
