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Forensic Anthropology Lectures:
Notes from the Dead

Bones from the Donner Party

Trapped in the High Sierras during a long and violent winter, members of the Donner Party ate their own dead just to survive.

Almost 154 years after three families left Springfield, Illinois, in search of a new life out West, a box of bones from their ill-fated trek sits in a CSU, Chico forensic laboratory, as anthropology professor P. Willey searches for concrete evidence of the Donner Party's alleged cannibalism.

His studies were the subject of the February 17 anthropology forum "Missteps and Remnants of the Donner Party," part of a semester-long series by the department, offered each Thursday at 4 p.m. in Ayers 120.

Addressing about 130 students and professors, Willey discussed the lure and importance of studying what he called "an epic journey that has captured our imaginations."

"Cannibalism is a hot topic in anthropology," said Willey, noting the difficulty in studying the phenomenon because it has "rarely been observed by qualified observers."

Inspired by the forensic studies of the Donner Party by a former student, Willey received permission from the state museum collections center in West Sacramento to have the Donner bones transferred to CSU, Chico in December.

Since then, Willey has been studying the bones for concrete evidence of cannibalism. So far, he has discovered a fracture in a small bone fragment that hints that the bone was fractured while it was "fresh."

Willey is building upon the archaeological and zooarchae-ological studies of noted researchers Donald Grayson of the University of Washington, Amy Dansie of the Nevada State Museum, and Sheilah Brooks, formerly of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Often bones uncovered at historical sites -- including discoveries at the Donner site beginning in the 1980s -- are a mixture of both human and animal remains. Employing modern forensic techniques, including the analysis of DNA, Willey hopes to distinguish which remains are human, then further scrutinize the remains for signs of cannibalism.

"Because the material was so fragmented, there needs to be a finer-grained scrutiny of the archaeo-faunal assemblage," said department chair Frank Bayham. "P. Willey's studies will accomplish that and may provide the evidence of cannabalism, one way or another, that he is looking for."

The well-known story of the Donner Party began in the spring of 1846, when twenty-two people belonging to the families of George and Tamsen Donner, Jacob and Elizabeth Donner, and James and Margaret Reed began their journey west. By July 31, the group reached northwestern Utah. There the party reached its full size: eighty-seven people, twenty wagons, and livestock.

The group was following the lead of Lansford W. Hasting's The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California, a book now referred to as propaganda by many. Written in order to lure emigrants away from Oregon and to California, the book's misleading explanations of terrain may have led the travelers to the route -- and corresponding ruthless winter -- that sealed their fate. By fall, the group was trapped by early snow in the High Sierras.

After the livestock and supplies were gone, the group took extreme measures to avoid starvation, Willey explained. Some of the travelers boiled the hides of livestock -- which was used as roofing for their makeshift tents -- into a gelatinous soup.

As the weaker members of the group began to die, in an effort to survive, the others turned to eating the deceased. One diary excerpt noted a man feasting on a "large pan full of liver and lights," Willey said.

What ensued was partly documented in the travelers' diaries, while some was shared second-hand. Other details have been recovered in excavations of the group's final camp site along Alder Creek, in the vicinity of present-day Reno, Willey said.

Willey concluded with an excerpt from a letter by Virginia Reed, a twelve-year-old Donner Party survivor, to a relative in her hometown.

"Never take no cutoffs and hurry long as fast as you can," she wrote. -- RL

Dr. Maggot and Mr. Worm

It's 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon, and a Holt lecture hall is overflowing into the aisles and hallways with students anxiously awaiting -- a biology department slide show. But not just any slide show. One with dead bodies in various states of decay.

"You people really need another theatre," quipped M. Lee Goff, an entomology professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, to the audience of about 200. The subject of Goff's February 18 presentation was entomology -- basically the study of bugs -- and the important role it plays in solving crimes.

Goff explained the three main ways insects become evidence: for store products, structural claims, and medical and legal cases. Product cases appear when a customer claims to have found an offending critter in her Cheerios, while structural claims include termite infestations. In the medical and legal cases, the entomologist is called in to determine the time and location of death, and even whodunit.

Goff cited the case of a woman discovered in a Hawaii sugar cane field. The Black Soldier fly was on her body -- a species that appears on corpses twenty days after the time of death. The fly was fourteen days into its developmental cycle, which placed the woman's date of death thirty-four days prior to the discovery. From this information, police were able to retrace where the victim was that day, and with whom. With a search warrant, police uncovered a trail of blood in the suspect's apartment that was the perfect outline of the woman's body.

In legal and medical cases, entomology is used in seven areas: determining the time of death; locating where crime occurred and whether the body was relocated; deciding the time of injuries before and after death; characterizing the crime scene habitat; detecting the presence of illegal drugs and toxins; tracing the sources of human DNA; and discovering abuse and neglect in the children and elderly.

Goff explained that both the type of insect on the body and its current developmental stage allow entomologists to determine an accurate time of death. The Blow fly is the first to appear, about ten minutes following death. The bug enters openings in the head, then the genitals and anus. The fly lays about 200 eggs and starts its biological cycle.

"When the insects go into the body, we look at those with the most advanced development," Goff said. "Then we work backward to measure the time of death."

The results are almost fool-proof. Goff presented a slide of a young air force cadet who had been raped, stabbed seventeen times, then slit across the throat. The boy's face was a black mask of maggots. Goff's team detected three species of flies, which told them the victim had been dead for three-and-a-half days with the time of death between 10 p.m. and midnight. Goff phoned the base where the boy was stationed to share the news. At the same time, there was another phone call. It was one of the boy's attackers, confessing to a crime that occurred at 10:30 p.m. three-and-a-half days prior.

Goff, visiting Chico for a February 20 anthropology conference, has been involved in forensic entomology for sixteen years. He studies about 200 cases each year in Hawaii and said he is attracted to the immediacy of his studies.

"I may not be able to prevent a murder, but I can keep that individual from doing it again," he said. -- RL