Kevin Costner 's epic Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter One has just hit cinema screens and tells the tale of desperate pioneers making the deadly cross-country journey to the Wild West . But to truly understand the brutality of the 1800s' wagon trails - from burying children to surviving by cannibalism - it's best heard from the horse's mouth..
.. The pioneers were faced with a decision as they paused, exhausted and starving, within California’s unforgiving Sierra Nevada mountains.
They had lost their livestock and wagons, and had little more than the clothes on their backs. The Donner-Reed party, on their way to start a new life in California as part of America’s great 19th century westward migration, must choose: rest until tomorrow, or strike onwards. The beleaguered group, led from the eastern ‘frontier’ in 1846 by Illinois businessman James Frasier Reed, pleaded for the former - but that night were cloaked in snowfall so heavy they became trapped.
The only option as they began to die of starvation and sickness? Cannibalism . “People died one by one, and when they died, the survivors ate their flesh. A third lived, and were eventually rescued,” explains historian and author, Katie Hickman.
The journey west was absolutely brutal,” she adds. “This is an extreme example, but many died on the way. Burials dotted the routes.
There are records of rows of 15 or more across. And there was little time to stop to dig a shallow grave, or to grieve. If they stopped,.
