Cannibalism by Bill Schutt

Author:Bill Schutt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2017-01-17T16:00:00+00:00

He continued, quiet and calm. “And it would make that tree you’re sitting under the real George Donner Tree.”

The Donner detectives smiled wry smiles, sensing my momentary confusion as I scrambled to my feet. “Wait. And what happened under this tree?”

“A lot of suffering,” John replied.

Kristin Johnson finished up. “So when and if this new site is excavated, we may have to modify our thinking about all sorts of things related to the Alder Creek camps”—most importantly, where they were actually located.

Minutes later we were hiking out of the 19th century and back to the parking area. Letting my gaze fall on the clusters of tiny white flowers that covered the meadow, I couldn’t help thinking about another blanket of white that had vexed the Donner Party, perhaps at this very spot, during the long and horrible winter of 1846–1847. Though the air temperature had risen even higher since our arrival that morning, I shivered at the thought. Then I turned my face toward the warm, late-June sun and headed for my car.

We’ve already learned that cannibalism occurs across the entire animal kingdom, albeit more frequently in some groups than others. When the behavior does happen, it happens for reasons that make perfect sense from an evolutionary standpoint: reducing competition, as a component of sexual behavior, or an aspect of parental care.

Cannibalism in nature is also widely seen as a natural response to stresses like overcrowding and food shortages. The unfortunates involved in shipwrecks, strandings, and sieges have also resorted to cannibalism, and by doing so they exhibited biologically and behaviorally predictable responses to specific forms of extreme stress. Although the conditions may have been unnatural, the actions that resulted were not.

Additionally, like male spiders that give up their lives and bodies to their mates, ultimately increasing the survival potential of their offspring, so too did the bodies of Donner Party members like Jacob Donner serve a similar function for their families.

Finally, in cannibalism-related tragedies like the Donner Party, survivors have been given something like a free pass for committing acts that would otherwise be considered unforgivable by their cultures.

But where did this taboo come from? Why is the very idea of human cannibalism so abhorrent that except in a very few cases it justified the torture, murder, and enslavement of those accused of being cannibals?

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