The Indifferent Stars Above Summary

Words: 643
Pages: 3

In the middle 1840s, colonization and expansion was rising in the United States. The need of having to control all of the land of President Polk, resulted in thousands of people migrating towards the west in hopes of finding cheap land and starting a better life for themselves. What started as a pioneer journey to the West, the Donner Party ended up being one of the most famous counts of cannibalism and survival from the early westward expansion era of American history.
Daniel James Brown, the author of “The Indifferent Stars Above”, presents us on a narrative based on actual events that happened during the mid-19th century, during the exploration towards California and Oregon. Brown. The story begins by introducing a young woman by the name of Sarah Graves, young women who all she wanted was to get married and live in the land of her dreams in California. Ultimately, after a long thought, she finally decides to go with her newly married husband because she considered it a once in a lifetime opportunity. She
…show more content…
After months of traveling in the harsh conditions, the oxen slowly began to give out and people began to become sick due to cholera and other bacteria diseases. Later on, food supply became an even greater issue, in which people began to eat their livestock, even the oxen that helped move the wagons. However, even then, it wouldn’t suffice the needs of the vast number of families. Once winter came in Sierra Nevada mountains, it came down to a point where nothing else mattered, except staying alive. They tried utilizing every part of the animal’s body, and even brewing soup out of the bones. However, once they had no other food source, they resulted to cannibalizing their own dead friends and family’s corpses in order to survive another few nights. Ironically though, if more had agreed to cannibalism earlier, more would have survived in the