Of the 87 members of the party, 48 survived the ordeal. It's clear that some of the migrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, eating the bodies of those that died of starvation, sickness, and the extreme cold, but there's also speculation that some victims were murdered for their flesh. Now interestingly enough, when I was 16 years old, back in 1988, I was hiking the Continental Divide and one early evening we spotted in the middle of like nowhere these lights and cameras and we discovered that they were anthropologists excavating some of the bones of the deceased to see if they could figure out if there were stab marks on the bones, to figure out if there were stab marks on them, to try and see if the victims who were consumed had died naturally. Now, an important element of the story was that the Donner-Reed party had splintered due to the horrible traveling conditions, each looking out for themselves and not trusting the other family. Now, in early November, most of the families, except for the Donner family, made it up a massive nearly vertical slope of a thousand feet to Truckee Lake, which is now known as Donner Lake. The Donner party, however, became trapped five miles below the rest of the party, who became settled into abandoned cabins that were built by previous pioneers. Out of desperation, some of the pioneers at Truckee Lake attempted to escape, which led to the first natural deaths.