Document Type
Book Review
Publication Date
Fall 8-1-2019
Publication Title
Journal of Anthropological Research
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Volume
75
Issue
3
First page number:
414
Last page number:
416
Abstract
This book offers a different look at how to think about the starvation and death that hounded emigrants attempting to get to California and Oregon in the early years of nineteenth-century US expansion. Specifically, the Donner party and two lesser-known Mormon handcart groups are scrutinized for what the patterns of age at death by sex can reveal. In the subtitle The Biology of Three American Tragedies, “biology” here means solely demographic data on sex and age at death. These are really the only biological variables examined, so the title Sex and Death on the Western Emigrant Trail is more accurate as to the subject matter; the subtitle promises more of a biological account than is actually delivered.
Disciplines
American Literature | United States History
File Format
File Size
50 KB
Language
English
Repository Citation
Martin, D. E.
(2019).
Sex and Death on the Western Emigrant Trail: The Biology of Three American Tragedies.
Journal of Anthropological Research, 75(3),
414-416.
University of Chicago Press.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/704319