Lost Miners, The

DESCRIPTION: "Six miners went into the mountains To hunt for precious gold; It was the middle of winter, The weather was dreadful cold. Six miners went into the mountains, They had nor food nor shack -- Six miners went into the mountains But only one came back."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1958 (Burt-AmericanMurderBallads)
KEYWORDS: mining homicide death food cannibalism gold
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1873-1874 - The disappearance of the Packer party
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Burt-AmericanMurderBallads, p. 231, "The Lost Miners" (1 fragment)
NOTES [204 words]: Burt-AmericanMurderBallads believes this item to be about Alferd Packer (she spells it "Alfred," but my sources indicate that "Alferd" is correct). In 1873, Packer and five others went out. In the bitter winter that followed, all save Packer died, and it was later learned that Packer had eaten their bodies. He was generally thought to have murdered them as well as consuming them, and died in prison in 1907.
He seems to have gone into folklore in a fairly substantial way. For a Wyoming account of his story, see James R. Dow, Roger L. Welsch, and Susan D. Dow, Wyoming Folklore: Collected by the Federal Writers' Project, University of Nebraska Press, 2010, #13, pp. 64-72, "Packer, the Man-Eater."
I believe Phil Ochs wrote a song about him, too.
There are at least five books on the subject, none of which I have made any attempt to see (you'll wee why when I give you the first two titles):
* Alferd Packer's Wilderness Cookbook by James E. Banks
* Alferd Packer's High Protein Cookbook by Wendy Spurr
* Otto Mears, his life & times: With notes on the Alferd Packer Case by Ervan F Kushner
* Alferd G. Packer, cannibal! Victim? by Ervan F Kushner
* Alferd G. Packer: Soldier, Prospector, and Cannibal by Ann Oldham - RBW
Last updated in version 6.0
File: Burt231

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