Cannibals in the Family

Daniel Blue, Reagans great, great, great uncle on his mother's side, resorted to cannabalism to stay alive after he was lost in the Rocky Mountains. Blue and his two brothers Alexander and Charles and another man were lost during an expedition to Pike's Peak that began in February, 1889. Blue was the only one to return, the others either fell ill, starved to death or died of exposure.
His account of the events follows:
"We were not strong enough to inter the corpse, neither had we pick or shovel with which to dig a grave ... The dead body laid there for three days, we lying helpless on the ground near it, our craving for food increasing ... until driven by desperation; wild with hunger, and feeling ... that self preservation is the first law of nature we took our knives and commenced cutting the flesh from the legs and arms of our dead companion. Later, when his brother Alexander died, he and his other sibling Charles ate part of him, too. Charles later died, but Daniel was found by an Arapaho Indian who nursed him back to health and got him back to Denver City." The men's bodies were never found.

Early Reagan, pp. 30-31.

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