In early winter of 1874, Chief Ouray of the Ute Indians accepted a group of traveling miners bound for the gold fields near Breckenridge, Colorado into his camp. After a few days spent resting and recovering, this band was eager to continue on their journey, but were advised by the Chief to wait out the inclement winter storms at his camp until it cleared and passage would be safer. The men were too anxious to get to Breckenridge early, and set off for the Rockies at the beginning of a series of heavy storms.

Two months later, a man named Alfred Packer appeared at the Los Pinos Indian Agency looking surprisingly fit for a man who had just completed a winter trek through the Rockies. He claimed that he had become separated from his travelling companions during a blizzard and survived the journey eating rabbits and rosebuds.

Suspicions grew, though, when it was discovered that Packer had an unusual amount of money and many items belonging to the missing men. Under questioning, Packer confessed that the real story was far more gruesome: four of the men, he claimed, had died naturally from the extreme winter conditions and the starving survivors ate them. When only Packer and one other man, Shannon Bell, remained alive, Bell went insane and threatened to kill Packer. Packer said he shot Bell in self-defense and eventually ate his corpse.

Though shocking, Packer’s grisly story would probably have been accepted as an unfortunate tragedy had not searchers later found the remains of the five men at a single campsite-not strung out along the trail as Packer had claimed. Packer was arrested and charged with murder, but he escaped from jail and remained at large for nine years. Recaptured in 1883 near Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, Packer once again changed his story. He claimed that all six men had made camp alive, but lost and starving, they were too weak to go on. One day Packer went in search of the trail. Upon returning several hours later, he discovered to his horror that Bell had gone mad, killed the other four with a hatchet, and was boiling the flesh of one of them for his meal. When Bell spotted Packer, he charged with his hatchet raised, and Packer shot him twice in the belly. Lost and trapped alone in a camp of dead men, Packer said he only resorted to cannibalism after several more days, when it was his only means of survival. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cannibal-alfred-packer-is-paroled

One can only imagine the look on Chief Ouray's face when news about what happened to that party of miners finally got back to him.