Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History(32)

Anthropologist Beth Conklin studied the Wari’ from the western Amazonian rainforest of Brazil. She reported that until the 1960s, the Wari’ consumed portions of human flesh as well as bone meal mixed with honey. Having conducted extensive interviews with Wari’ elders, she said that the “Wari’ are keenly aware that prolonged grieving makes it hard for mourners to get on with their lives.” With the corpse being the single most powerful reminder of the deceased, the Wari’ believed that consuming the body eradicates it once and for all. Beliefs or not, though, they were forced by missionaries and government officials to abandon their funerary rites and to bury their dead in what these strangers believed to be the civilized manner. Conklin said that this was a ritual the Wari’ found to be particularly repellent, since they considered the ground “cold, wet and polluting” and that “to leave a loved one’s body to rot in the dirt was disrespectful and degrading to the dead and heart-wrenching for those who mourned them.”

Getting back to the question of whether or not the Caribs were cannibals, several years ago, during a trip to Trinidad, I met Cristo Adonis, the spiritual leader of the Trinidadian Amerindians. One of the first things I learned was that there were very few of his people left (with no full-blooded individuals among the roughly 600 surviving members). I quickly noted that Adonis avoids using the European-assigned names Carib and Arawak, which he considers slang terms. Instead he refers to his ancestors as the Karina and Locono people. Mr. Adonis told me that his people did practice both endocannibalism, related to religious practices, and exocannibalism, as a way to gain power from their defeated enemies. His evidence for this claim derives solely from ethnohistorical accounts passed down over hundreds of years. I told him that might make some folks skeptical.

“Why,” he asked me, “would indigenous historians pass on stories about their ancestors practicing cannibalism if the stories weren’t based on actual customs?” Actually, I can think of some potential reasons for claiming one’s ancestors were cannibals (e.g., to instill fear in their enemies), but anthropologist Neil Whitehead also thinks that the Caribs were man-eaters, although I found his rationale to be open to debate. To back this up his claim, Whitehead offers accounts by non-Spanish writers describing the Amerindians they encountered as having carried out ritual cannibalism. Whitehead argues that since the English, French, and Dutch were enemies of the Spanish, they would have wanted to develop alliances with the Amerindians. Since the non-Spaniards were presumably on friendlier terms with the locals, they would have been in a better position to observe and report on the actual cannibalistic behavior of their native allies.

Arguing against Carib cannibalism, perhaps, is the fact that the documentation by non-Spaniards regarding the behavior contains some seriously fanciful descriptions. For example, alongside his descriptions of anthropophagy, Sir Walter Raleigh wrote about some indigenous peoples having their heads located within their chests and their feet pointing backwards, the latter a characteristic that made them “very difficult to track.” (See illustration on page 103.)

Interesting for another reason entirely is the most famous piece of Columbus-related circumstantial evidence: Dr. Chanca’s account of the recovery of “four or five bones of human arms and legs” in a hastily abandoned hut. In reality, the good doctor never saw the scene he wrote about in 1493 because he was not part of the landing party. This might come as a surprise, though, if you read Chanca’s work, since his repeated use of the word “we” gives the impression that he had experienced the horrors of the “cannibal hut” firsthand.

Though not a firsthand witness, Dr. Chanca was a strong supporter of Columbus, and because of his professional status, his written accounts carried tremendous weight. Historically, his letters make up much of what we know (or thought we knew) about the Admiral’s second voyage to the New World. Another factor to consider is that Chanca’s description of the cannibal hut was sent back to Spain accompanied by a letter from Columbus, requesting that the doctor’s salary be increased substantially. Since Columbus was already using the cannibal angle to justify his attempts to pacify and enslave the local residents, what are the odds that Dr. Chanca would have penned an accompanying document contradicting the Admiral’s description of the Caribs as subhuman eaters of men? This conflict of interest raises serious doubts as to whether Chanca’s account can be considered unbiased reporting.

But even if the events described by Chanca did take place, the bones Columbus and his men collected from the infamous hut were more likely part of a funerary ritual rather than proof of cannibalism. According to historians and anthropologists, rather than burying their departed ancestors, some Amerindians preserved and worshipped their bones. In 1828, author and historian Washington Irving pointed out that during Columbus’s first voyage, when human bones were discovered in a dwelling on Hispaniola, they were taken to be relics of the dead, reverently preserved. On Columbus’s second visit, however, when bones were found in a hut presumably inhabited by Caribs, the finding became incontrovertible evidence of cannibalism.

At best, then, Dr. Chanca’s letter provides a brief, secondhand account of what may or may not have been the aftermath of cannibalism by the inhabitants of a single hut on the island of Guadeloupe. Meager evidence? Certainly, but the story gained far greater significance as additional authors wrote about the incident. In what would become a blueprint for cannibal tales throughout history, descriptions of the practice were penned decades or even centuries after the actual event and without the input of additional witnesses.