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Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 21:05:09 -0400 (EDT)
From: Emily Harrison Kelly <ekelly@acpub.duke.edu>
Subject: Re: Harris' Good To Eat

> I'll maybe buy it - I think I've seen it somewhere. I'll probably have
> to special order it, and I'd like to know whether its worth the time and
> money.

Well I've got it in my hands, and I've just been scanning the chapter on cannibalism. Seems like a lot of twaddle to me. He starts out assuming that culturally accepted cannibalism has existed regularly, and then spends the whole chapter retelling anecdotes without being too careful with his cites, and explaining why all the people who say it never happened are wrong, because hey, it makes sense in context and look at these stories!

Harris mostly only mentions Arens specifically with reference to the South American Tupinamba culture and Hans Staden's account of their "warfare cannibalism", as Harris calls it. He comes back to Arens briefly when he discusses the Iroquois and surrounding communities.

Here's the Staden bit, which I find most convincing of Harris' stuff (i.e. he puts up actual claims rather than vague speculation--that's refreshing). Any typos are egregiously mine, though Harris makes a couple interesting grammar choices of his own. The edition I have is

Harris, Marvin, 1927- .
_Good to eat : riddles of food and culture_. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1985. ISBN 0-671-50366-9 ; LC 85-14561

This is all from chapter 10, "Peopler Eating", p. 199-234. I've started quoting on p. 206, and carry through (with a few cuts) through p. 211.

"...let me confront the issue of whether or not Staden's description is truthful. In his popular book, _The Man-Eating Myth_, anthropologist William Arens claims that Staden's account, like all other accounts of cannibalism (except for emergency cannibalism) is a tall tale. Arens advances three arguments to discredit Staden's account. Staden could not have translated verbatim the words of his Tupinamba captors right from the first day of his captivity because he didn't speak Tupi-Guarani, the native language; Staden reconstructed cannibal events in impossibly precise detail nine years afer they allegedly took place; and Staden relied on John Dryander, a German doctor, to help him fake the manuscript. Another anthropologist, Donald Forsyth, has refuted these clames. Staden was in fact a member of an expedition led by the Spanish captain Diego de Sanabria, which set sail from Seville in the spring of 1549. Two of the expedition's three ships made it to a Brazilian harbor near modern-day Florianopolis. The larger of the two vessels sank in the harbor. For two years Staden and his shipwrecked companions kept themselves alive by trading salvaged items from their ships with Tupi-Guarani-speaking villagers in exchange for food. When the salvaged items were used up, the survivors split into two groups. Staden's group took the small ship north along the coast. After another shipwreck, Staden and his companions reached the Portuguese settlement of Sao Vicente--the colonial forerunner of the modern-day port of Santos--in January 1553. For the next year Staden worked as a gunner for th ePortuguese and was in close contact with at least one Tupi-Guarani-speaking native whom he described as his "slave" and who accompanied Staden on hunting expeditions. Staden was also well acquainted with other Tupi-Guarani-speaking residents of the Portuguese settlement.

"In January 1554 a Tupinamba raiding party captured Staden and brought him back to their village. Staden spent the next nine months in constant fear of being killed and eaten. In September 1554 he eluded his captors, made his way to the coast, and was rescued by a French ship. The ship docked in Honfleur, Normandy, on or about 20 February 1555. On reaching his native Marburg, Germany, Staden quickly sought the help of Dr. John Dryander, a distinguished scholar and friend of Staden's family. Staden's motive in going to Dryander is clear from what Dryander says in the introduction to Staden's book. Staden wanted someone of high repute to serve as a character witness and to vouch for his account:

"'I have known [Staden's] father for upwards of fifty years, for he and I were born and taught in the same town, namely Wetter. Both in his home and in Hombert in Hesse where he now lives, he [i.e. the father] is looked upon as an upright, pious, and worthy man not unversed in the arts... I believe that Hans Staden has faithfully reported his history and adventures from his own experience and not from the account of others, that he has no intent to deceive and that he desires no reward or worldly renown, but only the glory of God, in humble praise and faithfulness for his escape.'

"Staden's book was finished at the latest in December 1556, less than two years after his return to Europe and less than three years after the date of his capture, although it was not actually published until early 1557. Forsyth has checked all of the principal facts, dates, and names by cross-reference to specific individuals mentioned by Staden as being at certain places and specified dates. From this resume it is clear that Staden spoke Spanish and Portuguese as well as German and had ample opportunity during the five years which *preceded* his capture, to have learned Tupi-Guarani, that he did not delay nine years in writing down his experiences but two at the most; and that he asked for and received Dryander's help not to invent and embellish a tall tale, but to assure the reader that he was a pious and honest man.

"Other sixteenth-century accounts independently corroborate the fundamental pattern of warfare cannibalism as practiced by the Tupinamba. Jesuit missionaries to Brazil wrote hundreds of pages of letters and reports about the practice. Most of these Jesuits spent years traveling among and visiting Tupinamba villages and almost all of them had learned to speak Tupi-Guarani. Father Jose de Anchieta, for example, who mastered Tupi-Guarani sufficiently to compose the first grammar of that language, had this to say about cannibalism in 1554:

"'If they capture four or five of their enemies, they [immediately] return [to their village] to eat them at a great feast...' [cut remainder of description--ehk]

"Anchieta was no armchair ethnographer. He not only obtained information from talking with the Tupinamba but from traveling among and living in their villages where he recorded specific events, as in his account of the slaughter on 26 June 1553 of an enemy "slave."

"'But in the afternoon when they were all full of wine, they came to the house where we were lodging and wanted to take the slave to kill [him]... Like wolves the Indians pulled at him [the slave] with great fury; finally they took him outside and broke [open] his head, and together with him they killed another one of their enemies, whom they soon tore into pieces with great rejoicing, especially the women, who went around singing and dancing, some [of the women] pierced the cut off members [of the body] with sharp sticks, others smeared their hands with [the victim's] fat and went about smearing [the fat on] the faces and mouths of others, and it was such that they gathered [the victim's] blood in their hands and licked it, an abominable spectacle, such that they had a great slaughter on which to gorge themselves.'

"Another Jesuit father, Juan de Aspilcueta Navarro, wrote about a direct encounter with cannibalism in 1549 in a village near what is the modern-day city of Salvador.

"'...upon my arrival they told me that they had just finished killing a girl and they showed my the house, and when I entered it I found that they were cooking her to eat her, and the head was hung on a timber; and I began to chide and decry such an abominable thing and so against nature. ...And afterwards I went to other houses in which I found the feet, hands, and heads of men in the smoke.'

[another account from Navarro that Harris calls eye-witness, from a letter dated 28 March 1550--ehk]

"Another Jesuit eyewitness of Tupinamba cannibal rituals was Father Antonio Blasquez. Writing in 1557, after being in Brazil for four years, Blasquez stated that the Indians find 'their happiness by killing an enemy and afterwards, for vengeance, to eat his flesh... there is no meat they like better.' Again, Blasquez was no armchair observer:

[long Blasquez description about the ritual torture of prisoners before killing them; nothing about the execution or disposal of the body--ehk]

"...If the Tupinamba did not in fact practice cannibalism, the Jesuits were not merely gullible consumers of nasty rumors, they must have been consummate liars. I refuse to believe Arens's claim that they lied to each other, lied to their superious in Rome, and lied in this manner continuously for over fifty years without a single word of protest from a single honest man among them."

Harris moves next to alleged eyewitness accounts of alleged cannibalism among the Iroquois, etc., in northern NY state and southern Canada (ha! I always knew you must have a vested interest in this discussion, Ottawa-outskirts-boy), specifically from Peter Raddison (1652), Wentworth Greenhalgh (17 June 1677). Also some gorgeous FOAF stuff, to wit:

"...In a famous incident related by a Christianized Huron, the Iroquois tortured two missionaries to death and ate their hearts. The Jesuit superious, Father Regnaut, to whom the Huron had told the story, states that he himself had witnessed similar acts of torture and cannibalism. 'I do not doubt all which I have just related [the Huron's story] is true, and I would seal it with my blood, for I have seen the same treatment given to Iroquois prisoners whom the Huron savages have taken in war...'

[and back to Arens--ehk]

"I have quoted the Jesuits' eyewitness accounts of cannibalism at length in order to refute Arens's mischievous contention that 'the collected documents of the Jesuit missionaries often referred to as the source for Iroquois cruelty and cannibalism, do not contain an eyewitness description of the latter deed.' It is true that the Jesuits' eyewitness accounts of torture and cannibalism among the Iroquois and Huron provide more information regarding torture than the cooking and chewing part of the proceeding. But I think the reason for this is obvious. As eyewitnesses whose culture prohibited cannibalism, the Jesuits were revolted by the consumption of human flesh; but as men who were not accustomed to watching people being tortured (even though their European contrymen used torture on a larger scale than the Indians), they were far more appalled and revolted by the way the victims were killed than by how they were cooked."

[Does the immediate above seem as lame to you as it does to me? And it's not nearly the only place he makes such grand sweeping conclusions--ehk]

OK, I'm tired of typing. That's all you're getting, at least for now.

With all this, Harris doesn't, however, make the claim that cannibalism was ever a staple source of nutrition, and if we're ruling out "ritual" cannibalism from the list of what counts, then a lot of the "warfare cannibalism" he describes is probably moot. He has a few allegedly first-hand accounts that are interesting if they bear out--how does his account of Staden's credibility hold up against Arens? From what you described in your review, it sounds like speculation against speculation here, though as always, in the absence of facts I'm inclined toward the skeptical version.

As for the Aztecs (p. 225-234), Harris has lots of spectacular descriptions, prefaced by "According to one of the chronicles..." and "One eyewitness [of Aztec civilization, *not* necessarily cannibalism, as far as I can make out--ehk] counted the number of poles and shafts..." and the like. His sources cited within the text of the book are Bernadino de Sahagun's _Florentine Codex_, Motolinia's _History of the Indians of New Spain_. And then he goes into pages of speculation about why (not whether) the Aztecs retained cannibalism even as a state-governed society.

I can certainly see why Harris keeps coming back as an "authoritative" source, though. He's got an extensive bibliography at the end of the book, and within the chapter it keeps citing things like, "One conquistador wrote..." and and unsourced direct descriptions that are presented as facts. And he sounds so sure of himself, I'm not surprised that people reading less than critically would buy his speculation and implications as solid fact without checking further.

As for whether you ought to buy it, if it's just for you and general interest's sake, I'd head to a library instead. It certainly doesn't seem like all that and more to me.

But if this thread means that much to you--well, there's a lot of meat to argue about in it, and it would be good to have a copy to jump off against for refutation.

Em "heh heh, she said meat" K