sexuality, gendered norms, and cannibalism persisted. Even when a group of people was not explicitly described as cannibalistic, “improper” consumptive patterns went hand in hand with other supposedly deviant practices. For example, Mandeville describes a group of people on a far-flung island who have a wide array of edible animals available to them yet limit themselves to certain animals and never consume the myriad fowl or rabbits among them. These people “eat flesh of other beasts and drink milk. In that country they take their daughters and sisters to their wives, and their other kinswomen. And if there be ten men or twelve men or more dwelling in an house, the wife of everych of them shall be common to them all that dwell in that house; so that every man may lie with whom he will of them on one night, and with another, another night. And if she have any child, she may give it to what man that she list, that hath companied with her, so that no man knoweth there whether the child be his or another’s.”49 Mandeville places a description of their dietary habits right next to a report on their sexual and kinship practices. Taken together, this and other descriptions of exotic people in medieval travel narratives clearly demonstrate a pervasive belief in the connection between seemingly disordered sexuality and eating habits. Not only were other humans the most improper food to eat, but cannibalism was perceived as both gastronomic and sexual.
In addition to the concept of Otherness and the connection between sex and cannibalism, medieval narratives reinforce the link between anthropophagy and imperial expansion. From Herodotus to Marco Polo, the concerns of empires, city-states, and rulers were intimately tied to the accusations of cannibalism. As empires and cities grew and expanded, they came into contact with new groups of people, many of whom resisted foreign influence. The peoples inhabiting the areas to the north and east of the Black Sea proved to be formidable obstacles to both Hellenic and Roman expansion. For centuries these Scythians were also considered to be the consummate cannibals. In one way or another all of the accusations of cannibalism discussed herein are connected to the expansion of empires and cultures but not always outright conquest. Thus even though Columbus did not sail west with an army at his back, he did bear with him a millennium’s worth of axioms about Otherness. Well before any documented interactions between Americans and Europeans, including Vikings in Newfoundland, new lands and strange new peoples were quite often already believed to be savage and cannibalistic. The categorization of the peoples of the Americas, setting aside any evidence of anthropophagous practices, was perfectly consistent with European expectations.
2. Discovering Cannibals: Europeans, Caribs, and Arawaks in the Caribbean
In the Pulitzer Prize–winning book Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus from 1942, Samuel Eliot Morison attempts to capture the awe-inspiring wonder of the discovery of the Americas. He describes the experience as earth-shattering, ushering in a new era of human experience: “Every tree, every plant that the Spaniards saw was strange to them, and the natives were not only strange but completely unexpected, speaking an unknown tongue and resembling no race of which even the most educated of the explorers had read in the tales of travelers from Herodotus to Marco Polo. Never again may mortal men hope to recapture the amazement, the wonder, the delight of those October days in 1492 when the New World gracefully yielded her virginity to the conquering Castilians.”1 Morison’s choice to describe the American continents as a virginal woman and Spanish exploration as sexual conquest follows a long-standing pattern. The notion of land as feminine and conquest as masculine appears often in the literature of imperialism.2 But the Americas did not willingly yield their virginity to Europe, as he suggests; rather Europe claimed and constructed the continents as pure and unspoiled in order to create a narrative of consent. Describing the encounter as consensual denies the fact that the Americas had minimal agency in regard to the Columbian encounter. There was no real choice: Columbus showed up without their permission and laid claim to lands and people who could not object because they were not even aware that a claim was being made. If one were compelled to describe the first meeting of Europeans and Americans in sexual terms, rape would be a much more appropriate metaphor.
Morison also highlights the novelty of the encounter between America and Europe while connecting it to the same historic context that I discussed in chapter 1. He argues that even with the knowledge of earlier traditions of contact with strange people and far-flung lands, something unique and unprecedented occurred when men from Europe met the men and women of the Americas for the first time. Accordingly this chapter uncovers the novelty and continuity of the discursive traditions of cannibalism in the context of the first encounters in the Caribbean. Furthermore I examine the connection that Morison makes between sexuality and conquest. The discussion will predominantly focus on the Caribs of the Lesser Antilles, for it is on these islands that the fearsome cannibals reportedly resided.3 However, particularly in the section on Amerigo Vespucci, I discuss mainland Carib peoples as well.4
The figure of the cannibal remains one of the most enduring images of the European conquest of America, and while Columbus was most certainly not the first person to indicate the existence of savage cannibals in a faraway land, his momentous voyage ushered in a new era in which cannibals replaced anthropophagi.5 This chapter explores the discourse of cannibalism in the context of the discovery and early exploration of the Caribbean, addressing the ways the discourse of cannibalism drew from earlier classical and medieval precedents and developed in new directions in a unique context, beginning with a discussion of the development of the discourse of cannibalism in writings about the four voyages of Columbus. Then I examine how descriptions of cannibalism differed in the writings of Amerigo Vespucci, especially regarding the gendered nature of cannibal discourse. Finally, I will briefly examine the visual rhetoric of man-eating.
The discourse of Carib cannibalism was gendered in a variety of complex and sometimes contradictory ways. Europeans writings about the New World demonstrated preconceived notions about proper displays of gender and sexuality, and these assumptions led them to construct Indians as inferior Others. In my examination the intersections of the discourses of cannibalism, sex, and gender in the Caribbean, the development of European ideas about alterity and difference, which were fundamental to the establishment and maintenance of European power in the New World, becomes clearer. Furthermore this exploration provides greater insight into how Europeans expanded their power in the Americas and the justifications that this power rested upon, both in the Caribbean and in other regions.
The Caribs took the symbolic place of the Scythians as the paradigmatic cannibals in the minds of European writers in the early sixteenth century.6 Europe was first made aware of the Caribs/Kalinago by neighboring Arawak/Taíno Indians of the Greater Antilles, who informed Columbus and his crew about the fearsome tribe to the east who came over the sea to terrorize and consume them.7 European writings implied that the Arawaks and Caribs were long-standing enemies.8 This supposed enmity has come down to us as a reflection of the divide between “good Indians” and “bad Indians.” The Caribs, from the first moment of European contact, were portrayed as villains who terrorized the innocent Arawaks and posed a significant impediment to European expansion. Their reputation for cannibalism became one of the most damning pieces of evidence of their savagery and accordingly their availability for conquest. On his first voyage Columbus did not venture into the Lesser Antilles, but he undertook the second journey across the Atlantic with the express purpose of finding the islands of the Caribs.9 Thus the purported presence of cannibalism in the West Indies was an important catalyst for early exploration and conquest. By the mid-sixteenth century the practice of cannibalism would also determine the Europeans’ ability to enslave a given population.
The men who participated in these voyages of exploration-turned-exploitation came from many different parts of Europe and did not possess a unified understanding of Otherness. Yet, as discussed in chapter 1, there were some generalized tropes with which they would have been familiar. Even though Columbus sailed for Spain, he was Italian by birth, as was Vespucci, who sailed for both Spain and Portugal. Italian mariners dominated the seas in the fifteenth century and led the way in the conquest of America. Despite the multiethnic nature of the crew on voyages to the Caribbean, the writings about these voyages all indicate that European men brought preexisting traditions about encounter with difference with them on their journey. The discovery of the Americas represented the first time that Europeans were exposed to such a large, unknown, and seemingly barbaric population.10 There were innumerable accounts of savages, wild men, and witches living in Europe, as well