a branch of the field that examines culture through the lens of psychoanalysis, typically articulates cannibalism as a manifestation of internal psychological processes. Cultural materialist anthropologists, such as Marvin Harris, believe that cannibalism can be best understood as a response to environmental factors: an inadequate protein supply for example.25 The well-known structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss asserted that one of the fundamental binaries on which all human cultures rest is the division between the raw and the cooked. This division plays out in a number of ways, including nature versus culture and civilized versus savage. He further argued that within the act of cannibalism, the way a body is cooked reveals important insights into the social status of the deceased person as well as about the society as a whole.26 He argued that the boiling of bodies is the typical form of endocannibalism, and roasting is typical of exocannibalism; that is, outsiders are most like to be roasted, and in-group members are more likely to be boiled.27 In his framework cannibalism is a feature of “primitive” societies, a kind of disordered consumption that is opposed to civilization and culture. Another fundamental human distinction for Lévi-Strauss and other structural anthropologists is the divide between men and women. Thus humanity is in a constant tug of war between two opposing forces, with cannibalism residing squarely within the primitive, savage, and feminine side of the binary.
The anthropologist William Arens continues to be a polemical figure in the study of cannibalism. In his controversial book, The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy, he argues that there has never been a society that has positively sanctioned cannibalism.He operates under the assumption that all of the evidence for cannibalism was merely propaganda to support European imperialism and served only to emphasize the “primitiveness” of conquered peoples. However, the majority of modern anthropological scholarship agrees that many groups did in fact practice cannibalism.28 What is often misunderstood about Arens is that he does not categorically deny the existence of cannibalism; rather he argues that whether or not cannibalism was a real social practice, it existed as a discursive trope. He asserts that the real or imagined existence of cannibalism does not diminish its importance in historical discourse.29
The ethnohistorian Thomas Abler confronts Arens in his article “Iroquois Cannibalism: Fact not Fiction” and debunks several of Arens’s assertions.30 Arens states that there is no definitive evidence of cannibalism in the Jesuit Relations, the compilations of reports from missionaries, which I discuss in greater detail in chapter 4. However, as Abler adroitly points out, thirty-one volumes contain references to cannibalism.31 Certainly the mere preponderance of references in the Jesuit Relations does not prove that the practice actually occurred, but when viewed in concert with the evidence for Iroquois cannibalism in speeches and captivity narratives, it is quite clear that anthropophagy did occur.
This project lends itself naturally to a comparative analysis; in order to draw conclusions about discourses of cannibalism in early postencounter North America, it is necessary to evaluate a range of sources from several imperial contexts, in addition to the social and cultural traditions of the Native group in question. D. W. Meinig’s characterization of the Spanish conquest as “stratification,” the French conquest as “articulation,” and the English conquest as “expulsion” serves as a useful model.32 The means and goals of empire had consequences not only for the frequency of reports of cannibalism but also in regard to the power of such reports in propelling conquest and colonization.
In American Pentimento: The Invention of Indians and the Pursuit of Riches, Patricia Seed argues that the way the empires of England, Portugal, Spain, and France conceived of ownership of land, resources, and people shaped the development of imperial power in the Americas. For example, the Moorish influence on Iberian political thought after the Reconquista created the understanding that deposits of natural resources were put there by God for use by his people. The successful elimination of Muslim power in Spain was seen as proof by the monarchs and other elites that Spaniards were the true people of God, and therefore the resources were theirs for the taking. Spanish tradition also insisted on the payment of one fifth of all profit to the Crown. This complex understanding of public versus private ownership carried over into the issue of slavery. Seed argues that although the Spanish Crown expressed no concern about the coercion of Native labor in the pursuit of riches, Indian slavery was not condoned because it implied private ownership of labor and resources.33 The development of the repartimiento system reflected this, as it apportioned Native labor into private hands in a trustee relationship, not full ownership.34 Spaniards in general believed that the pursuit of riches was a common goal to benefit all of God’s people. The control of natural resources obtained by the exploitation of Indian labor was of primary importance to the Spanish Empire in the Americas.
Drawing on Seed’s insights, I argue that the ways a particular empire understood its relationship to land and Others was important in determining the place of cannibalism within discourse. For example, as Spaniards perceived the exploitation of natural resources as central to their imperial goals, they were more likely to carve out a subservient position for Indians in order to maintain a local labor force. In chapter 2 I examine how the slave trade and the mining of raw materials were directly related to accusations of cannibalism. In opposition to Spanish conceptions, Englishmen conceived of their efforts in the New World in more individualized ways and were far more interested in private landownership.35 While success for the conquistadors may have been measured in gold and silver, success for the English was measured in landownership.36 Based on these general priorities, the English colonists in North America tended to show less interest in affording Indians a space in their New World. Thus the prominence of cannibalism within English discourse, and the relationship between cannibalism and imperial power, differed from the Spanish and French versions and had consequences for the gendered nature of imperial power.
In order to understand the discourse of cannibalism (keeping in mind imperial context), it is necessary to understand the distinction between civilization and savagery and to acknowledge the power of this binary. The conquest of the New World rested on the assumption of a fundamental difference between the European and the Indian. No matter how profoundly different European ethnic groups believed in their own regional and cultural superiority within Europe itself, they nonetheless believed in the innate superiority of Christian Europeans over all others. Certainly the English believed, for example, that Catholicism was fundamentally flawed, but they nonetheless continued to operate under the assumption that a flawed belief in God was superior to no belief in God at all. In order to make the conquest of the Americas viable, Europeans had to see themselves, and their social and cultural traditions, as different from American ones.
Anthony Pagden discusses many of the heated Spanish arguments about Indian humanity in The Fall of the Natural Man. He demonstrates that mainstream Spanish thought came to recognize the shared humanity of Spaniards and Indians, even if Spaniards considered Indians to be inferior. They assumed that it was their job to provide Indians with the knowledge that was denied them by their fall from grace. Spanish thought presumed that one of the most fundamental tenets of humanity was that humans should not consume one another. God called humanity forth to prosper, populate, and control the world through his word and glory; consuming one another violates his divine will. A similar sentiment was echoed in other empires as well, and although the English and the French may have had different ideas about God and about their relationship with the land and peoples of the New World, they still believed that human consumption violated fundamental tenets of Christianity.
The modern concept of the Other is useful here. While it is difficult to provide a concrete definition of this term, in its simplest form Others are those who represent the opposite of the Self/Subject. The Other serves to provide a Subject with a point of reference for something it is not and must strive not to be. Although the Other represents what a society should not be, there is also often a fetishistic reverence for the Other. It stands in opposition to the Self, the Subject, the Signifier. In order to define itself, a being must determine what it is not. The Subject is not merely constructed in opposition to its Object, however, as the reverse is also true. The “civilized” being exists because of the cannibal, just as the cannibal takes form because of the existence of the civilized world.
In The Location of Culture, Homi Bhabha puts forth a methodology for the analysis of the Other in discourse: “My reading of colonial discourse