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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 as tales of cannibals at the edges of the civilized world, but what distinguished the encounter with the Americans was its scale, not necessarily its novelty.11

Based on intellectual traditions of monstrosity and cannibalism, Columbus fully expected to encounter amazing and monstrous creatures when he arrived in the New World.12 The cannibals of Columbus’s day were part of the same family of monsters as dog-headed men, though today we consider the existence of cannibals as less dubious.13 While the cannibals of Europe’s imagination may have been considered among the monstrous and magical, this was no longer the case less than a century after discovery. Through an examination of the writing of Columbus, Vespucci, and others, the way the figure of the cannibal became disassociated with the realm of the imaginary and instead came to represent real, living people with disastrous consequences becomes clearer as well.

The beginnings and ends of historical epochs are always fuzzy, and while there is no clear moment in which the medieval world ends, Columbus’s discovery of the Americas was a harbinger of modernity. In many ways he was a man straddling the medieval and the modern; he challenged conventional wisdom about geography (although, contrary to the prevalent American cultural myth, people of his time knew that the world was round), traveled widely throughout Europe and Africa, and opened Europe’s eyes to the vast lands to the west. At the same time, he was obstinate in his belief that he had discovered the western route to Asia and found evidence to confirm his belief without recognizing the glaring errors in his observations. Furthermore his way of understanding difference was shaped by medieval epistemologies.14

First Impressions

In a journal entry from November 4, 1492, Columbus mentions cannibalism for the first time, more than three weeks after the first sighting of land on October 12.15 This initial observation is often overlooked because it does not relate directly to “real” Indians, but it is nonetheless very important. The entry, as abstracted by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, reads, “He [Columbus] understood also that, far from there, there were one-eyed men, and others, with snouts of dogs, who ate men, and that as soon as one was taken they cut his throat and drank his blood and cut off his genitals.”16 Columbus accepted the presence of wondrous creatures, like the fabled dog-headed men, albeit with a dollop of skepticism.17 He and his crew never encountered these creatures, although he did find a couple of mermaids who turned out not to be as beautiful as he anticipated.18 Despite that, he still insisted that they were in fact mermaids. Similarly he insisted that the islands of the Caribbean were actually India, in spite of the evidence to the contrary. He exhibited a curious combination of empirical observation coupled with confidence in his ability to interpret data based on a preconceived understanding of the outcome. Like most others of his time, he knew what he would find in the New World and simply looked for evidence to confirm his assumptions.19 Rather than letting his observations speak for themselves, Columbus insisted on the existence of truth in medieval and classical texts that he simply needed to confirm. In this way he was no great innovator or discoverer, for he was discovering only what he believed had already been proven to exist. His real discovery from his perspective, then, was the route that he took to get to Asia, not learning of new lands and new peoples.

In his famous letter to Luis de Santángel, the finance minister who was instrumental in convincing the Crown to fund the voyage, Columbus remarked that because of God’s divine will the lands that had been “talked or written” about by men but were known only through “conjecture, without much confirmation from eyesight, amounting only to this much that the hearers for the most part listened and judged that there was more fable in it than anything actual,” had finally been observed and were now known to Christendom.20 In the past several decades, much doubt has been cast on the novelty of Columbus’s discovery, but that is not at issue here. It does not matter that he was not the first European to set foot in the Western Hemisphere, but rather that his actions started a chain of events that radically altered the course of history. Through his writings and their legacy he originated an idea of the cannibal that not only affected the way scholars and laypeople speak about indigeneity, savagery, and civilization but had real tangible effects on people’s lives.

There are very few surviving records of Columbus’s voyages in his own words; the vast majority of what remains are summaries and abstracts of his work written by his contemporaries. Bartolomé de Las Casas abstracted and edited Columbus’s journal of his first voyage and published it as part of his larger work, Historia de las Indias. Las Casas’s book contains some of the actual language from the no longer extant journal, as well as editorial summaries of other portions. Ferdinand Columbus also abstracted and summarized his father’s journal in a biography about him that survives in a Latin translation from 1571.21 The state of the historical records makes it difficult to know where Columbus ended and the editorial hand began. In the passage quoted earlier, from Las Casas’s record of the journal of the first voyage, Columbus did not really doubt the veracity of the existence of dog-headed cannibals or men with one eye. However, in his widely published letter to Santángel, which was written in his own hand and published in Barcelona in April 1493, Columbus displayed a measured skepticism about the wonders of the New World.22 He wrote, “Down to the present, I have not found in those islands any monstrous men, as many expected, but on the contrary all the people are very comely.”23 Considering precedent, one might reasonably expect that men with dog heads would be considered monstrous.

Columbus wrote that he had not obtained any information about the existence of monsters in the Indies except for an island that was inhabited by those who other Indians “regard as very ferocious, who eat human flesh.” The people, he reported, plundered the other islands in their canoes. These cannibals were “no more ill-shaped than the others, but have the custom of wearing their hair long, like women.” Their ferocity was starkly contrasted by the excessive cowardice that Columbus attributed to other Indians. Finally, he indicated that the cannibals consorted with the people of the Island of Matinino, which was populated only by women who “practice[d] no female urges,” a tale that bears a striking resemblance to one told by Marco Polo and legends of Amazons in general.24 In this description of the peoples of the Caribbean islands, he denies the existence of monsters in the West Indies but confirms the presence of cannibals and the Amazon-like women of Matinino, with whom the cannibals mated. According to his letter, Columbus did not doubt that the cannibals were indeed human; they may have behaved monstrously, but they were not actually monsters. While his journal contains the record of what occurred on his journey, including that the Natives told him of the existence of the fabled dog-headed people, his letter to Santángel was more careful and did not relate such tales as reflections of reality.

After departing from Palos de la Frontera in Andalusia on August 3, 1492, the Niña, Pinta, and Santa María headed first to the Canary Islands, finally heading for the unknown west on September 6.25 Columbus and his crew explored the islands that we now call the Greater Antilles, including Hispaniola and Cuba. It was here that he encountered the Arawaks.26 His first written impressions of this group of Indians stressed their docility, generosity, and of course their nudity.27 During this initial contact he also learned that they were being terrorized by a fearsome neighboring tribe. Ferdinand Columbus reported, “Some Indians had scars left by wounds on their bodies; [we] asked by signs what had caused them, they replied, also by signs that the natives of other islands came on raids to capture them and they had received their wounds defending themselves.”28 Columbus’s journal contains a similar account of this fateful meeting.29

Throughout these first travels in the Caribbean, Columbus claims to have heard often about the atrocities of the neighboring Caribs. He recorded on November 23, 1492, that the Indians expressed great fear of the island of Bohío, where well-armed one-eyed cannibals resided.30 He doubted what the Arawaks told him; he wondered if perhaps their people were simply taken captive and, because they did not return, were assumed to have been eaten. He remarked that they expressed the same fear about him and his men when they first encountered them. The Arawaks’ fear inspired him with the hope that based on their superior technology and organization, these Caribs might in fact be the same people of the Great Khan for whom he had been searching. Despite the number of times the Arawaks reportedly told him that the Caribs had one eye or the faces of dogs, he did not believe them, and his excitement to meet the Great Khan only increased. At one point he believed that he encountered some Carib individuals based solely on their hideous appearance. However, he did not record much of importance about this encounter, and based on the navigational records of his journey, it is unlikely that these individuals were actually Caribs.31

In addition to the stories of being terrorized at the hands of cannibalistic seafaring Caribs, the Arawaks also told the Europeans about the legendary women of the island of Matinino. Columbus recorded that only women lived on this island and that they did not practice the traditional employs of their sex, but rather were fierce warriors. These women were said to be the consorts of the Carib warriors, who at a certain time of the year traveled to Matinino to mate with them. Male children were returned to their Carib fathers, and female children were raised by the women.32 Together the cannibals and the women of Matinino fascinated Columbus and filled him with the desire to encounter them on his second voyage. Herodotus indicated that the Amazons lived in a region bordering Scythia and the cannibals and tells a similar story about sex between Scythian men and Amazonian women.33 Although Columbus never explicitly connects the Caribbean with Scythia, he nonetheless transposes the geographical and sexual relationship between cannibals and Amazons onto the New World.

On his first voyage of discovery, Columbus did not find great caches of gold or spices, but his encounters with Indians provided him with clues about their possible location and what he believed to be the location of the Great Khan. The writings from this voyage reveal a profound ambivalence about the presence of cannibalism in the Caribbean. At times the admiral seems quite skeptical about what is revealed to him; at other times, however, he appears eager to hear about the sophistication of the man-eaters and the possible presence of gold in their midst. His diary and the published letter to Santángel further emphasize this ambivalence; he recorded that the cannibals were supposedly one-eyed and dog-headed, yet he doubted the truth of this. He was less skeptical about their cannibalistic ways but still did not unquestioningly accept it.

Neither Columbus, his son Ferdinand, nor Las Casas provides much detail about the gendered or sexual practices of Caribbean Natives. However, Columbus was intrigued by their nudity and remarked upon it a number of times.34 He fixated on the beauty of some of the Indians, but in the published versions of his accounts, he stops short of describing sexuality in any detail.35 He wrote that the men on Hispaniola only possessed one wife each, “except for the king, who could have as many as twenty.”36 The sexual practices of the women of Matinino and their Carib lovers did appear of some interest to the admiral, perhaps because of their relative strangeness.

The connection between sexuality and cannibalism became more firmly established in accounts of the second voyage and subsequently in the writings of Michele da Cuneo and Amerigo Vespucci. Additionally the first reference to cannibalism described dog-headed beings who drank blood and removed the genitals of their victims. In the coming decades Caribs would be widely accused of castrating and consuming their victims. This particular threat to masculinity embodied the most deep-seated fear of European men: not only did the Caribs practice strange sexual behaviors, but they also enacted their rage and vengeance on virile men, first by removing their “manhood,” then by ingesting and incorporating male bodies into their own.

There were a number of published secondhand accounts that deal with the admiral’s first voyage to the Americas. For example, Allegretto Allegretti wrote in 1493, “On one island there are men who eat other men from a nearby island, and they are great enemies to each other and do not have any type of weapons.”37 Allegretti displays none of the ambivalence evidenced in Columbus’s writings. He also incorrectly asserts that none of the islanders had any weapons, which was directly contradicted by the letter to Santángel, which was published in the same month in which Allegretti wrote his account.38 Allegretti also claims that the Indians welcomed the Spaniards by presenting them with “many young virgins,” an event that does not occur in the extant records of Columbus.

In his chronicle of the history of Venice from 1493, Domenico Malipiero repeats that the Indians of the New World were generous, timid, and good-natured. However, he also notes, “The island called Santa Maria has people like the others, except they have very long hair and eat human flesh, and they go about in the vessels referred to above [canoes] abducting men from other islands.”39 In this passage the Caribs and those that eat human flesh are clearly conflated. Interestingly Malipiero seems to suggest that the length of their hair is as important and interesting as their man-eating. He does not doubt that the cannibals are men and not monsters, nor does he express doubt about the veracity of the Arawak descriptions of them.