5. Living with Cannibals: Englishmen and the Wilderness
In 1729 Jonathan Swift anonymously published his now famous work, A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to their Parents or the Country, and for making them Beneficial to the Publick, in response to the growing deprivation and desperation of the Irish. In this satirical essay Swift suggests that the Irish eat poor children as a way to solve both population problems and hunger. Swift was quite aware of the tropes of cannibalism and the tendency to denigrate peoples and cultures through anthropophagous accusations. He insists that he learned about the supposed deliciousness of young children from “a very knowing American” acquaintance, underscoring the connection between the Americas and cannibalism. He proposes not simply to consume poor children but also to regulate procreation and breed humans for food; of the roughly 120,000 poor children, twenty thousand were to be set aside as breeders. Swift argues that only one fourth of the breeders need to be male, “which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine, and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore, one male will be sufficient to serve four females.”1 While Swift is not accusing poor Irish of being cannibals, he does satirically indict them for their sexual improprieties and links them to animals. Thus even as it uses cannibalism to satirize eighteenth-century society, A Modest Proposal deftly demonstrates the pervasiveness of the discursive connections between cannibalism, savagery, sexuality, and animality.
While the preceding chapters interrogated cannibalism in the discourses of exploration, conquest, and conversion, this chapter explores the relationship between cannibalism and settlement in the English overseas empire in North America. The British Empire differed in many ways from earlier French, Spanish, and Portuguese models, as did the discourse of cannibalism that was established in English texts. One important divergence is in the number of references to Indigenous cannibalism, as English sources contain far fewer descriptions of Native American anthropophagy. Interestingly among these limited references are a striking number of accounts of European individuals engaged in anthropophagous acts. There are also several accounts written by women, which are exceedingly rare in other imperial contexts.
In this chapter I uncover how English understandings of cannibalism served to support the development of an emerging frontier masculinity that defined itself through contact with, immersion in, and victory over savagery. While firmly entrenched in early modern notions of difference, in which Europeans believed themselves to be innately superior to Native Americans, the accounts of cannibalism in British writings from Jamestown to the Seven Years War reveal that Englishmen also expressed their superiority in relation to their European competitors in the New World. Cannibalism in many English accounts served as a metaphor through which colonists articulated their authority over the lands and peoples of North America. The nature of English imperialism and cultural beliefs about gender and hierarchies of humanity enabled English men to develop a uniquely American masculinity, which would see its full expression in the frontier heroes of the nineteenth century. In these texts cannibalism served as a counterpoint to masculinity because the reckless savagery that English writers saw in Indian anthropophagites contradicted the measured manliness expressed by Englishmen. Additionally contact with and triumph over cannibalism were both essential in establishing the supremacy of English civilization. Not only did English settlers articulate their encounters with Native peoples in decidedly gendered terms, typically representing Natives in terms of feminine weakness, but these gendered relationships also affected the imposition of imperial power in North America and helped to shape the nature of English expansion in Atlantic North America.
Earlier Spanish accounts of cannibalism stressed the stark dichotomy between the civilized and the savage, which translated most commonly into a racialized (in that these ideas would eventually come to be defined in terms of race) dynamic in which Europeans were “civilized” and Native Americans (and Africans) were “savage” and inferior. While this dynamic was still at play in English texts, the representative dichotomy between Indian savage Otherness and European civilization changed slightly. This change is particularly evident in narratives of captivity among the Indians. Rather than simply underpinning the cultural divide between the European and the Indian, English writers emphasized the superiority of the English over all others. During the Seven Years War accusations of cannibalism were lodged against Indians as well as Frenchmen; this reinforced English cultural superiority and their claim to the North Atlantic coast, both of which helped to define a new kind of Anglo-American masculinity. The French were accused of being nearly as savage and bloodthirsty as their Indian allies, and in some cases pious English settlers believed Catholicism itself to be cannibalistic.2 Thus the settler dynamic created a new paradigm of cannibal discourse that reinforced English supremacy. Because English settlers were faced with a set of circumstances in which they were competing for dominance among not only a variety of bellicose Indian tribes but other European empires as well, cannibalism functioned as a rhetorical strategy for establishing an Anglo-American identity. In the case of Englishmen driven to desperate acts of human consumption, the records of their cannibalism simultaneously assert their dominance over the land by demonstrating the lengths they will go to ensure their success in the New World and reinforce a developing Anglo-American masculine ideal that emphasized strength, sacrifice, and piety.
There are several possible reasons why English records mention acts of cannibalism less often than other records. First, large-scale English efforts of conquest and colonization in North America tended to begin later than Spanish expansion: in the seventeenth rather than the sixteenth century.3 By the seventeenth century millions of Native Americans were dead from foreign microbes, resulting in incalculable disruptions of cultural patterns and traditions. It is also possible that the Native people the English encountered were not anthropophagous.
The years that elapsed since Columbus’s initial encounter with the peoples of the Americas allowed both groups to become more familiar with one another. Europeans learned about the New World, just as Native peoples learned about Europeans, through trade and physical encounters. This greater awareness of one another was not always beneficial for Indians, however. Longer exposure to Native peoples did little to change many of the stereotypes that Europeans believed about them. The time that elapsed allowed for discursive tropes to take hold and further cemented the idea that Indians were savage. In other words, because of the circulation of stories in Europe that were filled with sensationalized depictions of savage, cannibalistic Indians, visitors to the Americas fully anticipated Indian savagery. These assumptions shaped the way encounters unfolded and enabled English settlers to prefigure their expectations of their Indian neighbors. The knowledge Indians gained about European visitors helped them to interact in ways that were more effective. Whereas the Arawaks might have believed that Columbus and his men were gods (although this is certainly debatable), no one welcomed Christopher Newport to Virginia with such adulation. Groups of Natives in the interior of North America were familiar with Europeans and their goods well before they ever met them. This familiarity allowed for the interaction between these groups to be more carefully crafted and enabled European observations of Indian life to be far less exaggerated and fantastical. English settlers did not record that they saw mermaids, Cynocephali, or Cyclopes in North America. The fantastical elements that permeated the earliest accounts of cannibalism in the New World were not substantively present in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English texts. The passage of time also allowed English settlers to familiarize themselves with the New World by reading published accounts, making the idea of cannibalistic Indians in the Americas more deeply entrenched.
Englishmen were not the only Europeans competing for dominance in seventeenth-century North America. The presence of French and Dutch settlers, missionaries, and soldiers also provided Native peoples with the opportunity to engage in diplomacy and negotiation to impact the balance of power. Despite all of this, one of the most important effects of the passage of time was the ravages of disease on Native communities. The massive depopulation and social reorganization brought about by European diseases played a significant role in altering earlier Indigenous power relationships and caused rapid changes to Native societies.4
It is not as easy as it might initially appear to determine whether Native North American groups actually practiced cannibalism. As we have seen, descriptions of cannibalism were always about power, and there is not a simple correlation between textual evidence and practice. Accusations of cannibalism did not necessarily reflect the actual practices of Indigenous peoples. Furthermore it is nearly impossible to determine to what degree cannibalism was employed as a denigrating rhetorical strategy without concern for actual practice. For example, although both French and English sources contain references to the practice of cannibalism among Iroquoian peoples, the English sources do not exhibit the same preoccupation with this practice that Jesuit writings do. Therefore there is more to the dearth of references to cannibalism than merely differences among Indian groups. Additionally English authors did not always provide enough information to determine the tribe to which a particular anthropophagic individual belonged, as their interests in the New World did not always necessitate a keen understanding of tribal differences. The sources about cannibalism that are discussed in the following pages tend to present a homogenized view of Indians, and authors were not careful in distinguishing one group from another. Thus it became easy for English captives, for example, to assume automatically that their captors were cannibals, whether or not they had any evidence for this. Generally English writers present Native peoples as undifferentiated Others who are simply an impediment to expansion and success, which contrasts with the discourses discussed in earlier chapters.5
English colonists took cues from earlier published documents; they learned tactics for survival in the Americas from these texts, but they also inherited certain legacies of stereotypes.6 Because of this English writers often based their assessments of Native groups on empirical observation as well as prior knowledge obtained from different imperial contexts. Most English settlers in the New World were familiar with the accusations of cannibalism lodged against Native Americans by earlier writers. By the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century educated Englishmen had ready access to scores of tales of New World cannibals, and because of this many English writers presumed the existence of cannibals without needing to prove it. For example, in his account of his voyages to New England in 1638 and 1663, John Josselyn writes that he obtained information about Indian cannibalism from Spanish accounts.7 He believed the Spanish stories about the practices of cannibalism in the Americas, but he understood these practices in relation to other English ideas about alterity.8 He believed Indians to be “of disposition very inconstant, crafty, timorous, quick of apprehension, and very ingenious, soon angry, and so malicious that they seldom forget an injury, and barbarously cruel.” He thought that they were prone to violence, melancholy, thievery, and lechery. Additionally he reports, “Both Men and Women [are] guilty of Misoxenie or hatred to strangers, a quality appropriated to the old Brittains, all of them Cannibals, eaters of human flesh. And so were formerly the Heathen-Irish, who used to feed upon the Buttocks of Boyes and Women Paps; it seems it is natural to Savage people so to do.”9 Josselyn’s statements are quite revealing regarding the intellectual legacies of cannibalism that seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Englishmen inherited. Not only did he read about cannibalism in Spanish accounts, but he took them to be true. Furthermore he equated New World cannibals with the Celtic inhabitants of early Britain. The English conquest of Ireland was a precursor to conquest in the Americas, and men like Sir Walter Raleigh gained knowledge about how to proceed with settlement in the New World through trial and error.10 English descriptions of the Irish and their perceived savagery parallel the descriptions of Native Americans. Interestingly Josselyn also hints at a connection between sexuality and cannibalism. In his example of ancient Irish anthropophagy, it was the buttocks of boys and the breasts of women that were consumed. Thus the cannibalization of individuals was itself a sexual act of incorporation. The consumption of the buttocks of boys could also be seen as a subtle reference to sodomy, which, as I discussed in chapter 3, was another common denigrating strategy employed in conjunction with accusations of cannibalism.
Tales of Indian cannibalism had been in circulation for quite some time. Therefore, at least discursively, cannibalism continued to be an important force in shaping imperial attitudes toward Native people, as well as the quotidian interactions of settlers in North America, even if it did not function as a primary catalyst for expansion, conquest, or conversion by this time. English writings took the presence of cannibalism for granted and did not always heed the burden of truth.
English colonists tended to assume that American lands already belonged to them, so it was their duty to occupy North America, in spite of the people who lived there, not because of them.11 By the eighteenth century the practice of cannibalism was not a primary justification for English settlement in the New World. Nor was the desire to convert the heathen Indians to Christianity the most important driving force behind English colonization of North America.12 Rather, especially in the case of the Puritans in New England, colonists assumed that the land was rightfully theirs because they would make proper use of it. Therefore it is important to consider the particular goals of North American English colonization (which were shaped by the lands and peoples they encountered) when determining the place of cannibalism in their accounts. There is little doubt that the English would have loved to find another Tenochtitlan. Early English entrepreneurs like Raleigh were quite interested in establishing an Indigenous labor force and exploiting the natural resources of their lands, much like the Spanish. Unfortunately for them the vast majority of the lands that they were able to acquire did not contain the necessary ingredients to create another New Spain.13 The enormous profits obtained from the slave labor and sugar production of the Caribbean colonies rendered mainland North America a virtual frontier, whose European settlers were more often than not outcasts in their home country. Americans tend to assume that Jamestown was established for farming and plantations, and while this is not wholly untrue, it is clear that the Jamestown patriarchs were ill prepared for farming life and were preoccupied partly by the search for riches.14 John Smith devoted a significant amount of space in his writings to the search for gold. Even as he tried to convince others of the viability of the planter colony, he nonetheless dangled the temptation of vast riches below the surface.15
The English were not uninterested in the presence of Native peoples, but unlike the Spanish, they were never able to place themselves within local power structures and form a more cooperative (but still quite unequal and exploitative) system.16 Once the fabled riches failed to appear in Virginia, the focus quickly shifted to planting. In 1588 Thomas Hariot traveled to Virginia and wrote a popular account of life in the New World that was meant to correct the slanderous reports of others.17 His text emphasizes the potential for agriculture, and he devotes much of the work to describing the different types of plants and natural resources to be found in Virginia. His descriptions of the Indians are generally quite favorable, as his work was meant to entice new settlers and investors. He makes no mention of Indian cannibalism or sacrifice but instead focuses on their potential to be civilized and brought under submission.18 Hariot’s words were published with a series of engravings by Theodore de Bry that were based on the drawings and watercolors of John White and detailed Indian life in Virginia.19 Together Hariot’s text and the images of De Bry present Virginia as a relatively unspoiled landscape ripe for English intervention. Unlike the descriptions of the Caribs or the Mexica written by early explorers to inspire Spanish intervention by describing the horrors of Indian practices and the necessity of civilized intervention, Hariot’s account of Virginia tries to catalyze settlement by describing an idyllic landscape inhabited by tractable people.
In their northern settlements, such as Plymouth, the English were set to establish more self-sufficient and independent colonies that were distinct from their homeland.20 The Plymouth settlers certainly received help from the Natives, but they were less interested in incorporating them into their society, even in a subordinate role, than were the Spanish. It seems New Englanders would have simply preferred the Indians to move out of their way.21 The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony brought with them a philosophy epitomized by John Winthrop’s famous pronouncement that Puritans should create a “city upon a hill,” a shining example of industriousness, piety, and virtue for the entire world to see. Strict rules were imposed, especially regarding women’s sexuality, and fraternization with Indians was discouraged.22 They came to the New World bearing with them an understanding of their own perfection and preeminence in the eyes of God, which could not easily be taught. While métis and mestizo individuals played important roles as mediators, translators, and local leaders in New France and New Spain, this was not as much the case in the English colonies on the mainland of North America, where such hybridization was discouraged.23
English views about physical and biological differences in this period are complex, but typically English writers believed that variations in skin color were due to the biblical curse of Ham or climatic differences.24 Implicit in their understandings of racialized difference was the assumption of the superiority of white skin over darker skin. Josselyn, for example, believed that underneath an external darker skin lay an uncorrupted layer that resembled European skin.25 Given this belief, all humans could become civilized once the corruption and its physical markers were removed. However, skin color was not the primary determinant of acceptance into proper society; civility played a much larger role in English views on Native peoples, for an individual’s actions and behaviors were of equal importance. The only appropriate sexual and marriage partners were those who were comparably civilized.26
In American Pentimento Patricia Seed argues that both the English settlers and the Spanish colonists distinguished themselves from the Indians they encountered by establishing their superiority through a hierarchical understanding of humanity (the Great Chain of Being). Each possessed an understanding of Indians as not fully human.27 This did not necessarily mean that Indians were perceived as fully inhuman; rather behaviors, norms, and practices determined one’s access to the benefits of the highest levels of humanity. Indeed Indians were human, but they were not acceptable humans. For the Spaniards one’s moral worth as a human being was determined by religion. In order to access God’s grace and therefore the proper form of human existence, one had to be Catholic. For Englishmen, however, the defining characteristic of humanity, according to Seed, was labor. Only through farming and hard work could one become a “real” human, so access to the land was of preeminent importance. Just as God placed minerals under the surface for deserving Spaniards, God created arable land upon which Englishmen could toil. Seed argues that these two fundamental ideas shaped the ways Englishmen and Spaniards interacted with the Native peoples of the Americas. In turn both empires developed discursive tropes through which they most commonly represented and understood the Indian Other. She explains that the idea of the cannibal was an ideological construct for the Spanish against which they defined themselves. Through their understanding of Indians as cannibals, they justified their conquest and their desire for the exploitation of Indian labor.
Englishmen, according to Seed, defined themselves in relation to the trope of the Indian as hunter. Hunting in England was a privilege of the rich, and owning a vast hunting preserve was an important rite of passage for English aristocrats. Respectable hunting was not for subsistence but for sport. Those who needed to hunt to survive were denied access by the creation of private preserves and the elimination of public lands. The noblemen who first went to the Americas understood hunting to be something other than work. Despite the fact that under English law Indian hunting grounds would have rightfully belonged to the Indians, Englishmen represented Indian hunting as characteristic of lazy, nomadic individuals who did not understand the importance of proper labor.28
Seed argues that the processes of English and Spanish imperialism in the Americas were profoundly shaped by these two general understandings of the Indian Other. Both of these stereotypes, the cannibal and the hunter, were intensely gendered ideas. Whereas Spanish ideas about New World cannibalism indicated their particular preoccupation with bellicose masculinity and Indian sexuality, the English were more preoccupied with the natural world, and hunting in particular. Indigenous hunting practices, according to Seed, challenged English conventions of both class and gender. Among Indian groups of the North American Atlantic coast, hunting was almost exclusively a male practice, which meant that farming was predominantly the realm of women. Since Englishmen valued farming and one’s relationship to the soil most prominently, it greatly disturbed their sense of order to see women performing these tasks.29 While Seed makes a convincing argument about the importance of the idea of the hunter to the British Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, her assumption might lead one to the conclusion that the cannibal was not important in English expansion in the Americas. But even if the discourse of cannibalism was not an obvious catalyst for English imperialism, it nonetheless played an important role in developing notions of race and gender in North America. An investigation of cannibalism in English discourse about continental North America reveals that such discourse was used to create and reinforce Anglo-American masculinity.
Cannibal Colonists
In sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century English writings about settlement in North America there are comparatively few references to Indigenous cannibalism. In the large collection by John Smith, for example, the members of the Powhatan confederacy are never directly accused of cannibalism. Smith’s writings do reveal that the early years of the Virginia colony were largely a disastrous failure. There were too many gentlemen among the first group of Jamestown settlers who expected someone else to labor for them. They anticipated receiving tribute from the Indians, just as Powhatan appeared to receive tribute from surrounding groups, and they expected to insert themselves into this hierarchical system at the top. Unlike during the Spanish conquest of Mexico, however, the Chesapeake Indians were not so readily disposed to substitute their old master for a new one. The Spanish model of conquest and colonization was unsuited for Virginia.
Smith wrote the most famous record of early Jamestown, but he was actually in Virginia only for part of the time that he described. He filled in the details of events that occurred in his absence with the help of eyewitnesses, but he nonetheless wrote about these events as if he were there. During one of his absences the colonists faced a period of extreme deprivation. Smith describes a dire situation in which they had run out of food and begun trading everything they had to “the Salvages, whose cruell fingers were so oft imbrewed in our blouds, that what by their crueltie, our Governours indiscretion, and the losse of our ships, of five hundred within six moneths after Captaine Smiths departure, there remained not past sixtie men, women and children, most miserable and poore creatures.”30 Smith attributes the colonists’ misfortunes in part to his own absence and the cruelty of the Indians (whose bloodlust apparently required no provocation) but primarily to the ineptitude of the governors of Jamestown. He does not blame their situation on the quality of the soil but on English failures and Indian machinations. Although he does not directly accuse the Indians of being man-eaters, the language he employs (“cruell fingers,” “imbrewed with our blouds”) reinforces their savagery. His descriptions of their cruelty are visceral, making use of a variety of bodily metaphors, but stop short of actually accusing them of anthropophagy.
This time of starvation occurred just two years after the founding of the colony, during the winter of 1609–10. By the time the cold receded, only sixty colonists in Jamestown still lived. The reasons for this period of extreme deprivation are still a matter of debate, but things were so desperate that by the time the resupply ships finally arrived on June 9, the remaining colonists were already sailing down the James River, prepared to abandon their settlement.31 The archaeological evidence indicates that the colonists faced extreme circumstances and that they consumed cats, dogs, horses, and rats. The textual evidence suggests that some of the colonists went so far as to eat one another. A recent forensic investigation uncovered the telltale cut marks of butchering on the bones of a fourteen-year-old girl, leading the research team to conclude that cannibalism among the English settlers at Jamestown is fact, not fiction.32
While all forms of available evidence indicate the presence of cannibalism, the details of what may have happened do not match neatly. In the five accounts of the “starving time” from the first quarter of the seventeenth century, not one mentions the consumption of a fourteen-year-old girl. In fact they disagree with one another on other points as well.33 Smith describes the deplorable situation as follows: “Nay, so great was our famine, that a savage we slew and buried, the poorer sort took him up again and ate him; and so did diverse one another boiled and stewed with roots and herbs: And one among the rest did kill his wife, powdered [salted] her, and had eaten part of her before it was known; for which he was executed, as he well deserved: now whether she was better roasted, boiled or carbonadoed [broiled], I know not; but of such a dish as powdered wife I never heard of.”34 Two different acts of anthropophagy are described here. First, the starving colonists dug up the recently buried corpse of an Indian man and ate him. It is probable that the colonists caused the death of the unfortunate Indian but unlikely that they killed him only with the intent to consume his body or they would not have bothered burying him in the first place. Their act of cannibalism was an innovative act of survival, not a premeditated crime. The man who killed his wife, on the other hand, did so in order to consume her. As soon as she was dead the murderer began preparing her body for consumption by salting it. This, according to Smith, was unforgivable. Despite the seriousness of the situation, the passage ends with a joke, making light of the act of anthropophagy and the death of the nameless wife.
Following Smith, the most familiar account is that of George Percy, who wrote in response to the blame Smith assigned him for his poor management of the colony. Unlike Smith, Percy was actually present during the “starving time.” He begins his account by relating the terrible circumstances that other European conquerors and settlers faced in the Americas. He even reports that some Spanish settlers in far southern South America mutinied against their commander because of the horrific starvation conditions they faced. The mutineers were hanged, but some of the desperate men cut down their corpses in the night and consumed them.35 Percy places the actions of the Virginia colonists within a larger context in an attempt to lessen the weight of judgment. If extreme deprivation was simply part of the colonial experience, something that happened even in the wealthiest, most powerful overseas empires, then their actions might seem less deplorable. Describing the events at Jamestown, he says that the colonists were forced
to do those things which seem incredible as to dig up dead corpses out of graves and to eat them, and some have licked up the blood which has fallen from their weak fellows. And among the rest this was most lamentable, that one of our colony murdered his wife, ripped the child out of her womb and threw it into the river, and after chopped the mother in pieces and salted her for his food. The same not being discovered before he had eaten part thereof, for the which cruel and inhumane fact I ajudged him to be executed, the acknowledgement of the deed being enforced from him by torture.36
Since Percy was the president of the colony during this time, although he was ill and delegated almost all of his duties, he is quick to point out that the perpetrators were punished and insists that the conditions were unavoidable and that the most horrific acts were confined to one individual. One might wonder why the murderous man would have thrown the baby away instead of eating it if he acted out of madness from starvation. But as to their descriptions of cannibalism, Percy’s and Smith’s accounts are fairly consistent with one another.
Thomas Gates’s account was the first to refute the tale of cannibalism. Given that his text influenced Shakespeare in the writing of The Tempest we can reasonably conclude that the tale of cannibalism at Jamestown had spread quickly. Gates argued that the man who reportedly killed and ate his wife was, in fact, simply a murderer who disarticulated his wife’s corpse to hide his crime and that an investigation of his house turned up significant stores of food. He blamed the rumors of cannibalism on the colonists who abandoned Jamestown in the summer of 1610. He believed that they intended to become pirates and invented the story of their deprivation to hide their crimes. Gates swore that he took depositions from a supply ship captain who claimed that when he left the colony just before winter in 1609 they had three months’ worth of food and sufficient cattle, making starvation virtually impossible.37 Two other sources, composed by the Virginia Assembly and William Strachey, were both written later and were intended to defend the actions of the colonists; thus both mention the cannibalism, but merely as evidence of the desperate and unavoidable position the colonists faced.38
Even though there is significant disagreement between the various textual accounts and the forensic evidence, the one thing they all have in common is that each describes the consumption of a woman’s body. English women were scarce in early Jamestown, yet it was a woman that was most likely sacrificed and eaten during the period of starvation. Indeed while the forensic evidence of the consumption of the fourteen-year-old girl likely represents a separate incident from that of the woman killed by her husband, each event involves the death and probable consumption of a woman. As in life, women performed the role of life-giving nurturer and provider. In each of the two acts of cannibalism recorded by Smith, the dominant white male consumed the body of a presumed inferior: an Indian and a woman. Through their deaths and cannibalization, the Indian and the nameless wife supported the power of the Jamestown patriarchs’ ambitions. Their consumption reinforced their inferiority. For English men to consume other English men was nearly unthinkable (but not impossible).
Captives and Cannibals
The vast majority of references to North American cannibalism in English writings occur in eighteenth-century captivity narratives (only a small number were published in the late seventeenth century), most of which detail the experiences of captives in the Northern Atlantic region and the Great Lakes. There was a significant increase in the number of accounts during the French and Indian War. Captivity narratives of this period tend to fall into two camps: those written by Puritans and those composed by soldiers. They differ in a number of ways, especially regarding to whom the authors give credit for their redemption. Puritan writers emphasized divine providence and reserved their harshest judgments for the character of Indians. The later narratives of soldiers were more likely to recognize personal cunning and individual effort as keys to their redemption rather than assigning all glory to God. These soldiers also pondered the relationship between the settler and the wilderness, positioning themselves as a part of the landscape rather than struggling against its maddening and corrupting influences like earlier captives.39 Often soldiers published their accounts with profit in mind, not extolling the glories of God.40
Captivity narratives provide a fertile field of investigation not only because of their pervasiveness but also because they contain consistent themes and experiences. For example, a great number of captivity narratives open with a scene of colonial domestic tranquility that is suddenly disrupted by an unprompted Indian attack, destroying buildings and breaking up families. In almost every captivity narrative the author endures long periods of starvation and grueling marches through unfamiliar wilderness. Finally most narratives contain a tale of redemption and the restoration of domesticity.
Published in Philadelphia in 1699, Jonathan Dickinson’s narrative of his captivity among several different groups of Indians in Florida is a lurid tale of shipwreck, kidnapping, and redemption and one of the earlier captivity accounts. While it is atypical in some ways, it contains themes that appear in other writings of this genre, including cannibalism. Dickinson interlaces elements of the captivity narrative with a tale of rescue infused with Quaker religious sentiment. In 1696 Dickinson left his wealthy plantation in Jamaica to move to Philadelphia with his family. The ship on which they were traveling wrecked on Jupiter Island, on the eastern shore of Florida, and soon they were discovered by the Jaega Indians of the nearby town of Jobe. On board the ship was a motley group of sailors, slaves, and other passengers, including the Dickinsons’ kinsman Benjamin Allen and the prominent Quaker elder Robert Barrow. The majority of the drama unfolds on their journey north toward redemption at the hands of the Spanish at St. Augustine. Rather than captors, the Indians seem to play the role of hostile escort.
Right from the start Dickinson makes his views on Native Americans quite clear. His preface is full of references to their “fury,” “savagery,” and “cruelty.” He also emphasizes their status as cannibals: “Yet are these Man-eaters as cowardly as cruel.” Referring to Barrow, he notes, “He was more than a Conqueror over those bloodthirsty Canibals.” Barrow’s virtue and piety are important features of the narrative, as he provides the voice of godly reason and confidence. Dickinson records Barrow’s words of wisdom and advice: “That he desired of the Lord, that he might not dye by the hands of those Barbarians; For (said he) They thirsted, or longed as much after our flesh, as ever I did after Victualls.” In the preface Dickinson establishes not only his ignorance of Native practices and beliefs but, more important, his stubborn refusal to understand more. Before being shipwrecked in Florida, Dickinson already knew that it was populated by ferocious man-eating Indians; he confirms this by observing, “Their Countenance was very Furious and Bloody.”41 He needed no other evidence than a visual affirmation of their barbarity.
Dickinson’s account was given the sensationalized title Gods protecting providence, man’s surest help and defence in the times Of the greatest difficulty and most Imminent danger; Evidenced in the Remarkable Deliverance Of divers Persons, From the devouring Waves of the Sea, amongst which they Suffered Shipwrack And also From the more cruelly devouring jawes of the inhumane Canibals of Florida. Faithfully related by one of the persons concerned therein; Jonathan Dickenson. Despite its provocative title, which was likely the creation of the publisher, not the author, no act of cannibalism actually occurs in the narrative. On their journey to St. Augustine, Dickinson and his group were quartered in a town where the Spaniards informed them that not twelve months earlier a group of Dutch were cast upon those shores “and were here devoured by these Cannaballs.” Despite this one vague reference to an occurrence of cannibalism, Dickinson weaves accusations of it throughout his narrative. Even when not directly mentioning anthropophagy, he litters his account with metaphors of consumption. Although he often excludes himself from feeling fear when he describes the acts of the Indians (though he does not hesitate to say that others were afraid), he mentions that they quite often worried that the Indians would eat them. Dickinson is consistently mistrustful of these “cannibal” Indians. At one point his captors go fishing, and despite the fact that this might have meant a full meal for the captives, he remarks, “But the sense of our Conditions stayed our hungry stomicks: for some amongst us thought they would feed us to feed themselves.”42
Figure 5.1 “Native Americans threaten Europeans.” Engraving. In Naaukeurige versameling der geden-waardigste zee en land-reysen na Oost en West Indië . . . (Leiden, 1707). This image shows Native Americans threatening a group of castaways, including Jonathan Dickinson, after their ship wrecked off the coast southeast Florida. (Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.)
Dickinson’s assumption that the Indians are cannibals leads him to assume that they cannot be trusted. However, even the constant fear of being eaten by his captors, who do very little physical harm to them, especially when compared to the experiences of captives farther north, does not prevent him from mistrusting their tales of the cannibalistic practices of other groups. The Englishmen want to travel north to the Spanish, but the local cacique strongly warns against this.43 The cacique informs them that although Spanish-controlled towns are not far, “when we came there, we should have our Throats and scalps cutt, and be shott, Burnt, and Eaten.”44 Dickinson does not trust the motives of the Indians and believes they are simply trying to steer him from his course, in a reversal of the “neighboring device” discussed in chapter 2. In this case, Dickinson believes that the Jaegas are calling out the anthropophagic practices of other groups in order to keep their captives from leaving. His lack of faith in the accusations of cannibalism in the Spanish-controlled region is curious; why does he unquestioningly, and without evidence, believe that the Indians of Jobe practice cannibalism, yet he does not trust the advice of the cacique? Perhaps Dickinson believes that anthropophagy is not likely to be practiced in regions where the European presence is strong. Despite his relatively low opinion of Spaniards (which changed slightly after the hospitality he was shown at their hands), his narrative suggests that he believes that a strong European presence of any kind might curb Indian anthropophagic desires.
Dickinson’s wife, Mary, and their baby are among the captives and face their own difficult circumstances. Mary was still nursing their young child when they were taken captive, but the hardships and starvation to which they are exposed prevent her from being able to provide adequately for their child. At one point an Indian woman serves as wet-nurse, much to Mary’s dismay. Both breast-feeding and cannibalism were conceived of as acts of incorporation, hearkening back to the images in chapter 2. Suckling babies were believed to do more than simply receive nutrients from their mothers; they also absorbed culture. Women’s bodies were associated with food, as through their breasts they provided the most basic elements necessary for human survival.45 In medieval European writings breast-feeding was believed to be a two-way relationship in which both mother and child received nourishment from the act. This nourishing relationship was both feared and admired. Witches were believed to have a supernumerary nipple through which they provided sustenance, usually blood, to their familiars.46 Thus the presence of breast-feeding in captivity narratives represents another way the discourse of cannibalism permeates a variety of relationships, including between colonist and Indian, and men and women. It speaks to the pervasive fear of consumption by savagery, whether through literal consumption or the metaphoric cannibalistic link between mother and child.
For Mary Dickinson to allow a “savage, cannibalistic” Indian woman to breast-feed her child was to allow for the potential of contamination. The “savagery” of the Indian woman might literally pass into the child through the breast milk. However, as the Dickinsons continued to endure enormous hardships and periods of starvation on their journey, Mary was forced to beg Indian women to feed her child. She was intermittently able to breast-feed throughout their journey, and at one point she suckles an Indian child, risking contamination herself. Both Mary and Jonathan Dickinson express great fear that their child will become a “savage” Indian.47 Dickinson fears incorporation by the Indians, both bodily and culturally. His presumption of the presence of cannibalism among the Florida Indians leads him to question their motives and remain constantly fearful of being consumed or corrupted by their “man-eating fury.”
Dickinson’s account of his captivity in Florida highlights a number of important aspects of English colonial discourse on cannibalism. First and foremost, Dickinson already presumed to know the nature of the Indians he encountered and did not need empirical evidence to back up his claims.48 English settlers in North America were already attentive to the Indians’ presumed propensity for man-eating, and thus a great number of captives, including Dickinson, expressed a fear of cannibalism without any proof of its presence. Dickinson’s publisher was also well aware of the power of using the term cannibal in the title in order to turn a profit. It is likely that Dickinson did not originally write his account for public view but that a group of Quakers in Philadelphia urged publication. His journal became quite popular, going through fifteen reprints by 1869, including Dutch and German editions.49 Perhaps even mentioning cannibalism in the title, with no actual occurrences within, was an attractive prospect to a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century publisher.50 Narratives of horrific cruelties, of which cannibalism was perceived as the ultimate sign of savagery and cruelty, were incredibly popular in early English America. In fact Dickinson’s work, along with those of Mary Rowlandson, John Williams, and Mary Jemison, were among the best-selling early English publications about North America.51
Providence plays an important role in Dickinson’s narrative. After they crashed on the beach, they came face-to-face with people whom they assumed to be ferocious, cannibalistic savages. Dickinson comments on the ferocity of their captors and that they seem poised to attack the shipwrecked Europeans: “But on a sudden it pleased the Lord to Work Wonderfully for our preservation, and instantly all these savage men were struck dumb, and like men amazed the space of a Quarter of an Hour, in which time their countenances Fell, and they looked like another people.” He believes that through the providence of God, the once “bloody minded Creatures” are rendered benign. During this transformation the plans of the Indians change as well as their outward appearance. Dickinson believes that savagery is often visible through dress, comportment, and facial expression. He remarks a number of times on his journey about the “Wild Furious Countenance[s]” of the Indians that he encountered. For Dickinson the outward manifestation of internal savagery can be changed by the grace of God.52 Throughout his narrative he remains ambivalent as to whether or not God has actually intervened and brought the Indians closer to Christianity and thus civilization, but he nonetheless puts a great deal of stock in the power of God to protect and redeem true believers.
This theme of redemption through divine providence is quite common in captivity accounts. Unlike the Jesuit priests who sought redemption through service, sacrifice, and sometimes martyrdom, Puritan men and women believed that their redemption could come spontaneously through God’s grace. God was believed to intervene actively in the lives of Puritans in New England, and in their narratives of Indian captivity writers often remark upon the ways God helped them to survive and overcome the horrors of captivity. The belief that through God’s divine grace English people could triumph over the wilderness and its inhabitants helped to bolster their sense of superiority. Whereas the Jesuits desired martyrdom, the Puritans desired redemption and deliverance from captivity, which was seen as evidence of God’s favor. The ability to persevere in what English colonists believed was a hostile environment peopled by savages was proof of divine providence.
A central theme of captivity narratives is the redemption of a chaste individual from the temptations of Indian “savagery.” According to Richard Slotkin, “In the Indian’s devilish clutches, the captive had to meet and reject the temptation of Indian marriage and/or the Indian’s ‘cannibal’ Eucharist. To partake of the Indian’s love or of his equivalent of bread and wine was to debase, to un-English the very soul.”53 The experience of captivity was akin to Satan’s testing of Jesus in the desert: one had to make it through a series of hardships that were meant to test the soul and break the spirit in order to prove one’s spiritual worth. If one survived intact and did not succumb to the allure of savagery, then one’s soul was cleansed and God’s favor was assured. In many captivity narratives cannibalism represents one of these key trials that English men and women had to face.
The prominent Puritan minister Cotton Mather wrote about redemption from captivity through God’s providence. In a collection of tales of redemption entitled Good Fetch’d out of Evil, he discusses several different narratives. About one of these he writes, “A crue of Indians had been Three Days without any manner of sustenance. They took an English Child, and hung it before the Fire to rost it for their Supper; but that those Cannibals might Satiate their—I want a name for it,—as well as their hunger, they would Roast it Alive. The Child began to Swell. A Cannoe arrived at that Instant with a Dog in it. The Lesser Devills of the Crue, proposed their taking the Dog instead of the Child; They did so; And the Child is yet Living! Her name is, Hannah Parsons.”54 It is clear that Mather believes God to be directly responsible for the salvation of little Hannah Parsons. Rather than allowing the death of an innocent English girl, God sent a dog to act in her stead, just as God sent a ram to Abraham to sacrifice in Isaac’s stead. Mather’s allusions to the famous biblical tale of redemption would likely not have been lost on his readers and would have reminded each of them that through sacrifice they could be redeemed by God’s mercy. The lands and Indigenous peoples of the Americas were perceived as a test of the devotion of the faithful. By overcoming the temptations and dangers of America, Puritan settlers could triumph and receive God’s blessing.
Mather acknowledged that there existed grades of savagery, as he refers to the Natives who set Parsons free as “lesser devils.” However, lesser devils were still savage, especially considering that dogs were thought to be an unacceptable food source for civilized peoples. Mather admitted to being without words to express properly the vicious, cannibalistic appetites of the Indians; he believed that it was more than mere hunger that motivated their actions. By roasting the child alive, they were also satiating a cruel blood lust. The presumption of the innocence of children heightened the horror the reader was meant to experience and the outrage at the actions of the Indians.
God’s intervention temporarily stayed the hands of Hannah Parsons’s executioners and assured that she would survive, but interestingly Mather does not indicate that this intervention had any lasting impact on the presumed savage nature of the Indians. This pattern was repeated in several other narratives. For Elizabeth Hanson, who was taken captive near Dover Township in 1724 and redeemed six months later by her husband after spending five months with Indians and one month with the French, faith in divine providence helped her to survive a strenuous captivity and the threat of cannibalism. Hanson was captured with her child, and together they had to endure a long march through the wilderness, as did most captives. Her nameless child was quite sick at first but was soon on the mend. The child’s recovery brought Hanson little comfort as her Indian master taunted her with threats, indicating that the child’s recuperation portended its cannibalization. Her master even made her find a stick on which the child would be roasted. Hanson was forced to undress the child so that her master could examine it: “He began to feel its arms, legs, and thighs; and having passed this examination upon it, he informed me, that as it was not yet fat enough, I must dress it again, till it was in better case. But notwithstanding he thus acted, I could persuade myself he was in earnest, but that he did it with a view to afflict and aggravate me: neither could I think but that our lives would be preserved from his barbarous hands, by the over-ruling power of Him, in whose Providence I put my trust both night and day.”55 Hanson believed that only through faith could she endure the trials of captivity. Her acknowledgment that her master was taunting her and even that he may not have been sincere in his threats did little to bring her comfort. In her narrative, just as in Mather’s account of the redemption of Hannah Parsons and in Dickinson’s report, captives seem to live under constant threat of cannibalization. By representing cannibalism in such a way, Mather, Hanson, and Dickinson emphasize the power of God over their destinies but not over the souls of Indians.
Cannibalism served as a key metaphor for the threat of incorporation into savagery. The fact that in the accounts of Mather and Hanson the threats were directed at children reinforced the vulnerability of the young and the importance of constant vigilance against the possibility of descent into savagery and wildness. Whether Hanson’s master actually intended to consume her child or merely threatened to do so as psychological torture is less important than the fact that by facing savage cannibals and surviving, Hanson served as a symbol of the redemptive power of English civilization and Christianity.
Captives who were not Puritans also wrote about the importance of divine providence. Briton Hammon escaped slavery only to face Indian captors who threatened him with death and consumption, “but the Providence of God order’d it otherways.”56 Henry Grace described being redeemed twice from the jaws of cannibals. The first time, he feared that his captors would consume him for want of food, but just as in the tale of Hannah Parsons, the Indians chose to kill and consume dogs instead; the second time, another tribe, the Cherokee, prevented him from being consumed.57 The common thread in all of these tales of redemption from cannibalism, or the threat of cannibalism, is that redemption was possible only through the intervention of God and that through God’s providence, English men and women could prove their superiority over the lands and peoples of North America. In these narratives cannibalism served the specific purpose of representing the fear of the descent into savagery through incorporation into the Other. The ability to overcome it reinforced English identity and ultimately enabled later English writers to assert their masculine power over the wilderness and its inhabitants.
Even in captivity narratives that did not directly describe incidents of man-eating, the influence of the discourse of cannibalism is still evident. In the popular account of his captivity, John Williams did not record any anthropophagic incidents, nor did he write much about the torture of captives. Even though he said that many were killed along their forced march to Canada (mostly women who were unable to keep up), he did not come upon the prolific scenes of torture and cruelty that many other captivity writers recorded. He was not brought to an Indian village and forced to run the gauntlet, nor did he participate in a formal adoption ceremony. Unlike most captives, he did not experience long periods of starvation. The only torture he details occurred at the hands of French Catholics who tried to force stubborn English captives to convert, and the vast majority of Williams’s account is taken up by his defense of Protestantism to these Jesuits. However, despite the lack of ethnographic detail, his account is nonetheless quite telling. He writes that in 1704 in Deerfield, Massachusetts, where he was captured, they were attacked by both “Indians and Macquas.”58 Macqua is an English transliteration of an Algonquian word for man-eater. Although this term originally referred to the Mohawk, Williams applies it unevenly and uses it to refer to members of either the Huron or Mohawk tribes.59 It is not particularly remarkable that Williams refers to the Mohawk as the Macquas, but it is remarkable that he divided Native Americans into two categories, Indian and Macquas, which is reminiscent of earlier divisions between good and bad, cannibals and noncannibals. He underscored a lasting assumption about cannibalism in the Americas: that there were two distinct types of people, one of whom considered man-eating a normal practice, the other who abhorred it. The reputation of the Mohawk as man-eaters most likely came about as an epithet lodged by their enemies. Calling another group cannibalistic persisted as an insult implying barbarity, viciousness, and brutishness.
In 1634 the Englishman and proto-ethnologist William Wood wrote a tidy summary of the view that many colonists held about the Mohawk in early New England:
These [Mohawks] are a cruel bloody people which were wont to come down upon their poor neighbors with more than brutish savageness, spoiling their corn, burning their houses, slaying men, ravishing women; yea very cannibals they were, sometimes eating on a man, one part after another, before his face and while yet living, in so much that the very name of a Mohawk would strike the heart of a poor Aberginian [a member of one of the tribes living north of the colony] dead, were there not hopes at hand of relief from the English to succor them. . . . That which they most hunt after is the flesh of man; their custom is if they get a stranger near their habitations not to butcher him immediately, but keeping him in as good plight as they can, feeding him with the best victuals they have. As a near-neighboring Indian assured me . . . a rough-hewn satyr cutteth a gobbit of flesh from his brawny arm, eating it in his view.60
It should not be surprising that Wood did not actually witness the act of cannibalism but recorded secondhand information as truth. Nor should Wood’s assertion that a member of a neighboring tribe told him of the horrific cannibalistic practices of the Mohawk come as a surprise. Indians often lodged accusations of cannibalism (and all of its implied savagery) at rival groups in order to cement a friendship with the Europeans. This dynamic took on a unique character for English settlers, as the accused cannibals were their (unwelcome) neighbors. In order to maintain an English presence in the New World it was necessary to disavow a connection to the Indians, even as the English relied on them as allies and trading partners. This complex relationship rested on a mutual lack of understanding of cultural practices. In order for the English to maintain their sense of superiority and their rightful claim to the land, it was necessary to denigrate their enemies, a common practice throughout North America.61 The trope of cannibalism continued to function in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a justification for certain actions against a perceived enemy, even if it often went unspoken.
Starvation was another common theme in early captivity narratives, as almost all captives were forced to endure long periods of extreme deprivation. While they lamented their circumstances, few captives were willing to connect their suffering with the often equivalent circumstances endured by their Indian masters. For example the captive Isaac Hollister remarked that several of the Seneca Indians with whom he was traveling died of starvation on their journey.62 Captivity writers established a hierarchy of suffering in which the trials they endured were always worse than those suffered by the Indians. Puritan writers tended to see suffering as a necessary condition of human life. More important, however, their suffering could be relieved by divine Providence, which was not afforded to the savage Indians. For Puritan writers like Mary Rowlandson, the suffering that she endured during her captivity was part of God’s divine plan, and from these sufferings she could renew her faith and revel in the power of redemption. She asserted that long periods of starvation and marching through the frigid wilderness was natural to those who led a savage existence.63 No captivity writer acknowledged the fact that the arrival of Europeans was at least partially responsible for their difficult circumstances.64
Dire circumstances occasionally drove English captives to cannibalism, and several eighteenth-century narratives include passages about these desperate acts. Thirteen-year-old Isaac Hollister was taken captive on the banks of the Susquehanna River on October 15, 1763. After several months of captivity, he and a fellow captive decided to make their escape. His companion, a Dutchman, convinced him that they should leave as soon as possible, even though it was still winter. The two wandered around the woods and eventually ran out of food. At one point they survived on tree bark alone for ten days. When the unfortunate Dutchman could go no farther, Hollister sat with him and offered comfort, but there was little to be had. Shortly before his death, the Dutchman told him “that if he died first, he would not have me afraid to eat of his flesh, for I am determin’d, says he, to eat of yours, if you should die before me.” Rather than balking at this suggestion, Hollister took the words to heart: “And now I was left all alone, stript of every comfort of life, and knew not which way to turn myself. I thought the absolute necessity I was in, would excuse my pursuing the advice he gave me of eating his flesh as soon as dead: I went immediately about performing the disagreeable operation and cut off 5 or 6 pounds of his legs and thighs:—I left the rest, and made the best way I could down the Creek.” After cutting apart his companion, Hollister resumed his wanderings and eventually arrived at an Indian town, where he was promptly returned to his master. He then spent a year living with the Seneca.65 In his attempt to escape the “savagery” of his captors, Hollister turned to cannibalism, subverting the long-standing connection between cannibalism and savagery. His attempt to return to civilization led to his temporary descent into savagery. Hollister’s survival rested on the consumption of his Dutch companion, just as English successes in the New World insisted on the sacrifice of both Indian and European competitors. By resorting to the savagery of cannibalism (at the urging of the Dutchman) Hollister symbolically enacted the triumph of English imperial claims in North America. His tale was a reminder that English people would do whatever was necessary to maintain their God-given right to the New World. Rather than representing weakness, his desperate acts proved his resourcefulness and reinforced the preeminence of masculine English power. The nature of English imperial power in eighteenth-century North America insisted upon the domination of the wilderness; while individuals like Hollister might have been faced with the possibility of succumbing to wildness, their ingenuity and masculine prowess allowed them to triumph over savagery.
Another captive, Thomas Brown, whose scouting patrol was captured by Indians near Montreal during the Seven Years War in 1759, was also driven to cannibalism. After his capture and imprisonment in Montreal, Brown and an English companion escaped and marched toward Crown Point for twenty-two days, on fifteen of which they were without food. Finally, when Brown’s companion died, desperation led him to cut the flesh from his friend’s bones and wrap it in a handkerchief. After burying his unfortunate companion, Brown continued on his journey. The next day he found three frogs to eat; while the frogs did not restore him fully, he was able to put off eating his friend. Brown described his trepidation at eating human flesh: “Being weak and tired, about 9 o’clock I sat down; but could not eat my Friend’s Flesh. I expected to die myself; and while I was commending my Soul to God, I saw a partridge light just by me, which I tho’t was sent by Providence; I was so weak, that I could not hold out my Gun; but by resting, I bro’t my Piece to bear so that I kill’d the Partridge. While I was eating of it, there came two Pigeons, so near that I kill’d them both.”66 Brown claimed he did not actually consume human flesh but was merely tempted to do so. Instead he was divinely redeemed. It seems unlikely that after weeks of starvation and being driven to carve up his companion, he would suddenly find food readily available or that he would have delayed in eating his friend, but this discursive turn of events reinforced God’s ability to triumph over savagery.
That Hollister and Brown were willing to include these unpleasant scenes in their published narratives speaks to an important shift in the discursive representation of cannibalism. They offered a justification of cannibalism that emphasized the importance of strength and self-reliance to survival rather than presenting accounts of horrific exploitation at the hands of tempting women. Portending the great masculine frontier heroes of the nineteenth century, Hollister and Brown represent themselves as survivalists who were driven to commit atrocious acts by their encounter with savagery, but did so only in hopes of redemption through the return to civilization. English settlers had begun to foster an understanding of themselves as part of the wilderness and to accept that the wilderness could drive an individual to commit acts that defied the very fabric of civilization. Yet the acts of cannibalism in these narratives demonstrate the inevitable triumph of the resourcefulness and endurance of civilization.
In January 1752 a group of English soldiers participated in an act of cannibalism. This incident is distinct from the anthropophagous acts of Hollister and Brown, who resorted to cannibalism only alone in the wilderness, far away from the discipline of military life. After a mutiny at Oswego, New York, a group of soldiers abandoned their posts and headed for New France. When their provisions ran out, they turned on one another and consumed four or five individuals.67 These soldiers symbolically abandoned their Englishness as they headed toward French territory and engaged in cannibalism. Unlike Hollister and Brown, their cannibalism did not represent the ingenuity of an individual on a quest for survival. Rather the soldiers were cowards who shirked their duties and tried to escape to the enemy. In doing so they succumbed to savagery.
The Seven Years War was a time of crisis and rearticulation for Anglo-American masculinity. The years leading up to the war reflected a change from Indian to French threats against English power and dominance in the northeastern United States. The already gendered arena of war also involved virulent anti-Catholicism; the English believed both French and Indian societies were led by inadequate patriarchs who brought their people to poverty, degradation, and damnation rather than civilization, growth, and prosperity. The way English writers represented the French in the years bracketing the Seven Years War was quite similar to their descriptions of Native peoples.68 The descriptions of cannibalism also reflected this shift, and more French people were accused of participating in this savage act.
In some cases English writers did not directly accuse the French of anthropophagous acts but instead upbraided them for sanctioning Indian cruelties. John Maylem’s “Gallic Perfidy: A Poem” from 1758 contains a detailed description of “Savage Furies” and “fell Canadian Rage” expressed though acts of cannibalism and cruelty. The title of the poem itself is an indictment of French disloyalty and treachery. By allowing such cruelties to be performed against English citizens, the French were just as guilty as their Indian allies. Maylem also mentions that English responses to Gallic perfidy involved “the Mother’s Shrieks, and the Father’s manlier grief.”69 This poem not only asserts English superiority but also emphasizes the importance of gendered responses to threats to imperial power. Outpourings of manly grief helped to solidify community identity and foster hatred and distrust of outsiders.70
In some cases it was not just the French who were indicted for these actions but all adherents of the Catholic Faith.71 Cotton Mather wrote, “On this side they [the English settlers] saw their Wives and Children, their Fathers, Mothers, etc. butchered daily by a Handful of Barbarous Indians; on t’other side, little or no resistance made by their armies which [were] Commanded by those of the Romish Religion; insomuch that it seem’d rather an intended Massacre, than a desire of putting an End to a Diabolick and Bloody War.”72 Some captives, like John Gyles, were very fearful of corruption by Catholics. When a Jesuit priest gave him a biscuit, he buried it rather than eating it because he feared that it contained a potion that would trick him into believing in Catholicism. As he was only a young child at the time, he took reports of Jesuit torture of Protestants very seriously. He was not alone in his hatred of Jesuits, for his mother remarked upon hearing that he was to be sold to them, “Oh, my dear child, if it were God’s will, I had rather follow you to your grave, or never see you more in this world, that you should be sold to a Jesuit, for a Jesuit will ruin you, body and soul!”73 Her pathological hatred of the Jesuits may be difficult for modern readers to comprehend, but the contest for imperial dominance in the Americas involved exclusionary understandings of the right to rule. Englishmen, and therefore the British Empire, solidified their power by strongly asserting communal standards and demonstrating the superiority of their moral character, for moral superiority translated into power.
John Norton, who was captured during King George’s War in 1746, recorded an incident in which French and Indian soldiers consumed human flesh: “After some Time the Indians seemed to be in a Ruffle; and presently rushed up in the Watchbox, brought down the dead Corpse, carried it out of the Fort, scalped it, and cut off the Head and Arms. A young Frenchman took one of the arms and flayed it, roasted the Flesh and offered some of it to Daniel Smeed, one of the prisoners, to eat, but he refused it. The Frenchman dressed the Skin of the Arm (as I afterwards heard) and made a Tobacco pouch of it.”74 Norton underscores what he believes to be the important differences between the English and their enemies, whether French or Indian: the Frenchman’s willingness to participate in the cannibal ritual of the Indians symbolically and tangibly connects him with savagery, while the refusal of the English prisoner to consume flesh sets him above his captors. Norton further emphasizes that this was not a desperate act of starvation by the young Frenchman, as he carried a tobacco pouch made out of his prey. English captives like Norton feared falling victim to the cannibal kettle of their Indian enemies, but they also were frightened of descending into savagery by identifying too closely with the Indians. It was necessary for Norton to see himself as completely separate from the French and Indians who took him captive in order to maintain his own sense of English superiority and to assure that his masculinity was not corrupted. In Norton’s narrative God’s providence delivers the English from the savages, heathens, and Catholics.
Examinations of gender must include the ways in which gender categories relate to power by legitimating various forms of oppression and domination and also the ways gender helps to shape relationships between individuals and groups. As Anne Lombard argues, for English colonists “the source of manhood . . . was not inside the individuals but without, in the attribution of virtues that signified a community’s agreement that a man had fulfilled its expectations for the male role.”75 Manliness was not innate; it was earned through demonstration of culturally determined morality. How English colonists, especially Puritans, understood manhood reinforced the importance of community. While this earlier model is quite different from the rugged individual frontier version of masculinity of the nineteenth century, these early depictions of masculinity paved the way for the frontier hero to emerge. In this way savage landscapes and savage people were not impediments to success but rather were necessary for the development of masculine virtues. The act of cannibalism posed a threat to masculine imperial power in North America, and in order to deal with its threat to both the community and the individual, English writers negotiated their sense of self-identity in relation to competing groups. Thus anyone who posed a threat to English dominion in North America risked being called a cannibal. In doing so English men were able to rearticulate and reassert their masculine dominance of the American landscape and its people.