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Cannibalism asserted

By Rusty Carter
The Virginia Gazette

Published January 6, 2007

JAMESTOWN — The settlers who came ashore in 1607 had among them scoundrels,
cheats and murderers. Now comes another revelation about America's
founders: Some were cannibals.

The winter edition of the journal Colonial Williamsburg includes companion
articles about episodes of cannibalism, notably during the "Starving Time."
One was penned by renowned archaeologist Ivor Noel Hume, a second by Mark
Nicholls of St. John's College in England, and the third by journal editor
Dennis Montgomery.

The most celebrated instance of cannibalism involved an unnamed settler who
strangled his pregnant wife in the couple's bed. He cut open her stomach
and threw their unborn child into the river. He then dismembered his wife,
"powdered" (salted) her to preserve her and ate portions of her each day.

When the rest of the colonists discovered his crime, the man was hung by
his thumbs until he confessed. The settlers then set the precedent for
later punishments in Salem, Mass., by burning the man at the stake.

Noel Hume's piece focuses on what then-president George Percy identified as
"this starveinge Tyme" of 1609-10.

Capt. Christopher Newport's "orders from the Virginia Company of London,
the joint-stock enterprise that owned the colony, were to return with
saleable commodities that would begin to repay investors," Noel Hume
writes. "Thus, the settlers spent a disproportionate amount of their time
and energy sawing trees and splitting boards, not for their own home
improvements but for building construction in England."

The colonists blamed the government, specifically Sir Thomas Smith, chief
executive of the Virginia Company back in England. They claimed his
interest was in getting labor to Virginia, which was then forced to fend
for itself while producing expected stock dividends.

Blame was equally parsed to the colony's leadership. The council "spent
more time jockeying for position than organizing the workforce," Noel Hume
writes.

When two supply ships arrived in early 1608, the survivors of the original
colonists were living in tents and holes in the ground. Only 10 were fit to
work. The ships were bringing another 120 settlers, who arrived in worse
shape. Another 60 "unseasoned helpers" arrived in September. The supplies
were exhausted within two months.

Nicholls asserts that cannibalism was practiced in some Native American
tribes, particularly in the North and West. Jesuits recorded instances of
it among the victors in battle.

"The Iroquois, Mohawk and other peoples surrounded their cannibalism with
strict and complex taboos," he asserts. "Never simply gastronomic, it was
usually confined to strengthening or purification rituals, or to the
systematic humiliation of foes."

Nicholls has found no real evidence of cannibalistic customs among Virginia
tribes, but "bad press is hard to shake off.

"When they captured Captain John Smith, they fed him, by his account, very
generously," Nicholls wrote. "In this there were perhaps courtesy and a
demonstration that the tribe was strong enough to eat well.

"Smith, writing years later and aware his readership would welcome a good
yarn, said he saw through the charade," Nicholls continued. "Surely he had
been fattened for slaughter."

Nicholls noted that Percy saw "sporadic cannibalism as a manifestation of a
partial breakdown in civilized society in the face of inescapable
disaster."

"Haveinge fedd upon our horses and other beastes as longe as they lasted,
we weare gladd to make shifte with vermin as doggs, catts, ratts and myce,"
Percy wrote. "And now famin beginneinge to looke gastely and pale in every
face, thatt notheinge was spared to mainteyne life and to doe those thinges
which seame incredible, as to digge upp deade corpes outt of graves and to
eate them."

Nicholls suggests that cannibalism at Jamestown was more than a mere act of
desperation. The culprits are never named, and how a man could kill, salt
and begin to devour his wife unnoticed in a small society seems odd.

"Was there connivance of some kind?" he writes. "Observe how the bodies of
men, including at least one Indian, are buried before being surreptitiously
dug up and consumed, Note, too, how carefully human flesh is prepared:
'boiled and stewed with roots and herbs,' 'powdered,' 'carbonadoed.' This
suggests concerted action, perhaps widely beneficial, and perhaps verging
on ritual. Is it the implication of method and planning a later
elaboration, or does it accurately reflect a starving man's obsession with
food?"

Percy, according to Nicholls, "was aware of the causes and tried to put the
events at Jamestown into context. Whenever cannibalism occurs in the
history of exploration in the New World, he suggests, it comes about in
extreme circumstances, as an unwilling, necessary act."

More — See the 1607 special section included in this edition. The winter
issue of the journal is being mailed to donors and others affiliated with
Colonial Williamsburg.