“Certainly the deepest horror, as far as I'm concerned, is what happens to your body at your own hands and others.” —Wes Craven
It's
Halloween and I'm thinking of bones, of my own guts, of the
third-trimester alien growing inside of me, and of my husband who
wants to eat the placenta, an act that to me seems taboo, dangerously
close to cannibalism. Maybe I'm just cautious, an overly sensitive
vegan, but I'm not sure I can trust a man with a taste for human
flesh, even if the placenta will soon be, technically, a “spare
part”. This near-breach of barriers has called into question our
unity, not only as a species but as a married couple. Our social
contract is on the line, and it gives me little comfort to know that
ours is not the first relationship to be rattled by cannibalism. One
could even claim, historically speaking, that cannibalism and
marriage are part of the American Experience, traceable back to the
first English colony at Jamestown.
Recent
archeological findings at Jamestown have verified claims of
cannibalism during the Starving Time, a period of brutal famine from
1609-1610, when an estimated seventy-percent of Jamestown's
population perished. Excavated skulls show marks from cutlery.
Bones show butcher cuts.
These
findings shouldn't be a shock considering the many testimonies of
colonists, including famously morbid sections of Captain John Smith's
account, as well as the lesser-known, but image-rich writings of
Governor George Percy who, unlike Smith, was actually present, living
and famishing in the colony during the Starving Time. Because
their topics overlap, it is especially fascinating to examine the
differences between the writing of Captain John Smith and Governor
George Percy. In the excerpts
below, we can see how Smith, in his General
History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles
(published in 1624),
approaches
the Starving Time as novelty, not as a personal tragedy. Where
Percy's writings on the time are loaded with details of misery,
Smith's account takes on a tone that is part recipe and part joke. He
writes of the colonists killing a native:
"[After
the colonists buried the native] they took
him up again and eat him, and so did divers one another boiled and
stewed with roots and herbs: And one amongst the rest did kill his
wife, powdered 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 [barbequed], I know not, but of such
a dish as powdered wife I never heard of."
Smith's
accounts are third-person, and he broaches the topic of cannibalism
with a more socially acceptable incident (for the time), the English
eating the “other”. When he delves into a more taboo tale where a
man kills and eats his own wife, Smith attempts to offset the horror
with humor, possibly because the incident seems to baffle him to
amusement, and possibly because he is aware that this type of
cannibalism is somehow a more grave departure from the social code of
acceptability, even in times of great hardship.
Unfortunately,
with the exception of a few funny spellings, George Percy's
documentation of the Starving Time is completely humorless. Few
laughs can be found in his personal account, A Trewe Relacyon,
the confessional memoir about his New World experience which,
although written in 1623, wasn't published in its entirety until
1922.
Early
in Relacyon, Percy prepares the reader for horror, appealing
to the reader's most visceral sensibilities:
"Now
all of us att James Towne beginneinge to feele the sharpe pricke of
hunger w[hi]ch noe man trewly descrybe butt he w[hi]ch hathe
Tasted the bitternesse thereof. A worlde of miseries ensewed as
the Sequell will expresse unto yow, in so mutche thatt some to
satisfye their hunger have Robbed the store for the w[hi]ch I
Caused them to be executed."
Although
Percy is the highest ranking official in Jamestown, he makes certain
to include himself in the tale of suffering, as though setting up a
buffer which he will later need. Here, Percy's writing demonstrates
his particular attention to the collective, beginning the tale with
“all of us att James Towne.” He uses pronouns to his advantage,
the collective “we” and the
singular “I.” He distinguishes himself as as governor and judge,
yet relies on the collective “we” to cushion his
involvement in the acts of cannibalism which are to follow. He goes
on to describe the general menu decline of the colony:
"Then
haveinge fedd upour horses and other beastes as longe as they Lasted,
we weare gladd to make shifte w[i]th vermin as doggs Catts Ratts
and myce all was fishe thatt Came to Nett to satisfye Crewell
hunger, as to eate Bootes shoes or any other leather some Colde come
by and those beinge Spente and devoured some weare inforced to
searche the woodes and to feede upon Serpentts and snakes [...]"
The
list goes from bad to worse. Percy continues to communicate the sense
that all is not well. The colonists have picked a poor location—they
never planned on growing their own food, assuming instead that they
would trade trinkets with the natives in exchange for nourishment.
But Powhatan, the powerful chief of the region's tribal confederacy,
is more interested in annihilation than in trade. As as result, many
of the colonists, while foraging for food, are killed by the natives
whose tribes surrounded the colony on three sides. Because it is
dangerous to leave the protected walls of the fort, the colonists
turn inward in their search for nourishment. Percy relates the
worsening conditions which finally lead to cannibalism:
"And
now famin beginneinge to Looke gastely and pale in every face, thatt
notheinge was Spared to mainteyne Lyfe and to doe those things
w[hi]ch seame incredible, as to digge upp deade corpes outt of
graves and to eate them."
Eating
dead people seems particularly gross, but even so, consuming the
already-dead seems more kind than killing people for food, which is
the next step in Jamestown's downward progression of hunger. In
arguably the most grisly section of Relacyon, infanticide
combines with matrimonial cannibalism*. In a manner far more
startling than Smith's, Percy sets the scene:
"And
amongste the reste this was moste lamentable. Thatt one of our
Colline murdered his wyfe Ripped the Childe outt of her woambe
and threwe itt into the River and after Chopped the Mother in
pieces and sallted her for his foode, The same not beinge discovered
before he had eaten p[ar]te thereof. For the w[hi]ch Crewell and
unhumane factt I adjudged him to be executed the acknowledgm[en]t
of the dede beinge inforced from him by torture haveinge hunge by
the Thumbes w[i]th weightes att his feete a quarter of an howere
before he wolde Confesse the same."
Unlike
Smith's, in Percy's version, there are no jokes about barbeque. This
is one of rare moments in straight-forward Relacyon where
Percy uses emotional language; it's one of three instances of the
word lamentable.
With
all of the New World gore Percy carries out, the slaughter of
natives, the execution of his own colonists, why, a decade and a half
later, when Percy writes A Trewe Relacyon, does he still seem
so rattled by the cannibalism at Jamestown? After all, from his
accounts, there was only one murder—the rest of the cannibalized
residents are all dead before they were exhumed for dinner.
Does
the Starving Time, to Percy, represent a departure from morality?
It's doubtful. Percy and the colonists are not missionaries or
otherwise motivated by morality or religion; they are gold-seekers,
and they operate under a set of rules that are more fitting for the
military, where desertion or mutiny threaten the survival of the
group. A more plausible explanation for Percy's lingering horror
might have more to do with social class than morality. Half the
colonists are gentlemen, not used to hardship or working. They
certainly aren't used to eating rats, horses, cats, or humans. The
debasement of groveling for food alongside commoners is an unwelcome
lowering of class, a crossing of lines that should not be crossed.
The loss of distinct social class hints at a blurring of identity,
but the problem seems more complex than that, or at least more
visceral. It seems the real terror comes from the inability to
distinguish one body from another, a human carcass from an animal's,
a baby from offal, a pregnant wife from salt pork.
Perhaps
it is the recognition of himself as a cannibal that startles Percy so
deeply. Maybe this is why he uses the collective voice when he talks
of cannibalism. He always says “we”, never implicating himself
alone in these actions, though other depravities which are arguably
just as horrific are admitted to without hesitation. He orders the
execution of men, but this is commonplace for others of his social
and political standing. There is acceptable precedent for his actions
as a governor, but not as a hungry, cannibalizing human. It seems
that being a cannibal is not something Percy is comfortable with.
When
identity is debased to the bare bones of ego, when it degrades into
the most basic difference between I and not-I, the
not-I becomes more personally defined, and even corporeally
defined by the boundaries of one's own skin—not skin color, but
actual skin, the largest and most protective organ of the human body,
which is also the first barrier of the recognizable self. Our skin
keeps us from looking like meat, keeps our faces from appearing as
something other than wet skeletons. Skin made Narcissus gaze into the
water. Skin makes human faces look human.** So when Percy looks in
the mirror, he doesn't want to admit, “I am a cannibal.” Instead,
he would rather surround himself with his fellows—his writing
illustrates this desire. The distinction between I and we is
important; it is the difference between collective dread and isolated horror.
Dread
becomes horror when the liminal lines break, when the act of
approaching abjection (eating rats and horses, dogs and cats, and
placenta) crosses over into complete immersion in taboo
(cannibalizing one's own species, friends, loved ones), and perhaps
it is here, on the other side of defilement where we are the most
uncomfortable, where we must call into question our own identities,
both as individuals and as members of a social contract.
*This
seemed relevant to the placenta debate, so last week, over dinner, I
read this section aloud to my husband.
**Placenta
has neither face nor skin, which is an argument for classifying the
placenta as a viable piece of meat.
All
George Percy quotes taken from A Trewe Relacyon, by George
Percy (Mark Nicholls’s transcription)
Rachel
G. White is a Creative Nonfiction MFA student at the University of
Iowa.
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