1673 Engraving of an Indigenous Brazilian Cannibal Feast
DESCRIPTION
An engraved scene of an Indigenous cannibal feast appears in this excerpted leaf from the Brazil section of the 1673 German edition of Arnoldus Montanus's account of the Americas.
In the center of the scene, a long wooden grill stands on trestles over a blazing fire laden with human heads and limbs while men in tall feather crowns kneel along it to tend the flesh. At right, two long-haired women sit by the flames while at left, a man in a feather crown lifts a vessel to his mouth. Severed remains lie on the ground in the foreground. Behind them, a captive with a cord tied around his waist is held at either end by two men while a third raises his arms above him, and a crowd of spearmen sits and stands beneath the palms. In the distance, two great masses of spearmen clash on a hillside.
The engraving is uncaptioned and neither side of the leaf describes a feast like the one seen here. It may illustrate the killing and eating of war captives that early European writers reported among the coastal peoples of Brazil, though the text does not confirm this reading. The reverse comes closest in the lament it records for a dead householder, mourned as "the strong man" who "brought so many prisoners home to a joyful meal." The text below lists the ailments that plagued newcomers to Brazil, from fluxes brought on by the cold of the night and sore eyes to strokes, dysentery, and worms. It then praises the elderly Brazilians' knowledge of healing herbs. The physician Willem Piso is said to have seen in Count Maurits's camp how they healed their wounded with fresh resin and a salve while the Dutch barber-surgeons cut off the arms and legs of others. The reverse adds that they revived the dying with the juice of the jaborandi root and buried their dead upright in a grave shaped like a great wine cask with meal, meat, fish, and drink set before it to appease the devil Aignan. It then opens the next chapter, on the Wild Coast or Guiana, with Francisco de Orellana's discovery of the Amazon which it dates to 1540.
Arnoldus Montanus (ca. 1625–1683), a Dutch minister and schoolmaster, compiled De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld from earlier chronicles and travel accounts without ever crossing the Atlantic. The Amsterdam publisher Jacob van Meurs issued it in 1671 with a wealth of engravings. John Ogilby's English adaptation followed the same year, and Die Unbekante Neue Welt, the German edition attributed to Olfert Dapper, followed in 1673. Its illustrations were drawn by artists who had mostly never seen the Americas either. They mix reported detail with European invention, and they shaped how a generation of European readers pictured the New World.
CONDITION
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