Talk:Cannibalism in the Americas

Update reference 7 please

I tried to click on the link for reference 7, but ended up at a broken page with a 508 error. However, the Wayback machine has an archived copy of the page here: http://web.archive.org/web/20240613113606/https://worldhistoryconnected.press.uillinois.edu/7.3/mcginness.html

Can someone please update the reference to include the archived page? I'm not sure the correct formatting. Hypershock (talk) 13:10, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing this and finding the archive URL! I've added it to the page – it's not hard, see this diff on how to do it. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Gawaon (talk) 14:00, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

White on Black Cannibalism during Slavery in the USA

This article lacks any mention of black slaves being cannibalized in the USA. The Delectable Negro would be a good source to draw information on this topic from. Kvaŝaro (talk) 10:20, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I have read that book and I don't think it covers what you suggest, as it's actually only about cannibalism as a metaphor and belief system, not about actual well-sourced examples. If there are some of the latter in the book, feel free to re-add it with specific page numbers and descriptions of them. But as it is, I wouldn't consider the book relevant for this article. Gawaon (talk) 14:26, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

That's interesting, because the summaries I've read explicitly state that it's about both metaphorical and literal cannibalism. But if you claim to have read the book I'm going to have to believe you until I do further research. Kvaŝaro (talk) 01:07, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Well, I suggest you read the book and if you find anything relevant, come back and add it here. I don't think you will, but maybe I missed something. Gawaon (talk) 07:54, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

I went over the book and found that several cases of literal human consumption are mentioned in it.

The Essex Case: "For example, one of the most notorious incidents of literal black consumption from the nineteenth century involved members of the whaling ship Essex, which sailed from Nantucket, Massachusetts, in 1838." (P. 5) This case has to do with survival necessities, since the crew of the Essex resorted to cannibalism only after getting shipwrecked and running out of their rations. Nevertheless, when the author further discusses this case in chapter 2, he writes: "Setting aside his racially prejudiced and pseudo- scientific hypotheses, Philbrick admits: 'Since there would be no black survivors to contradict the testimonies of the whites, the possibility exists that the Nantucketers took a far more active role in insuring their own survival than has been otherwise suggested. Certainly the statistics raise suspicion—of the first four sailors to be eaten all were black. Short of murdering the black crew members, the Nantucketers could have refused to share meat with them.'" (P. 73) The author also mentions that cannibalism in sea aboard North American ships was not uncommon at the time, which I believe is not mentioned in this article either.

The Nat Turner Case: "Take, for example, the circumstances surrounding the consumption of Nat Turner, the black insurrectionist. Black members of the Southampton, Virginia, community left oral records of whites who tried to coerce them into consuming Nat Turner’s boiled-down flesh and entrails. Black persons also implied that nineteenth-century whites might have consumed the revolutionary as a medicinal substance. Whites from the time period dismissed such ideas as “folk belief” arising from the backward and infantile culture of “older darkies.” To add to this, scholars of Turner’s experience have, on the whole, denied, infantilized, or dismissed the observations of black persons." The further description of the case of Nat Turner in chapter 5 mentions white people producing oils from his flesh, preserving his skull and making a purse out of his skin, among other things. The chapter is then concluded with the following quote: "As mightily as black people have struggled to fend off the reality of Nat Turner’s consumption, the fact is that he was most likely literally consumed." (P. 207)

Plantation Culture: "For example, within plantation culture, this culture of consumption took the form of whites literally flaying and smoking African American flesh and overt references in slave narratives to masters literally and metaphorically consuming their slaves. For the slave, this culture of consumption was a fact of daily life, as was amply documented in slave narratives, Works Progress Administration (WPA) interviews of ex-slaves, letters, political treatises, and autobiographies from the antebellum period." (P. 12)

The Claude Neal Case: As well as the Nat Turner case, chapter 5 also discusses the forced autocannibalism of Claude Neal: "In 1934, whites made Claude Neal, whom they lynched in Jackson Country, Florida, eat his cut off penis and testicles." (P.171) It then goes on to say that "The cutting off and forced eating of the penis was a reflection of white male oral fixations upon black male virility and black men as a sexual threat. In a different erotic scenario, the white men might have taken the black penis into their own mouths or anuses, but in the absence of such imaginative privacy, they use the black male body as a type of puppet through which they grope, grapple with, and ultimately subdue their hungers for black male flesh and sex."

Kvaŝaro (talk) 13:42, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

There's also the interesting case of the Portuguese slave ship Arrogante, on which a black slave was murdered, cooked, and fed to the other slaves – that the white sailors also ate of his flesh is possible, but not certain. It's described in List of incidents of cannibalism § 1830s. Since it happened on the high sea, it doesn't fit well into this article, and it also seems to be an isolated case. The authors of the paper about it speculate that there may have been similar incidents, but if so, no evidence for them seems to have surfaced so far. Gawaon (talk) 08:03, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the research, that's interesting! The Essex case is already mentioned in the article Custom of the sea, but it doesn't mention anything about the victims being black. The article already says, however: "In other cases, it is known that somebody was killed for survival cannibalism without a fair lottery taking place. In such cases, the victim was almost always a person of low status, such as an enslaved Black person or a teenage boy." I suggest you improve the representation of the Essex case in that article if you have the time.

The article about Nat Turner says that his "body was dissected and flayed", but not that he might have been eaten. What you mention also seems to suggest that there were rumours but nothing substantiated by a reliable source, so it seems better to leave it aside here. About the "references in slave narratives to masters literally ... consuming their slaves", that would, of course, have to be backed by actual references to such narratives to be in any way meaningful.

The Claude Neal case of forced autocannibalism seems to fit well into the List of autocannibalism incidents. I'll add it there when I have the time (or feel free to do it yourself). Gawaon (talk) 10:47, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

I've now extended that list to include the Claude Neal case. Gawaon (talk) 12:48, 15 December 2024 (UTC)