PJ Vogt

But I do have a plan for how this is going to go.

Well, not a plan, a menu.

Today, I'm going to serve you three stories of cannibalism.

The amuse-bouche is a historical story, possibly the origin story of our modern fear of cannibals.

For the main course, I have a contemporary story of a person eating a person.

And for dessert, a mystery set in remote Papua New Guinea.

Okay, so the first story I told to Keltha, The Conquest.

Okay, so okay, this story happens alongside the Western entry into the Americas, and I think it is where we got the modern meme of cannibalism, like the ubiquitous cartoon image that Hannah and I talked about, this guy with a bone in his nose cooking an explorer in a steaming cauldron.

That image, like the origin story of that image, I think I have a story of that for you.

Yes.

Okay.

1493, Christopher Columbus lands in Guadalupe, which at the time he would call Santa Maria de Guadalupe.

He's on his second voyage to the New World.

According to this one book I read called Cannibalism, A Perfectly Natural History by Bill Shutt,

Columbus's prime directive, like his mission from Spain, was to find gold in the islands.

I don't know why this belief was propagated, but the Europeans believed that silver was found in cold places and gold was found in hot places.

So according to their logic, it stood to reason this expedition was going to yield lots and lots of gold.

So he arrives with an army of 17 ships, lots of well-armed men, and he reports back to his sponsors in Spain that there's this one group of native people called the Arawaks.

And according to Columbus, these Arawaks, they are great.

He writes that the Arawaks, quote, are fitted to be ruled and to be set to work, to cultivate the land and do all else that may be necessary.