Hans Staden - Hans Stadens True History: An Account of Cannibal Captivity in Brazil

(Captions have been added by the editors; none appear in the original text.)

Hans Stadens Warhaftige allies to the French. In this way the work, although chiefly famed until now as a text on Tupian cannibalism, is no less important for appreciating the nature of European colonialism in Brazil and how that context was significant for the emergence of various ethnic and national antagonisms in Europe. In fact the issue of cannibalism, although obviously prominent in Stadens text and its accompanying visual illustrations, is by no means the only matter of contemporary interest to historians and anthropologistshow and why this should be so is part of the purpose of the introductory essay to explain.

It therefore needs to be emphasized at the outset that Stadens Warhaftige Historia has become a key reference in the resurgent debate on cannibalism and its discourses; a debate that had its very origins at the moment of the texts production, such as in the speculations of Michel de Montaigne, who also conversed with Tupi people brought as living exhibits to France, as well as in the way the idea of Brazilian cannibalism was used to mediate European controversies about the eucharistic cannibalism of Jesus Christ in Christian religions of the period.

So too, Stadens text has a particular significance in contemporary Brazil as both a source for Oswald de Andrades inspiration for a distinct Brazilian modernismtermed the antropofagista movementand for the visual reinterpretation of the woodcuts in the Warhaftige Historia by Candido Portinarithe Brazilian Picasso. A more popular legacy for the Warhaftige Historia is also evident in the production of childrens literature based on Stadens storyManuel Lobatos Aventuras de Hans Staden has gone through eleven editions and been in print since 1927making Hans Staden somewhat analogous to Davy Crockett as an icon of the wild frontier. There are also renderings of Stadens account in contemporary Brazilian cinema, notably by Nelson Pereira dos Santos in 1974 but also as recently as 2000 in a film by Luiz Alberto Pereira.

Despite this cultural genealogy there has not been an English-language version since Malcolm Lettss edition of 1928, and only two versions in modern German since Fouquets edition in 1941.

Undoubtedly part of the continuing importance of Stadens text is precisely the way in which it relates to current debates on knowing or interpreting others distant in both cultural space and historical time, and the issue of cannibalism vividly highlights ideas of such difference. It is therefore crucial to note that it was the issue of observation, not of cannibalism, that was taken up in the introduction to Stadens work by Johannes Dryander, a professor of medicine at the University of Marburg, where the work was first published. As such the Warhaftige Historia is perhaps uniquely important among the class of early colonial documents more generally, not for the representations of savage cannibalism, for which the work is currently notorious, but for the way it broaches questions of observational epistemology, as well as the meanings of captivity and cultural difference. Nonetheless, the appearance of the cannibal sign in an early and highly intense form through Stadens text can hardly be denied, but it is important to remember that this reflects European concerns and anxieties of the time, and the relevance, if any, of Stadens observations to the reconstruction of past cultural practices of the Tupi will be part of the task of the Introduction to explain.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work has had a long gestation and the intellectual support and encouragement of our colleagues has been invaluable. In particular we would like to thank Peter Hulme for suggesting the collaborative project and Stuart Schwartzs consistent enthusiasm for its outcomes. We trust that the text that follows meets those expectations. We would also like to thank Nils Holger Berg for assistance in making this translation.

Gordon Brotherston, Antnio Curet, Jose Rabasa, Lucia Sa, Kevin Terraciano, and Lee Wandel all deserve particular thanks for their interest in this work. Presentations given at Stanford, the Chicago Field Museum, UCLA, and the University of Wisconsin were invaluable for the comments on the editorial strategies we have pursued, and thanks are due both the organizers and audiences.

We would also like to thank Walter Schiffner of the Wolfhagen Museum for organizing a conference in 2007 celebrating the 450th anniversary of the original publication of Stadens account where the comments of encouragement of a variety of Staden scholars from Germany, France, and Brazil were invaluable. This was also the occasion for the celebration of a new translation of Stadens text into modern German and Portuguese by Franz Obermeier, Joachim Tiemann, and Guiomar Carvalho Franco (2006). We refer the interested reader to the detailed comments contained in the notes to this critical philological edition as well as in the Introduction and its exhaustive bibliography.