The publication of an English edition of Hans Staden’s Warhaftige Historia is welcome news for anyone interested in the American continent’s colonial past. Hans Staden’s account of his two voyages to the coast of Brazil is truly extraordinary. Not much is known about the author aside from this text. In it, we learn that as a young man from Hesse, Staden joined the crew of a ship in Lisbon in 1547 and set sail to Pernambuco, on the North coast of Brazil. This first trip, lasting approximately eight months, was without major incident. Back in Europe, he set off again in 1549, this time joining a Spanish vessel heading from Seville to the River Plate. On the Brazilian coast part of the fleet shipwrecked. Staden worked for two years for the Portuguese as a gunman in a fort on the island of Santo Amaro (Guarujá). In the vicinity of the fort, he was captured by the Tupinambá, enemies of the Portuguese, in whose forced company he then spent some nine months. For several of those months he believed he was going to be ritually killed and devoured. Eventually he made a reputation as a powerful sorcerer, and was adopted by the tribe, particularly by the chief Abatí-poçanga who called him his son. Finally he was able to escape and return to Europe, arriving in France in January 1555. His narrative, published in 1557, is divided into two parts: the first tells the sequence of his misfortunes and eventual escape; the second is a brief description of the mores of the savages, as he calls them. The original publication also included a series of fifty-five woodcuts and a map, which are restored to this edition.
What makes Staden’s narration particularly remarkable is the combination of two elements. First, the length and intensity of his stay amongst the Tupinambá: while there he was forced to go about naked, and was treated in a manner similar to prisoners from any enemy native tribe. He ate their food, went hunting with them, drank what they drank, and if they had nothing to eat, he got hungry with them. He accompanied them in war expeditions and in most daily activities performed by men. In other words, he experienced their lives in ways that neither missionaries nor colonists were able to or allowed themselves to. The second element is the narrative’s very strong “I”: there is never any doubt that Staden is telling the story of his misadventures. His voice is ever-present and dramatic, and it is often heard in direct dialogue with the Indians. He debates with them, censures them for devouring each other, and admires their strength, their courage, and hunting and fishing abilities. He is not amongst the Tupinambá to evangelize them, nor is he writing with the purpose of informing the Crown about the economic potentials of a new colony. His stated objective in publishing his adventures is to inspire others to believe that God had saved him from the worst possible fate: being killed and eaten by cannibals. But his close descriptions of the “savages” betrays an admiration for them that much complicates his pious intentions. Along with Cabeza de Vaca’s account of his (mis)adventures in Mexico, Staden’s True History is a rare and telling example of an early captivity narrative from the American tropics.
Staden’s text is superbly introduced by Neil Whitehead and Michael Harbsmeier in over 104 pages of very impressive scholarship. They give, for example, a history of previous editions in several languages. They also discuss the reception of Staden’s text over the centuries, including the suspicions that it may have been faked. Many pages are spent comparing Staden’s account with descriptions of Tupi groups by other authors: Caminha and Vespucci; the Jesuits Nóbrega and Anchieta; the French missionaries Léry and Thevet; and the Portuguese Soares de Sousa, and Gandavo. The introduction also describes the importance of Staden’s text for the Brazilian modernista movement, for Brazilian culture more generally, and for anthropology, particularly the works of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. In line with Whitehead’s interests, there is also a lengthy discussion about cannibalism in both the American tropics and Europe, including the philosophical debates on the subject, from colonial times until today. But by far the most fascinating aspect of the introductory text is the detailed comparison between the woodcuts, originally published in Staden’s first edition, and other visual sources. The first and most obvious of these sources are de Bry’s re-workings of the original illustrations, which, given their better reproductive qualities and availability, tended to replace the original woodcuts in most subsequent editions. Another visual source is Di Cavalcanti’s drawings, also based on the original woodcuts. The sensitive and enlightening analyses in both cases could have gained from the inclusion of illustrations from both de Bry and Di Cavalcanti. There is also a brief study of the two films based on Staden’s account: Nelson Pereira dos Santos’ 1971 classic Como era gostoso o meu francês and Luiz Alberto Pereira’s Hans Staden (1999).
Staden’s text is not only an important colonial source: it is also a wonderful read, with appeal to a wider and younger public, as the many Brazilian editions have shown. Coupled with Whitehead’s and Harbsmeier’s extremely informative introduction, it should become a landmark in the history of English-language publications about/from Latin America. My only low mark goes for the lack of care with Portuguese names, which are frequently misspelled: Sâo instead of São; Vincente instead of Vicente; Roenda instead of Roendo; Madrueira instead of Madureira, and so on.
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[Review length: 922 words • Review posted on March 9, 2010]