Savage Harvest: Cannibals, Colonialism, Rockefeller’s Quest

The author excelled at providing readers with an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of Rockefeller’s life, interest in art, travels in Asmat, and his final moments. However, I felt the author could have done a better job of analyzing Asmat culture and how it ultimately played into the life and death of Michael Rockefeller. If I could re-title this book it would simply be, “Michael Rockefeller’s Tragic Quest for Primitive Art”, as I felt this was the strongest focus while there were several inter spliced stories within this book of which the author touched on but never really spent time and energy analyzing in-depth. Overall, four stars, as the book is entertaining, informative, and reflects the author’s comprehensive research of Rockefeller’s disappearance.

What I did enjoy about this book is that it interwove several themes and cultures into one story. Cannibalism, colonialism, and the Rockefeller family’s quest for greatness all play into Michael Rockefeller’s disappearance. The author also effectively described how drastically Asmat culture had changed in the 50 years since Michael’s disappearance, and also how it had not changed. The ways in which it had not changed were the most fascinating for me. I thought the author also did a great job of describing Asmat culture in a fair and objective way without the “white man’s burden” nor a blind belief in cultural relativism clouding the descriptions. The author deftly described Dutch/European colonial culture, Asmat in the 1960s, Asmat in the 2000s, the Rockefeller dynasty, and how each of these cultures clashed through Michael’s travels and disappearance. I appreciated how the author included extensive personal interviews with people involved in Michael’s travels and with the Asmat. The author made a clear and convincing case, backed up with evidence, pointing to the reason’s and causes behind Michael’s demise.

However, this “tale” was perhaps too broad and touched on quite a lot of themes, but treats each theme and historical event as a single event in a cause and effect sequence. I would have liked the book more if the author stuck with one (or perhaps two ) theme – Asmat culture, cannibalism, colonialism, bringing religion to the Asmat, Globalization comes to Asmat, Indonesia’s control of Asmat etc. and described that theme and how it contributed to Michael’s demise. I think the strongest case for this would be how the author describes the Asmat’s infatuation with balance. Or, on a related note, how the Asmat live in extremes. Why are they this way? The author spent quite a lot of real estate discussing cannibalism, but never brings in his own or academia’s reasoning for the practice. I felt like the author would begin to go into a deeper analysis – but then would stop, change direction, and move onto another theme.

Overall, four stars, an entertaining, informative, and well researched book. It convincingly traces the life, travels, and disappearance of Michael Rockefeller, but it could have been focused better around a deeper analysis or explanation of Asmat culture.

In 1961, Michael Rockefeller, son of Nelson Rockefeller disappeared on his second trip hunting for primitive art in Papua New Guinea. Despite intense searches, officially, the cause of his disappearance and presumed death has remained unknown, a mystery, since. The speculations ranged from his going native, drowning at sea, and being killed and eaten by members of the Asmat cannibal headhunters in the region. Recently, author Carl Hoffman set out to find better answers, and this the story of his experiences.

Hoffman chooses to dispense with anything like an introduction. He offers no calm, rational overview of his report on what happened to Michael Rockefeller. Instead, he opens this masterful account with a body slam followed by knockout blow to the jaw: a detailed account, albeit speculative, of how the murder and following rituals of consuming Michael, body and spirit, might have taken place. When you wake up and shake off this stunning blow (never totally), he takes you on an extensive journey into the hearts and spirits of humans who are radically different from those of us in the “civilized” Western European world. Alien and Other, they truly are.

Hoffman speculates that he and Michael Rockefeller were both lured by the opportunity to know first hand these differences, to know them from the inside. The outcome for Hoffman – the experiences that led to this book – is radically different than for Rockefeller’s. His was a killing done by those whose world included spirits of their dead who create havoc if not avenged. Hoffman’s well-supported speculation is that the Rockefeller scion most likely was a victim of a ritualized murder done to balance the earlier killings of indigenous cannibal headhunters by (white) Dutch soldiers. He would have been the first white man to be killed by these indigenous people; and only after white soldiers in [date] had shot several from the same village as those who killed Rockefeller.

Hoffman’s style and approach includes the ability to observe and narrate detail and present it without dramatic interpretation. It seems to blend the best of investigative journalism with a more scholarly style as exemplified by presenting well-documented interpretations and conclusions.

Further, Hoffman goes deep enough into the culture to be able to lift out the very different spirituality and worldview (one in the same) for these people. While their biology, based on their DNA, is the same as any other Homo sapiens, interiorly they seem so difficult to understand, to “know” in the fullest sense possible, as to be truly and fully alien.

Part of my interest in this book stems from a quest to discover a fuller picture of our species’ basic nature when it comes to violence, particularly against other people. This is an ancient question: Are we inherently and irrevocably violent? A strongly related issue is to understand better the impact of killing a human being on the killer. For some in our culture, this is deeply unsettling. This can be true even when the killing would be considered justified, as in law enforcement, the military, or in situations of personal danger.

Hoffman emphasizes that the Asmat for countless generations had a worldview that required a ritualized approach to killing in order to avenge those of one’s own village killed by those in another village. When I asked if killing for them might be “disturbing” at some deep level, he felt that it would have been instead “emotionally powerful.”

Hoffman explained: “It may have been necessary for them; it may have been triumphant; it may have been morally or ethically just, but it’s always a powerful act. To kill is to take, possess, take power, consume the other. If it had no power, no importance, it wouldn’t happen on purpose, wouldn’t have the sacred importance it did. For the Asmat, I think, head hunting and cannibalism was a product of a certain kind of self, a certain kind of stark dualism, one that defined the self via the other.”

Yet, in Hoffman’s account in the book, shortly after the murder of Rockefeller, several Asmat men approached the area’s resident Dutch priest, and allowed themselves to be questioned as to the details of what happened. Why? Were they disturbed and unsettled by what had been done? Or, as Hoffman suggested in an email, was this actually an effort to get the village of the men who killed Rockefeller in trouble (since this group either came from the other village or were related to someone in the village). It could not have been because of any Christian-informed guilt because at that time, their culturally defined spirituality was their controlling worldview.

I am not any clearer on this question at this point. What does make sense to me, and is reinforced by Hoffman’s account of the Asmat people, is that we Homo sapiens sapiens are malleable to a significant extent. We are hardwired to kill under a variety of circumstances. Yet we also seem to be hardwired to seek more caring and compassionate responses to others. To survive the next few decades, let along centuries, we are going to have to deliberately choose to cultivate the second position and not the first, something for which Hoffman’s extensive work implicitly provides strong support.

It’s an easy read, full of interesting background history of rich and famous New Yorkers, and how they build their empires with siblings exploring the world. Very good book!