Cannibal Fictions: American Explorations of Colonialism, Race, Gender, and Sexuality

1. P. T. Barnum’s American Exhibition of Fiji Cannibals (1871–1873)

1 P. T. Barnum’s American Exhibition of Fiji Cannibals (1871–1873) Mr. Barnum, America Letter from New Zealand addressed to P. T. Barnum Talk of songs of a nation! . . . What I say is, “Let me furnish the amusements of a nation and there will be need of very few laws.” P. T. Barnum, New York Sun, 1880 Barnum, you are the Self-Offered American Moral Sacrifice, and National Columbian Scape-Goat of the Century. Vanity Fair, 1860 In one of the many amended chapters to his autobiography, The Struggles and Triumphs of P. T. Barnum, the renowned American showman states that he had recently fulfilled one of his lifelong goals: to procure some real live cannibals: “But perhaps the most rare and curious addition to my great show, and certainly the most difficult to obtain, is a company of four wild FIJI CANNIBALS! I have tried in vain for years to secure specimens of these man-eaters. At last the opportunity came.”1 By his own admission, at this point in his life, Barnum had almost done it all, continuously seeking to bring before the eager American populace the unusual, the unbelievable, the unseen. After looking the world over 29 for exotic specimens, Barnum claimed that cannibals were the one living curiosity he yearned for but had been unable to bring into the collection. Even though the historical record suggests that Barnum had earlier exhibited “Vendovi, a cannibal chief,” at the American Museum in 1841, Barnum omits this fact in the definitive version of his own life in order to highlight the significance of his recent acquisition.2 He adds this installment to his life story in 1873, two years after he and other business associates had initiated the traveling version of his long-running and successful American Museum, officially called P. T. Barnum’s Museum, Menagerie and Circus. This great traveling show would traverse the northeastern section of the United States, drawing record crowds. A. H. Saxon explains that “Although his tents, covering a total of three acres, could hold as many as 10,000 spectators at each performance, it was common throughout the season for thousands to be turned away.”3 Certainly Barnum had struck a chord with American audiences, both creating a need and filling a void. That millions of Americans in the decade following the close of the Civil War were drawn to Barnum’s venues and paid the fifty-cent admission price (and who knows how much more on incidentals such as the nickel pamphlets or other souvenirs and refreshments) is certainly remarkable. It would be an exaggeration to assume that the chief draw would have been the Fiji Cannibals on display, or the so-called Digger Indians, or Zip the Pinhead, from “the deep reaches of Africa,” whom Barnum frequently displayed. Nevertheless, as Barnum’s audiences viewed his continuing display of Ethnographic Others, they must have paused in front of, or read or heard about the Fijians indirectly. Certainly, Barnum’s promotional machine—“Come See the Fiji Cannibals!”—would have escaped the eyes and ears of very few attendees.4 Why would Barnum have been interested in displaying Fiji Cannibals ? Or cannibals in general? Part of the answer rests in an understanding of W. C. Crum’s The History of P.T. Barnum’s Cannibals (1872) (a text over which Barnum had editorial control and may himself have written in part)5 and its incorporation of the rhetoric of W. C. Gardenhire’s Fiji and the Fijians; and Travels among the Cannibals (1871). The rest of the answer rests in missionary texts, books that received widespread attention in ante- and postbellum America. Barnum, ever the smart businessperson , was ready to tap into and further arouse this preexisting intrigue . In comparing the diverse accounts, we can trace the transmission and distortion or reinterpretation of histories and facts through the 30 Colonial Performances • original missionary texts to the more commercial, but still “historical” account aimed at investors, to the blatantly consumer-oriented souvenir pamphlet. In doing so, we will arrive at a better understanding of how and why American audiences were interested in stories about Fijian cannibalism in the postbellum years just prior to the official colonization of Fiji by Britain. We have already noted the means by which Herman Melville appealed to contemporary audiences in Typee, but what did the renewed interest in the South...