Cannibal Encounters: Europeans and Island Caribs, 1492–1763

FIVE: Age of Iron to Age of Sentimentality: Island Caribs in the European Literary Imagination, 1660s–1760s

CHAPTER FIVE Age of Iron to Age of Sentimentality: Island Caribs in the European Literary Imagination, 16605-17605 DESPITE THEGRADUAL disappearance of Island Caribs in the century spanning the i66os to the 17605, their impact on European literature increased. Thanks to their countrymen's frequent contact with Island Caribs, French writers had available both detailed and mildly sympathetic firsthand accounts of these "cannibals." Rochefort's history, the various works of Du Tertre, and his fellow Dominican Labat's Nouveau voyage at the turn of the eighteenth century made Island Caribs among the best-known Amerindians . French readers had a choice between negative accounts based on dated Spanish sources and the more balanced descriptions of the missionaries and voyagers. While the situation was quite different in England before 1660, when one read about the Carib only as the most degraded form of humanity, the translation of Rochefort by John Davies in 1666 provided English audiences with a more complex and predominantly favorable picture of these maligned peoples. Although Englishmen in the islands maintained primarily hostile relations with these aborigines during the century after 1660, Rochefort's book and to alesser extent those of Du Tertre and Labat had some positive impact on evolving English images of Carib "cannibals." In the century after 1660, for the first time since the beginning of English and French interactions with Island Caribs, positive correlations between European policies and images may be warranted. Chapter One revealed a wide gap between brutally negative metropolitan images and normally cordial relations between these aborigines and marginally literate European sailors and merchants, who seemed unaware of the "cannibals'" reputation for depravity. Then, during the "Heroic Age" of colonization (1623-60), the more favorable impressions of French missionaries had little immediate impact on island officials and colonists who were expelling Island Caribs from their major strongholds. English islanders, who possessed no sources of favorable opinion of these "savages," were not significantly more hostile than their French counterparts. From the i66os on, Louis XIV and Colbert promoted a policy of douceur that blended well with the missionaries' rehabilitation of these natives. This policy remained 108 The European Literary Imagination 109 in force for much of the next hundred years, unlike in England where a similar strategy of Charles II had less success in restraining settler aggressions . While there can be no proof, it seems plausible to hypothesize that French metropolitan images of Island Caribs after 1660 retained a sympathetic component in part because of this conjunction of policy and literary image. Did colonial administrators at Paris and in the islands read the Du Tertres and the Rocheforts? Although some evidence suggests the affirmative , what lessons then did they learn?Colbert's policy of douceur after 1670 resulted from an unsentimental calculation of its benefits, not from any religious or humanitarian sentiment. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to argue that generally hostile English relations with Island Caribs in the period 1660-1763 contributed to the prevalence (despite Rochefort) of negative images of these "cannibals." Or, to put it another way, efforts to overcome encrusted stereotypes found little support in colonial realities. Images of another culture, once forged in the cauldron of interethnic relations, retain a tensile strength and resiliency that only major alterations of that relationship can affect. JOHN DAVIES ATTEMPTED to fill a large gap in English knowledge about the islands with his pirating of Rochefort's work. Only Ligon's book on Barbados was available. According to Davies, ignorance about the islands and its aboriginal inhabitants was the rule. And yet the economic importance of the Lesser Antilles was evident and their strategic value became apparent in the very year in which Davies and Rochefort appeared (1666). Davies probably chose the Protestant Rochefort instead of a Catholic missionary like Du Tertre for the obvious reason, and because the former's writing was more literary and entertaining. Like Du Tertre, however, Rochefort strongly condemned English conduct toward Island Caribs and referred frequently to these aborigines' seemingly implacable anglophobia .1 On the other hand, Rochefort's humanizing depictions of these sauvages contradicted the old images. Caribs are chaste not epicurean, he wrote; they are content with what nature provides, rather than indolent. If they are cannibals, they engage in ritualistic acts only against Amerindian enemies. They aresimple and naive, not dull and stupid. And most importantly , they pose little danger to European colonies. Rochefort acknowledges Carib vices, but he blames them on the bad example of Europeans and demonstrates that their vices were not...