When author and travel writer Carl Hoffman was brainstorming ideas for his next book project, he knew he wanted to explore a story that resonated deeply with readers. What could be more intriguing than – similar to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart – the story of the 1961 disappearance of Michael Rockefeller, the 23-year-old son of prominent political figure Nelson Rockefeller?

Rockefeller’s official cause of death was drowning. The truth, however, is harder to digest. The Asmat people, whose art and culture were loved and respected by Rockefeller, are the same people who likely killed and consumed him, according to Hoffman.

i think i can do it

The last known words spoken by Rockefeller were heard by anthropologist Rene Wassing as Michael jumped from their catamaran, which had overturned in the Betsj River 16 kilometers from the shore of West Papua. He had decided to try swimming to shore for help in crocodile-infested waters. His last words to Wassing were “I think I can do it.”

For 50 years it was suspected that he did not survive, but drowned or was eaten by crocodiles during the long swim to shore. But without a body and without evidence, rumors – that he became indigenous, was eaten by sharks or, worse, cannibals – circulated for decades. Drowning was the most logical answer to the tragic question: What happened to Michael Rockefeller? But as Hoffman discovered and wrote in his book “Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller’s Tragic Quest”, it turns out that Michael’s death was neither simple nor accidental.

People were finally ready to talk

When Hoffman began investigating Rockefeller’s disappearance, he realized that after the initial search party failed to find Rockefeller in 1961, no one really looked him over. There was never a closure for the family or the millions who wondered what might have happened to the wealthy son of one of America’s most powerful families.

“When you type Michael Rockefeller into Google, you get a billion results or something. But if you start looking at all those results, they’re all a regurgitation of the same basic data, which was a lot of guesswork,” explains Hoffman. “I realized that no one had ever done a systematic, substantive examination of what had happened.”

In 2012, Hoffman began looking into the history of Rockefeller. He hired a Dutch investigator who searched the archives for two years, revealing invaluable information. Hoffman interviewed Asmat villagers and former Dutch officers to corroborate the details of Rockefeller’s death. He suspected that since 51 years had passed, people might be willing to tell him the truth, and he suspected that it wasn’t the sharks that caught Michael.

“When I was a journalist, I learned that with these things, sometimes there is a perfect time when people would be ready to talk about it. Maybe even the Rockefellers,” he says. After some research and digging through the archives to find the right people to talk to, Hoffman was right. They were ready to talk. But, for starters, it’s important to know why Rockefeller was in New Guinea in the first place.

Why was Michael in Indonesia?

Michael and his father Nelson had a strong bond around art, and in particular tribal art, according to Michael’s twin sister, Mary, who eventually published a book, “When Sorrow Calls for Healing: A Memoir of Losing a Twin”, about coming to terms with the grief of losing Michael. It is this pursuit of the beautiful works of art of the Asmat people, especially their bis or “bisj” poles, that brought him to the villages of the Asmat tribes. (Asmat art collected by Rockefeller is still on display at the Metropoltan Museum of Art in Manhattan.)

His father had just opened the Museum of Primitive Art a few years before, and Nelson had put Michael on the board. Michael wanted to make a statement with the family museum and curate a collection of primitive art from the source – the Asmat warriors – directly.

When Michael finally encountered the Asmat people, including in the villages of Otsjanep and Omadasep, he realized, as Hoffman did on his own travels, that the Asmat were an extremely intelligent people with an emotionally alive culture. “They were not savages, however, but biologically modern men with all the intellectual power and manual dexterity to fly a 747 with a language so complex it had 17 beats,” Hoffman writes in his book.

How Michael Rockefeller would have died

the How? ‘Or’ What The reason Rockefeller died, according to Hoffman, is simple. He washed ashore, exhausted and weak from swimming for miles after the boat he and Wassing were in flipped. On the shore he saw familiar faces – those of the Otsjanep warriors. Instead of the rescue Rockefeller hoped for, he was stabbed in the ribs by one of the men, mortally killed in the precise actions of ritual headhunting, and consumed by the warriors.

According to Hoffman, the Otsjaneps had never killed a white man before, and they knew that Rockefeller was a kind, respectful young man who paid well for his art. So why did they supposedly kill him?

There are two parts to this question. First, why did they kill Rockefeller? Second, why did they eat it?

Ritual cannibalism, also known as cannibalism (human-specific cannibalism), has been practiced by various indigenous cultures for thousands of years, especially those in ecosystems where food and resources are scarce. For the Asmat, cannibalism was not their only goal. Rather, it was only part of the sacred headhunting ritual that gave meaning to their culture.

To understand Why the Asmat killed him in the first place is knowing that Michael’s death is the result of hundreds of years of colonialism and an indigenous people‘s struggle for power to retain the deepest seeds of their culture . “What happened with Michael,” says Hoffman, “…was a time when the Otsjanep, in particular, were trying to regain and maintain their power in a world where they were stripped of it; the power of their own cultural vision, power over their own destiny.”

The forces that led to Rockefeller’s death

In the years before Rockefeller set foot in an Asmat village, the Dutch colonialists occupied West Papua. The ritual headhunting and warfare of the villages was savage and of the highest level of cruelty to those outside.

Hoffman’s book explains the historical background in detail, but, in brief, Dutch civil servant Max Lapré took a troop of officers to the villages of Otsjanep and Omadesep on February 6, 1958, and burned houses, places of spiritual significance and canoes, and took the weapons from the villagers in an attempt to curb the violence and prevent the Asmat tribes from killing each other.

Lapré arrived at the edge of a village in Otsjanep and told them to lay down their arms. “A man came out of a house”, writes Hoffman, “carrying something in his hand and he ran towards Lapré … shots rang out from all directions.” In the end, five of the village’s most prominent men were killed. Their spirits would haunt the villagers until their deaths were avenged.

A matter of revenge

Enter Michael Rockefeller in 1961. Villagers remembered every detail of that day of violence in 1958. When a white man swam exhausted to shore in nothing but his boxers, some of the men felt that it was their opportunity to avenge the spirits of their brothers. . “I think those men who killed Michael felt that loss of power. For them, at that time, Michael had always been with other people and white people were powerful. Literally, they had guns and big boats …they represented power and wealth. The Asmat couldn’t even imagine so they didn’t attack them,” Hoffman explains. “But when Michael swam at that time, he had no power. He was alone. Exhausted. – to take back their own power, self-esteem and identity.”

News of Rockefeller’s death by Ostjanep’s warriors traveled until a local priest, Cornelius van Kessel, caught wind. After inquiring about the death, a message was sent to the Dutch authorities. However, because Dutch authorities feared the impact the news would have on the reputation of Dutch New Guinea, the message never got out of Indonesia. That is, until Hoffman’s Dutch investigator pulled him from the archives five decades later and spoke with a former Dutch patrol officer, Wim van de Waal, who had helped recover Rockefeller’s remains. . “I’ve never talked about it publicly,” van de Waal told Hoffman for his book, “I guess nobody’s going to be hurt by it now.”

Despite Hoffman’s attempts to discuss his findings with the Rockefeller family, they chose not to comment and left Michael alone, wherever he was.

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