(1520-ca. 1565) travel writer, biographer
Hans Staden was a Hessian soldier who traveled to Brazil on Portuguese ships. While serving in a coastal Portuguese fort in 1552, he was captured by Tupinamba Indian warriors. After months in captivity, he escaped and subsequently wrote a two-part narrative on his confinement and Tupinamba captors.
Published in 1557, Hans Staden: The True History of His Captivity, became an immediate bestseller. It contains important ethnographic descriptions of many aspects of the now extinct Tupinamba culture, including descriptions of villages, subsistence, crafts, customs, political practices, and cannibalism. The work is an absorbing account of an incredible experience.
The first part of the work contains a narration of Staden’s first two voyages to Brazil up to the time of his capture. The second part focuses on descriptions of Tupinamba culture and practices. Significantly, graphic woodcuts depicting cannibalism and other elements of Tupinamba life are included with the narrative. These represent the earliest published images of Native Americans and served to present to European audiences an authentic, graphic view of Native American life.
Through his narratives and images, Staden brought the world closer to understanding Native American culture by placing cannibalism and other practices within their proper cultural context.
Instead of sensationalizing the pagan practices as demonic, Staden illustrates the practices as part of a complex tribal social system in which retribution is taken against the cruelties of Spanish and Portuguese enemies as acts of war.
English Versions of Works by Hans Staden
The Adventures of Hans Staden. Washington, D.C.: Alhambra, 1998.
The Captivity of Hans Staden of Hesse, in a.d. 1547-1555: Among the Wild Tribes of Eastern Brazil. Translated by A. Tootal and edited by R. F. Burton. New York: Burt Franklin, 1964.
Works about Hans Staden
Goodman, Edward J. The Explorers of South America. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.
Moffit, John F., and Sebastian Santiago. O Brave New People: The European Adventure of the American Indian. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1998.
