[Cheyenne Women in the Robes of a Secret Society; Leonard Baskin (1993) ]...

Not To Live
--John Berryman ........................
......................................................(Jamestown 1957)

It kissed us, soft, to cut our throats, this coast,
like a malice of the lazy King. I hunt,
& hunt! but find here what to kill? --nothing is blunt,
but phantoming uneases I find. Ghost
on ghost precedes of all most scared us, most
we fled. Howls fail upon this secret, far air: grunt,
shaming for food; you must. I love the King
& it was not I who strangled at the toast
but a flux of a free & dying adjutant:
God be with him. He & God be with us all,
for we are not to live, I cannot wring,
like laundry, blue my soul—indecisive thing . .
From undergrowth & over odd birds call
and who would starv'd so survive? God save the King.


Evidence of cannibalism at Jamestown (via ourworldsmysteries):

Scientists said... ....they have found the first solid archaeological evidence that some of the earliest American colonists at Jamestown, Va., survived harsh conditions by turning to cannibalism. 

For years, there have been tales of the starving English settlers resorting to eating dogs, mice, snakes and shoe leather at Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America. There were also written accounts of settlers eating their own dead, but archaeologists had been skeptical of those stories. 

But now, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and archaeologists from Jamestown are announcing the discovery of the bones of a 14-year-old girl that show clear signs that she was cannibalized. Evidence indicates clumsy chops to the body and head, and it appears the girl was already dead at the time. 

‘Now whether she was better roasted, boiled or carbonado’d [barbecued], I know not.’ 

.....--Capt. John Smith, the colony’s most famous leader