These are the last known photos of Michael Rockefeller, the 23-year-old son of former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, pictured with a New Guinean tribe known for cannibalism. Michael disappeared without a trace during his 1961 New Guinean expedition and his body was never found.
On November 17, 1961, Rockefeller and Dutch anthropologist René Wassing were in a 40-foot (12 m) dugout canoe about 3 nautical miles (6 km; 3 mi) from shore when their double pontoon boat was swamped and overturned. Their two local guides swam for help, but it was slow in coming. After drifting for some time, early on November 19, Rockefeller said to Wassing: “I think I can make it.” He then swam for shore. The boat was an estimated 12 nmi (22 km; 14 mi) from the shore when Rockefeller made the attempt to swim to safety, supporting the theory that he died from exposure, exhaustion or drowning.
Wassing was rescued the next day, but Rockefeller was never seen again despite an intensive and lengthy search effort. At the time, his disappearance was major international news. His body was never found, and he was declared legally dead in 1964.
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Rockefeller, in a canoe with a native during his anthropological exploration in Dutch New Guinea. |
It was originally reported that Rockefeller either drowned or was attacked by an animal, such as a shark or saltwater crocodile. However, because headhunting and cannibalism were still present in some areas of Asmat in 1961, and still are, there has also been speculation that Rockefeller may have been killed and eaten by tribespeople from the Asmat village of Otsjanep.
In 1969, journalist Milt Machlin traveled to the island to investigate Rockefeller’s disappearance. He dismissed reports of Rockefeller living as a captive or as a Kurtz-like figure in the jungle, but concluded that circumstantial evidence supported the idea that he had been killed. Several leaders of the village, where Rockefeller likely would have arrived had he made it to shore, had been killed by a Dutch patrol in 1958, thus providing some rationale for revenge by the tribe against someone from the “white tribe.” Neither cannibalism nor headhunting in Asmat were indiscriminate, but rather were part of an eye-for-an-eye revenge cycle, so it is possible that Rockefeller found himself the victim of such a cycle.
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Michael Rockefeller during his 1961 expedition to New Guinea. |
Author Paul Toohey, in his book Rocky Goes West, claims that Rockefeller’s mother hired a private investigator in 1979 to go to New Guinea and try to solve his disappearance. The reliability of this story has been questioned, but Toohey claims that the private investigator swapped a boat engine for the skulls of the three men that a tribe claimed were the only white men they had ever killed. The investigator returned to New York and handed these skulls to the family, convinced that one of them was the skull of Rockefeller. If this event did actually occur, the family has never commented on it. However, the History Channel program Vanishings reported that Rockefeller’s mother did pay a $250,000 reward to the private investigator, which was offered for final proof of whether Rockefeller was alive or dead.
In the documentary film Keep the River on Your Right, Tobias Schneebaum states that he spoke with some Asmat villagers at Otsjanep, who described finding Rockefeller on the riverside and eating him.
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Michael Rockefeller in New Guinea, 1961. |
In 2014, Carl Hoffman published the book Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller’s Tragic Quest for Primitive Art, in which he discusses researching Rockefeller’s disappearance and presumed death. During multiple visits to the villages in the area, Hoffman heard several stories about men from Otsjanep killing Rockefeller after he had swum to shore. The stories, which were similar to testimonials collected in the 1960s, center around a handful of men arguing and eventually deciding to kill Rockefeller in revenge for the 1958 incident. Soon afterward, the villages were swept by a cholera epidemic, leading the villagers to believe that it was retribution for Rockefeller’s death. As Hoffman left one of the villages for the final time, he witnessed a man acting out a scene wherein someone was killed, and he stopped to videotape it. When translated, the man was quoted as saying:
“Don’t you tell this story to any other man or any other village, because this story is only for us. Don’t speak. Don’t speak and tell the story. I hope you remember it and you must keep this for us. I hope. I hope. This is for you and you only. Don’t talk to anyone, forever; to other people or another village. If people question you, don’t answer. Don’t talk to them, because this story is only for you. If you tell it to them, you’ll die. I am afraid you will die. You’ll be dead; your people will be dead, if you tell this story. You keep this story in your house; to yourself, I hope, forever. Forever.”
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