Staden, Hans (1525–1579)
Staden, Hans (1525–1579)
Hans Staden was a German gunner in the service of the Portuguese. He traveled to Pernambuco in January 1548, then returned to Portugal the following October, but sailed again in March 1549 on a Spanish vessel that was part of a new expedition to Rio de la Plata. Unfavorable weather broke up the fleet, which was reunited at the Portuguese colony of São Vicente. Here the Portuguese were allied with the Tupiniquin, which meant that the Tupinambá to the north, who were allied with the French, were hostile to their settlement. Staden was persuaded to stay in Portuguese service for another two years, acting as a gunner in a Portuguese fort on the island of São Amaro. It was during this period that he was captured by the Tupinambá. Warhaftige Historia, the famous account of his captivity and the anthro-pophagic rituals of his captors, was published in 1557 and is a key work in the discovery literature about Brazil. Notably, his account contained numerous woodcuts depicting the Tupinambá, which became the basis for a chapter in the widely circulated compendium of early voyages to America by Theodor de Bry.
See alsoBrazil: The Colonial Era, 1500–1808 .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Whitehead, Neil L., and Michael Harbsmeier, eds. Hans Staden's True History: An Account of Cannibal Captivity. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2008.
Neil L. Whitehead