“ carib cannibalism ,” author richard b H u m a n i t i e s

In the article, “Carib Cannibalism,” author Richard B. Moore discusses a placard he saw at the
Nelson’s Dockyard Museum in Antigua. The poster explained a series of artifacts of the Carib
peoples by indicating that they were cannibals who ate everybody – the French, the Spanish, and
other indigenous groups. Moore thought that this was a stereotypical characterization that did not
reflect reality at all. He also believed that this stereotype was dangerous and harmful. He was so
upset, he wrote to the museum supervisor and requested that the poster be removed.
Imagine that you are Mr. C. J. Blackstone, the museum supervisor (p. 134). Imagine that you
just received Moore’s correspondence, with his request that the offensive poster be removed.
Attached to his letter was a draft version of this article. Imagine that everything you have ever read
up to this point has indicated that the Carib peoples were cannibals, but Moore’s letter (and article)
present very compelling evidence to indicate that this may not be true. As you do not wish to have
your museum associated with offensive portrayals of indigenous peoples, you decide that you must
share this information with the Board of Directors of the Museum, so that you can all consider
whether to keep the offending poster in place.
But, the members of your Board of Directors are very busy people and they do not have time to
read Moore’s very long correspondence with you, consisting primarily of this very detailed article.
So, you write an 800-word summary of the article to share with the members of the board.
THUS, your assignment is pretend you are Mr. C.J. Blackstone and write that 800-word
memo to the Board of Directors summarizing Moore’s article. You must summarize his article
in 800 words or less. The Board of Directors are very busy people!!
As you begin to draft your summary, consider the following: Moore writes very strongly against the
notion the Carib peoples of the Caribbean were cannibals. Why? What is the basis for his argument?
What evidence does he use to prove his point? 800-word summary addressed to the Board of Directors will be assessed based on how well it
completes the two main goals outlined below.
1) Describe the main points of this author’s argument. You do not have to answer all of the following
questions in your 600-word summary, but thinking about them as you read may help you describe the main
points of Moore’s argument.
a. What does Moore say about people’s right to defend themselves when they are
attacked? How is that right interpreted differently among victors and vanquished?
b. According to Moore, who invented the notion the Caribs were cannibals? Why?
c. Why did other people accept those claims?
d. How did various Europeans use such claims to support nationalist ideas?
e. How did subsequent historians accept or refute these claims? Why?
f. How is cannibalism used as a shorthand to support the notion that Europeans were
civilized, while other groups in Asia, Africa, and Latin America were “savages”?
g. Why is it important to stop using language that supports this notion?
2) Describe the evidence that the author uses to “prove” his argument.
a. Give at least three specific examples of that evidence.
b. You should use the words “for example” – followed by a specific quote or example
– at least once in your summary.
And again, your summary must absolutely be no longer than 800 words!
Thus, you must include a “Word Count” in your heading at the top of the paper.
You can determine the “Word Count” of a document (if you write it in Word) in two ways.
1) Look at the bottom left side of the screen when you have your Word doc open. You
should see a bar across the bottom. The first thing on the left side will be the number of
pages (“Page 1 of 1,” for example). Then, to the right of that, you will see the word
count. That will include the entire document, including the heading at the top.
2) If you would like to exclude the heading from the Word Count, which you should do,
then highlight the words you want to count, go to the top menu bar, click “Review” and
then choose “Word Count” on the left side, among the options that appear. That box
will give you the Word Count of just the text you have selected.