Michael Rockefeller
Encyclopedia
Michael Clark Rockefeller (born 1938 - presumed dead
November 17, 1961), was the youngest son of New York
Governor
(later Vice President
) Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller and Mary Todhunter Rockefeller
and a fourth generation
member of the Rockefeller family
. He disappeared
during an expedition in the Asmat
region of southwestern Netherlands New Guinea
.
cum laude in 1960, served for six months as a private
in the U.S. Army
, then went on an expedition for Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
which studied the Dani
tribe of western Netherlands New Guinea. The expedition produced Dead Birds
, an ethnographic documentary film produced by Robert Gardner, and for which Rockefeller was the sound recordist. Rockefeller and a friend briefly left the expedition to study the Asmat
tribe of southern Netherlands New Guinea. After returning home with the Peabody
expedition, Rockefeller returned to New Guinea to study the Asmat and collect Asmat art.
Michael Rockefeller spent his time in Netherlands New Guinea actively engaged with the culture and the art while capturing ethnographic data. In one of his letters home, he wrote:
"I am having a thoroughly exhausting but most exciting time here…The Asmat is like a huge puzzle with the variations in ceremony and art style forming the pieces. My trips are enabling me to comprehend (if only in a superficial, rudimentary manner) the nature of this puzzle…"
anthropologist René Wassing were in a 40-foot dugout canoe about three miles 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, Rockefeller said to Wassing "I think I can make it" and swam for shore. It is estimated that the boat was twelve miles from the shore when he made the attempt to swim to safety, supporting the theory that he died from exposure, exhaustion, and/or drowning. Wassing was rescued the next day, while Rockefeller was never seen again, despite an intensive and lengthy search effort. At the time, Rockefeller's disappearance was a major world news item. His body was never found. He was declared legally dead
in 1964.
or crocodile
. Because headhunting
and cannibalism
were still present in some areas of Asmat in 1961, some have speculated that Rockefeller was killed and eaten by local people.
In 1969, the journalist Milt Machlin traveled to Netherlands New Guinea to investigate Rockefeller's disappearance. He dismissed reports of Rockefeller's living as a captive or as a Kurtz
-like figure in the jungle, but concluded that there was circumstantial evidence
to support the idea that he was killed. Several leaders of Otsjanep village, where Rockefeller likely would have arrived had he made it to shore, were killed by a Dutch patrol
in 1958, and thus would have some rationale for revenge against someone from the "white tribe." Neither cannibalism nor headhunting in Asmat were indiscriminate, but rather were part of a tit-for-tat revenge cycle, and so it is possible that Rockefeller found himself the inadvertent victim of such a cycle started by the Dutch patrol.
A book titled Rocky Goes West by author Paul Toohey claims that, in 1979, Rockefeller's mother hired a private investigator to go to New Guinea and try to resolve the mystery of his disappearance. The reliability of the 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. There was, however, a report on the History Channel program "Vanishings" that Rockefeller's mother did pay a $250,000 reward to the investigator which was offered for final proof whether or not Michael Rockefeller was alive or dead.
in New York City. The Peabody Museum
has published the catalogue of an exhibition of pictures taken by Rockefeller during the New Guinea expedition.
wrote a song about Rockefeller's disappearance, which appeared on their 1985 album Jamboree
.
Christopher Stokes's short story "The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller", published in the 23rd issue of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, presents a fictional account of young Michael's demise.
The 2004 novel King of America by Samantha Gillison
is loosely based on the life of Michael Rockefeller.
The 2007 film Welcome to the Jungle deals with two young couples who venture after Michael Rockefeller (thinking they can make a lot of money if they find evidence of Rockefeller) but meet grisly demises.
Jeff Cohen
's play The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller, based on the short story by Christopher Stokes, had its world premiere in an Off Broadway production at the West End Theatre in New York, directed by Alfred Preisser
, from September 10 to October 3, 2010.
Death in absentia
Death in absentia is a legal declaration that a person is deceased in the absence of remains attributable to that person...
November 17, 1961), was the youngest son of New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
Governor
Governor of New York
The Governor of the State of New York is the chief executive of the State of New York. The governor is the head of the executive branch of New York's state government and the commander-in-chief of the state's military and naval forces. The officeholder is afforded the courtesy title of His/Her...
(later Vice President
Vice President of the United States
The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
) Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller and Mary Todhunter Rockefeller
Mary Rockefeller
Mary Todhunter Clark Rockefeller was the first wife of Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, a Governor of New York. He served, after their divorce, as the 41st Vice President of the United States.-Biography:...
and a fourth generation
Generation
Generation , also known as procreation in biological sciences, is the act of producing offspring....
member of the Rockefeller family
Rockefeller family
The Rockefeller family , the Cleveland family of John D. Rockefeller and his brother William Rockefeller , is an American industrial, banking, and political family of German origin that made one of the world's largest private fortunes in the oil business during the late 19th and early 20th...
. He disappeared
Missing person
A missing person is a person who has disappeared for usually unknown reasons.Missing persons' photographs may be posted on bulletin boards, milk cartons, postcards, and websites, along with a phone number to be contacted if a sighting has been made....
during an expedition in the Asmat
Asmat people
The Asmat are an ethnic group of New Guinea, residing in the Papua province of Indonesia. Possessing one of the most well-known and vibrant woodcarving traditions in the Pacific, their art is sought by collectors worldwide...
region of southwestern Netherlands New Guinea
Netherlands New Guinea
Netherlands New Guinea refers to the West Papua region while it was an overseas territory of the Kingdom of the Netherlands from 1949 to 1962. Until 1949 it was a part of the Netherlands Indies. It was commonly known as Dutch New Guinea...
.
Early life
After attending The Buckley School in New York, Rockefeller graduated from Harvard UniversityHarvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
cum laude in 1960, served for six months as a private
Private (rank)
A Private is a soldier of the lowest military rank .In modern military parlance, 'Private' is shortened to 'Pte' in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries and to 'Pvt.' in the United States.Notably both Sir Fitzroy MacLean and Enoch Powell are examples of, rare, rapid career...
in the U.S. Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
, then went on an expedition for Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is a museum affiliated with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.Founded in 1866, the Peabody Museum is one of the oldest and largest museums focusing on anthropological material, and is particularly strong in New World ethnography and...
which studied the Dani
Dani
Dani is a unisex given name typically truncated from the name Daniel or Danielle.Dani may refer to:-People:* Dani people, a people living in the isolated central highlands of West Papua* Danes -Given name:...
tribe of western Netherlands New Guinea. The expedition produced Dead Birds
Dead Birds (1965 film)
Dead Birds is a 1964 documentary film by Robert Gardner about the Dani people of New Guinea. It was produced as part of the Harvard-Peabody Expedition to study the highlands of New Guinea, at that time one of the only remaining areas in the world uncolonized by Europeans.The film has been selected...
, an ethnographic documentary film produced by Robert Gardner, and for which Rockefeller was the sound recordist. Rockefeller and a friend briefly left the expedition to study the Asmat
Asmat people
The Asmat are an ethnic group of New Guinea, residing in the Papua province of Indonesia. Possessing one of the most well-known and vibrant woodcarving traditions in the Pacific, their art is sought by collectors worldwide...
tribe of southern Netherlands New Guinea. After returning home with the Peabody
Peabody
-Places:United States* Peabody, Indiana* Peabody, Kansas** Peabody Downtown Historic District, in Peabody, Kansas* Peabody, Massachusetts* Peabody, Cambridge, Massachusetts, a neighborhood* Peabody River, in New Hampshire-Institutions:...
expedition, Rockefeller returned to New Guinea to study the Asmat and collect Asmat art.
"It's the desire to do something adventurous," he explained, "at a time when frontiers, in the real sense of the word, are disappearing."
Michael Rockefeller spent his time in Netherlands New Guinea actively engaged with the culture and the art while capturing ethnographic data. In one of his letters home, he wrote:
"I am having a thoroughly exhausting but most exciting time here…The Asmat is like a huge puzzle with the variations in ceremony and art style forming the pieces. My trips are enabling me to comprehend (if only in a superficial, rudimentary manner) the nature of this puzzle…"
Disappearance
On November 17, 1961, Rockefeller and DutchNetherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
anthropologist René Wassing were in a 40-foot dugout canoe about three miles 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, Rockefeller said to Wassing "I think I can make it" and swam for shore. It is estimated that the boat was twelve miles from the shore when he made the attempt to swim to safety, supporting the theory that he died from exposure, exhaustion, and/or drowning. Wassing was rescued the next day, while Rockefeller was never seen again, despite an intensive and lengthy search effort. At the time, Rockefeller's disappearance was a major world news item. His body was never found. He was declared legally dead
Death in absentia
Death in absentia is a legal declaration that a person is deceased in the absence of remains attributable to that person...
in 1964.
Speculation
Most believe that Rockefeller either drowned or was attacked by a sharkShark
Sharks are a type of fish with a full cartilaginous skeleton and a highly streamlined body. The earliest known sharks date from more than 420 million years ago....
or crocodile
Crocodile
A crocodile is any species belonging to the family Crocodylidae . The term can also be used more loosely to include all extant members of the order Crocodilia: i.e...
. Because headhunting
Headhunting
Headhunting is the practice of taking a person's head after killing them. Headhunting was practised in historic times in parts of China, India, Nigeria, Nuristan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Borneo, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, Micronesia, Melanesia, New Zealand, and the Amazon Basin, as...
and cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
were still present in some areas of Asmat in 1961, some have speculated that Rockefeller was killed and eaten by local people.
In 1969, the journalist Milt Machlin traveled to Netherlands New Guinea to investigate Rockefeller's disappearance. He dismissed reports of Rockefeller's living as a captive or as a Kurtz
Kurtz (Heart of Darkness)
Mr. Kurtz is a central fictional character in Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness. A trader of ivory in Africa and commander of a trading post, he monopolises his position as a demigod among native Africans. Kurtz meets with the protagonist, Marlow, who returns him to the coast via steamboat...
-like figure in the jungle, but concluded that there was circumstantial evidence
Circumstantial evidence
Circumstantial evidence is evidence in which an inference is required to connect it to a conclusion of fact, like a fingerprint at the scene of a crime...
to support the idea that he was killed. Several leaders of Otsjanep village, where Rockefeller likely would have arrived had he made it to shore, were killed by a Dutch patrol
Netherlands New Guinea
Netherlands New Guinea refers to the West Papua region while it was an overseas territory of the Kingdom of the Netherlands from 1949 to 1962. Until 1949 it was a part of the Netherlands Indies. It was commonly known as Dutch New Guinea...
in 1958, and thus would have some rationale for revenge against someone from the "white tribe." Neither cannibalism nor headhunting in Asmat were indiscriminate, but rather were part of a tit-for-tat revenge cycle, and so it is possible that Rockefeller found himself the inadvertent victim of such a cycle started by the Dutch patrol.
A book titled Rocky Goes West by author Paul Toohey claims that, in 1979, Rockefeller's mother hired a private investigator to go to New Guinea and try to resolve the mystery of his disappearance. The reliability of the 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. There was, however, a report on the History Channel program "Vanishings" that Rockefeller's mother did pay a $250,000 reward to the investigator which was offered for final proof whether or not Michael Rockefeller was alive or dead.
Asmat artifacts and photographs
Many of the Asmat artifacts Rockefeller collected are part of the Michael C. Rockefeller collection at the Metropolitan Museum of ArtMetropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
in New York City. The Peabody Museum
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is a museum affiliated with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.Founded in 1866, the Peabody Museum is one of the oldest and largest museums focusing on anthropological material, and is particularly strong in New World ethnography and...
has published the catalogue of an exhibition of pictures taken by Rockefeller during the New Guinea expedition.
Popular culture
The band Guadalcanal DiaryGuadalcanal Diary (band)
Guadalcanal Diary is an alternative jangle pop group. They originated in Marietta, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, but they were often billed as being "from Athens, Georgia" in the early 1980s. The band formed in 1981 and disbanded in 1989. They reformed in 1997, but never recorded any new material...
wrote a song about Rockefeller's disappearance, which appeared on their 1985 album Jamboree
Jamboree (Guadalcanal Diary album)
Jamboree is the second full-length release by Marietta, Georgia jangle poppers Guadalcanal Diary. The album was released in 1986.-Track listing:#"Pray for Rain" - 4:06#"Fear of God" - 3:22#"Jamboree" - 3:17#"Michael Rockefeller" - 4:50...
.
Christopher Stokes's short story "The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller", published in the 23rd issue of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, presents a fictional account of young Michael's demise.
The 2004 novel King of America by Samantha Gillison
Samantha Gillison
Samantha Gillison is a writer who frequently contributes to Salon.com and Condé Nast Traveler. Gillison attended Brown University, where she majored in ancient Greek, and has taught at Columbia University. In 2000, she was a recipient of the Whiting Award for her work in The Undiscovered...
is loosely based on the life of Michael Rockefeller.
The 2007 film Welcome to the Jungle deals with two young couples who venture after Michael Rockefeller (thinking they can make a lot of money if they find evidence of Rockefeller) but meet grisly demises.
Jeff Cohen
Jeff Cohen (playwright and theater director)
Jeff Cohen is an American theater director and playwright.-Biography:Cohen grew up in a house across from in the Liberty Heights neighborhood of Baltimore, the setting for his play, Men of Clay..-Career:...
's play The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller, based on the short story by Christopher Stokes, had its world premiere in an Off Broadway production at the West End Theatre in New York, directed by Alfred Preisser
Alfred Preisser
-Career:Preisser is the founder and artistic director of APPI, a New York-based theatrical production company that creates dance, music and theater pieces with universal themes and aggressive interpretations of classics...
, from September 10 to October 3, 2010.
See also
- Rockefeller familyRockefeller familyThe Rockefeller family , the Cleveland family of John D. Rockefeller and his brother William Rockefeller , is an American industrial, banking, and political family of German origin that made one of the world's largest private fortunes in the oil business during the late 19th and early 20th...
- Nelson RockefellerNelson RockefellerNelson Aldrich Rockefeller was the 41st Vice President of the United States , serving under President Gerald Ford, and the 49th Governor of New York , as well as serving the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations in a variety of positions...
- Metropolitan Museum of ArtMetropolitan Museum of ArtThe Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
- Asmat peopleAsmat peopleThe Asmat are an ethnic group of New Guinea, residing in the Papua province of Indonesia. Possessing one of the most well-known and vibrant woodcarving traditions in the Pacific, their art is sought by collectors worldwide...
- Death in absentiaDeath in absentiaDeath in absentia is a legal declaration that a person is deceased in the absence of remains attributable to that person...
- List of people who disappeared mysteriously
External links
- Asmat Art in the Michael C. Rockefeller Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Michael Rockefeller photographs on display at The Peabody Museum
- Outside magazine: "Lost Scion: Was Michael Rockefeller eaten by cannibals?"
- Agamemnon Films Presents: The Search for Michael Rockefeller
- In Search Of... television segment on Michael Rockefeller hosted by Leonard NimoyLeonard NimoyLeonard Simon Nimoy is an American actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer. Nimoy's most famous role is that of Spock in the original Star Trek series , multiple films, television and video game sequels....