Walter In Denver

Friday Forgotten Tragedy

Last week I picked up a Guadalcanal Diary CD I've been meaning to get for quite a while. That disc includes the song Michael Rockefeller, a cryptic retelling of the story of his demise.

Michael's actual story is worth remembering. He was one of the famous Rockefellers, son of Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Fabulously wealthy and looking to make productive use of his life, at the age of 23 he embarked on a mission to study the art of native New Guinea tribes. He collected pieces of their handiwork which now reside at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1961 in an effort to reach a remote tribe he embarked on a poorly planned boat trip to a far corner of the island. His unseaworthy craft was swamped by waves, and he made a desperate attempt to swim for land and was never seen again. He was presumed lost at sea.

However, there may be more to the story, as his Wikipedia bio notes:

In 1969, the journalist Milt Machlin traveled to 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 called 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 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.

Sharks and saltwater crocodiles are common in the area, so as Mrs. In Denver observes it's likely he was eaten by something, cannibalistic natives or other.

As for the Guadalcanal Diary CD, it's an underrated gem. It makes me want to go out and buy a Rickenbacker and learn to play the thing so I can reproduce that phenomenal sound.

Posted by Walter at April 18, 2008 09:34 PM