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In 1870, high school dropout John D. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company, which earned him the title of America's first billionaire and gave his family one of America's largest fortunes for over a century. J.D. Rockefeller's grandson, Nelson Rockefeller, would become prominent in the fields of both business and politics.
holding positions such as the governor of New York from 1959 to 1973, and even vice president of the United States from 1974 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford. In the late 1930s, when Nelson gave birth to his youngest son, Michael Rockefeller, the family fortune was estimated to be around $900 million.
Michael had always been drawn to what was known as primitive art and yearned to be a part of a great adventure. When he was just 19 years old, he got the offer to visit the remote island of Papua New Guinea and come face to face with the never before contacted Asmat tribe and their art.
known to be some of the last remaining peoples in the world to practice headhunting and cannibalism. Visiting the Asmat tribe would be just the adventure Michael was looking for, and the enthusiastic and adventurous Scion set off on the trip of a lifetime, but he would never return. The circumstances of Michael's disappearance seemed to point to an accident caused by sudden, inclement weather.
But just days after he went missing, rumors began to swirl around the Asmat villages. Rumors of a much more savage end to Michael's life at the hands of the Asmats. Part 1: Michael as a Rockefeller Michael Clark Rockefeller was born on May 18, 1938, to his father Nelson and mother Mary. Michael and his twin sister Mary were the youngest of the five children.
Michael attended the Buckley School, a private boys' elementary school in New York City, before starting at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire for high school, where he acted as a student senator and art director of the yearbook. He also played for their varsity wrestling team.
Despite his success in student politics and athletics, it seemed that Michael's true passion lied in the arts. Michael attended Harvard University for college, graduating cum laude with degrees in history and economics. After this, he served in the US Army for six months. But he did not feel that this was what he was meant for. Michael sought a great adventure, something that would completely remove him from the life of luxury that he knew he was destined for.
Michael's father Nelson had made many connections across the globe during his careers in politics, which had even led him to the island of Sumatra in 1939, where he purchased a knife that was decorated with a sculpted head which had real human hair. This ignited an interest in Michael that would follow him into his young adulthood, an interest in what was known as primitive art.
The term "primitive art" or "primitivism" was used to describe cultural artifacts from peoples of the Pacific Isles, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the pre-colonial Americas. It described any art that fell into the styles known to be the oldest forms of artwork, despite these pieces often being important daily cultural items, rather than solely display pieces.
Nelson was a prolific art collector, which likely also fed his son's appreciation for these pieces. Nelson, however, gained this intrigue from his own mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, who founded the Museum of Modern Art, or MoMA, in New York City in 1929. Nelson, who was a patron of the museum, later became president of the museum in 1939.
After taking this position, Nelson attempted to convince the trustees to include an exhibit of primitive art, which they declined, feeling that the primitive style of art did not fit the theme of the Museum of Modern Art.
Even after being turned down, Nelson continued to travel the world collecting pieces of art, using them to start his own museum in 1954, the Museum of Primitive Art on West 54th Street, located in a townhouse right next to the one he had grown up in, also conveniently right across the street from MoMA, which he was no longer acting as the president of. In an interview, Nelson said about primitive art:
My interest in primitive art is not an intellectual one. It is strictly aesthetic. Don't ask me whether this bowl which I am holding is a household implement or a ritual vessel. I could not care less. I enjoy the form, the texture, the color, the shape. I am not in the least interested in the anthropological or the ethnological end of it.
That's why I founded this museum. To show that the art of primitive people could be treated on purely aesthetic and formal grounds.
Michael, who was just 19 years old at the time, often spoke with his high school best friend, Sam Putnam, about how they would express themselves in some grand way before inevitably settling into the opulent lives that were expected of them. And, likely noticing the importance of primitive art to his father, Michael sought out to experience this great adventure and the remote islands of the Pacific, which had been previously untouched by the Western world.
Part 2: New Guinea and the Danny Tribe Sam Putnam introduced Michael to the director of the Harvard Film Studies Center, a man named Robert Gardner who was working on a documentary about a nearly uncontacted group of people in Papua New Guinea, the Danny Tribe.
New Guinea, the second largest island in the world, is part of what we now know as Indonesia. But at the time of Michael's interest, the island was home to many tribes who had no idea of the world beyond their lush island.
In 1883, the island of New Guinea was taken by the Europeans. The Dutch took the western half of the island, while the Germans and the British split the eastern half of the island. The Dani tribe, which consists of nearly 50,000 people, inhabited the extremely remote and mountainous central area of western New Guinea.
Though remote, their community was extremely complex, and their villages included technology such as irrigation canals, stone walls, suspension bridges, and abundant agriculture and livestock. Both men and women painted their bodies and faces, and wore nothing but gourds or grass skirts to cover their genitals. Families lived in homes with thatched roofs, battles and hunts were conducted using spears, and shamans were their spiritual leaders.
The people of the Dany tribe were known to be organized, diplomatic, and welcoming to outsiders. Dany spiritual practice suggests that all humans have a soul. Therefore, rituals must be performed to ease the restless souls of those who have passed. If these souls are not appeased, they can bring illness, misfortune, or even death to the living, especially if the deceased had held a lot of power in life.
A common practice during funerals is for a female relative to cut off the tip of her finger to signify the pain that death causes, while also acting as a sacrifice for her loved one's soul. Once the Dutch had gained control of this part of New Guinea, their goal was twofold.
Number one was to spread Christianity to remote tribes. And number two was to ensure that these tribes slowly gravitated away from practices such as these, which many Westerners considered to be taboo and unacceptable, including polygamy, cannibalism, and, most notoriously for the Dani tribe, headhunting.
Robert Gardner's goal for this film was not only to expose the Western world to this never-before-seen group of people, but more specifically, to record their tense way of life and constant battles with neighboring groups within their tribe. Since all deaths must be avenged, no matter how long it takes, the end of a battle would not be the end of the cycle of death.
since those lost in battle must have their deaths avenged in order for their souls to be at peace. Robert Gardner got in contact with Jean-Victor De Bruyne, the head of Native Affairs in Dutch New Guinea at the time, who gave him permission, assistance, and $5,000 of funding for his documentary project, which would end up being released as a 1963 film titled "Dead Birds."
Once Sam introduced Michael to Robert and his project, Michael knew that this was the adventure he had been seeking, and he was offered the role of sound technician. In March of 1961, 19-year-old Michael arrived in New Guinea and met with a Harvard anthropology graduate student named Carl Heider, and the two traveled to the remote valley home of the Danny. The men met up with the rest of the documentary team, who had set up a camp within walking distance of the village they were documenting.
The team consisted of a New York Times writer, a Life magazine photographer, and numerous anthropologists. Despite their intention to be non-intrusive, members of the nearby village visited their camp to investigate the never-before-seen equipment they possessed. The film crew got great footage of the battles that they were looking for, but it came at a price.
Since the Dutch had exerted such control over the island, much of the internal conflict that once trademarked the Dhani people had been controlled. So, the film crew encouraged violence between warring groups, offering them goods such as tobacco or steel axes in exchange for footage of battles between historical enemies. Michael was eager and excited about this expedition, often forgetting that he was there to perform a specific job.
He was known to enthusiastically take photos, often using up to 18 rolls of film a day. Though he had a talent for capturing moments through candid photos, the rest of the crew often had to redirect him and remind him of his role in the film production. During a fireside chat one night, Michael confided in his colleague Carl that he had a dual mission to complete in New Guinea. Though he, of course, was there to work on the film.
He disclosed that his father had recently put him on the board of the Museum of Primitive Art, and he sought out to bring a major collection of primitive art to New York.
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Part 3. The Asmat Tribe.
Before his departure from New York to New Guinea, Michael had been in touch with an ethnologist named Adrian Grabrands, who was living and working in New Guinea at the time. Adrian was conducting field work with the Asmat people, the largest tribe in New Guinea, located in the remote jungles of the island's southwestern coast.
When Michael heard about Adrian's work with the Asmats, he knew that involvement with the tribe would be just what he needed to get the primitive art he sought for his father's exhibit. The Asmats were known for their woodworking skills, and Michael was particularly drawn to their intricately carved bowls, oars, and ritual objects. The Asmats' advanced woodworking skills stemmed from their creation story, which told that they themselves were created from wood,
According to their oral tradition, the first human to ever exist was a man named Fumer Ipitz. Though Fumer Ipitz spent a while enjoying his days alone, dancing on the beach and eating fish, he eventually became lonely and sought companionship. Fumer Ipitz cut down some trees and carved them into the shape of humans, placing them in his jeyu.
which is a ceremonial clubhouse for the men of the village. Next, Fumaripets made a lizard skin drum. When he beat the drum, he watched as the wooden figures came to life and began dancing. Because Asmat tradition suggested that humans were created from trees, wood carving became a pivotal part of their daily routine.
The Asmats were highly spiritual, living in a complex culture with important ceremonies regarding life and death, and a language so complex that it included 17 tenses.
Their diverse surroundings, made up of jungle, sea and swamp, allowed them to adopt a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, as well as become well-versed fishermen navigating the dense marsh and turbulent sea with the same confidence that they had on land. When Dutch missionary Gerard Zegwaert began living amongst the Asmats from 1952 to 1956, he made note of these cultural aspects.
Since he was the first white man to ever encounter this tribe, he saw these practices in their most raw and natural state. However, he also observed the more taboo traditions of the Asmats, including cannibalism and headhunting. In a culture where humans came from trees, like the palms produced food and nourished their bodies, so would the head of a man further nourish their spirits.
The ritual of headhunting was a complex and time-consuming one that was done with great care and unified the village. After all was said and done, the man who was tasked with completing the ritual would take on the name and assume the identity of the victim who was hunted, becoming this individual for the rest of his life.
the rest of the victim's body would not go to waste, as it would be distributed to homes throughout the village, and every part of it would be used. The meat would be eaten, and the bones would be used as decoration or given to the dogs. Despite this history of what Westerners considered violence, Michael Rockefeller remained enthusiastic about joining the Osmots, especially since many white men who had previously settled near the Osmots had been treated very well.
When Michael arrived, he noticed that, by this point, the Asmats had been influenced by the Western world, straying slightly from the culture of their ancestors and adopting some aspects of European culture, such as their clothing. Michael's main goal with this first trip into Asmat territory was to scalp things out and determine what they had that he would want for his father's collection, and also to figure out what they wanted in return that he could bring back for trade.
Michael was put in contact with a priest named Cornelius Van Kessel, who was known as the first white man to make contact with the southern Asmat tribes, which was even more remote than the others. Over the course of his time there, Cornelius truly immersed himself into Asmat culture, becoming trusted by the Asmats and gaining a personal familiarity with their daily lives.
Because of this, Michael felt that he would be a great point of contact when it came to getting the really good pieces of primitive art. When Michael and Cornelius first arrived at the village, the Asmats were having a celebration, which Michael was eager to take photos of. As they settled in, Michael eventually asked the men if they could reenact what their battles looked like so he could film it in exchange for some goods that they would have found valuable.
Michael traveled upriver to nearby villages with an anthropologist friend as a guide, collecting assorted Asmat items as he went.
His favorite of these items, though, were the beige poles. The beige poles were huge and extremely intricate in design, ranging anywhere between 15 and 20 feet high, carved out of fully grown mangrove trees. Beige poles are carved to symbolize the men's ancestors and are believed to hold the souls of the ancestors and satisfy them until their deaths are avenged. Michael traded some goods for beige poles, a complete set.
These bijpuls were dedicated to souls whose deaths had long been avenged, so they were not thought to be actively harboring spirits, and the Asmats had no problem giving them to Michael. However, he would continue to expect to receive goods from other tribes, others who may not be as willing to let go of their ritual objects.
Just a few years before Michael arrived at this specific area, some Dutch officials had taken over, setting fire to the village and forcing them to abandon their culture, killing five Asmat villagers in the process. The man who directed this raid was invited back to the village three years later for a celebratory feast to make amends.
However, when he arrived, he realized that he himself would become the feast, and he was killed, cooked, and eaten by the villagers, his death becoming vengeance for the deaths of those his crew had killed in their raid. So when another white man, Michael Rockefeller, showed up, it's no wonder this community may have felt on edge and defensive, especially when he began asking to take home their ritual objects.
Though Michael's journals never indicated that he ever traded for human heads, and by all accounts, the Asmats weren't even still practicing headhunting at this time. The local Dutch government did observe an uptick in the market for hunted heads in the area once the locals caught wind of Michael's presence. According to some government publications, it was rumored that Michael had been offering as many as 10 steel axes in exchange for just one human head.
Since the offers of tobacco and steel axes were too good to pass up, the local tribes would trade for already hunted heads passed down from their ancestors. However, there was not an infinite supply of these, and eventually this high demand would require blood to be shed. After a quick trip back home to the States in October of 1961,
Michael returned to Asmat territory with around $7,000 worth of equipment, nearly $50,000 in today's money, accompanied by a small team of translators and Dutch missionaries. He returned on a catamaran-style boat, big enough to house all of his equipment, goods for trading, and collection of artifacts. One thing he did not bring, however, was a radio to contact the rest of the world.
Not long after their trip began, Michael was already feeling successful. At one of the first villages they stopped at, he immediately noticed an intricately carved canoe that he wanted for the collection. While the carver did not agree to trade Michael for this canoe, he did offer to carve him a new one that he could pick up later that month. Later in the month, they arrived at another village slightly up the river.
When they arrived, however, it was low tide, and the shallow water caused them to struggle to sail into the tributary where the village sat. One of Michael's interpreters, an Asmat teenager named Simon, called out to the villagers, a signal that they were there and needed help. The Asmats chanted a song of welcome, began paddling out in their canoes to meet Michael and his team. They then got into the river and helped Michael's team to shore by pulling the boat in.
This warm welcome made Michael feel at home and comfortable with this particular village of Asmat people, a welcome that he would expect to receive from other villages as well. In November, Michael met with some Dutch missionaries and discussed his plans over tea. Based on where specifically he wanted to go, they recommended that he travel via the inland river system since the alternative route was the sea, which could be unpredictable at this time of year.
that what would be a bit of a longer journey for him, it was a much safer route. One of the priests tried to convince Michael to follow him through the rivers, but Michael refused since he had to make some stops and check on the progress of the canoe that was being carved for him.
Even though no members of the crew were very experienced sailors or navigators, Michael thanked the priest for his offer, but promised to see him later in the week since they both had plans to end up in the same village. On the morning of November 17th, Michael and his crew of three loaded up into the catamaran and set sail. The next day they stopped to check on Michael's canoe that was being made, and he was happy with the progress.
The following morning they headed to the village where he was to meet up with the Dutch priest. And from there, they continued on to a village where some Asmats had bish poles they were willing to trade. Part 4: The Storm The weather was fair the following day, but this didn't last long. In a split second, the weather turned and the wind picked up, tossing around the catamaran. The waves rose, splashing into the boat, causing it to sink deeper.
water flooded the small engine that they relied on for power. The two Asmat teenagers that accompanied Michael encouraged him to abandon ship and swim to the banks while they were still in the river before the storm swept them out to sea. Michael did not comply, however, refusing to leave his expensive sound and photography equipment, detailed journals, and bartering goods behind. The Asmat teenagers, Simon and Leo,
decided that their best chance of survival was to leave Michael and his boat and swim to the banks of the river, leaving Michael and his Dutch anthropologist guide, René, to fend for themselves. They intended to go find help, but there was no telling how long this would take, since they were traveling on foot through the jungle in the middle of the night.
Rene later said that he and Michael were not panicking at this point. Rather, they were calmly trying to keep the boat above water, bailing and making repairs as needed. By midnight, 11 hours after they had set off, Leo and Simon had gotten help, and a government boat set off to rescue them. However, while the boat was heading to their aid, it ran out of gas, and it also did not have a radio for contact.
Once people started noticing that the rescue boat didn't return, the United States Department of State was contacted, and Nelson Rockefeller was notified that his son was missing. The following morning, the Dutch Air Force had gotten involved in the search, sending out 12 search planes. It was one of these planes that finally was able to spot Michael's capsized boat, which was located about 24 miles from the shore.
However, the rescuers on this plane were only able to spot one person near this ship when they were expecting to find two: Michael and René, the anthropologist. The figure they saw was René, and he was frantically waving in an attempt to get the plane's attention. René said that after Simon and Leo abandoned ship, the weather had calmed down a bit. He and Michael climbed to the top of the thatched roof of the cabin where they waited all night
Once the sun rose, they realized that they had been swept out to sea, though they were still able to see the shoreline. They waited for a while in case any help came, but all of their belongings, including their food supply, had been swept away by the waves. Feeling hopeless, with no hope of rescue in sight, Michael decided to swim to shore at around 9 a.m. the following morning.
At this point, Grenet estimated that shore was about 3 miles away, and he tried to convince Michael not to go, but he claimed that Michael was too restless and full of energy to remain on the boat and wait around. Using a rope, Michael fastened two empty fuel tanks around his waist to act as a flotation device. Taking only a compass and a Swiss Army knife, Michael removed his pants and shoes and hopped into the sea, beginning his journey.
22 hours after Michael began his swim to shore, Rene was finally rescued about 10 miles from shore. But Michael was nowhere to be found. While aerial and nautical searches were beginning to look for Michael, rumors were spreading throughout the nearby Asmat villages that a white man had been pulled out of the water, taken to a nearby village, and beheaded to avenge the spirit of the Asmats that had been invaded and killed by the Dutch a decade before. Part 5
The Search, on November 19th, 1961. Two days after his disappearance, Michael's father, Nelson Rockefeller, who was the governor of New York at the time, received a phone call that his son had been missing. He knew that Michael would not go off-grid intentionally, as he had just sent his father a letter the week before, informing him that he would be home for Christmas. Nelson called Michael's siblings and invited them over to his house to talk.
Nelson informed his children that their brother had not been seen or heard from in days, and that he would be leaving for New Guinea that night. Nelson arrived in New Guinea with his daughter Mary, Michael's twin sister, Robert Gardner, the director of the Dead Birds documentary, and Nelson's press secretary. Nelson planned to charter a seaplane so that he could search the villages Michael was known to frequent, hopefully gathering information from the locals about whether Michael had ever even made it to shore.
Nelson claimed that he felt confident that Michael's experience in the army would help him if he was in a survival situation, and he was known to be in great physical shape, especially when it came to swimming. While the search was happening, journalists were swarming the area and news outlets were constantly updating the public on the missing Rockefeller.
Dutch officials had made a statement that the area Michael had gone missing from was one of the more controlled ones, meaning it was less remote and the Dutch government had more of a presence there. However, Robert Gardner was not too convinced. He claimed that the tribes of this area were not too far removed from the members of previous years who had practiced headhunting and cannibalism.
The deputy governor of New Guinea agreed, suggesting that Michael was on the hunt for headhunting relics. This was the first mention of this, however, and Michael had never included anything in his journals that suggested he was looking to trade for headhunting paraphernalia. Additionally, Dutch officials did confirm that a member of the Dutch government had recently been killed by a group of Asmats that were previously believed to be friendly.
The search party grew, now including American missionaries who were stationed on the island, as well as nearly 2,000 Asmat men from one of the larger villages. President Kennedy had offered to send some U.S. Marines to help search, but after some consideration, Nelson ended up declining this offer. Despite the throngs of people searching for Michael, by Wednesday, November 22nd, things were looking bleak.
Some locals had claimed that, based on the specific stretch of shoreline that Michael had disappeared from, even if he had successfully swam through the turbulent, shark-infested sea to shore, he would have been in a patch of jungle so remote and difficult to traverse that it could be at least 10 days before he came in contact with someone who could help him.
By the end of that week, Nelson had plans to leave New Guinea and return to New York, claiming that he was a realist and understood the conditions that his son would have faced if he reached the shoreline. So, only one week after Michael had disappeared, Nelson was already planning to head back to the States.
The Dutch commissioner in New Guinea announced that he still held out hope for finding Michael, believing there was a 50/50 chance he was still alive. He believed that, even if Michael had either drowned or been attacked by sharks or crocodiles, he would have been disconnected from the two gas cans he was using for flotation. Based on the currents that week, the gas cans would have eventually made it back to shore, likely within six days, since they hadn't turned up.
Even with thousands of people searching the area, the commissioner remained optimistic. However, on Friday, November 24th, a red six-gallon gas tank was found floating near the shore, 80 miles south of where Michael was last seen. The Dutch official statement was that this was one of the cans that Michael had used for flotation and that this discovery was further proof that he had made it ashore safely since he would have discarded them on the beach once he made it.
However, not everyone agreed. Some believed that this was just more evidence that he hadn't made it to land at all, since his survival training would have likely caused him to bring the cans with him for his trek into the jungle. Others believed that there was still hope, and the fact that only one can was found indicated that he may have taken the other with him as he began his journey to find civilization.
This was big news and the first major development in the search, and Nelson decided that he would stay in New Guinea a little while longer. Soon after this, planes flying over the area reported seeing wisps of smoke coming from the jungle and believed it may be coming from a fire. On Monday, November 27, helicopters were sent out to search a 10-mile-long strip of coastline
Each helicopter had an ASMAT translator on board so that they could land at the villages along the coast and question the natives in case Michael had managed to stumble into a village. However, just the next day, the Dutch government announced that, though the searches would continue, they believed that Michael was dead, though the exact circumstances surrounding his death were still a mystery.
Later the same day, Nelson and his daughter Mary finally boarded the plane that would take them back to New York.
The Dutch government's official statement regarding Michael's death was that he had died due to the elements during his swim from the boat to shore, whether that was drowning after exhaustion and dehydration overtook him or an attack by a predator in the water. There are known to be high shark populations in the Arafura Sea, which Michael was swimming in, as well as crocodiles in the inland rivers that they sailed in.
In addition to this, the currents would have been extremely rough and the shoreline was no white sandy beach. Instead, he would have had to traverse mangroves and marsh to gain access to the thick jungle. While these rough conditions do make this theory plausible, not everyone was so quick to believe it, and over the years, other theories have begun to swirl. Part 6: The Theories
In 1969, American journalist and writer Milt Macklin wrote a story about Michael Rockefeller for a pulp fiction magazine. After this publication, a man named John Donahue showed up at Milt's door, claiming to have information about Michael's disappearance. John told Milt that he had been sailing along the coast of Papua New Guinea when he passed a village.
To his surprise, he noticed a white man emerge out of one of the huts. He described the man as having long, sandy-colored hair and a full beard, and he had difficulty walking. Allegedly, because he was still recovering after having two broken legs. John said that the man was squinting at them, but once he was able to make out John and his crew, he got extremely excited to see them. The man then allegedly extended his hand and said, "I am Michael Rockefeller. Can you help me?"
John elaborated on this story, telling Milt that Michael said he swam for hours before finally reaching the shore. As he staggered through the jungle, he was spotted by a group of Asmat men who helped him and took him to safety. However, these men were soon attacked by a group of people from the Trobriand Islands, which were located hundreds of miles away.
The Trobriand Islanders kept Michael hostage and took him back with them. John alleged that he wanted to help Michael but he was scared to, since the tribe held Michael as a sort of trophy and were not very willing to let him go. Milt was shaken by John's story and asked him for more information about the island.
John was able to produce the exact coordinates of the island. It was called Kanapu, and it was located in the Trobriand Islands, around 800 miles away from Asmat territory, where Michael had disappeared from. Milt saw great potential in this unbelievable story, and he headed out to Indonesia with a cinematographer and 10,000 feet of film, determined to be the one that would find Michael Rockefeller.
Milt spent a while in Indonesia, gathering documentary footage and information for the book he would later publish: The Search for Michael Rockefeller. But nothing ever came to fruition with this. He spent the next few decades working on other unrelated projects, even coining the terms "Bermuda Triangle" and "Abominable Snowman". But he flew under the radar when it came to the Michael Rockefeller case until he passed away in 2004.
It wasn't until 2011 when director Fraser Heston befriended Milt's widow, Margaret, and was able to get some insight about the information Milt had gathered about this case. Margaret told Fraser that Milt had never done anything with the footage gathered during his trip. It was given to a film development center, which later went out of business. So Fraser dedicated the next six months to tracking down these films.
He eventually found them in a storage facility in Vermont, and three months later, he had received cardboard boxes containing all 15 reels of footage. What he would see once he played this footage would completely shock him. The film included a video of about 600 Asmat warriors ceremonially rowing canoes down a river.
On one canoe, however, among the other hundreds of Asmat men, was a white man. He was fully naked, but decorated in feathers just like his fellow warriors. His blonde hair, scruffy beard, and fair skin made him stick out like a sore thumb among the other men on his canoe.
Whether this white man was actually Michael or just another Dutch missionary immersing himself in the culture, Fraser knew he had found something big and he made a documentary about his discovery named after Milt's book, "The Search for Michael Rockefeller". Still though, there is another theory about what may have happened to Michael.
Not long after Michael went missing, rumors began to swirl that he did make it to shore, but he wasn't there for long before he was killed and eaten by a group of Asmats. Word got around to the Dutch authorities in the area, and they sent an Asmat boy named Gabriel, who was a friend of the missionaries, to do some investigating. He went to the village that was closest to Michael at the time of his disappearance, and asked some questions.
The men in the village denied knowing anything about Michael, but Gabriel was still suspicious, noticing that none of the men from this particular village had aided in any search efforts. Plus, Gabriel had heard rumors from a village just up the river that a white man had been pulled out of the river and soon killed. When Gabriel had approached the men about this rumor, they said that they had seen something in the water that day. It was a fierce giant snake, but it wasn't a white man.
However, when Gabriel tried to push for more information, the man he was speaking with, who had allegedly been the one telling people he killed a white man, began running around shouting that he never told anyone anything before hiding in the jungle. The Dutch missionary that had sent Gabriel out requested that he come back and bring these men with him so that he could try to get their story straight.
Once they were speaking to the priest, they changed their story again, claiming that they did not see a snake or a white man that day, just a piece of wood that had looked like a face, and that the whole story about killing the white man had been made up. Gabriel pried again, bribing the men with tobacco. He explained that the Dutch government was looking for a white man that they knew had washed up on shore.
Gabriel tried to coax the information out of them, saying that it was okay if they found the white man washed ashore, dead, as long as they could give Gabriel proof that they had found Michael. The Dutch government would stop looking for him and they could all just forget this ever happened. But the men still did not budge, and they continued to swear that they did not know anything about Michael's disappearance.
One of the men, named Pep, ended up gifting Gabriel his old dagger that he didn't need anymore, since he had a new one made out of human bone. And Gabriel went on his way, back to the Dutch priest, to report what happened during his latest trip. A few days later, these men, as well as some others from a neighboring village, paid another visit to the Dutch missionaries and had a different story to tell.
The men told the priest that on November 17th, a man named Wim van der Waal had been requesting some building materials. This was the same man who had sold Michael the catamaran that he used on his journey before he went missing. And this happened on the same Friday that Michael had set off on his expedition to check on the progress of the canoe that he had commissioned. The next day, Saturday, 50 Asmat men set off in their canoes to deliver the materials to van der Waal.
The following afternoon, on Sunday, they all got back in their canoes to begin the trip back home. The next morning, at around 6 a.m., they took a break at the mouth of the river to have a smoke. Since the Asmat tradition was that the mouth of any river belongs to the village that lives upstream of it, this would have been their territory, and these men believed that they would be safe. Suddenly, someone called out that they saw something in the water. It was a man, a white man,
He appeared to be swimming on his back and, though exhausted, he seemed friendly, turning to wave at them. However, the Asmat men were not feeling so friendly, and one of them allegedly brought up the fact that they were always talking about headhunting white men. This was their chance. They argued over this, with one of their leaders saying that this was a bad idea, but most of the men agreed and wanted to do it.
The men pulled the white man into their canoe and stabbed him with a spear. He was still alive after this, so they brought him ashore where they killed him. The Asmat men described this white man as wearing shorts they had never seen before.
They said the shorts ended up high on his thighs and had no pockets. They were describing men's underwear, which the Asmat men definitely would not have seen before, since they were not even sold in the European store in the most westernized part of Asmat territory.
This gave some validity to the story, but the priest tried to remain calm as they continued to tell the tale. The men said that Michael's head was located back in the village at the home of a man named Finn. One of his femurs had been used to make daggers, one of which was the new dagger that Pep had received, allowing him to gift his old one to Gabriel. Other villagers each claimed his other bones, and they were distributed around the village to be used for various purposes.
There was some disagreement regarding who specifically had claimed Michael's glasses, but they were taken by one of the men in the village. All in all, according to this story, there were about 15 men in this village that had at least one of Michael's body parts, and five of them had been present at the time that Michael was allegedly killed. The men clarified that Michael's death was the direct result of the Dutch raid that occurred four years prior.
One of the Dutch missionaries had offered the Asmat men three steel axes in exchange for Michael's head, as well as two more for his femur, but they declined this offer. Though they didn't deny that they had these things. The plan of the Dutch government at this point was to keep all of this information to themselves and not bring it up to the Rockefellers. If they inquired about it, the Dutch would tell them that it was being investigated.
The Dutch presence in New Guinea wanted to keep up the guise that they had this all under control. If it seemed that they were not able to control the natives, they would no longer get the international support that they wanted to help them stay in New Guinea. So the priests with information were silenced, and the whole situation was swept under the rug. Some of the missionaries felt uncomfortable by the fact that the government was trying to keep this silent, and fought to get justice for Michael.
One of them believed that the best thing to do was tell the Rockefellers himself. He trusted that they would do what they thought was best with the information, but that it was his duty to at least inform them of this information. However, once members of the government caught wind of this plan, he was immediately silenced and strongly encouraged not to move forward with this.
Vandewa was not able to let this go so easily, and in January of 1962, he began spending lots of time in this Asmat village, befriending the tribesmen and spending long hours smoking and chatting. Once he built a rapport with them, he asked about the headhunting rituals that their forefathers had practiced. The men gladly taught him about headhunting, informing him that they had practiced it regularly in the past, but they still did do it occasionally.
A few months into Vanduval's attempt to build trust with this village, he finally mustered up the courage to ask about Michael, promising the men that whatever they told him would stay in the Jehu. In Vanduval's own words, the answer fell right out of their mouths. The men gave Vanduval the entire story, sparing no gory details. Though the exact details did waver from the original when it came to who in particular did what, the basis of the original story still stood.
The men led van der Waal into the jungle, where they dug up a skull and some bones. The skull had a hole in the right temple, which was an indicator that it had been headhunted, before the brains were removed to be eaten. Van der Waal was given the remains, and he called for a Dutch policeman to come pick them up from him. Once the policeman got the skull, it was handed over to a dentist at the Dutch town in New Guinea, before it was sent to the Netherlands.
There is no further record of what happened to the skull after it reached the Netherlands, nor was the policeman ever questioned any further about what he knew. A later inquest into the veracity of these men's stories concluded that, if Michael had been swimming at a rate of half a mile per hour, based on the time and location that he had begun swimming, he would have made it to the mouth of the river at the exact time as the Asmat men who claimed to have found him.
Additionally, further investigation revealed that the men who confessed to headhunting Michael were related to the men who were killed in the Dutch raid years prior. Ultimately, however, there was never any concrete evidence found that would nail down any of these theories. If Michael died in the sea, none of his physical remains had ever been found or washed up ashore. Only the singular gas can.
If he was headhunted, no identifiable piece of him or his belongings have been found either. Additionally, since the skull that was sent to the Netherlands is no longer accounted for, there is no way to scientifically confirm or deny whether this was even his. So Michael Rockefeller's story ends, and his death remains a mystery. Did he live out the rest of his years as a warrior among the Trobriand Islanders? Have his remains sunk to the bottom of the Arafura Sea?
Or, somewhere in Asmat territory, is his skull hanging as a trophy to this day?