Perhaps the most frightening aspect of the phenomenon was “witika psychosis,” which would grip the victim with the uncontrollable urge to consume human flesh. Since to most Algonquins, as much as to the European, man-eating was taboo, it was with unspeakable terror that sufferers felt themselves being invaded by the witika’s cannibalistic impulses.
Some of the most useful research for this book comes from the monumental Iconography of Manhattan Island, by I. N. Phelps Stokes, which furnishes an intimate description of daily life in New Amsterdam during the seventeenth century. Such details as the botched hanging of an African giant, the discovery of missing human heads in a cow pasture and the exact layout of the settlement’s streets appear there.
Chapter five’s “two-legged cheese worm” quote is from a seventeenth-century pamphlet, Tractaat van het Excellente Kryd Thee, by Cornelis Bontekoe, excerpted in Simon Schama’s excellent account of Dutch culture in the Golden Age, The Embarrassment of Riches. The sermon in chapter nineteen is modified from a text by the Puritan preacher Richard Baxter, “Directions Against Sinful Fear,” in The Practical Works of Richard Baxter. The dialogue exchange between the German “shiv-man” and the Polish sailor in chapter forty-seven is based on a passage in Peter Stuyvesant: The Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam, by John S. C. Abbott.
I’d like to acknowledge my debt to several people for their help and encouragement. Paul Slovak bowled me over with his immediate enthusiastic embrace of this project. Betsy Lerner acted as a superb sounding board, first editor and—most of all—friend. Betty and Steve Zimmerman provided support without which The Orphanmaster could not have been written. Maud Reavill offered her usual winning combination of intelligence, skepticism and ebullience. My husband, Gil Reavill, gave vital input throughout, including a nudge to get me started. “Write me a murder,” Gil said, and I did.
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