Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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He Was An Indian Of
Great Vigour Of Mind And Body.
He spoke Spanish with facility, and
preserved a certain influence over the neighbouring nations.
As he
attended us in all our herborizations, we obtained from his own mouth
information so much the more useful, as the missionaries have great
confidence in his veracity. He assured us that in his youth he had
seen almost all the Indian tribes that inhabit the vast regions
between the Upper Orinoco, the Rio Negro, the Inirida, and the Jupura,
eat human flesh. The Daricavanas, the Puchirinavis, and the
Manitivitanos, appeared to him to be the greatest cannibals among
them. He believes that this abominable practice is with them the
effect of a system of vengeance; they eat only enemies who are made
prisoners in battle. The instances where, by a refinement of cruelty,
the Indian eats his nearest relations, his wife, or an unfaithful
mistress, are extremely rare. The strange custom of the Scythians and
Massagetes, the Capanaguas of the Rio Ucayale, and the ancient
inhabitants of the West Indian Islands, of honouring the dead by
eating a part of their remains, is unknown on the banks of the
Orinoco. In both continents this trait of manners belongs only to
nations that hold in horror the flesh of a prisoner. The Indian of
Hayti (Saint Domingo) would think himself wanting in regard to the
memory of a relation, if he did not throw into his drink a small
portion of the body of the deceased, after having dried it like one of
the mummies of the Guanches, and reduced it to powder.
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