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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The Caribs Of The Continent, Those Who Inhabit
The Plains Between The Lower Orinoco, The Rio Branco, The Essequibo,
And The Sources Of The Oyapoc, Hold In Horror The Practice Of
Devouring Their Enemies.
This barbarous custom,* at the first
discovery of America, existed only among the Caribs of the West
Indies.
(* See Geraldini Itinerarium page 186 and the eloquent tract
of cardinal Bembo on the discoveries of Columbus. "Insularum partem
homines incolebant feri trucesque, qui puerorum et virorum carnibus,
quos aliis in insulus bello aut latrociniis cepissent, vescebantur; a
feminis abstinebant; Canibales appellati." "Some of the islands are
inhabited by a cruel and savage race, called cannibals, who eat the
flesh of men and boys, and captives and slaves of the male sex,
abstaining from that of females." Hist. Venet. 1551. The custom of
sparing the lives of female prisoners confirms what I have previously
said of the language of the women. Does the word cannibal, applied to
the Caribs of the West India Islands, belong to the language of this
archipelago (that of Haiti)? or must we seek for it in an idiom of
Florida, which some traditions indicate as the first country of the
Caribs?) It is they who have rendered the names of cannibals,
Caribbees, and anthropophagi, synonymous; it was their cruelties that
prompted the law promulgated in 1504, by which the Spaniards were
permitted to make a slave of every individual of an American nation
which could be proved to be of Caribbee origin. I believe, however,
that the anthropophagy of the inhabitants of the West India Islands
was much exaggerated by early travellers, whose stories Herrera, a
grave and judicious historian, has not disdained to repeat in his
Decades historicas.
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