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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We Had A
Fugitive Indian From The Guaisia In Our Canoe, Who Had Become
Sufficiently Civilized In A Few Weeks To Be Useful To Us In Placing
The Instruments Necessary For Our Observations At Night.
He was no
less mild than intelligent, and we had some desire of taking him into
our service.
What was our horror when, talking to him by means of an
interpreter, we learned, that the flesh of the marimonde monkeys,
though blacker, appeared to him to have the taste of human flesh. He
told us that his relations (that is, the people of his tribe)
preferred the inside of the hands in man, as in bears. This assertion
was accompanied with gestures of savage gratification. We inquired of
this young man, so calm and so affectionate in the little services
which he rendered us, whether he still felt sometimes a desire to eat
of a Cheruvichahena. He answered, without discomposure, that, living
in the mission, he would only eat what he saw was eaten by the Padres.
Reproaches addressed to the natives on the abominable practice which
we here discuss, produce no effect; it is as if a Brahmin, travelling
in Europe, were to reproach us with the habit of feeding on the flesh
of animals. In the eyes of the Indian of the Guaisia, the
Cheruvichahena was a being entirely different from himself; and one
whom he thought it was no more unjust to kill than the jaguars of the
forest. It was merely from a sense of propriety that, whilst he
remained in the mission, he would only eat the same food as the
Fathers.
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