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Cannibalism in the Americas

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A scene depicting ritualistic Aztec cannibalism being practiced in the Codex Magliabechiano, folio 73r.

Cannibalism in the Americas has been practiced in many places throughout much of the history of North America and South America. The modern term "cannibal" is derived from the name of the Island Caribs (Kalinago), who were encountered by Christopher Columbus in the Bahamas. Numerous cultures in the Americas were reported by European explorers and colonizers to have engaged in cannibalism, however these claims are not always reliable since the Spanish used them as part of their justifications for conquest.[1]

At least some cultures have been physically and archeologically proven beyond any doubt whatsoever to have undertaken institutionalized cannibalism. This includes human bones uncovered in a cave hamlet confirming accounts of the Xiximes undertaking ritualized raids as part of their agricultural cycle after every harvest. Also proven are the Aztec ritual ceremonies during the Spanish conquest at Tecoaque. The Anasazi in the 12th century have also been demonstrated to have undertaken cannibalism, possibly due to a drought, as shown by proteins from human flesh found in recovered feces.

There is near universal agreement that some Mesoamericans practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism, but there is no scholarly consensus as to its extent. Anthropologist Marvin Harris, author of Cannibals and Kings, has suggested that the flesh of the victims was a part of an aristocratic diet as a reward, since the Aztec diet was lacking in proteins. According to Harris, the Aztec economy would not support feeding slaves (the captured in war) and the columns of prisoners were "marching meat."[2] Conversely, Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano has proposed that Aztec cannibalism coincided with times of harvest and should be thought of as more of a Thanksgiving. Montellano rejects the theories of Harner and Harris, saying that with evidence of so many tributes and intensive chinampa agriculture, the Aztecs did not need any other food sources.[3] William Arens' 1979 book The Man-Eating Myth claimed that "there is no firm, substantiable evidence for the socially accepted practice of cannibalism anywhere in the world, at any time in history", but his views have been largely rejected as irreconcilable with the actual evidence.[4][5]

In later times, cannibalism has occasionally been practiced as a last resort by people suffering from famine. Well-known examples include the ill-fated Donner Party (1846–1847) and the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 (1972), after which the survivors ate the bodies of the dead. Additionally, there are cases of people engaging in cannibalism for sexual pleasure, such as Albert Fish and Jeffrey Dahmer.

Aztecs

Aztecs sacrificing a victim and bleeding their tongue and ears

There is universal agreement that some Mesoamerican people practiced human sacrifice followed by cannibalism, but there is a lack of scholarly consensus as to how widespread the latter practice was. At one extreme, the anthropologist Marvin Harris, author of Cannibals and Kings, has suggested that the flesh of the victims was a part of an aristocratic diet as a reward, since the Aztec diet was lacking in proteins. While most historians of the pre-Columbian era accept that there was ritual cannibalism related to human sacrifices, they often reject suggestions that human flesh could have been a significant portion of the Aztec diet.[6][3] Cannibalism was also associated with acts of warfare, and has been interpreted as an element of blood revenge in war.[7]

The Mexica of the Aztec period are perhaps the most widely studied of the ancient Mesoamerican peoples. While most pre-Columbian historians believe that ritual cannibalism took place in the context of human sacrifices, they do not support Harris' thesis that human flesh was ever a significant portion of the Aztec diet. Michael D. Coe states that while "it is incontrovertible that some of these victims ended up by being eaten ritually […], the practice was more like a form of communion than a cannibal feast".[8]

Documentation of Aztec cannibalism mainly dates from the period after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519-1521). For instance, a convoy ordered by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar was cannibalized by the Aztecs in Zultépec-Tecoaque in 1520. In the Nahuatl language, the name "Tecoaque" translates into "the place where they ate them." Over the span of eight months, the convoy was ritually sacrificed and their heads put up on skull racks. Both men and women were sacrificed, including pregnant women. At least one 3-or-4 year old child was also sacrificed during the ritual, and the town's population swelled to 5,000 as people arrived for the ceremonies. In 1521, Hernán Cortés and his forces arrived and in an act of revenge massacred the town's inhabitants, who were mostly women and children.[9]

Conversely, in his widely criticized book, The Man-Eating Myth, Arens writes, "The gradual transformation of what little evidence is available for Aztec cannibalism is also an indication of the continual need to legitimize the Conquest".[10] The following claims could have been exaggerated.

  • Hernán Cortés wrote in one of his letters that a Spaniard saw an Indian ... eating a piece of flesh taken from the body of an Indian who had been killed.[11]
  • The Historia general (compiled 1540–1585) by Bernardino de Sahagún (the first Mesoamerican ethnographer, according to Miguel León-Portilla) contains an illustration of an Aztec being cooked by an unknown tribe. This was reported as one of the dangers that Aztec traders faced.
  • In his book Relación (1582), Juan Bautista de Pomar (c. 1535 – 1590) states that after the sacrifice the body of the victim was given to the warrior responsible for the capture. He would boil the body and cut it to pieces to be offered as gifts to important people in exchange for presents and slaves. It was rarely eaten, since they considered it of no value. Bernal Díaz reports that some of these parts of human flesh made their way to the Tlatelolco market near Tenochtitlan.
  • In 2012 The National Institute for Anthropology and History (INAH) reported that they have discovered around 60 skeletons under subway lines in Mexico City, 50 children, and 10 adults, dating back 500 years. The skeletons appear to have cut marks on the bones that indicated human sacrifice, but does not indicate that cannibalism had occurred.[12][13]

Bernal Díaz's account

Title page of the original 1632 edition of Bernal Díaz's True History

Bernal Díaz's True History of the Conquest of New Spain (written by 1568, published 1632) contains several accounts of cannibalism among the people the conquistadors encountered during their warring expedition to Tenochtitlan.

  • About the city of Cholula, Díaz wrote of his shock at seeing young men in cages ready to be sacrificed and eaten.[14]
  • In the same work, Diaz mentions that the Cholulan and Aztec warriors were so confident of victory against the conquistadors in an upcoming battle the following day, that "they wished to kill us and eat our flesh, and had already prepared the pots with salt and peppers and tomatoes."[15]
  • About the Quetzalcoatl temple of Tenochtitlan Díaz wrote that inside there were large pots, where human flesh of sacrificed Natives was boiled and cooked to feed the priests.[16]
  • About the Mesoamerican towns in general Díaz wrote that some of the indigenous people he saw were "eating human meat, just like we take cows from the butcher's shops, and they have in all towns thick wooden jail-houses, like cages, and in them they put many Indian men, women and boys to fatten, and being fattened they sacrificed and ate them."[17]

Díaz's testimony is corroborated by other Spanish historians who wrote about the conquest. In History of Tlaxcala (written by 1585), Diego Muñoz Camargo (c. 1529–1599) states that: "Thus there were public butcher's shops of human flesh, as if it were of cow or sheep."[18]

Controversy

Accounts of the Aztec Empire as a "Cannibal Kingdom", Marvin Harris's expression, have been commonplace from Bernal Díaz to Harris, William H. Prescott and Michael Harner. Harner has accused his colleagues, especially those in Mexico, of downplaying the evidence of Aztec cannibalism. Ortiz de Montellano argues that the Aztec diet was balanced and that the dietary contribution of cannibalism would not have been very effective as a reward.[3]

Among the Xiximes

As recently as 2008, Mexico's National Institute of Archaeology and History (INAH) derided as a "myth" historical accounts by Jesuit missionaries reporting ritual cannibalism among the Xiximes people of northern Mexico.[19] But in 2011, archaeologist José Luis Punzo, director of INAH, reported evidence confirming that the Xiximes did indeed practice cannibalism. Remains of more than three dozen bones were uncovered inside a cave hamlet that show distinct signs of butchering and defleshing, confirming contemporary European accounts of the Ximimes. Typically lone men from other tribes would be targeted, and their bodies broken apart at the joints and then cooked. The meat was then mixed with beans and corn into a soup. Tribes of the Xiximes practiced cannibalism in the belief that eating the souls of their enemies and hanging their bones from trees would bring about good crop yields next year, and thus conducted cannibalistic raids as part of their agricultural cycle after every harvest.[20]

Caribbean

The first known depiction of cannibalism in the New World. Germany, c. 1505, People of the Islands Recently Discovered.... Woodcut by Johann Froschauer for an edition of Amerigo Vespucci's Mundus Novus.

European explorers and colonizers brought home many stories of cannibalism practiced by the native peoples they encountered. In Spain's overseas expansion to the New World, the practice of cannibalism was reported by Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean islands, and the Caribs were greatly feared because of their supposed practice of it. Queen Isabel of Castile had forbidden the Spaniards to enslave the indigenous, unless they were "guilty" of cannibalism.[21] Despite this, some writers of the first accounts of alleged Carib cannibalism were unconcerned about cannibalism or even wrote positively of the people. The credibility of the Caribs' long-standing reputation as eaters of human flesh is further supported by their legends, which were recorded in the 17th century.[22]

The accusation of cannibalism quickly became a pretext for attacks on indigenous groups and justification for the Spanish conquest.[23] In Yucatán, shipwrecked Spaniard Jerónimo de Aguilar, who later became a translator for Hernán Cortés, reported to have witnessed fellow Spaniards sacrificed and eaten, but escaped from captivity where he was being fattened for sacrifice himself.[24] The Florentine Codex (1576), compiled by Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún from information provided by indigenous eyewitnesses, includes evidence of Mexica (Aztec) cannibalism. Franciscan friar Diego de Landa reported on further Yucatán instances.[25]

Brazil

Tapuia woman holding a severed human hand and showing a human leg in her basket. By the Dutch painter Albert Eckhout, Brazil, 1641.
Woodcut showing 12 people holding various human body parts carousing around an open bonfire where human body parts, suspended on a sling, are cooking.
Cannibalism in Brazil. Engraving by Theodor de Bry for Hans Staden's account of his 1557 captivity.

In early Brazil, there was the occurrence of cannibalism among the Tupinamba.[26] An analysis by Anne B. McGinness argues that the way different Christian missionaries reacted to cannibalism influenced the success or failure of their attempts to convert the Tupinamba to Christianity. Missionaries sometimes received threats of cannibalism, including from Tupinamba women, but some missionaries continued their conversion attempts.[27]

Human placentophagy is also recorded from the natives of the captaincy of Sergipe in Brazil: "They eat human flesh when they can get it, and if a woman miscarries devour the abortive immediately. If she goes her time out, she herself cuts the navel-string with a shell, which she boils along with the secondine [i.e. placenta], and eats them both."[28][full citation needed]

Indigenous Canadians and Native Americans

The 1913 Handbook of Indians of Canada (reprinting 1907 material from the Bureau of American Ethnology) ascribed former cannibal practices to dozens of North American Indigenous groups.[29] The forms of cannibalism described included both resorting to human flesh during famines and ritual cannibalism, the latter often consisting of eating just a small portion of an enemy warrior. From another source, according to Hans Egede, when the Inuit killed a woman accused of witchcraft, they ate a portion of her heart.[30]

As with most lurid tales of native cannibalism, these stories are treated with a great deal of scrutiny, as accusations of cannibalism could be used as justifications for the subjugation or destruction of "savages".[31] The historian Patrick Brantlinger suggests that Indigenous peoples that were colonized were being dehumanized as part of the justification for the atrocities.[32]

Human bones dated to the 12th century found at around 40 sites throughout the American Southwest possess clear markings of having been butchered and cooked. The defleshing and dismemberment of some bodies is the same as animals used for food. The episodes were undertaken at Anasazi sites and may have been caused by a drought. At one settlement human feces have been found containing the proteins of human flesh, conclusively showing the occurrence of cannibalism.[33][34]

Among settlers and explorers

There is archaeological and written evidence for English settlers' cannibalism in 1609 in the Jamestown Colony under famine conditions, during a period which became known as Starving Time.[35][36][37]

Travelers through sparsely inhabited regions and explorers of unknown areas sometimes ate human flesh after running out of other provisions. In a famous example from the 1840s, the members of Donner Party found themselves stranded by snow in the Donner Pass, a high mountain pass in California, without adequate supplies during the Mexican–American War, leading to several instances of cannibalism, including the murder of two young Native American men for food.[38][39] Sir John Franklin's lost polar expedition, which took place at approximately the same time, is another example of cannibalism out of desperation.[40]

Boone Helm acquired the nickname "Kentucky Cannibal" for eating several other travelers

In frontier situations where there was no strong authority, some individuals got used to killing and eating others even in situations where other food would have been available. One notorious case was the mountain man Boone Helm, who become known as the "Kentucky Cannibal" for eating several of his fellow travelers, from 1850 until his eventual hanging in 1864.

See also: Boone Helm § Serial murder and cannibalism

20th century to present

When Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed on a glacier in the Andes on October 13, 1972, the survivors resorted to eating the deceased during their 72 days in the mountains. Their experiences and memories became the source of several books and films. Survivor Roberto Canessa described how they "agonized" for days in the knowledge that "the bodies of our friends and team-mates, preserved outside in the snow and ice, contained vital, life-giving protein that could help us survive. But could we do it?" Ultimately he and the other 15 people who were rescued months later decided they could, realizing there was no other way to face off starvation.[41]

In 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was arrested after one of his intended victims managed to escape. Found in Dahmer's apartment were two human hearts, an entire torso, a bag full of human organs from his victims, and a portion of arm muscle. He stated that he planned to consume all of the body parts over the next few weeks.[42]

See also: Category:American cannibals

See also

References

  1. ^ Specktor, Brandon (January 13, 2020). "Columbus' Claims of Cannibal Raids May Have Been True After All". livescience.com. Retrieved March 4, 2024.
  2. ^ Harris 1991.
  3. ^ a b c Ortiz de Montellano 1978.
  4. ^ Lévi-Strauss, Claude (2016). We Are All Cannibals, and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 87.
  5. ^ Lindenbaum, Shirley (2004). "Thinking about Cannibalism". Annual Review of Anthropology. 33: 475–476, 491. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.33.070203.143758. S2CID 145087449.
  6. ^ "Opinion: To Aztecs, Cannibalism Was a Status Symbol". The New York Times. January 6, 1987.
  7. ^ Petrinovich 2000, p. 126.
  8. ^ Coe, Michael D.; Koontz, Rex (January 1, 2008). Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 9780500287552.
  9. ^ Gershon, Livia (January 21, 2021). "After Aztecs Cannibalized Spanish Convoy, Conquistadors Retaliated by Killing Innocents". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved March 3, 2024.
  10. ^ Arens 1980.
  11. ^ Letters of Cortés, trans. Francis A. MacNutt (New York: 1908), 1:256–257, 2:244.
  12. ^ "Under Mexico City – Archaeology Magazine". www.archaeology.org. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
  13. ^ "Mexico City Subway Dig Yields Aztec Remains and Artifacts – History in the Headlines". HISTORY.com. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
  14. ^ Díaz del Castillo 1992, p. 150.
  15. ^ Díaz del Castillo 1992, p. 178.
  16. ^ Díaz del Castillo 1992, p. 176.
  17. ^ Díaz del Castillo 1992, p. 579. In the original Spanish: "[...] comer carne humana, así como nosotros traemos vaca de las carnicerías, y tenían en todos los pueblos cárceles de madera gruesa hechas a manera de casas, como jaulas, y en ellas metían a engordar muchas indias e indios y muchachos, y estando gordos los sacrificaban y comían."
  18. ^ Excerpt translated from Muñoz Camargo 1947, p. 153. In the original Spanish: "Ansí había carnicerías públicas de carne humana, como si fueran de vaca y carnero como en día de hoy las hay".
  19. ^ "Sinaloa Xixime people's Cannibalism, A Myth". Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. June 9, 2008. Retrieved September 28, 2017. Sinaloa INAH Center archaeologist Alfonso Grave Tirado declared that Spaniard chroniclers' appreciations reflected fear inspired by Xixime, and not a historical reality.
  20. ^ Valle, Sabrina (October 1, 2011). "Cannibalism Confirmed Among Ancient Mexican Group". National Geographic. The National Geographic Society. Archived from the original on October 1, 2011. Retrieved September 28, 2017. The newfound bones prove that cannibalism, 'was a crucial aspect of their worldview, their identity,' said José Luis Punzo, an archaeologist behind the new research.
  21. ^ Rebecca Earle, The Body of the Conquistador: Food, Race, and the Colonial Experience in Spanish America, 1492–1700. New York: Cambridge University Press 2012, p. 123.
  22. ^ Myers, Rovert A. (1984). "Island Carib Cannibalism". Nieuwe West-Indische Gids / New West Indian Guide. 58 (3/4): 147–184. ISSN 0028-9930. JSTOR 41849170.
  23. ^ Dow, James. "Cannibalism". Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture. 1: 535–37.
  24. ^ Kay A. Read, "Cannibalism" in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerica, New York: Oxford University Press 2001, vol. 1 p. 138.
  25. ^ De Landa, Diego (1978). Yucatán before and after the Conquest. Dover. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-486-23622-3.
  26. ^ *Métraux, Alfred (1949). "Warfare, Cannibalism, and Human Trophies". Handbook of South American Indians. 5: 383–409.
  27. ^ McGinness, Anne B. (2010). "Christianity and Cannibalism: Three European Views of the Tupi in the Spiritual Conquest of Brazil, 1557–1563". World History Connected. 7 (3).
  28. ^ E. Bowen, 1747: 532
  29. ^ "Cannibalism", James White, ed., Handbook of Indians of Canada, published as an appendix to the Tenth Report of the Geographic Board of Canada, Ottawa, 1913, pp. 77–78.
  30. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Cannibalism" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 5 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 184–185.
  31. ^ Stannard, D. E. (1992). American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 197.
  32. ^ Brantlinger, Patrick (2003). Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930. Cornell University Press. pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-0-8014-8876-4.
  33. ^ Maugh, Thomas (September 7, 2000). "Conclusive evidence of American Indian cannibalism found | The Seattle Times". archive.seattletimes.com. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
  34. ^ Walker, Amélie (March 2, 2024). "Anasazi Cannibalism? – Archaeology Magazine Archive". archive.archaeology.org.
  35. ^ Stromberg, Joseph (April 30, 2013). "Starving Settlers in Jamestown Colony Resorted to Cannibalism". Smithsonian.
  36. ^ "Skull Proves Settlers Resorted to Cannibalism". ABC News. May 2, 2013. Archived from the original on May 2, 2013. Retrieved May 2, 2013.
  37. ^ Kelso, William M. (2017). Jamestown: The Truth Revealed. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0-8139-3993-3. OCLC 964303596.
  38. ^ Johnson, Kristin, ed. (1996). Unfortunate Emigrants: Narratives of the Donner Party. Logan: Utah State University Press. pp. 62, 130, and passim. ISBN 0-87421-204-9.
  39. ^ Korn, Radice & Hawes 2001, pp. 129–130.
  40. ^ Keenleyside, Anne (1997). "The Final Days of the Franklin Expedition: New Skeletal Evidence" (PDF). Arctic. 50 (1): 36. doi:10.14430/arctic1089. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022. Retrieved January 26, 2008.
  41. ^ Bever, Lindsey (February 25, 2016). "Cannibalism: Survivor of the 1972 Andes plane crash describes the 'terrible' decision he had to make to stay alive". The Independent. Archived from the original on November 23, 2017.
  42. ^ Masters, Brain (1993). The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-0-340-59194-9.

Bibliography

Further reading

  • Abler, Thomas S (1980). "Iroquois Cannibalism: Fact not Fiction". Ethnohistory. 27 (4): 309–316. doi:10.2307/481728. JSTOR 481728.
  • Berdan, Frances F. The Aztecs of Central Mexico: An Imperial Society. New York 1982.
  • Dole, Gertrude E (1962). "Endocannibalism among the Amahuaca Indians". Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences. 24 (2): 567–573. doi:10.1111/j.2164-0947.1962.tb01432.x.
  • Forsyth, Donald W (1983). "The Beginnings of Brazilian Anthropology: Jesuits and Tupinamba Cannibalism". Journal of Anthropological Research. 39 (2): 147–178. doi:10.1086/jar.39.2.3629965. S2CID 163258535.
  • Harner, Michael (1977). "The Ecological Basis for Aztec Sacrifice". American Ethnologist. 4: 117–135. doi:10.1525/ae.1977.4.1.02a00070.
  • Jáuregui, Carlos. Canibalia: Canibalismo, calibanismo, antropofagía cultural y consumo en América Latina. Madrid: Vervuert 2008.
  • Lestringant, Frank. Cannibals: The Discovery and Representation of the Cannibal from Columbus to Jules Verne. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1997.
  • Ortiz de Montellano, Bernard R. Aztec Medicine, Health, and Nutrition. New Brunswick 1990.
  • Read, Kay A. Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos. Bloomington 1998.
  • Whitehead, Neil L. (1984). "Carib Cannibalism, the Historical Evidence". Journal de la Société des Américanistes. 70: 69–98. doi:10.3406/jsa.1984.2239.
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