CARNE HUMANA
Among the names of the old Spanish land grants are many that hold a suggestion of interesting and sometimes tragic tales, now lost in the dim shadows of the past. Of such is Carne Humana (human flesh), the name of a grant in Napa County, near St. Helena. This spot may have been the scene of one of those horrible acts of cannibalism to which the Indians of the entire Southwest were quite generally addicted. Captain Fages, in his diary of one of the expeditions to San Francisco Bay, mentions that this practice prevailed among the Indians of that region to a certain extent, but seems to have been confined to the eating of the bodies of enemies slain in battle, and only the relatives of the slayer were permitted to take part in the abhorrent feast.