[8] Raleigh gives the following graphic description of the wife of an Indian chief whom he met during his voyage to this region:—
“In all my life I haue seldome seene a better fauored woman: She was of good stature, with blacke eies, fat of body, of an excellent countenance, hir haire almost as long as hir selfe, tied vp againe in pretie knots, and it seemed she stood not in that aw of hir husband, as the rest, for she spake and discourst, and dranke among the gentlemen and captaines, and was very pleasant, knowing hir owne comelines, and taking great pride therein. I haue seene a Lady in England so like hir, as but for the difference of colour I would haue sworne might haue beene the same.” Op. cit., p. 66. [↑]
[9] Peter Martyr says of them:—”Edaces humanarum carnium novi helluones anthropophagi, Caribes alias Canibales appellati.”
Notwithstanding all that has been said on the subject since the discovery of America, it is still a moot question with many serious investigators whether the Caribs of Tierra Firme were ever cannibals, as is so generally believed. That the Caribs of certain of the West Indian islands were addicted to anthropophagy there can, it seems, be little doubt. The concurrent testimony of the earlier writers, including Peter Martyr and Cardinal Bembo and others, have apparently placed the matter beyond controversy. It was the cruelties and anthropophagous habits of the Caribs, as reported to Spain, that provoked the law which was promulgated in 1504 in virtue of which every Indian, who could be proved to be of Carib origin, might be enslaved by the Spaniards. This law, however, although designed by its framers to eliminate a practice that was a disgrace to humanity, opened the door to evils almost as great—if not greater in some instances—as those it was expected to suppress. Selfish, soulless colonists had but to circulate the report that certain Indians, whom they coveted for slaves, were cannibals, in order to justify themselves before the law for tearing them from their homes and keeping them in servitude. Thus it happened that, shortly after the promulgation of the law aforesaid, the Caribs of the Mainland, as well as those of the West Indies, were classed as cannibals. They were accordingly hunted like wild beasts, and countless thousands of them—the same innocent, gentle, inoffensive creatures that so strongly appealed to Columbus—were sold into slavery and met with a cruel death in the mines of Española. So successful were the atrocious slave-dealers of the time in fixing the stigma of cannibal on the Indians of the Mainland that Herrera felt authorized to declare that there was in every pueblo of Venezuela a slaughter house in which human flesh could be obtained—en cada Pueblo havia Caneceria publica de carne humana (Dec. VIII, Lib. II, Cap. XIX).
Direct and specific as is this charge, it is quite safe to assert that it is utterly devoid of foundation in fact. The most charitable construction we can put on Herrera’s statements is that he was misled by the false reports of those whose interest it was to have it believed that the Caribs of Venezuela, as well as those of the West Indies, indulged in the horrid practice of devouring their enemies. Humboldt was among the first to raise his voice in defense of the Indians of the Mainland and to assert that it was only the Caribs of the West Indies that had “rendered the names cannibals, Caribbees and anthropophagi, synonymous.” (Personal Narrative, Vol. II, p. 414.)
A recent Venezuelan writer, Tavera-Acosta, declares that it is “an incontrovertible fact that so far the anthropophagy of which they have been accused by their ferocious and ignorant executioners has never been proved” against the Caribs. Their sole crime was that they took arms against their ruthless invaders in defense of their homes, and relying on their numbers and conscious superiority over other tribes endeavored by all possible means to preserve their independence. (Anales de Guayana, p. 320, Ciudad Bolivar, 1905.)
There can be no doubt that the Indians, during the period of the conquest and subsequently, were the victims of gross misrepresentations and had in consequence to endure untold hardships and miseries. Not content with denouncing them as cannibals, their relentless persecutors—Dutch, Germans, English, French and Portuguese, as well as Spaniards—insisted on regarding them as mere animals—like a species of chimpanzee or orang-outang—that had no souls and no rights any one was bound to respect. It required the bull—Sublimis Deus—of Pope Paul III to define the status of the hapless Indians, to make it clear that they are not “dumb brutes created for our service,” but that they “are truly men”; that “they are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property”; that they are not “to be in any way enslaved”; and that “should the contrary happen, it shall be null and of no effect.”
What has been said of the cannibalism of the South American Indian in times past may with even greater truth be iterated of it to-day. In spite of what has been written to the contrary, even by so distinguished an explorer as Rafael Reyes—ex-president of Colombia—it may well be doubted if there is a single tribe in South America that can justly be accused of cannibalism. Some of them, owing to their miserable social condition, or because they have for generations past been the victims of the injustice and cruelty of the whites, may be ferocious and vindictive, but, that even the worst of them are cannibals, is yet to be proved. Compare Oviedo y Baños, op. cit., II, p. 377 et seq., and Across the South American Continent, Exploration of the Brothers Reyes, Paper Read at the Pan-American Conference, by General Rafael Reyes, the Delegate for Colombia, Dec. 30th, 1901, Mexico and Barcelona, 1902. [↑]
[10] Nouveau Voyage aux Isles de l’Amérique, Vol. VI, pp. 127, 128, Paris, 1743. [↑]
[11] “Facilius enim mulieres incorruptam antiquitatem conservant, quod multorum sermonis expertes ea tenent semper, quæ prima didicerunt.”—De Orat., Lib. III, Cap. XII, 45. [↑]