Unlike the better-known tribes of Guiana, most, if not all, of the Indians of the upper rivers are indisputably cannibals, especially the Boro, Andoke, and Resigero groups. It has even been asserted by some writers that sundry tribes belong to the lowest grade of cannibals in that they will “eat their own dead children, friends and relatives.”[150] This, however, is incorrect, and why it must be so is very obvious when the main causation of extra-tribal cannibalism is understood.
There are three reasons why these Indians are anthropophagous.
In the first place, and it is not only the first but the most general and important, anthropophagy is looked upon as a system of vengeance, a method of inflicting the supreme insult upon an enemy.[151] It will be seen that the Indian has very definite opinions as to the inferiority of the brute creation. To resemble animals in any way is a matter to be avoided at all costs. Body hair is an animal characteristic, so man must depilate. The birth of twins is a disgrace because it is a descent to bestial levels. What a crowning disgrace then must it be for the dead to share no better fate than that of slaughtered animals. No more absolute vengeance on the dead could be devised. The primary cause therefore is insult.
Secondly, there is a desire to make use of what would otherwise be waste material. Animal food is scarce in the forest. But these tribes do not, as has been asserted of the Cobeu and Arekaine,[152] make war simply with a view to obtaining provision of human flesh. Anthropophagy is the effect, not the cause, of war. But then there remains the fact that meat is hard to come by, and is continually required. The slain and the prisoners provide meat, and at the same time the degradation, the ignominy of supplying the place of beasts makes vengeance most definite.
PLATE XXXII.
WITOTO WAR GATHERING (Some Brummagen Goods)
Finally, and in a still more subsidiary degree, there is the reason most commonly advanced, the supposition that there exists a measure of belief in the assumption of the characteristics of the eaten by the eater; a belief that must give sardonic impulse to the primary reason of all, the desire to degrade the dead. Though this third reason has least weight of any with the Indian, it cannot be entirely absent when the food tabu connected with childbirth is remembered. But I know of no such actually admitted reasons as give rise to anthropophagous feasts elsewhere, as among the Aro, who are said to eat human sacrifices because “those who ate their flesh ate gods, and thus assimilated something of the divine attributes and power.”[153]
The subsidiary reason, that of necessary anthropophagy, has been advanced by some apologists,[154] and with a certain amount of truth. But this reason may be looked upon as very secondary, in my opinion, though, were the food-quest of little importance, there might be less cannibalism. The Indian would, in fact, only eat human flesh ceremonially, as a ritual insult.
From all this it follows that intra-tribal cannibalism would be a criminal outrage by the tribe on itself, and therefore it could never occur that a member of the tribe was eaten, nor would his teeth be extracted even to show an accomplished revenge. This disposes of any such thing as the eating of dead relatives as a sign of respect. These and similar statements are due to misapprehension of facts by the writer, or a too hasty judgment on the part of the explorer.