I've always been intrigued by the dichotmy of the Conquistadors who could rally against the the human scarifice and canabilism of the Aztecs and then celebrate Mass atop a Mexican pyramid by eating and drinkng "the body and blood of Christ." In any event being eaten by either animals or Indians seems to have been a bit of an obsession among our 16th C. brethern. For for infortmation on humanity's real and imagined realtionship with cannibalism check out Reay Tannahill's Flesh and Blood: A History of the Cannibal Complex.
“But he [Diego García de Peredes] would not live long to enjoy the honors of victory: in 1563 he was attacked and eaten by alligators as he rested by the bank of a river.”1
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1 Minta, Stephen. Aguirre: The Re-creation of a Sixteenth-Century
Journey Across South America (Henry Holt and Company: New York, 1995)
p.209.
“Alvar Núnez Cabeza de Vaca notes in his Naufragios , chapters fourteen and seventeen. ... certain Castilians who were camped apart died gradually of hunger and that those of them who remained alive devoured the dead until the last one of them had perished, there being none left to eat him.”1
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1Vega, Garcilasco de la. Trans. John and Jeannette Varner.
The
Florida of the Inca. (University of Texas Press, Austin 1988) p.15.
Fortunately, Bernal Diáz has preserved for us the Aztec recipe for Spaniard, in a speech by Hernán Cortés; "...they wished to kill us and eat our flesh, and had already prepared the pots with salt and peppers and tomatoes..."1 Bon appetite!
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1Gold, Glory and the Gospel, by Lois B. Wright (Anthenum,
New York, 1970) p.185.
“One conquistador, Álvaro López, later testified, however, that he saw many pots, pans, and axes being prepared, and that he observed the Indians saying that they were getting ready to cook and eat the Spaniards with garlic.”1
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1 Thomas, Hugh. Conquest: Montezuma, Cortéz,
and the Fall of Old Mexico. (Touchstone: New York, 1993) p.384
Thus the number went on diminishing. The living dried the flesh of those who died. The last to die was Sotomayor. Esquivel, by feeding on the corpse, was able to stay alive until the first of March [1529], when one of the Indians who had fled returned to see if anybody might be alive and took Esquivel with him.1
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1 Covey, Cyclone Trans.&Annot. Cabeza de Vaca’s
Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America (University of New Mexico
Press, Albuquerque: 1993) p.74.
They eat the flesh of their enemies, not as being good for food, but
from custom...They do not eat the whole body of the man taken, but eat
it piece by piece. For fear that he be not tasted, they cut him up in pieces
which they put to dry in the chimney, and every day cut off a piece to
and eat it with their ordinary food to call to mind their enemies.1
In time past [c.1516] these tall men called Canibali, in this river, ate a Spanish captain named Juan de Solis and sixty men who had gone, as we did, to discover land, trusting too much in them.2
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1 Pigafetta, Antonio. Translated and Edited by R.A. Skelton Magellan’s Voyage: A Narrative Account of the First Circumnavigation. (Dover Publications: New York, 1994) pp.43-44
2 Pigafetta. p.46.
...that Topiawari, soon after our departure from the river, fled into
the mountains, carrying Hugh Godwyn with him, and leaving a substitute
in this country, as aforesaid; and that the next news they heard of him
was that he was dead, and the English boy eaten by a tiger.1
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1 Nicholl, Charles. The Creature in the Map: A Journey
to El Dorado (William Morrow and Company, Inc.: New York, 1995) p.254.
Among the crew was a “very proper” young black. This is the first and last we here of him, for “leaping out of a galley, to swim in the mouth of this river, [he] was in all our sights taken and devoured with one of those largartos. 1
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1 Nicholl, Charles. The Creature in the Map:A Journey
to El Dorado. (William Morrow and Company, Inc.: New York 1995. pp.154-155
For great courage was at that time required of a soldier. I must say
that when I saw my comrades dragged up each day to the altar, with their
chests struck open and their palpitating hearts drawn out, and when I saw
the arms and legs of these sixty-two men cut off and eaten, I feared that
one day or another they would do the same to me.1
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1 Díaz, Bernal. The Conquest of New Spain.
Penguin books: New York, 1963. p.407.
It did not take long for the legend of the Caribs to grow and be improved
on, so that when the Spaniards captured four anonymous islanders and discovered
that they ‘had had their virile members cut off’, they deduced that the
Caribs castrated their captives ‘as we do to fatten capons, to improve
their taste’.
The Caribs were believed to deal with the carcasses as coolly as European butcher, ‘guts and limbs eaten, and the rest salted and dried like our hams’.* A further gloss was that the Caribs were not only cannibals but connoisseurs, though their preferences depended largely on the fancy of the chronicler. According to one (a Frenchman), the Caribs thought the French delicious, the English so-so, the Dutch tasteless and the Spaniards so tough as to be virtually inedible.1
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1 Tannahill, Reay. Food in History. (Crown Trade Paperbacks: New York 1988) p. 212.
*Quote from Tannahill, R. Flesh and Blood: A History
of the Cannibal Complex 1975. p. 76.
In the spring of 1511, Gerónimo de Aguilar explained, he had been on a ship under a conquistador named Valdivia, making its way from Darien to Santo Domingo. The ship struck shoals off the Víboras, the Vipers, some islands near Jamaica. Aguilar set off in boat with Valdivia and about twenty others. They were caught in a current which ran fast to the west. After privations they were cast ashore in Yucatan. Half their number were by then dead.
The Mayas captured the survivors, sacrificed Valdivia and four others, and ate their bodies at a fiesta. Aguliar and some others were put into cages to be fattened, as they supposed, for a subsequent banquet. They broke out of the cages and fled...1
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1 Thomas, Hugh. Conquest: Montezuma, Cortéz,
and the Fall of Old Mexico. (Touchstone: New York, 1993) p.163
Deponent says that when the Portuguese [Hernando Simon Fernandez] discovered this port he wished to land on one promontory, but wild Indians ate thirty-eight Englishmen, and he went on to the other promontory, where there is a good port, and found the savages there gentler.1
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1 Quinn, David Beers. ed. The Roanoke Voyages 1584-1590.
Vol. I. (Dover, New York: 1991) p.81.
In the uninhabited country which they passed through as far as Compostela there are numerous, very dangerous rivers, full of large and fierce alligators. While the army was halting at one of the rivers, a soldier who was crossing from one side to the other was seized, in sight of everybody, and carried off by an alligator without it being possible to help him.1
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1 Castañeda, et al. The Journey of Coronado.
(Dover Publications Inc.: New York 1990) pp.71-72.
Along most of the coast of Darien they are accustomed to eat human flesh, though some were afraid to eat the flesh of Spaniards, thinking that even in their bodies it might do them harm. Those they caught alive, in particular the captains, they used to tie up by the hands and feet. They would throw them to the ground and pour molten gold into their mouths saying ‘Eat, eat gold, Christian’, and to further ill-treat and humiliate them, with flint knives cut off an arm, some a shoulder, some a leg, and then roasting the meat on embers they would eat it, dancing and singing. They would hang up the bones in their temples or in chief’s houses, as trophies of victory. 1
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1 Alexander, Michael ed.. Discovering the New World
based on the works of Theodore De Bry. (Harper and Row, New York 1976)
p.137.
Then I told him [the native chief Jeppipo Wasu] that this had happened because he wanted to eat me, so he promised I should not be harmed if he recovered. I went among them laying my hands on their heads, but they began to die; first one of the children, then the chief’s old mother, then more of his family. The chief begged me to tell my God to withdraw his wrath. I told him that he would recover his health if he gave up all thoughts of killing me. He ordered all those in his huts to stop mocking me and threatening to eat me. He finally recovered as did one of his wives who had been stricken, but eight of his friends died, as well as others who had treated me with great cruelty.
Another chief dreamed about me, which greatly terrified him. Having called me to his huts and given me food he told me how one of his expeditions he had captured a Portuguese whom he had killed, after which he had eaten so much of him that his stomach had ever since been delicate, and he vowed he would never eat a Portuguese again. Now that he had dreamed of me was afraid he was about to die. I told him not to worry, but he must never again eat human flesh.
Several of the old women also said, ‘We have eaten several Portuguese, but their God was not as angry as yours. By this we now see that you cannot be a Portuguese.’ And so they left me alone for a while not knowing whether I was a Portuguese or a Frenchman. They said I had a red beard like a Frenchman, while most Portuguese had black beards.1
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1 Alexander, Michael ed.. Discovering the New World
based on the works of Theodore De Bry. (Harper and Row, New York 1976)
p.115.
c.1562.
Ribault left behind a small force of twenty-eight or so men to garrison the fort while he returned to France for reinforcements. During the winter, the men left at Charlesfort ran short of food and were close to starving. They mutinied, built a small boat, and set sail for France...On the open sea, suffering terribly from hunger or thirst, some of the men resorted to cannibalism, if death did not claim them first. Finally the survivors were rescued at sea by an English ship, and they were returned to France in 1563.1
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1 Hudson, Charles. The Juan Pardo Expeditions: Exploration
of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1562-1569. (Smithsonian Institution
Press, Washington: 1990) p.14.
A Mexican was supposed to have said: “If we had not been frightened by Mary and St. James, your palace would have by this time have been destroyed, and yourselves cooked, though you would not have been eaten; for we tried your flesh the other day and it tasted bitter, so we would have thrown your carcasses to the eagles, lions tigers and snakes, who would have eaten you for us.”1
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1 Thomas, Hugh. Conquest: Montezuma, Cortéz,
and the Fall of Old Mexico. (Touchstone: New York, 1993) p.391.
The following evening we reached their village, some thirty leagues from Brikioka. It consisted of seven huts and was called Uwattibi. Their women were in a mandioca plantation and I was made to call: ‘A Junesche been ermi vramme’ or ‘I your food, have come.’
When we landed they all ran from their huts to look at me, then the warriors entered the huts leaving me to the women who danced around me singing the songs they sing to their own people when they are about to eat them. Next they brought me into their fort and the women struck me with their fists and plucked at my beard crying ‘Sche innamme pepicke a e’ or ‘by this blow I avenge my friend, who those you have been among have killed.’ Meanwhile the men were in a hut drinking praises to their gods for having prophesied my capture.
I thought I was to be killed and eaten then, but my captors had presented me as an act of friendship to their father’s brother, Ipperu Wasu, who was to keep me until I was ready to be eaten. He would then kill me and so gain a new name for himself.
Then my captors led me to an aprasse or dancing. Several of the women led me along by the arms and several by the ropes that were tied around my neck, so roughly that I could barely breathe. I consoled myself with thoughts of the sufferings of Our Lord Jesus Christ at the hands of the vile Jews. Then they brought me to their chief, who was called Vratinge Wasu, or Great White Bird. They sat me down on some newly dug earth before his huts and I looked round for the Iwara Pemme, which they use to club men, and asked if they were going to kill me. They answered ‘Not Yet’ and a woman came towards me from the crowd holding a fragment of crystal, set in a thing like a bent ring, with which she shaved off my eyebrows. She would also have cut off my beard but this I would not suffer and said that I would die with my beard. Then they answered that they were not yet ready to kill me, and left me my beard. But later they cut it off with scissors the French had given them.
Then they led me to the huts where they kept their idols, Tammeraka. They made a circle round me and tied objects which rattled to my legs. At my neck they fastened a square of tail-feathers so that they rose above my head; this they call Arasoya. Then the women began to sing and I had to keep time with my leg rattle through my leg wound was now so painful that I could hardly stand upright.
When the dance was ended I was handed to Ipperu Wasu. The people told me their idols had prophesied they would capture a Portuguese but I told them I was a friend and ally of the French and came from Allemlanien. The French were their friends and came very year bringing knives, axes, mirrors, combs and scissors in exchange for Brazil wood, cotton, feathers and pepper. But the Portuguese had many times captured them and handed them to their enemies to be eaten. Eventually a young Frenchman whom they called Karwattuware came and I was brought to him. When he addressed me in French I was unable to reply and he told the savages ‘Kill him and eat him, the worthless one, for he is indeed a Portuguse, your enemy and mine.’ I begged him for mercy but he was adamant. And so the savages resolved to prepare for the day of my killing. Meanwhile they kept me in close confinement, mocking me continuously, both young and old.
Troubles, men say, never come singly. At that time one of my teeth began to ache so violently that because of the pain I could not eat and I began to lose flesh. My master discovered why I ate so little and came with an instrument made of wood and wanted to pull out the tooth. I told him that it no longer troubled me. Nevertheless he tried to draw it out by force, but I resisted so vigorously that he desisted. Then he said that if I did not eat and grow fat again he would kill me before the appointed day. God knows how much I wanted to die ion peace if it was his will, before the savages could have their way with me.1
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1 Alexander, Michael ed.. Discovering the New World
based on the works of Theodore De Bry. (Harper and Row, New York 1976)
pp.102-103.
“All the same, if you do not free Montezuma soon, you will be properly killed and then cooked with chocolate.”1
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1 Thomas, Hugh. Conquest: Montezuma, Cortéz, and
the Fall of Old Mexico. (Touchstone: New York, 1993) p.391.
“Since we are friends,” the Cacique continued in his reasoning, “The Governor will come out carelessly. Therefore, I shall command a dozen strong and spirited Indians to go near him, so that when he approaches my squadron, these men can carry him off bodily, whether he be mounted or on foot, and then attack him in the midst of the Indians. At the same time my warriors will hurl themselves against the rest of the Spaniards, who being unprepared and upset at the seizure of their Captain, will be very easily taken and killed. On those who are captured, I plan to inflict all the modes of execution I have threaten them with in order that they may see that my warnings were sincere and not the foolishness and mad ravings they judged them to be and laughed as such. Some I shall roast alive, some I shall boil. I shall bury some alive with just their heads remaining above ground, and the others I shall poison with a mild poison so that they well be able to see themselves in a state of decomposition and decay. Still others I shall hang by the feet on the highest trees to provide food for the birds. There will be no manner of cruel death that I shall not carry out upon these people.”1
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1 Vega, Garcilasco de la. Trans. John and Jeannette Varner.
The Florida of the Inca. (University of Texas Press, Austin 1988) p.140.
“These wretches,” writes Cieza, “they [ three Spaniards] went [ashore]
without suspecting anything, and they cried out as the Indians with great
cruelty removed their eyes...then the barbaians hacked off their penises
and, having kettles put over great fires, they put them inside and finished
them off, killing them in great torment.”1
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1 Duncan, David Ewing. Hernando de Soto: A Savage in Quest
of the Americas. (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 1996) p.123.
This fish is very vicious in the sea so that when a sailor throws himself
in the water for some reason this fish turns on his back and tears out
a leg or an arm and eats it.
Kraemer, Ruth S. Trans.Historire Naturelle des Indes:
The Drake Manuscript in the Pierpoint Morgan Library. (Andre Deutsch
Limited: London 1996) p.258.
And one of my men, I do not know which, told them that they would die
of hunger, for we would not let them escape in search of food. They replied
that they were not short of food, and that when they were they would eat
us and the Tascaltecans.1
1 Cortes, Hernan. Translated and edited by Anthony Pagden.
Letters
from Mexico. (Yale University Press: New Haven and London 1986) p.188.
Corzula [1559] painted a gruesome picture of ‘the Indians of
Florida.” The natives’ record record of cruelty indicated, he says, that
castaways on this hostile shore would never be safe until the natives were
conquered. “Each day there are shipwrecks there; ships run aground; they
are becalmed; and the people are killed by the Indians and eaten.” He cites
examples...
Arnold III, J. Barto and Robert Weddle. The Nautical
Archeology of Padre Island: The Spanish Shipwrecks of 1554. (Academic
Press, New York 1978) p.38.
A
woodcut illustration from the 1509 edition of Amerigo Vespucci’s La Lettera,
Lettera delle isole novamente trovate or Four Voyages. The Mariner was
cut up and roasted, according to Vespucci’s text.
Found in:
Milanich, Jerald T. and Susan Milbrath, editors. First
Encounters: Spanish Exploration in the Caribbean and the United States,
1492-1570 (University of Florida Press, Gainesville 1991) p. 190.
Blood is thicker than water--and tastier too!
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