41 8 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



local developments in the two continental divisions. In general 

 the southern populations present more violent contrasts than the 

 northern in their social and intellectual developments, so that 

 while the wild tribes touch a lower depth of savagery, some at 

 least of the civilised peoples rise to a higher degree of excellence, 

 if not in letters where the inferiority is manifest certainly in the 

 arts of engineering, architecture, agriculture, and political organi- 

 zation. Thus we need not travel many miles inland from the 

 Isthmus without meeting the Catios, a wild tribe 



The Catios. 



between the Atrato and the Cauca, far more de- 

 graded even than the Seri of Sonora, most debased of all North 

 American hordes. These Catios, a now nearly extinct branch 

 of the Choco stock, were said to dwell like the anthropoid apes, 

 in the branches of trees ; they mostly went naked, and were 

 reported, like the Mangbattus and other Congo negroes, to 

 " fatten their captives for the table." Their Darien neighbours 

 of the Nore valley, who gave an alternative name to the Panama 

 peninsula, were accustomed to steal the women of hostile tribes, 

 cohabit with them, and carefully bring up the children till their four- 

 teenth year, when they were eaten with much rejoicing, the mothers 

 ultimately sharing the same fate 1 ; and the Cocomas of the 

 Marafion " were in the habit of eating their own dead relations, 

 and grinding their bones to drink in their fermented liquor. 

 They said it was better to be inside a friend than to be swallowed 

 up by the cold earth 2 ." In fact of the Colombian aborigines 

 Herrera tells us that " the living are the grave of the dead ; for 

 the husband has been seen to eat his wife, the brother his 

 brother or sister, the son his father ; captives also are eaten 

 roasted 3 ." 



Thus is raised the question of cannibalism in the New World, 

 where at the discovery it was incomparably more prevalent south 

 than north of the equator. Compare the Eskimo and the Fuegians 

 at the two extremes, the former practically exonerated of the 



1 The Travels of P. de Cieza de Leon (Hakluyt Soc. 1864, P- 5 sc l-)- 



2 Sir C. R. Markham, List of Tribes, &c. Jour. Anthrop. Inst. 1895, p. 253. 

 "This idea was widespread, and many Amazonian peoples declared they pre- 

 ferred to be eaten by their friends than by worms." 



3 Quoted by Steinmetz, Endokanmbalismtts, p. 19. 



