XL] THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 419 



charge, and in distress sparing wives and children, and eating 

 their dogs ; the latter sparing their dogs because useful for catching 

 otters, and smoking and eating their old women because useless 

 for further purposes 1 . In the north the taste for human flesh had 

 declined, and the practice survived only as a ceremonial rite, 

 chiefly amongst the British Columbians and the Aztecs, except 

 of course in case of famine, when even the highest races are 

 capable of devouring their fellows. But in the south cannibalism 

 in some of its most repulsive forms was common enough almost 

 everywhere. Killing and eating feeble and aged members of the 

 tribe in kindness is still general ; but the Mayorunas of the Upper 

 Amazon waters do not wait till they have grown lean with years 

 or wasted with disease 2 ; and it was a baptized member of the 

 same tribe who complained on his death-bed that he would not 

 now provide a meal for his Christian friends, but must be devoured 

 by worms 3 . But the lowest depths of the horrible are perhaps 

 reached by what J. Nieuwhof relates of the Tapuyas, a wide- 

 spread family which includes the Botocudos, and is the same 

 as that to which Von Martius has given the collective name 

 of Ges 4 . 



In the southern continent the social conditions illustrated by 

 these practices prevailed everywhere, except on the 

 elevated plateaux of the western Cordilleras, which z j n ^ e Cu 

 for many ages before the discovery had been the 

 seats of several successive cultures, in some respects rivalling, 

 but in others much inferior to those of Central America. When 

 the Conquistadores reached this part of the New World, to which 



1 C. Darwin, Journal of Researches, 1889, p. 155. Thanks to their 

 frequent contact with Europeans .since the expeditions of Fitzroy and Darwin, 

 the Fuegians have given up the practice, hence the doubts or denials of 

 Brydges, Hyades, and other later observers 



2 V. Martius, Zur Ethnographic Brasiliens, 1867, p. 430. 



3 Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Ethics, 1892, I. p. 330. 



4 "Von den Tapuyas sagt er dass die todte Frucht sogleich von der Mutter 

 verschlungen wird, da sie nicht besser bewahrt warden konne, als in den 

 Eingeweiden der Gebarerin; auch der Nabelstrang und die Nachgeburt (sic) 

 \verden gleich gekocht von der Mutter in ihrer Waldeinsamkeit gegessen" 

 (Steinmetz, p. 17). Something similar is related by Dobrizhoffer even of the 

 Guarani, who were not usually regarded as bestial savages (ib. p. 18). 



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