440 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [vor. 48 
“We were able to distinguish which of the women were natives 
of this island and which captives, by the distinction that a Caribbee 
woman wore on each leg two bands or rings of woven cotton, one 
fastened around the knee and the other around the ankle, by this 
means making the. calves of their legs look big and the above- 
mentioned parts small, which I imagine they do because they believe 
this sort of adornment makes them pretty and graceful: by that 
peculiarity we distinguish them.1 
“These captive women told us that the Carribbee.men use them 
with such cruelty as would scarcely be believed; and that they eat 
the children which they bear to them, only bringing up those which 
they have by their native wives. Such of their male enemies as 
they can take away alive, they bring here to their homes to make a 
feast of them, and those who are killed in battle they eat up after 
the fighting is over. They claim that the flesh of man is so good to 
eat that nothing like it can be compared to it in the world; and this 
is pretty evident, for of the human bones we found in their houses 
every thing that could be gnawed had already been gnawed, so that 
nothing else remained of them but what was too hard to be eaten. 
In one of the houses we found the neck of a man undergoing the 
process of cooking in a pot, preparatory for eating it.” 
“The habits of these Caribbees are beastly. 
‘These bands or rings of woven cotton worn by the Caribbee women were 
about two inches wide and sometimes embellished with pieces of gold, pearls, 
and valuable stones; a sort of double garter known by them as Ilauto. 
2 Alexander von Humboldt, in his “ Personal Narrative of Travels to the 
Equinoctial Regions of America,” speaking about the Caribbees, makes the 
following instructive observations, worthy of serious reflection, upon the 
baneful influence of fads and fancies: “ Reproaches addressed to the natives 
on the abominable practice which we here discuss, produce no effect; it is 
as if a Brahmin, travelling in Europe, were to reproach us with the habit 
of feeding on the flesh of animals. In the eyes of the Indian of the Guaisia, 
the Chernvichaena was a being entirely different from himself, and one 
whom he thought it was no more unjust to kill, than the jaguars of the forest. 
It was merely from a sense of propriety that, whilst he remained in the 
mission, he would only eat the same food as the Fathers. The natives, if 
they return to their tribe (irse al monte), or find themselves pressed by 
hunger, soon resume their old habits of anthropophagy. And why should we 
be so much astonished at this inconstancy in the tribes of the Orinoco, when 
we are reminded, by terrible and well-ascertained examples, of what has 
passed among civilized nations in times of great scarcity? In Egypt, in the 
thirteenth century, the habit of eating human flesh pervaded all classes of 
society; extraordinary snares were spread for physicians in particular. They 
were called to attend persons who pretended to be sick, but were only hungry; 
and it was not in order to be consulted, but devoured. An historian of great 
veracity, Abd-allatif, has related how a practice, which at first inspired dread 
and horror, soon occasioned not the slightest surprise.” 
