426 



discovery of America, existed only among the 

 Caribbees of the West Indies. It is they, who 

 have rendered the names of cannibals, Carib- 

 bees, and anthropophagi, synonymous ; it was 

 their cruelties, that prompted the law § promul- 

 gated in 1504, by which the Spaniards were 

 permitted to make a slave of every individual of 

 an American nation, which could be proved to 

 be of Caribbee origin. I believe however, that 

 the anthropophagy of the inhabitants of the 

 West India islands was much exaggerated in 

 the tales of the first travellers^. Herera, a 

 grave and judicious historian, has not disdained 

 to relate these tales in the Decades historicas ; 

 he has even credited that extraordinary event, 

 which led the Caribbees to renounce this bar- 

 barous custom. The natives of a little island 

 devoured a Dominican monk, whom they had 

 carried off from the coast of Portorico^; they 



Lees ? [Petr* Martyr., p. 6. Rochefort, Hist, des Antilles, book 

 2, chap. 7.) If this word be significative, it seems to denote 

 rather " strong and valiant strangers," than anthropophagi. 

 (Herera, Decad. i, p. 11.) Garcia, in his etymological 

 reveries, finds it to be simply Phenician. Annibal and Can- 

 nibal, according to him, must be derived from the same 

 Semitic root. 



* See the history of this law, which declares the liberty of 

 all nations not Caribbees, in Gomara, p. 278-281. 



f Vespucci, p. 91. Grynaeus, p. 68. 

 \ Herera, Decad. \, p. 13. 



