<414 
INNATE EEltOCIl'Y OE THE INDIANS. 
existed only among tlie Caribs of tbe "West Indies. It is 
they who have rendered the names of cannibals, Caribbees, 
ana anthropophagi, synonymous ; it was their cruelties that 
prompted the law promulgated in 1504, by which the 
Spaniards were permitted to make a slave of every indi- 
vidual of an American nation which coidd be proved to be 
of Caribbee origin. I believe, however, that the anthro- 
pophagy of the inhabitants of the "West India Islands was 
much exaggerated by early travellers, whose stories Herrera, 
a grave and judicious historian, has not disdained to repeat 
in his Decades liistoricas. He has even credited that extra- 
ordinary event which led the Caribs 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 Porto Pico ; they all fell sick, aud would never again eat 
monk or layman.” 
If the Caribs of the Orinoco, since the commencement 
of the sixteenth century, have differed in their manners 
from, those of the West India Islands ; if they are unjustly 
accused of anthropophagy ; it is difficult to attribute this 
difference to any superiority of their social state. The 
strangest contrasts are found blended in this mixture of 
nations, some of whom live only upon fish, monkeys, and 
ants; while others are more or less cultivators of the 
ground, more or less occupied in making and painting 
pottery, or weaving hammocks or cotton cloth. Several 
of the latter tribes have preserved inhuman customs alto- 
gether unknown to the former. “ You cannot imagine. 
Said the old missionary of Mkndavaca, “ the perversity 
this Indian race (familia de Indios). You receive men of 
a new tribe into the village ; they appear to bo mild, good, 
incolebant feri trucesque, qui puerorum et virorum carnibus, quos ab ,? 
in insulis bello aut latrociniis cepissent, vescebantur ; afeminis abstinebanl - 
Canibales appellate’’ — “ Some of the islands are inhabited by a cruel a' 11 } 
savage race, called cannibals, who eat the flesh of men and boys, 
captives and slaves of the male sex, abstaining from that of females- 
(Hist. Venet., 1551.) The custom of sparing the lives of female pris° nK,s 
confirms what I have previously said, p. 326, of the language <‘J /''* 
women. Does the word cannibal, applied to the Caribs of the " **! 
India Islands, belong to the language of this archipelago (that of HayhJ- 
or must we seek for it in an idiom of Florida, which some tradition 
indicate as the first country of the Caribs ? 
