Cannibalism in the Early History of the Northwest Coast: Enduring Myths and Neglected Realities

Abstract

WHETHER IT TAKES PLACE for survival after an airplane crash in some desolate region, as a depraved act by a mad murderer, or in a ritualized form among primitive cultures, cannibalism is a repulsive but fascinating subject. It evokes curiosity and perhaps a nightmarish fear since it is connected with headhunting, torture, human sacrifice, and brutality. Indeed, in some of its forms, cannibalism might be seen as an ultimate act of savagery by human beings against heir own kind. From the very beginning of European overseas expansion, explorers, conquerors, and missionaries wrote extensively about contacts with cannibal races or reported their existence beyond the known frontiers. The Caribs of the West Indies, the Tupinamba of Brazil, and the Aztecs of Mexico became the best known anthropophagists, Indeed, the Caribs discovered by Columbus gave us the word 'cannibal.' Today, some historians and anthropologists believe that the Aztecs engaged in large-scale cannibalism to provide animal protein in their diet while others doubt that they ate human flesh at all.• Certainly, the evidence of sixteenthcentury Europeans does leave much to be desired. Filled with misconceptions and their own superstitions, unable to understand Indian culture or language, and often filled with blind religious fervour to convert the pagan, they might be said to have been programmed to identify unusual phenomena. During the eighteenth-century Enlightenment Europeans experi-