Cannibalism in the Americas
While numerous cultures in the Americas were reported by European explorers and colonizers to have engaged in cannibalism, some of these claims may be unreliable since the Spanish Empire used them to justify conquest.
This includes human bones uncovered in a cave hamlet confirming accounts of the Xiximes undertaking ritualized raids as part of their agricultural cycle after every harvest.
The Anasazi in the 12th century have also been demonstrated to have undertaken cannibalism, possibly due to drought, as shown by proteins from human flesh found in recovered feces.
Well-known examples include the ill-fated Donner Party (1846–1847) and the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 (1972), after which the survivors ate the bodies of the dead.
[7] When Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed on a glacier in the Andes on October 13, 1972, the survivors resorted to eating the deceased during their 72 days in the mountains.
Survivor Roberto Canessa described how they "agonized" for days in the knowledge that "the bodies of our friends and team-mates, preserved outside in the snow and ice, contained vital, life-giving protein that could help us survive.
[12] The Florentine Codex (1576), compiled by Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún from information provided by indigenous eyewitnesses, includes evidence of Mexica (Aztec) cannibalism.
[13] In February 1864, eight Haitians – four men and four women – were convicted to death and executed for having murdered and cannibalized a girl in a Vodou ritual held in a village near Port-au-Prince.
The niece of one of the men was kidnapped while her mother was away, and a few days later, "strangled, flayed, decapitated and dismembered" in a sacrificial ritual allegedly held to make her uncle wealthy.
[17] He also referred to records of a case where the police supposedly found "packages of salted human flesh", but for fear of causing a scandal, chose not to investigate further.
[21] Similarly, the British captain William Kennedy heard from an Anglican clergyman that children were "stolen, butchered, and their flesh sold" in markets throughout the country.
Kennedy also heard of a family feast where a little boy had been consumed and spoke with a man who had seen barrels filled with human flesh offered for sale in western Haitian.
[22] Mike Dash notes that evidence for the claims made by St. John and other observers that cannibalism was "a normal feature" of Haitian life is nevertheless thin.
While the custom does not seem to have been unknown or universally shunned, estimates made by some Europeans, according to which "forty Haitians were eaten" every day and "almost every citizen of the country had tasted human flesh", were presumably widely exaggerated, reflecting prejudices more than reality.
[26] Conversely, in his widely criticized book, The Man-Eating Myth, Arens writes, "The gradual transformation of what little evidence is available for Aztec cannibalism is also an indication of the continual need to legitimize the Conquest".
Bernal Díaz's True History of the Conquest of New Spain (written by 1568, published 1632) contains several accounts of cannibalism among the people the conquistadors encountered during their warring expedition to Tenochtitlan.
In History of Tlaxcala (written by 1585), Diego Muñoz Camargo (c. 1529–1599) states that: "Thus there were public butcher's shops of human flesh, as if it were of cow or sheep.
More than three dozen bones were uncovered inside a cave hamlet that showed distinct signs of butchering and defleshing, confirming contemporary European accounts of the Xiximes.
Tribes of the Xiximes practiced cannibalism in the belief that eating the souls of their enemies and hanging their bones from trees would bring about good crop yields next year, and thus conducted cannibalistic raids as part of their agricultural cycle after every harvest.
[42][43] There is archaeological and written evidence for English settlers' cannibalism in 1609 in the Jamestown Colony under famine conditions, during a period which became known as Starving Time.
