Note 123 — SECOND VISIT TO BRAZIL. (continued 2)

Perhaps all the Indians may have been so far cannibals, as to taste of the flesh of prisoners taken in battle, or victims offered to the gods; but I cannot believe that any ever fed habitually on human flesh, for many reasons. But their traducers had their reasons for inventing and propagating the most atrocious falsehoods, as a sort of excuse for their own barbarity in hunting and making slaves of them. These practices, indeed, were so wicked, and so notorious, that in 1537, the Dominican Frey Domingos de Becançoo, provincial of the order in Mexico, sent Frey Domingos de Menaja to Rome to plead the cause of the Indians before Paul III.; who having heard both sides, pronounced that "The Indians of America are men of rational soul, of the same nature and species as all others, capable of the sacraments of the holy church, and consequently free by nature, and lords of their own actions."