Note 315 — Chapter III · COLUMBIANS.
Reading edition
They brought for sale 'human skulls, and hands not yet quite stripped of the flesh, which they made our people plainly understand they had eaten; and, indeed, some of them had evident marks that they had been upon the fire.' Cook's Voy. to Pac., vol. ii., p. 271. Slaves are occasionally sacrificed and feasted upon. Meares' Voy., p. 255. 'No todos habian comido la carne humana, ni en todo tiempo, sino solamente los guerreros mas animosos quando se preparaban para salir á campaña.' 'Parece indudable que estos salvages han sido antropófagos.' Sutil y Mexicana, Viage, p. 130. 'At Nootka Sound, and at the Sandwich Islands, Ledyard witnessed instances of cannibalism. In both places he saw human flesh prepared for food.' Spark's Life of Ledyard, p. 74; Cornwallis' New El Dorado, pp. 104-6. 'Cannibalism, all-though unknown among the Indians of the Columbia, is practised by the savages on the coast to the northward.' Cox's Adven., vol. i., pp. 310-11. The cannibal ceremonies quoted by Macfie and referred to Vancouver Island, probably were intended for the Haidahs farther north. Vanc. Isl., p. 434. A slave as late as 1850 was drawn up and down a pole by a hook through the skin and tendons of the back, and afterwards devoured. Medicus, in Hutchings' Cal. Mag., vol. v., p. 223. 'L'anthropophagie á été longtemps en usage ... et peut-être y existe-t-elle encore.... Le chef Maquina ... tuait un prisonnier à chaque lune nouvelle. Tous les chefs étaient invités à cette horrible fête.' Mofras, Explor., tom. ii., p. 345. 'It is not improbable that the suspicion that the Nootkans are cannibals may be traced to the practice of some custom analagous to the Tzeet-tzaiak of the Haeel tzuk.' Scouler, in Lond. Geog. Soc., Jour., vol. xi., pp. 223-4. 'The horrid practice of sacrificing a victim is not annual, but only occurs either once in three years or else at uncertain intervals.' Sproat's Scenes, p. 156.