CANNIBALISM. The practice of eating human flesh. The word is derived from Caniba, a variant of Carib. the name of the West In dian tribe among whom the Spanish discoverers first noticed the custom. The practice is very widespread, having been found within the his toric period in both Americas. in Africa. India, Australia. New Zealand. and throughout the Polynesian islands. Some early European tribes, and even some of the more cultured early heathen nations, have also been accused of the same practice. By some students cannibalism has been ascribed to economic causes merely. but in most. if not all eases. the custom appears to have had its origin in the superstitions belief that in this manlier the qualities of the person eaten, partienlarly if a brave enemy, might be acquired. or his post-mortem ghost existence ut terly destroyed by leaving nothing in which the spirit might still find lodgment. In some tribes the first-mentioned idea even led children to eat the bodies of their deceased parents. ln isolated
instances cannibalism appear to have been dic tated by no other motive than that of mere sav age revenge. Although cannibalism thus appears to have been originally almost a religious cere monial. the depraved appetite sometimes grew to such an extent that in many tribes human flesh became a regular article of diet. This was especially the case in equatorial Africa, in some of the South Sea Islands, among the Ta puyan tribes of Brazil. and on the headwaters of the Amazon. The ancient Aztecs annually sacri ficed thousands of human victims to their gods. the bodies being afterward eaten by the populace. Cannibal practices are still common among the tribes of Vancouver Island and the northwest coast of North America. Occasional ceremonial cannibalism was quite general among the In dians of the United States, but the only tribes which practiced it to any great extent were the Atakapa, Tonkawa, and some others of the west ern Gulf Coast.