🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <31A394A8.142D@megafauna.com>,
Steve Barnard  <steve@megafauna.com> wrote:
>
>For the life of me I don't know what this topic has to do with most of 
>the cross-posted newsgroups, but no one is complaining yet, so here 
>goes.

Followups set to alt.folklore.urban, where this is on-topic.

You cite Sahagun for a second-hand account of Aztec cannibalism and Duran 
with a non-eyewitness account (i.e. these are what was told to them by 
others); and Harris as approving of these accounts.  Here's what I have 
on this.

Arens (see my book review elsewhere on AFU) spends nearly 30 pages on the
Aztecs.  Athough he has no dispute with the wide-spread human sacrifice
practiced by the Aztecs, he questions whether there was ever cannibalism
involved.  I won't go into all of his arguments, but he's reviewed the
letters of Cortez, in which there are no firsthand observations of
cannibalism; the reports of Gorama, Cortez's personal secretary - again,
no firsthand accounts; the reports of Alvarado, ditto; the work of Bernal
Diaz, another of Corte's soldiers, and finds that again there are no
eyewitness accounts (anyone spot a trend here?).  These represent the
earliest contacts with the Aztecs. 

Arens:

   In order to understand how the Aztecs were converted into the classic
   man-eaters they are today, it is only necessary to review the literary
   works of those conquistadors who penned their memoirs later in life. 
   By then, these were different men, living in different times.  The
   consequences of the Conquest were becoming a matter of debate in the
   capitals of Europe.  The Spaniards had by then won the war, but the
   rationale for conquest and the character of colonial rule were lively
   issues.  Thus Francisco de Aguilar, one of Cortes's major lieutenants,
   wrote more than fifty years after his return to Spain that the Aztecs
   captives were eaten as a "very tender delicacy" (1963: 164).  The
   'Anonymous Conquistador', whose belated account may or may not be
   authentic, but either way is a refelction of the times, concludes his
   essay on the Conquest with a final acontextual paragraph whic states
   that, in addition to being sodomites and excessive drinkers, the Aztecs
   went to war for the sake of human food ... 

Arens then moves on to the next group of commentators, the Spanish priests
and missionaries.  "The transformation of the Aztecs from civilized to
barbaric was accomplished by the deft intellectual management of these
friars. ... Strangely enough, the very same individuals are today used as 
reliable sources for pre-contact Aztec culture, even though no group of 
specialists ever had a better reason or a stronger desire to misinterpret 
and distort the material." 

Arens reviews the collected works of Duran, a Dominican priest in the 16th
century.  Guess what? "His accounts assume the prior existance of Aztec
cannibalism as a correlative of human sacrifice. ... Despite these
comments, Duran never observed an instance of Aztec cannibalism, since the
presumed custom had been abolished fifty years before." 

Next there's Fray Bernardo de Sahagun, a contemporary of Duran who wrote a
13-volume account of Aztec history and culture and the Conquest.  "  ...it
is surprising, in light of the reliance placed on this collection, that
there is little reference to cannibalism per se. ... these are not
eyewitness accounts." 

Arens moves on to modern scholars: Harner (1977) (of whom Arens says "...
in a singular inversion of the scholarly method, the lack of documentation
is actually offered as evidence for the existatnce of a custom.  Although
a novel procedure, the technique is not entirely convincing."), Harris
(1977) (who provided no new documentation), Montellano (1978) (who shot
down Harner), Price (1978) (who claimed to be "in possession of a
still-secret but nonetheless 'more powerful explanatory model' to explain
Aztec cannibalism"), and many more. 

To sum up, Arens finds that the primary sources do not in any credible 
case mention eyewitness accounts of cannibalism, and secondary sources 
all rely on the friend-of-an-explorer tales as indisputably genuine.  

-- 
      Ian York   (iayork@panix.com)  <http://www.panix.com/~iayork/>
      "-but as he was a York, I am rather inclined to suppose him a
       very respectable Man." -Jane Austen, The History of England