Cannibalism in the Americas#Caribbean

File:Albert Eckhout Tapuia woman 1641.jpg, Brazil, 1641.]]

File:Os Filhos de Pindorama. Cannibalism in Brazil in 1557.jpg in Brazil. Engraving by Theodor de Bry for Hans Staden's account of his 1557 captivity.]]

In early Brazil, there was the occurrence of cannibalism among the Tupinamba.*{{cite journal | last1 = Métraux | first1 = Alfred | author-link = Alfred Métraux | year = 1949 | title = Warfare, Cannibalism, and Human Trophies | journal = Handbook of South American Indians | volume = 5 | pages = 383–409 }} An analysis by Anne B. McGinness argues that the way different Christian missionaries reacted to cannibalism influenced the success or failure of their attempts to convert the Tupinamba to Christianity. Missionaries sometimes received threats of cannibalism, including from Tupinamba women, but some missionaries continued their conversion attempts.{{Cite journal |last=McGinness |first=Anne B. |date=2010 |title=Christianity and Cannibalism: Three European Views of the Tupi in the Spiritual Conquest of Brazil, 1557–1563 |url=https://worldhistoryconnected.press.uillinois.edu/7.3/mcginness.html |journal=World History Connected |volume=7 |issue=3 |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20240613113606/https://worldhistoryconnected.press.uillinois.edu/7.3/mcginness.html |archive-date=June 13, 2024}}

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. Their experiences and memories became the source of several books and films. 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. But could we do it?" Ultimately he and the other 15 people who were rescued months later decided they could, realizing there was no other way to face off starvation.{{cite web |last1=Bever |first1=Lindsey |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cannibalism-andes-plane-crash-1972-survivors-terrible-decision-stay-alive-a6895781.html |title=Cannibalism: Survivor of the 1972 Andes plane crash describes the 'terrible' decision he had to make to stay alive |website=The Independent |date=February 25, 2016 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171123062437/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cannibalism-andes-plane-crash-1972-survivors-terrible-decision-stay-alive-a6895781.html |archive-date=November 23, 2017}}

File:Cannibalism in the New World, from Vespucci.jpg. Germany, {{circa|1505}}, People of the Islands Recently Discovered.... Woodcut by Johann Froschauer for an edition of Amerigo Vespucci's Mundus Novus.|left]]

European explorers and colonizers brought home many stories of cannibalism practiced by the native peoples they encountered. In Spain's overseas expansion to the New World, the practice of cannibalism was reported by Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean islands, and the Caribs were greatly feared because of their supposed practice of it. Queen Isabel of Castile had forbidden the Spaniards to enslave the indigenous unless they were "guilty" of cannibalism.Rebecca Earle, The Body of the Conquistador: Food, Race, and the Colonial Experience in Spanish America, 1492–1700. New York: Cambridge University Press 2012, p. 123. Despite this, some writers of the first accounts of alleged Carib cannibalism were unconcerned about cannibalism or even wrote positively about the people. The credibility of the Caribs' long-standing reputation as eaters of human flesh is further supported by their legends, which were recorded in the 17th century,{{Cite journal |last=Myers |first=Rovert A. |date=1984 |title=Island Carib Cannibalism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41849170 |journal=Nieuwe West-Indische Gids / New West Indian Guide |volume=58 |issue=3/4 |pages=147–184 |issn=0028-9930 |jstor=41849170}} as well as by archaeological evidence.{{cite web |last1=van Hoose |first1=Natalie |title=Study puts the 'Carib' in 'Caribbean', boosting credibility of Columbus’ cannibal claims |url=https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/carib-skulls-boost-credibility-of-columbus-cannibal-claims/ |website=Florida Museum – Research News |access-date=24 February 2025 |date=10 January 2020}}

The accusation of cannibalism quickly became a pretext for attacks on Indigenous groups and justification for the Spanish conquest.{{cite journal | last1 = Dow | first1 = James | title = Cannibalism | journal = Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture | volume = 1 | pages = 535–37 }}

In Yucatán, a shipwrecked Spaniard Jerónimo de Aguilar, who later became a translator for Hernán Cortés, reported to have witnessed fellow Spaniards sacrificed and eaten but escaped from captivity where he was being fattened for sacrifice himself.Kay A. Read, "Cannibalism" in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerica, New York: Oxford University Press 2001, vol. 1 p. 138.

The Florentine Codex (1576), compiled by Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún from information provided by indigenous eyewitnesses, includes depictions of Mexica (Aztec) cannibalism.

Franciscan friar Diego de Landa reported on further Yucatán instances.{{Cite book|last=De Landa|first=Diego|title=Yucatán before and after the Conquest|url=https://archive.org/details/yucatanbeforeaft00land|url-access=registration|year=1978|publisher=Dover|page=[https://archive.org/details/yucatanbeforeaft00land/page/4 4]|isbn=978-0-486-23622-3}}

File:Affaire de Bizoton 1864.png ritual in Haiti, 1864]]

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. Accounts of the trial vary regarding the girl's age – reported to range from seven to twelve – but are otherwise largely in agreement. 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. Her remains were then cooked and eaten, with some evidence indicating that more than the eight people found guilty might have eaten her flesh. There are two other accounts of cannibalistic Vodou ceremonies by self-claimed eyewitnesses from the 1870s and 1880s, but their reliability is disputed.{{cite web |last1=Dash |first1=Mike |title=The Trial That Gave Vodou a Bad Name |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-trial-that-gave-vodou-a-bad-name-83801276/ |website=Smithsonian Magazine |access-date=July 2, 2024 |language=en |date=May 29, 2013}}

Various European visitors and inhabitants of the country thought that cannibalism was reasonably common and was practiced not only in the context of human sacrifices but also for gastronomic reasons.

Sir Spenser St. John, the British chargé d'affaires in Haiti in the 1860s, collected many such accounts in a controversial book first published in 1884.{{cite book |last1=St. John |first1=Spenser |author1-link=Spenser St. John |title=Hayti, or, the Black Republic |date=1889 |publisher=New York |location=Scribner & Welford |edition=2nd |url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924021174564}}

While allowing that only a minority of Vodou worshippers engaged in or approved of human sacrifice,{{sfn|St. John|1889|p=230}} St. John recorded several cases where children were sacrificed and eaten in Vodou ceremonies, reported by people who said to have witnessed them in person.{{sfn|St. John|1889|pp=200–207}}

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.{{sfn|St. John|1889|p=224}}

Not all reports of cannibalism collected by St. John related to religious ceremonies. A French merchant told him he had once seen a group of soldiers beating a man; when he inquired about the reason, they ordered the man "to open his basket, and there he saw the body of a child cut up into regular joints."{{sfn|St. John|1889|p=243}}

St. John spoke with a woman who had seen how "human flesh was openly sold in the market" in the countryside, and other witnesses stated the same.{{sfn|St. John|1889|pp=242–243}}

There are also newspaper reports of quartered children sold as food in the Christmas season, of the remains of partially eaten children being found, and of a man who accidentally ate some of "the leg of a child served to him as part of his dinner."{{sfn|St. John|1889|p=243}}

St. John's Spanish colleague told him that many children disappeared during certain seasons without a trace; while nothing more was known with certainty, people generally assumed most of them had been eaten.{{sfn|St. John|1889|p=227}}

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. The clergyman's wife had once nearly purchased a chunk of human flesh, "believing it to be pork". 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.{{cite book |last1=Kennedy |first1=W. R. |title=Sport, Travel, and Adventures in Newfoundland and the West Indies |date=1885 |publisher=William Blackwood and Sons |location=Edinburgh |pages=351–352}}

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.

File:Kodeks tudela 21.jpg

There is universal agreement that some Mesoamerican people practiced human sacrifice followed by cannibalism. Still, there is a lack of scholarly consensus on how widespread the latter practice was. At one extreme, the anthropologist Marvin Harris, author of Cannibals and Kings, has suggested that the flesh of the victims was a part of an aristocratic diet as a reward since the Aztec diet was lacking in proteins. While most historians of the pre-Columbian era accept that there was ritual cannibalism related to human sacrifices, they often reject suggestions that human flesh could have been a significant portion of the Aztec diet.{{cite news |title=Opinion: To Aztecs, Cannibalism Was a Status Symbol |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE7DE1F3DF935A35752C0A961948260 |work=The New York Times |date=January 6, 1987}}{{sfn|Ortiz de Montellano|1978}} Cannibalism was also associated with acts of warfare, and has been interpreted as an element of blood revenge in war.{{sfn|Petrinovich|2000|p=126}}

The Mexica of the Aztec period are perhaps the most widely studied of the ancient Mesoamerican peoples. While most pre-Columbian historians believe that ritual cannibalism took place in the context of human sacrifices, they do not support Harris' thesis that human flesh was ever a significant portion of the Aztec diet. Michael D. Coe states that while "it is incontrovertible that some of these victims ended up by being eaten ritually […], the practice was more like a form of communion than a cannibal feast".{{Cite book|title = Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=Mt7tAAAAMAAJ|publisher = Thames & Hudson|date = January 1, 2008|isbn = 9780500287552|first1 = Michael D.|last1 = Coe|first2 = Rex|last2 = Koontz}}

Documentation of Aztec cannibalism mainly dates from the period after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519-1521). For instance, a convoy ordered by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar was cannibalized by the Aztecs in Zultépec-Tecoaque in 1520. In the Nahuatl language, the name "Tecoaque" translates into "the place where they ate them." For eight months, the convoy was ritually sacrificed, and their heads were put up on skull racks. Both men and women were sacrificed, including pregnant women. At least one 3-or-4-year-old child was also sacrificed during the ritual, and the town's population swelled to 5,000 as people arrived for the ceremonies. In 1521, Hernán Cortés and his forces arrived and, in an act of revenge, massacred the town's inhabitants, who were mostly women and children.{{Cite web |last=Gershon |first=Livia |date=January 21, 2021 |title=After Aztecs Cannibalized Spanish Convoy, Conquistadors Retaliated by Killing Innocents |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mexican-archaeologists-reveal-story-cannibalism-and-conquest-180976805/ |access-date=March 3, 2024 |website=Smithsonian Magazine |language=en}}

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".{{sfn|Arens|1980}} The following claims could have been exaggerated.

• Hernán Cortés wrote in one of his letters that a Spaniard saw an Indian ... eating a piece of flesh taken from the body of an Indian who had been killed.Letters of Cortés, trans. Francis A. MacNutt (New York: 1908), 1:256–257, 2:244.

• The Historia general (compiled 1540–1585) by Bernardino de Sahagún (the first Mesoamerican ethnographer, according to Miguel León-Portilla) contains an illustration of an Aztec being cooked by an unknown tribe. This was reported as one of the dangers that Aztec traders faced.
• In his book Relación (1582), Juan Bautista de Pomar (c. 1535 – 1590) states that after the sacrifice, the body of the victim was given to the warrior responsible for the capture. He would boil the body and cut it into pieces to be offered as gifts to important people in exchange for presents and slaves. It was rarely eaten since they considered it of no value. Bernal Díaz reports that some of these parts of human flesh made their way to the Tlatelolco market near Tenochtitlan.
• In 2012, The National Institute for Anthropology and History (INAH) reported that they had discovered around 60 skeletons under subway lines in Mexico City, 50 children and 10 adults, dating back 500 years. The skeletons appear to have cut marks on the bones that indicate human sacrifice but do not indicate that cannibalism had occurred.{{Cite web|title = Under Mexico City – Archaeology Magazine|url = http://www.archaeology.org/issues/138-1407/features/2173-mexico-city-aztec-buried-world|website = www.archaeology.org|accessdate = October 23, 2015}}{{Cite web|title = Mexico City Subway Dig Yields Aztec Remains and Artifacts – History in the Headlines|url = http://www.history.com/news/mexico-city-subway-dig-yields-aztec-remains-and-artifacts|website = HISTORY.com|accessdate = October 23, 2015}}

File:Bernal Diaz del Castillo Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España 1632.jpg's True History]]

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.

• About the city of Cholula, Díaz wrote of his shock at seeing young men in cages ready to be sacrificed and eaten.{{sfn|Díaz del Castillo|1992|p=150}}
• In the same work, Diaz mentions that the Cholulan and Aztec warriors were so confident of victory against the conquistadors in an upcoming battle the following day that "they wished to kill us and eat our flesh, and had already prepared the pots with salt and peppers and tomatoes."{{sfn|Díaz del Castillo|1992|p=178}}

• About the Quetzalcoatl temple of Tenochtitlan, Díaz wrote that inside, there were large pots where the human flesh of sacrificed Natives was boiled and cooked to feed the priests.{{sfn|Díaz del Castillo|1992|p=176}}
• About the Mesoamerican towns in general Díaz wrote that some of the indigenous people he saw were "eating human meat, just like we take cows from the butcher's shops, and they have in all towns thick wooden jail-houses, like cages, and in them they put many Indian men, women and boys to fatten, and being fattened they sacrificed and ate them."{{harvnb|Díaz del Castillo|1992|p=579}}. In the original Spanish: "[...] comer carne humana, así como nosotros traemos vaca de las carnicerías, y tenían en todos los pueblos cárceles de madera gruesa hechas a manera de casas, como jaulas, y en ellas metían a engordar muchas indias e indios y muchachos, y estando gordos los sacrificaban y comían."

Díaz's testimony is corroborated by other Spanish historians who wrote about the conquest. In History of Tlaxcala (written by 1585), Diego Muñoz Camargo ({{circa|1529–1599}}) states that:

"Thus there were public butcher's shops of human flesh, as if it were of cow or sheep."Excerpt translated from {{harvnb|Muñoz Camargo|1947|p=153}}. In the original Spanish: "Ansí había carnicerías públicas de carne humana, como si fueran de vaca y carnero como en día de hoy las hay".

Accounts of the Aztec Empire as a "Cannibal Kingdom", Marvin Harris's expression, have been commonplace from Bernal Díaz to Harris, William H. Prescott and Michael Harner. Harner has accused his colleagues, especially those in Mexico, of downplaying the evidence of Aztec cannibalism. Ortiz de Montellano argues that the Aztec diet was balanced and that the dietary contribution of cannibalism would not have been very effective as a reward.{{sfn|Ortiz de Montellano|1978}}

As recently as 2008, Mexico's National Institute of Archaeology and History (INAH) derided as a "myth" the historical accounts by Jesuit missionaries reporting ritual cannibalism among the Xiximes people of northern Mexico.{{cite web |url=http://www.inah.gob.mx/en/4299-sinaloa-xixime-people-s-cannibalism-a-myth |title=Sinaloa Xixime people's Cannibalism, A Myth |author= |date=June 9, 2008 |website=Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia |access-date=September 28, 2017 |quote=Sinaloa INAH Center archaeologist Alfonso Grave Tirado declared that Spaniard chroniclers' appreciations reflected fear inspired by Xixime, and not a historical reality.}} But in 2011, archaeologist José Luis Punzo, director of INAH, reported evidence confirming that the Xiximes did indeed practice cannibalism. 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. Typically, lone men from other tribes would be targeted, and their bodies would be broken apart at the joints and then cooked. The meat was then mixed with beans and corn into a soup. 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.{{cite web |url=http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/news/2011/11/110930-cannibalism-cannibals-mexico-xiximes-human-bones-science/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111001234723/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/news/2011/11/110930-cannibalism-cannibals-mexico-xiximes-human-bones-science/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=October 1, 2011 |title=Cannibalism Confirmed Among Ancient Mexican Group |last=Valle |first=Sabrina |date=October 1, 2011 |website=National Geographic |publisher=The National Geographic Society |access-date=September 28, 2017 |quote=The newfound bones prove that cannibalism, 'was a crucial aspect of their worldview, their identity,' said José Luis Punzo, an archaeologist behind the new research.}}

The 1913 Handbook of Indians of Canada (reprinting 1907 material from the Bureau of American Ethnology) ascribed former cannibal practices to dozens of North American Indigenous groups."[http://faculty.marianopolis.edu/c.belanger/QuebecHistory/encyclopedia/cannibalism.htm Cannibalism]", James White, ed., Handbook of Indians of Canada, published as an appendix to the Tenth Report of the Geographic Board of Canada, Ottawa, 1913, pp. 77–78. The forms of cannibalism described included both resorting to human flesh during famines and ritual cannibalism, the latter often consisting of eating just a small portion of an enemy warrior. From another source, according to Hans Egede, when the Inuit killed a woman accused of witchcraft, they ate a portion of her heart.{{cite EB1911|wstitle=Cannibalism|volume=5|pages=184–185}}

As with most lurid tales of native cannibalism, these stories are treated with a great deal of scrutiny, as accusations of cannibalism could be used as justifications for the subjugation or destruction of "savages".Stannard, D. E. (1992). American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 197. English professor Patrick Brantlinger suggests that Indigenous peoples that were colonized were being dehumanized as part of the justification for the atrocities.{{Cite book |last=Brantlinger |first=Patrick |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hwsUXs6ksXUC |title=Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930| date=2003 |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=978-0-8014-8876-4 |pages=1–2 |language=en}}

Human bones dated to the 12th century found at around 40 sites throughout the American Southwest possess clear markings of being butchered and cooked. The defleshing and dismemberment of some bodies are the same as that of animals used for food. The episodes were undertaken at Anasazi sites and may have been caused by a drought. At one settlement, human feces have been found containing the proteins of human flesh, conclusively showing the occurrence of cannibalism.{{Cite web |last=Maugh |first=Thomas |date=September 7, 2000 |title=Conclusive evidence of American Indian cannibalism found {{!}} The Seattle Times |url=https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=20000907&slug=4041058 |access-date=March 2, 2024 |website=archive.seattletimes.com}}{{Cite web |last=Walker |first=Amélie |date=March 2, 2024 |title=Anasazi Cannibalism? – Archaeology Magazine Archive |url=https://archive.archaeology.org/9709/newsbriefs/anasazi.html |access-date= |website=archive.archaeology.org}}

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.{{cite web |last=Stromberg |first=Joseph |date=April 30, 2013 |url=http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/starving-settlers-in-jamestown-colony-resorted-to-cannibalism-46000815/#ixzz2WUFK3upY |title=Starving Settlers in Jamestown Colony Resorted to Cannibalism |work=Smithsonian}}{{cite web|url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-02/cannibalism/4664156|title=Skull Proves Settlers Resorted to Cannibalism|work=ABC News|date=May 2, 2013|access-date=May 2, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130502062754/http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-02/cannibalism/4664156|archive-date=May 2, 2013|url-status=live}}{{Cite book|title=Jamestown: The Truth Revealed|last=Kelso |first=William M.|isbn=978-0-8139-3993-3|location=Charlottesville |publisher=University of Virginia Press |oclc=964303596|year = 2017}}

Travelers through sparsely inhabited regions and explorers of unknown areas sometimes ate human flesh after running out of other provisions. In a famous example from the 1840s, the members of Donner Party found themselves stranded by snow in the Donner Pass, a high mountain pass in California, without adequate supplies during the Mexican–American War, leading to several instances of cannibalism, including the murder of two young Native American men for food.{{cite book |editor1-last=Johnson |editor1-first=Kristin |title=Unfortunate Emigrants: Narratives of the Donner Party |date=1996 |publisher=Utah State University Press |location=Logan |isbn=0-87421-204-9 |pages=62, 130, and passim}}{{sfn|Korn|Radice|Hawes|2001|pp=129–130}} Sir John Franklin's lost polar expedition, which took place at approximately the same time, is another example of cannibalism out of desperation.{{cite journal|last=Keenleyside |first=Anne |title=The Final Days of the Franklin Expedition: New Skeletal Evidence |journal=Arctic |volume=50 |issue=1 |page=36 |date=1997 |doi=10.14430/arctic1089 |url=http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic50-1-36.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic50-1-36.pdf |archive-date=October 9, 2022 |url-status=live |access-date=January 26, 2008}}

File:LeviBooneHelm.jpg acquired the nickname "Kentucky Cannibal" for eating several other travelers]]

In frontier situations where there was no strong authority, some individuals got used to killing and eating others, even in situations where other food would have been available. One notorious case was the mountain man Boone Helm, who became known as the "Kentucky Cannibal" for eating several of his fellow travelers from 1850 until his eventual hanging in 1864.

{{See also|Boone Helm#Serial murder and cannibalism}}

{{See also|Category:American cannibals}}

In 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was arrested after one of his intended victims managed to escape. Found in Dahmer's apartment were two human hearts, an entire torso, a bag full of human organs from his victims, and a portion of an arm muscle. He stated that he planned to consume all of the body parts over the next few weeks.{{Cite book|title=The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer|last=Masters|first=Brain|publisher=Hodder & Stoughton|year=1993|isbn=978-0-340-59194-9|url=https://archive.org/details/shrineofjeffreyd00mast}}

• Alfred Packer, an American prospector, accused but not convicted of cannibalism
• Cannibalism in Africa
• Cannibalism in Asia
• Cannibalism in Europe
• Cannibalism in Oceania
• Child cannibalism
• Human sacrifice in Aztec culture
• List of incidents of cannibalism
• Manifesto Antropófago ("Anthropophagic" or "Cannibal Manifesto"), a Brazilian poem
• {{slink|Spanish conquest of Yucatán#First encounters: 1502 and 1511}}
• Wariʼ, an Amerindian people that practiced both endo- and exocannibalism

{{reflist}}

{{refbegin}}

• {{cite book |last1=Arens |first1=William |year=1980 |title=The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy |title-link=The Man-Eating Myth |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |isbn=0-19-502793-0}}
• {{cite book |last1=Díaz del Castillo |first1=Bernal |author-link=Bernal Díaz del Castillo |year=1963 |orig-year=1632 |title=The Conquest of New Spain |title-link=Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España |edition=6th printing (1973)|others=J. M. Cohen (trans.) |series=Penguin Classics|publisher=Penguin Books |location=Harmondsworth, England|isbn=0-14-044123-9 |oclc=162351797}}
• {{cite book |last1=Díaz del Castillo |first1=Bernal |year=1992 |orig-year=1632 |title=Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España |others=Joaquín Ramírez Cabañas (ed., intro. & notes) |publisher=Editorial Porrúa |location=México D.F. |isbn=970-07-1800-X|language=es}}
• {{cite journal |last1=Harner |first1=Michael |author-link1=Michael Harner | date=1977 |title=The Enigma of Aztec Sacrifice |url=http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/aztecs/sacrifice.htm |journal=Natural History |volume=86 |issue=4 |pages=46–51 |issn=0028-0712}}
• {{cite book |last1=Harris |first1=Marvin |author-link1=Marvin Harris |year=1991 |orig-year=1977 |title=Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures |title-link=Cannibals and Kings |publisher=Vintage Books |location=New York |isbn=0-679-72849-X |oclc=23985455}}
• {{cite book |last1=Korn |first1=Daniel |last2=Radice |first2=Mark |last3=Hawes |first3=Charlie |title=Cannibal: The History of the People-Eaters |date=2001 |publisher=Channel 4 Books |location=London}}
• {{cite book |last1=Muñoz Camargo |first1=Diego |author-link=Diego Muñoz Camargo |year=1947 |orig-year=c. 1585 |title=Historia de Tlaxcala |title-link=History of Tlaxcala |publisher=Publicaciones del Ateneo Nacional de Ciencias y Artes de México |location=México D.F.|language=es}}
• {{cite journal |last1=Ortiz de Montellano |first1=Bernard R. |title=Aztec Cannibalism: An Ecological Necessity? |year=1978 |journal=Science |volume=200 | issue=4342| pages=611–617 |doi=10.1126/science.200.4342.611 |pmid = 17812682 |bibcode = 1978Sci...200..611O |s2cid = 35652641 |url=http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/aztecs/montellano.htm |access-date=August 30, 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090805031701/http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/aztecs/montellano.htm |archive-date=August 5, 2009 }}
• {{cite book |last1=Petrinovich |first1=Lewis F. |title=The Cannibal Within |date=2000 |publisher=Aldine Transaction |location=New York |isbn=0-202-02048-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QauRWfX4NTcC}}

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• {{cite journal |last1=Abler |first1=Thomas S |year=1980 |title=Iroquois Cannibalism: Fact not Fiction |journal=Ethnohistory |volume=27 |issue=4 |pages=309–316 |doi=10.2307/481728 |jstor=481728}}
• Berdan, Frances F. The Aztecs of Central Mexico: An Imperial Society. New York 1982.
• {{cite journal |last1=Dole |first1=Gertrude E |year=1962 |title=Endocannibalism among the Amahuaca Indians |journal=Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences |volume=24 |issue=2 |pages=567–573 |doi=10.1111/j.2164-0947.1962.tb01432.x}}
• {{cite journal |last1=Forsyth |first1=Donald W |year=1983 |title=The Beginnings of Brazilian Anthropology: Jesuits and Tupinamba Cannibalism |journal=Journal of Anthropological Research |volume=39 |issue=2 |pages=147–178 |doi=10.1086/jar.39.2.3629965 |s2cid=163258535}}
• {{cite journal |last1=Harner |first1=Michael |year=1977 |title=The Ecological Basis for Aztec Sacrifice |journal=American Ethnologist |volume=4 |pages=117–135 |doi=10.1525/ae.1977.4.1.02a00070 |doi-access=free}}
• Jáuregui, Carlos. Canibalia: Canibalismo, calibanismo, antropofagía cultural y consumo en América Latina. Madrid: Vervuert 2008.
• Lestringant, Frank. Cannibals: The Discovery and Representation of the Cannibal from Columbus to Jules Verne. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1997.
• Ortiz de Montellano, Bernard R. Aztec Medicine, Health, and Nutrition. New Brunswick 1990.
• Read, Kay A. Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos. Bloomington 1998.
• {{cite journal |last1=Whitehead |first1=Neil L. |year=1984 |title=Carib Cannibalism, the Historical Evidence |url=http://www.persee.fr/doc/jsa_0037-9174_1984_num_70_1_2239 |journal=Journal de la Société des Américanistes |volume=70 |pages=69–98 |doi=10.3406/jsa.1984.2239}}

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{{wikiquote}}

• Harry J. Brown, [http://www.lehigh.edu/~ejg1/natimag/Harry.html Hans Staden among the Tupinambas] (1997) – essay analyzing the images accompanying Staden's travel report

{{Cannibalism}}

Category:Pre-Columbian cultures

Category:Mesoamerican diet and subsistence