Some of them were in the form of fearsome dragons as big as calves and others half-man half-dog and hideously ugly. When thy saw their idols shattered the Caciques and the papas who were with them wept and covered their eyes; and they prayed to their gods for pardon. (From
The Conquest of New Spain 1560s)
In "Of Cannibals," on the other hand, Michel de Montaigne suggests instead that travelers to foreign places might do well to suspend automatic negative judgment of native peoples, and seek instead, to regard them from within their own indigenous geographical, social, and economic contexts, instead of their own. As Montaigne further observes:
every one gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country. as, indeed, we have no other level of truth and reason, than the example and idea of the opinions and customs of the place wherein we live:
there is always the perfect religion, there the perfect government, there the most exact and accomplished usage of all things. They are savages at the same rate that we say fruit are wild, which nature produces of herself and by her own ordinary progress; whereas in truth, we ought rather to call those wild, whose natures we have changed by our artifice, and diverted from the common order. ("Of Cannibals")
Montaigne suggests that the seemingly horrific cannibalism of native peoples of Brazil, who happen to kill and eat their war enemies, is no more barbaric in reality than are various European killing practices. As he describes the Brazilians' cannibalism:
Every one for a trophy brings home the head of an enemy he has killed...
After having a long time treated their prisoners very well... he to whom the prisoner belongs, invites a great assembly... he ties a rope to one of the arms of the prisoner... And gives to the friend... The other arm... they two, in the presence of all... despatch [sic] him with their swords...they roast him, eat him...
A and send some chops to their absent friends. ("Of Cannibals")
Montaigne then suggests this practice is no more barbaric (and in fact, less so) than that of the Portuguese, of burying an enemy up to his waist,...
.. The next day, I whipped his bare behind till the blood ran from his legs. I cut off his ears, his nose, slit his mouth... gouged his eyes out... I then stuck a knife in his belly and drank his blood... I put strips of bacon on each cheek of his behind and put them in the oven. At certain intervals, I basted his ass cheeks with a wooden
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