GEORGE FRANKLIN FELDMAN's book is "a vivid account of the barbaric practices of both native Americans and European explorers and colonists."
At a time when New Age Spirituality seems to have taken on an interpretive view of Native American beliefs, it seems a relief to get back to historical reality, and that is that many Native American tribes practiced cannibalism, headhunting, and human sacrifice, often in war, sometimes in religious ritual. Covered are the Taensa and Natchez, the Calusa and Timucua, the Skidi Pawnee (they sacrificed 13 year old girls to their Morning Star god), The Iroquois, The Chippewa, Nootka, Kwakiutl, Yuki and Their Neighbors in California (where they didn't cannibalize but thought their enemies did), the Comanche, the Apache (Fierce enough to keep the Mexicans and the Spanish away for 300 years), and White Scalp Hunters.
The evidence is not just in the early explorer's diary, or anthropological study - though that's included, but in the latest in testing the physical evidence or bones, skulls, and most interestingly, human excrement which shows that human beings were eating human beings. While in some places and times this might have been the result of famine and drought, we learn that tribes warred with tribes, taking prisoners, slaves, and torturing captives before killing them and that taking scalps as trophies escalated when prizes for scalps were offered. Black hair being black hair, many humans innocent to various wars, died when their scalp was taken. So much for that New Agey idea that Native American paganism was essentially peace driven or that "Indians" had a sense that the earth was to be shared, rather than fought over for resources.
C 2008 by the author
The publisher is Alan C. Hood and Company Chambersburg, Pennsylvania
