THE MOST striking fact about the Cinta Larga—and one that would have alarmed the men of the expedition had they known it—was that these Indians were cannibals. Unlike the type of cannibalism much of the world had come to know—among desperate explorers, marooned sailors, and victims of famine—the Cinta Larga’s consumption of human flesh was born not out of necessity but out of vengeance and an adherence to tribal traditions and ceremony.
