them to the oven.

At such times, the feast was even a disagreeable rite. It is a fact
that the Marquesan disliked the flesh of a white man. They said he
was too salty. Hundreds of years ago the Aztecs, according to Bernal
Diaz, who was there, complained that "the flesh of the Spaniards
failed to afford even nourishment, since it was intolerably bitter."
This, though the Indians were dying of starvation by hundreds of
thousands in the merciless siege of Mexico City.

Standards of barbarity vary. Horrible and revolting as the very
mention of cannibalism is to us, it should be remembered that it
rested upon an attitude toward the foreigner and the slave that in
some degree still persists everywhere in the world. Outside the tribe,
the savage recognized no kindred humanity. Members of every clan
save his own were regarded as strange and contemptible beings,
outlandish and barbarous in manners and customs, not to be regarded
as sharers of a common birthright. This attitude toward the stranger
did not at all prevent the cannibal from being, within his own tribe,
a gentle, merry, and kindly individual.

Even toward the stranger the Marquesan was never guilty of torture
of any kind. Though they slew and ate, they had none of the
refinements of cruelty of the Romans, not even scalping enemies as
did the Scythians, Visigoths, Franks, and Anglo-Saxons. In their most
bloody wars they often paused in battle to give the enemy time to
eat and to rest, and there is no record of their ever ringing a
valley about with armed warriors and starving to death the women and
children within. Victims for the gods were struck down without
warning, so that they might not suffer even the pangs of anticipation.