But what - or who - is on the menu?
North American aborigines knew them by sight and reputation, fearsome hunters prone to dine on men and kidnap women. Long before the first pale Europeans trespassed in the New World, Native tribes described the forest-dwellers as cannibals - a term without meaning, unless both predator and prey were human beings. Native legends speak of brutal wars between tribesmen and cannibal giants, an early form of ethnic cleansing from which only one side could emerge victorious.
But are the stories true?