Historical: These verses are some of the most historically interesting in the Book of Mormon, because they are both right and wrong, and the way that they are wrong is right. To understand such an enigmatic statement we must pull apart the elements that are noted in these verses. Mormon is cataloguing a set of practices, and there is a correlation between most of that set and known practices in Mesoamerica.
There are four elements that can be pulled from Mormon’s description:
Of the four, rape is not a known religious practice from Mesoamerica, but the sad history of humanity tells us that we should not be surprised to find rape and war in the same context.
Human sacrifice is very well known and well documented for Mesoamerica. While the Aztec sacrifices are the best known, there are indications of human sacrifices going much farther back in time, and reaching into Book of Mormon times. There is no serious dispute that there was human sacrifice in Mesoamerica during Book of Mormon times.
Torture is one of the facets of the Maya world about which recent discoveries have provided dramatic new evidence. The Maya appear to have been a particularly cruel people in terms of the tortures to which they subjected their captives. When the murals of Bonampak where restored, one of the enlightening and grisly aspects of the restoration was noting the blood dripping from the tips of fingers. Either fingernails had been pulled off of the captives, or the tips of the fingers had been cut off. Sacrificial caches have been found where there are bowls with finger bones.
The eating of human flesh is best known from the Aztec times. Pieces of the victims were cooked and distributed to be eaten. This was a religious rite, and it would be unfair to their religious understanding to call it cannibalism (because of the connotations we bring to that label). For the Aztecs, it would be better to see that act as a rather too literal “sacrament” of flesh. Where the Christian symbolically eats the flesh of the Savior, the Aztecs literally ate the flesh of their sacrifices.
All of these descriptions are accurate for Mesoamerica. However, Mormon does not accurately describe the practice of eating human flesh. For Mormon, they feed the flesh of the fathers to the wives and children, and they “devour their flesh like unto wild beasts.” Here is where Mormon gets it wrong, but he gets it wrong in precisely the right way. Historically, ritual cannibalism has evoked very strong responses when it is met. The human disdain for eating the flesh of our own is deeply engrained, and is a subject of revulsion. When a non-human-flesh eating population encounters a population that does eat human flesh (and it should be noted that institutionalized eating of human flesh is always ritual and religion, and never food) there is an immediate revulsion and a reaction.
One of the typical responses is to overstate the case and make the actions of those “other people” even more reprehensible. Therefore, Mormon tells us that the flesh of the fathers is fed to the wives. This makes us recoil in horror, and it is intended to. However, it is not historically accurate. What is historically accurate, however, is the description. Mormon is not accurately describing the practice, but he is responding appropriately for a man of his times.