CANNIBALISM

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4307, 16 March 1901, Page 3 (Supplement)

CANNIBALISM

A UNIVERSAL CUSTOM. THE MARCH OF CIVILISATION. Are all the cannibals dead? In these day s when Darkest Africa has seen the dawn, and civilisation is exploring the remotest corners of the world, we might suppose that they were at least dying out. Yet trustworthy authors have estimated the number of cannibals at the present day at more than two millions. Dr Zaborowski, a learned Polish anthropologist, has recently published some interesting and valuable details regarding tne.se savage people, which are thus summarised in ’’La. Science Franoai.se.” •

“Anthropophagy is not primitive. Man did not venture to feed on Ids own species except under compulsion of absolute necessity, when famine anti the desire for animal food pushed him to the last extremity, a body of hunters, for instance, in pursuit of an animal, at a time when it is hard to find game, meet.; another party. Impelled by hunger, they begin to fight, and the bodies of the vanquished take the place of the absent animal victims. In some such way cannibalism originated. Aloreover, this custom nas existed, or yet exists, everywhere—in Europe as in Africa, at different periods of course, but usually corresponding to a transitory phase of civilisation. In other cases it may appear under the forms of a regular habit common to a whole people.

“This, of course, cannot take place with pastoral peoples who are preserved from hunger by tlxe milk and flesh of their iierds; it Ls the consequence of a warrior regime, of a social hoirarchy with a servile caste, and of a religion that sanctifies cannibalism and raises it to the position of an institution “There is, in fact, besides the cannibalism of necessity, that of gluttony, that of vengeance, and that of filial respect and religious feeling, or oven that of justice. The habit, once assumed, is easily kept up, as we sec in the oases of numerous existing races.” In Nortli America, the learned author assures us, “where white civilisation is pushing th© redskins gradually to the wall," the Sioux Indians still sometimes indulge in acts of cannibalism. The Crees and the Blackfeet keep up the custom, widen, according to the writer, was bequeathed to them by the ancient Mexicans, of opening the breast of their enemy to extract the heart and eat it raw. The Malays, he says, also eat the tiger’s heart, tliat they may become bravo, and quite recently the New Zealand natives ate their enemies so as to assimilate their desirable qualities. He goes on to say :

“The forests of the Amazon are yet inhabited by races who practise cannibalism either for vengeance or gluttony. . Justice, however, requires the statement that all the Brazilian tribes are not cannibals; cannibalism is disappearing more and more, and no recent instances have been reported. Even the Fuegians, after having been long regarded as incorrigible eaters of human flesh, seem to have given up the practise. . . “In Australia, the natives are supposed to bo cannibals only on occasion. . . But Lumholtz, says that they eat children by preference, rarely members of the tribe, J>ut always strangers. Human flesh is to them the most toothsame of viands.”

“In New Guinea, the petty Papuan tribes ate prisoners of war as lately as 1883. The Battacks of Sumatra have invented judicial anthropophagy; they devour condemned criminals while yet alive. . . The natives of New Caledonia also practise this custom, but in secret. . .

“But the true land of cannibalism is Africa, the land of man-hunting and slavery. Here game abounds, but war is only a means of procuring prisoners and human flesh. . . .

“Tho negroes of Southern Nubia and the region of, tho Albert Nyanza love human flesh. The Nyam-Nyams eat not only prisoners of war. but also their unprotected compatriots, and Schweinfnrth was once present at a. feast of which the ‘menu’ consisted wholly of a new-born babe. The const races of the West, Angola, and Loanga, indulge in cannibalism whenever they get the chance. The Kaffirs of the South seem to have given it up; at least, no recent case has been reported among them. It may bo hoped that European influence will cause the disappearance of anthropophagy in these regions by suppressing slavery and man-hunting.

“But we find cases of cannibalism elsewhere than among these miserable people, and numerous facts may be cited to show that it exists sometimes even in Europe. There are isolated cases due either to diseased conditions or to peculiar instances of absolute necessity. “In 1852 an Englishman killed an old woman, boiled her flesh with potatoes, and ate it. About the same time another'Englishman killed a man in the woods, cut up his body, hid the pieces, and carried them, one by one to his house, whore, they were eaten by him and his wife.

“In 1872 a. young Italian, seventeen years old, killed seven women and cut them up. He declared that he took pleasure in eating their flesh. Another Italian killed and ate his own two-year-old babe.

“In 1884 shipwrecked English sailors killed- and ate one of their comrades. How many similar cases have occurred without coming to public notice! The survivors of the second Flatters expedition to the- Sahara, during a Halt ,at tho Hassi-e 1 -Hadidatij well, killed and ate ho fewer than eleven of their comrades, one by one, to avoid perishing with lumber. The butcher of the caravan conducted the executions with the tacit consent of the survivors. “It may be seen that cannibalism is far from being completely extinct, and that we find it practised sometimes by representatives of the most civilised nations. Anthropophagy from necessity will probably exist for a long time,' hut civilisation will cause the last traces of other manifestations of cannibalism to disappear rapidly.”