CANNIBALISM.

Otago Witness, Issue 567, 11 October 1862, Page 8

CANNIBALISM.

(From the London Review, May 24.)

Tn the primitive world there was once an objectionable custom, that members of a community should minister to one another's necessities in their deaths as well as in their lives. A pious affection consecrated the mortal remains of the loved and lost to a use which was at all events simple. Travellers tell us that there are parts of the world still in which the tradition is preserved. It is well known that indirectly, and after a passage through soil, air, and plants, the material elements of each race of mankind pays into the substance of those that follow. W r h-'n we oat a sheep, we eat an animal that has biowscd the gras9, and has fed on the juices of the ground, and has imbibed the rain of heaven ; and grass, ground, and rain are all in part composed of what once was living men. Some nations ai'e in the habit, to speak delicately, of abbreviating this process. They merely help nature. Good, plain, practical people among them see no advantages in cumbrous funerals and costly sepulchres : it does a man no #ood to put him underground. Grace before meat is as good a burial service as any other, aud if people object to serving their generation iv the way that their fathers have done before them, the sooner such nonsense is got rid of the better. It is all very well for strangers who come in ships to practice a wasteful and ridiculous system af interment ; tho " Tom Browns "of the Fiji Islands are proo.;bly men who won't stand foreigneering and new-fangled ideas when they interfere with good old honest habits. A man has proved all that man need be here below, if he has turned out in the course of his career at once brave, subtle, faithful, and wholesome.

It need hardly bs said that public opinion in Europe has pronounced very decidedly against the practice. No person of the slightest pretensions to respectability would venture publicly upon it. The upper classes never think of such a thing. Even among the humbler orders it is quite unusual ; aud well-in-formed persons declare that it is not common in the west of Ireland. This being the case, why is it that we "are so unanimous ? There have beeu philosophers, chiefly Frenchmen, who have declared that the moral creed of the savage is far superior to that of the European, and (he untutored Indian was once held up as a model of virtue, till people began lo be quite ashamed of wearing shoes and stockings. Let us suppose ourselves endeavouring to explain to an intelligent anthropophagist from the tropics why we do not think it right to eat people, we do not mean to eat immoderately, or to be too fond of it, or to kill people for food without sufficient cause, but simply to do as others in the Pacific Ocean do. It cannot be said that it is not agreeable to nature ; for the facts prove that with some races it is quite so. And, moreover, a great part of the creed of Christendom consists in acting contrary to simple natural impulses. Nor is it fair to urge that it might lead to the prevalence of unlawful homicide ; for the abuse of a thing is not its use, and it might be argued in the same way that the eating of sheep's flesh leads to illicit sheep stealing. Nor again is it, as so many people believe, a custom pernicious to health. We do not wish to enter too minutely into particulars, but looking at the question generally it must be admitted that the higher we ascend in the scale of organic nature, the more strengthening is the food which the animal yields. Fish is poor nourishment, fit for Fridays ; chicken •is a little more invigorating, nice eating, in fact, for invalids ; rabbits and hares have their advantages, but a strong man wants beef. What are we to say to the intelligent foreigner who wants to know why we do not advance one step higher? We cannot tell him that it is wicked and impious ; we cannot show him any precept in the Bible forbidding us directly to utilise the defunct. We may not, it is true, marry our grandmothers ; but it nowhere says that we may not eat our grandfathers. Besides, he might reply that he came from the tribe where the belief was all the other way, and where his countrymen merited Paradise "by revenge and eating many enemies." One loophole of escape appears in the physiological part of the question ; for it is usually found that carnivorous animals are not good food, and man is semi-carnivorous. But, on the other hand, dogs will thrive on the flesh of other dogs, and rabbits on that of rabbits ; and the famous Kilkenny cats only obeyed a wholesome instinct in eating one another up. So that we shall do well in the discussion to fall back upon general remarks upon the dignity of the species, and the insult offered by such a custom to the collective status of humanity; which remarks the intelligent foreigner being unable to understand, will probably not be in a position to confute. It is perhaps time, however, to consider one theory which has been proposed of late years upon the subjectof c.innibalism, which disposes of several of its chief difficulties The theory is, that the custom does not exist. Tt is said, that strong as the evidence is, it is not yet sufficient to prove the fact ; that vast allowance must be made for ignorant love of the marvellous, still more for malicious tying, and some even for capricious blundering. A writer in the Quarterly Revi w, a few years ago, went so far as to suggest that one witness of cannibalism in New Zealand had been " hoaxed " by the humorous natives. If travelling Englishmen are to be the victim? of the practical jokes of savage tribes, there is indeed no end to thej geographical scepticism that may ai-ise. Perhaps it was only by way of make-believe that Indian widows used to enter their husband's graves ; and when- the king of Damomey executed his " grand custom," it is only his way of shocking public sensibilities by a conjuring trick. But we are not quite driven to such a hypothesis. There is no doubt, indeed, that the accusation of cannibalism has been frequently made without a particle of proof; heathens, under the empire, used to bring the .charge against Christians ; and Christian' crusaders as often against Saracens. Indeed some nations have been found with whom we appear to lie under the imputation ourselves ; in the Gallas language the name of white man is synonymous with man-eaten But the proof of the existence of cannibalism is as strong as it need be. No Englishman, it is true, has ever seen one savage eat another, but Englishmen have seen savages roasting each other for food. There are three special -districts famous for cannibalism on the globe. Central Africa has always enjoyed a reputation in this respect beyond other lands, and it is from it that the latest cannibal stories, have come. Whether we are to believe M. dv Ohaillu's narrative or not, the existence of 'man-eaters in the countries which he describes ,ift 'matter of the oldest .history. Mr.' Pethericl^ if we, are not mistaken," has. reported that he has reached the zone of the custom en the other side of the continent; and at Matiamvo, the strange territory further south, where the ', kings ate'^d Jo succeed by the constitutional "jtnurderbf their predecessors, the coronation .ceremony is' described by a ; late Portuguese traveller as 'Containing customs extremely an- ] thrppophagic. The real and original " Canni-

bal Islands " are shrouded in poetic mystery, but the title should belong to the Fijian group " par excellence." Of the nature of their meals the strongest of all the evidence is that of the present Roman Catholic missionaries; though when they relate n concentrated attack made upon them only six years ago bjr the 3000 Protestant converts, led on by the Protestant missionaries under the protection of the English ships of war, we begin to feel that Father Parel's accounts of the cooking of the prisoners may possibly he a little imaginative. The third cmnibal district is Brazil, where Lieutenant Smyth's guide, on the banks of the Amazon, as he trudged ulong, told him he wished he could shoot those men yonder, as he was sure tliev would bo good. The North American Indians are not altogether imimculate, the most <U^>:uled among them, at all events: and even the [roquoN, when they wish to' make war on another tribe, use what is either a very significant expression, or a very queer metaphor, and say, " Let us go aud ate that nation." Whatever we may have said slightingly of the Roman Catholic missionaries, it must he acknowledged that it was they, if the story be true, who worked the deliverance of the Caribs from the stigma of cannibalism, not, it is true, by the infLu »?•) of religious teaching chiellv. Tha '"-.ribs, siys Ken-era, were cured of their cannibal appetites by devouring a Dominican monk. " They fell sick of him," he simply states, "and would no longer eat cither priest or l-iym-in." IJiit, granting that t-ome unsophisi'Cited nations do eat one another, aud if lluml'uUlt and Pre-^cott were satisfied on the poinf, why should not we be so Iod? it is far from certainly known why they do it. Is it from excess of love, as some travellers toll u c , oi" from excess of hate, as others believe ? Do thay do it for the most part when in wantofothoribod, as the Carrier Indians ? or in preference lo other foo:l, as some of tho races of liiaiil? Is it a mark of utter abasement, as is generally thought? or is it, as one author of the day declares, a sign merely of a certain stage in political development ? It is not the most degraded races of mankind that eat human fie*h. The Fiji Islanders are far above the worst of the Bushmen — for example, in the scale of humanity; and in fact, so says a trustworthy writer, consider themselves rather gentlemanly than otherwise. It is true that they kill all their old people : but there is no doubt th>.t they treat them with great kindness until they are old enough to be killed. For ourselves, Aye are inclined to think that the moth cs to cannibalism arc two-fold. Some tribes adopt it from misery and starvation ; others, and those the greater number, out of fierceness and the spirit of revenge. The Tupi races of Brazil, to take an instance, are courageous and enterprising, and they cat th-ir prisoners from feelings of anger, an anger r.ot so hot, it may he remai'kcd, that they cannot wait to fatten them. Near them live another tribe, cowardly and stupid folk, Avho never eat human flush at all 5 and near (lice ni»ai'.i i third i - ;ice, the Aimotes, miserable being", wh'> cannot swim, and hardly know how to live together in communities ; aud these practice cannibalism for want of other food. r L he rirst-class of motives is. it appears to us, by far the most common. The liattas of Sumatra, are said to cat their malefactors. The Charruas, who are not cannibals generally, ate the body of their enemy Solis, after death. The Mexicans, at the siege of their capital, were horrified at the idea of eating their own countrymen, but thought prisoners of war the obvious and natural resource for the appetite. And the ISTew Caledonians, who share their partialities at the present day, think the conduct of white men in devouring the animals which they have reared and fed, little short of monstrous.

If we now return to our discussion with the intelligent foreigner, who asks us why we think his conduct objectionable, and set our missionaries to discourage it, what light have we gained from examining the fact ? We can point out to him that no cannibal nations have ever arrived at very high social cultivation, or made any great progress in science or art ; and we can urge the wickedness of giving way to those feelings of an^'cr, which in some cases have so marked a development. Beyond this we really do not know how far we can go \ and it will only rennin to add that in this, as in so many other things, bis taste and ours arc different. We will not quarrel, we will say, about matters of mere food. People can have a very high respect for each other without eating of the f=ume dishes, and aesthetic varieties of opinion reed not prevent perfect mutual esteem. With all due regard for each other's opinion, we yet amicably differ, [f an intelligent friend is mistaken in his view, it is an error, doubtless, of the head, ai.d not of the heart. Perhaps he will not think too harshly of us for our own preference for mutton. If any one, however, should think from our tolerant tone that we tire about to a'lopt our friend's practice, he is very much mistaken. We should consider it the worst pos=?'h!e taste in any Englishman to do so. Nothing cmld make us more unhappy than to thin'c that nny of our readers should be led, by what is here said, into a custom sr> extremely umvnal. If any apology, indeed, is needed for the light tone of some of our remarks, it must be found in the fact that the vice of cannibalism is not at present a common one, or likely soon to be popular. If we do bite and iV:\oi;r one another, it is in a purely metaphorical sense. Should the vice in question ev^n assail the higher strata of society, should good ton cease to repudiate it, and fickle fashion adopt it as the novelty of the day, we shall not then spare the voice of earnest remonstrance, or the keener lash of satire.