Cannibal

“ One cannibal juggler would drink large draughts of cocoanut oil, swallow uncooked giant beans, eat fire, and chew the ends of trumpet-shells, while the astonished lookers-on shouted their plaudits or sat trembling in every limb at what to them appeared to be horrible realities. One great magician lives in the poetry of his country, because he possessed a spear that would spring into life at his bidding. ”

“ THERE can be no doubt about it: real cannibal kings are getting scarce. Ever since, as a youngster, I read of Du Chaillu's adventures among the man-eating natives of Equatoria, I had hankered to see a real live cannibal in the flesh. But when, in later years, I made inquiries about them from missionaries and traders and officials in Senegal and Uganda and Nyasaland, I invariably received the reply: “Oh, that's all over now; except among a few of the West Coast tribes, cannibalism is a thing of the past.” ”

“ They were not cannibals, but held human life as sacred as civilized people do. It is admitted that in times of dire distress, through prolonged storms, they sacrificed one (an old woman) to save the rest, but if that made them cannibals then an American army officer held in high esteem is a cannibal. ”

“ Kreophagist and anthropophagist, butcher and amateur butcher, are but different branches of one and the same great predatory stock. The cannibal and the sportsman are the wicked uncles of the pious flesh-eater, unrespectable descendants from a common ancestry, who have failed to adapt themselves to modern requirements, and, like belated Royalists in a Commonweal, have continued to play the old privileged game when its date is over-past, an indiscretion which has caused them—the cannibal especially—to be ignored as much as possible by their more cautious relatives. ”

“ We are told that there is such a disease as a cannibal madness, and that it was common among the North American savages; that those seized with it have a raving desire for human flesh, and rush like wolves upon all they meet. Now, in what was this court of conscience better than these cannibals? Better! a thousand times worse—for wolves are honest. Now I well know, Eusebius, how I have put a coal under the very fountain of your blood—and it is boiling at a fine rate. ”

“ Who but a cannibal can look the innocent creature in the face, with its soft confiding eyes, its gentle and baby-like manners, and calculate upon devouring its brains, or satisfying the cravings of hunger upon its tender ribs? ”

“ The cannibals in a state of frenzy, real or pretended, bite flesh out of the extended arms of their fellow villagers. When they issue forth with cries of Hop-pop to observe this solemn rite, all who are of a different religious persuasion make haste to get out of their way; but men of the cannibal creed and of stout hearts will resolutely hold out their arms to be [pg 021] bitten. ”

“ The eating of human beings, or, as it is called, cannibalism, is no idle tale invented by travellers. Men of the highest character for truth, who have had ample opportunity for observation, from the time of Cook to the present day, have assured us that the natives of those lovely regions are cannibals: that they not only eat the bodies of enemies slain in war, but even kill and eat their own slaves. ”

“ The word cannibal is associated in our minds with scenes of the most debased savagery that the imagination can picture; of men in habits and appearance a little lower than the brute; of orgies the result of the most degrading religious superstition. It is not until one has lived on terms of friendship with cannibals that one realises that the practice is not [Pg 18] incompatible with an intelligence and moral qualities which command respect. ”

“ On the other hand, the notion of presenting food to the supernatural powers, whether ghosts or gods, is nearly universal among savages, and, where cannibals are concerned, that food is naturally human flesh. The terrible Aztec banquets of which the gods were partakers are the most noted examples of human sacrifices with a purely cannibal origin. Now there is good reason to guess that human sacrifices with no other origin than cannibalism survived even in ancient Greece. ”

“ Finally, whatever the immediate or remoter causes of individual acts of cannibalism may have been, this much seems clear, that the strength of the whole evil lay in the religious belief, propagated by the priests, encouraged by the poets, and practised by the chiefs and people, that it was an institution founded and patronized by the gods of Cannibal-land. ”

“ Cannibalism was practised in very ancient times; and though some peoples, as the New Zealanders and Fijians, have given it up in recent times, it is still practised over a wide area in Central Africa, where human flesh is a common article of food. Superstitious ideas are often associated with cannibalism among those who practise it. The Caribs were cannibals at the time of the Spanish conquest, and the word 'cannibal' is derived from their name. See Cannibalism. ”

“ They ascend the tree together until they come to a beautiful country well stocked with fat oxen. They kill an ox, and while its flesh is roasting they amuse themselves by making a stout thong of its hide. By and by one of the cannibals, smelling the cooking meat, comes to the foot of the tree, and looking up discovers the boy and girl in the sky-country! They invite him up there; to share in their feast, and throw him an end of the thong by which to climb up. When the cannibal is dangling midway between earth and heaven, they let go the rope, and down he falls with a terrible crash. ”

“ I may state that very few white men have ever had the good fortune to see a cannibal feast, as the natives, knowing the detestation in which the practice is held by white men, always keep the occurrence as quiet as possible. On one occasion only did I ever see human flesh, and the owner assured me he was not going to eat it. I never heard of cannibalism the whole (six months) time I was living at Aola on Guadalcanar, and the natives, in answer to my inquiries, most strenuously denied the practice, but this, of course, they would do. ”

“ Early man was a cannibal; he enjoyed human flesh, and therefore he offered it as a food gift to the spirits and his primitive gods. Since ghost spirits were merely modified men, and since food was man's greatest need, then food must likewise be a spirit's greatest need.
Cannibalism was once well-nigh universal among the evolving races. ”

“ For some time after eating human flesh the cannibal has to observe a great many rules, which regulate his eating and drinking, his going out and his coming in, his clothing and his intercourse with his wife.91 Similar customs prevail among other tribes of the same coast, such as the Bella Coola, the Tsimshian, the Niska, and the Nootka. In the Nootka tribe members of the Panther Society tear dogs to pieces and devour them. They wear masks armed with canine teeth.92 So among the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands there is one religion of cannibalism and another of dog-eating. ”

“ If there be any people who, from the barren state of their country, might be supposed to be cannibals by nature, these people, from the difficulty they, at times, experience in procuring food, might be liable to that imputation. But, in all my knowledge of them, I never was acquainted with one instance of that disposition; nor among all the natives which I met with in a route of five thousand miles, did I see or hear of an example of cannibalism, but such as arose from that irresistible necessity, which has been known to impel even the most civilized people to eat each other. ”

“ We are agog with excitement. The cannibals are not far away now. We ply him with questions and as he spreads his bread with marmalade he tells us of the Kia Kias and what their name means. To be kikied, he avers, is to be eaten; the natives are eaters of men ”

“ I look upon a man that interrupts another in conversation as a monster far [Pg 10] less excusable than a cannibal; yet cannibals (though, comparatively with interrupters, valuable members of society) are rare, and, even where they are not rare, they don't practise as cannibals every day: it is but on sentimental occasions that the exhibition of cannibalism becomes general. But the monsters who interrupt men in the middle of a sentence are to be found everywhere; and they are always practising. Red-letter days or black-letter days, festival or fast, makes no difference to them. ”

“ JANE CHALMERS ALONE AMONGST CANNIBALS
Alone among cannibals! One can scarcely imagine a more terrifying experience for a white woman. No matter how friendly people around might be, the knowledge that they were by long habit cannibals, whose huts were adorned with human skulls, would be sufficient to strike terror to the heart of the bravest. ”

“ The flesh-eater generally affects to look on cannibalism as something monstrous and abnormal, a dreadful perversion of taste which has no connection with the civilised meat-diet on which our welfare is supposed to depend; but the real facts show that the truth is quite otherwise, and that the position of the cannibal who is being proselytised to give up his man-eating is in many ways analogous to that of the flesh-eater who is worried by the vegetarian propagandists. The glories of the old English roast beef may be instructively compared with the glories of the old African roast man. ”

“ And just as there were starting places and paths for human spirits bound from this world to another, so also were there the same conveniences for the spirits of pigs, rats, snakes, bananas, taro, yams, canoes, clubs, spears, etc.
The Hades of the cannibal is both physical and spiritual, but its physical character is so only in appearance. The spirit of 166the body goes to the other world, retaining the likeness of the living man in an impalpable form. ”

“ But of late cannibalism has for some reason or other fallen into disrepute, even among those who ought logically to be numbered among its supporters. Its scientific and systematic practice is now relegated to a few barbarous nations, while Europeans, although still addicted in the main to flesh-eating, become cannibals only under the pressure of some great necessity, as in time of siege or shipwreck, and even then the utmost exertions are usually made by the survivors to keep secret the manner in which they preserved their own lives. ”

“ At a low stage of development of civilisation, cannibalism was a recognised means whereby men acquired vigour, for by eating at least the heart or brain of a valiant enemy they thought that they assimilated to themselves his rare and valuable qualities. ”

“ Willatopy indicated the stature of a boy of about twelve. "But I remember him very well indeed. He and I used to sail together in the yawl, and I learned all the channels; every one. He always said to me, 'Be wise when you grow up, Willie. Stick to Tops Island. Never go to England. They are all ravening wolves in England where every man preys on his neighbour.' He meant, I think, that the English are cannibals. The Hula cut off the heads of their enemies—it is the custom—but they are not cannibals any longer. The English are cannibals. They devour one another." ”

“ Tylor's article Cannibalism, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, may be consulted by any scholars who think our testimony on this point untrustworthy. It only remains to note that cannibalism is the most frequent form of peril in German and Modern Greek, and English and Indian, as in Zulu, Hottentot, Eskimo, and Samoyed Household Tales. ”

“ If once the public conscience can be awakened, it is possible that in time it may be inexpressibly pained and shocked by other things besides cannibalism, which are now established as mere every-day matters in our midst. So, without wishing to weaken the just detestation in which cannibalism is at present held, I should like to inquire a little into the reasons on which this abhorrence is based, and to see if they do not lead us to wider and fuller conclusions than those hitherto reached by well-meaning anti-cannibalistic flesh-eaters. ”

“ If the King of the Cannibal Islands, upon whose principal island we might suffer the inconvenience of being wrecked, were to exclaim in a loud voice “I will eat every single man who has arrived by that identical boat and no other,” we should all be eaten, and we should all be equally eaten. For being eaten, considered as a tragedy, is not a matter of degree. ”

“ The punishment for cannibalism is death, although every native, whatever his offence, is given a trial by the Belgian authorities.
So far as employing the white man as an article of diet is concerned, cannibalism has ceased in the Congo. Some of the tribes, however, still regard the flesh of their own kind as the last word in edibles. The practice must be carried on in secret. To have partaken of the human body has long been regarded as an act which endows the consumer with almost supernatural powers. The cannibal has always justified his procedure in a characteristic way. ”

“ But we afterwards learned that perhaps superstition also led them to sell us this site, in the malicious hope that it would prove our ruin. The mounds on the top, which had to be cleared away, contained the bones and refuse of their Cannibal feasts for ages. ”

“ Accepting the theory of a comparatively modern origin of cannibalism, the question still remains, of the immediate occasion of its introduction. Aside from the tradition already mentioned, we can imagine but three grounds on which it could have been based. Human flesh may have been first eaten under stress of necessity, and found so palatable that the practice was continued; superstition may have suggested the idea that the eating of the flesh would secure the eater against the bad influence of the spirit of the eaten one ”