Cannibalism

Among the Maoris cannibalism was undoubtedly always connected with revenge, and their wars were always wars of revenge. This trait deserves to be remarked as distinguishing their cannibalism from that which has assumed either a more everyday character, or one distinctively religious.

An Australian family-party from New South Wales. Original print by the Bibliographisches Institut. Leipzig
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When we find the traditions unanimously affirming that cannibalism was not practised among the earlier generations of immigrants, we may no doubt imagine it to be one of those phenomena which correspond with a certain retrogression in the public life of the community, brought about by internal quarrels; but further, that it came in with the increase of the population, which in many islands led undoubtedly to overcrowding. It disappeared and came up again, showing that there was always a favourable soil for it somewhere. We are led to the same conclusion by considering its geographical distribution. Well-ascertained centres of undisguised cannibalism are noticed in places so far apart as New Zealand, the Marquesas, the Palliser Islands, and the Paumotus. The Hawaiian and Tahitian groups, the Society Islands, and, for a period, Tonga, were free from it during the time of the more frequent visits of Europeans towards the end of the last century. But throughout Polynesia there exist both objects and legends in which traces survive of a time when it extended more widely.

When we find that in the Marquesas cannibal feasts were preceded by the cutting off of the victim's hair, to make arm-rings and necklets of magical potency, we cannot fail to see a cannibal significance in the frequent use of human hair to adorn spears and helmets, or of human bones and skulls as drinking-vessels; or in the Hawaiian custom of putting the eye of a human victim in the oil used to anoint the king. Strong men's bones are available as talismans. In New Zealand, fish-hooks were, according to Forster, furnished with a jagged bit of human bone. The people also had necklaces of human teeth; and in Hawaii a bone hung round the neck by a string of human hair counted as a high distinction.

The notion of the gods eating souls runs all through Polynesian mythology. In Aitutaki a god was called Terongo, the man-eater. Tangaroa caught souls with a net or a noose and ate them up. Souls of people who died suddenly were devoured by the god. This conception might easily pass into that of eating the body with the soul; and therewith human sacrifices, and, in the uncertainty of the boundary between divine and human, cannibalism received a divine justification.

Among most Melanesian tribes cannibalism is a settled institution, often in a very extensive degree. In many places it has, for various reasons, disappeared, as in Teste between the visits of Moresby in 1872 and Finsch in 1885. Elsewhere human flesh is in such request that even the remains of a relative who has died a natural death will serve for a repast. We find also examples of a recent extension of the bad habit by a sort of infection. Thus Saa caught it from San Christoval, Florida from somewhere to the westward, perhaps Savo. The Torres Islanders bake the heads which they have captured, and eat the eyes and pieces from the cheeks. The Fijians used long wooden forks, to eat not only prisoners of war, but members of certain particular tribes who were condemned to deliver one of their number for a cannibal feast. In the Solomons prisoners were even sold for cannibal purposes. Brown the missionary was told in New Britain that they retained the custom with the view of intimidating their enemies.

When we find a human skull with the back smashed in, the brains having been swallowed through the opening, we may safely infer cannibalism; and such are found in quantities on D'Entrecasteaux. Cannibalism often merely expresses hatred and rage against a slain enemy, just as when a captured foe is burnt alive. A craving for flesh meat can seldom be assigned as a cause; most readily perhaps among the indigent natives of New Caledonia. Yet even these go back to mythology and declare that men are fishes and therefore eatable. Human sacrifices, with subsequent consumption of the corpse or portions of it, form in Oceania also a mainstay of cannibalism. One receives the impression that life in those parts is always passed under the foreboding of being sacrificed. Cannibalism has also been maintained where it would otherwise have disappeared, owing to its association with skull worship. The Hattams, among whom it is a custom to decorate their dwelling-houses with the heads of dead persons, desecrate the graves of their neighbours in a shameful way, and at every feast in honour of a newly-captured head cannibalism blazes up afresh.

Infanticide

Infanticide was a recognised institution in Polynesia in pre-Christian times. The language has formed special terms for burying alive, stabbing with a splinter of bamboo, and strangling. In Tahiti some mothers had killed ten children; the only gleam of light in the blackness of this crime was the strict adherence to the law that a child had escaped death if it had lived for even a short interval of time. Fortunately there were cases enough where natural maternal feeling got the better of convention. Williams the missionary asserts that every time a mother murdered a child sprung from a misalliance, she advanced a step in rank, until she at length reached a point, corresponding to the number of her infanticides, at which she was permitted to let her children live in future. In not a few districts of this favoured region necessity was the motive for infanticide, but indolence still more so. The natives in justifying the practice frequently approximated to Malthusian principles. The dislike of bringing up more girls than necessary was an equally prevailing cause. War, the priesthood, fishery, and sailing, were: regarded as forms of activity to which it paid to bring up boys, and thus the disproportion of the sexes was so great that one woman was often wife to four or five men.