Part 2
St. Jerome has the following passage in one of his works: “Cum ipse adolescentulus in Gallia viderim Attacottos gentem Britannicam, humanis vesci carnibus; et cum per sylvas porcorum greges, et armentorum pecudumque reperiant, pastorum nates et feminarum papillas solere abscindere; et has solas ciborum delicias arbitrari.” The quotation appears in “Gibbons’ Decline and Fall,” and may be rendered: He learned that the _Attacotti_, the people of the country now called Scotland, when hunting in the woods, preferred the shepherd to his flocks, and chose only the most fleshy and delicate parts for eating.
Gibbon, in comparing the people of Scotland with the natives of the gorilla country, makes what may be considered rather an equivocal compliment. “If,” says he, “in the neighborhood of the commercial and literary town of Glasgow, a race of cannibals has already existed, we may contemplate in the period of Scottish history, the opposite extremes of savage and civilized life.” There is reason to fear that cannibalism was not quite extinct in Scotland, even in an age which must be called civilized.
Andrew Wyntoun has a grisly passage in his Rhyming Chronicle, regarding a man who lived so brief a time before his own day, that he might easily have heard of him from surviving contemporaries. It was about the year 1339, when a large part of Scotland, even the best and most fertile, had been desolated by the armies of Edward III.
“About Perth, there was a countrie Sae waste, that wonder wes to see; For intill well-great space thereby, Wes nother house left, nor herb’ry. Of deer there was then sic foison[1] That they wold near come to the town. Sae great default was near that stead. That many were in hunger dead. A carle they said was near ther by, That wold set settis[2] commonly, Children and women for to slay, And swains that he might over-ta: And ate them all that he get might: _Chrysten Cleek_ till name be hight. That sa’ry life continued he, While waste but folk was the countrie.”
Footnote 1:
Abundance.
Footnote 2:
Traps.
Lindsay of Pitscottie tells a dismal story of a man who lived during the reign of James II., (about 1460), at a time also within the recollection of people alive during the epoch of the historian. He says: “About this time there was are brigand ta’en, with his haill family, who haunted a place in Angus. This mischievous man had ane execrable fashion, to tak all young men and children he could steal away quietly, or tak away without knowledge, and eat them; and the younger they were, esteemed them the maer tender and delicious. For the whilk cause and dreadful abuse, he with his wife and bairns were all burned, except ane young wench of a year old, wha was saved and brought to Dundee, where she was brought up and fostered; and when she came to woman’s years, she was condemned and burnt quick for that crime. It is said that when she was coming to the place of execution, there gathered are huge multitude of people, and especially women, cursing her that she was so unhappy to commit so infamous deeds; to whom she turned about with an ireful countenance, saying, ‘Wherefore chide ye me, as if I had committed ane unworthy act? Give me credence, and trow me, if ye had experience of eating men and women’s flesh, ye would think it so delicious that ye would never forbear it again.’ So, without any sign of repentance, this unhappy creature died in the sight of the people.”
In the sunny land of Italy, in the year 1519, at the beautiful city of Milan, a record appears in its annals that a Milanese woman named Elizabeth had an invincible inclination to human flesh. She enticed children to her house, where she killed, salted and ate them. Being discovered, she was broken on the wheel and burnt.
During one of the earlier revolutions in Southern Italy the _Neapolitan lazaroni_ (whether from hunger or to manifest intense hatred towards their rulers, as well as to exhibit the wretchedness to which they had been reduced,) roasted their fellow men in the public streets, and gave to all who were willing to partake.
At the time when Belisarius was engaged in the Gothic war, a horrible famine afflicted Italy, and it is the testimony of Procopius that on this occasion multitudes in the agony of their want sustained life by eating human flesh.
When Rome was captured by the Goths in the year 410 and the ports blockaded, there was such a distress among the _Romans_ that human flesh was publicly sold in the markets; and many mothers were forced to consume their own children.
It is recorded also that the _Jews_ (having destroyed upwards of two hundred thousand Romans in the time of Trajan) glutted their rage by feeding on the bodies of some of the slain.
Glaber chronicles that during the famine of 1033 in France, guests were sacrificed by _Frenchmen_ who had welcomed them to their hospitality; children were enticed into secret places and slain, and frequently human flesh was exposed for sale in the markets. At the same period, a woman who lived by letting lodgings murdered and ate seventeen strangers who had made their home beneath her roof. The fact of these enormities accidentally came to the knowledge of the eighteenth lodger; having entered her house and anticipating her purpose, to save his own life he took that of his hostess.
CANNIBALISM BY ENTOMBED MINERS.
(Boulogne Dispatch to the London Times.)
“Excavations in the Chancelade quarries, where it will be remembered a landslip occurred last October burying a number of workmen, have been carried on ever since for the purpose of unearthing the bodies. For many days after the slip was believed to have been smothered, the workers smoke was seen to issue from the ruins. Soldiers and quarrymen, directed by a party of engineers, worked day and night in hopes of taking the men out alive. Ever since the work has proceeded, but of late the endeavors were not so vigorously plied. The diggers have now reached the actual spot where the men were engaged at the time of the accident, and on penetrating into a gallery cut in the stone the explorers discovered the body of a young man lying on the ground. Photographs taken of the position show that a dreadful state of affairs must have come about when the men uncrushed found themselves entombed. It appears undoubted that some of the men tried to prolong their lives by killing and eating their companions in misfortune. A few solitary arms and limbs have been picked up in their prison, and everything points to the fact that cannibalism was resorted to. The young man whose body was unmutilated seems to have survived the others, and to have died of hunger.”
Schweinfurth, in a work entitled “Heart of Africa,” assures his readers that tribes in _Africa_ even now wage war with neighboring tribes, for the avowed purpose of obtaining human flesh to dry for provisions.
On the authority of Dr. Schweinfurth the _Niam-Niams_, also of Central Africa, devour the bodies of their dead enemies, and when any one of their people is old, feeble or so near dying, to use the sailor’s simile in Charles Dickens’ famous story, “he needn’t be so very partick’ler about a few minutes,” he is killed and eaten. Runaway slaves when recaptured always meet this fate, though as a rule the slaves in this tribe rarely attempt to escape.
The _Wambembe_ also of Central Africa ate human flesh to such an extent that, when they could not obtain it otherwise, they traded their animals to secure the coveted article.
A Negro race called the _Babooke_ living near the Niam-Niams is even more notoriously cannibalistic than that people; and Baker tells of the _Makkarika_ tribe, dwelling about two hundred miles west of Gondokoro, who consumed the flesh of man with great avidity. When the slave-traders made a “razzia,” these natives accompanied them for the sake of eating the slain. The traders complained that they were bad associates, as they insisted upon killing and eating the children. Their method was to catch a child by its ankles, dash its head against the ground, and thus deprived of life, it was boiled and eaten.
A horrible act of cannibalism at Gondokoro is thus described by N’Yanza: “The traders had arrived with their ivory from the west, together with a large number of slaves; the carriers of the ivory being Makkarikas. One of the slave girls attempted to escape, when a slave dealer fired at her with his musket. The ball struck her in the side, wounded her and she fell to the ground. No sooner had the poor creature fallen than the Makkarikas rushed upon her in a crowd, killed her with their lances and at once divided her by cutting off the head, and separating the body into as many pieces as were required. The slave women and their children who witnessed this scene rushed panic-stricken from the spot and took refuge in trees. The Makkarikas seeing them in flight were excited to give chase, and pulling the children from their refuge among the branches killed several, and a great feast was prepared for the whole party.”
Paul De Chillu, with whom the writer has conversed, says that the natives of the gorilla country in Western Africa manifest no repugnance toward human flesh as food, but take it with a relish. The _Fans_, one of the West African tribes, are known to have indulged in this depraved taste for human food, and they purchase dead slaves for culinary purposes from other tribes, at the high rate of an elephant’s tooth apiece. In polite Fan society, it is accounted a very courteous act to exchange bodies for table use with the neighboring tribes with whom at the time the Fans happen to be at peace. It is narrated that, on one occasion a war party of this tribe while on the march, finding a newly-buried body in a grave, dug it up, cooked it in the pot buried with it, and ate the flesh for breakfast as an especial dainty.
* * * * *
War reports on record in England show that when Gen. Sir Charles Macarthy was killed in the first Ashantic battle, the Fantis, known as one of the most cruel and vindictive of the negroloid races, ate the heart of this brave officer to give them a share of his courage. With them superstition and all the absurdities and abominations of the fetich still remain in force. Their religion is accompanied with so much noise that white-faced strangers are driven almost mad by their pandemonia. Drums are beaten, horns are blown, and all the population unite in producing the greatest possible din as well as confusion.
The Kamrasi cement friendship by making an incision in the bodies of their friends, having taken out some of the blood, mixing it with farinaceous food. This act is supposed to perpetuate a friendship coeval with life.
The people of _Maneana_ south of the Gambia and Senegal’ Mollien states are man-eaters; but their preference is for elderly persons; nor are they particular as to whether the vital spark of life has been extinguished.
According to Abdallatiphus, during the famine which desolated Egypt, A. D. 1199, in consequence of the Nile not overflowing its banks, many of the _Nubians_ living on the river were forced by the pangs of hunger to kill and eat their own children.
In the interior of New Guinea (the great link by which the Molucca Islands are connected with New Holland on the one hand and the Polynesian Archipelago on the other) is a race of _Haraforas_ who live in the hollows of trees, which they ascend by means of long notched pieces of timber. The agility of the youth of this race among the branches of trees is wonderful; they will climb and spring from one branch to another almost with the ease of monkeys, and like those animals when attacked all take to the trees as refuges, where they can defend themselves with great chance of success. Their habits are essentially the same as those of other tribes already named. Beccari bears testimony to the fact of having seen some of them wearing bracelets of human jaw-bones, and necklaces made of the spinal vertebræ which had evidently been subjected to the action of heat. Their habitations in the tree-tops were also decked with human skulls, which led to the belief that the taste of human flesh was not unknown to them.
The _Papuans_ were considered great adepts at cooking their fellow-men, and with them man-eating, plain, unmistakable and vile, existed up to a very late period. It is intimated that some of these natives have not yet lost their relish for human food. The Papuans who live inland are described as frightful and hideous in appearance, making themselves more so by the peculiar manner of arranging their hair, which they form into enormous bunches. This startling head gear is about three feet in circumference, and adorned with the feathers of birds. New Guinea contains several varieties of the Papuan race. The black men of the south-east coast, from Cape Valsche to Cape Possession are different from the Arfaks inhabiting the mountainous northwest coast inland.
The inhabitants of the Isle of Pines, on the south of New Caledonia, where the sea abounds with coral reefs, are also known to have been tinctured with a gastronomic liking for their own species. Among the New Caledonians the priests claimed the hands of the slain as their special perquisites; and as those parts of the human body are said by anthropophagous connoisseurs to be the best, war was frequently fermented by the priests, in order that their larders might be the more abundantly supplied. D’Entrecasteaux thus recounts the skill displayed by the women in their methods of serving up the human body for food: “Sometimes it was placed before their lords and masters completely roasted but in a sitting posture, fully equipped in war costume, to represent the pièce de résistance; then again it would be served up as a side dish, skillfully cut in slices to tempt the appetite.” He states also that on their arrival the natives felt the calves and brawny arms of his men, and manifested much pleasure at the prospect of a feast, which might possibly be in store for them. This race did not confine itself to bipedal diet, perhaps for the reason that the supply was not equal to the demand; but like many other of the Oceanic people depended for the main portion of their sustenance on cocoa-nuts, roots, shell-fish, spiders, etc. When all other things failed they have been known to stay the pangs of hunger by filling their insatiable stomachs with clay, which though it affords no nutriment, yet for a time allays the cravings of the appetite.
In _Australia_ where large animals are scarce, certain tribes of an extremely degraded type have been known to feed on flesh. There is a story of an Englishman who several years ago went to New Caledonia to raise cattle for the market of Noumea. While journeying from one ranch to another, by reason of the bushes and low shrubbery he lost his way, and after wandering about till near nightfall, finally came upon a large village of natives. He was hospitably entertained, well fed and by the great chief Atai was treated with much attention. Atai was very courteous to his white guest, and when night had fully come conducted him in state to the hut set apart for his repose. Fortunately the visitor was acquainted with the customs of the country, and knew the common method for putting an end to travelers preparatory to feasting upon them. It is as follows: The guest is kindly received and allotted a cabin by himself for rest and sleep. The native huts have visually but one opening, which serves as a door and window. When the guest is supposed to be well settled in his cabin, this single entrance is fired; and as it is constructed of light twigs it not only burns very rapidly but the occupant within is killed and roasted; now the feast begins. As the Englishman was familiar with this custom of New Caledonian life, and feeling that the cabin which the venerable Atai had so courteously provided might become for him perhaps a tomb as well as a cooking stove, unless he were very watchful, manifested however no distrust. Accordingly he entered the cabin of the chief, meeting courtesy with courtesy, until both were fairly housed. As he was in the prime of life and quite an athlete, he regarded himself more than a match for the aged cannibal, should he now be disposed to exhibit violence. Closing, therefore, the door and planting his back firmly against it, laying his hand on his revolver and displaying at the same time other weapons, he determined to remain in his chosen position the entire night. It was a terrible night for the traveler; but none the less for the cunning chief who again and again from his detainer requested permission to withdraw. He was made to understand, however, that his company could not be dispensed with, and that they must not think of parting until morning. When daylight was fully come, the Englishman now felt assured that Atai would not venture to allow his people openly to attack him, as he was well known in the settlement, and both issuing forth together from the hut, he gladly accepted the escort of a native guide, and was safely conducted to the borders of the same.
Among the _Maoris_ or aborigines of _New Zealand_ cannibalism prevailed to an alarming extent, also among the natives of the Sandwich Islands, Tahiti, and neighboring groups. Ellis in his “Polynesian Researches” shows that the Polynesians evinced a strong disposition to devour the flesh and drink the blood of their slain enemies; and the motive which governed them seemed to be the arousing of terror and obtaining a satisfactory revenge. A New Zealand warrior having killed his foe, would sever the head from the body, scoop up the warm life-blood flowing from the mutilated trunk, and facing his enemies with fiendish triumph would drink it in presence of other captors. Perhaps if there is one feature in the history of these islanders better known than another, it is the reputation they had of preferring the human subject as an article of diet to any inferior mammalia. In song and story this omnivorous weakness of the “King of the Cannibal Islands” and his dusky subjects has been celebrated.
Dr. Brown of Edinburgh in writing concerning the habits and customs of this people observes with a certain degree of grim humor, “If the Polynesian did eat his brother instead of loving him, he loved him (gastronomically) not only wisely but well; for the custom was conducive of great good, kept down the price of pork, yams and fowls, saved funeral expenses, thinned the population of an insular country, etc.; moreover, was it not in part a religious observance only allowed to certain individuals of high piety and stout digestion, and therefore to be encouraged and praised instead of being condemned in a chorus of seamen’s oaths and missionary hymns?” And yet in face of this and numerous other facts, some positively assert that cannibalism never existed among the islands in the South Pacific. Time has wrought however among these peoples great changes, and when as now some of these pristine savages are seen clothed in the usual attire prevalent in the western world, it is very humiliating to be asked whether their respected fathers perhaps ever partook of “cold missionary.” It is but just to these distant people, however, to say that never was cannibalism rampant among them, as was true of the occupants of the neighboring isles; and it is equally pleasant to know that, ornaments of the human person, either as charms or necklaces, made of human teeth, have lost their former popularity.
The experience of Captain Marion, a French officer who visited New Zealand June, 1772, with a party of sixteen men and four lieutenants, confirms beyond all question the truthfulness of the statement, that the natives in former times were strongly addicted to this repugnant habit; for no sooner had the Frenchmen landed than they were attacked, murdered and soon after eaten. Next morning when another boat’s crew went ashore, a great swarm of these savages immediately surrounded them, captured and put to death no less than eleven of the twelve constituting the party. The survivor witnessed the dead bodies of his companions cut up and divided among the actors in the scene, each of whom having eaten what he needed, carried away such portions as were left, to be consumed by his absent friends. A similar misfortune overtook Captain Furneaux of the ship Adventure in the year 1773, on Cook’s second voyage. The record is that a boat was sent to the land under the care of a midshipman and a crew consisting of ten men, all of whom were killed and eaten.
Hawkesworth verifies the accounts made by other writers, and declares unequivocally that the New Zealanders ate the bodies of their enemies; but he remarks apologetically that their cannibalism originated from an irresistible necessity, occasioned by the pangs of hunger rather than from any natural desire for this form of food.
_Kotzebue_, in 1824, directed his course for the _Navigators’ Islands_, and on the second day of April observed the most easterly of the number rising like a high mountain from the ocean. His testimony concerning these people is, that “the inhabitants are the most ferocious people to be met with in the South Sea.” He visited also the scene where De Langle and his comrades fell, now known as Massacre Bay. On the arrival of his ship “La Perouse” it was surrounded by several hundred canoes filled with furious savages, who evidently were disposed to take the vessel by violence. To prevent any assault, however, the sailors were placed at proper stations, fully armed, and with orders to check any attempt at advance. Even with this precaution and in defiance of repeated blows, some of the more resolute succeeded in clambering aboard. Impelled by that covetous emotion which no savage has ever been able to repress, every object within their reach was grasped with both hands, and they held to it so pertinaciously as to require the united efforts of the strongest seamen to remove their grip and throw them overboard. A few who were permitted to remain on deck behaved like wild beasts of the desert, and showed in their movements the most disgusting propensities. Indeed one of them was so much tempted by the accidental display of a young sailor’s bare arm, that unable to control his horrible appetite, he snapped at the same with his teeth, indicating by the most unequivocal signs, that such food was to him both acceptable and palatable. Kotzebue, after other references to the existence of cannibalism in the islands of the South Sea, warns all voyagers not to venture among the tribes who have this taste for human food, without the utmost precaution, as they are more artful and treacherous than any of the other Polynesians.
Walon, a shipwrecked mariner, narrates his experience in connection with that of several shipmates, in the following almost ghastly words: