Cannibalism in Oceania

A cannibal feast on Tanna, Vanuatu, c. 1885–1889

Cannibalism in Oceania is well documented for many parts of this region, with reports ranging from the early modern period to, in a few cases, the 21st century. Some archaeological evidence has also been found. Human cannibalism in Melanesia and Polynesia was primarily associated with war, with victors eating the vanquished, while in Australia it was often a contingency for hardship to avoid starvation.

Cannibalism used to be widespread in parts of Fiji (once nicknamed the "Cannibal Isles"), ^[1] among the Māori people of New Zealand, and in the Marquesas Islands. ^[2] It was also practised in New Guinea and in parts of the Solomon Islands, and human flesh was sold at markets in some Melanesian islands. ^[3] Cannibalism was still practised in Papua New Guinea as of 2012, for cultural reasons. ^{[4] [5]}

Australia

While it is generally accepted that some forms of cannibalism were practised in Australia in certain circumstances, the prevalence and meaning of such acts in pre-colonial Aboriginal societies are disputed. ^[6] Before colonization, Aboriginal Australians were predominantly nomadic hunter-gatherers at times lacking in protein sources. Reported cases of cannibalism include killing and eating small children (infanticide was widely practised as a means of population control and because mothers had trouble carrying two young children not yet able to walk) ^{[7] [8] [9]} and enemy warriors slain in battle. ^{[10] [11] [12]}

In the late 1920s, the anthropologist Géza Róheim heard from Aboriginals that infanticidal cannibalism had been practised especially during droughts. "Years ago it had been custom for every second child to be eaten" – the baby was roasted and consumed not only by the mother, but also by the older siblings, who benefited from this meat during times of food scarcity. One woman told him that her little sister had been roasted, but denied having eaten of her. Another "admitted having killed and eaten her small daughter", and several other people he talked to remembered having "eaten one of their brothers". ^[13] The consumption of infants took two different forms, depending on where it was practised:

When the Yumu, Pindupi, Ngali, or Nambutji were hungry, they ate small children with neither ceremonial nor animistic motives. Among the southern tribes, the Matuntara, Mularatara, or Pitjentara, every second child was eaten in the belief that the strength of the first child would be doubled by such a procedure. ^[14]

Usually only babies who had not yet received a name (which happened around the first birthday) were consumed, but in times of severe hunger, older children (up to four years or so) could be killed and eaten too, though people tended to have bad feelings about this. Babies were killed by their mother, while a bigger child "would be killed by the father by being beaten on the head". ^[15] But cases of women killing older children are on record too. In 1904 a parish priest in Broome, Western Australia, stated that infanticide was very common, including one case where a four-year-old was "killed and eaten by its mother", who later became a Christian. ^[16]

Historian William Rubinstein writes that both "deliberate infanticide" and "the practice of the cannibalism of a murdered baby [were] apparently common" in Australia. ^[17] A number of reports indicate that newborn infants were sometimes killed by their mothers, who then feed the flesh to an older sibling in order to strengthen the older child in that way. ^{[18] [19]} The Norwegian ethnographer Carl Sofus Lumholtz confirms that infants were commonly killed and eaten especially in times of food scarcity. He notes that people spoke of such acts "as an everyday occurrence, and not at all as anything remarkable." ^[20]

Some have interpreted the consumption of infants as a religious practice: "In parts of New South Wales ..., it was customary long ago for the first-born of every lubra [Aboriginal woman] to be eaten by the tribe, as part of a religious ceremony." ^[21] However, there seems to be no direct evidence that such acts actually had a religious meaning, and the Australian anthropologist Alfred William Howitt rejects the idea that the eaten were human sacrifices as "absolutely without foundation", arguing that religious sacrifices of any kind were unknown in Australia. ^[22]

Another frequently reported practise was funerary endocannibalism, the cooking and consumption of the deceased as a funerary rite. ^{[23] [24] [25] [26] [27]}

When anyone dies, provided he or she be not too old, certain of the male relatives take the body out into the bush and cook it in a native oven.... When all the flesh is removed – apparently everything is eaten – the bones are collected, and, with the exception of the long ones from the arm, are wrapped in paperbark and handed over to the custody of a relative. ^[25]

Lumholtz says that "the greatest delicacy known to the Australian native is human flesh", even adding that the "appetite for human flesh" was the primary motive for killing. Unrelated individuals and isolated families were attacked just to be eaten and any stranger was at risk of being "pursued like a wild beast and slain and eaten". ^[28] He says acquiring human flesh in this manner was something to be proud of, not a reason for shame. ^[29] He nevertheless stresses that such flesh was by no means a "daily food", since opportunities to capture victims were relatively rare. ^[30] One specific instance of kidnapping for cannibal purposes was recorded in the 1840s by the English immigrant George French Angas, who stated that several children were kidnapped, butchered, and eaten near Lake Alexandrina in South Australia shortly before he arrived there. ^[31]

Melanesia

In parts of Melanesia, cannibalism was still practised in the early 20th century, for a variety of reasons – including retaliation, to insult an enemy people, or to absorb the dead person's qualities. ^[32]

New Guinea

Korowai people of New Guinea practised cannibalism until very recent times

As in some other New Guinean societies, the Urapmin people engaged in cannibalism in war. Notably, the Urapmin also had a system of food taboos wherein dogs could not be eaten and they had to be kept from breathing on food, unlike humans who could be eaten and with whom food could be shared. ^[33]

The Korowai tribe of south-eastern Papua could be one of the last surviving tribes in the world engaging in cannibalism. ^[5]

A local cannibal cult killed and ate victims as late as 2012. ^[4]

Fiji

Scene from outside a Fijian bure kalou (temple) with a victim about to be consumed – drawing by Alexandre de Bar (c. 1860)

One tribal chief, Ratu Udre Udre in Rakiraki, Fiji, is said to have consumed 872 people and to have made a pile of stones to record his achievement. ^{[34] [35]} Fiji was nicknamed the "Cannibal Isles" by European sailors, who avoided disembarking there.

Polynesia

New Zealand

The first encounter between Europeans and Māori may have involved cannibalism of a Dutch sailor. ^[36] In June 1772, the French explorer Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne and 26 members of his crew were killed and eaten in the Bay of Islands. ^[37] In an 1809 incident known as the Boyd massacre, about 66 passengers and crew of the Boyd were killed and eaten in Whangaroa, Northland.

Cannibalism was a regular practice in Māori wars. ^[38] In one instance, on 11 July 1821, warriors from the Ngāpuhi tribe killed 2,000 enemies and remained on the battlefield "eating the vanquished until they were driven off by the smell of decaying bodies". ^[39] Māori warriors fighting the New Zealand government in Tītokowaru's War on the North Island in 1868–1869 revived ancient rites of cannibalism as part of a radical interpretation of the Pai Mārire religion. ^[40]

According to the historian Paul Moon, the corpses of enemies were eaten out of rage and in order to humiliate them. ^[41] Moon has criticized other historians for ignoring Māori cannibalism or even claiming that it never happened, despite an "overwhelming" amount of evidence to the contrary. Margaret Mutu, professor of Māori studies at the University of Auckland, agrees that "cannibalism was widespread throughout New Zealand" and that "it was part of our [Māori] culture", but warns that it can be hard for non-Māori to correctly understand and interpret such customs due to a lack of contextual knowledge, though she did not elaborate on what knowledge they might lack. ^[42]

According to one scholarly article,

Apart from the passing European, however, Maori cannibalism, like its Aztec counterpart, was practised exclusively on traditional enemies – i.e., on members of other tribes and hapuu. To use the jargon, the Maori were exo- rather than endocannibals. By their own account, they did it for purposes of revenge: to kill and eat a man was the most vengeful and degrading thing one person could do to another." ^[43]

Such humiliation could also involve exhuming and consuming the bodies of enemies that had died of unrelated reasons – an act known as kai pirau (necrophagy). ^[44]

In addition to eating the bodies of enemies slain in battle, one way in which an injury could be avenged was by digging up a corpse belonging to the offender's group and eating it. Stafford in his history of the Te Arawa tribe describes how the Ngati Whakaue chief Manawa revenged the killing, by some Ngati Raukawa tribesmen, of people who had been staying with him as guests. Manawa went to a Ngati Rau burial ground and dug up the corpse of a man who he knew had been recently buried there; he took the body home, cooked and ate it. Afterwards, Stafford writes he made the bones into "utensils". ^[44]

Marquesas Islands

The dense population of the Marquesas Islands, in what is now French Polynesia, was concentrated in narrow valleys, and consisted of warring tribes, who sometimes practised cannibalism on their enemies. Human flesh was called "long pig". ^{[45] [46]} Rubinstein writes:

It was considered a great triumph among the Marquesans to eat the body of a dead man. They treated their captives with great cruelty. They broke their legs to prevent them from attempting to escape before being eaten, but kept them alive so that they could brood over their impending fate ... With this tribe, as with many others, the bodies of women were in great demand. ^[47]

See also

• Alexander Pearce, Irish criminal who confessed to practising cannibalism while on the run in Australia
• Asmat people, a Papuan group with a reputation of cannibalism
• Cannibalism in Africa
• Cannibalism in Asia
• Cannibalism in Europe
• Cannibalism in the Americas
• Child cannibalism
• List of incidents of cannibalism

References

1. Sanday, Peggy Reeves (1986). Divine Hunger: Cannibalism as a Cultural System. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 151. ISBN   978-0-521-31114-4.
2. Rubinstein, William D. (2014). Genocide: A History. New York: Routledge. pp. 17–18. ISBN   978-0-582-50601-5.
3. Knauft, Bruce M. (1999). From Primitive to Postcolonial in Melanesia and Anthropology. University of Michigan Press. p. 104. ISBN   978-0-472-06687-2.
4. "Cannibal Cult Members Arrested in PNG". The New Zealand Herald . 5 July 2012. ISSN   1170-0777 . Retrieved 28 November 2015.
5. Raffaele, Paul (September 2006). "Sleeping with Cannibals". Smithsonian Magazine .
6. Biber, Katherine (2005). "Cannibals and Colonialism". Sydney Law Review. 27 (4). Retrieved 7 October 2023.
7. Howitt 1904, pp. 748–750.
8. "Aboriginal Cannibals". Register. 8 March 1928. Retrieved 5 October 2023.
9. Berndt & Berndt 1977, p. 470.
10. Howitt 1904, pp. 751–752.
11. McCarthy, Frederick (1957). Australia's Aborigines: Their Life and Culture. Melbourne: Colorgravure. p. 166.
12. Berndt & Berndt 1977, pp. 469–470.
13. Róheim 1976, pp. 71–72.
14. Róheim 1976, p. 71.
15. Róheim 1976, pp. 69, 72.
16. Royal Commission on the Conditions of the Natives (1905). Report Presented to Both Houses of Parliament. Perth: Wm. Alfred Watson. pp. 61, 63.
17. Rubinstein 2014, pp. 16–17.
18. Cowlishaw, Gillian (1978). "Infanticide in Aboriginal Australia". Oceania. 48: 265.
19. Rubinstein 2014, p. 17.
20. Lumholtz 1889, pp. 134, 254, 273.
21. Smith, R. Brough (1878). The Aborigines of Victoria. Vol. 1.
22. Howitt 1904, pp. 754–756.
23. McCarthy 1957, pp. 165–166.
24. Berndt & Berndt 1977, pp. 467–469.
25. Spencer, Walter Baldwin; Gillen, Francis James (1912). Across Australia.
26. Howitt 1904, pp. 751–753, 755.
27. Monroe, M. H. (15 April 2013). "Australian Aboriginal Mortuary Rites – Cannibalism". Australia: The Land Where Time Began. Retrieved 7 October 2023.
28. Lumholtz 1889, pp. 176, 271–272.
29. Lumholtz 1889, p. 72.
30. Lumholtz 1889, p. 274.
31. Angas, George French (1847). Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand: Being an Artist's Impressions of Countries and People at the Antipodes. Vol. 1. London: Smith, Elder. pp. 122–123.
32. "Melanesia Historical and Geographical: the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides". Southern Cross (1). Church Army Press. London: 1950.
33. Robbins, Joel (2006). "Properties of Nature, Properties of Culture: Ownership, Recognition, and the Politics of Nature in a Papua New Guinea Society". In Biersack, Aletta; Greenberg, James (eds.). Reimagining Political Ecology. Duke University Press. pp.  176–177. ISBN   978-0-8223-3672-3.
34. Most Prolific Cannibal Guinness Book of World Records Internet Archive Wayback Machine 29 September 2004
35. Sanday 1986, p. 166.
36. King, M. (2003). The Penguin History of New Zealand. London. p. 105.
37. "Diary of du Clesmeur" in McNab, Robert (ed.). Historical Records of New Zealand. Vol 11.
38. Masters, Catherine (8 September 2007). "'Battle rage' fed Maori cannibalism". The New Zealand Herald . Archived from the original on 22 October 2012. Retrieved 23 September 2011.
39. McLintock, A. H., ed. (1966). "Hongi Hika". An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand.
40. Cowan, James (1956). "Chapter 20: Opening of Titokowaru's Campaign". The New Zealand Wars: A History of the Maori Campaigns and the Pioneering Period. Vol. II: The Hauhau Wars, 1864–72. Wellington: R. E. Owen.
41. "A brief history of human cannibalism". theweek. 18 June 2021. Retrieved 14 November 2024.
42. "Maori cannibalism widespread but ignored, academic says". stuff.co.nz. New Zealand Press Association. 31 January 2009. Retrieved 26 September 2024.
43. Bowden, Ross (1984). "Maori Cannibalism: An Interpretation". Oceania . 55 (2): 81–99 – via Wiley.
44. Bowden 1984, p. 96.
45. Alanna King, ed. (1987). Robert Louis Stevenson in the South Seas. Luzac Paragon House. pp. 45–50.
46. "Long pig – Oxford Reference". www.oxfordreference.com. Retrieved 13 August 2019.
47. Rubinstein 2014, p. 18.

Bibliography

• Berndt, Ronald M.; Berndt, Catherine H. (1977). The World of the First Australians (2 ed.). Sydney: Ure Smith. ISBN   978-0-7254-0272-3.
• Howitt, A. W. [Alfred William] (1904). The Native Tribes of South-East Australia. London: Macmillan.
• Lumholtz, Carl (1889). Among Cannibals: An Account of Four Years' Travels in Australia and of Camp Life with the Aborigines of Queensland. New York: C. Scribner's Sons.
• Róheim, Géza (1976). Children of the Desert: The Western Tribes of Central Australia. Vol. 1. New York: Harper & Row.