Chapter 129

40Cf.Lippert,Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit, ii. 282; Koch,loc. cit.pp. 87, 109.

41Featherman,Social History of Mankind, ‘Chiapo- and Guarano-Maranonians,’ p. 355.

42Bowdich,Mission to Ashantee, p. 300.

43Rink,Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 45.

44Lumholtz,op. cit.p. 272.

45Dieffenbach,op. cit.ii. 128sq.

46Best, inJour. Polynesian Soc.xii. 83, 147.

Moreover, by eating the supposed seat of a certain quality in his enemy the cannibal thinks not only that he deprives his victim of that quality, but also that he incorporates it with his own system.47In many cases this is the chief or the only reason for the practice of cannibalism. The Shoshone Indians supposed that they became animated by the heroic spirit of a fallen foe if they partook of his flesh.48Among the Hurons, if an enemy had shown courage, his heart, roasted and cut into small pieces,was given to the young men and boys to eat.49The Ew̔e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast used to eat the hearts of foes remarkable for sagacity, holding that the heart is the seat of the intellect as well as of courage.50Among the Kimbunda of South-Western Africa, when a new king succeeds to the throne, a brave prisoner of war is killed in order that the king and nobles may eat his flesh, and so acquire his strength and courage.51The idea of transference very largely underlies Australian cannibalism.52In some tribes enemies are consumed with a view to acquiring some part of their qualities and courage.53The Dieyerie devour the fatty portions of their foes because they think it will impart strength to them.54And similar motives are often given for the practice of eating relatives or friends. When a man is killed in one of the ceremonial fights in the tribes about Maryborough, in Queensland, his friends skin and eat him in the hope that his virtues as a warrior may go into those who partake of him.55Among the natives of the River Darling, in New South Wales, a piece of flesh is cut from the dead body and taken to the camp, and after being sun-dried is cut up into small pieces, which are distributed among the relatives and friends of the deceased. Some of them use the piece in making a charm, or throw it into the river to bring a flood and fish, but others suck it to get strength and courage.56In certain Central Australian tribes, when a party starts on an avenging expedition, every man of it drinks some blood and also has some spurted over his body, so as to make him lithe and active; the elder menindicate from whom the blood is to be drawn, and the persons thus selected must not decline.57In certain South Australian tribes cannibalism is only practised by old men and women, who eat a baby in order to get the youngster’s strength.58Among other natives of the same continent, as we have noticed above, a mother used to kill and eat her first child, as this was believed to strengthen her for later births.59And in various Australian tribes it is, or has been, the custom when a child is weak or sickly to kill its infant brother or sister and feed it with the flesh to make it strong.60Many of the Brazilian Indians are in the habit of burning the bones of their departed relatives, and mix the ashes with a drink of which they partake for the purpose of absorbing their spirits or virtues.61Dr. Couto de Magalhães was informed that the savage Chavantes “eat their children who die, in the hope of gathering again to their body the soul of the child.”62

47Blumentritt, ‘Der Ahnencultus der Malaien des Philippinen-Archipels,’ inMittheil. d. kais. u. könig. Geograph. Gesellsch. in Wien, xxv. 154 (Italones). Lewin,Wild Races of South-Eastern India, p. 269 (Kukis). de Groot,op. cit.(vol. iv. book) ii. 373sqq.(ancient Chinese). Schneider,Die Religion der afrikanischen Naturvölker, p. 209sq.(Negroes). Dorman,op. cit.p. 145sq.(North American Indians). Keating,op. cit.i. 104 (Potawatomis). Koch,loc. cit.pp. 87, 89sqq., 109 (South American Indians). Andree,op. cit.p. 101sq.andpassim. Lippert,Der Seelencult, p. 70sqq.Idem,Kulturgeschichte, ii. 282. Trumbull,Blood Covenant, p. 128sqq.Frazer,Golden Bough, ii. 357sqq.Gomme,Ethnology in Folklore, p. 151sqq.Crawley,Mystic Rose, p. 101sqq.

48Featherman,op. cit.‘Aoneo-Maranonians,’ p. 206.

49Parkman,Jesuits in North America, p. xxxix.

50Ellis,Ew̔e-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, p. 100.

51Magyar,Reisen in Süd-Afrika, p. 273.

52Fraser,Aborigines of New South Wales, pp. 56, 81. Brough Smyth,Aborigines of Victoria, i. p. xxxviii. Howitt, ‘Australian Medicine Men,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.xvi. 30. Langloh Parker,Euahlayi Tribe, p. 38. Gason, ‘Dieyerie Tribe,’ in Curr,op. cit.ii. 52.

53Howitt,Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 752.

54Gason, inJour. Anthr. Inst.xxiv. 172.

55Howitt,op. cit.p. 753. McDonald,’Mode of Preparing the Dead among the Natives of the Upper Mary River, Queensland,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.ii. 179.

56Bonney, ‘Aborigines of the River Darling,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.xiii. 135.

57Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 461.

58Crauford, inJour. Anthr. Inst.xxiv. 182.

59Supra,i. 458.

60Howitt,Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 749sq.(all the tribes of the Wotjo nation, and the Tatathi and other tribes on the Murray River frontage). Stanbridge, ‘Tribes in the Central Part of Victoria,’ inTrans. Ethn. Soc. London, N.S. i. 289. Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 52, 475 (Luritcha tribe).

61Wallace,Travels on the Amazon, p. 498 (Tariánas, Tucános, and some other tribes of the Uaupés). Coudreau,La France équinoxiale, ii. 173 (Cobbéos, of the Uaupés). Monteiro, quoted by von Spix and von Martius,Reise in Brasilien, iii. 1207, n. * (Jumánas). Koch,loc. cit.p. 83sq.Dorman,op. cit.p. 151.

62Couto de Magalhães,Trabalho preparatorio para aproveitamento do selvagem e do solo por elle occupado no Brazil—O selvagem, p. 132.Cf.de Castelnau,Expédition dans les parties centrales de l’Amérique du Sud, iv. 382 (Camacas).

The belief in the principle of transference has also led to cannibalism in connection with human sacrifice and to the eating of man-gods. At Florida, in the Solomon Islands, human flesh was eaten in sacrifice only.63In Hawaii, “après le sacrifice, le peuple, qui d’ailleurs ne fut jamais anthropophage, pratiquait une sorte de communion en mangeant certaines parties de la victime.”64In West Equatorial Africa, according to Mr. Winwood Reade, there are two kinds of cannibalism—the one is simply anact ofgourmandise, the other is sacrificial and is performed by the priests, whose office it is to eat a portion of the victims, whether men, goats, or fowls.65And this sacrificial cannibalism is not restricted to the priests. In British Nigeria “no great human sacrifice offered for the purpose of appeasing the gods and averting sickness or misfortune is considered to be complete unless either the priests or the people eat the bodies of the victims”;66and among the Aro people in Southern Nigeria the human victims offered to the god were eaten by all the people, the flesh being distributed throughout their country.67The inhabitants of the province of Caranque, in ancient Peru, likewise consumed the flesh of those whom they sacrificed to their gods.68The Aztecs ate parts of the human bodies whose blood had been poured out on the altar of sacrifice,69and so did the Mayas.70In Nicaragua the high-priests received the heart, the king the feet and hands, he who captured the victim took the thighs, the entrails were given to the trumpeters, and the rest was divided among the people.71In ancient India it was a prevalent opinion that he who offered a human victim in sacrifice should partake of its flesh; though, in opposition to this view, it was also said that a man cannot be allowed, much less required, to eat human flesh.72The sacrificial form of cannibalism obviously springs from the idea that a victim offered to a supernatural being participates in his sanctity73and from the wish of the worshipper to transfer to himself something of its benign virtue. So also the divine qualities of a man-god are supposed to be assimilated by the personwho eats his flesh or drinks his blood.74This was the idea of the early Christians concerning the Eucharist. In the holy food they assumed a real bestowal of heavenly gifts, a bodily self-communication of Christ, a miraculous implanting of divine life. The partaking of the consecrated elements had no special relation to the forgiveness of sins; but it strengthened faith and knowledge, and, especially, it was the guarantee of eternal life, because the body of Christ was eternal. The holy food was described as the “medicine of immortality.”75

63Codrington,op. cit.p. 343. See also Geiseler,Die Oster-Insel, p. 30sq.(Easter Islanders).

64Remy,Ka Mooolelo Hawaii, p. xl.

65Reade,op. cit.p. 158. See also Schneider,Die Religion der afrikanischen Naturvölker, p. 209sq.

66Mockler-Ferryman,British Nigeria, p. 261.

67Partridge,Cross River Natives, p. 59.

68Ranking,Researches on the Conquest of Peru, p. 89.

69Prescott,History of the Conquest of Mexico, p. 41. Réville,Hibbert Lectures on the Religions of Mexico and Peru, p. 89. Bancroft,Native Races of the Pacific States, ii. 176; iii. 443sq.

70Bancroft,op. cit.ii. 725.

71Ibid.ii. 725.

72Weber, ‘Ueber Menschenopfer bei den Indern der vedischen Zeit,’ inIndische Streifen, i. 72sq.

73Seesupra,i. 445sq.

74See Frazer,Golden Bough, ii. 352, 353. 366.

75Harnack,History of Dogma, i. 211; ii. 144sqq.; iv. 286, 291, 294, 296, 297, 299sq.

In various other instances human flesh or blood is supposed to have a supernatural or medicinal effect upon him who partakes of it. The Banks Islanders in Melanesia believe that a man or woman may obtain a power like that of Vampires by stealing and eating a morsel of a corpse; the ghost of the dead man would then “join in a close friendship with the person who had eaten, and would gratify him by afflicting any one against whom his ghostly power might be directed.”76Australian sorcerers are said to acquire their magic influence by eating human flesh.77The Egyptian natives who accompanied Baker on one of his expeditions imagined that the rite of consuming an enemy’s liver would give a fatal direction to a random bullet.78Among the aborigines of Tasmania a man’s blood was often administered as a healing draught.79In China the heart, the liver, the gall, and the blood of executed criminals are used for life-strengthening purposes;80thus at Peking, when a person has been executed by the sword, certain large pith balls are steeped in the blood and, under the name of “blood-bread,” sold as a medicine for consumption.81Tertullian speaks of those “who at the gladiatorial shows, for the cure of epilepsy,quaff with greedy thirst the blood of criminals slain in the arena, as it flows fresh from the wound.”82So also in Christian Europe the blood of criminals has been drunk as a remedy against epilepsy, fever, and other diseases.83In these cases the ascription of a healing effect to the blood of the dead may perhaps have been derived from a belief in the transference of some quality which they possessed in their lifetime; the blood or life of a sound and strong individual might impart health to the sickly. But the mystery of death would also give to the corpse a miraculous power of its own, especially when combined with the horror or awe inspired by an executed felon.

76Codrington,op. cit.p. 221sq.

77Eyre,Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia, ii. 255.

78Baker,Ismailïa, p. 393.

79Bonwick,Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians, p. 89.

80de Groot,op. cit.(vol. iv. book) ii. 377.

81Rennie, quoted by Yule, in his translation of Marco Polo, i. 275, n. 7.

82Tertullian,Apologeticus, 9 (Migne,Patrologiæ cursus, i. 321sq.).

83Strack,Der Blutaberglaube in der Menschheit, p. 27sqq.Wuttke,Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart, § 189sqq., p. 137sq.Jahn, ‘Ueber den Zauber mit Menschenblut,’ inVerhandl. d. Berliner Gesellsch. f. Anthrop.1888, p. 134sqq.Havelock Ellis,The Criminal, p. 284. Peacock, ‘Executed Criminals and Folk-Medicine,’ inFolk-Lore, vii. 270sq.

In other instances, again, the belief in the wonderful effects of cannibal practices may have originated in the notion that, if a person or the essential part of him is eaten, he ceases to exist even as a spirit, or at all events loses his power of doing mischief. Among the Indians of British Guiana, when a man is pointed out as the secret murderer of a relative who has died, the avenger will shoot him through the back; and if he happens to fall dead to the ground, his corpse is dragged aside and buried in a shallow grave. The third night the avenger goes to the grave and presses a pointed stick through the corpse; and if on withdrawing the stick he finds blood on the end of it, he tastes the blood in order to ward off any evil effects that might follow from the murder, returning home appeased and apparently at ease. But if it happens that the wounded individual is able to escape, he charges his relatives to bury him after his death in some place where he cannot be found. This is to punish the murderer for his deed, “inasmuch as the belief prevails that if he taste not the blood he must perish by madness.”84In Prussia it was a popular superstition thatif a murderer cut off, roasted, and ate a piece of his victim’s body, he would never after think of his deed.85But by eating a part of the corpse a homicide may also protect himself against the vengeance of the survivors, presumably because he has now absorbed their relative into his own system.86The natives of New Britain eat their enemies and fix the leg and arm bones of the victims at the butt end of their spears, believing that this not only gives them the strength of the man whose bones they carry but also makes them invulnerable by his relatives.87The Botocudos thought that by devouring their fallen enemies they both protected themselves from the hatred of the dead and at the same time prevented the arrows of the hostile tribe from hitting them.88In Greenland the relatives of a murdered person, when highly enraged, will cut to pieces the body of the murderer and devour part of the heart or liver, “thinking thereby to disarm his relatives of all courage to attack them.”89In the South of Italy there is a popular belief that a murderer will not be able to escape unless he taste or bedaub himself with his victim’s blood.90Sometimes, we are told, cannibalism is even supposed to have a positively injurious effect upon the victim’s relatives, in accordance, as it seems, with the principle of sympathetic magic. Among the Chukchi, in the case of revenge for blood, the slayers eat a little bit of the enemy’s heart or liver, supposing that they in this way cause the hearts of his kinsfolk to sicken.91

84Bernau,Missionary Labours in British Guiana, p. 57sq.

85von Tettau and Temme,Die Volkssagen Ostpreussens, p. 267.

86Cf.Hartland,op. cit.ii. 245sq.

87Powell,Wanderings in a Wild Country, p. 92.

88Castelnau,Expédition dans les parties centrales de l’Amérique du Sud, iv. 382.

89Cranz,History of Greenland, i. 178.

90Pasquarelli, quoted by Hartland,op. cit.ii. 246.

91Ratzel,History of Mankind, ii. 212.

Human flesh or blood is not only believed to impart certain qualities or beneficial magic energy to him who partakes of it, but also serves as a means of transferring conditional curses from one person to another. This I take to be the explanation of cannibalism as a covenant rite; in a previous chapter I have tried to show that themain principle underlying the blood-covenant is the idea that the transference of blood conveys to the person who drinks it, or is inoculated with it, a conditional curse which will injure or destroy him should he break his promise.92The drinking of human blood, or of wine mixed with such blood, has been a form of covenant among various ancient and mediæval peoples, as well as among certain savages.93In some South Slavonic districts compacts between different clans are even now made by their representatives sucking blood from each other’s right hands and swearing fidelity till the grave.94In certain parts of Africa, again, the partaking of human flesh, generally prepared in a kind of paste mixed with condiments and kept in a quaintly-carved wooden box and eaten with round spoons of human bone, constitutes a bond of union between strangers who are suspicious of one another or between former enemies, or accompanies the making of a solemn declaration or the taking of an oath.95Among the Bambala, a Bantu tribe in the Kasai, south of the River Congo, cannibalism accompanies the ceremony by which a kind of alliance is established between chiefs of the same region. The most powerful chief will invite the other chiefs of the neighbourhood to a meeting held on his territory, in order to make a compact against bloodshed. “A slave is fattened for the occasion and killed by the host, and the invited chiefs and their followers partake of the flesh. Participation in this banquet is taken as a pledge to prevent murder. Supposing that a chief, after attending an assembly of this kind, kills a slave, every village which took part in the bond has the right to claim compensation, and the murderer is sure to be completely ruined.”96

92Supra,ii. 208.

93Strack,op. cit.p. 9sqq.Rühs,Handbuch der Geschichte des Mittelalters, p. 323.Supra,ii. 207sqq.

94Krauss, ‘Sühnung der Blutrache im Herzögischen,’ inAm Ur-Quell, N.F. i. 196.

95Johnston, inFortnightly Review, N.S. xlv. 28.

96Torday and Joyce, inJour. Anthr. Inst.xxxv. 404, 409.

For the practice of eating relatives or friends, finally, some special reasons are given besides those already mentioned.It is represented as a mark of affection or respect for the dead,97as an act which benefits not only the person who eats but also him who is eaten. The reason which the Australian Dieyerie assign for their endo-anthropophagy is, that should they not eat their relatives they would be perpetually crying and become a nuisance to the camp.98The natives of the Boulia district, Queensland, among whom children that die suddenly are partly eaten by the parents and their blood brothers and sisters, say that “putting them along hole” would make them think too much about their beloved little ones.99In the Turrbal tribe in Southern Queensland a man who happened to be killed in one of the ceremonial combats which followed the initiation rites was eaten by those members of the tribe who were present; and the motive stated is that they ate him because “they knew him and were fond of him, and they now knew where he was, and his flesh would not stink.”100The Bataks of Sumatra declared that they frequently ate their own relatives when aged and infirm, “not so much to gratify their appetite, as to perform a pious ceremony.”101Among the Samoyedes old and decrepit persons who were no longer able to work let their children kill and eat them in the hope that they thereby might fare better after death.102The Indian of Hayti “would think he was wanting to the memory of a relation, if he had not thrown into his drink a small portion of the body of the deceased, after having dried it … and reduced it to powder.”103Among the Botocudos old men who were unable to keep up in the march were at their own request eaten up by their sons so that theirenemies should be prevented from digging up and injuring their bodies;104whilst mothers not infrequently consumed their dead children out of love.105The Mayorunas considered it more desirable for the departed to be eaten by relatives than by worms;106and the Cocomas, a tribe of the Marañon and Lower Huallaga, said it was better to be inside a friend than to be swallowed up by the cold earth.107It is impossible to decide how far these statements represent original motives for the custom of eating dead relatives. They may be later interpretations of a habit which in the first place sprang from selfishness rather than love.

97Dawson,op. cit.p. 67 (tribes of Western Victoria). McDonald, inJour. Anthr. Inst.ii. 179 (natives of the Upper Mary River, Queensland). Featherman,op. cit.‘Oceano-Melanesians,’ p. 243 (Hawaiians). Southey,History of Brazil, i. 379 (Tapuyas). Marcgravius de Liebstad,Historia rerum naturalium Brasiliæ, viii. 12, p. 282 (ancient Tupis).

98Gason, inJour. Anthr. Inst.xxiv. 172.Idem, in Woods,op. cit.p. 274.

99Roth,North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, p. 166.

100Howitt,op. cit.p. 753.

101Leyden, ‘Languages and Literature of the Indo-Chinese Nations,’ inAsiatick Researches, x. 202.

102Preuss,op. cit.p. 218.

103Bembo, quoted by von Humboldt,op. cit.v. 248.

104Voss, inVerhandl. Berliner Geellsch. Anthr.1891, p. 26.

105Waitz,Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iii. 446.

106von Schütz-Holzhausen,Der Amazonas, p. 209.

107Markham, ‘List of the Tribes in the Valley of the Amazon,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.xxiv. 253.

The cannibalism of modern savages has often been represented as the survival of an ancient practice which was once universal in the human race.108The advocates of this theory, however, have not generally made any serious attempts to prove it. I have in another place put the question how ethnographical facts can give us information regarding the early history of mankind, and my answer was:—We have first to find out the causes of the social phenomena; we may then from the prevalence of the causes infer the prevalence of the phenomena themselves, if the former must be assumed to have operated without being checked by other causes.109This seems a very obvious method; but, so far as I know, Dr. Steinmetz is the only one who has strictly applied it to the question of cannibalism. He has arrived at the conclusion that primitive man most probably was in the habit of eating the bodies of his dead kinsmen as also of slain enemies. His argument is briefly as follows:—The chief impulse of primitive man was his desire for food. He fed not only on fruits and vegetables, but on flesh. His taste for animal food was not limited by any sufficient esthetic horror of human corpses. Nor was he kept back from eating them by fear of exposing himself to the revenge of the disembodied soul of his victim, nor by any fantastic sympathy for the dead body. Consequently, he was an habitual cannibal.110If I cannot accept Dr. Steinmetz’s conclusion it is certainly not because I find fault with his method, but because I consider his chief premise exceedingly doubtful.

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