Page 35 - Melanesia

he traditional custom of cannibalism hung from a chief ’s waistband or plaited
T was systematic. Certain utensils were
used for cannibal feasts alone including
pots and forks. Special chants were com-
posed and many occasions were marked by
the presentation of a human body. Discrimi-
nation as to the victims was often defined
and people of low rank generally did not
eat the people of more chiefly status, and
some clans were looked upon as the proper
food for their superiors. Women were gen-
erally excluded from the feasts but women
of rank were reputed to secretly eat human
flesh and if there was a very large supply,
then even common women ate it quite
openly. Apart from their flesh, the enemies’
bodies provided other useful articles and
mementoes — necklaces of enemy teeth
being commonly worn and clubs were in-
laid with teeth from their victims. The skulls of his companions. After regaining his ship,
of particularly notorious enemies were
sometimes made into soup bowls or yaqona
bowls for chiefs and priests, care being
taken not to shatter their heads in killing
them. Their tobe or ornamental ringlets of
hair were kept as souvenirs, often being
before his death. In Naclear Bay, in the Fijis,
to form a neck lanyard for the key to the
chief ’s European trade chest or as strings
for his sling,” says the research paper. The
long bones were sometimes split and
carved to make head scratches or milamila
and very rarely into cannibal forks. They
were usually worked into the better-known
canoe sail needles or sau-ni-laca made from
the split shin bones. Sanctioned and indeed
demanded by Fijian religion, cannibalism
allowed revenge and vindictiveness to be
carried past an enemy’s death. Some of the
principal chiefs and priests of Fiji were fond the limbs of my unfortunate companions.
of human flesh almost to the point of ad-
diction but in being so, were serving their
religion and society.
C aptain Morell, an American skipper,
came near to being the victim of an
ambush in the Fiji Islands. He lost fourteen
he said, he saw the savages cutting up the
members of his poor sailors while they were
still alive, and more than one of them saw
his own arm or leg roasted and devoured
a Captain Dillon came near to losing his life.
While searching for sandal-wood trees with
eighteen or twenty of his men, he found
himself separated from the majority of his
party and surrounded by a large number
of the natives. It was impossible to regain
the sea, so he and four others took refuge
on a steep rock. ‘We were,’ said Dillon later,
‘five refugees on a rock, and the ground
below was covered with several thousand
savages. They lit fires at the foot of the rock
and heated hearths upon which to roast
The corpses of these,’ he continued, ‘as well
as those of two chiefs of a neighboring
island, were brought before the fires in the
following manner: two natives from Naclear
constructed a kind of stretcher with branch-
es of trees, which they placed upon their
shoulders. The corpses of their victims were
put crosswise upon this structure, so that
the head hung down on one side and the
legs on the other. Thus they were carried
in triumph to the fires, where they were
placed on the grass in a sitting position.