Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/892

808 for storing as well as from their reckless improvidence, should in severe climates be often driven to this extremity. For example, it is known that the miserable natives of Tierra del Fuego, when starving in winter, would throttle and devour the oldest woman of the party ; when asked why they did not rather kill their dogs, they replied, &quot;Dog catch otters!&quot; (Fitzroy, Voy. of Adventure and Beagle, vol. ii. p. 183). For accounts of cannibalism and murder under stress of hunger in Australia see Salvaclo, Memorie deW Australia, p. 240 ; Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvolker, vol. vi. p. 749 ; among American tribes, Bancroft, Native Races of Pacific States, vol. i. p. 120 ; Back, Exp. to Great Fish River, p. 227 ; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 89 ; in Polynesia, Ellis, Polynesian Researches, vol. i. p. 359; Martin, Mariner s Tonga Islands, vol. i. p. 116.

II. Fury or Bravado.—The North American Indian phrases as to eating the flesh and drinking the blood of their enemies are not to be taken as mere metaphor, but as referring to acts really done. There is even an Iroquoiy legend of a dialogue between the Manitu (Great Spirit) and a warrior who defends the eating of slain enemies as satisfying at once hunger and revenge (Crevecceur, Journey in Pennsylvania ; Klemm, Allgemeine Cidturgeschichte, vol. ii. p. 28). For actual details of this ferocious custom see Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, vol. iii. p. 242 ; Hennepin, vol. ii. p. 159 ; J. G. Miiller, Amerikanische Urreligionen, p. 145; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 159. Among the Polynesians, there is similar evidence of warriors devouring the flesh and drinking the blood of the slain enemy, where the purpose seems clearly that of inspiring terror and gratifying vengeance. (See Ellis, Polynesian Researches, vol. i. p. 309; Turner, Polynesia, p. 194; Waitz, vol. vi. p. 158.)

III. Morbid Affection.—Cases of the dead being devoured by relatives and friends (especially children by parents) from a sentiment of affection are recorded among low savage tribes, see Spix and Martius, Reise in Brasilien, vol. ii. p. 692 ; Angus, Savage Life in Australia, &c., vol. i. p. 73; Howitt, Impressions of Australia, p. 134; Gerland, Aussterben der Naturvolker, p. 66. Such accounts are not, however, numerous, and sometimes, at least, may properly belong to other classes. The most remarkable is the often-quoted passage of Herodotus (iv. 26), describing the funeral feasts of the Issedones of Central Asia, where the relatives ate the body of the deceased with other meat, the skull being set in gold and preserved ; these were sacred rites done in honour of the dead. As lately as the 13th century, William of Ruysbruck was told that the people of Tibet had till recently kept up this custom of eating their deceased parents, and still used their skulls as drinking-cups (Rubruquis in Pinkerton s Coll. of Voyages, vol. vii. p. 54).

IV. Magic.—Few notions belonging to primitive savage magic are more intelligible or more widely spread than the bslief that the qualities of any animal eaten will pass into the eater. This motive naturally leads to cannibalism (see Stanbridge, in Trans. Ethnological Soc., vol. i. p. 289), especially in war, where the conqueror eats part of the slain enemy with the avowed purpose of making himself brave. This idea is found among the natives of Australia (see Macgillivray, Voyage of Rattlesnake, vol. i. p. 152, vol. ii. p. 6), and not less distinctly in New Zealand (Ellis, vol. i. p. 358); among the North American Indians, when warriors would devour the flesh of a brave enemy, and particularly the heart as the seat of courage (Keating, Long s Expedition, vol. i. p. 102) ; also in Ashantee (J. L. Wilson, Western Africa, p. 168). An English merchant in Shanghai, during the Taeping siege, met his Chinese servant carrying the heart of a rebel, which he was taking home to eat to make him brave (Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 133). The imagined value of human flesh in giving magical powers to the eater is known to the savage world both in Australia and America (Eyre, Central Australia, vol. ii. pp. 255, 329; Angas, vol. i. p. 123; Keating, vol. i. p. 103 ; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 159, vol. vi. p. 748). This idea even holds a place in the more cultured magical traditions of Asiatic and European nations (see Gerland, p. 06; Schaafhausen, in Archiv fur Anthropologie, vol. iv. p. 247).

V. Religion.—One of the strongest reasons for consider ing anthropophagy as having widely prevailed in pre historic ages is the fact of its being deeply ingrained in savage and barbaric religions, whose gods are so often looked upon as delighting in human flesh and blood. The flesh of sacrificed human victims may even serve to provide cannibal feasts. The understood meaning of these rites may be either that the bodies of the victims are vicariously consumed by the worshippers, or that the gods themselves feed on ths spirits of the slain men, their bodies being left to the priests and people. Thus in Fiji, &quot; of the great offerings of food, native belief apportions merely the soul thereof to the gods, who are described as being enormous eaters ; the substance is consumed by the wor shippers. Cannibalism is a part of the Fijian religion, and the gods are described as delighting in human flesh &quot; (T. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, vol. i. p. 231). In Mexico, the anthropophagy which prevailed was distinctly religious in its origin and professed purpose. That the primary meaning of the human sacrifice was to present victims to their deities is shown by the manner in which the sacrificing priest, who tore out the heart, offered it to the sun, and afterwards went through ceremonies of feeding the idol with the heart and blood. It was the Aztec worship of the war-god Huitzilopochtli which brought on the enormous prevalence of sacrifices of prisoners ; to obtain supplies of such captives became a motive for frequent wars ; and it was the limbs of these victims which were eaten in the sacrificial feasts that formed part of the festivals. (For particulars and authorities see Prescott, Conquest of Mexico ; Bancroft, vol. ii.; Waitz, vol. iv.) In Africa, also, canni balism has in some cases evidently a sacrificial character (see Lander, Records, vol. ii. p. 250 ; T. J. Hutchinson, Ten Years among Ethiopians, p. 62, &c.)

VI. Habit.—The extent to which anthropophagy has been carried among some nations is, no doubt, mainly due to the indulgence of the appetite once aroused. In such cases this reason is openly avowed, or some earlier motive remains rather in pretext than in reality, or the practice is justified on the ground of ancestral custom. It seems, for instance, that the cannibal feasts of old Mexico had become in themselves acceptable to the people, and that we must refer the sickening horrors of Fijian anthropophagy more to sensual gratification than to any religious motive. Among conspicuous cannibal races may be mentioned the Gemi-civilized Battas of Sumatra, whose original instiga tion to eating their enemies may have been warlike ferocity, but who are described as treating human flesh as a delicacy, and devouring not only war-captives but criminals, slaves, and, according to one story, their aged kinsfolk ( Junghuhn, Batta-ldnder ; Marsden, Hist, of Sumatra, p. 390; see also Wuttke, Geschichte des Hcidenthums, vol. i. p. 172; Fried- mann in Zeitschrift fur Ethnologic, 1871, p. 313). Canni balism assumes its most repulsive form where human flesh is made an ordinary article of food like other meat. This state of things is not only mentioned in past times in descriptions of West Africa, where human flesh was even sold in the market (see Pigafetta, Regnum Congo, in De Bry ; Wuttkc, vol. i. p. 171), but still continues among the Monbuttu of Central Africa, whose wars with neighbouring tribes are carried on for the purpose of obtain ing human flesh, the bodies of the slain being dried for 