Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/781

XII of unbroken vegetable diet an intense craving for animal food, it seems, came on. Some of the men killed a woman and satisfied their wild hunger by eating her. Shortly afterwards he heard of a little girl being killed and eaten.

In order to obtain some further information, I sent the above extracts to Mr. Tom Petrie and Mr. Harry Aldridge, both of whom have an intimate acquaintance not only with the tribes who assembled at the Bunya feasts, but have themselves been at these meetings.

Mr. Tom Petrie in reply said that he never in all his experience came across such a thing as sacrifice. Strangers at feasts were always treated well, and looked after, and had lots of game, eggs, etc., in fact, just what the others had. If any one died in good condition, or if some one was killed in a fight, then they were most surely eaten. That "flesh hunger" spoken of was absurd. Such things did not happen in the part of the Bunya-Bunya country he had been in. Mr. Petrie considered that the woman who Mr. Curr says was killed and eaten was probably killed in a fight, and under such circumstances would most certainly be eaten.

Mr. Aldridge informs me he had seen men, women, and children eaten at the tribal meetings in the Bunya country. The men and women had been killed in a fight, the children generally by some accident. In fact, any one killed in a fight, or by accident, or dying in good condition, was eaten.

The idea of "flesh hunger" is absurd, because at the feasts all sorts of game was eaten, and the guests had the same meals as their hosts, and were always treated well. He says that he knows the Mary River side, and Mr. Petrie the Brisbane side, and with their knowledge of the language and habits of the natives, he considers that it would be impossible for the alleged human sacrifices to have occurred without their cognisance.

It seems clear that even if cases did occur of women and children being killed for cannibalistic reasons, such cases must have been most exceptional, and the statement that young girls were marked for sacrifice by the old men and sacrificed to propitiate an evil divinity may be put aside