[114] Livingstone, Last Journals, ii. 39.
[115] Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa, i. 158.
[116] Ward, Five Years with the Congo Cannibals, p. 37.
[117] Torday and Joyce, ‘Ethnography of the Ba-Yaka,’ in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxvi. 42.
[118] Du Chaillu, Explorations in Equatorial Africa, p. 97.
[119] Burton, Two Trips to Gorilla Land, i. 216 sq.
[120] Nisbet, op. cit. ii. 136. Turner, Samoa, p. 305 (Savage Islanders). Angas, Polynesia, p. 385 (natives of Bornabi, in the Caroline Islands). Powell, Wanderings in a Wild Country, p. 247 (some of the tribes in New Guinea). Calder, ‘Native Tribes of Tasmania,’ in Jour. Anthr. Inst. iii. 23; Ling Roth, Aborigines of Tasmania, p. 111.
It is true that the information which a traveller visiting a savage tribe receives as regards its attitude towards cannibalism is often apt to be misleading. There is nothing as to which many savages are so reticent or the practice of which they will deny so readily as cannibalism, though at the same time they are much inclined to accuse other peoples of it.[121] The reason why they are so anxious to conceal its prevalence among themselves is of course their knowledge of the detestation in which it is held by the visiting stranger; but not infrequently they really seem to feel that it is something to be ashamed of. It has been said of some Australian natives that, “unlike many other offences with which they are justly charged, … this one in general they knew to be wrong,” their behaviour when they were questioned on the subject showing that “they erred knowingly and wilfully.”[122] At all events the reproaches of the whites have been taken to heart with remarkable readiness. Even among peoples who have been extremely addicted to it, cannibalism has disappeared with a rapidity to which, I think, there is hardly any parallel in the history of morals. Erskine wrote in the middle of the last century:—“Our experience in New Zealand has proved that this unnatural propensity can be eradicated from the habits of a whole savage nation, in the course of a single generation. I have heard it asserted that there did not exist in 1845 many New Zealand males of twenty years of age who had not, in their childhood, tasted of human flesh; yet it is perfectly well known that at the present time the occurrence of a single case of cannibalism, in any part of those islands, would attract as much notice as in any country of Europe; and that, when a native can be induced to talk on the subject, his information is given reluctantly, and with an unmistakable consciousness of degradation, and a feeling of shame that he and his countrymen should ever have been liable to such a reproach.”[123] Of the Bataks it was said some time ago that the rising generation began to refrain from cannibalism, and that those of them who had submitted to European rule thought with horror of the wild times when they or their ancestors were addicted to it.[124] Cieza de Leon remarks with some astonishment that, as soon as the Peruvian Incas began to put a stop to this practice among all the peoples with whom they came in contact, it was in a short time forgotten throughout their empire even by those who had previously held it in high estimation.[125] Moreover, the extinction of cannibalism has not always been due to the intervention of superior races.[126]
[121] Curr, The Australian Race, i. 77; Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. p. xxxvii. sq.; Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 56. Romilly, Western Pacific, p. 59 sqq. Idem, From my Verandah in New Guinea, p. 68. Powell, op. cit. pp. 52, 59 (natives of the Duke of York Group). Erskine, op. cit. p. 190 sq. (Fijians). Melville, op. cit. p. 341 (Polynesians). Reade, op. cit. p. 159; Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, p. 330 (Fans). At the same time there are many cannibals who make no attempts to conceal the practice.
[122] Brough Smyth, op. cit. i. p. xxxviii.