The chief reason for the persistent survival of cannibalism is to be found in the light in which the natives regard the act. As far as can be ascertained, the Maories do not eat their fellow-men simply because they have any especial liking for human flesh, although, as might be expected, there are still to be found some men who have contracted a strong taste for the flesh of man. The real reason for the custom is based on the superstitious notion that any one who eats the flesh of another becomes endowed with all the best qualities of the slain person. For this reason, a chief will often content himself with the left eye of an adversary, that portion of the body being considered as the seat of the soul. A similar idea prevails regarding the blood.
(1.) CANNIBAL COOK HOUSE.
(See [page 834].)
(2.) MAORI PAH.
(See [page 846].)
When the dead bodies of enemies are brought into the villages, much ceremony attends the cooking and eating of them. They are considered as tapu, or prohibited, until the tohunga, or priest, has done his part. This consists in cutting off part of the flesh, and hanging it up on a tree or a tall stick, as an offering to the deities, accompanying his proceedings with certain mystic prayers and invocations.
Most women are forbidden to eat human flesh, and so are some men and all young children. When the latter reach a certain age, they are permitted to become eaters of human flesh, and are inducted into their new privileges by the singing of chants and songs, the meaning of which none of the initiates understand, and which, it is probable, are equally a mystery to the priest himself who chants them.
The palms of the hands and the breast are supposed to be the best parts; and some of the elder warriors, when they have overcome their reluctance to talk on a subject which they know will shock their interlocutors, speak in quite enthusiastic terms of human flesh as an article of food.
That cannibalism is a custom which depends on warfare is evident from many sources. In war, as we shall presently see, the New Zealander can hardly be recognized as the same being in a state of peace. His whole soul is filled with but one idea—that of vengeance; and it is the spirit of revenge, and not the mere vulgar instinct of gluttony, that induces him to eat the bodies of his fellow-men. A New Zealander would not dream of eating the body of a man who had died a natural death, and nothing could be further from his thoughts than the deliberate and systematic cannibalism which disgraces several of the African tribes.