CANNIBALISM IN AFRICA

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 8, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 26.

CANNIBALISM IN AFRICA.

FROM the Missionary Review we take the following statements in regard to the practise of cannibalism in the Dark Continent:—

"Cannibalism has been surprisingly little discussed in books of travel. We are told that in such and such a district cannibals are to be found, but we hear no details, neither how the flesh is prepared, what joints are preferred, nor to what extent the practise is prevalent. Captain Hinde asserts that nearly all tribes in the Kongo basin are or have been cannibals, and that the practise is on the increase, not merely for superstitious reasons, but also for the provision of food. There is a certain sturdy, fat race in Africa, which has never been famous for its prowess, but which is made a regular staple article of diet. Whole cargoes are constantly carried up the river, and sold to the natives for food.

"The Batetella are described as a fine race, with no old or infirm persons among them. The reason of this is that at the first sign of decrepitude the sufferer is killed and eaten. The members of this tribe consider human flesh the greatest of all delicacies, and are ever on the watch for any excuse to kill and eat their comrades. So soon as a victim is appointed to die, mobs collect outside the king's house, and the victim is given over to them, the people tearing him to pieces as quickly as a pack of hounds will make end of a hare. Each sets himself to cut off his favorite piece, no one making it his business to kill the victim first, lest a coveted morsel should be lost. After a big battle, in which many prisoners have been taken, human beings have been sold for as little as five or six shillings a brace for eating purposes.

"Natives in the region of the Ubangi River urged one of Stanley's officers to leave one of his boat's crew in exchange for a goat, saying, 'Meat for meat.' Urging his help in making a war against their neighbors, he said, 'You can take the ivory, we will take the meat.' Rows of skulls are hideously exhibited, hung round the tents of cannibals, to show how many men they have eaten."

A correspondent of the Saturday Review writes as follows:—

"The cannibalism of the black secret society known as the Human Leopards, near Sierra Leone, disclosed by the recent trial, brings forcibly before us the difference between the East African and the West African habits of eating human flesh. The Sherbro cannibals waylaid and killed their victims, and afterwards feasted on their flesh. The cannibalism of the east coast is of a very different kind. The flesh of the old people—the grandfather and grandmother of a family—is dried and mixed with condiments; and a portion of this is offered, with a dim sort of sacramental meaning, to travelers who become guests of the family. To refuse it would be a deadly insult. To accept it is a passport to the privileged position of a friend of the house. Many of our travelers in East Africa have eaten thus sacramentally of the ancestors of some dark-skinned potentate.

"The cannibalism of the west coast is, as has just been said, of a more horrible kind. The Sherbro's case seems to be connected with fetichism, the worst developments of which are peculiar to that country; but there is a hideously genuine appetite for fresh human flesh still existing among the negroes of west Africa. This cannibalism manifests itself in a refinement of gluttony which has its mild analogy in the tastes of Europeans. Young boys are brought from the dark interior, kept in pens, fattened upon bananas, and finally killed and baked. To these Thystean feasts come not only the savage chiefs of the interior, but also, it is whispered, black merchants from the coast. Men who appear at their places of business in English territory in broadcloth and tall hats, who ape the manners of their white masters, are said to disappear annually into the interior, where, we are told, they might be seen, in naked savagery, taking part in the banquets on plump boys, in which they delight. Be this as it may, somehow the native of the west coast and its Hinterland is unlike the east or south African native in the deep-lying savagery and the extraordinary facility for returning to it, which are his leading and very unpleasant characteristics. The subject claims the attention of the anthropologist, and certainly suggests a curious reason for questioning the relationship of the black man and the ape or gorilla, seeing that the race of monkeys seems to be singularly free from anything like cannibalism."