26 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



CANNIBALS AND CANNIBALISM. 



By Thos. Steel, F.C.S. 



(Read before Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, April 10, 1893.^ 

 {Concluded from fage 10.) 



Amongst the Maoris of New Zealand there is no doubt that 

 cannibalism was practically universal. In the main the customs 

 attendant on its practise greatly resembled those of the Fijians, 

 and considering how closely related are the two races in blood, 

 manners, and language ; this is not surprising. Many different 

 traditions were current amongst different tribes regarding the 

 origin of the custom, some of which indicate something of the 

 nature of a religious sacrifice, whilst the bulk of them are tales of 

 simple revenge for real or fancied injuries, which are related in 

 connection with the legendary histories of the mythical ancestors 

 of the Maoris. 



With the Maori the great law was the law of revenge. If a 

 man fell sick and died, it was at once concluded that he had 

 been bewitched by some secret enemy, and immediate steps were 

 taken to detect the guilty party. The direction in which an 

 insect would crawl, or some equally trifling indication, was suffi- 

 cient to show the direction from whence came the injury. Should 

 it chance that in that quarter lay the pah, or village, of a rival 

 tribe, the evidence was considered clear ; otherwise, probably the 

 first individual met with in that direction would be assumed to 

 be the offender. A life was always sought for a life. If a man 

 was killed, in a fight or otherwise, utxi — revenge, or equivalent — 

 must be sought by his friends, and in turn the friends of the man 

 thus taken as %itu would seek a like recompense. Thus the 

 seeking of xitu became a hereditary matter. A son might not have 

 an opportunity of revenging the killing and eating of his father 

 or brother, but the solemn charge would be handed down, and in 

 this manner sometimes several generations might pass before full 

 and satisfactory M^ti was obtained for a long past injury. Fre- 

 quently nothing but the complete extermination of a tribe would 

 end a hereditary dispute of this kind. When a man had been 

 killed and eaten it became the most sacred duty of his nearest 

 relatives to kill and eat the party who had so wronged them, or 

 if this could not be done, to treat some member of his family, or 

 some relative, or even only a member of his tribe, in like manner. 



As in the case of the Fijians, women were not allowed to 

 partake of the cannibal feast except in some rare cases, such as 

 when a woman chanced to be the sole survivor of a chiefs line, 

 and as such became entitled to partake of the flesh of those slain 

 in battle as tUu for her race. It was the special privilege of those 

 having relatives killed in a battle to kill the prisoners captured. 



