October 9, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



503 



Having thus dealt with some of the more 

 important points in the character of the 

 primitive Fijian, I propose next to con- 

 sider how far these suffice to account for 

 some of the more "savage" conditions 

 under which these islanders when first seen 

 were living. 



Cannibalism claims the first mention, 

 in that, though the practice has been re- 

 corded from many other parts of the world, 

 it is commonly supposed to have been car- 

 ried further in Fiji than elsewhere. 



Here, however, it is at once necessary to 

 point out that the outbreak of cannibalism 

 in Fiji in the first half of the last century 

 was not due to any innate and depraved 

 taste on the part of the Fijians, and that 

 the practise to the degree and after the 

 fashion of which the story-books tell was 

 not natural to the Fijian, whether of Mela- 

 nesian or Polynesian stock. 



It is probable, even perhaps certain, 

 that all the Fiji islanders occasionally ate 

 human flesh before the coming of white 

 men to the islands; but it was only after 

 the arrival of the new-comers that this 

 practise, formerly only occasional and 

 hardly more than ceremonial, developed 

 into the abominable orgies of the first 

 half of the last century. The first Euro- 

 peans to set foot — about 1800 — and to re- 

 main in the islands for any time were the 

 so-called "beachcombers." At first at 

 least, these renegades from civilization, to 

 secure their own precarious position and 

 safety, contrived to put themselves under 

 the patronage of some one or other of the 

 great native chiefs, who would be Poly- 

 nesians, and assisted and egged on these 

 chiefs in their then main occupation of 

 fighting other great rival chiefs, also Poly- 

 nesians, and raiding the less advanced 

 Melanesians of the surrounding districts. 

 The guns and ammunition which the 

 beachcombers, in some cases at least. 



brought with them or managed to procure, 

 and the superior craft which they had im- 

 bibed from civilization, greatly assisted 

 them in this immoral purpose. Conse- 

 quently a habit of cruelty, new to the 

 Fijian, was implanted and developed, espe- 

 cially in the Polynesian chiefs. It became 

 more and more a fashion for the greatest 

 native warriors, thus egged on, to vie with 

 each other in the number of their victims 

 and in the reckless cruelty with which 

 these were killed. Doubtless at first the 

 victims were opponents killed in fight, 

 sometimes great rival chiefs and sometimes 

 mere hoi polloi who had been led out to 

 fight, probably not very reluctantly, for 

 their chiefs. Incidentally more and more 

 people were killed; and the bodies of the 

 slain were conveniently disposed of in the 

 ovens. A taste for this food was thus de- 

 veloped in the chiefs — though this seems, 

 for a time at least, to have been confined to 

 the great chiefs, most of those of lower 

 status, and all women, refusing to partake, 

 at any rate till a later period. Before long, 

 when the number of the killed ran short, 

 the deficiency was made up by clubbing 

 more and more even of their own people, 

 till eventually the great native warrior 

 took pride in the mere number of those he 

 had kiUed and eaten. 



It seems probable that even the coming 

 of the missionaries, who first reached Fiji 

 thirty or forty years after the earliest 

 beachcombers, and at once began almost 

 heroic efforts to stop cannibalism, thereby 

 to some extent temporarily even aggravated 

 the evil. For the chiefs, in their charac- 

 teristic temper of gasconade, killed and ate 

 more and more unrestrainedly, in mockery 

 of the missionaries and to show what fine 

 fellows they thought themselves to be. 



To return from this digression into a 

 somewhat distasteful subject, cannibalism 

 as practised by the Fijians before the com- 



