WHOLESALE CANNIBALISM.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8854, 3 July 1907, Page 1

WHOLESALE CANNIBALISM.

The Cologne Gazette pubishos an extraordinary account of cannibal practices in the Southern Canioroons, on the authority of a German trader. According to this correspondent, 'who visited Nsana, chief of tho Maka tribe at the end of December, 1905, the Maka people not only eat their prisoners of war, as do all the tribes inhabiting the southern region of the protectorate, but consume as food the flesh of their own people who are condemned to death for crimes. He was present when a man was killed because his wife died in child-birth, juid had to witness a feast held next day, when the remains of the unfortunate man wore eaten. He himself escaped a similar fate with difficulty, for Nsana’s sou considered him pa’rticulraly nppotis- . , . ... .....

i. T he Government caravan was afterwards compelled to fight its way through the Maka territory and this tribe killed all the black dealers and bearers they came across in a short space of time, eatiug upwards of a hundred of them.

In the further course of his travels, the correspondent discovered that cannibalism is carried on to such an extent by the Maka tribe that human flesh was offered for sale in the public markets. This tribe pronounce sentence of death for the most ordinary crimes iu order to the culprit. Ho followed a baud of the Baia tribe, and sends to the Cologne Gazette a photograph showing the tribesmen carrying off on their heads for future consumption portions of the bodies of men belonging to other tribes whom they had killed iu battle. He mentions that the members of the Baia tribe are strict Moslems, and observe the ritual of the faith most conscientiously,