EATERS OF HUMAN FLESH

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 383, 18 June 1928, Page 11

EATERS OF HUMAN FLESH

GRIM TALES OF TRIBAL RITES

CANNIBALS OF NORTH AUSTRALIA

GRIM tales of cannibal feasts in the wilds of northern and central Australia, of native women who have eaten their own babies—“because they liked the meat” —are told by a white woman who has penetrated these unfrequented regions many times during the last quarter of a century. Grisley relics of horrible native orgies lie buried under the shifting sandhills.

It was in 1900 that I first came in contact with cannibals, writes Daisy M. Bates in “The Australasian.” At the Beagle Bay Trappist Mission, 100 miles north of Broome, which was visited in company with, and at the invitation of, Bishop Gibney and Dean Martelli, I asked the abbot if cannibalism obtained in that area? The abbot pointed to one of the women near us, and told us she had recently eaten her newborn baby. When she was asked how she could kill and eat her wee baby, she replied, “I only ate one, that woman ate three.” Several others were later pointed out to us who had eaten their babies. Sometimes they shared the food with those who were present at the birth, or a portion might be sent to a son or daughter not present “to make them strong.” Tharnduriri, an old man of the Andingirini group in the north central area, sat on the woodheap by my camp, and described the last ceremony that he took part in before his trek into civilisation.

A young adult man had been killed. Tharnduriri extracted the raw liver, and placed it on some bark. Certain young men of his group, to whom he was kommuru (uncle) stood in a semicircle facing him. They held their miros (spearthrowers) across their backs with the ends in the crook of the elbow, thus rendering them unable to use their hands. Tharnduriri sliced the liver with a large chipped flint, and threw a piece at the mouth of each young man, by whom it must be caught and swallowed without mastication. Should a stomach reject the portion, or should the young man be unable to swallow it without mastication, or should it drop before he could catch it in his mouth, the young man’s death followed soon afterwards. Ate Their Own Killed The Andingirini ate their own killed, as well as those of their neighbours. Before cooking the body the elbows and knees were broken, and the cooked food was distributed according to the law. All the bones and remains must be destroyed by fire or the dead man might gather his bones together, and turn into an evil spirit. Those to whom skull or shoulder, or arm was given often kept the bones, which they polished and rounded, making a hole at one end to run a string through; the bone then became a magic pendant. Among the group of 26 which arrived at my camp out of the wilds iu 1920, all except the babies in arms had eaten human food. One morning very early the news came that Nyan-ngauera had left the camp, taking a fire stick and her little girl with her. /No one would follow her or help to track her. For 12 miles I followed the tracks unsuccessfully. Nyanngauera, doubling many times on her tracks, was able to return to a spot about a mile west of the camp, where she gave birth to and killed and ate the baby, sharing the food with the little girl. Later, with the help of her sons and grandsons the spot was found, but nothing was to be seen, only the ashes of the fire. The boys then said, “The bones are under the fire,” and digging with the wanna (digging stick) we came upon the broken skull and one or two bones, which were forwarded later to the Adelaide Museum. The boys then described the manner in which the little creature was killed and cooked. To soften the effect of this dreadful deed the other women told me of the many babies they had killed and eaten in their own wild country.

Janjingu said, “I gave three girl babies and one boy baby to my big son to make him strong,” and her son, a civilised young man, confirmed the statement. Sometimes a boy or girl who may be growing thin or delicate will be given a younger baby who has been allowed to live for a while, and if the boy does not want to eat his little sister his mother pretends the food is emu meat, and the boy eats it. “Hungry for Human Meat” There were occasions among the groups of the central areas when a sort of epidemic of infant or adult cannibalism took place. Mulga-rong-u said that in one group west of his own emu group a number of women —all sisters —killed and ate their young children. The Wiri-wiri (big mouths) of the border area, between West and South Australia, killed and ate many of their own group in a sudden lust for human meat. The Kalur group, said Moongumindil, “were always hungry for human meat.” They put on mul-dharra (murderers’ slippers) and raided a camp, then moved away a little distance and let the victim be buried, and when the mourners had left the locality the Kalur returned, dug up the corpse, and cooked and ate it. Ban-yarda, a poor, paralysed creature whom I carried pick-a-back to my camp in 1926, killed and ate all her babies except Bobburda “because she liked the meat.” Bobburda was allowed to live because she was born near a white settlement. A fire is always lighted over the remains of eaten humans. The tame dingoes in camp were not given human meat or bones. Teeth, skull, the larger bones from which the marrow has been extracted, are collected together, and a fire built over them so that the dogs will not smell the meat. The areas round Ooldea Water, Yuria, Wandunya, and many other permanent waters were the scenes of many a human feast in the days before the white man. Jinjabula, the last blind old emu man of Ooldea Water, whom I tended for some eight months before his death in 1918, had many a tale to tell of human meateating; and Daui of Boundary Dam, and Binilya of Tarkula (Tarcoola), both also blind, added their reminiscences to Jinjabula’s. Binilya had eaten several of her babies, and Daui had “run amok” in human food lust in his day. “We ate opossum, men, and dingo men, and kangaroo men and women, and sometimes we gave them some of our own emu men when they brought us their boys for initiation, and the emu food ran out; we were all koOgurda (meat eaters), said Jinjabula, “and we must have meat.” Some old natives of the Eucla area remembered their fathers’ tales of the killing of Baxter, Eyre’s companion, by the Port Lincoln natives, because their fathers told them , they killed and ate the two natives. Strange natives were always killed and eaten. The magic bones of dead and eaten men are still kept by their owners. Two of these, a shoulder bone and forehead bone, have been “lent” by their respective owners to young brothers or other blood relations going to Karonie or other western settlements. The bones not only shield the wearers, but warn them if enemies are plotting a raid or meditating treachery. The bone hangs from a string at the back of the neck.