Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1908-08-06

CANNI balls WILL EAT ONLY
THEIR OWN KIND.
Probable Explanation Is That Savages
Fear the Spirit of Antagonistic
Race Will Take Posses
sion of Them.

II was only recently that news came
out OF the western Pacific of the kill
Ing OF a missionary on one of the
Solomon islands for a cannibal feast,
says the New York Sun.
PRIVATE advices from the official
charged with the investigation OF the
murder comment upon the probability
tnat the story had come out to civil
cation as a tale of cannibaHsm. The
missionary had been killed. the writer
said, for trespassing upon the sacred
precincts OF one of the native secret
societies while their solemn mummery
was in progress, due warning of which
had been given by the deep reyer-
beration made by the energetic swing.
ing of the bull roarer.
But there was no evidence of anv
sort to offset the statement made by
the murderers that they had not eaten
the white man. Their statement
found confirmation in the condition of
such of the bones as were recovered.
for each had been brought to high
polish and stained with turmeric to
brilliant yellow.
The charge of eating white men
seems very hard to down. Even now,
when every one should know better,
1t is by no means unusual to find the
statement that the Hawaiians at
keala4Iekua ate Capt. Cook. yet they
were not cannibals at ALL
In the western Pacific, where can
n,balism is constantly practiced ex-
cept under the immediate eye of
White men, it is natural to be sus-
picious of practitioners of such gas
tronomy. Yet it is highly improbable
that white man, who might be killed
In the most Jovial way by these saw
ages, would ever be eaten by them
Here is a piece Of testimony on the
subject from sedate German who has
lived for 80 years and more among
these cannibals of the Pacific, Herr
Parkinson Of the Bismarck archi-
pelago.
During my long residence in these
Islands," he writes, 81 have not vet
been able to establish to my satisfac-
ton a single case in which white
men, though butchered, have actually
been eaten by the Melanesians. The
bodies of the murdered have often
enough been dismembered and single
pieces sent to remote districts as
trophies of the preparation of the
murder, but as to the eating 0f any
of these portions no definite informa-
ton can be had
1T seems quite difficult to compre-
bend why the cannibal who eats his
own kind should reject The white man
as an article of food. Yet if we con-
slider the senseless superstition of the
Melanesian, which in my opinion has
driven him to cannibalism, because
through eating the bodies of the slain
he expects to come into full enjoy
ment of all the powers of him who is
eaten, thus does it become compre-
hensible that he will not eat the body
Of white man whom he has killed
because of his belief that the spirit of
the murdered man will exert an infiu-
ence over him which he does not at
all regard as desirable. -l.
"The late King. Goroit Of the Short
land islands once told me in answer to
my question the not particularly fat
tering reason spirit belong all white
man no good!' in general one receives
the reply that the white man as meat
does not taste good. This hold to be
subterfuge under which the sly ma
tive hides his dread of the spirit of the
slain" -.