The Daily Ardmoreite. [volume] (Ardmore, Okla.) 1893-current, 1914-09-10
cANNIBALs IN SOLOMON ISLES
A White Man Ia Regarded As Favorise
For Feast

|
rites of the savages was recently re-
ceived here from Sydney from traV-
eler who had spent some time in the
cannibal-infested Solomon islands in
the Pacific. The Solomons are the can
nibalistiC hub of the South Pacific, al
| though human flesh is also eaten oc-
casionally in the Marquesas and New
| Hebrides islands
"Maneaters on land, maneaters in
the water; for Gods sake, steer clear
of the Solomons," was the advice Civ
en- to the writer when he first eX-
pressed his intention of visiting those
islgnds. In Fiji travellers are still so
advised
AT Suva," says the writer of the
letter, the mate of trader told me:
You can chuck pig overheard any
where in the Solomons, and five min
utes later walk ashore on the black
doIs sal fins of sharks But what's the
use? The blacks will snap you up
and pick your bones the minute you
reach the beach"
one missionary broke all records by
living six years in the Solomons. His
three predecessors lasted six months,
and then were put to death.
"Cannibalism, which has always
been practiced in the Solomons. owes
its persistence not to any particular
prediction for human flesh" says
the writer of the letter, but to the
fact that it is looked upon as religious
and tribal rite. Human sacrifice has
been and still is the most salient fea-
ture of their ceremonies, and the erec-
ton of a temple, the birth of son
to the wife of chief, the launching
of a new head-hunting canoe, or one
of a dozen other things, may require
the taking of life and the subsequent
eating of the victims flesh
"The sacrifice is not always-in fact
is not usually-a white man. But if
a trader or a missionary happens to
be within striking distance when a
victim is required, the prophets or
priests are more than likely to receive
ntimation from the spirits that only
the flesh of foreigner will answer
the purposes of the ceremony.
81 have just made the round of the
Solomons on an Australian trading
steamer, and the whole voyage was a
successive dropping and picking up of
scientists, travellers, traders and mis-
sionaries. But now and then there
was none to come aboard where pas
/ sengers were expected, and only the
charred remains of copra shed or the
warped iron sheets of mission house
= remained to tell a story, the details
. of which usually came to us in de-
lirious island jargon in the course of
the next stop or two. And occasional
" nerves which had been tautening
for weeks under the influence of such
tales as these gave way at the sight
! of lurking natives, guns in hand watch
ing from the palms and pandanus ron
dure of a crescent of snowy beach,
and the call of science or the lure of
exploration was not enough to make
man risk the result of a hundred
ward paddle to the shore of an island
which he had come $500 miles to
= visit
1.-TWO orchid hunters we dropped at
an island which impressed them as
being safer than the ones to which
they had intended going But French
entomologist who had been furnish
ing them with thrills for six weeks
with accounts of his adventures with
the natives of equatorial Africa never
left the steamer until she. was warped
in and berthed against the circular
quay at Sydney, and British orni-
biologist whom we put ashore at an
out of the way part of Bougainvile, on
|
on her return to say that the natives
were treating him famously; that his
collection was progressing beyond his
most sanguine expectations, and that
he considered the bush tracks of the
Solomons safer than Broadway. About
two weeks later the favorite wife OF
the bush chief died, and before | left
Australia, the gunboat Clio brought tC
Sydney in very small box all that
remained of the young scientists
, bones that the marines could identify
, for shipment to his family in Eng
land.
Considerable missionary capita
was for time made out of the wide
, ly disseminated boast of a number OF
, Solomon chiefs that they did not eat
i, human flesh until it leaked out that
thou ,,.ara pntnriouc 6nl In,