AnthropophagyDarling, Charles W. (Charles William)
History
Anthropophagy
Darling, Charles W. (Charles William)
Cannibalism
A Negro race called the _Babooke_ living near the Niam-Niams is even
more notoriously cannibalistic than that people; and Baker tells of the
_Makkarika_ tribe, dwelling about two hundred miles west of Gondokoro,
who consumed the flesh of man with great avidity. When the slave-traders
made a “razzia,” these natives accompanied them for the sake of eating
the slain. The traders complained that they were bad associates, as they
insisted upon killing and eating the children. Their method was to catch
a child by its ankles, dash its head against the ground, and thus
deprived of life, it was boiled and eaten.
A horrible act of cannibalism at Gondokoro is thus described by N’Yanza:
“The traders had arrived with their ivory from the west, together with a
large number of slaves; the carriers of the ivory being Makkarikas. One
of the slave girls attempted to escape, when a slave dealer fired at her
with his musket. The ball struck her in the side, wounded her and she
fell to the ground. No sooner had the poor creature fallen than the
Makkarikas rushed upon her in a crowd, killed her with their lances and
at once divided her by cutting off the head, and separating the body
into as many pieces as were required. The slave women and their children
who witnessed this scene rushed panic-stricken from the spot and took
refuge in trees. The Makkarikas seeing them in flight were excited to
give chase, and pulling the children from their refuge among the
branches killed several, and a great feast was prepared for the whole
party.”
Paul De Chillu, with whom the writer has conversed, says that the
natives of the gorilla country in Western Africa manifest no repugnance
toward human flesh as food, but take it with a relish. The _Fans_, one
of the West African tribes, are known to have indulged in this depraved
taste for human food, and they purchase dead slaves for culinary
purposes from other tribes, at the high rate of an elephant’s tooth
apiece. In polite Fan society, it is accounted a very courteous act to
exchange bodies for table use with the neighboring tribes with whom at
the time the Fans happen to be at peace. It is narrated that, on one
occasion a war party of this tribe while on the march, finding a
newly-buried body in a grave, dug it up, cooked it in the pot buried
with it, and ate the flesh for breakfast as an especial dainty.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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