Lumholtz

Mobile exo : Alimentaire - goût pour la chair humaine

Eleven days before my arrival they had killed and eaten a man of another tribe on some hills near the farm. They returned triumphant, and boasted of their inhuman act. (72) One day we crossed a valley, where he told me many blacks had at one time lived of whom not a trace was now to be seen. They had gradually been killed and eaten by other tribes. As has repeatedly been stated, the Australian tribes are constantly at war with each other. They try to exterminate one another whenever there is an opportunity. They constantly plan attacks, and in their warfare exhibit a cunning worthy of a better cause. This enmity between the tribes is attributable to the superstition that any black man can by witchcraft cause death among the members of his tribe. (...) but the greatest incentive to taking life is their appetite for human flesh. (...) On Herbert river expeditions are sometimes undertaken for the special purpose of securing talgoro – that is, human flesh. On such occasions a small company of the boldest and most depraved gather together, and they are, of course, persons of high standing in the tribe. They are not many in number, as a rule only three or four; for the attacks are made on small family tribes that live scattered through the district, sometimes consisting of not more than five or six individuals. (...) When they have found a small family tribe to be attacked, they try to stay near their camp in the evening. Nothing having happened to cause apprehension during the day, the family sits comparatively secure round the camp fire.Early in the morning, before sunrise, a noise is suddenly heard and the family wakes up in a fright. (...) Each one has to look after himself ; and it is generally worst for the old individuals, who are killed and eaten. A woman is as a rule splendid booty ; if she be young her life is generally spared, but if she be old she is first ravished and then killed and eaten. (...) The natives of Northern Queensland and of many other parts of Australia are cannibals. My people never made any secret of this, and in the evenings it was the leading topic of their conversation, which finally both disgusted and irritated me. The greatest delicacy known to the Australian native is human flesh. The very thought of talgoro makes his eye sparkle. When I asked my men what part of the human body they liked best, they always struck their thighs. They never eat the head or the entrails. The most delicate morsel of all is the fat about the kidneys. By eating this they believe that they acquire a part of the slain person’s strength, and so far as I could understand, this was even more true of the kidneys themselves. For according to a widespread Australian belief, the kidneys are the centre of life. (273)

Cannibalism in Aboriginal Australia