Posted on 08/16/2007 2:12:55 PM PDT by blam
Cannibal tribe apologises for eating Methodists
By Nick Squires in Sydney
Last Updated: 3:29pm BST 16/08/2007
A tribe in Papua New Guinea has apologised for killing and eating four 19th century missionaries under the command of a doughty British clergyman.
Sorcery and witchcraft are still common in some Papuan tribes
The four Fijian missionaries were on a proselytising mission on the island of New Britain when they were massacred by Tolai tribesmen in 1878.
They were murdered on the orders of a local warrior chief, Taleli, and were then cooked and eaten.
The Fijians - a minister and three teachers - were under the leadership of the Reverend George Brown, an adventurous Wesleyan missionary who was born in Durham but spent most of his life spreading the word of God in the South Seas.
Thousands of villagers attended a reconciliation ceremony near Rabaul, the capital of East New Britain province, once notorious for the ferocity of its cannibals.
Their leaders apologised for their forefather's taste for human flesh to Fiji's high commissioner to Papua New Guinea.
"We at this juncture are deeply touched and wish you the greatest joy of forgiveness as we finally end this record disagreement," said Ratu Isoa Tikoca, the high commissioner.
Cannibalism was common in many parts of the South Pacific - Fiji was formerly known as the Cannibal Isles - and dozens of missionaries were killed by hostile islanders.
Born at Barnard Castle, Durham, Rev Brown emigrated to New Zealand as a young man and served as a missionary in Samoa before moving with his wife and children to New Guinea.
He was familiar with the cannibalistic traditions of the region and once described a visit to a village in which he counted 35 smoke-blackened human jaw bones dangling from the rafters of a hut.
"A human hand, smoke-dried, was hanging in the same house. And outside I counted 76 notches in a coconut tree, each notch of which, the natives told us, represented a human body which had been cooked and eaten there," he told the Royal Geographical Society.
Even so, he was shocked when told that four of his staff had been cannibalised.
"They were killed simply because they were foreigners, and the natives who killed them did so for no other reason than their desire to eat them, and to get the little property they had with them," he wrote.
He reluctantly agreed to launch a punitive expedition, ordering his men to burn down villages implicated in the murders and destroy wooden canoes.
At least 10 tribe members blamed for the attack were killed in an area known as Blanche Bay. Rev Brown claimed the raids made the region safe for Europeans.
In a letter to the general secretary of the London Missionary Society he wrote: "The natives respect us more than they did, and as they all acknowledge the justice of our cause they bear us no ill will."
But the reprisals attracted fierce criticism from the press, particularly in Australia.
The Australian newspaper said: "If missionary enterprise in such an island as this leads to wars of vengeance, which may readily develop into wars of extermination, the question may be raised whether it may not be better to withdraw the mission from savages who show so little appreciation of its benefits."
However, an official investigation by British colonial authorities a year later exonerated Rev Brown.
My first thought was Scrappleface. ;o)
No fair.
You know that I can't think when you wink at me.
:-P
I think Methodists would leave a bad aftertaste - today’s versions anyway.
You burp .. I prefer to slurp
Details, details.
Ever read The Peace Child?
It’s written by a missionary who went into New Guinea and worked among the cannibalistic Sawi tribespeople. Fascinating book.
ping
The other white meat.
Seriously, my brother was a missionary in Brazil circa mid ‘50s.
There were still headhunters and cannibals in the Amazon then.
The favorite part of a human? Palm of the hand. Tastes similar to pork.
I’ll need to read that! I saw a program about that ship and its crew on TV once. Verrrry interesting.
In a letter to the general secretary of the London Missionary Society he wrote: "The natives respect us more than they did, and as they all acknowledge the justice of our cause they bear us no ill will."
But the reprisals attracted fierce criticism from the press, particularly in Australia.
The Australian newspaper said: "If missionary enterprise in such an island as this leads to wars of vengeance, which may readily develop into wars of extermination, the question may be raised whether it may not be better to withdraw the mission from savages who show so little appreciation of its benefits."
However, an official investigation by British colonial authorities a year later exonerated Rev Brown.
A good lesson for what we're going through today with muslims, with the obligatory handwringing from the press.
To have them eat a highly "cholesterolized" Rosie would be cruel and highly unusual............even for a cannibal.
Hannibal Lecter would be hard pressed to find any Chianti that could make such a meal palatable. Probably best would be Mad Dog.
I’ve never told this story to anyone, but my grandfather went native there before he returned to Europe to hang out with the Dadaists, Tristan Tsara, even Lenin in Zurich. (He was an atheist.) He was perfectly lucid when he recounted, with some embarassment, that Methodists did indeed tasted better than members of other Protestant heresies.
Well, Methodists are sweet. If they had eaten a Baptist, they’d have developed dyspepsia and sworn off the ‘long pig’ forever.
A good friend (now deceased) of mine flew the second group od misionaries into this tribe and they weren’t eaten since they worshop birds and their arriving in a chopper made them equivelant to god.
He brought back a number of artifacts, including the pot that the first ones were boiled in, and if they are still there he donaated most of them to a museum in San Francisco.
It’s a real long wild story on his trip into this tribe which i won’t go into, who had never seen anyone from the outside world except the 2 missionaries that they boiled and shrunk their heads.
It's amazing the stories us FReepers have.
There’s a similar one I’ve heard:
A tourist was passing by the market in a cannibal village, where he saw a sign advertising “Human Brains for Sale”. Intrigued, he looked at the display, and saw that American brains were priced at $2.00 a pound, British brains at $3.00 a pound, and French brains at $100.00 a pound.
Curious about the price for French brains, he asked the butcher “Why do French brains cost so much more? Do they taste that much better?”
To which the butcher replied “No, they taste the same. But do you know how many Frenchmen you have to kill to get one pound of brains?”
I hear monkey tastes a lot like human
Hey, wow, I think I quoted a different part of the same AS piece not long ago...
;’)
Along that same line...
Q: What did the cannibal do after he dumped his girlfriend?
A: He wiped...
Eathing s/b Eating.
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