Cannibals

by Ray Black

  Due to the lack of water and food, and to their constant exposure to inclement weather, the men were soon in a very weakened state. In the Pollard boat, and on the brink of starvation, Charles Rhamseldel was the first of the men to suggest that they resorted to cannibalism in an effort to survive. Pollard was nauseated by the suggestion, but as the days went by and the crew became weaker and weaker, it was obvious that they would either all die from starvation, or alternatively allow themselves to sustain one another!

  In the end, Owen Coffin, finally convinced Pollard that one of the men would have to be sacrificed. Ironically enough it was Coffin himself who drew the short straw. Coffin was Pollard’s cousin, and had been entrusted into his care at the age of 14 by his mother. Pollard demanded that he took his place, but Coffin denied him this and said it was his right to save the remaining crew of the Essex.

  To settle the matter the crew decided to draw straws again, and this time it was the fate of Charles Rhamseldel who drew the short end of the stick. However, being the childhood playmate of Coffin, Rhamseldel pleaded with Coffin to exchange places. The matter was settled when Rhamseldel eventually executed Coffin himself, by shooting him in the head with a musket. The crew quickly devoured their companion, with the exception of Pollard who said that there was no way he could eat one of his own relatives.

  It appears that the other two boats resorted to similar measures. In Chase’s boat it was a black crew member who died first, only this time from natural causes, and he was simply thrown overboard. However, on realizing that this man could in fact have saved their lives, when a second black crew member died, a short time later, he was consumed by the remainder of the crew.

  The third man to die in Chase’s boat was yet another black sailor, only this time he was the victim of drawing straws for a cannibalistic sacrifice.

  The men survived in this hellish way for several months, slowly eating one another to stave off malnutrition, all the time suffering from exposure to the salt and sun of the ocean. It would be many more days before some of the men found salvation.

  The Aztecs

  Cannibalism has been around for a long time and in a lot of places – the Aztecs used cannibalism in human-sacrifice rituals

  The earliest records show that the Aztecs migrated from the north into the Valley of Mexico as early as the 12th century ad. They were a rather abject civilization who were forced to live on the worst lands in the valley.

  They were a poor, ragged race who ate rats, snakes, and stole food, but above all sacrificed human flesh to their gods. They were considered just too wild and nasty by neighbouring tribes, and consequently they were driven from one place to another.

  In 1300, the Tenochcas, as they were then known, escaped to settle on an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco. It was here that they were to build their city and started to thank their god, Huitzilopochtli, for his assistance with human sacrifices. The city they built was called Tenochtitlan or ‘place of the Tenochcas’.

  It was very hard to build Tenochtitlan because the Aztecs only had a very small piece of land in the surrounding marshes. The Aztecs made the swampy, shallow lake into a habitable place by piling up mud from the lake bottom. These mud islands were used as their city foundations. To start with they built a few thatched mud huts, and some small temples.

  Next they built causeways and bridges to connect the city to the mainland. They dug canals and lined them with stone so that people could move easily around.

  By 1376, the city was growing quickly and people came from miles around to live in the city of Tenochtitlan. The Aztecs slowly became more powerful and more skilled at defending themselves, although they had no real form of military strategy.

  At least half of the Aztec population were farmers, and they worked on the reclaimed areas of the lake, which they covered with soil and then cultivated. The city itself consisted of a large number of priests and crafts people, and soon Tenochtitlan was becoming a true urban centre.

  The Aztecs had two clearly differing social classes. At the bottom were the macehualles or ‘commoners’, and at the top the pilli or ‘nobility’. All male children went to school to learn history, the religion of the Aztecs, and the art of war and fighting. Women were regarded as the subordinate of men in Aztec society, and were required to behave with chastity and high moral standards.

  Aztec laws were simple and yet harsh. Almost every crime was punishable by death, while minor offences involved corporal punishment or mutilation. As an example, if they were found guilty of slander they would lose their lips.

  Their religion consisted of a very complicated structure, due to the fact that most of it was inherited from people they conquered. They were dominated by three gods – Huitzilopochtli ‘hummingbird wizard’, Tezcatlipoca ‘Smoking Mirror’, and Quetzalcoatl ‘Sovereign Plumed Serpent’. Under these three dominant gods were an infinity of other gods.

  human sacrifice

  The overwhelming aspect of Aztec religious life, however, was their predominance of human sacrifice. Although it is known that this was practiced throughout the Mesoamerican world, the Techochca performed it at a scale never seen before, or indeed since. The Aztecs believed that their gods would only give things to human beings if they were constantly nourished by human beings. To satisfy their gods, the Aztecs would draw their own blood by piercing their tongues, ears, extremities or even genitals. However, Aztec theologians also developed the idea that the gods would be best nourished if they were given the living hearts of sacrificed captives. This theology led to widespread fighting in search of sacrificial victims, both captured in war and paid as a tribute by the conquered people.

  Some of these sacrifices were small, involving the giving up of a slave to a minor god. Others were spectacular, involving hundreds or even thousands of captives, but no matter what the size, the actual sacrifice was always carried out in the same manner. The victim would be restrained by four priests on an altar which would be placed at the top of a pyramid structure or a raised temple. The officiant then made an incision just below the rib cage and pulled out the victim’s living heart. Next the heart was burned and the corpse was pushed down the steep steps. If the captive was very noble, or had been extremely brave, then his body would be carried down the steps.

  Even more disturbing than these human sacrifices, was the practice of ritual cannibalism that was carried out at these ceremonies. After the hearts were removed and the bodies tossed down the temple steps, the limbs were removed and later cooked. As repugnant as cannibalism is to us today, back then to the Aztecs, cooked human bodies were looked upon as great delicacies. The favoured parts of the body were the hands and thighs, and it has been said that the Aztec emperor, Moctezuma, was reported to have been partial to cooked thighs served with tomatoes and chili pepper sauce. Although this thought might turn our stomachs, it must also be remembered that the Aztecs had no domestic livestock from which to obtain their protein, and so the ritual sacrifice was a way for the Aztec royalty to obtain vital nutrients. Thus in the Aztecs we can see a mixture of religion and nourishment which resulted in human sacrifice.

  Sorcery in Guyana

  The Kanaimàs enjoy the savage delight of killing and devouring human beings as part of a gruesome ritual

  Along the northeast coast of South America in Guyana, there is a form of cannibalism that is known as ‘kanaimà’. This is a form of ‘assault sorcery’ where the dark sorcerers (or Kanaimàs) of the Guyana highlands mutilate and poison their victims as part of a gruesome and highly ritualized murder. This horrifying ritual can take many years to complete, and the victims all end up suffering a horrible death.

  An anthropologist who visited Guyana in the 1990s, had heard of the horrifying stories of the kanaimà but believed them all to be grossly exaggerated. His original plan was to survey the area making notes about the villages, burial sites and caves so that he could write about them in detail when he returned home. However, shortly after arriving in one of the villages he was
approached by a local nurse who earnestly requested that he turned his attention to the Kanaimàs instead. She told him that the practice still took place and that the natives were stalking, bludgeoning, poisoning and mutilating their victims along the forested mountain paths.

  She told him that the Kanaimàs did not kill their victims immediately, they preferred to maim and intimidate them by perhaps breaking their fingers or dislocating their necks. The intention of the first attack is purely to weaken the victim. Months or even years later, the Kanaimàs will return to their victim and carry out a ferocious attack. After suffering many months, or even years, of pain, the hapless victim has his tongue pierced with snake fangs, his mouth and anus are pierced with sharp objects, and also toxic plants are inserted into the anus.

  Three days after death, the sorcerer inserts a stick into the already decomposing body and then sucks the end of the stick. If the sorcerer does not carry out this ritual, he is vulnerable to revenge by the family of his victim. The victim is chosen simply because they are vulnerable and the Kanaimàs announce their intention to attack with bird-like warning calls.

  These attacks against innocent, defenceless people can be considered as cannibalism because the ultimate aim is to partake a portion of the dead body as a form of protection against evil, and is thought to appease the gods of the Kanaimàs.

  The anthropologist himself, Neil Whitehead, was subjected to poisoning by the Kanaimàs, which made the horrendous stories related to him even more horrifying.

  Cannibalism in the Congo

  It has been reported that nearly all the tribes in the Congo Basin either are, or have been, cannibals

  Cannibalism is far from being dead in Africa, for it is almost impossible to control the natives who inhabit the bush. It is possible that thousands of natives are being eaten in the Congo every year, purely because it is difficult to break old habits. It is probably hard to believe but at one time or another nearly all the tribes in the Congo Basin either have been or are still cannibals. Races who, until recently, had no cannibalistic tendencies even though they were situated in a country surrounded by cannibal races, have now learned to eat human flesh.

  The reason for this cannibalism is probably because they simply prefer human flesh to any other. Reports from men who have lived among cannibal races, said that they never came across a single case of them eating any kind of flesh raw; they invariably either boil, roast or smoke it. The custom of smoking flesh was to make it last longer, as sometimes the natives could go without meat for quite long periods. Smoked meat for sale in the African markets, could possibly be human flesh.

  Studies of the different tribes has shown that they have a preference for various parts of the human body. Some cut long steaks from the flesh of the thighs, legs or arms; others prefer the hands and feet. Although not generally consumed, there are certain tribes who consider the head to be a real delicacy. Almost all the tribes use some part of the intestines due to the amount of fat they contain.

  The Kukukukus

  A missionary who spent some time with a tribe of people called the Kukukukus in the 1950s, reported a time when a party of warriors took an enemy tribesman prisoner. They tied the poor captive to a thin tree trunk and then carried him horizontally back to their village. To make sure that the prisoner did not escape, they broke both his legs by hitting them with clubs, bound him to a tree, and then adorned him with feathers and shells in preparation for their forthcoming feast. The women bought in fresh vegetables from the surrounding fields, and then the menfolk proceeded to dig a big hole in the ground to act as an oven. While all this was going on, the children were allowed to ‘play’ with the prisoner, using him as a target and eventually stoning him to death. This exercise is supposed to harden their children towards the act of killing. When the captive is no longer alive, the natives cut off his arms and legs with a bamboo knife. Next the meat is cut up into small pieces, wrapped in pieces of bark, and then cooked together with the vegetables. Such a banquet is attended by men, women and children, and is usually accompanied by dancing and jubilant songs. Apparently it is only the tribes’ enemies that are eaten, and if the captive is a a brave, young, strong warrior, the muscly parts of the body are given to the young boys of the tribe so that they can absorb the dead man’s power and courage. Cannibalism among the Kukukukus derives mainly from a shortage of meat and a deficiency of protein. Meat is indeed a rare luxury for them, and they have often been seen devouring the charred remains of rats, mice, lizards and other vermin after burning grass on the fields that surround their village.

  For All to See

  Reports from people who have travelled through the Congo in the early 1900s, say it was difficult to pass down certain roads without seeing the horrible remains left to the jackals which the human ‘wolves’ had not found to their liking. Spotted by smouldering camp fires were the whitening bones, cracked and broken, which form the relics of ‘human’ banquets. Some of the bodies that were found along the roadside were minus their hands and feet, others had steaks cut from the thighs or elsewhere, while others had the entrails or head removed. It appeared that neither old nor young, women or children, were exempt from being served as food.

  Recent Cannibalism

  Many acts of cannibalism have been reported from time to time in the African Congo, but one that has recently been brought to light by the press is the massacring and eating of pygmies by rebels in the dense forests of the northeast. It appears that the Ituri province was completely out of control and that cannibalism was just the latest of the atrocities taking place there. Ituri’s forest-dwelling pygmy tribes were caught between fighting groups in the battles of Congo’s four-year civil war. Two of the Ugandan-backed movements captured pygmies on a regular basis and sent them into the forest in search of food and minerals. If they returned empty-handed, they were killed and eaten. Reports came back of enemy commanders feeding on the sexual organs of pygmies, believing that this would give them improved strength. Also pygmies were being forced to feed on the cooked remains of their relatives and colleagues.

  It seems that cannibalism has definitely re-emerged in certain parts of the Congo. Much of the enormous area of forest is now being controlled by the Mayi-Mayi, a group of tribal militia who have been united by their beliefs and also their taste for human flesh.

  Just outside the Congolese town of Bunia, a horrified mother watched as militiamen roasted and then ate the severed arms of her dying daughters. She told of how the militiamen calmly cooked the human flesh over an open fire before throwing their victims, many of them still alive, into the flames.

  It is stories like this that have galvanized the world to take action and do something about the horrific cannibalism that is taking place in the Congo.

  The Last Known Tribe

  They found natives who were completely naked and living in the trees

  The media were absolutely buzzing all around the world in November 1995. The reason being that an expedition led by Doctor Cesar Pérez de Tudela (a famous Spanish climber and explorer), and professor Vicente Martínez (a journalist) had discovered what was possibly the last indigenous tribe of cannibals known all over the world.

  This project was the result of ten years of intense work, and six different expeditions had been carried out in the past by different explorers.

  The final expedition took the Doctor and the Professor a month and it involved climbing mountains, crossing jungles, rivers and lakes. The explorers found a few villages located near the rivers of Irian Jaya (Indonesia), where they discovered the natives were totally naked and lived in the trees. The majority of the natives were totally unaware of any civilization outside of their tribe.

  They live in close proximity to the ethnic groups of Korowais and Kombais, and the local authorities and people of the surrounding villages were not aware that their neighbours had been practising cannibalism for many years and indeed still are.

  The expedition saw first-hand the chopped heads of the tribe’s
enemies, the bodies of which had already been eaten by them. They even discovered the head of a missionary who had recently gone missing. These tribes are extremely hostile and live in very remote areas which made them very difficult to find. Although they proved that the natives ate human bodies, it is still not clear whether it is as a ritual or just their normal way of living.

  Cannibalism in Russia

  An alarming thought is that cannibalism seems to be a fairly common occurrence in the former Soviet Union

  In 1996 ten people were charged with the killing and eating of other people. A rough estimate by Russian police is that around 30 people were eaten in just that one year. Reports leaked out through the press that human flesh was being sold in street markets, vagrants were being eaten or their bodies being cut up and sold. Every month the Russian police were finding the corpse of a homeless person with missing body parts.

  Ukraine

  Police arrested three men and a woman on July 15, 2002, in the central Ukranian town of Zhytomyr. They were suspected of killing and cannibalizing at least six people, including an 18-year-old, in what is believed to have been a Satanic ritual. The young woman was killed in a forest and then fleshy parts of her body were removed and eaten by her murderers.