Section: The Bismarck Archipelago

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From around 1884 to 1919, both northeastern New Guinea and the archipelago were claimed by Germany as a colony. Some years earlier, in 1882, the German branch of the Catholic Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus had set up its first mission station in New Britain (which was called Neu-Pommern at that time). One of the missionaries, Matthäus Rascher (1868–1904), notes that the inhabitants of the coastal regions of the peninsula captured many of the Baining people, who lived in the mountainous interior. Captives were either kept as slaves or killed and eaten; those killed in attacks were eaten as well. At special risk were small groups of Baining who had come to the coast in order to catch fish or to fetch limestone or salt water. Occasionally, however, whole villages were raided and both pigs and people taken away as bounty.3

Rascher reports that in a particularly large attack in September 1896, a group of Baining people were enticed by a promise of trade into visiting a nearby bay. Dozens of young, strong men were tricked into approaching the canoes of the attackers; suddenly, they were drawn into the canoes which immediately left, taking the Baining (who could not swim) with them. Those left behind were attacked by a group of fighters who had hidden in the bush; nearly all of them were killed. Rascher estimates that about fifty people were murdered, while about thirty young men were enslaved. Some of the killed were cut to pieces and distributed among the attackers, while the corpses of others were tied to poles and transported to the villages of the slavers for later consumption. To make escape impossible, the newly captured slaves were transported to Massava and Massikonapuka, two small islands north of the Gazelle Peninsula. Several of those killed were roasted and eaten on these islands in direct view of the captives.4

Rascher’s mission station was on the coast near these islands, and he heard of these events from the slavers themselves. When he asked them if they had not felt pity for their victims, they told him that, “no, it was no big deal, since it had only been done to Baining people.” They also implied that their victims were “so stupid” that they deserved what they got.5 During his talks with the shore dwellers, Rascher found that they tended to regard the Baining as mere “animal, born without rights and only good for work. . . . They regard themselves as real people, as rich and clever people, because they . . . own boats, fish and especially tambu [shell money], while the Baining people have nothing of all this.”6

This justification of both slavery and cannibalism due to one’s own superiority and an outspoken disdain for the victimized people is something that seems specific to the region, with no known equivalents in New Zealand. In subsequent chapters we will occasionally hear similar statements from certain parts of Africa.

In common with New Zealand, on the other hand, was the notion of cannibalism as something self-evident and uncontroversial. While resting at a spring, Rascher’s local companions told him that they used to wash the virua—the bodies of the slain—at this place. While they said that they no longer practiced cannibalism because of “the fear of the [colonial] judge and the difficulty of getting human flesh without attracting attention,” they did not see anything bad or reprehensible in the custom.7

Albert Hahl (1868–1945), who from 1896 served as a colonial judge in the Gazelle Peninsula and later became the last governor of German New Guinea, observed that cannibalism was so ingrained in local customs that even people who had spent a long time among Europeans expected captives to be killed and eaten. Once he drew a little girl out of a battle zone to prevent one of his companions from killing her with an ax. Seeing this, “a boy, who had already spent nine years in the service of whites, exclaimed . . . : ‘Sir, fine, I’ll cook her, she’ll make a good meal.’”8

In colonial times, though cannibalism could no longer take place as openly as earlier, Baining were still occasionally killed and eaten in the proximity of Rascher’s mission. In 1897, a six-year-old who served as an altar boy in the mission church revealed that the day before he had eaten of the bodies of two Baining who had been spotted near the coast and killed with a spear by one of the men of the village. Another boy later confirmed the incident, which the adults had tried to keep secret from the Europeans.9

Rascher notes that in many attacks directed against groups of Baining people, including the large raid described above, unrelated Baining supported the shore dwellers as allies. The Baining themselves did not keep slaves, but practiced cannibalism when given the chance, and claimed some of the dead bodies as a reward.10

According to Rascher, slaves had been frequently butchered for feasts on the coast of the peninsula until a short time before his arrival in the region (in 1895). He claims that, according to local tradition, every sufficiently wealthy family was expected to slaughter one or more slaves in the spring and fall to regale their neighbors. The emerging trade with Europeans weakened this tradition; because of a higher demand for workers, more Baining were enslaved than ever before, and those who were useful workers now had a better chance of staying alive. Those captured in raids who were unable or unwilling to work, however, were still killed and eaten without further ado, as one of Rascher’s confreres observed during his travels through the country.11

Rascher’s informants told him that old people encountered in slave raids were usually killed and eaten—the men immediately, while the women were often raped before their death. Younger victims had a better chance of being left alive and sold into slavery, though there were some “archcannibals” who had all captive children slaughtered, seemingly enjoying their flesh more than the money they might otherwise have earned. As in New Zealand, women’s flesh was considered better than that of men; brains were valued as special delicacies. Human flesh—like meat in general—was roasted between hot stones, then consumed together with taro and other vegetables.12

According to the British traveler Herbert Cayley-Webster, the flesh of slaves was still commonly served at feasts when he visited the Gazelle Peninsula in the 1890s. He met chiefs who told him, with evident pride, “how they have enjoyed their feast on the previous evening, which had been some portion of a human being.” Some of them, he claims, butchered “every few days” one of their slaves “to satisfy their diabolical tastes.”13

While this sounds exaggerated, the fact that slaves were sacrificed for feasts was also confirmed by liberated slaves themselves. When Albert Hahl became a judge, he declared slavery forbidden and postulated that all slaves be released. Since the slave owners ignored his request, he traveled through his district to liberate the slaves. While he was not usually very successful (the owners hid their slaves when he came), at Watom, a small island north of the Gazelle Peninsula, he forced a chief to free six young male slaves. One of them told Hahl that the slaves “had to work hard all the time,” and also lived in constant fear for their lives: “When there was a big feast, the plumpest slaves were selected, killed and devoured.” Other liberated slaves reported the same.14

Father A. Kleintitschen, who belonged to the same congregation as Rascher, notes that “the little Baining children” captured on the north coast of the peninsula usually did not survive for long because they were considered “choice delicacies.” In 1890, he adds, the mission sent a boat along the coast in order to purchase and rescue enslaved children, but they managed to acquire only one four-year-old girl. “The shore dwellers regretted that they had not come earlier. A month ago they still would have had a lot of children to sell. But since they could not fish because of the frequent storms, they had eaten the little ones. For the next time, however, they intended to preserve some.”15

In this case it seems that the children had been treated less as “delicacies” than as a food supply for difficult times. The last remark made by the shore dwellers indicates that this was not exceptional but might have been the fate of many enslaved children not considered valuable for other purposes. While the accounts of Rascher, Cayley-Webster, and Hahl leave the impression that slaves were eaten at lavish feasts held by the wealthy, Kleintitschen’s account seems to suggest that the owners of enslaved children were poor fishers who might have faced hardship, possibly even starvation, if they had not slaughtered and consumed their human provisions. There may be truth in both versions—it is quite possible that slaves were considered “emergency rations” for times of food scarcity and also were sacrificed for sumptuous feasts held in times of plenty.

All reports so far are from the Gazelle Peninsula, which was clearly a hot spot regarding the consumption of persons who were considered slaves or had been taken in slave raids. Indeed Heinrich Schnee (1871–1949), the deputy governor of German New Guinea from 1898 to 1900, observes that slavery and slave trade existed as regular institutions only in the Gazelle Peninsula, where the Baining people were enslaved by the shore dwellers. Elsewhere in the Bismarck Archipelago and the nearby Solomon Islands, there was no organized slave trade, but (according to Schnee) war cannibalism was often practiced, and captives were occasionally kept alive for festive occasions—in some cases for years. During this time, they were exploited like slaves, but sooner or later all of them were butchered and eaten.16

While there might not have been a regular trade in living slaves outside of the Gazelle Peninsula, captives could be killed in order to sell their dead bodies, as the German settler Ludolf Kummer observed. Sometime after arriving in New Ireland (then called Neu-Mecklenburg), another large island situated northeast of New Britain, Kummer heard that a sixteen-year-old boy was about to be killed in a nearby village and his corpse sold for consumption to another village. Kummer hired the boy to work on his plantation, thus saving his life.17

Kummer, who settled on the island in the late nineteenth century, was told that until recently the fattening and slaughter of slaves (or, if Schnee’s distinction is correct, of captives) had been fairly common in some areas. In his own time, human flesh was still served at festive occasions, as he discovered by accident. When visiting a village in 1900, he encountered the inhabitants in the progress of preparing a feast. Their chief invited him to join them. A large amount of a meat that looked similar to pork was served. Kummer was about to eat some of it when a villager he had talked to earlier quietly warned him that it was human flesh.18 He does not say (and probably did not know) who the unfortunate provider of this meat was.

While Kummer discovered this by accident, the German traveler and author Stefan von Kotze (1869–1909) deliberately got himself an invitation to a banquet whose main course was a purchased woman. While in northern New Ireland, he heard of the upcoming cannibal feast from a “half-caste” friend. He convinced his friend, who was invited, to get him an invitation too—a privilege for which he paid a considerable sum of money. In preparation of the meal, the host, a local chief, bought “a young woman . . . from a foreign tribe”—it is unclear whether she had been sold by her own people or whether the sellers had captured her in a raid or battle.19 Kotze’s financial contribution likely went towards covering her purchase price, thus directly contributing to her death—but this does not seem to have bothered him.

Kotze did not see how the woman was killed, but he witnessed the subsequent preparation of the meal:

Special pieces of the festive roast were reserved for the better gentlemen, myself included. A deep hole was dug and covered with red-hot stones. Certain soft parts of the body were carefully wrapped in banana leaves together with wild breadfruit, the package was put in the oven, several hot stones were placed on top of it, and the hole was filled with earth again. After about twenty-four hours, the word was: Messieurs sont servis!20

While waiting for this moment, Kotze had drunk “a lot of cognac to calm my stomach.” But when his reserved piece was served to him, “similar in appearance and consistency to a foie gras pâté,” he felt overwhelmed with nausea and “had to leave immediately”—or so he writes.21

He adds that, while the earth oven was used for the parts consumed by the “better gentlemen . . . the plebs roasted the other parts, roughly carved, simply over an open fire.” All the eaters were men, no women had been invited.22 During his time in New Ireland he observed that women and children were generally excluded from the consumption not just of human, but indeed of any meat. He suspected that, because of a general rarity of meat, men preferred to get more for themselves and hence excluded other potential eaters.23

In neighboring New Britain, on the other hand, young boys were not generally excluded from cannibal meals. Rascher, as mentioned, knew a boy who at the age of six told the missionary that on three occasions he had eaten human flesh—the last time just one day earlier. Another boy confirmed that he too had attended the recent cannibal meal, though assuring that he had not eaten of the flesh “because the missionary had forbidden it.”24 Kleintitschen writes that eighty out of a hundred boys living in a mission-run orphanage admitted to having eaten human flesh.25 There are, to my knowledge, no reports of women and girls eating human flesh in New Britain, which suggests that they might have been excluded from this food just as on the neighboring island. But boys seem to have been permitted to share in this “male privilege” at an early age.

In addition to the fact that cannibalism in the Bismarck Archipelago was apparently more clearly restricted to male eaters than in New Zealand, another notable difference is the absence of a punitive motive. In New Zealand, as we have seen (Chapter 2), the killing and subsequent consumption of slaves was often explained as a reaction to some kind of misbehavior on their part. While this might have been little more than a pretext, as some observers felt, it is notable that no such motive or pretext was ever given in the Bismarck Archipelago (to my knowledge). This also means that no underlying motive of keeping the remaining enslaved population at bay through disciplining terror is discernable here.