Section: Sumatra

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The German author Sigwart Friedmann, who visited the island in the middle of the nineteenth century, notes that criminals and captured enemies were commonly eaten among the Batak people in the north26—a custom also documented by various other authors.27 Friedmann adds that there were some wealthy men “who buy slaves, fatten them for a while like cattle and then slaughter them,” but comments that most of the Batak disapproved of such purely culinary cannibal acts.28 The German-Dutch botanist and geologist Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn (1809–1864), who in the 1840s lived for several years in Sumatra, agrees, noting that he knew of a Batak rajah (ruler) who from time to time had one of his slaves butchered for a feast—not as a punishment for crimes, but simply because he liked the taste. The rajah also regularly purchased slaves for consumption, paying a premium for fat ones. Junghuhn also notes that this man was an exception, “hated” by most of his neighbors.29 Still it seems that those who wanted to buy slaves for consumption had no trouble finding sellers.

The consumption of the flesh of captives was less controversial than that of slaves. At the house of another rajah, Junghuhn was offered a soup with pieces of meat which turned out to be of human origin. He found out that the rajah had not had anything else ready and had not known, “in his guileless manner,” that the European disapproved of such food. The flesh came from two captives caught some time earlier in an attack on their village and slaughtered just the day before. Junghuhn observes that human flesh was generally praised as very tasty—even better than pork.30

In earlier times, slave eating might have been more widely accepted in some parts of the island. The Italian friar Odoric of Pordenone (1286–1331) visited Sumatra in the early 1320s. He asserts that the inhabitants of Lamuri, a kingdom which existed in its north from around the ninth to the sixteenth century, “eat man’s flesh . . . just as we eat beef.” According to Odoric, slave traders from other regions brought children to sell to the people of Lamuri, “who buy them and slaughter them in the shambles and eat them.” While Odoric does not claim to have personally seen this, he leaves no doubt that he visited Lamuri and talked with some of its inhabitants. The custom, he adds, was not due to hunger, because “the country in itself is excellent, and hath great store of flesh-meats, and of wheat and of rice.”31

Henry Yule, who edited Odoric’s account, notes that much of the latter’s description of Lamuri and Sumatra is confirmed by other sources or contemporary evidence and concludes that the friar wrote down what he heard or saw while visiting the island, though every detail might not be based on personal observation.32 An Arab collection of travel reports from the middle of the ninth century and the Italian merchant Marco Polo, who visited the island thirty years before Odoric, also state that human flesh was eaten in northern Sumatra, but without giving further details.33

As Odoric’s more specific report is not confirmed by other independent sources, some doubts as to its reliability remain. But if essentially correct, it is one of the earliest sources documenting slave eating as a particular practice.34 Odoric also points out that cannibals and non-cannibals worked together: in his account, merchants came “from far” to sell enslaved children to the cannibals, apparently not bothered by the subsequent fate of those they sold.35 When we turn to Africa in subsequent chapters, we will repeatedly encounter similarly pernicious alliances between those who did and those who did not practice cannibalism.

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