Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 October 1889 — HUMAN FLESH-EATERS. [ARTICLE]

HUMAN FLESH-EATERS.

The Horrible Practices of Certain f British Columbia Indians. The British Columbia Indians havei been suspected of eating human flesh, says a Victoria correspondent of the New York Herald, but they have hitherto concealed their practices so carefully that no reliable white man is able to give personal testimony of the fact. Mr. Pocock has been spending a great , deal of time among them, and although he is not able to give personal testimoI ny of their cannibalistic rites, yet he has collected a great deal of evidence from natives of the prevalence .of the practice/ The Kwagutls, a tribe dwelling in the central part of the province, have a belief that if a man meets a certain spirit on the mountains he has a right thereafter ’during the winter dances, lasting two months of the year, to bite whoever displeases him. The spirit i» called Ha-mad-tsi and the cannibals who earn their horrible distinction by seeing him are known as Ha-mad-tsis. They belong to> what maybe<-ailoa 7 aii exclusive and aristocratic caste. Only I members of certain families, may become Ha-mad-tsis, and these when they come to the age of discretion go up into the mountains, where they meet the spirit. Having encountered this unlovely sprite they come back to the villages snapping and biting at every body and making themselves generally very undesirable neighbors. Their sole purpose is to show the tribe that they are different from ordinary, men. and do not care what they eat or what they suffer. In old times a captive or a slave was killed and presented to the initiated, who ate the corpse in the presence of a general assemblage of the people. More recently, although slavery is not wholly extinct, the Indians have become afraid to kill, so they are reduced to the stealing of corpses. Usually these have been drying for a long time, being “buried” among the branches of a tree, and are flavorless, the brains alone being considered a luxury. Up to the time of eating a corpse in public the acolyte, whenever he appears from the woods, bites indiscriminately, women being, however, generally exempt, whether from native gallantry or not does not appear. Formerly the faces were bitten, noses and ears especially, but now the cannibal merely lifts the flesh of a man’s arm with his teeth, which is sliced off with a knife by a by-stander while the half* insane savage retains his grip of it and finally swallows it. The father of the biter pays everybody who has suffered from his progeny’s enthusiasm from two to ten blankets. There are few men in the Kwagutl tribes who do not bear the scars of this extraordinary mania. The Ha-mad-tsi, during the progress of the whiter dances, is stark naked, a heavy plaited rope of cedar bark adorned with tassels being carried, however, on the shoulders. There are from three to twenty Ha-mad-tsis, and each of them will perhaps eat of four or five corpses in a life-time. Mr. Pocock, however, had one old gentleman pointed out to him who had partaken of twenty. At the same time the corpse is very frequently a sham one made up, for the purpose. Deer dr goat flesh is often tied to the human bones and devoured In the dusk, so that the onlookers are all deceived. Still there are no doubt well-authenticated cases of this species of emotional, ceremonial cannib.lism constantly taking place among these degraded savages in the interior. Mr. Pocock has not actually witnessed the ceremony, but he collected a considerable amount of testimony from what he considers reliable native witnesses.