Human cannibalism

Gastronomes of the old school

The pre-pork period

I can feel the shudder and feeling of horror that came over me as we looked at them, and saw the agonised look of the poor fellow, who seemed dazed with grief, and said they were the hand and foot of his little girl

Human cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh or internal organs of other human beings. A person who practices cannibalism is called a cannibal. The meaning of "cannibalism" has been extended into zoology to describe animals consuming parts of individuals of the same species as food.

Quotes

• The Cannibals and savage people do not so much offend me with roasting and eating of dead bodies, as those which torment and persecute the living.
  • Michel de Montaigne
  • John Florio, Montaigne's Essayes, Book II, Ch. XI. Of Crueltie

• And of the cannibals that each other eat,
  The anthropophagi, ...
  • William Shakespeare, Othello, act 1, sc. 3

• ... The barbarous Scythian,
  Or he that makes his generation messes
  To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
  Be as well neighbour’d, pitied, and reliev’d,
  As thou my sometime daughter.
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear, act 1, sc. 1

• Nay, so great was our famine, that a Salvage we slew and buried, the poorer sort tooke him up againe and eat him, and so did divers one another boyled and stewed with roots and herbes; and one amongst the rest did kill his wife, and powdered her, and had eaten part of her before it was knowne, for which hee was executed, as hee well deserved: now, whether she was better roasted, boyled, or carbonado'd, I know not, but of such a dish as powdered wife I never heard of.
  • John Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia, Book IV
  • A brief account of the "starving time", from the record of an eyewitness and sufferer.
  • Reported in: Jeremy Belknap, American Biography, II (1855), p. 122

• I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
  • Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal (1729)

• Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
  • Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison (Paris, 20 June 1787)
  • J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, ed., The Best Letters of Thomas Jefferson (1926), p. 27

• Go to the meat market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgement, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy paté-de-foie-gras.
  • Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851), Ch. LXV

• I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.
  • Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

• CANNIBAL, n. A gastronome of the old school who preserves the simple tastes and adheres to the natural diet of the pre-pork period.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

• Mr. Harris has already intimated to you in a letter of his that while he was down at Jikau, attending a committee meeting, a horrible case of murder and cannibalism on the part of rubber sentries occurred in this district. It was of a shocking nature, and has greatly distressed us. On Sunday morning, May 15, just after eight o'clock, I had gone across to Mr. Harris's house, and we were just going to commence morning worship when two boys rushed breathlessly in, and said that some sentries had killed a number of people, and that two men had gone by to tell the rubber white men, and that they also had some hands to show him, in case he did not believe them. It greatly upset us, and we told them to watch for the men as they came back, and to tell us, so that we could see them. Shortly afterwards the two men came along the path, and we heard the boys calling to them to come and show us ; but they seemed afraid, and so we went out quickly and overtook them, and asked them where the hands were. Thereupon one of them opened a parcel of leaves, and showed us the hand and foot of a small child, who could not have been more than five years old. They were fresh and clean cut. It was an awful sight, and even now, as I write, I can feel the shudder and feeling of horror that came over me as we looked at them, and saw the agonised look of the poor fellow, who seemed dazed with grief, and said they were the hand and foot of his little girl. I can never forget the sight of that horror-stricken father. We asked them to come into the house and tell us about the affair, which they did, and the following is the story they told us—
  'The father of the little girl said his name was Nsala, and he was a native of Wala, which is a section of the Nsongo District and connected with Lifinda, the outpost of Baringa. On the previous day, although it was three days before they were due to take in the rubber, fifteen sentries came from Lifinda, all except two being armed with Albini rifles, and they were accompanied by followers. They began making prisoners and shooting, and killed Bongingangoa, his wife; Boali, his little daughter of about five years of age; and Esanga, a boy of about ten years. These they at once cut up, and afterwards cooked in pots, putting in salt which they had brought with them, and then ate them.'
  • Letter from E. Stannard to Dr. Guinness (21 May 1904)
  • Reported in: E. D. Morel, King Leopold's Rule in Africa (1904), p. 444
  • See also: Atrocities in the Congo Free State and Force Publique

• 'But if you eat this chap who's God,' said Llewelyn stoutly, 'how can it be horrible? If it's alright to eat God why is it horrible to eat Jim Whittle?'
  'Because,' said Dymphna reasonably, 'if you eat God there's always plenty left. You can't eat God up because God just goes on and on and on and God can't ever be finished. 'You silly clot,' she added and then went on cutting holly leaves.
  • Anthony Burgess, The Wanting Seed (1962), Ch. 3

• A collective insanity seemed to have seized the nation and turned them into something worse than beasts. The princess de Lamballe, Marie Antoinette's intimate friend, was literally torn to pieces; her head, breasts, and pudenda were paraded on pikes before the windows of the Temple, where the royal family was imprisoned, while a man boasted drunkenly at a cafe that he had eaten the princess' heart, which he probably had.
  • J. Christopher Herold, The Age of Napoleon (1963), Ch. 1

• When the Yumu, Pindupi, Ngali, or Nambutji were hungry, they ate small children with neither ceremonial nor animistic motives. Among the southern tribes, the Matuntara, Mularatara, or Pitjentara, every second child was eaten in the belief that the strength of the first child would be doubled by such a procedure.
  • Géza Róheim, Children of the Desert: The Western Tribes of Central Australia, I (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 71

• A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone. Go back to school, little Starling.
  • Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs (1988)

• A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. [Slurps] You fly back to school now, little Starling.
  • The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

• But if you're gonna dine with them cannibals
  Sooner or later, darling, you're gonna get eaten ...
  • Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, "Cannibal's Hymn"
  • Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus (2004)