Cannibal tribe apologises for eating Methodist Missionaries
Pastor Dale Morgan
Cannibal tribe apologises for eating Methodist Missionaries*
By Nick Squires in Sydney
Last Updated: 3:29pm BST 16/08/2007
A tribe in Papua New Guinea has apologised for killing and eating four
19th century missionaries under the command of a doughty British clergyman.
Sorcery and witchcraft are still common in some Papuan tribes
The four Fijian missionaries were on a proselytising mission on the
island of New Britain when they were massacred by Tolai tribesmen in 1878.
They were murdered on the orders of a local warrior chief, Taleli, and
were then cooked and eaten.
The Fijians - a minister and three teachers - were under the leadership
of the Reverend George Brown, an adventurous Wesleyan missionary who was
born in Durham but spent most of his life spreading the word of God in
the South Seas.
Thousands of villagers attended a reconciliation ceremony near Rabaul,
the capital of East New Britain province, once notorious for the
ferocity of its cannibals.
Their leaders apologised for their forefather's taste for human flesh to
Fiji's high commissioner to Papua New Guinea.
"We at this juncture are deeply touched and wish you the greatest joy of
forgiveness as we finally end this record disagreement," said Ratu Isoa
Tikoca, the high commissioner.
advertisement
Cannibalism was common in many parts of the South Pacific - Fiji was
formerly known as the Cannibal Isles - and dozens of missionaries were
killed by hostile islanders.
Born at Barnard Castle, Durham, Rev Brown emigrated to New Zealand as a
young man and served as a missionary in Samoa before moving with his
wife and children to New Guinea.
He was familiar with the cannibalistic traditions of the region and once
described a visit to a village in which he counted 35 smoke-blackened
human jaw bones dangling from the rafters of a hut.
"A human hand, smoke-dried, was hanging in the same house. And outside I
counted 76 notches in a coconut tree, each notch of which, the natives
told us, represented a human body which had been cooked and eaten
there," he told the Royal Geographical Society.
Even so, he was shocked when told that four of his staff had been
cannibalised.
"They were killed simply because they were foreigners, and the natives
who killed them did so for no other reason than their desire to eat
them, and to get the little property they had with them," he wrote.
He reluctantly agreed to launch a punitive expedition, ordering his men
to burn down villages implicated in the murders and destroy wooden canoes.
At least 10 tribe members blamed for the attack were killed in an area
known as Blanche Bay. Rev Brown claimed the raids made the region safe
for Europeans.
In a letter to the general secretary of the London Missionary Society he
wrote: "The natives respect us more than they did, and as they all
acknowledge the justice of our cause they bear us no ill will."
But the reprisals attracted fierce criticism from the press,
particularly in Australia.
The Australian newspaper said: "If missionary enterprise in such an
island as this leads to wars of vengeance, which may readily develop
into wars of extermination, the question may be raised whether it may
not be better to withdraw the mission from savages who show so little
appreciation of its benefits."
However, an official investigation by British colonial authorities a
year later exonerated Rev Brown.