cannibal9

In the lead-up to the Bicentenary and Brisbane Expo, a glossy new magazine, Exploring Australia, appeared. The lead article by Peter Shanley, "The Cooktown Cannibals" - described as "chilling" by the Courier Mail - told the story of Hugh and Don Macquarie, who:
   "...were captured alive. Both men were attacked and knocked unconscious. When the elder Hugh awoke, his brother had already been killed and was being roasted. To make sure Hugh didn�t try to escape, the tribesmen chopped off his legs at the knees and left him to watch while his brother was eaten. With the last of his strength, he scratched an account of what had happened into a tin pannikin. The pannikin was found by a party of miners four days later, pushed under a rock ledge amid the remains of the feast."
   (Congratulations if you didn�t assume that the title of the article referred to Aboriginal people; doubled if the word �tribesman� left you unsure on the matter: you are excused from having to read the rest of the article. Otherwise, read on!)
   A dramatic story, worthy of a place in Ripley�s "Believe it or not". The sceptic in me stirred: I decided to check it out.
   Shanley could not remember where he got his version from, but it was probably from Hector Holthouse (River of Gold, Angus & Robertson, 1967), who, in turn, was unable to give me a source for his account. Ion Idriess (The Tin Scratchers, A&R, 1959) had a slightly less gory version - Hugh�s legs broken, not amputated - with details of some of the sentences and quite extensive information supposedly scratched on the pannikin.
   Contemporary newspaper reports milked the incident in the best tabloid tradition, but gave none of the graphic details featured in the Holthouse/ Idriess versions. Even before the police search, The Cooktown Herald "supposed" the bodies were eaten and, "for all we know, the skeletons (are lying) bleaching around camps..." This surmise is possibly the source of Idriess� account of "freshly picked bones glinting in the sun" being found beside the track.
   I eventually located the original Inquest Papers in the Queensland State Archives (No 47 of 1877). These include a detailed account of the results of a five-day search of the site by a five-member police detachment. Throughout, there is no mention of the pannikin or cannibalism: a butchered pack-horse, personal belongings, blood stained clothing, and blood on the rocks and ground were found, spread along a mile of the track. 400 metres further on, and 400 metres off to the left of the track, some hair, burnt skin and bone fragments were found in a fireplace on the third day of the search. While Dr Korteam pronounced the hair to be human, either the skin and bone fragments were not given to him, or he declined to declare them human. They could well have been from the butchered pack-horse. The coroner returned an open verdict.
   Dr Peter Bell (Cairns Historical Soc Bulletins 276/8) points out that the evidence could be read to suggest that the brothers were killed by a solitary European traveller for the considerable quantity of gold they would have been carrying. It would have been in the interest of any suspect to have the pannikin produced at the inquest. Could the story about it have been spread to discourage further investigation?
   The later versions become increasingly inconsistent with the evidence presented at the inquest, and the details of their graphic story of cannibalism are clearly exposed as fabrications.
A preference for the flesh of Chinese
   A few months later, the statement of a columnist in The Sunday Mail about a preference Aboriginal people in North Queensland had shown for the flesh of Chinese, over that of Europeans, was challenged in a letter to the editor. Encouraged by four correspondents who rushed to his defence, the columnist poured scorn on his critic, claiming that what was written was "completely accurate" and dismissing as "asinine rubbish" the suggestion that there was no evidence for it.
   The dogmatism and stridency of the letters and subsequent column, reminiscent of defenders of creationism, astrology etc, invited me to take my enquiries further.
   I began with Carl Lumholtz, a Norwegian ethnographer, who spent fourteen months in North Queensland in the early 1880�s, often alone with Aboriginal guides, observing flora, fauna and Aboriginal practices. His book Among Cannibals, reprinted 1980, is frequently cited, even by people who haven�t read it, but vividly recall the title - and, of course, presume it refers to Aboriginal people.
   The topic of cannibalism would fill a mere five of the book�s 400 pages. Some people told Lumholtz that the natives were cannibals. He never actually saw anyone eating human flesh, and he does not name the few witnesses who said they had. The specific examples are vague on details of date and place.
   But his Aboriginal guides, he said, made no secret of their cannibalism. It was a leading topic of their camp-fire conversation at night; their eyes sparkled at the thought of eating human flesh; thighs, they assured him, were the best eating. All this, Lumholtz said, caused him disgust and irritation.
   Aboriginal people reading his story usually explode into laughter at his reversal of cause and effect. They point to the restraint and courtesy shown by the guides in allaying his fears with assurances that they had no stomach for the flesh of a white man.
   Over the years, the numbers supposedly eaten have grown from dozens to hundreds, peaking in Cilento and Lack�s Centenary History of Queensland, which had "thousands of Chinese ... killed and eaten by the ferocious myalls of the Palmer".
   So, what is the evidence? The research of historians like Evans, Saunders, Reynolds and Loos over recent decades provided a good starting point. And Michael Pickering�s unpublished thesis, "Cannibalism among Aborigines: A Critical Review of the Literary Evidence" (ANU, 1985) has provided detailed information and a framework for analysis.
   When you put together all the statements relevant to the topic, all the newspaper reports, journals, books, letters, inquests, whatever, relating to North Queensland for the period 1861 to 1897, the material fits broadly into three bundles.
   Firstly, there are the specific credible reports of the deaths of some 260 Europeans and 90 Chinese at the hands of Aboriginal people. These give, in varying degrees, details of names, dates, places and circumstances. For 20% of them, there are quite extensive Inquest Papers in the Queensland State Archives. But in not one of these reports is there any real evidence of cannibalism.
   That qualification - no real evidence - defines the second bundle; instances from the first group, like that of the Macquarie brothers, where allegations of cannibalism were added. But the mere fact of disappearance, signs of struggle, bloodstains, or the failure to find a body are not real evidence. Bones and charred flesh in the fire-place may be evidence of cremation, but not of cannibalism. Were they to be considered as such, the white perpetrators of the 28 Aboriginal people at Myall Creek in 1838 would have been charged with cannibalism.
   The third bundle includes stories which lack details of names, dates, place or source - like Holthouse�s story of half a dozen Chinese miners found hanging from a branch by their pigtails, waiting for their turn to be clubbed, roasted and eaten. Or Lumholtz�s tale of ten Chinese miners being eaten at one dinner (he attributed the preference for their flesh to their being largely grain fed).
   In short, we still lack even one credible account of either a European or a Chinese person having been eaten by Aboriginal people, let alone evidence for any preference.