Cannibal

Two cannibals were eating a clown. One paused and looked up at the other, saying, "Does this taste kind of funny to you?" – Old joke.

Inuit have a story of a hunter who once visited an unknown people. Upon arrival, a blind old man approached him, warning, "You are among cannibals. They will kill and eat you. Stay in my home. They won't attack you there."

Grateful, the exhausted hunter decided to nap in the old man's iglu. He had not been long asleep when a strange noise awakened him. He saw the old man's two sons shuffling toward him, carrying a large stone with which to kill him. The hunter realized that the old man and his sons were cannibals, as well, and that they had merely wanted him for themselves. He leapt up and seized his harpoon, surprising the sons, so that they were easily killed with quick thrusts to the heart.

Then the hunter hid behind some skins, and waited. Soon, the blind old man arrived. Crouching, he began to grope around the floor for the meal his sons had left him. As soon as the old man's probing fingers drew near, the hunter impaled him upon his harpoon. Wasting no time, the hunter fled. He had not travelled far, however, before he turned to see the other cannibals and their dog teams chasing him.

Fortunately, the hunter was something of an angakoq (shaman). He faced the cannibals and rapidly began to fire arrows at their lead dogs. The shamanic arrows struck the dogs, making them turn toward the icy water. All of the dog teams rushed in, drowning the cannibals along with themselves. The hunter returned home, explaining to his people that they would remain safe from cannibals ever after.

I can't remember what age I was when I finally learned that Indians don't eat people.

I was very little – that's for sure. My friends and I, all Inuit, held a marked fear of First Nations peoples. We were convinced, through various stories circulating among us, that they were cannibalistic. It wasn't until I at last befriended an Indian girl at school that I learned differently, and I additionally learned that the Indian kids held the same fears of Inuit.

It was a strange revelation, and somewhat confusing. I explained to her that Indians were supposed to be savage people who kidnapped Inuit to eat. No, she told me, it was Inuit – or so their stories told – who were cannibals, capturing Indian kids and eating them raw. I corrected her, of course, saying, "We would never eat Indians raw. Maybe boiled… " And we were friends after that.

Having assuaged each others' fears, we became good friends over the course of years. And, naturally, neither of us even once eyed the other hungrily. But the cannibal confusion was a good experience, since it helped me learn that Inuit are not unique in their traditional dread of cannibalism. I would eventually learn that it was a fear haunting nearly all cultures worldwide. The Inuktitut term for a cannibal is inuktuurniku, or "one who has eaten an Inuk" (Inuk being the singular form of Inuit). Inuit legends are rife with mention of semi-human cannibal monsters, betraying their age-old fear of the phenomenon. There is the Netsilingmiut amayirsuk, for example, a huge crone that imprisons children within the hollow hump in her back, carrying them away to be devoured; or the nakasungnaikut, a man without bones in his legs, who crawls through the icy darkness hunting for normal humans, whom he ambushes and eats alive.

The dreadful nature of such near-human monsters hints at just how perverse the cannibal is perceived to be. The cannibal is not at all the usual sort of bestial monster, the one with several limbs and an appearance/lifestyle so alien that there is no hope of identification with humanity. It is not the simple beast, the animal-like monster that, although it stalks, kills, and eats people, is somehow understandable. After all, it is natural for bestial predators to eat other creatures not of their own species. Wolves eat caribou. Bears eat seals. Owls eat lemmings. We all comprehend this simple dynamic of nature.

But the cannibal is not a natural, and thus understandable, occurrence. In a way, they are the ultimate symbol of gluttony, the lust for food taken to such an extreme that even fellow humans are no longer exempt from consumption. The cannibal, in common human thinking, is a deceiver – a traitor. The cannibal is one who "breaks the rules," and eats his own. As predators, there exists an unspoken understanding between humans that they are not to turn their predatory skills against each other, but will instead cooperate against those animals that are not human.

Cannibals, however, have violated this most fundamental social contract (not to prey upon those of their own species) having removed themselves to a plane of thought that is seemingly alien to the rest of us. The cannibal is a creature of chaos, choosing to remain outside of the usual social contracts that ensure human safety: in other words, a monster. The monster is not predictable, so the monster, the cannibal, is unsafe.

And to whom is the monster image most useful? Well, parental figures, of course. A most difficult task, faced by any parent, is in making their child understand the dangers of the unknown. Children incessantly wander off while parents aren't looking, meandering into nebulous dangers. It would be easy if the parents could simply explain such dangers, cautioning the children against them. But, unfortunately, most explanations of danger only confuse children, or simply don't impress them. For this reason, societies across the ages have developed strikingly similar children's stories – mostly cautionary tales against wandering away from the safety of home, at the risk of being eaten by semi-human monsters that exist "over there." Unlike many subjects, eating is something that even the smallest child can comprehend, and therefore the idea of a monster that gobbles up children is easy to grasp. The cannibal is the parental metaphor for the thief, the abuser, the kidnapper, the paedophile – all the horrors an adult can imagine, but cannot adequately explain to a child.

Yet, over an extended period of time, cultures do pay an inevitable price for the cannibal-fears that parents convey. An accumulation of such fears, over generations, can result in a society that defines its sense of integrity only against other, more supposedly "savage" cultures.

If such stories are not explained to children as they grow – if they are not eventually taught that those "others" are not actually cannibalistic, but that the tales were only to serve the purpose of disciplining them when they were younger and less comprehending – there exists the good chance that the children will retain their fears into adulthood, passing onto their own progeny an exaggerated version of such fear. We can easily see the effects of such compounded fear (whether deriving from cannibal hatred, or from other sources) manifesting in the various ethnic conflicts of nearly all societies, from the most basic and ancient band-level groups to the youngest and most developed nations.

Closest to home, there exists the old and unfortunate Indian-Inuit enmity, an enmity revolving around cannibal fears projected from each society toward the other.

As one follows the northern side of the taiga (i.e., tree line) up into the northwest, from the peoples of the Padlermiut to the Haningayormiut to the Kogluktomiut to the Avvagmiut to the Kittegaryumiut to the Kikiktarugmiut, one finds an increasing prevalence of traditional myths and stories that refer to conflicts with numerous Algonkian-speaking Indian peoples.

Such tales normally refer to raids by Indians upon Inuit, and follow a distinct pattern: the Inuit men go hunting, only to later return and find that Indians have raided their village, and either exterminated or captured the Inuit women and children.

Wrathful, the hunters track the Indians to their camp to find them gathered around the fire, alternately congratulating themselves on a successful raid, or snacking on some leftover Inuk. Sated and therefore unaware, the Indians fail to notice the Inuit circling round their camp, whereupon the Inuit leap up and fill the Indians full of arrows.

While Inuit displayed in their tales a traditional dread of Indians, the Algonkian and Athapaskan peoples were all too eager to return the favour, filling their own folklore with stories of the loathsome northern cannibals, the Eskimantsik, or "Eaters of Raw Meat" (from which some believe comes the word "Eskimo").

The Algonkian-speaking and Athapaskan-speaking Indians occupied a great deal of sub-Arctic land in Canada, in the form of similar yet distinct nations that ranged all along the taiga. Depending upon their respective areas, Inuit had to contend with a great number of tribes, fighting a sort of "cold war" with elusive, and therefore grossly misunderstood, tree line peoples.

Even at a glance, one can appreciate the vast potential for cross-cultural misunderstanding. From southeast to northwest, the Inuit clashed with so-called Naskapi and Montagnais (both known today as Innu), west main Cree, western woods Cree, and Athapaskan peoples such as the s-called Chipewyan, Yellowknife, Hare, Kutchin, Koyukon, and Holikachuk.

The problem is that the taiga has always acted as a sort of fence, keeping either super-culture from fully knowing each other. The tree line is the dividing line between two distinct worlds. On the northern side were Inuit, whose technology had already been so superbly adapted to the Arctic environment that Inuit were fearful to leave it for the "cannibal" infested woodlands.

On the southern side were the Algonkian and Athapaskan nations, whose lifestyles were profoundly suited to their sub-Arctic forest lands, and who feared straying too far north, away from the cover of the pines, and into the clutches of the man-eating Eskimantsik.

The Algonkian folklore was brimming with exceptionally ancient legions of woodland cannibal ghosts and monsters, the most famous of which was the dread "Wendigo," a man who had transformed himself into a monster by eating human flesh, and who was doomed to forever stalk the woods and northern "wastes" in a mad search for raw, human flesh.

Already armed with such beliefs, it was not difficult for the northernmost tree line Algonkians to identify the Wendigo with Inuit, for the Inuit tendency to eat uncooked meat was vastly monstrous to them (few of the Algonkians ate quaq, or raw, frozen meat.)

Unfortunately, the tree line only served to keep the differing cultures just far enough apart that there could be little understanding between them. Each culture could only observe the other from afar, generally consumed with ignorant fear. With the only contact consisting of occasional encounters (wherein neither party understood the other's language or customs), often in the form of raids or skirmishes occurring over millennia, is it any wonder that lurid rumours developed on both sides? Nor is it any wonder that the most common accusations were those of cannibalism, for human beings naturally have a tendency to dwell upon, to study and examine, their worst fears – evoking maximum terror in their effort to imagine "just how bad it gets." And the key tool in such primal psychotherapy is the alienation of others, the need to define oneself as opposed to the "monsters."

Yet a monster is a difficult thing to concretize, for the truly inhuman monsters of nature are only, in the end, mere animals: the bear, the shark, the venomous serpent. These animals may possess fearsome or deadly traits, but they generally avoid humanity, and are easily dealt with.

Therefore, man turns to himself, looking at his own kind for those who might play out the part of monsters. And it just so happens that cannibals fit the bill exactly. The unspoken assumption is that, unlike beasts and birds, cannibals have made a conscious choice in their diet. They are the perfect monsters, for they masquerade as humans, having human traits and talents, while perversely eating their own. They live among their food.

But make no mistake: I'm not saying that cannibal legends are entirely the result of cross-cultural fear. Are the claims of Indians and Inuit completely false? Are there true cases of cannibalism among either culture?

If one were to go by Inuit stories of Inuk eating Inuk, the answer might appear to be… yes.

The truth is that, while Inuit believed the Athapaskan and Algonkian Indians to be cannibalistic, the real cannibalism occurred instead as aberrations that cropped up among Inuit themselves. There may be a kernel of truth within the ancient Inuit stories of hunters lost out on the land, accidentally blundering into a "strange" people who, it turns out, want him as quaq.

Yet while such "lost among the cannibals" tales constitute wonderful horror folklore – occurring the world over – it seems far more likely that the real cannibals were individuals born of madness and starvation. Knud Rasmussen, in his informative travels, was told of many instances of cannibalism by various Inuit peoples, the most lurid of which is perhaps that related by Qaqortingneq, an old camp leader of the Netsilingmiut, regarding a middle-aged man named Tuneq:

One winter, many years ago, hunting was a failure. Day after day went by and nobody had anything to eat. People died of hunger or froze to death, and the quick lived on the dead.

Then Tuneq suddenly became disturbed in his head. He began to consult the spirits, and it was not long before he began to do so through his own wife. He used her as a medium: qilaq. He did it in this way: he tied a line to one of her legs and made her lie on the platform; then he tugged at her leg and let the spirits answer through her leg. He did this often, and it was not long before he said he had received the answer that he was to save his own life by eating his wife.

At first he only cut small pieces from her clothing and ate them, drinking water with it to help him to swallow it. People who saw him say that he behaved like a man possessed of a wild and evil spirit. Bigger and bigger were the pieces he cut from her clothing; at last her body was quite exposed in many places.

The wife knew that the spirits had said her husband should eat her, but she was so exhausted that it made no impression on her. She did not care. It was only when he began to feel her, when it occurred to him to stick his fingers in her side to feel if there was flesh on her, that she suddenly felt a terrible fear; so she, who had never been afraid of dying, now tried to escape.

With her feeble strength she ran for her life, and then it was as if Tuneq saw her only as a quarry that was about to escape him; he ran after her and stabbed her to death.
After that, he lived on her, and he collected her bones in a heap over by the side platform for the purpose of fulfilling the taboo rule required of all who die. He was going to hold death-taboo over her for five days.

But people say that the ghost of his wife often walked through her own bones, Tuneq waking up at night as the bones he himself had gnawed began to rattle. Sometimes they moved up and down, and it happened that the man sitting up on the platform would be hauled off during the night by some invisible power. And when he then suddenly awoke there was no one in the snow hut, only the bones lying over by the side platform, rattling.

– Knud Rasmussen The Netsilik Eskimos, Reports of the Fifth Thule Expedition, Vol. VIII. Copenhagen. 1931: 137

For me, the story above (which Qaqortingneq and Rasmussen both seem to relate with ghoulish delight), affirms my suspicion that the tales of the cannibal "societies" are merely that, since they seem to follow a universal folkloric pattern that occurs from Africa to Asia. The tales of cannibalistic individuals, however, seem far more plausible.

Indians have been most famously, and unfairly, accused of cannibalism – claims that suspiciously originate most often from syncretists, such as early missionaries and explorers. It is telling that only the largest and most well-organized nations are accused of it. A good eastern North American example is the Iroquois. A Mexican example is the Aztec. Such accusations are not of ritual cannibalism, but rather that the cultures were thinking, "Oh goody, stew."

It is quite possible that colonial powers – clergy and traders both – confident in the supremacy of their own cultures, might have been unnerved by the sight of high civilization among those peoples they had pre-judged to be "savages." As I've already implied, attribution of cannibalistic practice is a popular method by which to strip a foreign culture of its legitimacy. The reasoning seems to have gone like this: No one would mourn for a cannibal people who lost their land; so those people whose land we want must be cannibals, mustn't they?

True cannibalism is rare and scattered, as evinced by the modern media's tendency to sensationalise it. Reports on contemporary cannibals are related with the same zest with which old folktales used to be. Few, for example, know about the details of Jeffrey Dahmer's trial, while many know of his claims of "love" for those he pickled and pan-fryed. No crime writer would fail to mention that Andrei Chikatilo found specific parts of women "tasty", and that he liked to "nibble" them. No tale of Ed Gein would be complete without failing to mention his penchant for long-haired women.

The psychopathic cannibals actually provide us with a clue as to how the human race approaches the eating of its own kind: cannibalism represents special circumstance. All occurrences of cannibalism represent some attempt by an individual or society to correct an imbalance, a loss or threat to social or personal paradigms.

While mythical accounts typically portray cannibals as having a mere dietary preference for human flesh, true cannibals are always self-limiting in their consumption, depending on their goals. Criminal cannibals act to fulfill a distinct psychological need. Starving cannibals eat to preserve their lives. Those few, rare societies of cannibals have eaten specific parts to:
1. Honour or assume the strength of enemies and/or ancestors (e.g., Mohawk);
2. Celebrate the capture or killing of an enemy (e.g., Aztec);
3. Mark an important change (e.g., ancient Greeks, who ate their retired kings).

The point? As ever, any extreme is a bad thing, and a label is the ultimate extreme. Under the lens of objectivity and wisdom, there are reasons behind any form of behaviour, no matter how deviant it might at first seem. Likewise, there are complicating factors in any situation that occlude the truth.

Accusations of cannibalism were always a form of social control, and this has not changed today. The cannibal is the metaphor for the monster, or those whom we wish to depict as monsters. Ultimately, if we favour wisdom, we must choose our words carefully – for a word, like an impelled fist, is a manifestation of will, and will is the only true fire that we have stolen from the gods – a fire that may forge a nation, or blast it into sterility.

In a Canada that threatens to grow ever more hostile toward Aboriginal self-determination, let's think hard on the matter: What are the new ways, however veiled, in which some accuse others of cannibalism?

Pijariiqpunga. 

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