Tom Harrisson was an explorer and anthropologist of the old school – he always wanted to travel to exotic places, and started young, on a University expedition in the 1930s. This quickly led to a trip to Vanuatu, where he spent several months in a relatively conventional way – living with other Westerners, but studying the natives of Espiritu Santo – one of the northern islands of Vanuatu (then called the New Hebrides) and their traditional lifestyles. Two books resulted: Living among Cannibals and Savage Civilisation.
But while he was there, he nursed an ambition to live really wildly, on the island of Maleluka, which he could see from Santo, and which had a reputation – well deserved as it turned out – for traditional and pre-Christian behaviours of the most extreme sort. In short, they were cannibals – and even today, they have a reputation for being by far the most traditional of all the Vanuatu islands, perhaps even of all the islands in the South Pacific. One charming feature of their social life was that, as a reward for being a particularly good wife, a woman might be permitted by her husband to have her two front teeth knocked out, a treatment they considered both complimentary and beautifying! So when his expedition packed up its bags and left for England, he travelled alone and without equipment or money, to Maleluka, where he remained a year, living with a tribe in the fullest possible sense (almost, he didn’t eat human flesh – or he doesn’t confess to it), learning their language, and then writing these two astonishing books. And if the phrase “South Pacific” makes you think of show business, even that is appropriate, because he made arrangements to be taken off the island and back to civilisation by a passing yacht, owned by Douglas Fairbanks, no less.
Two themes Harrisson treats of very energetically are pigs and cannibalism. His view is that the people of Malekula live in great affluence as far as food is concerned, and have very little concern about the need to provide clothing or shelter, so their energies are directed into other areas to inform status and wealth. These are intimately related to pig ownership, and especially to the ownership of pigs with curved tusks, which can go round in a complete circle, or even two – in exceptional circumstances, three whole rounds. This is done, apparently, purely for the sake of it, just as we briefly measured wealth in tulip bulbs. The first pigs are borrowed, perhaps to entitle a man to marry, and are then bred carefully and their tusks encouraged to grow in these bizarre patterns by the rather cruel removal of the opposite (upper) incisor. When there are a sufficient number of pigs with sufficiently ornate tusks, there is a feast, at which there is a great deal of dancing and kava, and all the pigs are ritually slaughtered – and the giver of the feast goes up a step in the complex social hierarchy – a ladder which starts with the entry to manhood through a series of initiation ceremonies which recall the greatest brutalities of a certain type of public school story.
Cannibalism is more complex still, and seems ritualised to a high degree. There was not all out war, and human flesh was not eaten as an important part of the diet. And women and children (which included Harrisson, as he had not been through the early initiations) are excluded and never killed. A “war” is a matter of formal declaration, then of stealth, with ambushes being set in the paths and outside people’s houses. It all sounds remarkably incompetent, with a very low success rate, but when someone is killed, they are taken back to the conquering village (with the other village trying to get the body back, mainly to prevent it suffering the ultimate indignity, of losing its head), cooked and a little eaten by each person. A death means the losing village has to get even, then the war is over. If it goes on too long without the two sides killing equal numbers, they just agree it’s all got too boring and stop the war, perhaps with a compensating payment of pigs or women. Everyone can then carry on walking around safely again until the next war is declared.
Harrisson’s style can be a little patronising, but his vivid accounts are compelling, particularly in Living among Cannibals (1941), a short and simple series of themed essays about all aspects of Malekulan life. I would recommend it to anyone travelling to Vanuatu, and certainly when I was on my two week cruise in September on the Soren Larsen, its 120 odd pages were eagerly devoured by about a dozen people on board. Savage Civilisation is altogether a more complex book, arranged in an idiosyncratic and – to me, at least – rather inaccessible way, and would be probably be of interest only to the most dedicated student.
This time I think I'll try to curb my temptation to make a bad joke about odd food!!! Anyway, we are all very happy that you have come home safely and all in one piece!
Of course, we have different habits but after all what fashion and social rules set in our Western civilization and what we do to animals - women non included - is certainly as dreadful as that. And trying to get back the bodies is a concern in all wars (re the Odyssey).
Posted by: glo | Thursday, 09 October 2008 at 11:58 PM