the people of Tonga no longer cannibals still reference it in every day life. known as part of the cannibal islands were notorious for eating human flesh. one of the questions that I had is why stop? yes I know a rather redundant question to something that should have never taken place in the first place but why stop? why suddenly give up the cannibalistic lifestyle? the people of Tonga are more than okey with talking about their cannibalistic past with a smile on their face. as if they are proud of it?

the last section in among the cannibals by Paul raffaele, he talks about the Aztec’s and their ritual sacrifices. We know that they actually did sacrifice and eat humans due to the extensive records kept by cortéz and his men. Cortéz notes detailed the “slaughterhouses caked in blood inside and out, the priets outfits were caked in dried blood, their hair uncombed since entering the priesthood was untidy and covered in dried blood” the victims would be sacrificed and the head placed on the skull rack, the rest of the body arms legs, forearms, thighs were used in feasts for the warriors while the torso was most likely feed to the animals. The victims were ritually sacrificed to please their gods specifically the god of war, the sun, and water etc etc. the Aztec’s would follow the strict teachings of the codex. the codex being a special book of the aztec which told al their stories of their people and talked heavily about sacrifice. Not just war captives would be sacrificed there were others within the nation that would be chosen to be sacrificed. However; they were treated as gods before the sacrifice was to take place.

the second to last section of the book among the cannibals focused on the warlord Joseph kony. The african warlord has used cannibalism as the phycholoigal torture device on the child soldiers that he has kidnapped for his army. within the book are eyewitness accounts of this by the children themselves who are rescued. they talk about chopping up their school mates with machete’s, beating to death with sticks to another. When these children return home there is the strong possibility that their family will not accept them back into the family unit. Calling them a disgrace to their family for feasting on human flesh. The way in which Joseph kony “controls” the kids by making them murder and eat other children makes them ashamed to go back to their families thus making kony their “only father”

The children of the LRA are basically brain washed into believing that what they are doing is wrong yes but there is no other way to go about it for fear of dying, mutilation, sold as sexual slaves etc etc. Kony believes himself to be a god amongst the children referring to different texts including the bible, koran, and other such texts to “preach” to the children calling upon the gods of “bruce” and other “American” gods most likely he has pulled them from famous people such as bruce lee.

This week I focused on the the tonga region. These people were known to have taken captives during war and eat them. The prisoners were forced to dig their own oven if you will. The tongans would cook these people like suckling pigs if you will first delivering a killing blow either to the back of the dead or a slice to the throat. stuff the body with hot rocks, place them face down into the pit dug into the ground, place more hot rocks on the back, then cover the pit with leaves for 6 to 10 hours. During the cooking process in a fury of dancing and commotion sex does insue said to please the south pacific gods. Due to this strictly being warriors only warriors were allowed to eat the flesh women, and children were not allowed. It was said the women and children were too vunlerable and would be possessed by the vanquished spirits of the fallen warriors. Cut to modern day the royal family of Tonga admit that their ancestors have eaten human flesh before and commented on the taste being that of suckling pig “long pig” as they call human flesh.

The Modern day Tongan is rather large and partake in feasts on a daily basis that would rival that of the American wedding. they however do relate a lot to their ancestors who would frequently consume human flesh and that they would most likely love the feasts of the modern day. The tongan people seem very proud of the fact that their ancesctors used to eat human flesh even alluding to the face that several people in Tonga do still partake in the feasting of human flesh.