Solomon Islands—Ingova’s head-hunters—How whole tribes were wiped out—Savage invasions and clever tactics.

The Solomon Islands, not being of such importance as New Guinea, have had much less attention paid to them.

No doubt the extreme danger which has always attached to a visit to these islands has made the white man give them as wide a berth as possible, only going there when compelled to either for trading or scientific purposes. It is here that cannibalism flourishes, and the head-hunters go forth on expeditions in all their savage grandeur to strike down the unsuspecting neighbour.

If there is uncertainty about life in New Guinea, there is precious little in the Solomon Islands, for the chances are ten to one against one’s living to tell the tale, unless he keep strictly to the trading parts of the islands.
PORTRAIT OF A SOLOMON ISLAND CANNIBAL

This man was said to have “kaikaied-man plenty” (to have eaten plenty of men). He told me in island English that I was no good to eat. His teeth were stained red by chewing the betel-nut.

Travellers, scientists, and traders still visit the {95} interior, and some come out all right, but to every one that survives a dozen succumb, simply because cannibalism is to a certain extent a religious ceremony to these natives.

They do not kill and eat human beings for the sake of their taste, or because they are hungry, as some writers will insist on having us believe. The cause is farther back than this; in nearly every case when human beings are killed and eaten, it is on occasions when such a sacrifice is necessary, according to the natives’ religious beliefs.

Like the prophets and priests of old they believe in sacrifices; they honestly consider that they are doing the correct thing when they kill, cook, and eat a man or woman, and it will take many years and many missionaries to persuade them to the contrary. Of late, however, there are indications that in some of the islands head-hunting is losing favour, particularly with the younger generation, which sounds satisfactory, for if the rising generation decide against the practice it will soon die out. Other causes sometimes arise which may help to stop the custom. For instance, in one part of New Georgia the chief, some years ago, gave orders that no more human flesh was to be eaten, which to many might look as if his cannibalistic views were {96} changing, but the cause of it was not a moral, but a physical one: the last feast of man they had indulged in caused an epidemic of sickness to run through the tribe, and the chief did not wish such a thing to occur again. He felt that either the digestion of his tribe had altered, or that the particular tribe on which he had been feasting was no longer palatable, so he stopped it. Again, in other parts certain chiefs boast that they do not eat human flesh, and hope is again raised that these savages are reforming, but a little closer inquiry shows that the particular chief deals in human flesh, trading it to other natives, and, like the man who makes the sausage, he does not eat it.

Throughout these islands there are very few tribes who are still actually cannibals, in the sense of the word as it is generally accepted, but in spite of this grain of promise life is just as uncertain, because one can never tell when a head is needed for a religious ceremony. You may live on the most friendly terms with a tribe for months, and go away with the idea that cannibalism is dead, and laugh at those who have tried to make you believe otherwise, but had you remained one day longer, or the chief’s son died one day sooner, that laugh would never have come off, but instead your head would {97} have, and your comely carcase would have been frizzling in the kai-kai dish; and the very men who had made so much of you a little before, would with equal glee have made less of you then.
SACRED SKULL SHRINES, BRITISH SOLOMON ISLANDS

The skull houses are small erections supported, in this case, on pedestals; the length is about three feet, with an overhanging roof. The box is open at the back as well as in the front, and charms of Tredacua shell and leaves are suspended in front. The houses in the background are made of canes and grass; that in the foreground is of wood. The native is carrying a shield.

When standing before a chief, who is smiling at you and treating you to all the courtesies his nature can conjure up, and knowing that with him you have trusted yourself for many an hour’s smoke or solitary ramble in the bush, it is difficult to realise that the same chief a week before was on the warpath, concocting the most devilish schemes, and carrying out the most fiendish atrocities on men, women, and children in his pursuit of heads. But such is the case, and one can only account for the inconsistency of it by putting these acts down to a religious mania, and thus giving these otherwise amiable and interesting creatures a certain excuse for actions which to us would seem inexcusable.

Tribe after tribe has been completely wiped out by certain powerful chiefs through a continued series of head-hunting expeditions. The methods adopted by the aggressive party are simple and generally most effective. The Rubiana natives are perhaps the most bloodthirsty of all the Solomon group, and, being both rich and powerful, they can descend on a village and overpower it by sheer {98} force of numbers, even without the use of modern weapons, which are now owned by nearly all the important tribes. The most notorious head-hunter in later years was Ingova of Rubiana lagoon, New Georgia, to whom I have already alluded. He is old and wizened now, and his hand trembles as he lifts the glass of grog he begs from you, after telling a yarn of the good old days. Yes, Ingova’s strength and valour are gone now, and could the departed spirits of the hundreds he has killed in days gone by see him as he is to-day—his feeble limbs, his shaking hand, his bloodshot eyes, and seared face—they would indeed wonder what it was they feared in him. Where is the great spirit that once possessed him? they would ask. They would scorn him now, and the women would laugh at him—poor, feeble, tottering Ingova.

Years ago Ingova’s Euro was hung with skulls, hundreds of them were strung in the cross-beams, with staring, vacant eyeholes, which looked out of nothing and yet seemed to see everything. Their drooping lower jaws, showing sets of white teeth which glistened in the rays of the moon, made ............