Revision as of 10:40, 2 September 2007

doc. 410 — 3 and 11 October 1845

Letter from Joseph Chevron to his parents and friends

Cannibalism in Tonga

[11] After the famous carnage of the chicken hunt and the war with Hapai‘i, there was a famine. They began again to practice cannibalism which had also occurred before during a famine. There had been epidemic illnesses. In the wars which the chiefs waged against each other, they ate each other as vengeance; then they continued to be cannibals because they liked the taste, or rather, as the natives say, because they were cursed. Some of them, however, were horrified at this kind of food, but others, they still say, found it delicious.

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