[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

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WARFARE 229
kill anyone who does not belong to their district, partly because
he is a stranger, partly because they are eager to gratify their
partiality for human flesh whenever the opportunity offers. The
Wilemp people add that the cannibalism which they themselves
practised was always of the second variety, was always done to
express contempt for one who had been justly killed in vengeance
or in punishment for a crime. They maintained that even a
captive taken in war was not usually eaten, unless in his past
life there had been something to justify so ignominous an end.
Normally they returned the bodies of men slain in battle to
their fellow clansmen for honourable disposal. Thus, a man
belonging to the party which had killed someone during a ï¬Åght,
but who has some FRIEND or kinsman among the opposing force,
acts as an intermediary and procures a safe passage for the
dead man's clansfolk to come and remove the body. In some
other parts of Malekula, however, cannibalism was undoubtedly
a characteristic accompaniment to warfare, for in Lambumbu,
and almost certainly in Lagalag and among the Big Nambas,
those killed in ï¬Åghts between traditionally hostile groups were
regularly eaten.
Before passing on to the more technical aspect of cannibalism,
one variety of this practice must be noted which is perhaps
rather unusual. There is a. certain secret society, of which more
will be said later, called Nimbe’ei, whose members kill and eat
those who have offended against them. The evidence is by no
means clear, but it seems that this association does not concern
itself with individuals who have committed crimes against the
community, but rather with those who have been rash enough
or unfortunate enough to injure one of the individual members
of the N imba’ei. In other words, it does not seem to be a society
one of whose functions is recognized as being to aid in the preserva-
tion oi law and order, but to be a private association for the
exacting of private vengeance, and it may well be that its
cannibalistic practices are dictated as much through a love of
human ï¬Åesh as through a desire to express contempt for its
victims. Unfortunately it is as yet impossible to make any
deï¬Ånite statements on this matter (see Chapter XV).
Whether cannibalism was practised in Malekula because the
people desired to gratify their taste for human flesh or in order
to express their contempt for a stranger or enemy, the cooking