11-01-2015, 06:19 AM
quote:
Originally posted by kimo wires
Didn't they eat Captain Cooke?
I remember in My Hawaiian History class the Kahuna/Teacher ,jokingly,referred to it as the first Cooke out.
The Hawaiians actually treated Cook's body with respect, according to the Hawaiian burial traditions. The mana was considered to be in the bones, so the bodies of high ranking individuals were cooked to remove the insignificant flesh, before preparing the all important bones for their final resting place by wrapping them in kapa. (In fact someone recently applied for permits to do traditional Hawaiian burials.) Cook's hands were removed and packed with salt and his bones were being in the process of having the flesh removed when his men retrieved them. Not understanding Hawaiian burial practices they returned home to claim they saved Cook from being eaten after his death. What they did get back was packed into a chest and sunk in Kealekekua Bay somewhere, someday we will probably see someone selling what they claim is his skull on Ebay.
The Hawaiians did sacrifice humans, usually prisoners of war, but also members of the lowest class and people who broke important kapus, but there is very little credible evidence of cannibalism, and that evidence mostly points to what bystander refereed to as endocannibalism, which has occurred in many different cultures across human history.
It seems like human sacrifice and cannibalism get lumped together in people's minds, causing confusion. There are thousands of pages of documentation of the pre contact ways and rituals written by the first generation of literate Hawaiians, who wrote down what they learned from those still living who had experienced pre contact Hawaii, awaiting translation in the Bishop Museum archives. As those documents get translated we will get a better picture of what life was really like then.