Your Ancestors Were Delicious

Descendants of Papua New Guinea cannibals who dined on missionaries in 1878 have apologized to the people of Fiji.

The ceremony marked 132 years since Methodist ministers and teachers from Fiji arrived in the New Guinea islands region in 1875 headed by Englishman George Brown.

In April 1878, a Fijian minister and three teachers were killed and eaten by Tolai tribespeople on the Gazelle Peninsula. [Link]

It Also Needs More Car Chases

St. Louis Post-Dispatch book editor Jane Henderson had some good advice for the author of an acclaimed book about the Pilgrims.

Nathaniel Philbrick is condensing his popular "Mayflower" history into a book for middle school students, so I asked whether he couldn't add some cannibalism. The cannibalism in his "In the Heart of the Sea" is one of the things that made that whale story so riveting.

"I've had so many teachers tell me that 'Revenge of the Whale' is the only thing they can get their seventh-grade boys to read, because it has the cannibalism in it," he said with a laugh. ("Revenge of the Whale" is the student-geared version of "In the Heart of the Sea," the true story of a whaling ship sunk by an angry sperm whale.) [Link]

Not a Search and Rescue Operation

Eagle Scout candidate Jeff Carlson is using forensic evidence dogs to find unmarked gravesites in an El Dorado Hills, California, cemetery.

Members of the Institute for Canine Forensics, a non-profit group based out of Los Altos, the forensic dogs and their handlers spent last Wednesday searching the cemetery.

The dogs can detect the scent of human remains through the ground and are trained to sit when they've made a detection. Carlson and four other Scouts worked alongside the dogs and handlers marking each detection site with a flag.

According to dog handler Bev Peabody, there are fewer than ten dogs in the United States that can sniff out historical graves.

Historical grave detection dogs ignore the scent of live people and only look for residual scent, which comes from decomposing human bodies.

These dogs have assisted in several local investigations, working at Maidu and Miwok Indian historic sites as well as at the Donner Party campsites. [Link]

Do Donners Still Hunger for Human Flesh?

A Genealogue Exclusive [What's That?]

With scientists debating whether the Donner Party resorted to cannibalism while crossing the Sierra Nevada in 1846, one genealogist is sure of the answer.

"You bet they did."

Arnold Trafton, a researcher from Butte, Montana, was interviewing Donner descendants at a family reunion recently. Hoping to gain some insights on the family for a forthcoming book on pioneer wagon trains, Trafton learned far more than he had expected.

"About 30 minutes into the reunion, it became clear that the caterer wasn't going to show up. Some of the family started getting restless . . . belligerent, even. They started looking at me in a way that made me very uncomfortable."

Trafton says that one small girl—no more than two to three years old—approached him, curtseyed, and began gnawing on his left leg.

"I screamed, of course. But nobody did anything, not even the kid's parents. They just kept staring at me. I saw that some of them were drooling."

After detaching the child from his calf, Trafton fled from the building, pursued by an octogenarian wielding a salad fork.

"I'm not saying they would have eaten me," says Trafton, "but I strongly suspect it. I'm just lucky that my wife was with me. If I hadn't pushed her to the floor, I don't think they'd have let me out of the room."

The Donners Came Late to the Party

From SFGate.com:

Scientists: Donner Family Not Cannibals

By SCOTT SONNER, Associated Press Writer

Friday, January 13, 2006

Reno, Nev. (AP) -- There's no physical evidence that the family who gave the Donner Party its name had anything to do with the cannibalism the ill-fated pioneers have been associated with for a century and a half, two scientists said Thursday.

Cannibalism has been documented at the Sierra Nevada site where most of the Donner Party's 81 members were trapped during the brutal winter of 1846-47, but 21 people, including all the members of the George and Jacob Donner families, were stuck six miles away because a broken axle had delayed them.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

(Thanks, George!)

tags: genealogy, family history, family tree

Genealogue Exclusive: Grim Evidence Found in Plymouth

A Genealogue Exclusive [What's That?]

Recent archaeological excavations on Cole's Hill in Plymouth, Mass., have turned up the bones of several Pilgrims, and have raised unsettling questions about how the early settlement there survived.

Team leader Stephen Holman of Taunton University was the first to inspect the bones.

"The first skeleton we found—we call him 'Edward Tilley' in the lab—was mostly complete but disarticulated, and the ribs and long bones bore unusual markings. It looked like something, or someone, had gnawed on them. The joints showed signs of deliberate butchering, perhaps with a hatchet."

Subsequent exhumations confirmed Holman's suspicions.

These findings call into question the accepted history of the Pilgrim's first winter of 1620-21, including accounts written by the Pilgrims themselves. In none of these works is there any mention of cannibalism—a fact which does not surprise anthropologist Mary Donner, also of Taunton University.

"Cannibalism is not something the Pilgrims would have been proud of, and it's not something the company's investors would have been thrilled to hear about. It's entirely likely that the colonists swore an oath never to speak of it. Call it the second Mayflower Compact."

Officers of the Society of Mayflower Descendants could not be reached for comment, but one long-time member wondered how this news would affect her membership.

"If my ancestor ate another Pilgrim," asked Dolores Bisbee of Wareham, "can I claim descent from both?"