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his mind that the previous encounter was not just an anomaly but something characteristic of not
only New Zealand, but also of barbaric societies in general, in which, in his opinion, the Maori
take it to a whole new level. What relegates the Maori to the lowest state of barbarism in this
instance is the reaction of the boy which Forster uses as the basis for this ranking. To add to the
supposed long list of activities forced upon Maori wives, this seemingly undisciplined child,
moreover, becomes the archetype of an education which teaches him to disrespect his mother,
presumably in order to prepare him for his own future matrimonial state, or at least groom him
into a warrior.
The most prominent and controversial example of Maori barbarism is naturally that of
cannibalism or ‘kai-tangata’ 56 and the principle of revenge. 57 Instead of focusing on the
differences between feudal European society and Maori society, however, he places each culture
alongside one another in order to show how similar they are in broader terms, and specifically
questions the opinions of those Europeans who justify the extermination of such people due to the
above act. Here, the first encounter with cannibalism that Forster records occurs on the return to
the Sound when a group of Europeans, including the captain and the elder Forster, discover the
entrails of a human corpse, which the nearby Maori claim to have eaten from. They are then
shown several limbs, including a half-eaten head, from the same body of the fifteen or sixteenyear-old
youth who had been slain in battle and was the only one of the dead that could be
brought back. No fierce and frenzied behaviour is visible in their demeanour as this act is
contrasted with the humanistic portrayal of the women of fallen friends and loved ones, who “laut
wehklagten und sich zum Andenken der Gebliebnen die Stirn mit scharfen Steinen verwundeten”
(I:402). The first thought which comes to Forster’s mind is that the blame for this battle taking
place may indeed lie in their own hands. It is already clear in his eyes the negative influences the
Europeans have had on the native population of New Zealand, especially regarding areas of
commerce and trade, which he suspects have caused neighbouring tribes to raid one another for
goods to trade with the Europeans: “Der große Vorrath von Waffen, Putz und Kleidern, mit
56 Debate continues today over the validity of anthropophagy as a widespread custom with some contemporary
scholars arguing, for example, that cannibalism is little more than a product of the Western obsession with “maneating
non-Western peoples”, what has been referred to as self-perpetuating “cannibal talk”, while anthropophagy
itself only existed in limited form in the South Pacific generally as ritualistic acts of human sacrifice (see Gananath
Obeyesekere, Cannibal Talk: The Man-Eating Myth and Human Sacrifice in the South Seas. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2005; cf. Peter Hulme, “Introduction: The Cannibal Scene”, in: Cannibalism and the Colonial
World. Eds. Francis Barker, Peter Hulme and Margaret Iversen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, 1-38;
William Arens, “Rethinking Anthropophagy”, in: ibid., 39-62).
57 See Klauck, 93-101; cf. Salmond, Cannibal Dog, 142-45, 223-26; Küchler Williams, Erotische Paradiese, 138-50.
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