The Maori Ate Men From James Cook’s Crew
After over one hundred years of hearing about these terribly frightening natives, an English explorer named James Cook decided to give it another go. Maybe he believed that the stories about the natives were over-exaggerated. He felt that he had the confidence to do a much better job than the Dutch had ever done. He sailed a ship called “Resolution” to New Zealand. A second ship called “Adventure” had gotten separated from them during a storm, but it would take six days for them to catch up to Cook and his crew.
A man named Jack Rowe left with a small group of men on a boat to shore, in order to search for some food and water to bring back to the ship, but they never returned. Another man, named James Burney, went on a rescue mission with a couple of other volunteers. They were cautious, sneaking around as not to be found.
They found a Maori canoe near the shore, and inside of it was blood, a shoe, and remnants of meat. There were also roughly 20 baskets that were filled with freshly cooked meat, ready to be delivered to various parts of the village. They hope that this was dog meat, but when they recognized the cooked tattooed flesh of Thomas Hill, it confirmed their worst fear. They were cooking and eating dismembered body parts. As they peeked through the trees, they could see the native people cooking human body parts over the fire, and feeding their internal organs to the dogs. At the time, they had no way of knowing that this was the “whāngai hau” ceremony, which is a custom for Maori people to eat their enemies, because they believed that there would consume the power of that person’s spirit, as well as the spirits of their ancestors.
Burney and his men didn’t waste any time running for their lives, and The Maori started to chase them. Rowe’s crew shot at the tribe and smashed the canoes on the shore so they could not follow them to their ship.