Human sacrifice for a new canoe

The custom of sacrificing a human being on the completion of a new superior canoe seems to have its origin in the same belief as in the case of a new house, that is, that it provided protection from the gods . No doubt the fact that the act enhanced the mana or prestige of the individual or clan would also not be negligible.

In flight. 8 of the Journal of the Polynesian Society, p. 208, we find the following remark: “Formerly, when a canoe was first launched, the runners were the living bodies of slaves. I have to take issue with this claim, as there is no evidence that such a custom existed here, although common in Fiji. The murder of a single person on such an occasion is quite another matter. 

In flight. 13 of the Journal mentioned above, Colonel Gudgeon speaks of a small vassal tribe having to provide human sacrifices to the Arawa tribe in case of need. One such occasion was the launching of a war canoe, when one of the unfortunate vassals was bound and thus used as a skid for the ship, which was hauled over its body in the process of being launched. This is the only case mentioned in the tradition, to our knowledge.

The killing of a person to mark the completion of a new canoe was apparently practiced only in connection with the superior type of ship, the waka taua, or war canoe, and was not a common custom; it was practiced only occasionally.

Ellis tells us that at Tahiti, canoes were fired at the bodies of captives captured in war, but he does not specify whether the bodies were alive or dead.

In Fiji, human sacrifice far exceeded that of any Polynesian community. Williams, in his Fiji and Fijians, writes: “A chief is known to have killed several men for the rolls, in order to facilitate the launching of his canoes, the 'rolls' then being cooked and eaten. (For 'rolls', read 'skids'.) He also states that a Fijian chief would kill a man, or men, by dropping a keel from a new canoe, and try to add one for every fresh plank . 

Other authors claim that the Fijians used the living bodies of men as canoe launching pads. In Gordon Cumming's At Home in Fiji we read, after an account of human sacrifice for a new home, the following statement: "The same idea prevailed in regard to the launching of a chief's canoe, when the bodies 'living men were replaced by ordinary scrolls. Then comes the description of a scene witnessed by a European. 

"These people left their guests surprised in the night, when forty were captured, and each being bound hand and foot to the stalks of the banana trees, were then laid in rolls, face up, along the path by which the canoes were to be dragged across the isthmus. The cries of the victims were drowned out by the hauling songs of their captors, and, except for one, all were crushed to death. A poor wretch lingered for a while in torture until the ovens were ready, in which everything was baked. »

We have read of ancient Norse Vikings whipping human victims at the rollers on which a ship was launched, and this baptism of wild blood has now escalated to bathing the prow of a new ship with red wine instead of red blood.