Early Filipino tribesmen cannibalism

If you think eating brains is something only zombies find appetizing, then wait until you read Paul de La Gironière’s best-selling mid-19th-century travelogue.

Gironière was a French explorer who arrived in the Philippines in 1820. The adventurer in him thought it was a good idea to stay in the country for a while to practice his profession (he was an eye doctor). Soon, he founded the town of Jala Jala in the present-day Rizal province and managed it for almost 20 years until the death of his wife and son.

One day, accompanied by his assistant (aptly named Alila), Gironière decided to explore the mountainous provinces of the north.  This was to see for himself what exactly the head-hunting “savages” looked like and how they survived on a daily basis.

First stop was the Tinguians of Abra. Save for their weird odor (which Gironière attributed to the Tinguians’ habit of not removing their clothes), the two visitors found the ethnic group nicer than they expected. And then came the biggest surprise of their lives: A few days after their arrival, Gironière and Alila were invited to take part in a “brain feast”–a traditional celebration held every time the group won a battle against a rival tribe.

As described by Gironière, the bizarre tradition starts with the Tinguian chiefs and warriors sitting around a “sacred” space where a  large vessel of basi (sugarcane wine) was placed, along with several decapitated heads of their enemies. After giving a short victory speech, each of the warriors would then get a severed head for himself, crack it open using a hatchet, and take out the brain. As if it’s not gory enough, the young Tinguian girls would then pound the brains until they were fine enough to be mixed with the sugar cane wine.

When the concoction is ready, all the participants would each get a taste of it and pass it around for the whole tribe to enjoy.  Fearing that the Tinguians would kill them, Gironière had no choice but to partake in what he would describe as an “infernal beverage.”

Although some scholars dismiss the “brain feast” as a possible work of fiction, history suggests otherwise. American explorer Dean Worcester described similar ritual among the Kalinga, while William Alexander Pickering–in his book “Pioneering in Formosa” (1898)–commented that Formosan savages “mixed the brains of their enemies with wine, and drank the disgusting mixture.”