The ten lost tribes are still lost (Part 3) ; the Jewish cannibals of Polynesia

See Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.

The noted British researcher Tudor Parfitt in his The lost tribes of Israel; History of a myth, writes about the Maori tribes of New Zealand who fought against the British. One of their leaders Te Ua Horoparera Haumene founded the Pai Marire movement. Pai Marire religion was a strange hybrid of Maori and Judeo/Christian culture. Undoubetedly influenced by their encounter with Christianity and often encouraged by British Missionaries, many of the Aborigines believed themselves to be desendants of the lost tribes of Israel. The aforementioned Haumene began to see himself as a Prophet and saviour akin to the Prophet Moses sent by God to liberate his people; the Jews, he subsequently went under the name Te Ua Jew Ua.

Richard Taylor in Te Ika a Maui, or New Zealand and its inhabitants (1855) wrote:

The many points of resemblance in feature, general customs and manners may enable us to discover in the widely spread Polynesian race, a remnant of the long-lost tribes of Israel.


The fascinating segment in Parfitt's book that really caught my attention is a hair raising tale involving a Jewish sea captain from NJ, Christian clerics and a group of Maori Cannibals:

The Hau Hau's sense of Jewish solidarity led them to spare any Jews they came across in the settler towns they captured. In March 1781, Eclipse berthed in Opitiki, on the north-east coast of the North Island. Some of the passengers including the Reverends, Carl Volkner and T. S. Grace were captured by the Hau Hau under the command of their arch-priest Kereopa. The owner and captain of the Eclipse was a Jersey-born Jew, Captain M. Levy (1821-1901). Both he and his brother, as Jews and thus 'akin to the Hau-Hau' were freed. On 2,March 1864, however, Volkner was taken into the local Church of St. Stephens, stripped of his clothes and allowed to pray in front of the altar before being hanged. An hour later he was decapitated and the Hau Hau allegedly crowded around the altar to drink his blood from the communion cup while Kereopa recited the prayer 'Hear O' Israel , this is the word of God, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We are the Jews who were lost and have been persecuted!' Kereopa then gouged out Volkner's eyes and gave orders that his head be smoke cured. [1] [2]

Notes:

[1] Parfitt, Tudor. The lost tribes of Israel; History of a myth. Phoenix Press, 2003 pp. 151-152.

[2] The account may have been exaggerated for effect. It is possible that anti-semitism played a not minor role in the description of the Maori and their identification with Jews. The Anglican clergyman Samuel Mardsen did a comparative study of ancient Israelite and Maori culture and arrived at the conclusion that the latter originates from the former. Parfitt writes: even cannibalism was evoked -on the grounds that Jesus had told the Jews 'he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him' (See Ibid, p. 148).