In nineteenth-century Fiji, cannibalism was a key symbol, the focal paradigmatic gesture upon which orderly social relations were mythically and ritually based. The passions exhibited in cannibal custom – the rage, joy, fierce aggressiveness, and sexual excess – were deeply etched in the Fijian collective psyche and social foundation. In many respects, nineteenth-century Fijian culture can be characterized as “a pure culture of the death instinct,” a phrase Freud used to describe the sadistic superego seen in melancholia. Warfare was one of the bases of Fijian society. Periods of peace in epic tales receive special mention as interludes between the intertribal warfare. When a tribe settled for any length of time in one place without fighting, this fact was recorded as worthy of note. Flying over parts of Fijian territory, which is composed of numerous islands, one can see the surviving earthworks of scores of circular ditched or moated fortifications. The Fijian dictionary contains many obsolete terms referring to war and cannibalism, the names of war clubs, and numerous words pertaining to clubbing and spearing.