Again and again this strange method of divination was repeated, the balanced weapon indicating--to the perfect satisfaction of the superstitious Hauhaus--the men whom the Maori war-god desired as the instruments of vengeance on the whites. Name after name the priest and chief pronounced, as his _taiaha_ pointed along the squatting ranks, until the tale of bare-legged warriors was complete.
Then, when the _taua_, or war-party, had filled their cartridge-belts and seen to their weapons, there was a ceremony of a livelier sort. The women and girls of the _pa_ attired themselves in their waist _piupiu_ of coloured flax, decked their hair with feathers, dabbed ochre-paint on their cheeks, and lined up on the _marae_ for the _poi_-dance, to send the warriors off "in good heart," as the Maori has it. _Hakas_, too, were danced by the men and boys of the village, and the merry _poi_-songs and the loudly yelled war-chants put a brisker jig into the feet of the brown soldiers as they marched out of the settlement and struck into the forest, hunting for _pakehas_.
As the men of the _Tekau-ma-rua_ left the stockade, Titokowaru himself would loudly farewell them, shouting in his terrible gruff voice the ferocious injunction:
"_Patua, kainga! Patua, kainga! E kai mau! Kaua e tukua kia haere! Kia mau ki tou ringa._" ("Kill them! Eat them! Kill them! Eat them! Let them not escape! Hold them fast in your hands.")
Should the _Tekau-ma-rua_ meet with success in their murderous raids, it was usual for the leader of the party to chant in a loud voice, as the home-palisades were neared, a song beginning, "_Tenei te mea kei te mou ki toku ringa_," meaning that he had in his hand a portion of the flesh of a slain _pakeha_. This was called the _mawé_; it was an offering to the god of war. The _mawé_ was almost invariably a human heart, torn from the body of the first man of the enemy killed in the fight.
On two or three occasions Kimble Bent witnessed the ceremony of the offering of the _mawé_, the ancient rite of the _Whangai-hau_. The heart (_manawa_) or other piece of human flesh, was brought into the _marae_ and given to a man named Tihirua, who was the priest of the burnt sacrifice. He was a young man about twenty-five years of age, belonging to the Ngati-Maru tribe, of the Upper Waitara. "He would take the heart in his hand," says Bent, "and strike a match, or take a firestick and singe the flesh. When it was slightly scorched he would throw it away; it was _tapu_ to Uenuku. This was an ancient war-custom of the Maoris; Titokowaru adopted it because he believed it would cause the _pakehas_ to lose strength and courage, and become unnerved in time of battle. After the fight at Papa-tihakehake, in 1868, I saw this man Tihirua cut a white man's body open outside the _marae_, tear out the bleeding heart, hold lighted matches underneath it until it was singed, and then throw it away."[5]