Titoko possessed, in a strong degree, what the Maoris termed _mana-tapu_--personal _tapu_, or sacred prestige, heritage from his priestly forefathers of Ariki rank. His body was sacred in Maori eyes, and he was accredited with many a singular supernatural attribute: "Even the winds of heaven are his," said the Hauhaus. When the _whakarua_, the north-east breeze, blew, it was a fitting time for the war-parties to set out, for the _whakarua_ was the breath of Uenuku, Titoko's deity, and his familiar spirit, and it was an omen of success in battle.
Bent gives some curious instances of Titokowaru's _mana-tapu_. Once, when the white man was travelling through the forest with Titoko and his band of Hauhaus, the chief's shoulder accidentally struck against a flax kit containing some cooked potatoes which an old man was carrying on his back. Titoko immediately ordered the man to throw the potatoes and basket away, for the food had become infected, through contact with the priest, with the mysterious and deadly microbe of the _tapu_, and consequently unfit to be eaten. So the old fellow had to cast his day's rations into the bushes and go fasting.
Titokowaru would suffer no rivals in the _pa_. Now and then it happened during the war-days that some budding _tohunga_ would arise and prophesy things, in bold opposition to the chief, and announce that his familiar spirit, or his ancestral gods, had conferred priestly powers upon him. Titoko had "a short way with dissenters." His usual and most effective method of silencing the pretender was to take a basket of potatoes in his hand and seek out his rival.
"What," he would say, "have you then an _atua_, a god of your own?" Should the Hauhau be so imprudent as to answer "Yes," Titoko would lift his potato-kit and set it on his rival's head. "That for your _atua_!" It was enough. The other's _tapu_--if he ever had any--would be immediately destroyed by such an act, for the head of man must not be touched by food, and any self-respecting _atua_ would desert a _tapu_-less Maori without delay. But no man dared, by way of retaliation, to try the potato-basket trick on Titokowaru.
"Ringiringi" had now been nearly three years with the Maoris, and spoke their language well. "I lived exactly like a Maori," he says; "worked like a nigger, and always went about bare-footed. They would not give me a gun, nor did they make me fight--for Titokowaru made me _tapu_, and would not permit me to go out on the war-path--but I had to make cartridges for them. They managed to get plenty of gunpowder; I have often seen it brought in in casks and in 25 lb. weights. They got a good deal of it from the neutral and so-called 'friendly' tribes, who procured it from the _pakehas_. The Puketapu tribe, and some of the Whanganuis, helped us in this way. I know there was a white man, Moffatt, living on the Upper Wanganui River, who made a coarse powder for the Hauhaus there, but I don't think any of it came our way. I had a wooden cartridge-filler, and we always had plenty of old newspapers to make the cartridge-cases. Bullets were plentiful, too, as a rule; but sometimes in the bush, when the Hauhaus ran short, they would use old iron, stones, and even pieces of hard wood. I have sometimes loaded my cartridges with bits of supplejack, cut to size, when I had no lead bullets."