And then the feasting. The bush-family and their "tame white man" enjoyed a meal of truly huge proportions and variety in comparison with the meagre forest-fare to which they had been confined so long. And when the pakeha tobacco and pakeha grog came out—unwonted luxuries to the mohoao, the bush-people—old Rupé and his household were indeed in the Promised Land for which they had longed for many a month; they had all that the heart of the Hauhau could desire.
The feast over, the dried eels and honey, conveyed with so much toil from distant Rukumoana, were brought up to the marae, and ceremoniously presented to old "Double-Canoe," who distributed the food amongst the people of the village. The canoe itself was similarly presented to the chief as a gift of aroha from Rupé. In return, the men of Hukatéré placed before the visitors their gifts—£5 in money (representing the sum total of the pakeha cash in the village), and blankets, shirts, and other articles of clothing, of which Bent and his companions were in much need after their rough life in the bush.
"While I was in the kainga," says Bent, "the local chief went down to the town of Patea, a few miles away, to get me some European clothing. He informed some people in the town that Tu-nui-a-moa, the pakeha-Maori, who had been with the Hauhaus for twelve or thirteen years, was in his kainga, and next day about twenty Europeans rode up to the settlement out of curiosity to see me. We had a long talk, and they gave me some articles of clothing, and told me all about the white man's world from which I had cut myself off. This was about the end of the year 1878.
"After a month's stay we returned to our own village, in a canoe belonging to the Hukatéré natives, loaded with goods and 'tucker.' Five days' paddling and poling up-river took us to Rukumoana. Planting season came round again; then we whiled away the time in Maori fashion—hunting wild pigs, snaring and shooting birds, catching eels, and getting honey—until the crops were harvested. And not long after that we bade farewell to our old kainga for ever, loaded our canoe for the last time, and once more paddled down to Hukatéré."
KIMBLE BENT, THE PAKEHA-MAORI.
(From a photo taken in 1903.)
From Hukatéré the pakeha-Maori and his girl-wife went to Taiporohenui—Bent's old home in the war days. There he lived for a year or so, blanketed like a Maori, and working in the cultivations. Here, too, in the long nights he was much with the old men of the kainga, and from such learned men as Hupini and Pokau—true tohungas, or priests, and soothsayers—he learned much of the strange occultism of the Maori. He saw singular ceremonies, the rites of the makutu, the black art. He learned scores of karakias—incantations useful in Maori eyes for all sorts of purposes, all conditions of war and peace time. Some of these were makutu spells by which the wizard could slay an enemy, by witchcraft and the power of the evil eye. Many a case of death from makutu came under Bent's observation during his life among the Maoris. Old Hupini, says the pakeha-Maori, undoubtedly killed men with his makutu—a combination of three factors: projection of the will force, the malignant exercise of hypnotic influence, and sheer imagination and fright on the part of the person makutu'd.
Many Maoris believe that the witchcraft can be wrought by an adept or tohunga by taking some of the hair or clothing or even remains of the food of the person intended to be slain, and pronouncing the appropriate powerful karakias and curses over it. The enemy's hau—his life-essence, his vital force—then lies in the hollow of the tohunga's hand.