A tohunga can take the hau of a man's footprints and thereby makutu him; he can even makutu an enemy's horse so that it will fall sick and not be able to travel!
Amongst the prayers and ceremonies which old Hupini taught Bent were the karakia for combating the evil spell of the makutu and for restoring a bewitched and ailing person to health and safety—to the Land of Light and Life, the Ao-marama.
One of these rites Bent describes in true Maori fashion:
A person is taken seriously ill; it is the makutu. The wise man is called in; he divines that the illness is caused by another tohunga's witchcraft. At daylight in the morning the sick man is carried to the water-side. The wise man then takes three small sticks or twigs (rito)—fern-sticks will do—and sets them up by the side of the river or the pool. One of these sacred wands represents the invalid, one the tribe to which he belongs, and one the mischief-working wizard (te tangata nana te makutu). A charm is said over them, and then two rito are taken away, leaving only one—that for the wizard—the "wand of darkness."
An incantation, beginning:
"Toko i te po, te po nui, te po roa" ("Staff of the night, the great night, the long night"), etc., is repeated over this wand. When this is said the priest conducts the sick person to the edge of the water and sprinkles water over his body, repeating as he does so a charm to expel the makutu spirits from his body, ending with a curse upon the malevolent wizard—"Eat that tohunga makutu, let him be utterly eaten and destroyed."
When this is ended the patient is taken back to his house. He is told that the wise man has, by virtue of his very strong charms, seen the rival tohunga makutu, and that it will not be long before that evil man dies. The curse falls, the wizard is himself makutu'd, and the invalid—perhaps—recovers.
About the year 1881 Bent—now able to venture into the towns of the pakeha again in safety—left Taranaki, and travelled to Auckland and up to the Waikato. Then he went on to the west coast, and spent some months amongst the Maoris of the Ngati-Mahuta tribe, living in the historic old settlement Maketu, on the shores of Kawhia Harbour, close to the legendary landing-place of the Tainui canoe—the Waikato Maoris' pilgrim ship.
Tawhiao, the Maori King, was then living at Kawhia, and he asked Bent to remain with him and be his pakeha and interpreter. The white man was now, however, wearying to be back in his old home, Taranaki.
"Tawhiao," says Bent, "insisted on me remaining with his tribe, but I repeated a Maori incantation which I had been taught by the tohungas in Taranaki, a karakia used as a charm by strangers (tangata tauhou) who may desire to leave the place where they are staying on a visit and proceed to a new pa, and who fear obstruction. The charm begins: