"It is mine," a young man would reply; "it is my first spoils of war, a tanga-ika."
"Burn it," was the chief's order.
Then the human bodies lying on the marae were apportioned one by one, to each tribe, as piles of food are served out at a ceremonial Maori gathering.
"Nga-Rauru, this is yours! Tangahoé, this is yours!" and so on, till the seven bodies were all disposed of.
A woman sat weeping on the marae. She was Te Hau-karewa, wife to one Te Rangi-whakairi-papa and a sister of Te Waka-tapa-ruru, the old warrior who had fallen in his desperate rush upon the white enemy that morning. Though old, she was a tall, fine-looking woman, with a mass of black curly hair.
Ceasing her tangi for the dead, when the bodies of the soldiers were laid out on the ground, she rose, and, taking a stick in her hand, she walked along the row of the dead men and struck each a blow on the head.
"Upoko-kohua!" she cried vehemently, with hate flashing in her eyes; "Upoko-kohua! Ka taona koe ki te umu, he utu mo taku tungane kua mate, ko Te Waka-tapa-ruru! Mehemea ko au i tata i taku tungane i te takiwa i mate ai, ka kainga au i te karu o te tangata nana i whakamatea Te Waka!" ("Boiled heads! Cursed heads! Soon ye'll be cooked in the oven, as payment for the death of my brother, Te Waka-tapa-ruru. Had I but been near my brother when he fell, I would have swallowed the eyes of the man who slew him!")
Then, throwing away her stick, she sat down again, and fell to weeping in the very abandonment of woe, for the savage woman of the woods loved her grim warrior-brother greatly.
Some of the Maoris proposed that the bodies of the slain whites, the "Fish of Whiro," should all be burned or buried.