The revival of the ancient practice of cannibalism was the most hideously savage feature of Titokowaru's method of warfare. It was not meat-hunger in this case; it was a battle-field rite. In olden Maoridom war was war to the death, and to the oven; it was no use beating your enemy unless you killed him, and no use killing him unless you also ate him. The eating of soldiers' bodies not only glutted racial revenge; but also--in Maori eyes--destroyed the prestige of the whites; it ruined their _mana_ as men and as warriors. The Taranaki Maoris tell a singular little story in explanation of those man-eating rites in Titokowaru's camps. In consuming bodies from the battle-fields they were only putting into practice the spirit of a speech made by old King Potatau te Wherowhero a decade or so before. Potatau--grandfather of the present "king" of Waikato, Mahuta Potatau te Wherowhero, M.L.C.--was a warrior of exceeding renown three-quarters of a century ago, and a cannibal of cannibals. Te Wherowhero Kai-tangata--"man-devourer"--he was called. Many a time he raided Taranaki with his war-parties of Waikato and Ngati-Maniapoto and Tainui. At Pukerangiora, about 1830, he slew hundreds of Ngati-Awa tribespeople, and with his warriors cooked and ate them. Nearly thirty years later he was set up as king over the confederated Maori tribes in the centre of the island. When the Maori kingdom was first established, the then governor of the colony visited old Potatau, and discussed the Maori aspirations for independence. The governor, according to the Maori story, endeavoured to show the king the folly of opposing the sway of the white man; if it did come to warfare--which was not then contemplated by either side--the British soldiers would soon make a clean sweep of the ill-armed and ill-provisioned Maori. "You are wrong," said Potatau; "it will take you many a year to sweep away the Maoris--you will never do it." "But," said the governor, "suppose we fight you, and drive you into the forest, far away from your cultivations, what will you do for food?" "Why," replied the old king, "I have plenty of food even in the bush--the berries of the _tawa_ and _karaka_ trees, the heart of the _mamaku_ tree-fern, and the _nikau_, and other foods of the forest. We can live on those." "And suppose I chase you with my soldiers, and fight you in the forest, and pursue you so that you cannot even get those things to eat, the berries and the _mamaku_, what then will you do for food?" Said old Potatau, grinning, "Then I'll eat you!"[9] This half-defiant, half-jocular speech of the venerable warrior of Waikato was repeated word for word, as it is given here, in every Kingite village and in the Hauhau _pas_ of after years; but it was left for Titoko's bushmen of Taranaki to put into actual execution their old foeman's commissariat methods.