The Maori did not march out on the war-path without careful observance of the ceremony and ritual pertaining to the service of Tu, the god of battle. The Niu, the sacred divining rods, had to be cast, the oracles consulted, and the warriors sprinkled and hardened for the path of strife and death. Old warriors of the cannibal era have described to me the priestly preliminaries to fighting expeditions, the reading of the omens, the ceremonies to weaken the enemy and draw their spirits into one's hands (kukume ai nga wairua).

“Sometimes,” said a venerable man of the Ngati-Whakaue, Rotorua. “when an expedition of blood was proposed, we would see on the horizon, in the direction of our enemy's country, a strange red glow as of a great fire. That was the ahi-papakura; it was a sign of success for us and of disaster for our foes. If a rainbow, which was the aria or visible form of the god Uenuku, appeared on high in the rear of our war-party, it was a good omen. But if it spanned the path by which we were to go, on our front, it was a warning, a portent of likely defeat, and we would not march away until a more favourable day came.”

As in the Iliad and in the great Hindu epics, warriors in battle could conceal themselves in magic mists to escape their foes. Charms to this end are called huna (literally “to hide”). The following is a specimen of such a spell, recited by an old

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Arawa warrior, who himself professed to have found it of service in bush-fighting aforetime:

Pungawerewere, heiheia mai aku mata,
Popokorua, heiheia mai aku mata.
E Moko e!
Tu mai ki waho
Moku to taua rua.
Titiro ki runga,
Titiro ki raro,
Titiro ki whenua noa atu.

(Translation.)
Spiders, hide my face;
Ants, obscure me from the foe;
O 'Moko,
Come forth from out thy pit,
And let me enter it.
Search all around,
Gaze up and down,
See nothing but the empty land.

Here he appealed to the spiders to weave their webs across the path by which he had gone, and to the ants (“he iwi i roto i te whenua,” “a people of the earth”) to hide him in the ground with them. “Moko” is a contraction of the name Ruaimoko, the god of the Underworld.

“Great Pilgrims of Tu.”

The return of the warriors from an expedition was attended by much priestly ritual, for the tapu of blood must be removed before they could mingle with their people again. On Mokoia Island, Lake Rotorua, the venerable Tamati Hapimana described to me on the sacred beach of Matariki the thrilling scenes of other days when the great war-canoes came dashing up to the shore from the Ohau or Lake Rotoiti, home from a campaign. The blanket-kilted sage, bare-footed and bare-headed, his long white locks floating in the breeze, stood on the pumice-sands, a twig of willow in his hand, and showed how the high priest Unuaho greeted the returning warriors.

“As the war-canoes drew near,” he said, “the tohunga stood on this spot, naked save for a girdle of leaves, and waved a leafy branch—as I wave this page 232 willow-bough—and cried in a loud chanting voice to the men of battle:

“‘I haere mai i whea?
Tē-ere, Tē-ere tēre-nui na Tu?’
(‘Whence come ye,
Great Company of Tu?’)

“And the war-priests standing amidships chanted in reply, while the canoes lay off the shore:

“‘I haere mai i uta,
I haere mai i tai,
I haere mai i te
Tu parekura—
Tē-ere, tē-ere, tēre nui o Tu.’
(‘We come from the land,
We come from the sea,
We come from the battle-field of Tu—
Pilgrims, great pilgrims of Tu.’)

“Then the priest on the shore cried:

“‘Whence come ye,
Great travellers from Whiro?’^*

and the warrior-priests answered:

“‘We come from above,
We come from below,
We come from the seeking-out,
The searching—
Pilgrims, great pilgrims of Whiro.”’

Then, said Tamati, the soldiers would leap naked into the shallow water and remain there until the high priest had performed the ceremonies to remove the tapu of blood which had been imposed on them when they went forth to fight. And the great tohunga, dandling to and fro a sacred offering from page 233 the field of battle, the emblem of the slain, to the Maori gods of war, would chant:

Hikitia mai taua kai,
Hapainga mai taua kai,
Ki runga rangi taua kai.
Kia kai mai Rongomai,
Heke iho i te rangi—taua kai.
(Raise up the food,
Lift up the food,
Raise up to the heavens that food.
Come and eat, Rongomai;
Descend from the heavens—that food.)

Then the warriors were free to greet their wives and children again, the tapu safely lifted.