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!"[1]
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.
"Titokowaru heard it," say the Maoris; "and when the war began, and he became a fighting chief, he did as Potatau would have done—he fought his enemy in the forest, and slew him there, and ate his flesh for food. And, as Potatau had predicted, it was many a year before the war was ended—and even then Titokowaru was never caught."
- ↑ "Ko koe te kai mau!"
