The Yucky Bits

Last week I said I'd found some stuff that was a bit too yuck to read in class. So if you continue don't say you weren't warned!

In Michael King's "New Zealanders at War"...

• A small canoe with the dead bodies first approached the shore: the war canoe and those taken in fight, about 40 in all, lay at a short distance. Shortly after, a party of Young Men landed to perform the war-dance and song usual on their return from fighting: they yelled and jumped and brandished their weapons, and threw up human heads in the air in a shocking manner; but this was but a prelude ...
  
  An awful pause and silence ensued. At length the canoes moved slowly and came into contact with the shore; when the widow of Tettee and other women rushed down upon the beach in a frenzy of rage, and beat in pieces the carved work at the head of the canoes with a pole: they then got into a canoe and pulled out several prisoners-of war into the water and beat them to death: except one boy who swam away and got into another canoe. The frantic widow then proceeded to another canoe and dragged out a woman prisoner into the water and beat out her brains with a club with which they pound fern root. We retired from this distressing scene.

And

• ... the party who took the pa stayed in it, keeping all the women they could, and killed all the men. The children under 3 years they cut their heads and arms off and cooked the trunk, taking the inside out and then beating it up to a pulp which, he said, was the best food to eat with roi [fern root]. The women they ran sharp sticks through their feet to prevent their escape. A man moe'd [had intercourse with] any one of them and ara kau ano i te aii [the moment he finished the act] killed her and stuck her up and komo tia ana te anganga [thrust the head] of any tangata mata kite tapa [dead person against her vagina] or the hand of any dead man ... They ate the women when the men were eaten, and that after they had them to wife.