Kai Tangata

There has been some debate recently about Maori and the concept of Kai Tangata, some historians have questioned the entire idea of Maori rituals associated with cannibalism. Paul Moon has written about this and received some criticism in the Listener for it. Was it an occasional highly ritualised part of their tikanga or something which was widely practised? Personally I can't go past the huge amount of literature that supports the practise. I also wonder whether there isn't a certain amount of (revisionism) rewriting history to suit a particular viewpoint about Maori....

In WTL Travers "Stirring Times of Te Rauparaha" (1872)

• Leaving naught at Mauinena and Makioa but the inhabitants bones, having flesh and tendons adhered, which even his dogs had not required, Hongi pursued his course.

• ...for more than a thousand victims lay dead in the trench and the magnitude of the feast that followed may, be imagined from the fact.... many hundred native ovens were discovered ... while numberless human bones lay scattered around.(Ngati Whatua at Mokoia Pa, Panmure)
  

• Some conception of the numbers killed and eaten ... Mr. Raven ....collected many cartloads of their bones and buried them in a mound on the side of the main road... (Ngai Tahu at Kaiapoi)
  

Then later 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.... They ate the women when the men were eaten, and that after they had them to wife.