REVOLTING CANNIBALISM BY HAUHAUS.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 14, Issue 703, 26 July 1869, Page 3

REVOLTING CANNIBALISM BY HAUHAUS.

The Daily Southern Cross, 23rd July, contains the following intelligence : A report has come to hand, by way of Tauranga, which in its nature, perhaps, surpasses all that we have ever heard of the horrors of Hauhauism. That the fanatics had relapsed into the worst practices of cannibalism we have heard again and again ; such details of brutish cruelty and inhumanity as have been given have aroused feelings of the deepest abhorrence ; but the latest instance surpasses all. It would appear that the friendly chief Marsh Brown, with some of his scouts, had penetrated some distance into the Urewera country, when near the spot where Captains Travers and White were buried at Ruatanaha the scouts came upon a board stuck up in a conspicuous part of the path. Upon near inspection it was found that it bore writing in Maori, which has been translated as follows .

" Friends, we have been to Ruatahana, and have disinterred the bodies of the Europeans who were buried there. " I have eaten them. The pakehas are very fat. " Tamai Eowhiti." Up to the present there has been no means of ascertaining whether or not the natives have really been Ruilry of such revolting cannibalism as the above would lead us to believe. Many of those who belong to the class known as Ci Maori doctors " incline to the opinion that the setting up of this board was a mere piece of bounce, while others, on the other hand, believe that the report may be true enough !—the natives have eaton the bodies of our dead as a mark of undying hatred. How long shall we have to wait for the punishment of these inhuman monsters, who slaughter defenceless women and children, and like ghouls devour the bodies of our falieu countrymen ?