fices pertaining to the death of members of the chieftain class. As old Tutakangahau put it to me, “A person was slain for a dead chief, as a koangaumu [see ante]. A person of another hapu [subtribe] would be killed for the purpose, and ever after the people of that hapu would be subjected to such remarks as, ‘You were the human sacrifice for my ancestor.’ This custom of sacrificing a person was an exalting of the dead person, a making much of him.”

If it was believed that the dead chief had been bewitched, then the person who it was believed had bewitched him, and so caused his death, was selected as an ika koangaumu, or sacrifice, or perhaps another member of his tribe if the real culprit was not available.

There were two purposes for which persons were slain, in cases where no witchcraft was suspected. Men were killed to provide human flesh for the funeral feast, but these were often slaves of the tribe, and the butchering of them was not a ritual performance. But the putu kai was a very different thing. A person of good rank, perhaps a relative of the defunct chief, was slain as in exaltation of, and a token of respect to, the dead. In this case, however, the body of the sacrifice was not eaten. The sacrifice was sometimes selected from the same subtribe as that of the dead chief, but more often from a different one. He would not necessarily be slain at the home of the deceased chief, nor yet his body be brought there. But a party would go forth and slay him wherever they might find him, among his own people, and simply leave the body lying where death overtook it, for his friends to bury.

I have failed to obtain any confirmation of a statement made by some writers that these persons were sacrificed at such a time in order that their spirits might attend that of the deceased chief to or in Hades, and that men of rank were never slain for the purpose.