ANDREW POWERS. 
575 
On the 14th January 1831, a man named Andrew Powers 
entered the Wanganui river ; he formed one of a boat’s crew 
belonging to Joe Rowe, a trader in preserved human heads, 
it came from Rapiti on a trading expedition ; there were 
three white and one colored men with him, they rowed as 
far as a sandy bight, adjoining the South Bluff, where they 
landed to dine, and whilst doing so, a party of natives 
joined company, they had some cooked food with them, 
two baskets of which were given to the party. Whilst eating 
their dinner, Puta, one of the natives, went and sat in the 
boat; Joe Rowe, called out to Powers to go and turn him 
out, he replied, you had better do so yourself, as you 
know more about Maories than I do ; Joe then got up, and 
asked him what he wanted in the boat ; the native replied, 
to look at him ; the sailor commanded him to leave, and 
when the native continued to sit still, he took hold of his 
mat to drag him out, the native immediately arose, drew 
out his patiti (hatchet) from beneath his mat, and cleft his 
skull. Powers went to help his comrade, when a native 
named Wetu knocked him overboard, and as he laid hold of 
the boat with one hand, they immediately struck him over it, 
and made him let go ; he then put his hand on the side of 
their canoe, and got in ; the natives pulled him down on his 
belly, one sitting on his legs and another on his arms, and so 
held him for some time, when he was permitted to look up, 
he found three of his comrades had been killed, but the man 
of color was spared ; they cut off the heads of Rowe and 
another, and placed them to steep in a little water hole above 
the cliff, down which a small stream trickled. One of these 
heads was afterwards dried in the usual way for sale ; the 
other being very much chopped about in the face with the 
hatchet, he thought was not preserved; the bodies of two of 
the victims were cut up and eaten ; afterwards, when Powers 
had been some time with them, he asked what had become 
of the third man who was killed, as he only saw two of their 
heads ; they told him, when he was killed he cried, and their 
atuas said, they were not to eat the bodies of men who cried 
from fear of death, lest it should make them cowards ; so 
they buried him in the sand. 
