Kimble [Kimball] Bent An Unusual European Who Deserted The British Army And Joined The Hau Hau #26

len.george (63)in #history • 5 years ago

The most dreaded hour in Maori warfare was the dark, dank hour just before the dawn, and then it was well to be on the qui vive, for Kepa's [Major Kemp]

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dusky forest-rangers and their white comrades the A.C.'s [Armed Constabulary]

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had a truly unpleasant fashion of attacking their enemies at most unholy, shivery times, when man slept soundest.

So the watchmen in the tower were enjoined to extra vigilance in the early morning hours.

As in the olden Maori days, out rang the voice of the high sentinel, chanting his ancient “Whakaara-pa,” his “All's well” song, to Tarioa and Kopu, the first and morning stars.

This is one of the songs he cried, an old watch chant of the Ngati-Toa tribe of Kawhia.
Translation.
Kia hiwa e Now watchful be,
Kia hiwa O watchful be,
Kia hiwa e tenei tuku, On this side and on that!
Kia hiwa e tera tuku, Bend ears to every sound.
Kia whakarongo koe High up, high up

Ki nga kupu. The surf rolls in
Whakapuru tonu, On Harihari's cliffs,
Whakapuru tonu And loudly sounds the restless sea
Te tai ki Harihari,
Ka tangi tere On Mokau's coast.
Te tai ki Mokau. Now yonder, lo! the sun,
Ka ao atu te ra, The sun leaps up
Ka ao mai te ra Above the mountain-tops.
Ki tua o nga pae ra.
E—e! I—a—we.

Late one night, as the Hauhaus lay behind their palisades, Colonel Thomas McDonnell

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a man who spoke Maori like a native, rode boldly up to the pa wall with his escort, and asked for Titokowaru.

He called out in the native tongue, “O Titoko, where are you?”

Titoko, summoned from his tent, went down to the stockade.

“I am here” he shouted.

The white officer cried, “Titoko, I have been trying to discover your atua, [god] the god which guides you in your battles.

Now I have found it, I know the source of your mana.

When the wind blows hard from the whakarua (the north-east), I know it is the breath of your god, the wind of Uenuku,

But your atua is only a tutua—a low fellow”

Spoke Titoko angrily, and said, “McDonnell, go, Depart at once, If you do not ride away directly, there will be a blazing oven ready for you”

McDonnell rode away, and the angry chief returned to his tent.

Why McDonnell should have paid this daring night visit to the stockade is not quite clear, but the incident is given just as Bent narrates it.

He and his companions on the marae heard the dialogue, and Bent says the old fear struck to his heart when he heard Titokowaru menacing the white officer with the oven.

The Taranaki’s seem to have been particularly addicted to the “ordeal by fire.”

“The oven is gaping open for you” was their customary threat.

Their tribal history abounds, too, in tales of how some obnoxious neighbours or others, Ngati-so-and-so, had been effectively disposed of by the simple process of surrounding their huts while they slept, fastening the doors, and then setting fire to the whares.

The only objection from the Maori point of view to this summary method of obtaining utu was that it “spoiled the meat”

Colonel McDonnell was so conversant with Maori tikanga, customs, rules of life, and ways of thought, that he was by way of being a tohunga-Maori himself, and his dramatic twitting of Titokowaru with the fact that the reputed source of his fighting mana was within his (McDonnell's) knowledge was a circumstance that hugely annoyed the old war-chief.

It was just as if so much of his mana-tapu had passed to his white foeman, to the rival maker of strong “war-medicine.”

Occasional skirmishes with the white cavalry patrol-parties enlivened the three months' sojourn in Tauranga-ika.

In one of these encounters a young Wanganui trooper, now a resident of Wellington, won his New Zealand Cross.

This was William Lingard, a member of Captain John Bryce's troop of Kai-iwi Cavalry.

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Out scouting one day, Bryce took a party of his men boldly up to the front of the stockade on a reconnaissance.

The place was unusually quiet, and a white flag was flying on the flag-staff in front of the pa.

One of the cavalrymen, Sergeant Maxwell, leaping a ditch and hedge that intervened between the farmlands and the pa, raced right up close to the stockade and fired at it.

Trooper Lingard, also leaping the obstacles, with the rest of the detachment, rode up past the pa.

Lingard, though he could see nothing of the Maoris, raised his carbine and fired a shot.

The next instant the whole palisade front, just above the ground, where the interstices were left for musketry, was a blaze of fire, and a storm of lead sang over the little troop.

The Hauhaus, hidden in their trenches, and preserving complete silence, had waited till the patrol was within murderously close range.

Maxwell was mortally wounded, but he sat his horse till it carried him out of range.

Several horses were shot and fell.

One trooper, H. Wright, was pinned to the ground by his horse falling on his leg, and was unable to extricate himself, but, nevertheless, drew his revolver, and kept popping away at the palisades.

The whole pa was now in a roar of battle-excitement.

The Maoris, as they fired, raised their fearful yells and war-shouts, an infernal din that almost drowned the cracks of the firearms.

Kimble Bent was there, sitting on the parapet inside the stockade, and watching the encounter.

A burly framed Hauhau, a herculean savage known as Big Kereopa, one of those who had shared in the cannibal feast at Papa-tihakehake, dashed out from the rear of the stockade, armed with a long-handled tomahawk, and rushed at the helpless pakeha.

Trooper Lingard instantly put his plunging horse at the Hauhau, and cut at him with his sword.

Another trooper, Tom D. Cummins(now of Wanganui) took a hand in the combat, and with a shot from his carbine stopped the charging Hauhau.

He put a bullet into Kereopa, and the big fellow clapping a hand to his wound, which was in his posterior parts, bolted back into the pa nearly as quickly as he had come, yelling “I'm shot! I'm shot!”

Lingard, leaning over, got Wright by the hand, and, though almost dismounted himself, succeeded in dragging his comrade from under the fallen horse.

Then, noticing a white horse, which was usually ridden by one of the Maori scouts, tethered to a tutu-bush a short distance from the palisades, Lingard galloped at it, cut the tether-line with his sword, and soon had Wright mounted again and riding down the hill out of range, with the Hauhau bullets whistling close around their heads.

Lingard's rescue of his comrade was a remarkably plucky bit of work.

Info From

The first of the below posts has a list of the previous posts of Maori Myths and Legends

https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/how-war-was-declared-between-tainui-and-arawa

https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/the-curse-of-manaia-part-1

https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/the-curse-of-manaia-part-2

https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/the-legend-of-hatupatu-and-his-brothers

https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/hatupatu-and-his-brothers-part-2

https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/the-legend-of-the-emigration-of-turi-an-ancestor-of-wanganui

https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/the-continuing-legend-of-turi

https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/turi-seeks-patea

https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/the-legend-of-manaia-and-why-he-emigrated-to-new-zealand