Kimble [Kimball] Bent An Unusual European Who Deserted The British Army And Joined The Hau Hau #33

The Hauhau war-chief's mana-tapu [Glory] was gone, and there was nothing for it but to fly to the depths of the wilderness.

He and his men gathered in a few days at Rimatoto but made a very short stay there.

They marched through the forest to the island-fastness in the Ngaere swamp, where they were very nearly caught by Whitmore and his Constabulary, who made a rough tête-de-pont over the quaking morass with hurdles of supplejack and bush-vines.

Then they made off for the Ngatimaru Country, on the upper waters of the Waitara, thirty or forty miles away, over terribly rough country and through an almost trackless forest.

“A party of forty or fifty of us,” says Bent, “remained in our little settlement at Rimatoto, always on the alert against surprise by the troops, until the anxiety of our position became too much for us.

We packed up our belongings, and swagged them inland to Rukumoana, on the Patea River.

In this lonely spot, far in the bush, we camped and made a little clearing in order to plant food.

When we had felled the bush with our axes, twenty men travelled across to the Upper Waitara to procure seed potatoes from their friends, and we planted our crops and waited.”

In this remote valley of refuge, far in the forest, the white runaway and his Hauhau companions, he was still with his chief Rupe, remained for many weeks, living the loneliest life conceivable, hearing nothing of the outside world, and existing precariously on the foods of the forest.

Titokowaru was safe in his bush retreat in the Ngatimaru Country, his last battle fought, his once godlike mana in the dust.

One day two Hauhaus, exhausted and half-starved, entered the little bush-camp at Rukumoana.

One of them was Bent's old rangatira, Tito te Hanataua.

They had passed through many perils and hairbreadth escapes, and they warned the white man and his Maori comrades that Kepa te Rangihiwinui and his Wanganui Maori scouts were still hunting for them, and would have their heads to a certainty should they happen on the trail to the refuge place.

The old feeling of terror came over Bent and his companions at the mention of Kepa's name.

That night Hauhau piquets kept watch on the edge of the clearing, and more than once they imagined they heard stealthy footfalls, the breaking of branches, and the whispers of enemies in the woods.

These dangers, however, were things of the imagination.

Nevertheless, it was an anxious night in the lonely kainga, [village] and when morning came the people decided to abandon their camp and bury themselves still deeper in the wilderness.

In a very short time, the men and women of the settlement were on the march, laden with their flax pikaus, [baskets] containing such belongings as they thought worth removing.

They took to the forest in a due northerly direction; bound for that Alsatia of rebels and Hauhaus, the remote and rugged Ngati-Maru Country, upon the head-waters of the Waitara, Titokowaru's hiding-place.

The utmost caution was observed on the march.

No fires were lighted.

So that there should be no clue to the direction of the flight, care was taken to leave no broken branches or other bushmen's signs, not a leaf was turned or a twig displaced if the refugees could help it until they were well into the ranges.

Wherever possible they took to the creek-beds and walked in the running water so that no trail should betray them.

They could have spared themselves that anxiety and trouble, however, for the Government troops had at last abandoned the chase.

Two days Bent and his friends spent on that terrible trail, the roughest, wildest part of the Taranaki hinterland.

Fording rivers, pushing through matted jungles, climbing wooded precipices, lowering their swags down perpendicular cliffs, and swinging themselves down by forest vines and creepers, they emerged, at last, a weary little band, on the banks of the Waitara, about thirty miles from the mouth of that river.

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All around towered the densely forested blue ranges; the high banks of the winding Waitara fell precipitously to its rapid whitened waters.

On the cliff-top where they left the forest, there was a little Maori camp.

Here the fugitives were ordered to the main Hauhau camp, the Kawau pa, where Titokowaru and his followers had established themselves, weary of war, but nevertheless resolute to die “fighting like the shark,” as the Maori has it if attacked in their last hiding-place.

The Kawau pa stood in an admirable position for defence, in a great bend of the Waitara River.

The winding rapid river here swept round a long tongue of steep-banked level land, protecting it on three sides, in the rear was the dense forest.

The banks of the river were from twenty to thirty feet high and could be climbed only in a few places.

On this high tongue of land, about a quarter of a mile long, there stood a large village of well-built raupo and nikau thatched houses, between the village and the forest were the cultivations of potatoes, kumara, and taro.

On the opposite side of the river, in the direction of the Taramouku Range, wild horses and cattle abounded in the bush.

A short distance below the village there was a large pa-tuna, or eel-weir, consisting of two rows of stout manuka stakes set closely together and sunk into the river-bed and converging in a V, at the lower end of which hinaki, or eel-baskets, were set for the purpose of catching the piharau, or lamprey, which abounded in the Waitara, and which were a great Maori delicacy.

As Rupe and his pakeha Bent and their companions marched slowly into the marae of the warchief's camp, their eyes on the ground, they were welcomed with the ancient ceremony of the powhiri. ]greeting]

The village women and girls waved green branches and shawls as they retired before them, singing all together the famous old greeting song,

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“Toia Mai te Waka”

(“Oh, haul up the canoe”)

likening the guests to a canoe-party of visitors arriving from a distant shore.

Then as the women fell back the whole force of Titoko's warriors leapt to their feet, and swinging their firearms this way and that threw themselves with martial fury into all the thrilling action of the war-dance.

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The ground shook under the mighty tread of many scores of brown feet, and the forest rang with the chorus of the war-song and the reverberating volleys of many guns.

Then, when the dance was ended, the hongi of long-severed friends, the pressing of the nose to nose, and the pitiful weeping for the dead.

For quite two hours the great tangi lasted.

When it ceased one of the headmen of the river-tribes sent the new arrivals to his own camp, close by the Kawau, the village women came in procession, to the lilt of the tuku-kai song, bearing their baskets of food, steaming hot from the hangi, and the half-starved white man and his friends were soon enjoying a bountiful feast after their long-enforced existence upon the meagre rations of the bush.

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

https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/the-love-story-of-hine-moa-the-maiden-of-rotorua