Kimble [Kimball] Bent An Unusual European Who Deserted The British Army And Joined The Hau Hau #16

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

When the renegade Charles Kane, or “Kingi,” fled from the Turuturu-Mokai fight after receiving his bullet-wound, he made his way to the Turanga-rere village and announced that he would not return to Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu.

The Maoris, however, took him back to Te Ngutu, and he and Kimble Bent were brought before Titokowaru, who was sitting in the Wharé-kura.

Bent now appears, from his own account, to have wearied of his terrible life amongst the Hauhaus.

The war-chief fiercely questioned “Kingi,” whom he suspected of an intention to return to the European camps.

Then turning to “Ringiringi,” he said,

“E Ringi, speak Do you ever think of leaving us and running away to the pakehas?”

Bent confessed that he now desired to return to the men of his own colour, adding “But I will never take arms against you.”

Titokowaru glared at his white man, then he went to the door of the council-house and called to the people in the marae to enter.

When they were all in the big whare [house], Titokowaru ordered them to close the door and the sliding window.

In the gloom of the praying-house, the people sat in terrible silence, and the white men trembled for their heads.

Titokowaru, fearfully stern and menacing, addressed the pakehas.

“Whakarongo mai [Listen to me.]

If you persist in saying that you wish to return to the white men, it will be your death, I will kill you both with my tomahawk, now, in this house, unless you promise that you will never leave the Maoris, I will slay you, and your bodies will be cooked in the hangi”

“Ringiringi,” in real fear of his life, made answer that he would remain with the Hauhaus if Titoko would protect him, for he dreaded some of the chief's fiercer followers.

“Kingi,” too, hastened to give the required promise, a promise which he, unlike his fellow-pakeha, broke at the first opportunity.

When the people had left the Whare-kura, Titoko spoke to “Ringiringi” in a more friendly and reassuring tone, saying that he wished the pakeha to remain with him in the pa, and that, in order to assure his life against the wilder spirits in the tribes gathered under his command, he would tapu him, as Te Ua had done two years before.

For his tapu, he explained, was a far more effective and binding one than that of the Opunake prophet, a spell that no man dared break on pain of death.

Not many days later the Irish traitor “Kingi” deserted from the pa, taking with him a watch, a revolver, and some clothing which he had “commandeered” from the natives.

For some little time, nothing was heard of him.

At length the warriors of the Tekau-ma-rua, while out scouting one day in the direction of Turangarere, discovered on the track leading to the settlement a note addressed to the white soldiers' commander at Waihi, stating that the writer (Kane) and Bent were at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu, awaiting a favourable opportunity to tomahawk Titokowaru, cut off his head, and bring it in to the Government camp.

Kane was evidently clearing the way for his return to civilisation, and this note, which he had left in a spot where he hoped the white troops would come across it, was obviously intended to serve as a palliative in some measure of his military offences.

The deserter's letter was brought to the “Bird's-Beak” pa, where it was translated by an English-speaking Maori.

“Ringiringi,” questioned, disclaimed any knowledge of it, and as to the incriminating reference to himself, he assured Titokowaru that “Kingi” was lying.

Titokowaru immediately despatched the white man and four armed Maoris after “Kingi.”

They found him at Te Paka village, he disappeared that evening but was later caught by a party of seven Maoris and confined in a raupo hut at Te Paka.

They killed him there that night.

Bent was lying half-asleep in a whare in the settlement when the seven Maoris, who had brought “Kingi” in, entered, in an intensely excited state, sat down, and asked him if he had heard of the judgment on his fellow-white.

Then one of them said, “Kingi is dead.”

Another man, leaning forward until his passionate face almost touched Bent's, exclaimed,

“Ringi, had you done as Kingi has done, we would not have killed you in the ordinary way.

Your fate would have been burning alive in the oven on the marae”

Then the seven, after a conversation between themselves in a strange language the white man could not understand, listen as he would, the Maoris sometimes improvise a secret tongue, by sliding certain syllables in words and adding new ones, the executioners rose and left the whare.

It was not until the next day that “Ringiringi” learned the details of the deserter's end.

“Kingi,” after being given a meal, was left alone in his hut, but was watched through crevices in the wall until he sank to sleep, fatigued with his enforced tramp.

He lay with a blanket partly drawn over his head.

One of the Hauhaus, a man named Patumutu (“The Finishing Stroke”), stole quietly into the whare and attempted to deal him a fatal blow with a sharp bill-hook.

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The blow, however, only gashed his nose, and he leapt up and grappled with his assailant.

The Maoris outside, hearing the noise of the scuffle, rushed in.

An old man, Uru-anini of the Puketapu, seized the white man by the leg, brought him down, and dealt him a terrible blow with an axe as he lay on the floor.

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The other Hauhaus completed the work with their tomahawks, and the dead body of the renegade Irishman, cut almost to pieces, was dragged out and thrown into a disused potato-pit on the outskirts of the village.

When Bent returned to the “Bird's-Beak” stockade he found himself in a position of extreme peril.

The Hauhaus, excited by the news of Kane's treachery and summary execution, were fiercely hostile in demeanour, and some of the young bloods came dancing about the white man, as he walked into the village, with menacing shouts, emphasised by savage thigh-slapping, pukana-ing, and grimacing with out-thrust tongue and rolling eyes, and similar demonstrations of derision and hatred.

A council of the people was held on the marae, and the killing of Kane was narrated in minutest and barbaric detail.

Then several Hauhaus rose in turn and demanded the death of “Ringiringi,” on the principle that all pakehas were unreliable, and that it was a foolish policy to keep one in the camp who might sooner or later betray them.

“Let us lead him outside the pa and shoot him,” proposed one truculent young warrior of the Tekau-ma-rua.

“Kaati!” cried Titokowaru, in his great roaring voice, as he rose with his spear-staff in his hand.

“‘Ringiringi’ is my pakeha. I have tapu'd him, and I have told him that his life is safe. If you want to shoot him, well, you must kill me first”

Then, turning to the white man, the war-chief took him by the hand, led him to his own house, and shut the people out.

He told “Ringiringi” that in the present temper of the tribesmen he had better remain as much as he could in the whare, and that, at any rate, he must not venture far from the door unless he, Titoko, were with him or in view.

Some days later, “Ringiringi,” imagining from the more settled and pacific attitude of the Hauhaus that he no longer ran any risk in taking his walks abroad, wandered a short distance outside the stockade into the forest, and, seating himself on a fallen tree-trunk, filled his pipe for a quiet smoke.

Suddenly he heard a cough. He looked about him but saw no one.

“Who's there?” he called out.

A voice close above him replied, “It is I— Hakopa.”

“Ringiringi” looked up quickly, and saw an old tattooed man named Hakopa (Jacob) te Matauawa, perched on the lowest branch of a rata-tree, with a double-barrelled gun in his hand.

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Hakopa was a tall, lean, straight old fellow, a veteran of the ancient fighting type.

Bent had a thorough admiration for him as a man of singular courage, without the braggadocio of the young toas,
Hakopa had for a long time exhibited a kindly leaning towards the white man, and had been a firm friend of his all through the troubled days in the pa.

“Quick, quick!” he said, in a low, cautious voice.

“Hide yourself, Ringi,

When you walked out of the pa I heard two men who were watching you say that they would follow you up and kill you as they had killed Kingi.

They went to their wharés for their weapons, and I followed you quickly to warn you.

I saw you standing there, and climbed on this branch to see what those men are doing.

E tama, Conceal yourself, They are coming.”

The white man hastily selected a hiding-place.

He lay down behind a big log nearby, a fallen pukatea-tree, the log and the creepers and ferns that grew about it quite concealed him from the view of anyone approaching from the pa.

Hardly had he hidden himself than two villainous visaged young Hauhaus walked quickly along the track from the pa gateway.

Both swung tomahawks as they came, and one carried at his girdle a revolver, trophy taken from some slain white officer.

Seeing Hakopa descending from his tree-perch, they stopped and asked,

“Where is the pakeha? Did you see him pass?”

“Why do you ask?” said the old man.

“We have come to kill him,” replied one of the men. “Where is he?”

Hakopa instantly put his cocked tupara to his shoulder and levelled it at the foremost of the Hauhaus, the man with the revolver.

“Haere atu,” he said sharply. “Go, Leave this spot at once, or I will shoot you. ‘Ringiringi’ is my friend.”

The old fellow's determined air quite overawed the pakeha-hunters, and they sulkily and silently returned to the pa.

Jacob watched them off, and when the white man had risen from his hiding-place he escorted him back to the pa,
walking in front of him with his gun cocked, on the alert for any attack on his protege.

He took “Ringiringi” to his house, and then reported the affair to Titokowaru.

The chief showed genuine anger.

He assembled the fighting-men, and sternly ordered them to molest the white man no more. “If you harm him,” he said, “I shall leave the pa and return to my own village.

Listen! ‘Ringiringi’ is henceforth my moko-puna, my grandchild, and I now give him another name, the name of one of my ancestors. His name is now Tu-nui-a-moa.”

And behind Titokowaru leaped up old Hakopa, a bright tomahawk in his hand.

Making sharp, quick cuts in the air with his tomahawk, he cried, as he danced to and fro,

“Yes, and if anyone attempts to touch the white man, he will have to kill me too, Kill me and Titokowaru, Who will dare it? Come on, come on”

Thereafter Bent was not molested.

He went by his new name, and “Ringiringi” he was called no more, at any rate, not by Titokowaru's tribe.

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