Kimble [Kimball] Bent An Unusual European Who Deserted The British Army And Joined The Hau Hau #9

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

We left Kimble recovering after the fall of the Otapawa Pa.

But there were periods of halcyon, lazy days in Maoridom, when “Ringiringi” and his ragged comrades of the bush, their work over, could just “lie around” and smoke and eat, and take no thought for the morrow so long as they could procure a pipe-full of strong torori (tobacco) and a square meal of potatoes and pork.

Tito proved a not unkind master, when he found that his white man neither attempted to escape from the tribe nor shirked the often heavy tasks imposed upon him.

The paheka [european] soon became an adept in the woodcraft of the Maoris.

He accompanied the young men of the tribe on their forest expeditions, bird-snaring and bird-spearing, these camping-out trips sometimes lasted for a week or more.

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Far into the solitudes of the great woods, the little hunting-parties penetrated, always armed, for they never knew when or where the Government Maori scouts might be encountered.

The days were spent in birding and pig-hunting, and the long nights by the blazing camp-fire when the white man learned from his Hauhau comrades many a wild legend and folk story, hair-raising tales of witchcraft, and mournful tangi-songs and love-ditties without end.

Powder and shot were too valuable to waste on the birds of the forest in those days.

One of the Maori snaring methods, as practised by “Ringiringi” and his companions, was to cut out wooden waka, or miniature canoes or troughs, fill them with water and place them in some dry spot in the forest where pigeons and tui were plentiful.

Just over these troughs, flax-snares were arranged, so that when the birds, thirsting for water after feasting on the bush-berries, flew down to drink, and stretched their heads through the running loops, they were tightly noosed.

Other snares were set on the miro- trees, of whose sweet berries the pigeons and tui were particularly fond.

“Ringiringi” quickly learned the art of setting snares of flax or cabbage-tree leaf with cunning slip-loops in the branches of the fruit-laden miro, in a clump of these pines he sometimes caught in a single day as many as three hundred or four hundred birds, kaka parrots, tui, and pigeon, for the forests were alive with feathered creatures, and in the autumn time, when the wild fruits were ripe and abundant, they were to be taken with little trouble, the noisy kaka parrot was the most easily lured of all.

The only forest bird that was not welcomed by the hunters was the owl or ruru;

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should one happen to be killed it was never eaten, because in Maori eyes it was an atua, a spirit or the incarnation of a tribal deity.

Bird-spearing was another forest art widely practised in those times.

Long slender limber spears of tawa wood, twelve feet long and more, were used.

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In making the bird-spears, the pole from which each was cut was scorched with fire till very dry, then it was scraped and scraped down with pawa-[paua]shells

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and scorched again, and once more scraped and shaped with great care and industry, until it had been reduced to the size desired and was perfectly smooth.

These spears were armed with barbed tips, often of bone, sometimes of iron.

The villagers trailed the weapons after them as they travelled through the forest until they came to some tree where tui and pigeon perched in numbers, then the spear was slowly and cautiously pushed upwards until close to the unsuspecting bird, and a sudden, sharp thrust impaled it on the barbed point.

The pakeha was carefully schooled in the art of using the spear, and was enjoined, above all, never to strike the pigeon full in the breast, because the bone would often snap the barb-tip off, it must be speared in the side.

In the late autumn the pigeons were “rolling fat", and many hundreds of them were preserved or potted in Maori fashion by the birding-parties in taha, or cabalashes (the hué gourd),

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which were hermetically sealed with the fat of the cooked birds.

One foraging expedition which Bent accompanied was farther afield than usual, up northwards to the great Ngaere swamp, a huge morass near where the present township of Eltham stands,

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and where dairy cattle now graze on fields that in those days of '66 were seemingly irreclaimable bogs and wildernesses, lagoons, where millions of eels crawled, snake-like, in the ooze, and where countless thousands of wildfowl and water-birds fished and screamed and squabbled all day long.

To the edge of the great swamp came the food-hunters, they waded across to the two islets which rose from the middle of the bog, ancient refuge-places of fugitive tribes, and camped there, catching and smoke-drying huge quantities of eels for winter food in the home kainga, and snaring many ducks and other birds.

In this primaeval spot the beautiful kotuku, the white heron

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so famous in Maori song and proverb, now never seen in the North Island, then abounded, the white man often admired this graceful bird as he stood on silent watch on the marge of some sedgy pool, then, like lightning-flash, darted his long spearbill on his prey.

The birds were tame, and easily caught, and many were snared and eaten by the foragers.

“Ringiringi” captured some on the shores of the lagoon by the simple expedient of a bent supplejack and an arrangement of flax loops, set near the kotuku's daily haunts, a day seldom passed without a heron being found flapping and choking tightly noosed in the snares of the fowlers.

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