CHAPTER 2

The Hawaiian People

Early Hawaiian history is entirely legendary. There was no written language, although certain crude outline pictures and characters, apparently depicting historical events, have recently been found. These, however, have not yet been deciphered. The history, therefore, can be traced only through ancient "meles" or songs, poems without rhyme or metre, but strictly accented and often several hundred lines in length, which were handed down orally for many generations. Every high chief had in his retinue professional bards who, like the minstrels of England, kept alive the traditions of wars and of heroes and who, as well, chanted love songs and dirges and composed poems in honour of the chief.

The Islands were settled as early as 500 a.d., a fact proved by the discovery of human bones under ancient lava and coral beds. The Hawaiian people are clearly of the Polynesian race, all branches of which can almost certainly be traced back to the Island of Savaii in the Samoan group. The Hawaiian language is but one dialect of the Polynesian tongue. Indeed, so similar are these dialects that an intelligent man, well versed in Hawaiian, can understand almost everything said by a Maori of New Zealand. Not only the people, moreover, but the animals and plants in Hawaii, are related to the islands of the southern Pacific. This means that the early settlers must have come from the south and southwest, whereas the prevailing winds and currents are from the northeast. Wonderful this passage must have been in any case, across two thousand miles of open ocean in canoes; still more extraordinary when the voyage was made against winds and currents.

There were two periods of migration to Hawaii, but of the first there are few legends, although to it are ascribed certain temples and the great fish ponds along the coast of Molokai. In the eleventh or twelfth century intercourse with the south was renewed and in the songs are recorded many voyages both to and from Tahiti or Samoa, the voyagers travelling in fleets of canoes and steering by the stars. The canoes were probably built of planks, decked over, and large enough to carry a certain amount of live stock. For some unknown reason the period of this intercourse was very short. During the next five hundred years there are no legends of distant voyages, and ideas of any country beyond the Hawaiian group became indistinct. This time of isolation brought about, naturally, fixed national customs and a very definite and individual national religion.

In ancient times the people were divided into three distinct classes, the nobility, the priests and sorcerers, and the common people, and between these classes were absolute and unalterable lines of demarcation. The chiefs, or " alii," were supposed to be descended from the gods and their office was, therefore, religious as well as political. So sacred were the highest chiefs considered that when they walked about the people all had to prostrate themselves. The courts comprised personal attendants of the chief,—men of high rank only on the father's side,—priests, diviners, storytellers, and dancers, who were trained to the art from infancy. The chief owned all the land and parcelled it out among the nobility, who, in turn, distributed it among the common people. As often as a chief died the land was redistributed. It was the feudal system in its most literal and oppressive form, the only check on the power of the nobles being that the people were not fixed to the soil, but might move from place to place at will, thereby entering the service of some other chief.

The priests, or "kahunas," were also a hereditary order exercising great power, not only because they were the medium of communication with the gods, but because they, only, knew anything of astronomy and medicine. The lower ranks of priests were sorcerers, able to pray people to death—one of the few ancient beliefs still held by many Hawaiians. As to the religion itself, four great gods were worshipped in different ways by all Polynesians. According to the Hawaiian interpretation, which does not differ materially from others, the most powerful of these gods was Kane, the creator of the world. He with his brother Kanaloa once lived on the Island of Hawaii, where they made miraculously many of the springs; they also introduced the banana and other useful trees. Ku was a cruel god, delighting in suffering and human sacrifice. Lono, of a slightly lower rank, controlled the rains and had his own particular order of priests. In addition to these highest gods, all the forces of nature were deified; the air, the rocks, the trees, were the expression of invisible beings to whom reverence was due and who must at all times be propitiated. There were also gods of different localities, gods of different professions, gods living in sharks and lizards and owls. Most powerful among the minor deities, as might be expected in a volcanic country, was Pele, the goddess of fire. Near the volcanoes on Hawaii she was most feared, and constant propitiation was therefore necessary. She, with her sisters and her brother, lived in the volcano; "The roaring of the furnaces and the crackling of the flames were the music of their dance and the red fiery surge was the surf in which they played." There were malignant and friendly elves in the woods; there were demigods of every kind; there were deified ancestors. Not an act of daily life could be performed without reference to one or more of these divine beings. It was this far-reaching superstition that gave rise to the tabu system, one of the most elaborate devices of any heathen race.

Spearing Fish at Napoopoo, Hawai`i

This system was made up of minute regulations, infringement of any one of which was considered both as a sin against the gods and as a political offence, since the office of the chiefs was religious as well as secular. The following are a very few of these tabus, which are enough to indicate their general character: Men and women were compelled to eat in separate houses and women were not allowed to eat with men or to enter men's eating-houses on pain of death. For women, also, certain food, such as bananas, cocoanuts, and pork, was forbidden. A commoner was prohibited on pain of death from crossing the shadow of a chief—a law which must have been difficult to obey in the early morning or late afternoon. Certain nights of the month were tabu—the king spent the time in the temple, which was closed to all other persons, nor during those nights could women step into canoes. At certain tabu periods no sound could be heard, no fire could be lighted; dogs were muzzled and fowls tied up in calabashes. For four days after the dedication of a temple there could be no fishing, no bathing, no pounding of poi, no work of any kind in the locality.

All this system was elaborated by the priests on the basis of tradition and was enforced by the chiefs. Connected with it was an equally complicated religious ritual. The more important temples consisted of great stone platforms surrounded by thick stone walls. The interior was often terraced and occasionally there was an inner court in which stood the principal idol. In the centre of the main court was the oracle, an obelisk of wicker work, within which the priest stood when acting as intermediary with the gods. In this court also were sacred houses in which the king and priests lived during periods of tabu. On the outer walls of the temple stood innumerable hideous images, probably intended as human scarecrows to frighten away the over-inquisitive. In addition to the temples were houses of refuge, to which criminals of any grade could flee and receive protection until the time of purification was passed, when they could go out under the care of the gods. The idols, after having certain ceremonies performed over them, became representatives of the gods and were reputed to have definite powers imparted by their respective deities.

Every family, moreover, had its private idol, the power of which was very limited as compared with that of the temple idols. The prayers composing the temple ritual were, like the songs, handed down orally through many generations. They were in reality charms rather than prayers, and had to be recited accurately to be effective,—a very difficult task, since they were so long that they often took hours to repeat and were in an ancient dialect not much more understood by the common people than in Russia is the old Slavonic tongue of the Orthodox ritual. Human sacrifice, the supreme act of worship, was reserved for the most solemn occasions only, such as the dedication of a temple, the funeral rites of a chief, or the launching of a war canoe. The victims, who were secretly slain by the Mu, the official executioner, were either prisoners of war or men who had infringed the tabu. Women, being inferior and therefore not worthy to be offered to the gods, were, in this instance at least, safe.

The common people, who were hardly more than serfs, had little to make life happy unless they were fortunate enough to be attached to a benevolent chief. All were liable to military service, and wars, after the beginning of the fifteenth century, were nearly continuous. Weapons consisted of long and short spears, daggers, clubs, and slings. There were no shields, but trained warriors be came very expert in warding off attack. Vancouver says that in a sham battle he saw " six spears cast at once at Kamehameha I, of which he caught three, parried two, and avoided the sixth by a quick movement of the body." After a battle it was customary to give no quarter to the defeated enemy. In spite of the wars, however, much time was of necessity given to peaceful pursuits. As there was no metal, tools were made of stone, or sharks' teeth, or wood, yet with these rude implements the people carried on extensive agricultural works, terraced the land when necessary, built irrigation ditches and tunnels, and constructed fields for the growing of taro. This was their principal crop, as it was, and is, the staple food. The best of it, and indeed the larger proportion, grows in fields which must be covered with water to the depth of a few inches and which must, therefore, be very carefully laid out. The root is boiled or steamed until soft, pounded with stone pestles into a paste, mixed with water, and allowed slightly to ferment. This is poi, the national food, very healthful, and, to those who are accustomed to it, very good. (It may be noted that the glutinous qualities are such that it is used also as a paste in hanging wallpaper.) In addition to taro, the ancient Hawaiians cultivated sweet potatoes, yams, and bananas. Of animal food they had only pork. Fishing was, therefore, a most important industry. and the fishermen, who formed a class by themselves, were expert in the use of hook and line, net, and spear. Fish, too, were preserved in huge fish ponds, which were made by building rock walls, sometimes a mile or more in length, in rude semicircles into the sea, each end resting on the shore. These walls were built close enough to prevent the fish from escaping, while the tide water could still pass through them. Some of these fish ponds are still in use, but the most interesting are the ancient ones, now, owing to the subsidence of the land, many feet under water, which one sees from the hills of Molokai. Both fish and vegetables were prepared in underground ovens. They - were wrapped in leaves and laid on heated stones; water was then poured into the cavity and the whole covered, the food being cooked by the steam.

Houses, varying in size according to the rank of the owner, consisted of rough wooden frames, tied together, and thatched over with grass or ti leaves. The doors were low and narrow and there were usually no windows. There was little or no attempt at ornamentation. To some extent the same style of house is used at the present day, and, like the peasant cottage of Brittany, seems the real expression of the land and of the native character. As one finds them occasionally on the southwest coast of the Island of Hawaii, nothing could be lovelier than one of these gray-brown huts, with tapering cocoanuts at one side, a great mass of vivid green banana trees on the other, and behind, the red foothills. Civilisation seems to slip away and one is conscious only of the old man and the old woman sitting cross-legged in the sun, busy with the same primitive tasks that occupied their ancestors hundreds of years ago. For furniture they had only mats, those of finer quality spread over the sleeping-platform at the end of the room; calabashes and water bottles made of gourds, which were sometimes decorated by burning; and bowls and platters of polished wood. At night they burned kukui nuts (Aleuritis moluccana) for light. Their clothing was made of kapa, or, as it is usually called, tapa, a kind of paper cloth manufactured by the women from the bark of certain trees. This kapa was of different grades, some as heavy as leather, some as fine as linen.* The women wrapped strips of it about three feet wide around the waist, and the men used it as a " malo " or loin cloth. It was also sometimes worn as a mantle by both men and women. This simplicity of dress was more than compensated by the national love of ornament. Both men and women wore wreaths of flowers or of bright-coloured feathers, or strings of orange-coloured * pandanus fruit on head and neck. The chiefs wore also hooks of walrus ivory suspended from the neck on braids of human hair. No costume could have been, after all, more appropriate than this brightly-dyed kapa and these brilliant flowers against the bronze skin, which seems in itself a dress.

The Hawaiians were a sport-loving people. Boxing, wrestling, foot racing, and bowling with polished stone discs were among the favourite amusements. Still to be seen, also, are the long slides on steep hillsides, down which they darted on wooden sleds. Swimming and diving were the delight of all, chiefs and common people, and surf riding remains to this day one of the favourite sports. It is this surf riding, as popular now with foreigners as with the natives, which makes Waikiki, near Honolulu, unique among bathing resorts. The surf rider takes a long, smooth, polished board and with it swims out a half-mile or so from the shore. He then lies flat on his board and swims rapidly toward shore until a roller catches the board and carries him on its crest to the beach. Expert surf riders can raise themselves to a standing position after the wave takes them and so ride, standing, for hundreds of yards, or as far as the wave will carry them. The game has all the excitement of tobogganing without the effort of dragging the toboggan uphill again, be cause the swim out to sea, diving under the waves as one goes, has almost the fun of the ride back. For those who cannot swim the tamer sport of surf riding in long Hawaiian canoes, the outriggers of which make an upset next to impossible, is a good substitute.

Like this sport, Hawaiian dancing and music remain to recall the ancient times. The primitive flute can be heard only as it is played by the pensioners at Lunalilo Home, and even the ukulele, a tiny guitar, is an improvement almost beyond recognition over the old "ukeke," although its use as a metrical accompaniment is much the same. The songs still have the old melody, with minor cadences and a haunting sadness that sets them off from all other songs. And when a chief dies the wailing is still heard,—a piercing rhythmical lamentation lasting for hours or even days within and around the house of the dead. It can never be forgotten, and somehow, after one has heard it, one can recognise always, even in the love songs that are chanted in the moonlight outside of hotel windows, a strain of the same hopeless sadness which is so fully expressed in the dirges and which is perhaps a note of the passing Hawaiian race.

For a passing race it surely is. No one knows when the number of inhabitants was greatest, but it is certain that the continuous wars which ravaged the country for two centuries and over before its discovery by Captain Cook had already reduced the population by a large proportion. Foreigners —even Captain Cook's own crew—introduced diseases unknown before. The people had never been moral according to Anglo-Saxon standards, the marriage tie being of the loosest, polygamy a common practice, and fidelity an unknown virtue. This meant that the diseases of civilisation could do their worst. What made the situation even more deplorable was the almost complete lack of medical knowledge. It is true that the uses of certain herbs were understood, but sickness, according to the common belief, was caused by evil spirits and its cure was in sorcery. Relatives of the sick man made offerings for him. If this did not prove effective the sick man himself, whatever his disease, was given a steam bath and then dipped in the sea, or was made to eat pieces of squid. The sorcerers, however, were more often employed to make men sick than to relieve suffering, and so absolute was the belief in evil spirits, so powerful the imagination, that they were always successful. A man who knew that a kahuna was praying him to death promptly died. The wonder is, not that the population declined, but that it did not decline even more rapidly. At the time of the discovery of the Islands the native population numbered, according to Cook, 432,000, but on what he based his data is not known; 250,000 is probably nearer the truth. To-day there are not 30,000 pure-blooded Hawaiians, about 40,000 including the part-Hawaiians. The race, already decimated by war, decreased rapidly under the scourge of measles, smallpox, venereal diseases, and strong drink. Now that there is adequate medical knowledge, and with the protection given to the Hawaiians by the better class of white people, the race might again increase were it not for intermarriage with foreigners. So general is this intermarriage that, although the number of those with Hawaiian blood is greater with every census, the number of pureblooded natives proportionally decreases. It is a question of only a few generations before the Hawaiians, as a people, will be only a memory, just as their language will soon be extinct as a pure tongue.

And in many ways this disappearance of the race is sad, for the Hawaiians are a people with a past that is often noble. In spite of their weaknesses and their follies they are very lovable. The best of them are physically admirable, tall, well formed, with high foreheads, good features, deep chests, slender limbs. In colour they are something like the American Indian, although not as red, and their high cheekbones and straight hair accentuate the resemblance. There is nothing about them to suggest the negro, and they them selves consider him as an inferior being. Their manners are excellent, their motions graceful. Among the higher ranks, of whom the Queen is a good example, there is a courtliness of demeanour which recalls the salons of the old European aristocracy. They carry themselves well, walk firmly and lightly. Nothing could be more physically beautiful, more harmonious in line, than a Hawaiian fisherman, naked except for his loin cloth, as he stands poised on a rock ready to cast his net. He is classic in the moulding of his form, in the perfection and symmetry of his muscular development, insistently reminiscent of some Greek bronze of an athlete stripped for the games.

Hawaiian Surf Riding

The Hawaiians are also an intelligent people, so that teaching them is a pleasure. Nor are they merely imitative. They make good teachers in the schools, good overseers on the plantations. They never steal. They are honest and trustworthy. They are affectionate and grateful for kindness. Like children, however, they are emotional and easily led, voting often, for example, against their principles on the advice of some unscrupulous agitator and keenly regretting afterwards what they have done. They are now, as they always have been, abnormally fond of games of chance, and in the excitement of the moment will wager everything they possess, which, fortunately for them and unfortunately for " beasts of prey," is usually very little. Their most besetting sin is what might be called moral laziness. On the plantations, for instance, they make splendid workmen, accomplishing in a day twice the amount of hard labour that a Japanese is willing to do, but when pay day comes they go home and, forgetting to return in the morning, fish a little, sleep and eat a great deal, until their money is exhausted and their credit gone. Then, with perfect cheerfulness, they go back to work. According most satisfactorily with this habit is the ancient custom, loyally adhered to even at present, of dependence on a chief. The Queen has very many who look to her for food and shelter because their ancestors looked to her ancestors, and she, as loyal to custom as they, supports them out of her meagre resources. The same is true in greater or less degree of all the remaining chiefs.

Except in the case of intermarriage with the Chinese, the mixture of Hawaiian with foreign blood does not usually result well. There are notable exceptions of part-Hawaiians in important public and private positions, but as a rule, among the men at least, it seems to be the weak qualities of both races which are exemplified in the children of mixed marriages. As the Hawaiian blood becomes more and more diluted this may not be the case, but as it is now it makes even sadder the breaking up of the race, because too often in the half-Hawaiian it is the moral weakness that will be noted and imputed to the native blood, not the physical strength; the love of gambling, not the honesty; the vacillation, not the loyalty; the trickiness, not the childlike simplicity. An ethnologist a few generations hence, in attempting to reconstruct from the predominant characteristics of their mongrel descendants a picture of the ancient Hawaiian race, will make them a people despicable and thoroughly degraded. And those who have known them in their integrity, like children faulty and volatile, but like children eager to be taught and susceptible to every good influence, will no longer be there to defend them. The man who would see the remnants of a genial, kindly, affectionate race must see them now or never.

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