Hawaiian

“ Here and there in the building, stages are set with splendid waxen Hawaiians engaged in olden pursuits, such as basket-weaving and poi-pounding. The figures, full-statured, are startlingly lifelike, except in the unavoidable deadness of the coloring. It is impossible to imitate the living hue, of which the natives say, “You can always see the blood of an Hawaiian under his skin.” ”

“ The world surges in on the Hawaiian Islands. And the Hawaiian can no longer give himself solely to the tradition that bound him to the valleys and the mountains, and that knit him to Wakea and Papa, who begat and brought forth the islands and the men and women upon them. ”

“ Now, the real body of Hawaiian folklore belongs to no isolated group, but to the whole Polynesian area. From New Zealand through the Tongan, Ellice, Samoan, Society, Rarotongan, Marquesan, and Hawaiian groups, fringing upon the Fijian and the Micronesian, the same physical characteristics, the same language, customs, habits of life prevail; the same arts, the same form of worship, the same gods. And a common stock of tradition has passed from mouth to mouth over the same area. In New Zealand, as in Hawaii, men tell the story of Maui's fishing and the theft of fire. ”

“ His passion was open and honorable. To the praise of the Hawaiian race, be it recorded, that no white woman ever received other than courtesy at their hands. Rich or poor, alone among thousands of natives, they and theirs with no other protection than their own virtue, have ever been, not only respected, but cared for, and to a certain extent venerated. ”

“ Leaving Waimea, we continued across the rolling green plains, whose indefinite borders were lost in Mauna Kea’s misty foothills. Rain fell soothingly, and often we had glimpses of fierce-looking, curly-headed Scotch bulls with white faces, vignetted in breaking Scotch mist into the veriest details of old steel engravings. Hawaiian cowboys, taking form in the cottony vaporousness, waved and called to our coachman ere swallowed again.
One cannot encompass Hawaii without stepping upon the feet of one lordly mountain or another. ”

“ In his attempt to translate his concepts into physical signs the Hawaiian was favored not only by his vivid power of imagination, but by his implicit philosophy, for the Hawaiian, looked at things from a physical plane—a safe ground to stand upon—albeit he had glimpses at times far into the depths of ether. When he talked about spirit, he still had in mind a form of matter. A god was to him but an amplified human being.
It is not the purpose to attempt a scientific classification of gesture as displayed in the halau. ”

“ This record which the Hawaiian people have left of themselves is full and specific. When, therefore, we ask what emotions stirred the heart of the old-time Hawaiian as he approached the great themes of life and death, of ambition and jealousy, of sexual passion, of romantic love, of conjugal love, and parental love, what his attitude toward nature and the dread forces of earthquake and storm, and the mysteries of spirit and the hereafter, we shall find our answer in the songs and prayers and recitations of the hula. ”

“ In 1900, by an act of Congress, the Hawaiian Islands became a territory of the United States. Of the one hundred and ninety and odd thousands of inhabitants of the islands, in 1910, nearly eighty thousand were Japanese. The native Hawaiians come next in point of numbers and are the most interesting people to the average tourist. Though dark-skinned, they are quite different in appearance from the negro, and many of the young men and women are decidedly good-looking. ”

“ Centuries have passed; Hiku and Kawelu no longer exist on this plane of action, but whilst the [103] Hawaiian race endures will live the story of their love, and the spectral past with its warriors and gods, and its warm love and worship and song and story will ever be brilliantly reflected in their hearts. The lovers lived to a mellow old age, ever faithful to each other, blessed with a numerous offspring, from whom the kings of Hawaii claimed descent. ”

“ The Hawaiian language is a member of the widely-diffused Malayo-Polynesian group and closely resembles the dialect of the Marquesas; Hawaiians and New Zealanders, although occupying the most remote regions north and south at which the race has been found, can understand each other without much difficulty. ”

“ One of the difficulties in the clearing up of the foggy chapters of the history of the Hawaiian islands is that within the lifetime of men who were young at the close of the last century, the Hawaiian tongue became a written language, and made the traditions of savages highly colored stories, in various degrees according to ignorance, prejudice and sympathy, accepted as historical. ”

“ While human nature everywhere shares in this weakness, the tendency seems to be greater in the Hawaiian than in some other races of no higher intellectual and esthetic advancement.
Another quality of the Hawaiian character which reenforces this tendency is their spirit of communal sympathy. That is but another way of saying that they need the stimulus of the crowd, as well as of the occasion, even to make them keep step to the rhythm of their own music. In all of these points they are but an epitome of humanity. ”

“ Hawaiian poetry is far ahead of Hawaiian song in the power to move the feelings. A few words suffice the poet with which to set the picture before one’s eyes, and one picture quickly follows another; whereas the musical attachment remains weak and colorless, reminding one of the nursery pictures, in which a few skeletal lines represent the human frame. ”

“ MYTHS AND MELES
ative Hawaiians—big, generous, happy, good-looking folk, athletic and fond of music—are in physical characteristics, in temperament, in language, traditions and customs, so closely related to the Samoans, the Maoris of New Zealand, and the other inhabitants of Polynesia, that it is clear they belong to the same race. Although Hawaii is two thousand miles from any other land, the people are so much like the natives of the South Sea Islands that I do not see how the relationship can be questioned. ”

“ This excursion into the jungle of Hawaiian literature should at least impress us with the oneness of humanity; that its roots and springs of action, and ours, draw their sustenance from one and the same primeval mold; that, however far back one may travel, he will never come to a point where he can say this is “common or unclean;” ”

“ Far out in the broad island-dotted and island-fringed Pacific Ocean lies an island group known as the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands.
The brave voyager Captain Cook, who discovered these Hawaiian Islands, found living there a brown-skinned people, whose descendants live there to this day. Indeed, most of the island dwellers in the Pacific are of the brown race, which we know as one of the great divisions of the human family. ”

“ For one thing, all the peoples whose systems are characterized by the Hawaiian feature rank relatively high in the scale of civilization. No one would dream of placing the Maori culture below that of, say, the Fijians. Secondly, we have the most powerful circumstantial evidence from distinct quarters of the globe to prove that Hawaiian features develop secondarily within the Dakota scheme. Thus, among some Iroquois tribes, the tendency has developed to call the father’s as well as the mother’s sister ‘mother’. ”

“ In dealing with Hawaiian legends, it is necessary to bear in mind that many of them have a Southern origin, and valuable work is yet to be done in tracing some of them to still earlier and remoter sources, perhaps to Asia. The single version of the Maui story which I offer, is not by any means the most interesting, nor the most important of the four or five variants of this legend furnished by the Hawaiian Islands. ”

“ But during the migratory period referred to, especially marked by the coming of Nanamaoa, Pili, Paao and the Oahu and Maui Paumakuas, the Hawaiian group was not the only scene of foreign adventure among the central islands of the Pacific. The native chiefs of Hawaii, whose ancestors had reached the group more [118] than five hundred years before, were quite as adventurous and skilled in navigation as their southern invaders ”

“ Hawaii in some form of the word is the most universally used name among all the Polynesians as the place for their ancestral home.
The name of the Hawaiian Islands is taken from this mythological name. So also is the Savaii of the Samoan Islands. So also the small island [43] Hawaiki in Lake Rotorua of New Zealand, where the New Zealand legends say the ancestors of the Maoris placed the relics which they brought with them from their ancestral Hawaiki when they settled in New Zealand. In far eastern Tahiti is a place on Raiatea, the island now known as Opoa. ”

“ Those chiefs, those ancestors of the Hawaiian aristocracy, did not however, as I have endeavored to show, appear on Hawaiian soil much earlier than the period of those great migrations, [251] that national or intertribal displacement of the Polynesian race which occurred during the eleventh and twelfth centuries of our era. ”

“ As we entered, the children were singing in Hawaiian the hymn, "I want to be an Angel," and soon after "I have a Father in the Promised Land," both of them to the familiar tunes the children sing with us. It quite carried me back in association to our home Sabbath-schools. The Hawaiians love to sing, and the children sing with all their hearts, just as our children do.
Grandpa gave them a short talk, and then we went into the church, and he addressed the native congregation,—an intelligent and well-dressed body of men and women. The Hawaiians as a race are excessively fond of flowers. ”

“ That the memory of the northern Hawaii should in process of time, and after the cessation of this period of intercourse, have faded from the minds of southern chiefs and bards, or been confounded with that of the Samoan Sawaii, is natural enough; though I think it possible, were Tahitian, Tongan and Samoan legends—if yet existing—properly compared with each other and with the Hawaiian, that many proofs may yet be drawn from that side of the frequent intercourse, hostile, or friendly, of those days between the northern and southern groups of the Pacific. ”

“ The Hawaiian ear has always a delicate feeling for tone-color.
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In all our discussions and conclusions we must bear in mind that the Hawaiian did not approach song merely for its own sake; the song did not sing of itself. First in order came the poem, then the rhythm of song keeping time to the rhythm of the poetry. The Hawaiian sang not from a mere bubbling up of indefinable emotion, but because he had something to say for which he could find no other adequate form of expression. The Hawaiian boy, as he walks the woods, never whistles to keep his courage up. ”

“ In mental ability and artistic genius the Hawaiians rank high among their kindred, as their advanced governmental institutions, their assimilation of foreign culture, their industrial and artistic manufactures (kapa-printing, straw-plaiting, feather-weaving, etc.) , and their development of a literature amply demonstrate. The love of Hawaiians (and other Polynesians) for games and sports proves them not incapable of action requiring both mental and physical exertion. ”

“ Her poets never tired of depicting nature; sometimes, indeed, their art seems heaven-born. The mystery, beauty, and magnificence of the island world appealed profoundly to their souls; in them the ancient Hawaiian found the image of man the embodiment of Deity; and their myriad moods and phases were for him an inexhaustible spring of joy, refreshment, and delight.
GLOSSARY
The study of Hawaiian pronunciation is mainly a study of vowel sounds and of accent. Each written vowel represents at least two related sounds.
A (ah) has the Italian sound found in father, as in ha-le or in La-ka ”

“ Several traditions have come down the centuries referring to the existence of cannibal tribes or bands at one time or another in the Hawaiian archipelago, particularly on the islands of Oahu and Kauai, and harrowing stories of their exploits are a part of the folk-lore of the group. But in every instance the man-eaters are spoken of as foreigners, who came from a land unknown, maintained local footholds for brief seasons in mountain fastnesses, [372] and in the end were either exterminated or driven from the islands by the people for their barbarous practices. ”

“ Kua lei ahi. No Hawaiian has been found who professes to know the true meaning of these words. The translation of them here given is, therefore, purely formal.
Footnote 259: (return) Pa-ú halaká. An expression sometimes applied to the hand when used as a shield to one’s modesty; here it is said of the ocean (kai) when one’s hody is immersed in it.
Footnote 260: (return) Hana-maló. A cape that lies between Kawaihae and Kailua in north Kona.
Footnote 261: (return) Ewa lewá. ”

“ The people who settled the Hawaiian group of islands are recognized as having occupied a unique station, one so far removed from the center and vortex of Polynesian activity as to enable them to cast a highly important side-light on many of the problems yet unsolved, that are of interest to ethnologists and philologists and that still enshroud the Polynesian race. ”

“ As the old book has it, “The double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” (O ke kanáka lolilua ka manao lauwili kona mau aoao a pau.)
This is a typical Hawaiian poem of the better sort, keyed in a highly imaginative strain. The multitude of specific allusions to topographical names make it difficult to Page 54 translate it intelligently to a foreign mind. The poetical units are often so devised that each new division takes its clue from the last word of the previous verse, on the principle of “follow your leader,” a capital feature in Hawaiian poetry. ”