Hawaiians

“ The Hawaiians were barbarous, certainly, since they slew their prisoners of war, and to their gods made sacrifice of their enemies; since no tie of consanguinity save that of mother and son was a bar to wedlock; since murder was scarcely a crime, and the will of the alii-nui on every island was the supreme law; since the masses were in physical bondage to their chiefs and in mental slavery to the priesthood. Yet, with all this, they were a brave, hospitable and unselfish people. ”

“ The Hawaiians were never cannibals. The most conspicuous of their barbarisms was the sacrifice of human beings to their gods; but did not the temples of early Gaul and Saxon flow with the blood of men? and did not one of the fathers of Israel sharpen his knife to slay the body of his son upon the altar of the God of Abraham? ”

“ In 1820, the missionaries completed their long voyage and landed in Hawaii to find a country and a people without gods and without religion, ready and ripe for instruction.
But to return. Hawaii is the home of shanghaied men and women, who were induced to remain, not by a blow with a club over the head or a doped bottle of whisky, but by love. Hawaii and the Hawaiians are a land and a people loving and lovable. ”

“ His high brow denoted intellectual qualities which were usually conspicuous through their absence from the heads of his race. Hawaiians are like all the South Sea Islanders, and have a deeply rooted hatred for work. As they have embraced Christianity, heathen songs have ceased, and now, like caged birds on the polished perches of civilisation, they sit and quote, parrot-like, all that the missionaries teach them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Hawaiians are pleasing in form and feature, graceful, polite, fond of music and dancing and wreathing themselves with flowers, and possess withal a deep fund of poetry, which finds expression in their own names, the names they have bestowed upon waterfalls and valleys and green peaks and sea-cliffs, and in the meles or native songs which commemorate events of personal interest or national importance. ”

“ Hawaii Nei is a territory of the United States. There are more Japanese resident in Hawaii at the present time than are resident other nationalities, not even excepting the native Hawaiians.
The figures are eloquent. In round numbers, there are twenty-five thousand pure Hawaiians, twenty-five thousand various Caucasians, twenty-three thousand Portuguese, twenty-one thousand Chinese, fifteen thousand Filipinos, a sprinkling of many other breeds, an amazing complexity of intermingled breeds, and ninety thousand Japanese. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Natives of every well-known country reside there, and trading vessels or warships from America and the leading countries of Europe are frequently in port. A remarkable trait of these foreign-born or naturalized Hawaiians is that interest in their native land seems only intensified by their distant residence. The better Hawaiians they are, the better Americans, English, French, or Germans they are. ”

“ The conservatives were overthrown, and the iconoclasts went through the islands smashing and burning the idols, or tossing them into the sea. Thus the Hawaiians were a people without a religion. At this juncture of affairs Christian missionaries from the United States arrived. More than ten years before, native Hawaiians, serving as sailors on American ships, had stirred the generous impulses of New England, and one of the first missionary companies sent out by the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, seven married men with their wives, reached Honolulu April 4, 1820. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To this vigorous sport the Hawaiians are exceedingly partial. They are almost to the manner born, for from their earliest childhood they live an amphibious life, and never seem happier than when they are diving, swimming, bathing, or playing tricks in the bright emerald waters that wash the smiling shores of their favoured [Pg 366] isle, or in those of the pleasant river that flows by the groves and gardens of Hilo.
On a sunny afternoon half the population of the latter town may be seen "disporting themselves in, upon, and beneath the water." ”

“ To acknowledge the 100th anniversary of the January 17, 1893 overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, and to offer an apology to Native Hawaiians on behalf of the United States for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Whereas, prior to the arrival of the first Europeans in 1778, the Native Hawaiian people lived in a highly organized, self-sufficient, subsistent social system based on communal land tenure with a sophisticated language, culture, and religion ”

“ Kalaua turned away with an angry gesture. "Better or worse, they shall never camp there!" he exclaimed with warmth. "The Hawaiians are masters still in Hawaii. Whether they will or whether they won't, the Englishmen shall move their tents from that peak there. We will never allow them to occupy that spot. We will make them shift from the Platform of Observation." ”

“ All Hawaiians envy and are ready to compete with him for this odd chance of an occasional fee for some hours’ talking; he cannot find one to earn a certain hire under the sun in his plantation, and the work is all transacted by immigrant Chinese. One cannot but be reminded of the love of the French middle class for office work; but in Hawaii, it is the race in bulk that shrinks from manly occupation. ”

“ These patriots set up a provisional government and made repeated application for admission to the United States, the tender of the islands being finally accepted by a joint vote of Congress on July 7, 1898, since which time the Hawaiian Islands have been a part of our country.
The manners and customs of the native Hawaiians are most interesting, but space forbids a description of them here. Their religion was a gross form of idolatry, with many gods. Human sacrifice was freely practiced. They deified dead chiefs and worshiped their bones. ”

“ In Honolulu the death-rate per thousand in 1900 for Hawaiians was 42.81, which is abnormally large. These tendencies therefore indicate the ultimate extinction of the race. Notwithstanding the disposition shown by the Hawaiians freely to intermingle with other races, there is a remarkably small number of ‘part Hawaiians,’ as will be seen in the table below. Marriages between natives and Chinese are common, but the Japanese have shown an aversion to mixed marriages. The decrease in the native population and their disinclination to work made necessary the importation of labor. ”

“ The Hawaiians believed in a subterranean world of the dead divided into two regions, in the upper of which Wakea reigned; in the lower, Milu. Those who had not been sufficiently religious "must lie under the spreading Kou trees of Milu's world, drink its waters and eat lizards and butterflies for food." Traditional points from which the soul took its leap into this underworld are to be found at the northern point of Hawaii, the west end of Maui, the south and the northwest points of Oahu, and, most famous of all, at the mouth of the great Waipio Valley on Hawaii. ”

“ But the worship of the Hawaiians was not confined to Kane, Ku, Lono and Pele. Heiaus were erected to the war-gods of the kings, and great sacrifices were frequently made to them, generally of human beings, preceding, during, and following campaigns and battles. Humbler temples were also maintained to fish, shark, lizard and other gods, where sacrifices of fish and fruits were offered.
To the superstitious masses the land abounded in gnomes and fairies, and the waters in nymphs and monsters, whose caprices are themes of a bountiful store of folk-lore. ”

“ With such primitive implements they terraced their fields, irrigated the soil, and raised crops of taro, bananas, yams, sweet potatoes, and sugar-cane.
Most of the houses of primitive Hawaiians were small, but the grass houses of the chiefs were sometimes seventy feet long. They were all simply a framework of poles thatched with leaves or the long grass of the Islands. Inside, the few rude belongings—mats, calabashes, gourds, and baskets for fish—were all in strange contrast to the modern luxury which many of [Pg 34] their descendants enjoy to-day. ”

“ The American eagle, from its seat in the North, overshadows with guardian pinions the American continent.
In the case of Hawaii the American Republic seems likely to depart from its traditional policy of acquiring no territory beyond American bounds. The Hawaiian Islands were won from barbarism by the efforts and sacrifices of American missionaries and their descendants. A republic has been established there, and intelligent Hawaiians look hopefully forward to a common future with the United States. ”

“ As to the mask, the less said about that the better. People won't believe you: they'll say it's impossible. I believe you, because I understand Hawaiians down to the very ground: I know how skin-deep their civilization goes: but folks who don't, will think you're romancing. Besides, Kalaua wouldn't like it, of course. It's bad form to be a heathen in Hawaii. Whatever the natives may be in their own hearts, in their outer lives they prefer to be considered civilized Christians. There's nothing riles your true-born Hawaiian like a public imputation of cannibalism or heathendom. ”

“ Among the subjects presented are the origin of the Hawaiian race, the Hawaiians as laborers, native arts, manners and customs, social life, natural resources, volcanoes, the missionary movement, literature, and immigration. ”

“ The Hawaiians are naturally indolent, voluptuous and deceitful, more imbecile than vicious, destitute of morality, preserving of late years, the form, not from principle, but fear of exposure, and subsequent punishment. ”

“ And now, borne by the soft breath of the tropics, let us be wafted to the island of Hawaii, and backward over a misty bridge of historic meles to the reign of Kealiiokoloa, a son of Umi and grandson of the famed Liloa. It was during his brief reign—extending, perhaps, from 1520 to 1530—that for a second time a white face was seen by the Hawaiians. A Spanish vessel from the Moluccas was driven upon the reefs of Keei, in the district of Kona, and completely destroyed. But two persons were saved from the wreck—the captain and his sister. They were first thought to be gods by the simple islanders ”

“ Despite the denials of Hawaiians that their ancestors ever ate the flesh of men, it is admitted that a large company of cannibals, strong, dark, tattooed, and speaking a strange language, were storm-blown to Kauai in the seventeenth century. ”

“ I believe Nannie was as strong and vigorous and enjoyed her outing as much as she did forty years before.
The island has a population of about one hundred and fifty thousand, only seven per cent native Americans, the rest Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese. The original Hawaiians have practically disappeared from the earth as a result of so-called missionary efforts to Christianize them by presenting them with a Bible with the right hand and a bottle of rum with the left. ”

“ We are thus again able to summarize the data in terms of historical connection. The assumption may be made that the ancient Polynesian terminology was that of Hawaii and New Zealand, which was modified where the Polynesians came into contact with diverse populations, and is shared by populations whose territory was presumably traversed by the Hawaiians. Dr. Rivers also states that the Burmese, Karen, Chinese and Japanese systems conform to the Hawaiian principle. He seems to depend on Morgan’s statement of the case, which may require revision. ”

“ We all dismounted and took a lunch, then, with some leather, Mr. Paris bound up the broken place firmly, and we went on our way rejoicing that no worse thing had befallen us; for we were far away from any house, and had still half of our journey to perform, and this being the only carriage on that part of the island, no native knew how to repair it. On reaching the sea-shore, we passed through a grove of cocoa-nut trees. Here we drank some delicious cocoa-nut milk, and quite a group of natives gathered about us, and shook hands. The Hawaiians as a race are very fond of shaking hands. ”

“ The nuts strung on the midrib of a coconut leaf formed the Hawaiians’ only torch. The oil of the nut, expressed under pressure, is a valuable paint oil.
For the drinking we were given choice of a mild beer and “pop” (soda-water of various colors) , and coconut water in the shell; and for dessert, the not unpleasant anti-climax of good old vanilla ice cream to remind us that Hawaii has long been in the grasp of Jack’s “inevitable white man.”
Next came the dancing. Mr. Moore had promised us a hula; but a hula, except by professional dancers, is more easily promised than delivered. ”