The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead Volume Ii Part 40

-- 2. _The Natives and their Mode of Life_

The natives of the Sandwich Islands are typical Polynesians. In general they are rather above the middle stature, well formed, with fine muscular limbs, open countenances, and features frequently resembling those of Europeans. The forehead is usually well developed, the lips thick, and the nostrils full, without any flatness or spreading of the nose. The complexion is tawny or olive in hue, but sometimes reddish brown. The hair is black or brown and occasionally fair or rather ruddy in colour, in texture it is strong, smooth, and sometimes curly. The gait is graceful and even stately. But in these islands, as in other parts of Polynesia, there is a conspicuous difference between the chiefs and the commoners, the superiority being altogether on the side of the chiefs. "The n.o.bles of the land," says Stewart, "are so strongly marked by their external appearance, as at all times to be easily distinguishable from the common people. They seem, indeed, in size and stature to be almost a distinct race. They are all large in their frame, and often excessively corpulent, while the common people are scarce of the ordinary height of Europeans, and of a thin rather than full habit."[5] And the difference between the two ranks is as obvious in their walk and general deportment as in their stature and size, the n.o.bles bearing themselves with a natural dignity and grace which are wanting in their social inferiors. Yet there seems to be no reason to suppose that they belong to a different race from the commoners; the greater care taken of them in childhood, their better living, s.e.xual selection, and the influence of heredity appear sufficient to account for their physical superiority. The women are well built and "beautiful as ancient statues" with a sweet and engaging expression of countenance.

Yet on the whole the Hawaiians are judged to be physically inferior both to the Tahitians and to the Marquesans; according to Captain King, they are rather darker than the Tahitians, and not altogether so handsome a people. On the other hand they are said to be more intelligent than either the Tahitians or the Marquesans. Captain King describes them as of a mild and affectionate disposition, equally remote from the extreme levity and fickleness of the Tahitians, and from the distant gravity and reserve of the Tongans.[6] They practised tattooing much less than many other Polynesians, but their faces, hands, arms, and the forepart of their bodies were often tattooed with a variety of patterns.[7]

[5] C. S. Stewart, _Residence in the Sandwich Islands_, p. 104.

[6] J. Cook, _Voyages_, vii. 112 _sq._, 115 _sq._; U. Lisiansky, _Voyage round the World_, pp. 123 _sq._; L. de Freycinet, _Voyage autour du Monde, Historique_, ii. Deuxieme partie (Paris, 1839), p. 570; W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 23; C. S.

Stewart, _Residence in the Sandwich Islands_, pp. 104, 106; J.

J. Jarves, _op. cit._ pp. 77 _sqq._; J. Remy, _op. cit._ pp.

x.x.xvii _sq._; F. D. Bennett, _op. cit._ i. 209. The last of these writers speaks in unfavourable terms of the personal appearance of the women, whom he found less handsome than the men and very inferior to the women of the Society Islands.

[7] J. Cook, _Voyages_, vi. 213 _sq._, vii. 121; W. Ellis, _op.

cit._ iv. 23.

The staple food of the Hawaiians consists of taro (_kalo_), sweet potatoes, and fish, but above all of taro. That root (_Arum_ or _Caladium esculentum_) is to the Hawaiians what bread-fruit is to the Tahitians, and its cultivation is their most important agricultural industry. It is grown wherever there is water or a marsh, and it is even planted on some arid heights in the island of Hawaii, where it yields excellent crops. Artificial irrigation was practised and even regulated by law or custom in the old days; for it was a rule that water should be conducted over every plantation twice a week in general, and once a week during the dry season. The bread-fruit tree is not so common, and its fruit not so much prized, as in the Marquesas and Tahiti. The natives grew sweet potatoes even before the arrival of Europeans. Yams are found wild, but are hardly eaten except in times of scarcity. There are several sorts of bananas; the fruit for the most part is better cooked than raw. In the old days the cooking was done in the ordinary native ovens, consisting of holes in the ground lined with stones which were heated with fire. After being baked in an oven the roots of the taro are mashed and diluted with water so as to form a paste or pudding called _poe_ or _poi_, which is sometimes eaten sweet but is more generally put aside till it has fermented, in which condition it is preferred by the natives. It is a highly nutritious substance, and though some Europeans complain of the sourness of taro pudding, others find it not unpalatable. Fish used to be generally eaten raw, seasoned with brine or sea-water. But they also commonly salt their fish, not for the sake of preserving it for a season of scarcity, but because they prefer the taste. They construct artificial fish-ponds, into which they let young fish from the sea, princ.i.p.ally the fry of the grey mullet, of which the chiefs are particularly fond. Every chief has, or used to have, his own fish-pond. The natives are very skilful fishermen. In the old days they made a great variety of fish-hooks out of mother-of-pearl and tortoise sh.e.l.l as well as out of bone, and these they dragged by means of lines behind their canoes, and so caught bonettas, dolphins, and albicores. They took prodigious numbers of flying fish in nets. At the time when the islands were discovered by Captain Cook, the natives possessed pigs and dogs. The flesh of both of these animals was eaten, but only by persons of higher rank. Fowls were also bred and eaten, but they were not very common, and their flesh was not very much esteemed.

The sugar-cane was indigenous in the islands, and the people ate it as a fruit; along with bananas and plantains it occupied a considerable portion of every plantation. Captain Cook found the natives skilful husbandmen, but thought that with a more extensive system of agriculture, the islands could have supported three times the number of the existing inhabitants.[8] He remarked that the chiefs were much addicted to the drinking of kava, and he attributed some of the cutaneous and other diseases from which they suffered to an immoderate use of what he calls the pernicious drug.[9]

[8] J. Cook, _Voyages_, vi. 215 _sq._, 219, 224 _sq._, vii. 126 _sq._; U. Lisiansky, _Voyage round the World_, p. 126; Archibald Campbell, _Voyage round the World_ (Edinburgh, 1816), pp.

161-63, 182 _sq._, 194-197; W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 61, 215 _sq._, 420 (as to irrigation); C. S. Stewart, _Residence in the Sandwich Islands_, pp. 111-113; Tyerman and Bennet, _op. cit._ i. 412, 426, 428, 430, 472; O. von Kotzebue, _Neue Reise um die Welt_ (Weimar, 1830), ii. 96; J. J. Jarves, _op. cit._ pp. 68 _sq._; J. Remy, _op. cit._ pp. xxiv _sq._, xliii; F. D. Bennett, _Narrative of a Whaling Voyage round the World_, i. 213 _sqq._ As to the system of irrigating the taro fields, see especially O. von Kotzebue, _Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea and Beering's Straits_ (London, 1821), i. 340 _sq._

[9] J. Cook, _Voyages_, vii. 113 _sq._

-- 3. _Houses, Mechanical Arts_

Captain King observed that in some respects the natives of the Sandwich Islands approached nearer in their manners and customs to the Maoris of New Zealand than to their less distant neighbours of the Society and Friendly Islands, the Tahitians and the Tongans. In nothing, he says, is this more observable than in their method of living together in small towns or villages, containing from about one hundred to two hundred houses, built pretty close together, without any order, and with a winding path leading through them. They were generally flanked towards the sea with loose detached walls, intended for shelter and defence.[10]

The shape of the houses was very simple. They were oblong with very high thatched roofs, so that externally they resembled the top of hay-stacks or rather barns with the thatched roof sloping down steeply to two very low sides, and with gable ends to match. The entrance, placed indifferently in one of the sides or ends, was an oblong hole, so low that one had rather to creep than walk in, and often shut by a board of planks fastened together, which served as a door. No light entered the house but by this opening, for there were no windows. Internally every house consisted of a single room without part.i.tions. In spite of the extreme simplicity of their structure, the houses were kept very clean; the floors were covered with a large quant.i.ty of dried gra.s.s, over which they spread mats to sit and sleep upon. At one end stood a kind of bench about three feet high, on which were kept the household utensils. These consisted merely of a few wooden bowls and trenchers, together with gourd-sh.e.l.ls, serving either as bottles or baskets. The houses varied in size with the wealth or rank of the owners. Those of the poor were mere hovels, which resembled the sties and kennels of pigs and dogs rather than the abodes of men. The houses of the chiefs were generally large and commodious by comparison, some forty to sixty feet long by twenty or thirty feet broad, and eighteen or twenty feet high at the peak of the roof. Chiefs had always a separate eating-house, and even people of the lower ranks had one such house to every six or seven families for the men. The women were forbidden to eat in company with the men and even to enter the eating-house during the meals; they ate in the same houses in which they slept. The houses of the chiefs were enclosed in large yards, and sometimes stood on stone platforms, which rendered them more comfortable.[11]

[10] J. Cook, vii. 125.

[11] J. Cook, _Voyages_, vi. 214 _sq._; U. Lisiansky, _Voyage round the World_, p. 127; A. Campbell, _Voyage round the World_, pp. 180-182; C. S. Stewart, _Residence in the Sandwich Islands_, p. 107; W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 320-322; Tyerman and Bennet, _op. cit._ i. 371 _sq._; J. J. Jarves, _op. cit._ pp. 67 _sq._

In the mechanical arts the Hawaiians displayed a considerable degree of ingenuity and skill. While the men built the houses and canoes and fas.h.i.+oned wooden dishes and bowls, the women undertook the manufacture of bark-cloth (_kapa_) and mats. Bark-cloth was made in the usual way from the bark of the paper-mulberry, which was beaten out with grooved mallets. The cloth was dyed a variety of colours, and patterns at once intricate and elegant were stamped on it and stained in different tints.

The mats were woven or braided by hand without the use of any frame or instrument. The materials were rushes or palm-leaves; the mats made of palm-leaves were much the more durable and therefore the more valuable.

The coa.r.s.er and plainer were spread on the floor to sleep on; the finer were of white colour with red stripes, rhombuses, and other figures interwoven on one side. Among the most curious specimens of native carving were the wooden bowls in which the chiefs drank kava. They were perfectly round, beautifully polished, and supported on three or four small human figures in various att.i.tudes. These figures were accurately proportioned and neatly finished; even the anatomy of the muscles strained to support the weight were well expressed. The fis.h.i.+ng-hooks made by the men, especially the large hooks made to catch shark, are described by Captain Cook as really astonis.h.i.+ng for their strength and neatness; he found them on trial much superior to his own.[12]

[12] J. Cook, _Voyages_, vi. 218 _sq._, vii. 133-135; L. de Freycinet, _Voyage autour du Monde, Historique_, ii. 611 _sq._; A. Campbell, _Voyage round the World_, pp. 192-195; W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 109-113; C. S. Stewart, _Residence in the Sandwich Islands_, pp. 114-116; J. J. Jarves, _op. cit._ pp. 66 _sq._

The mechanical skill of these people was all the more remarkable because of the extreme rudeness and simplicity of the tools with which they worked. Their chief implement was an adze made of a black or clay-coloured volcanic stone and polished by constant friction with pumice-stone in water. They had also small instruments made each of a single shark's tooth, some of which were fixed to the forepart of a dog's jawbone and others to a thin wooden handle of the same shape.

These served as knives, and pieces of coral were used as files. Captain Cook found the natives in possession of two iron tools, one of them a piece of iron hoop, and the other an edge-tool, perhaps the point of a broadsword. These they could only have procured from a European vessel or from a wreck drifted on their coast. No mines of any kind are known to exist in the islands.[13]

[13] J. Cook, _Voyages_, vi. 220-224; A. Campbell, _op. cit._ p.

198; W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 322; O. von Kotzebue, _Neue Reise um die Welt_, ii. 97 (as to the kava bowls); J. J. Jarves, _op.

cit._ p. 66. As to the absence of mines in the Hawaiian Islands, see J. Remy, _op. cit._ p. xvi.

Their weapons of war included spears, javelins, daggers, and clubs, all of them made of wood. They also slung stones with deadly effect. But they had no defensive armour; for the war-cloaks and wicker-work helmets, surmounted with lofty crests and decked with the tail feathers of the tropic bird, while they heightened the imposing and martial appearance of the wearers, must have proved rather enc.u.mbrances than protections. Captain Cook found the natives in possession of bows and arrows, but from their scarcity and the slenderness of their make he inferred that the Hawaiians, like other Polynesians, never used them in battle.[14]

[14] J. Cook, _Voyages_, vi. 227 _sq._, vii. 136 _sq._; W.

Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 156 _sq._; J. J. Jarves, _op. cit._ pp. 56 _sq._

-- 4. _Government, Social Ranks, Taboo_

The government of the Hawaiian Islands was an absolute monarchy or despotism; all rights of power and property vested in the king, whose will and power alone were law, though in important matters he was to a certain extent guided by the opinion of the chiefs in council. The rank of the king and the chiefs was hereditary, descending from father to son; but the appointment to all offices of authority and dignity was made by the king alone. Nevertheless posts of honour, influence, and emolument often continued in the same family for many generations. Nor were hereditary rank and authority confined to men; they were inherited also by women. According to tradition, several of the islands had been once or twice under the government of a queen. The king was supported by an annual tribute paid by all the islands at different periods according to his directions. It comprised both the natural produce of the country and manufactured articles. But besides the regular tribute the king was at liberty to levy any additional tax he might please, and even to seize and appropriate any personal possessions of a chief or other subject.

Not infrequently the whole crop of a plantation was thus carried off by his retainers without the least apology or compensation.[15] However, the government of the whole Hawaiian archipelago by a single monarch was a comparatively modern innovation. Down to nearly the end of the eighteenth century the different islands were independent of each other and governed by separate kings, who were often at war one with the other; indeed there were sometimes several independent kingdoms within the same island. But towards the close of the eighteenth century an energetic and able king of Hawaii, by name Kamehameha (Tamehameha), succeeded in extending his sway by conquest over the whole archipelago, and at his death in 1819 he bequeathed the undivided monarchy to his successors.[16]

[15] U. Lisiansky, _op. cit._ pp. 116 _sq._; A. Campbell, _op.

cit._ pp. 169 _sq._; W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 411 _sq._; C. S.

Stewart, _Residence in the Sandwich Islands_, p. 102; Tyerman and Bennet, _op. cit._ i. 380; J. J. Jarves, _op. cit._ pp. 30 _sqq._ According to Jarves (_op. cit._ p. 33), "Rank was hereditary, and descended chiefly from the females, who frequently held the reins of government in their own right. This custom originated in the great license existing between the s.e.xes; no child, with certainty, being able to designate his father, while no mistake could be made in regard to the mother."

[16] C. S. Stewart, _Residence in the Sandwich Islands_, p. 101; J. J. Jarves, _op. cit._ p. 30; J. Remy, _op. cit._ pp. lxi _sq._; _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 9th Edition, xi. 528.

The whole body of chiefs fell into three cla.s.ses or ranks. The first included the royal family and all who were intimately connected with it.

The second included such as held hereditary offices of power or governors.h.i.+ps of islands, after the time when the whole archipelago was united in a single kingdom. The third cla.s.s embraced the rulers of districts, the headmen of villages, and all inferior chiefs. The members of the first two cla.s.ses were usually called "high chiefs"; they were few in number and closely related both by blood and marriage. The members of the third cla.s.s were known as "small" or "low" chiefs. They were by far the most numerous body of chiefs in any island, and were generally called _haku aina_ or landowners, though strictly speaking the king was acknowledged in every island as the supreme lord and proprietor of the soil by hereditary right or the law of conquest. When Kamehameha had subdued the greater part of the islands, he distributed them among his favourite chiefs and warriors on condition of their rendering him not only military service, but a certain proportion of the produce of their lands. In this he appears to have followed the ancient practice invariably observed on the conquest of an island.[17] For "from the earliest periods of Hawaiian history, the tenure of lands has been, in most respects, feudal. The origin of the fiefs was the same as in the northern nations of Europe. Any chieftain who could collect a sufficient number of followers to conquer a district, or an island, and had succeeded in his object, proceeded to divide the spoils, or 'cut up the land,' as the natives termed it. The king, or princ.i.p.al chief, made his choice from the best of the lands. Afterwards the remaining part of the conquered territory was distributed among the leaders, and these again subdivided their shares to others, who became va.s.sals, owing fealty to the sovereigns of the fee. The king placed some of his own particular servants on his portion as his agents, to superintend the cultivation.

The original occupants who were on the land, usually remained under their new conqueror, and by them the lands were cultivated, and rent or taxes paid."[18]

[17] C. S. Stewart, _op. cit._ p. 97; W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv.

412 _sq._, 414; J. J. Jarves, _op. cit._ p. 33. Compare J. Cook, _Voyages_, vii. 137 _sqq._

[18] Ch. Wilkes, _op. cit._ iv. 34.

Below the chiefs or n.o.bles were the commoners, who included small farmers, fishermen, mechanics, such as house-builders and canoe-builders, musicians and dancers, in short, all the labouring cla.s.ses, whether they worked for a chief or farmer or cultivated patches of land for their own benefit.[19] According to one account, "the common people are generally considered as attached to the soil, and are transferred with the land from one chief to another."[20] But this statement is contradicted by an earlier and perhaps better-informed writer, who spent some thirteen months in Oahu, while the islands were still independent and before the conversion of the people to Christianity. He tells us that commoners were not slaves nor attached to the soil, but at liberty to change masters when they thought proper.[21]

On this subject Captain King observes: "How far the property of the lower cla.s.s is secured against the rapacity and despotism of the great chiefs, I cannot say, but it should seem that it is sufficiently protected against private theft, or mutual depredation; for not only their plantations, which are spread over the whole country, but also their houses, their hogs, and their cloth, were left unguarded, without the smallest apprehensions. I have already remarked, that they not only separate their possessions by walls in the plain country, but that, in the woods likewise, wherever the horse-plantains grow, they make use of small white flags in the same manner, and for the same purpose of discriminating property, as they do bunches of leaves at Otaheite. All which circ.u.mstances, if they do not amount to proofs, are strong indications that the power of the chiefs, where property is concerned, is not arbitrary, but at least so far circ.u.mscribed and ascertained, as to make it worth the while for the inferior orders to cultivate the soil, and to occupy their possessions distinct from each other."[22] Yet on the other hand we are told by later writers that "in fact, the condition of the common people is that of slaves; they hold nothing which may not be taken from them by the strong hand of arbitrary power, whether exercised by the sovereign or a petty chief." On one occasion the writers saw nearly two thousand persons, laden with f.a.ggots of sandal-wood, coming down from the mountains to deposit their burdens in the royal store-houses, and then departing to their homes, weary with their unpaid labours, yet without a murmur at their bondage.[23] When at last, through contact with civilisation, they had learned to utter their grievances, they complained that "the people was crushed by the numerous forced labours and contributions of every sort exacted from them by the chiefs. It was, indeed, very hard to furnish the chiefs, on every requisition, with pigs, food, and all the good things which the folk possessed, and to see the great despoiling the humble. In truth, the people worked for the chiefs incessantly, they performed every kind of painful task, and they paid the chiefs all the taxes which it pleased them to demand."[24]

[19] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 413.

[20] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 417. Compare J. J. Jarves, _op.

cit._ p. 34.

[21] A. Campbell, _op. cit._ p. 169. As to the length of Campbell's residence in Wahoo (Oahu), see _id._, p. 153 note.

The date of his residence was 1809-1810. Compare O. von Kotzebue, _Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea and Beering's Straits_ (London, 1821), iii. 246: "The people are almost subject to the arbitrary will of the lord, but there are no slaves or va.s.sals (_glebae adscripti_). The peasant and the labourer may go wherever they please. The man is free, he may be killed, but not sold and not detained."

[22] J. Cook, _Voyages_, vii. 141 _sq._

[23] Tyerman and Bennet, _op. cit._ i. 415.

[24] J. Remy, _op. cit._ p. 167.

Certainly commoners were bound to pay great outward marks of deference to their social superiors, the chiefs, or n.o.bles. Indeed, the respect almost amounted to adoration, for they were on no occasion allowed to touch their persons, but prostrated themselves before them, and might not enter their houses without first receiving permission.[25] Above all, the system of taboo or _kapu_, as it was called in the Hawaiian dialect,[26] oppressed the common people and tended to keep them in a state of abject subjection to the n.o.bles; for the prescriptions of the system were numerous and vexatious, and the penalty for breaches of them was death. If the shadow of a subject fell on a chief, the subject was put to death; if he robed himself in the cloth or a.s.sumed the girdle of a chief, he was put to death; if he climbed on the wall of a chief's courtyard, he was put to death; if he stood upright instead of prostrating himself when a vessel of water was brought for the chief to wash with or his garments to wear, he was put to death; if he stepped on the shadow of a chief's house with his head smeared with white clay, or decked with a garland of flowers, or merely wetted with water, he was put to death; if he slept with his wife on a taboo day, he was put to death; if he made a noise during public prayers, he was put to death; if a woman ate pig, or coco-nuts, or bananas, or lobster, or the fish called _ulua_, she was put to death; if she went in a canoe on a taboo day, she was put to death; if husband and wife ate together, they were both put to death.[27]

[25] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 413; J. J. Jarves, _op. cit._ pp.

33 _sq._ Compare J. Cook, _Voyages_, vii. 137.

[26] In the Hawaiian dialect the ordinary Polynesian T is p.r.o.nounced K, and the Tongan B is p.r.o.nounced P. Hence the Tongan _taboo_ becomes in Hawaiian _kapoo_ (_kapu_). See E. Tregear, _Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary_, p. xxiii.

[27] J. Remy, _op. cit._ pp. 159, 161, 167.