All implements of war or industry known to the early Hawaiians were
made either of wood, stone, or bone, as the islands are destitute
of metals; but with these rude helps they laid up hewn-stone walls,
felled trees, made canoes and barges, manufactured cloths and cordage,
fashioned weapons, constructed dwellings and temples, roads and
fish-ponds, and tilled the soil. They had axes, adzes and hammers of
stone, spades of wood, knives of flint and ivory, needles of thorn
and bone, and spears and daggers of hardened wood. They wove mats
for sails and other purposes, and from the inner bark of the paper
mulberry-tree beat out a fine, thin cloth called kapa, which they
ornamented with colors and figures.
Their food was the flesh of swine, dogs and fowls; fish, and almost
everything living in the sea; taro, sweet potatoes and yams, and
fruits, berries and edible sea-weed of various kinds. Poi, the favorite
food of all classes, was a slightly fermented paste made of cooked
and pounded taro, a large bulbous root, in taste resembling an Indian
turnip. They made a stupefying beverage by chewing the awa root,
and from the sweet root of the ti plant fermented an intoxicating
drink. The soft parts of the sugar-cane were eaten, but, with the
exception of the manufacture of a beer called uiuia, no other use
seems to have been made of it. Their food, wrapped in ti leaves,
was usually cooked in heated and covered pits in the earth. Their
household vessels were shells, gourd calabashes of various shapes
and sizes, and platters and other containers made of wood.
The dress of the ancient Hawaiian was scant, simple and cool. The
principal, and generally the only, garment of the male was the maro,
a narrow cloth fastened around the loins. To this was sometimes
added, among the masses, a kihei, or cloth thrown loosely over the
shoulders. The females wore a pau, or skirt of invariably five
thicknesses of kapa, fastened around the waist and extending to
the knees. When the weather was cool a short mantle was sometimes
added. Ordinarily the heads of both sexes were without coverings,
and in rare instances they wore kamaas, or sandals of ti or pandanus
leaves.
With the maro, which was common to the males of all ranks, the king
on state occasions wore the royal mamo, a mantle reaching to the
ankles, and made of the yellow feathers of a little sea-bird called
the mamo. When it is mentioned that but a single yellow feather
is found under each wing of the mamo, and that tens of thousands,
perhaps, entered into the fabrication of a single mantle, some idea
of the value of such a garment may be gathered. A few of these royal
cloaks are still in existence, one of which was worn by King Kalakaua
during the ceremonies of his late coronation. Pure yellow was the
royal color. The shorter capes or mantles of the chiefs were of yellow
feathers mixed with red. The color of the priests and gods was red.
The ornaments of the nobility consisted of head-dresses of feathers,
palaoas, or charms of bone suspended from the neck, and necklaces and
bracelets of shells, teeth and other materials. Many of them were
tattooed on the face, thighs and breast, but the practice was not
universal. Flowers were in general use as ornaments, and at feasts,
festivals and other gatherings garlands of fragrant leaves and blossoms
crowned the heads and encircled the necks of all. This is among the
beautiful customs still retained by the Hawaiians.
The dwellings of the masses were constructed of upright posts planted
in the ground, with cross-beams and rafters, and roofs and sides
of woven twigs and branches thatched with leaves. The houses of
the nobility were larger, stronger and more pretentious, and were
frequently surrounded by broad verandas. It was a custom to locate
dwellings so that the main entrance would face the east, the home
of Kane. The opposite entrance looked toward Kahiki, the land from
which Wakea came.
The homes of well-conditioned Hawaiians consisted of no less than six
separate dwellings or apartments: 1st, the heiau, or idol-house; 2d,
the mua, or eating-house of the males, which females were not allowed
to enter; 3d, the hale-noa, or house of the women, which men could not
enter; 4th, the hale-aina, or eating-house of the wife; 5th, the kua,
or wife's working-house; and 6th, the hale-pea, or retiring-house or
nursery of the wife. The poorer classes followed these regulations
so far as their means would admit, but screens usually took the place
of separate dwellings or definite apartments.
When war was declared or invasion threatened, messengers, called
lunapais, were despatched by the king to his subject chiefs,
who promptly responded in warriors, canoes, or whatever else was
demanded. A regular line-of-battle consisted of a centre and right and
left wings, and marked military genius was sometimes displayed in the
handling of armies. Sea-battles, where hundreds, sometimes thousands,
of war-canoes met in hostile shock, were common, and usually resulted
in great loss of life. Truces and terms of peace were ordinarily
respected, but few prisoners were spared except for sacrifice.
The weapons of the islanders were spears about twenty feet in length,
javelins, war-clubs, stone axes, rude halberds, knives, daggers and
slings. The slings were made either of cocoa fibre or human hair. The
stones thrown were sometimes a pound or more in weight, and were
delivered with great force and accuracy. The spears were sometimes
thrown, while the javelins were reserved for closer encounter. Shields
were unknown. Hostile missiles were either dodged, caught in the hands,
or dexterously warded. The chiefs frequently wore feather helmets in
battle, but the person was without protection.
The athletic sports and games of the people were numerous. The muscular
pastimes consisted in part of contests in running, jumping, boxing,
wrestling, swimming, diving, canoe-racing and surf-riding. Rolling
round stone disks and throwing darts along a prepared channel was
a favorite sport; but the most exciting was the holua contest, in
which two or more might engage. On long, light and narrow sledges the
contestants, lying prone, dashed down long and steep declivities, the
victory being with the one who first reached the bottom. The goddess
Pele enjoyed the game, and frequently engaged in it. But she was a
dangerous contestant. On being beaten by Kahavari, a chief of Puna,
she drove him from the district with a stream of lava. Sham battles
and spear and stone throwing were also popular exercises.
Among the in-door games were konane, kilu, puhenehene, punipiki,
and hiua. Konane resembled the English game of draughts. Puhenehene
consisted of the adroit hiding by one of the players of a small object
under one of several mats in the midst of the party of contestants,
and the designation of its place of concealment by the others. Kilu was
a game somewhat similar, accompanied by singing. Punipiki was something
like the game of "fox and geese," and hiua was played on a board with
four squares. These were the most ancient of Hawaiian household games.
The musical instruments of the islanders were few and simple. They
consisted of pahus, or drums, of various sizes; the ohe, a bamboo
flute; the hokio, a rude clarionet; a nasal flageolet, and a reed
instrument played by the aid of the voice. To these were added, on
special occasions, castanets and dry gourds containing pebbles, which
were used to mark the time of chants and other music. They had many
varieties of dances, or hulas, all of which were more or less graceful,
and a few of which were coarse and licentious. Bands of hula dancers,
male and female, were among the retainers of the mois and prominent
chiefs, and their services were required on every festive occasion.
The mourning customs of the people were peculiar. For days they
wailed and feasted together over a dead relative or friend, frequently
knocking out one or more teeth, shaving portions of their heads and
beards, and tearing their flesh and clothes. But their wildest displays
of grief were on the death of their kings and governing chiefs. During
a royal mourning season, which sometimes continued for weeks, the
people indulged in an unrestrained saturnalia of recklessness and
license. Every law was openly violated, every conceivable crime
committed. The excuse was--and the authorities were compelled to
accept it--that grief had temporarily unseated the popular reason,
and they were not responsible for their misdemeanors.
The masses buried their dead or deposited the bodies in caves, but
the bones of the kings were otherwise disposed of. There were royal
burial-places--one at Honaunau, on the island of Hawaii, and another,
called Iao, on Maui--and the tombs of many of the ancient mois and
ruling chiefs were in one or the other of those sacred spots; but they
probably contained but few royal bones. In the fear that the bones of
the mois and distinguished chiefs might fall into the hands of their
enemies and be used for fish-hooks, arrow-points for shooting mice, and
other debasing purposes, they were usually destroyed or hidden. Some
were weighted and thrown into the sea, and others, after the flesh had
been removed from them and burned, were secreted in mountain caves. The
hearts of the kings of the island of Hawaii were frequently thrown into
the crater of Kilauea as an offering to Pele. The bones of the first
Kamehameha were so well secreted in some cave in Kona that they have
not yet been found, and the bones of Kualii, a celebrated Oahuan king
of the seventeenth century, were reduced to powder, mingled with poi,
and at the funeral feast fed to a hundred unsuspecting chiefs.
The ancient Hawaiians divided the year into twelve months of thirty
days each. The days of the month were named, not numbered. As this gave
but three hundred and sixty days to their year, they added and gave to
their god Lono in feasting and festivity the number of days required
to complete the sidereal year, which was regulated by the rising of
the Pleiades. The new year began with the winter solstice. They also
reckoned by lunar months in the regulation of their monthly feasts. The
year was divided into two seasons--the rainy and the dry--and the
day into three general parts, morning, noon and night. The first,
middle and after parts of the night were also designated.
As elsewhere mentioned, they had names for the five principal planets,
which they called "the wandering stars," and for a number of heavenly
groups and constellations. It was this knowledge of the heavens that
enabled them to navigate the ocean in their frail canoes.
In counting, the Hawaiians reckoned by fours and their multiples. Their
highest expressed number was four hundred thousand. More than that
was indefinite.
After what has been written it would seem scarcely necessary to
mention that the Hawaiians were not cannibals. Their legends refer
to two or three instances of cannibalism on the islands, but the
man-eaters were natives of some other group and did not long survive.