“In countless upward-stirring waves
The moon-drawn tide-wave strives:
In thousand far-transplanted grafts
The parent fruit survives;
So in the new-born millions,
The perfect Adam lies.
Not less are Summer mornings dear
To every child they wake,
And each with novel-life his sphere
Fills for his proper sake.”
EMERSON.
A year had passed. There was no iron on the island, consequently no means
of building a vessel, which could carry the exiles back to Mexico. Their
only hope lay in the possibility that some caravel, equipped as theirs
had been for discovery, might sight Hawaii and explore its coasts. But
this hope was so faint as rarely to form a theme of discussion; so they
wisely identified themselves with the interests and welfare of their
generous host, whose kindness and confidence grew with their stay.
Kiana and Juan became firm friends. The former had long since learned
the origin and history of the shipwrecked party, as indeed had the more
intelligent among his chiefs, but their superior knowledge, and the
polite deference of the nobles towards them, continued to keep them in
the same sacred relation to the common people as at first. This was the
more useful, that it gave to their efforts to instruct them the sanction
of religion.
To properly understand the condition of the people under the government
of Kiana, it will be necessary to go more into detail. I have already
observed, that their climate and soil combined that happy medium of
salubrity and fertility, which gave ample returns in health and harvests,
but did not dispense with care and labor. Hence, they were an active
and industrious race. Nature was indeed a loving, considerate mother to
them. As yet no noxious reptiles or insects infested the land; ferocious
animals were equally unknown; storms were so rare as scarcely to be ever
thought of, while the temperature was so even, that their language had no
term to express the various changes and conditions of physical comfort
or discomfort, we combine into the word weather. This, of course, was a
sad loss to conversation, but no doubt a compensation for lack of this
prolific topic existed somehow in their domestic circles.
[Illustration]
The households of the chiefs were in one sense almost patriarchally
constructed. “My people” had a meaning as significant as upon a slave
plantation in America, with the difference that here they were only
transferred with the soil. They were literally “my people;” and as with
all purely despotic institutions, their welfare depended mainly upon the
character of their lords.
In some respects there existed a latitude of deportment between the
chiefs and their serfs, which gave rise to a certain degree of social
equality. This freedom of manner is common to that state of society in
which the actual gulf between the different classes is irrevocably fixed.
It grows out of protection on the one hand and dependence on the other.
On Hawaii there existed a partial community of property; for although
all that the serf possessed belonged to his lord, yet he had the use and
improvement of the property in his charge, and besides certain direct
interests in it, was protected by what might be termed their “common
law.” The chief was both executive and judiciary, as obtains in all rude
society. Self-interest became a powerful incentive to humanity, because
cruelty or injustice towards his tenantry was a direct injury to his
own property, and a provocation to desert his lands. There was also the
family bond, derived from direct intermingling of blood, the perpetuity
of estates and the familiarity of personal intercourse between the chiefs
and their dependents, fortified by a condition of society that knew no
contrasts to this state. The lack of other commerce than barter and a
partial feudal system, which required the people not only to furnish
their own arms, but upon all occasions to follow their lords to the
field, helped to develop this social union of extremes.
All lands were in reality held in fief of the supreme chief. His will
was in the main the code of law, and indeed the religious creed; that
is, the ultimate appeal in all questions was vested in him. But public
opinion, based upon old habits and certain intuitive convictions of right
and justice common to all mankind, held even him in check; so that while
rarely attempting any forcible violation of what was understood to be
the universal custom, he had it in his power indirectly to modify the
laws and belief of his people. While to some extent the spirit of the
clan existed, giving rise to devotion and attachments similar to those
recorded of the Highlanders of Scotland, there prevailed more extensively
the servile feeling common to Oriental despotism. Numerous retainers
of every grade and rank surrounded each chief, forming courts with as
varied and as positive an etiquette as those of Europe or Asia. The most
trivial necessity was dignified into an office. Thus there were “pipe
lighters,” masters of the pipe as they might be called, masters of the
spittoon, of the plumes or “kahilis,” and so on, while there was no lack
of idle clients, the “bosom friends” of the chief, his boon companions,
buffoons, pimps and every other parasitical condition in which the
individual merges his own identity into the caprices or policy of his
ruler, or by deceit, flattery, or superior address, seeks to advance his
own selfishness at the general expense.
In this arrangement the analogy to the courts of Europe is so evident
as to form a striking satire upon them. Here we find amid petty,
semi-naked tribes, the same masters and mistresses of royal robes
and other useless paraphernalia; the same abject crowd of parasites
quarrelling and intriguing for honors and riches they are too lazy or
dishonest rightfully to earn; the same degrading etiquette which exalts
a knowledge of its absurdities above all morality, and imposes penalties
upon its infringement, not bestowed upon crime itself: in fine, a parody
of all that in European monarchies tends to make human nature base and
contemptible.
Justice, however, requires me to state, that while the vices of the
systems were allied, their virtues were no less in common. Despotism
corrupts the many, but there are a choice few in all aristocracies who
receive power and homage only as in deposit for the public good. Its
conditions are favorable to their moral growth, when perhaps the rugged
necessities of life, in conflicts of equality, would dwarf their souls
to the common level of material wants or selfish interests. Besides
these exceptions, as familiar to savage as to civilized life, because
founded not upon acquired knowledge, but upon natural instincts, the very
superiority of position begets desire for superior manners and external
advantages. Thus we find in not a few of the privileged orders, rare
politeness and outward polish, and a chivalric loyalty to the institution
of titled aristocracy, as if in partaking of its birthright, it brought
with it a loftier and more refined standard of feeling and action than
that of the masses.
[Illustration: A SACRIFICIAL FEAST.]
The best of food was reserved for the nobles. Their houses, bathing
places, and domestic utensils, were tabu from vulgar use. They even used
a language or courtly dialect unintelligible to their subjects. Their
deportment was based upon the innate consciousness of mental superiority
and long inherited authority. Rank was derived from the mother as the
only certain fountain of ancestry. In size and dignity of personal
carriage they were conspicuous from the crowd. In short, the difference
was so marked in Hawaii between the chief and his serf, as to suggest to
a superficial observer the idea of two distinct races.
Hospitality was a common virtue. There was no beggary, as there was
no need of begging, for the simple wants of the natives were easily
supplied. The poorest man never refused food to his worst enemy, should
he enter his house and demand it. Indeed so freely were presents made,
that the absolute law of “meum and tuum,” as it exists among commercial
races, with its progeny of judges and gaols, locks and fetters, had
with them scarcely a defined meaning. Where there was so much trust and
generosity, any violation of them met with prompt and severe retribution.
Theft was visited upon the offender by the injured party, even if the
weaker, by the seizure of every movable article belonging to him. In this
wild justice they were sustained by the whole population. If the property
of a high chief suffered, the thief was sometimes placed in an old canoe,
bound hand and foot, and set adrift upon the ocean.
Kiana’s people were wealthy in their simple way. His reign was the golden
age of Hawaii. This was owing mainly to his own character, which took
delight in the happiness and prosperity of his subjects. No lands were so
well cultivated as his. No rents were more ample or more cheerfully paid.
His people had easy access to him. In their labors as in their sports he
often mingled. If at times he was hasty or severe, it was owing rather to
the quickened indignation of offended justice than to selfish passion.
A very striking reform in the rites if not in the principles of their
religion had been peacefully brought about by him. In general, the savage
mind is more influenced by fear than by love; that is, it seeks by
worship to avoid harm from natural objects, which from ignorance of their
laws he considers to be evil spirits, rather than to do homage to those
whose direct beneficence is readily recognized. But Kiana, like Manco
Capac with the Peruvians, taught them a less slavish ritual. Instead of
sacrifices of animals to deities whose attributes solely inspired dread,
he led them to rejoice in the bounteous seasons, the vivifying sun, the
winds that refreshed their bodies, and the clouds that watered their
thirsty soil. He taught them that the waters that bore them so pleasantly
from island to island, were much more to be regarded lovingly, than the
devouring shark with superstitious fear. Thus without fully, or perhaps
in any degree recognizing the principles of the One God, the people were
led more into harmony with those of his works, which were suggestive of
good and kind attributes, which they symbolized in idols, to which they
offered chiefly the fruits of the earth. They were indeed idolaters,
because their minds seldom, if ever, separated the image from the ideas,
but it was an idolatry that made them cheerful and truthful, and not
gloomy and cruel.
Contented under their government, reposing on their religion, these
islanders presented a picture of happiness, which, if we consider only
the peaceful, joyous flow of the material life, we might well envy.
They had no money to beget avarice, or to excite to the rivalries and
dishonesties of trade. There were no more prosperous territories and
bounteous soils for them to covet by arms; none of superior force to
make them afraid. Their diet was simple, and their diseases few. They
had nothing to fear from famine, weather, noxious animals, or poisonous
insects. Their unbounded hospitality kept want from even the idler,—their
agricultural games and fisheries gave ample scope for their physical
energies, while their numerous festivals, the songs of the bards, and
traditions and speeches of their historians and orators kept alive a
national spirit, which made them proud of their origin and their country.
[Illustration]
All their myths were connected with the great phenomena of nature, with
which their island was so pregnant. Hence in their minds there was a
certain grandeur of sentiment, as well as loftiness of expression and
suggestive imagery, that imbued them with the more elevating influences
of the great nature around them. Then their joyous dances, particularly
graceful and spirited among the children, though too expressive, perhaps,
in action and words of the sensual instincts with the adults, caused
the gayety of their sunny skies and the passionate enjoyments of their
rare climate to come home to them with a fulness of sympathy that made
them truly the children of material Nature. They danced, they sang, they
sported, and they feasted, as if the present hour had had no predecessor,
and was to see no successor. If they labored, it was that they might
enjoy. In all their exercises, whether of amusement, religion or work,
the requirements of the chiefs, or the necessities of their families,
there was a renunciation of all but the present moment, mingled with
so full a sense of sportive humor, that no civilized spectator could
have looked unmoved upon their sensuous happiness, however much he might
moralize upon its affinity to mere animal life.
If they ever thought of death, it was merely as a change to a world
where their enjoyments would be still more complete. At the worst their
spirits would only wander about their earthly abodes, vexed at the sight
of pleasures which they could no longer participate in. The general
idea the serfs had of heaven, was of some place specially given to the
chiefs, into which if they entered at all, it was in the same servile and
distinct relation to them as on earth. Perhaps one great cause of their
contentment sprung from their implicit acquiescence in the power and
privileges of their rulers, as of beings too vastly their superiors to
admit even for a moment of any equality of fate or aspirations in either
life.
Such in brief were the character and condition of the race among which
Alvirez and his party were now domesticated, and to all appearance for
life. There was much to reconcile them to their new position, as will
be shown, and especially in the peaceful contrast their present homes
presented to the crime and devastation which had been their experience
in Mexico. True, there was no gold. But what need of gold, when all it
represents was provided without price? After their long experience of
perils and hardships, to the seamen their present lives seemed planted
in Eden. An occasional affray with some distant tribe that sought to
spoil their more fortunate countryman under Kiana’s rule, gave them
opportunities to exercise their courage for the benefit of their new
friends. The reputation which they soon established, and the supernatural
character with which they continued in some degree, still to be regarded,
especially at a distance, contributed much towards keeping the frontiers
quiet. Juan and Kiana, according to Hawaiian custom, exchanged names, by
which in friendship, power and property, they were viewed as one. But the
better to appreciate the true position of each in reference to their new
life, we must trace their individual experiences.