KING MEHEVI--ALLUSION TO HIS HAWAIIAN MAJESTY--CONDUCT OF MARHEYO AND
MEHEVI IN CERTAIN DELICATE MATTERS--PECULIAR SYSTEM OF MARRIAGE--NUMBER
OF POPULATION--UNIFORMITY--EMBALMING--PLACES OF SEPULTURE--FUNERAL
OBSEQUIES AT NUKUHEVA-NUMBER OF INHABITANTS IN TYPEE--LOCATION OF THE
DWELLINGS--HAPPINESS ENJOYED IN THE VALLEY--A WARNING--SOME IDEAS WITH
REGARD TO THE PRESENT STATE OF THE HAWAIIANS--STORY OF A MISSIONARY’S
WIFE--FASHIONABLE EQUIPAGES AT OAHU--REFLECTIONS
King Mehevi!--A goodly sounding title--and why should I not bestow
it upon the foremost man in the valley of Typee? The republican
missionaries of Oahu cause to be gazetted in the Court Journal,
published at Honolulu, the most trivial movement of ‘his gracious
majesty’ King Kammehammaha III, and ‘their highnesses the princes of the
blood royal’.* And who is his ‘gracious majesty’, and what the
quality of this blood royal’?--His ‘gracious majesty’ is a fat, lazy,
negro-looking blockhead, with as little character as power. He has
lost the noble traits of the barbarian, without acquiring the redeeming
graces of a civilized being; and, although a member of the Hawiian
Temperance Society, is a most inveterate dram-drinker.
*Accounts like these are sometimes copied into English and American
journals. They lead the reader to infer that the arts and customs of
civilized life are rapidly refining the natives of the Sandwich Islands.
But let no one be deceived by these accounts. The chiefs swagger about
in gold lace and broadcloth, while the great mass of the common people
are nearly as primitive in their appearance as in the days of Cook. In
the progress of events at these islands, the two classes are receding
from each other; the chiefs are daily becoming more luxurious and
extravagant in their style of living, and the common people more and
more destitute of the necessaries and decencies of life. But the end
to which both will arrive at last will be the same: the one are fast
destroying themselves by sensual indulgences, and the other are
fast being destroyed by a complication of disorders, and the want of
wholesome food. The resources of the domineering chiefs are wrung from
the starving serfs, and every additional bauble with which they bedeck
themselves is purchased by the sufferings of their bondsmen; so that the
measure of gew-gaw refinement attained by the chiefs is only an index
to the actual state in which the greater portion of the population lie
grovelling.
The ‘blood royal’ is an extremely thick, depraved fluid; formed
principally of raw fish, bad brandy, and European sweetmeats, and is
charged with a variety of eruptive humours, which are developed in
sundry blotches and pimples upon the august face of ‘majesty itself’,
and the angelic countenances of the ‘princes and princesses of the blood
royal’!
Now, if the farcical puppet of a chief magistrate in the Sandwich
Islands be allowed the title of King, why should it be withheld from
the noble savage Mehevi, who is a thousand times more worthy of the
appellation? All hail, therefore, Mehevi, King of the Cannibal Valley,
and long life and prosperity to his Typeean majesty! May Heaven for many
a year preserve him, the uncompromising foe of Nukuheva and the French,
if a hostile attitude will secure his lovely domain from the remorseless
inflictions of South Sea civilization.
Previously to seeing the Dancing Widows I had little idea that there
were any matrimonial relations subsisting in Typee, and I should as soon
have thought of a Platonic affection being cultivated between the sexes,
as of the solemn connection of man and wife. To be sure, there were old
Marheyo and Tinor, who seemed to have a sort of nuptial understanding
with one another; but for all that, I had sometimes observed a
comical-looking old gentleman dressed in a suit of shabby tattooing, who
had the audacity to take various liberties with the lady, and that too
in the very presence of the old warrior her husband, who looked on
as good-naturedly as if nothing was happening. This behaviour, until
subsequent discoveries enlightened me, puzzled me more than anything
else I witnessed in Typee.
As for Mehevi, I had supposed him a confirmed bachelor, as well as most
of the principal chiefs. At any rate, if they had wives and families,
they ought to have been ashamed of themselves; for sure I am, they never
troubled themselves about any domestic affairs. In truth, Mehevi seemed
to be the president of a club of hearty fellows, who kept ‘Bachelor’s
Hall’ in fine style at the Ti. I had no doubt but that they regarded
children as odious incumbrances; and their ideas of domestic felicity
were sufficiently shown in the fact, that they allowed no meddlesome
housekeepers to turn topsy-turvy those snug little arrangements they had
made in their comfortable dwelling. I strongly suspected however, that
some of these jolly bachelors were carrying on love intrigues with
the maidens of the tribe; although they did not appear publicly to
acknowledge them. I happened to pop upon Mehevi three or four times when
he was romping--in a most undignified manner for a warrior king--with
one of the prettiest little witches in the valley. She lived with an
old woman and a young man, in a house near Marheyo’s; and although in
appearance a mere child herself, had a noble boy about a year old, who
bore a marvellous resemblance to Mehevi, whom I should certainly have
believed to have been the father, were it not that the little fellow
had no triangle on his face--but on second thoughts, tattooing is not
hereditary. Mehevi, however, was not the only person upon whom the
damsel Moonoony smiled--the young fellow of fifteen, who permanently
resided in the home with her, was decidedly in her good graces. I
sometimes beheld both him and the chief making love at the same time. Is
it possible, thought I, that the valiant warrior can consent to give
up a corner in the thing he loves? This too was a mystery which, with
others of the same kind, was afterwards satisfactorily explained.
During the second day of the Feast of Calabashes, Kory-Kory--being
determined that I should have some understanding on these matters--had,
in the course of his explanations, directed my attention to
a peculiarity I had frequently remarked among many of the
females;--principally those of a mature age and rather matronly
appearance. This consisted in having the right hand and the left foot
most elaborately tattooed; whilst the rest of the body was wholly free
from the operation of the art, with the exception of the minutely dotted
lips and slight marks on the shoulders, to which I have previously
referred as comprising the sole tattooing exhibited by Fayaway, in
common with other young girls of her age. The hand and foot thus
embellished were, according to Kory-Kory, the distinguishing badge of
wedlock, so far as that social and highly commendable institution is
known among those people. It answers, indeed, the same purpose as the
plain gold ring worn by our fairer spouses.
After Kory-Kory’s explanation of the subject, I was for some time
studiously respectful in the presence of all females thus distinguished,
and never ventured to indulge in the slightest approach to flirtation
with any of their number. Married women, to be sure!--I knew better than
to offend them.
A further insight, however, into the peculiar domestic customs of the
inmates of the valley did away in a measure with the severity of my
scruples, and convinced me that I was deceived in some at least of my
conclusions. A regular system of polygamy exists among the islanders;
but of a most extraordinary nature,--a plurality of husbands, instead of
wives! and this solitary fact speaks volumes for the gentle disposition
of the male population.
Where else, indeed, could such a practice exist, even for a single
day?--Imagine a revolution brought about in a Turkish seraglio, and
the harem rendered the abode of bearded men; or conceive some beautiful
woman in our own country running distracted at the sight of her numerous
lovers murdering one another before her eyes, out of jealousy for the
unequal distribution of her favours!--Heaven defend us from such a state
of things!--We are scarcely amiable and forbearing enough to submit to
it.
I was not able to learn what particular ceremony was observed in forming
the marriage contract, but am inclined to think that it must have been
of a very simple nature. Perhaps the mere ‘popping the question’, as
it is termed with us, might have been followed by an immediate nuptial
alliance. At any rate, I have more than one reason to believe that
tedious courtships are unknown in the valley of Typee.
The males considerably outnumber the females. This holds true of many
of the islands of Polynesia, although the reverse of what is the case in
most civilized countries. The girls are first wooed and won, at a very
tender age, by some stripling in the household in which they reside.
This, however, is a mere frolic of the affections, and no formal
engagement is contracted. By the time this first love has a little
subsided, a second suitor presents himself, of graver years, and carries
both boy and girl away to his own habitation. This disinterested and
generous-hearted fellow now weds the young couple--marrying damsel
and lover at the same time--and all three thenceforth live together
as harmoniously as so many turtles. I have heard of some men who in
civilized countries rashly marry large families with their wives, but
had no idea that there was any place where people married supplementary
husbands with them. Infidelity on either side is very rare. No man
has more than one wife, and no wife of mature years has less than two
husbands,--sometimes she has three, but such instances are not
frequent. The marriage tie, whatever it may be, does not appear to be
indissoluble; for separations occasionally happen. These, however,
when they do take place, produce no unhappiness, and are preceded by no
bickerings; for the simple reason, that an ill-used wife or a henpecked
husband is not obliged to file a bill in Chancery to obtain a divorce.
As nothing stands in the way of a separation, the matrimonial yoke sits
easily and lightly, and a Typee wife lives on very pleasant and sociable
terms with her husband. On the whole, wedlock, as known among these
Typees, seems to be of a more distinct and enduring nature than
is usually the case with barbarous people. A baneful promiscuous
intercourse of the sexes is hereby avoided, and virtue, without being
clamorously invoked, is, as it were, unconsciously practised.
The contrast exhibited between the Marquesas and other islands of the
Pacific in this respect, is worthy of being noticed. At Tahiti the
marriage tie was altogether unknown; and the relation of husband
and wife, father and son, could hardly be said to exist. The Arreory
Society--one of the most singular institutions that ever existed in any
part of the world--spread universal licentiousness over the island. It
was the voluptuous character of these people which rendered the disease
introduced among them by De Bougainville’s ships, in 1768, doubly
destructive. It visited them like a plague, sweeping them off by
hundreds.
Notwithstanding the existence of wedlock among the Typees, the
Scriptural injunction to increase and multiply seems to be but
indifferently attended to. I never saw any of those large families in
arithmetical or step-ladder progression which one often meets with at
home. I never knew of more than two youngsters living together in the
same home, and but seldom even that number. As for the women, it was
very plain that the anxieties of the nursery but seldom disturbed the
serenity of their souls; and they were never seen going about the valley
with half a score of little ones tagging at their apron-strings, or
rather at the bread-fruit-leaf they usually wore in the rear.
The ratio of increase among all the Polynesian nations is very small;
and in some places as yet uncorrupted by intercourse with Europeans,
the births would appear not very little to outnumber the deaths; the
population in such instances remaining nearly the same for several
successive generations, even upon those islands seldom or never
desolated by wars, and among people with whom the crime of infanticide
is altogether unknown. This would seem expressively ordained by
Providence to prevent the overstocking of the islands with a race too
indolent to cultivate the ground, and who, for that reason alone, would,
by any considerable increase in their numbers, be exposed to the most
deplorable misery. During the entire period of my stay in the valley of
Typee, I never saw more than ten or twelve children under the age of six
months, and only became aware of two births.
It is to the absence of the marriage tie that the late rapid decrease
of the population of the Sandwich Islands and of Tahiti is in part to be
ascribed. The vices and diseases introduced among these unhappy people
annually swell the ordinary mortality of the islands, while, from the
same cause, the originally small number of births is proportionally
decreased. Thus the progress of the Hawaiians and Tahitians to utter
extinction is accelerated in a sort of compound ratio.
I have before had occasion to remark, that I never saw any of the
ordinary signs of a pace of sepulture in the valley, a circumstance
which I attributed, at the time, to my living in a particular part
of it, and being forbidden to extend my rambles to any considerable
distance towards the sea. I have since thought it probable, however,
that the Typees, either desirous of removing from their sight the
evidences of mortality, or prompted by a taste for rural beauty, may
have some charming cemetery situation in the shadowy recesses along
the base of the mountains. At Nukuheva, two or three large quadrangular
‘pi-pis’, heavily flagged, enclosed with regular stone walls, and shaded
over and almost hidden from view by the interlacing branches of
enormous trees, were pointed out to me as burial-places. The bodies, I
understood, were deposited in rude vaults beneath the flagging, and were
suffered to remain there without being disinterred. Although nothing
could be more strange and gloomy than the aspect of these places, where
the lofty trees threw their dark shadows over rude blocks of stone,
a stranger looking at them would have discerned none of the ordinary
evidences of a place of sepulture.
During my stay in the valley, as none of its inmates were so
accommodating as to die and be buried in order to gratify my curiosity
with regard to their funeral rites, I was reluctantly obliged to
remain in ignorance of them. As I have reason to believe, however, the
observances of the Typees in these matters are the same with those of
all the other tribes in the island, I will here relate a scene I chanced
to witness at Nukuheva.
A young man had died, about daybreak, in a house near the beach. I had
been sent ashore that morning, and saw a good deal of the preparations
they were making for his obsequies. The body, neatly wrapped in a new
white tappa, was laid out in an open shed of cocoanut boughs, upon a
bier constructed of elastic bamboos ingeniously twisted together. This
was supported about two feet from the ground, by large canes planted
uprightly in the earth. Two females, of a dejected appearance, watched
by its side, plaintively chanting and beating the air with large grass
fans whitened with pipe-clay. In the dwelling-house adjoining a numerous
company we assembled, and various articles of food were being prepared
for consumption. Two or three individuals, distinguished by head-dresses
of beautiful tappa, and wearing a great number of ornaments, appeared
to officiate as masters of the ceremonies. By noon the entertainment had
fairly begun and we were told that it would last during the whole of
the two following days. With the exception of those who mourned by
the corpse, every one seemed disposed to drown the sense of the late
bereavement in convivial indulgence. The girls, decked out in their
savage finery, danced; the old men chanted; the warriors smoked and
chatted; and the young and lusty, of both sexes, feasted plentifully,
and seemed to enjoy themselves as pleasantly as they could have done had
it been a wedding.
The islanders understand the art of embalming, and practise it with such
success that the bodies of their great chiefs are frequently preserved
for many years in the very houses where they died. I saw three of these
in my visit to the Bay of Tior. One was enveloped in immense folds of
tappa, with only the face exposed, and hung erect against the side of
the dwelling. The others were stretched out upon biers of bamboo, in
open, elevated temples, which seemed consecrated to their memory. The
heads of enemies killed in battle are invariably preserved and hung up
as trophies in the house of the conqueror. I am not acquainted with the
process which is in use, but believe that fumigation is the principal
agency employed. All the remains which I saw presented the appearance of
a ham after being suspended for some time in a smoky chimney.
But to return from the dead to the living. The late festival had drawn
together, as I had every reason to believe, the whole population of the
vale, and consequently I was enabled to make some estimate with regard
to its numbers. I should imagine that there were about two thousand
inhabitants in Typee; and no number could have been better adapted to
the extent of the valley. The valley is some nine miles in length,
and may average one in breadth; the houses being distributed at wide
intervals throughout its whole extent, principally, however, towards the
head of the vale. There are no villages; the houses stand here and there
in the shadow of the groves, or are scattered along the banks of the
winding stream; their golden-hued bamboo sides and gleaming white thatch
forming a beautiful contrast to the perpetual verdure in which they are
embowered. There are no roads of any kind in the valley. Nothing but a
labyrinth of footpaths twisting and turning among the thickets without
end.
The penalty of the Fall presses very lightly upon the valley of Typee;
for, with the one solitary exception of striking a light, I scarcely saw
any piece of work performed there which caused the sweat to stand upon
a single brow. As for digging and delving for a livelihood, the thing is
altogether unknown. Nature has planted the bread-fruit and the banana,
and in her own good time she brings them to maturity, when the idle
savage stretches forth his hand, and satisfies his appetite.
Ill-fated people! I shudder when I think of the change a few years
will produce in their paradisaical abode; and probably when the most
destructive vices, and the worst attendances on civilization, shall have
driven all peace and happiness from the valley, the magnanimous
French will proclaim to the world that the Marquesas Islands have been
converted to Christianity! and this the Catholic world will doubtless
consider as a glorious event. Heaven help the ‘Isles of the Sea’!--The
sympathy which Christendom feels for them, has, alas! in too many
instances proved their bane.
How little do some of these poor islanders comprehend when they look
around them, that no inconsiderable part of their disasters originate
in certain tea-party excitements, under the influence of which
benevolent-looking gentlemen in white cravats solicit alms, and old
ladies in spectacles, and young ladies in sober russet gowns, contribute
sixpences towards the creation of a fund, the object of which is to
ameliorate the spiritual condition of the Polynesians, but whose end has
almost invariably been to accomplish their temporal destruction!
Let the savages be civilized, but civilize them with benefits, and not
with evils; and let heathenism be destroyed, but not by destroying the
heathen. The Anglo-Saxon hive have extirpated Paganism from the greater
part of the North American continent; but with it they have likewise
extirpated the greater portion of the Red race. Civilization is
gradually sweeping from the earth the lingering vestiges of Paganism,
and at the same time the shrinking forms of its unhappy worshippers.
Among the islands of Polynesia, no sooner are the images overturned, the
temples demolished, and the idolators converted into NOMINAL Christians,
that disease, vice, and premature death make their appearance. The
depopulated land is then recruited from the rapacious, hordes of
enlightened individuals who settle themselves within its borders,
and clamorously announce the progress of the Truth. Neat villas, trim
gardens, shaven lawns, spires, and cupolas arise, while the poor savage
soon finds himself an interloper in the country of his fathers, and
that too on the very site of the hut where he was born. The spontaneous
fruits of the earth, which God in his wisdom had ordained for the
support of the indolent natives, remorselessly seized upon and
appropriated by the stranger, are devoured before the eyes of the
starving inhabitants, or sent on board the numerous vessels which now
touch at their shores.
When the famished wretches are cut off in this manner from their natural
supplies, they are told by their benefactors to work and earn their
support by the sweat of their brows! But to no fine gentleman born to
hereditary opulence, does this manual labour come more unkindly than
to the luxurious Indian when thus robbed of the bounty of heaven.
Habituated to a life of indolence, he cannot and will not exert himself;
and want, disease, and vice, all evils of foreign growth, soon terminate
his miserable existence.
But what matters all this? Behold the glorious result!--The abominations
of Paganism have given way to the pure rites of the Christian
worship,--the ignorant savage has been supplanted by the refined
European! Look at Honolulu, the metropolis of the Sandwich Islands!--A
community of disinterested merchants, and devoted self-exiled heralds of
the Cross, located on the very spot that twenty years ago was defiled by
the presence of idolatry. What a subject for an eloquent Bible-meeting
orator! Nor has such an opportunity for a display of missionary rhetoric
been allowed to pass by unimproved!--But when these philanthropists send
us such glowing accounts of one half of their labours, why does their
modesty restrain them from publishing the other half of the good they
have wrought?--Not until I visited Honolulu was I aware of the fact that
the small remnant of the natives had been civilized into draught-horses;
and evangelized into beasts of burden. But so it is. They have been
literally broken into the traces, and are harnessed to the vehicles of
their spiritual instructors like so many dumb brutes!
. . . . . . .
Lest the slightest misconception should arise from anything thrown out
in this chapter, or indeed in any other part of the volume, let me here
observe that against the cause of missions in, the abstract no Christian
can possibly be opposed: it is in truth a just and holy cause. But
if the great end proposed by it be spiritual, the agency employed to
accomplish that end is purely earthly; and, although the object in
view be the achievement of much good, that agency may nevertheless be
productive of evil. In short, missionary undertaking, however it may
blessed of heaven, is in itself but human; and subject, like everything
else, to errors and abuses. And have not errors and abuses crept into
the most sacred places, and may there not be unworthy or incapable
missionaries abroad, as well as ecclesiastics of similar character
at home? May not the unworthiness or incapacity of those who assume
apostolic functions upon the remote islands of the sea more easily
escape detection by the world at large than if it were displayed in
the heart of a city? An unwarranted confidence in the sanctity of its
apostles--a proneness to regard them as incapable of guile--and
an impatience of the least suspicion to their rectitude as men or
Christians, have ever been prevailing faults in the Church. Nor is this
to be wondered at: for subject as Christianity is to the assaults of
unprincipled foes, we are naturally disposed to regard everything like
an exposure of ecclesiastical misconduct as the offspring of malevolence
or irreligious feeling. Not even this last consideration, however shall
deter me from the honest expression of my sentiments.
There is something apparently wrong in the practical operations of
the Sandwich Islands Mission. Those who from pure religious motives
contribute to the support of this enterprise should take care to
ascertain that their donations, flowing through many devious channels,
at last effect their legitimate object, the conversion of the Hawaiians.
I urge this not because I doubt the moral probity of those who disburse
the funds, but because I know that they are not rightly applied. To read
pathetic accounts of missionary hardships, and glowing descriptions of
conversion, and baptisms, taking place beneath palm-trees, is one thing;
and to go to the Sandwich Islands and see the missionaries dwelling
in picturesque and prettily furnished coral-rock villas, whilst the
miserable natives are committing all sorts of immorality around them, is
quite another.
In justice to the missionaries, however, I will willingly admit, that
where-ever evils may have resulted from their collective mismanagement
of the business of the mission, and from the want of vital piety evinced
by some of their number, still the present deplorable condition of the
Sandwich Islands is by no means wholly chargeable against them. The
demoralizing influence of a dissolute foreign population, and the
frequent visits of all descriptions of vessels, have tended not a little
to increase the evils alluded to. In a word, here, as in every case
where civilization has in any way been introduced among those whom we
call savages, she has scattered her vices, and withheld her blessings.
As wise a man as Shakespeare has said, that the bearer of evil tidings
hath but a losing office; and so I suppose will it prove with me, in
communicating to the trusting friends of the Hawiian Mission what has
been disclosed in various portions of this narrative. I am persuaded,
however, that as these disclosures will by their very nature attract
attention, so they will lead to something which will not be without
ultimate benefit to the cause of Christianity in the Sandwich Islands.
I have but one more thing to add in connection with this subject--those
things which I have stated as facts will remain facts, in spite of
whatever the bigoted or incredulous may say or write against them. My
reflections, however, on those facts may not be free from error. If such
be the case, I claim no further indulgence than should be conceded to
every man whose object is to do good.