rested at Kealia or Waipio, there was no _mele_ he loved so well to
hear as that which told of the faith of Kaala and Kaaialii:
“Oh! dead is Kaaialii, the young chief of Hawaii,
The chief of few years and many battles.
His limbs were strong and his heart was gentle.
His face was like the sun, and he was without fear.
For his love he plunged into the deep waters;
For his love he gave his life.”
X
LONO’S LAST MARTYR
The heroes of victory are rarely without their monuments: the heroes
of lost causes are too often forgotten. The old order changes, giving
place to new, and in course of time we praise the bold innovators who
let in the light, but we forget that even the defeated darkness may
have its martyrdoms, its faith and its courage worthy of the poet’s
song.
It is a story of such heroism as this which gathers round a neglected
tumulus, now well nigh hidden in clustering ferns and creeping vines
on the island of Hawaii. Not far from Kilau, on the western coast of
the island, almost under the shadow of Mauna Hualalai, which rises
nearly 9,000 feet above the sea, there is a plain of rough lava, whose
barrenness is only in places veiled by tufts of waving grass and by
spreading creepers and richly hued flowers. In many places there rise
the ruins of former temples and fortifications belonging to the old
warlike time. The massive, squarely shapen stones contrast strangely
with the spherical volcanic boulders which attest that here Nature has
warred as well as man. After traveling over two miles of such country
as this you will begin to stumble over frequent heaps of stones well
nigh concealed in the grass and ferns. Your imagination suggests
graves, rightly so, and you pick your way among them till you come
to Kuamoo, where there is an oblong cairn, some ten feet long by six
wide, built in the form of a tomb, and almost hidden from sight in the
greenery of innumerable ferns and the blossoms of morning glory and
passion flower. Well does Nature keep the spot beautiful and fragrant,
for here lie side by side the mortal remains of two heroes and two
lovers, whom, heathen though they were, the new time will not willingly
permit to be forgotten.
It was in the autumn of 1819 that the great change came which has been
hailed by many as the day of new birth for the Eight Islands--the
abolition of the tabu and the destruction of the idols. We shall not
attempt to defend the anterior condition of the island kingdom, but it
will be seen in the course of this story that the transition was by no
means without its element of danger and mischief.
No darkness could well have been deeper than that of olden Hawaii,
with its bloody worship, its human sacrifices, its oppression of
the _makaainana_, or common people, and, above all, its tabu. How
this pressed with leaden weight upon the people would be almost
incredible if described in detail. Suffice it to say that for every
act and condition of life there was a tabu, extending to food, dress,
etiquette, time, place, labor, and privilege. And for every breach of
the tabu there was but one penalty--death.
It might, therefore, be thought that its abolition would be received
with universal applause, that only from the hearts of the cruel bigots
of heathenism, monsters thirsting for human gore, tyrants ruling
by oppression and fraud, would there be a sigh of regret when the
death-knell of the old heathenism sounded forth.
This, however, was not the case. Viewing the matter from close quarters
we can easily see that the priests and worshippers of Lono, who
protested against the act of Liholiho had some justice on their side.
The mighty Kamehameha had breathed his last, and his dust had been
hidden away somewhere, where, no one but Hoapili knew, among the
mountains of Hawaii. Liholiho, his successor, was under the influence
of the queen mother, Kaahumanu, who had long been chafing under the
restraints of the tabu upon her sex. He himself, a youth of twenty-two,
no stranger, unfortunately, to the fire-water of the whalers, deemed
the law of tabu overmuch of a clog on his own princely liberty, and as
entailing, moreover, a heavy expenditure for the support of the state
idolatry and the maintenance of the priesthood.
Arrived at Kawaihae, he heard of Kaahumanu’s intention to attempt
the sacrilege, and, not indisposed to have his own share in the
contemplated work, immediately sailed to the south. Landing at Puako,
there followed a series of debauches to which the court of Kamehameha
had been a stranger. For twenty-four hours the tumultuous merriment
went on. The royal party joined the _hula_-dancers in their obscene
revelry. They tossed bottles of liquor to the sea gods, inviting them
to drink themselves drunk with them, and at last the moment arrived
when a public violation of the tabu was to take place, in order to
show that the old order had passed forever. This breach with the past
was made by the king’s deliberate act of sending prohibited food from
his own table to that of the women, and by his taking his own place
among them. In a moment the royal example was followed, men and women
were eating and drinking promiscuously together, and the feast was no
longer “_ai kapu_,” or sacred eating, but “_ai noa_,” or common eating.
A few chiefs turned pale in their drunkenness at the outrages offered
to their religion and their law, some strode forth indignant and held
counsel together, while Liholiho and the high-priest, Hewahewa, with
their drunken crew, rode forth to destroy the images of the insulted
gods, and the shrines where no sacrifice should be offered more.
We shall not be ashamed to stay among the few still faithful to the
old order and its traditions. It is true the tabu was tyrannous and
cruel beyond belief, but a cruel code is far better than anarchy, and
Liholiho had nothing to put in the place of the tabu but the lawless
wantonness of the whalers. Was the liquor of the white men a better
inspiration than the will of the chiefs? Had not Kamehameha, to whom
the land owed prosperity and peace, deliberately given up drinking
the _haole_ gin and expressly warned his people against falling into
its pernicious snare? And now had they not lived to see his son, a
shameful sight to the people, reeling on horseback, arms and legs
extended, raging against the gods of their fathers? If Vancouver had
sent the white teacher he had promised they might have heard tidings
worth giving ear to, as, rumor had it, had been the case in Tahiti,
but surely it was better to keep the old law, by which the chiefs and
people alike guided their steps, until they had considered the new!
The chief speaker in the conference was the young and handsome
Kekuaokalani, upon whom had fallen the defense of the traditions of
church and state. No nobler Hawaiian had ever been listened to by the
_alii_. Well nigh seven feet in height, with masses of raven black hair
hanging upon his shoulders, perfect in features and form, wise, brave
and magnetic, a chief of even bluer blood than his uncle Kamehameha, by
his own choice also a priest, equal in learning to Hewahewa, he was a
man well fitted to be the leader of a cause however desperate it might
appear. Moreover, his marriage with the beautiful Manono, who lived in
the light of his love, had touched the sympathy and imaginations of the
people, and when he strode forth from the wild revelry of the crowd,
bearing in his arms the insulted image of Lono, he may well have seemed
a hero, or even a demi-god, to the amazed and troubled people.
Whether ambitious or not, Kekuaokalani conceived that to him had
come a charge from the gods to avenge their cause upon a drunken and
degenerate king and to take the place before the shrines vacated by
the renegade Hewahewa. As for Kaahumanu, he knew her to be a light
woman, whose escapades had sorely troubled the heart and patience of
Kamehameha. Certainly Lady Pele, goddess of the fire-world, slumbering
within the mountain, would protect her honor against law-breakers such
as she.
So Kekuaokalani withdrew to Kaaweloa, where the conservative leaders
and the priests offered him the crown, with the oracular saying: “A
religious chief shall possess the kingdom, but irreligious chiefs
shall always be poor.” It was a dangerous honor thus thrust upon him,
but he accepted it gladly and prepared for the trial of strength with
Liholiho. Many of the people who shared his spirit gathered around him
and, when the winter solstice brought with it the annual feast of Lono,
the festival was kept with a sincerity and enthusiasm all the more
impressive from the presentiment entertained by not a few that it was
the last festival which Lono would ever have in Hawaii. It is not a
little pathetic to contemplate the people “about to die” face to face
with the gods “about to die” for these five strange, sad, festive days.
Meanwhile the work of the royal “reformers” went on throughout the
land and a month passed by, during which the news came daily of the
pulling down of _heiaus_ and the burning of idols. The king was happy
in his iconoclasm, but no word came to him of the preparations of
Kekuaokalani. Then suddenly the tidings reached Liholiho that Hamakua
was being invaded by the rebels, and that one of the chiefs, Kainapau
by name, was slain. Some of the king’s favorites endeavored to belittle
the affair and strove to allay the royal alarm by offering, with forty
warriors, to suppress the insurrection. Hewahewa, the renegade priest,
knew Kekuaokalani better, and declared:
“Not forty times forty will be enough! Kekuaokalani is in the field to
conquer or to die!”
Then the alarm was genuine and general, and while the resourceful
Kaahumanu bethought herself of the purchase of muskets from the white
traders, Liholiho endeavored to quench the fire of rebellion by the
sending of an embassy.
Some of the most notable men in the crowd were selected, men close
of kin to Kekuaokalani, as well as high in the counsels of Liholiho.
There was prominent among them, Naihe, the uncle of the rebel chief,
and Kalaimoku, the commander of the king’s forces. And with these was
Keopuolani, the bluest blooded queen of Kamehameha.
“We come,” they said, “to make peace between you and the king. Liholiho
offers you freedom to follow your own religion if you will consent to
lay aside your arms.”
“Alas!” replied the chief, “to what avail is liberty to worship when
the gods and the temples are consumed with fire? How can we serve the
gods acceptably when the tabu exists no more and men know not what is
sacred and what is common?”
“You will have war, then?” asked the ambassadors.
“Nay, I choose not,” cried Kekuaokalani. “Here stand I where Liholiho
and Hewahewa, king and high-priest, should stand to defend the
traditions to which I am pledged by my oath as _alii_. Lono will not
forget the faithful, and if we die we die true to our ancestors and to
the gods who made them kings.”
Kalaimoku withdrew with his company sadly and respectfully, and
Kekuakoalani went within his house and, falling upon the breast of his
wife, burst into tears.
O! beautiful was life surrounded with the love of Manono! Hard it were
to die and go beneath the ground with such sunshine flooding the earth.
But Kekuaokalani was right: “He could not choose.”
“Is there a choice for strong souls to be weak?” Though he die, he must
be loyal to his faith in Lono. The night before, the _alae_ had uttered
its shrill note of presaging ill outside the house. Manono was all
disconsolate with so many auguries of ill about her, but her husband
bravely used every endeavor to turn aside her fears, saying that
forebodings of ill were only for those who did ill. Yet he felt in his
heart that the gods perhaps intended to take their cause into their own
hands, and that he might be only a sacrifice where he had hoped to be a
deliverer.
Nevertheless, the next morning, when the army made itself ready for
the march, Kekuaokalani had a countenance wherein was no trace of fear
or foreboding. With cheerful shouts of encouragement to his eager
followers, he trod the lava plains with as much alacrity as if starting
to a feast, and close behind him, rather than with the other women
in the rear, marched Manono, happier to stand on the field of blood
beside her lover than to tarry behind in ignoble safety. There were
priests of Lono, too, carrying the gods newly arrayed for the carnage.
Perchance, yet once again, might the war god Kaili be seen flying above
the contending hosts, a luminous streak of vapor, uttering aloud the
war cries which had cleared the way to victory for Kamehameha. How the
drunkard Liholiho would feel his blood freezing in his veins at such an
apparition!
As they marched along they came to the spot where, twelve generations
before, the mighty giant Maukaleoleo had appeared to the hero Umi and
had given him strength above the lot of man to overcome his foes. Would
that now that terrific figure might appear, plucking the cocoanuts from
the tallest trees as he walked, or wading out to sea among the canoes!
But, alas! no marvels came to aid their faith. They must fight the
battle of the gods alone to-day.
So at last they came to Kuamoo on the morning of December 19, 1819,
a day forever memorable in the history of Hawaii as the day in which
the forces of the old era were defeated by those of the new, both
struggling in the dark and ignorant of the light which was so soon to
come.
Kalaimoku was even yet anxious to avoid a battle with Kekuaokalani, who
was his own sister’s son, and he sent a messenger with an affectionate
entreaty for another interview. But, even though his own mother
pleaded, together with his uncle, the dauntless heathen refused to
listen to the messenger and compelled him to leap into the sea and swim
with all his might to save his life.
The forces then took up their respective positions, Kalaimoku knowing
that now only the grim arbitrament of battle could decide. Liholiho’s
forces were strong in musketry and in the aid of foreigners, and their
retreat was protected by the formidable squadron of double canoes which
had been the pride of Kamehameha’s declining years. Kekuaokalani placed
the priests of Lono with the images in the front of his line for a
while, and then loud were the imprecations denounced upon the royal
army. But, to be of more avail to-day, behind these was a splendid
force of spearmen eager for the _lehua_, or first-slain victim. Behind
all were the women, who followed the soldiers with calabashes of water
and dried fish, to recruit the strength of the combatants when these
were weary or athirst. But every woman was ready to fight and die with
Kekuaokalani.
The attack was made by the rebel forces, who bore down upon the army
of Liholiho with an impetus such as must have swept all before it,
had it not been for the foreigners with their guns vomiting streams
of fire upon their assailants. The company of musketeers kept up
such a murderous fire upon the rebel center that, after a terrific
and protracted struggle, this was driven back to the rising ground.
Kekuaokalani, whose tall form was seen everywhere in the fray as he
shouted orders to his spearmen, was wounded early in the battle, but
fought on without knowing it, rallying his forces behind a stone
wall about breast high, where there took place a struggle which
for obstinacy and valour had no parallel in the annals of Hawaiian
warfare. The double canoes commanded by the queen mother, Kaahumanu,
raked the insurgent position with their guns, but two heroic figures
seemed to stand out among the falling after every discharge, as if
bearing charmed lives amid the rain of death. These were Kekuaokalani
and his wife, Manono, who fought side by side, heedless of the heaped
corpses around them. Weak with loss of blood from his previous wounds,
Kekuaokalani more than once leaned fainting upon the arm of his wife,
but he revived again and again to fight with a still more desperate
valor. The temptation was sore when he beheld, through the battle
smoke, his uncle Kalaimoku and his mother signalling him to ask for
quarter; he set his teeth hard and fired again. Had it been Manono
herself, he had most like done the same, though her breast had faced
the bullets! No longer able to stand, he sat upon a fragment of
lava and continued to load and fire his musket. No Kaili flew above
the host as of old, no Lono came to lend supernatural aid to his
faithful martyrs. Instead, the forces of Kalaimoku were advancing,
and Kekuaokalani knew himself left to die, with life still sweet on
his lips. The fated ball came at last, pierced his left breast, and,
folding his face in his feather cloak, Kekuaokalani fell forward at
the feet of Manono, and expired without a groan. Manono wept not, but
awaited hopefully the messenger of death which should make them fellows
again in the halls of Milu. On came the conquerors; in vain Kalaimoku
and his sister cried to save her. Another bullet, unerring in its aim,
pierced her temple and she fell upon the warm but lifeless body of her
husband.
The insurgents made but little more resistance now that their leader
had fallen. It was sunset and under the cover of the darkness any that
could, escaped. Some surrendered or were captured by the royal troops,
a few crept into caves and holes of the mountains, and, covering the
entrance with pieces of lava, lay concealed till Liholiho had returned
to Kailua.
Kalaimoku and his sister stood over the corpses of Kekuaokalani and
Manono, and, gazing long upon the noble dead, exclaimed with tears:
“Truly, since the days of Keawe, no nobler Hawaiians have lost the
light of the sun!”
Thus perished Lono’s last champions, faithful unto death.
Three months later the first Christian missionaries reached the group
with the tidings so long desired. The first news which reached them
from the shore was in the almost incredible words: “The idols of Hawaii
are no more!”
May we not, while rejoicing in the new day which was thus brought to
the land left by Liholiho bereft of law and religion, retain a tender
heart for the youthful pair whose bodies sleep beneath the morning
glory and the heaped-up stones on the shore of Kuamoo?
XI
KEOUA
_A Story of Kalawao_
The laws of men are merciful in intent, but they sometimes grind
hard upon the innocent and the poor, at times through the necessary
imperfection of all human efforts after the ideal, at times through the
harsh administration of enactments good enough in themselves.
No laws have ever seemed so necessary in Hawaii as the laws enforcing
the segregation of lepers; no laws just in themselves have ever been
the cause of so much grief and pain. There have been times, moreover,
when they were carried out neither wisely nor mercifully.
At such a time only could the following story have been possible--the
story of a love which laws could not abrogate nor death itself annul.
* * * * *
Pauoa is a valley of almost perpetual rainbow, where the mists dance in
the sunshine on the mountainside and the waters trickle down through
thickets of ferns and scarlet creepers to the long lines of cocoanut
palms which stand like sentinels along the beach from Diamond Head to
Honolulu.
But its chief beauty to Keoua, returning with his net from fishing
outside the coral reef, lay in the fact that he was homeward bent.
There, a hundred yards further, was the grass hut, secluded behind a
screen of banana trees, and rising apparently out of a glistening swamp
of taro-patch made on a terrace of the mountainside. What joy to feel
the embrace of his good _wahine_, Luka, and to have the crowing brown
baby thrust into his arms to fondle! Was it not always worth while to
be the long day away to know such a homecoming as this?
But to-night there was no welcome, and Keoua’s heart sank. In his haste
he waded through the taro-patch, instead of skirting the enclosure as
usual. The child was there, he heard its cry before he entered, but
of wife there was no sign. The baby lay on the matted floor, feebly
whining; the mother was gone, apparently not without struggle, for the
matting at the door had been torn violently away, making the hut look
like a desolate cave.
Keoua did not search the enclosure: he knew what had happened. The
officers of the Board of Health had found his hut at last, and had
taken away his wife, for--_she was a leper_. They had taken her away in
the husband’s absence, for they knew that, had he been there, he would
have fought to the death. His loaded gun still lay where he had left it
in the corner of the hut. They had taken her by violence as it seemed,
and callously left the helpless babe behind, for Hawaiian officials,
even those with bowels of compassion, were not much given to thinking
about babies. Some Chinese coolies working in the neighborhood
corroborated the suggestions of his fear. Luka had been carried away
to the _haole_ (white) doctors, and she would be taken to Molokai, and
there be dead--dead to husband, child and friends.
Keoua was a crushed man when he took his helpless babe in his arms. It
did not occur to him to give it away, as many of his friends would have
done, or even to find a nurse for it. Somehow it reminded him that he
once had a home. He did not go fishing now. For three or four days he
tried to make the babe eat some _poi_, or even, so stupid or ignorant
was the man, some hard taro, or a piece of banana, but, although it
did not cry, it refused to eat, and one day towards evening its cries
ceased forever. Then Keoua, more miserable and lonely than ever,
wrapped the tiny corpse in fold upon fold of _kapa_ and took it to the
Kawaiahao cemetery. Here, among the graves of so many of his fast-dying
race, he found a little wooden hut and knocked at the door. An old
white-haired Hawaiian, no other indeed than Keoua’s father, opened. He
was living here on the very soil which was in time to be his grave, and
to him Keoua handed the bundle without a word of explanation, even as
to the absence of Luka. The two men uttered their “_auwe_” together,
the young man in his youth and the old man in his age, over the body
of the babe. Then, as the moon rose, silvering the cocoanut groves of
Waikiki, Keoua stole back to his deserted hut, with the instinct of a
beast wishing to hide its head in the earth.
* * * * *
Two days later the “_Likelike_” is on her way from Honolulu to Mani.
What a dream that voyage is! For a while the empty craters of Leahi and
Koko Head, fringed with breakers along the coral reef, stand out in
glorious sunlight. Then suddenly--
“The sun’s rim dips,
The stars rush out,
At one stride comes the dark.”
Mattresses are spread on deck, the passengers stretch themselves for
sleep, the air is heavy with the scent of the wreaths of flowers with
which almost every voyager is bedecked; overhead the stars swing
like lamps, or as though the whole vault of heaven, with its million
eyes, were one lamp swaying in infinite space. Then, with a faint
consciousness of something breaking in upon your dream, you feel an
anchor drop and hear the splash of oars. You have not, however, reached
your destination yet. This is some boat coming off from the shores of
Molokai for stores for a lonely ranch in the mountains. If you rise,
you may lean over the bulwarks and look through the mists upon a black
mass of mountain wall which conceals the most loathsome scene the
world affords--the great lazar house of Hawaii in Nature’s fairest
garden, the saddest witness our earth possesses to the existence of the
serpent’s trail.
Yes, it is not the chill night-mist which makes you shiver; for,
although you know the leper settlement is not on this side of the
island, at Kaunakakai, but on the other side over the _pali_ at
Kalaupapa, you feel that no wall of mountain can shut out the thought
of thirteen hundred fellow creatures suffering a living death in the
land which God made so fair.
If you had been onboard the “_Likelike_” on the day of which I speak,
you would have heard, almost coincident with the lifting of the anchor,
a splash so indistinct that when some one shouted “Man overboard!”
few believed the cry. Men lazily looked over the bulwarks, but saw
nothing, for the moon was behind the mountain, and presently, with the
comforting assurance that, if anybody had gone overboard, he was by
this time food for sharks, lay back on their mattresses to continue
their dreams and their voyage.