in height, strong and sinewy, excelling all other chiefs in athletic
exercises, cruel to enemies, ruling his own household with a rod of
iron, generous and brave among his friends, and filled with a
fatalistic belief in his own destiny. At heart he was devoted to the
interests of his country as far as he understood them. He believed that
he knew best, therefore in after years when he became ruler over the
group of islands he was thoroughly autocratic. The king’s will was to
be the people’s will. His was a savage face, large-featured, often
ferocious and repulsive. On the other hand it was capable of a vast
range of playing passions.
His uncle, Ka-lani-opuu, who ruled the large island of Hawaii at the
time of the death of Captain Cook, had died in 1782. Ka-meha-meha had
been chosen king by a number of influential chiefs in opposition to his
cousin Kiwa-lao, the son of Ka-lani-opuu. War arose between the
cousins. Kiwa-lao was slain in one of the early conflicts. Other
chiefs, of the southern part of the island, refused to swear allegiance
to Ka-meha-meha, and had continued the war. The favors of the war gods
had been almost equally distributed. The last battle had been fought at
Hilo. At the time when our story opens Ka-meha-meha’s attack had been
repulsed with fearful loss on the part of his followers. At this time
he was forty-seven years of age and just commencing the life work of a
king and savage statesman.
The king looked thoughtfully down into the valley where the wounded and
wearied warriors were drawing the war canoes out of the inrolling surf.
In the village could be heard wailing as the scanty news of the battle
was hastily reported, and the people realised that some loved chief or
friend would never return again to their homes.
The king’s heart grew warm toward his faithful friends as he want down
into the valley to tell them there was no pursuit, and they could seek
rest and healing. While the chiefs were around the poi-bowl that
evening he was very quiet. He was thinking of the bodies of his
warriors laid on the altars before the gods of the southern districts
of the island. He thought of the naked altars of his own Waipio temple,
to which he had brought no captives to be slain in sacrifice. He
imagined that he might go alone and do some daring deed, perhaps make a
hurried raid upon some unsuspecting point of his enemy’s territories.
He rose from his mat and quietly passed out into the darkness. He
called a few strong boatmen and his favourite canoe steerer, launched
one of the war canoes, and with sail and paddle sped southward.
That night was rough for Hawaiian seas. Thunder reverberated in
oft-repeated echoes from the sea cliffs. Thunder and lightning are rare
in this part of the great Pacific. Heavy winds blew and dashed the
waves high around the canoe. The natives say, “The chief was not in
danger, because his steersman was skilful and watchful. The sea did not
break over the boat, nor were they wet. Like a dolphin the boat ran
over the waves.”
It was a misty morning as he passed Hilo Bay, where the greater part of
his enemies was encamped. His boat, far out in the shadows, was not
noticed. He passed around a corner of the island and planned to
surprise the natives of a noted fishing-ground, hoping to make captives
and secure booty from some of the warriors against whom the recent
battle had been fought.
The morning light was touching the inland mountain tops. It rested, a
silver star, on the snowy summit of Mauna Kea. It made a golden glory
of the fire clouds of the volcano Kilauea. It glistened over the black
beds of pa-hoe-hoe, or smooth, shining lava. It began to bring into
strong relief the uplifted heads of the cocoanut trees of a century’s
growth. The white foam of ocean waves began to be visible along the
outer reef.
The natives of Papai, a bay on the Puna coast, hastened into the sea to
gather the delicacies which are usually found among the shell-fish
along the reef, and also to set nets and snares for fish.
As the mists rose from the waters, the oarsmen entered into the spirit
of the adventure. Like a shark the war canoe dashed toward the
fishermen.
The people of Puna, looking toward the dawn on the sea, had noticed the
boat far out. They asked each other, “What boat is this of the early
morning?” After a little they counted the number of oarsmen. They saw
that the newcomers were strangers. Then they asked a native who was
visiting them, whose home was on the other side of the island: “O
Paiea, do you know who this is?”
Paiea looked, recognised his ruling chief and called out: “It is
Ka-meha-meha!” Then the people were filled with fear, for the prowess
of the chief was well known and greatly feared. They seized paddles and
nets and snares and with the screaming women and children fled, rushing
along the reef, falling into the deep holes, swimming and stumbling
toward the mainland.
The king, commanding the others not to follow, leaped from the canoe to
attack two stalwart natives who had been aiding the weak to escape.
The story, related by Kukahi, is that Ka-meha-meha did not succeed in
overtaking any of the Puna people before they gained the shore and fled
inland. Closely pursuing he called on them to stop; but with greater
terror they continued their flight. Then he became angry and quickened
his pace. A fisherman turned and threw his fishnet over the pursuing
chief, causing him to fall down upon the sharp lava. “Blood crawled
over the stones around the fallen body.” Then he tore the nets which
entangled him and again rushed heedlessly on. While straining himself
to see where the men were running, his foot broke through a thin shell
of lava into a crevice. To pull it up was impossible.
The men turned back and struck at him with their paddles, but after a
few blows the paddles were destroyed. He managed to grasp a large piece
of lava. The men ran away. “The thrown stone struck the trunk of a Noni
tree, broke it off and with the tree fell to the bottom of a small
ravine, and the spot is shown to this day.”
The steersman became anxious concerning his chief and came up from the
boat. Meantime the fishermen had secured spears and were returning to
kill Ka-meha-meha. The steersman broke the sharp edges of lava away
from the imprisoned foot, but did not succeed in liberating his chief
before the natives began to thrust at him with their spears.
The agile chief, fettered as he was, avoided the thrusts, but the
steersman was awkward. One of the spears pierced him. Ka-meha-meha
seized this spear and quickly broke it near the body. When the men saw
that he had a weapon they ran away.
When Ka-meha-meha had freed himself he and his companion came down to
the shore. He warned the men not to repeat the story of the injured man
and the battle between himself and the flying fishermen of Puna. He did
not want his high chiefs to know that he had been struck and hurt by a
common man. The chiefs were very strenuous in upholding the dignity of
their caste. They thought but little of putting to death their
servants. That some of the lower classes should have struck their
highest chief was sufficient ground for killing any of his companions
who had failed to protect him even at the cost of their own lives.
Ka-meha-meha knew how unreasonably wilful he had been in forbidding his
steersman to join in the pursuit, and therefore felt the injustice of
permitting him to be punished. It was a weary journey for the defeated
king and his wounded steersman.
The spear-head and part of the shaft still rested in the side of the
wounded man. The king could not have the spear removed without great
danger, so waited, thinking to have the wound well cared for after
reaching Lau-pa-hoe-hoe. However, it was impossible to keep the boatmen
from telling the story of the splintered paddle and the wounded
steersman. The chiefs soon heard the particulars and called the council
of chiefs. There they grimly voted to “heal” the wounded man.
Ka-meha-meha appealed to them:
“O chiefs! The night of our going away was a very evil night. There was
storm and wind and thunder; yet I received no injury, nor was I even
wet by the sea. Nor was I permitted to feel the least fear. My
steersman was wise and skilful. He was my close friend on the deceitful
and dangerous sea. Therefore I ask you, if you wish to see him healed,
have him brought before my eyes for the treatment.”
But some of the chiefs went out and instead of bringing the wounded man
into the council took him and twisted the spear-point, pulling it back
and forth, until he died.
After Ka-meha-meha returned from his Puna excursion he rested for a
time. His adventure was not encouraging. He decided that he could not
hasten the plans of the gods. The ancient Hawaiian was very much of a
fatalist. So also is the Hawaiian of to-day. What has to be is accepted
without rebellion.
Ka-meha-meha realised that he was too weak, both in personal strength
and in the number of warriors, to make further effort for the time
being. Therefore, he sent his warriors home to cultivate their fields
and prepare new war material for future conflicts.
While this preparation was going on, a new element entered into
Hawaiian warfare. The white man’s ships and the white man’s weapons
were becoming familiar to the great king.
White men were secured to take charge of small cannon, and to drill
squads of warriors equipped with the rude firearms of a century ago.
Some of these white leaders and their muskets found their way into the
service of almost all the important chiefs throughout the islands.
Ka-meha-meha owned the best harbours and offered the best inducements
for trade with the foreigners. He secured the best equipment of arms
and men. This gave Ka-meha-meha a vast advantage over the antagonistic
kings and chiefs of his own and other islands. He had large boats built
and armed with small swivel cannon. He had sixteen foreigners in his
service. He led his victorious warriors from island to island. In his
last campaign it is said his fleet of canoes lined the beach of one of
the islands for a distance of four miles.
In a few years his friends saw the prophecy fulfilled. “His cloud was
resting on the mountains of all the islands.” He had unified the group
under one autocratic government, and had established the Ka-meha-meha
dynasty.
Then came the memory of that excursion made in 1783 to Puna for the
sake of robbery and possible murder. The king wondered what had become
of the men who had attacked him. He had gone to Hilo and was having a
fine fleet of wide and deep canoes made in the splendid koa forests
back of Hilo. While waiting here, some time between the years 1796 and
1802, he determined to find the men of the splintered paddle. He knew
that these men might have changed their residence from the Puna
district to Hilo. So he sent messengers throughout both districts
summoning all the people to a great meeting in Hilo. Certain large
grass houses were set apart for the large assembly. The Hilo people
were separated from the families of the other district. When the people
were thus gathered together they found themselves prisoners. They
feared wholesale destruction. The days of human sacrifices among the
Hawaiians had not passed by. The new king, against whom they had at one
time fought, might intend their sacrifice in numbers. They were his
property to be burned or cut to pieces and placed in the temples of the
gods. No one could dispute the will of the chief. It was a political
condition which the Hawaiians of a hundred years later could scarcely
begin to realise. That man is very ignorant who thinks the old days
best.
The king passed through the houses allotted to the Hilo people. It must
have been an anxious time for the prisoners. Wholesale destruction,
possibly because of the bitter war of 1783, stared them in the face.
But the chief touched them not and passed through their lines out to
the houses in which the Puna people were confined.
A suspicion at least of the reason for their imprisonment must have
come to the guilty men. The story runs that when they saw Ka-meha-meha
they bowed their heads, hoping to escape recognition. But this revealed
them at once to Ka-meha-meha, and he approached them with the command
to raise their heads. It was an interesting scene when these common men
were brought before the chiefs for final judgment. It is said the chief
asked them if they were not at the sea of Papai. They assented. Then
came the question to two of them:
“You two perhaps are the men who broke the paddle on my head?”
They acknowledged the deed.
“To the death, to the death!” cried the chiefs around the king.
“Down the face!” “Command the stones!” “Let the man and his friends be
stoned to death!”
The king listened to the suggestions of his companions. Then he said:
“Listen! I attacked the innocent and the defenceless. This was not
right. In the future no man in my kingdom shall have the right to make
excursions for robbery without punishment, be he chief or priest. I
make the law, the new law, for the safety of all men under my
government. If any man plunders or murders the defenceless or the
innocent he shall be punished. This law is given in memory of my
steersman and shall be known as ‘Ke Kana-wai Ma-mala-hoa,’ or the law
of the friend and the broken oars. The old man or the old woman or the
child may lie down to sleep by the roadside and none shall injure
them.”
The law with the name Ma-mala-hoa is still on the statute books of
Hawaii. It has been greatly modified and enlarged, but the decree
against robbery by any man, and especially the plunder of the weak by
the powerful, had its beginning for Hawaii in the days of Ka-meha-meha.
Alexander says in his history of the islands: “During the days of
Ka-meha-meha energetic measures were taken for the suppression of
brigandage, murder and theft throughout the kingdom.”
“The Law of the Splintered Paddle” marked the awakening of a pagan
conscience to a sense of just dealing between the strong and the weak.
XVIII
LAST OF THE TABU
To-day the thatched house is a curiosity in the Hawaiian Islands. In
the time of our story the grass roof was the only shelter from the rain
and heat, except the thick-leaved tree or the insecure lava cave. The
long rushes and grasses from the sea marshes and the long leaves of the
pandanus tree made a very good if not a very enduring home. There the
chiefs and common people alike were born, and out of such grass houses
their bodies were carried when life was over.
It was the same story told over again on islands or continents. The
chief’s house might have a few more mats of a little finer texture, or
calabashes of wood with markings a little more unique, but birth nights
left fully as many beautiful children, and the hours of death took away
fully as many noble men and women from the poor hut built by the taro
patch as from the better-apportioned home under the silver-leaved kukui
or candle-nut tree. Out of the ranks of the unappreciated have come
some of the best people of the earth, and some of the strongest
influences changing nations.
There was a modest grass house in one of the upland valleys of Kailua,
Hawaii. Tall cocoanut trees bent over it. Near it grew the ohia, or
native apple tree, luxuriant in crimson tassel-like blossoms. The
sacred ohelo berries ripened in the iliahi or sandalwood forest above.
One bright afternoon a tall, finely formed woman broke through the
arching branches which obstructed the path and approached the door
where an old woman sat crooning to a child resting in her arms. The old
woman looked up, and then fell on her face, crying:
“Oh! my chief! my chief! My Ka-ahu-manu!”
The queen gently raised the old woman, calling her “mother,” as was the
Hawaiian custom when speaking to favourite retainers.
“Where are Oluolu and her husband?” asked the queen.
“Coming soon with the pink taro you so dearly love,” was the reply.
While the favourite queen of Ka-meha-meha was visiting with her old
nurse, a happy young couple came from the near-by taro patch. The young
man carried a bunch of rare bananas. When he saw the queen he
prostrated himself at her feet and, without thinking, gave the bananas
to her.
Ka-ahu-manu laughed gaily, saying: “O my thoughtless one, you have
tempted your queen to break tabu.”
A horrified expression crossed his face and he hastily started to
withdraw the bananas. But the queen was wayward and self-willed. Her
hand was on the bunch as she said:
“This is mine. It is your offering to your chief. I will eat of these
bananas.” In a moment she was eating the delicious fruit.
Then the old woman began to wail: “Auwe, auwe! The queen must die and
we shall all be destroyed!”
“Hush, mother,” said the young man, as he glanced significantly over to
Oluolu, who had evidently some secret knowledge of the way to violate
tabu. “Many people think that the tabu is not right, and that the
threatened punishments come not from the gods, but from the priests
themselves. The white men in Ka-meha-meha’s court do not keep tabu, nor
do they die. Even the king does not require human sacrifices. Old
things are passing away.”
“But the gods will punish the people for the growing unbelief,”
murmured the grandmother.
“Not if the belief is false,” said Oluolu.
Ka-ahu-manu listened in astonishment. She had done many things secretly
which she did not care to have come to the ears of the priests, but she
could scarcely believe that the common people did the same. She said:
“Is this the talk of the common people?”
“No,” answered Oluolu. “Only a few speak freely one to another. The
dread of the priest is over the land.”
When Ka-ahu-manu returned to the king’s houses she kept these things in
her heart. She saw the priests and their spies becoming more vigilant
and more violent. She realised that the foreigners were exerting a
strong influence against the tabu system. Her outspoken speeches, for
which the priests did not dare to punish her, were bearing fruit. The
indignation of the queens of Ka-meha-meha was aroused when a priest
commanded that a little girl who had been caught eating bananas should
have one of her eyes gouged out. Then came a carousal, after which a
tipsy woman stumbled into her husband’s eating-house and was put to
death for violating the tabu. Ka-ahu-manu talked these and many other
similar experiences over when she visited the old grass house, gaining
new ideas and new confidence from her loyal retainers; but the old
woman, with aching heart, sat in the door, muttering incantations to
keep her queen and her children from the danger which their words
seemed to invite.
Ka-meha-meha died about 2 o’clock in the morning of May 8, 1819. When
he knew that his illness was serious he gave the kingdom jointly to
Ka-ahu-manu and his son, Liho-liho.
The very morning of Ka-meha-meha’s death some chiefs came to
Ka-ahu-manu with the proposition that she use her authority and declare
the tabu at an end. But there was an indescribable scene of riotous
confusion and revelry and lust. Even the ordinary restraints of savage
society were laid aside. Priests were occupied with signs and
incantations to discover some one who might have prayed the great king
to death. Ka-ahu-manu’s party of practical unbelievers were under
suspicion. Therefore the queen decided that the time had not yet come
to take such an eventful step. However, some of the people violated
different tabus and suffered no injury. Kee-au-moku, the queen’s
brother, broke the tabu staff of the priests, and Hewa-hewa, the high
priest, later gave his influence not only toward the suppression of the
tabus, but also toward the destruction of the idols and their temples.
After a few days Liho-liho, the young king, and Ka-ahu-manu, in their
most regal apparel, met and together assumed the government of the
Hawaiian Islands. At that time Ka-ahu-manu proposed that they
henceforth disregard the tabus. But the king, although under the
influence of liquor, was not quite ready to take this step. Some of the
chiefs also opposed such action. Keopuolani, one of the queens, asked
the king to eat with her. But Liho-liho delayed the answer. Then she
took his little brother (afterward Ka-meha-meha III) and induced him to
eat with her. This gave an example of the most sacred tabu chief in the
land violating tabu with her little son. Soon the king yielded and
openly ate and drank with the queens at a feast in which many tabu
articles were placed. The word passed rapidly from island to island,
and was hailed with joy by the mass of the people.
But the guardian of the war god, Kaili, felt responsibility placed upon
him by the dying charge of Ka-meha-meha. He felt that it was his high
trust to protect the tabus and the worship of the gods. He was strong
and fearless. The priests and chiefs who wished to perpetuate tabu
gathered around him and a rebellion was instituted.
The story of the “battle of Kua-moo” must be told very briefly. It was
the death struggle of the fanatics. It was the attack of the handful
upon the better armed and larger army. It was a long drawn-out
conflict. At last the guardian of the war god, wounded and bleeding,
fought, seated upon a block of lava. By his side his wife stood, also
fighting bravely. As he, struck by a musket ball, fell back dead, she
cried out: “I surrender!” But at that moment a ball struck her in the
temple and she fell dead by the body of her husband.
How the tabus were laid aside, the idols destroyed and the temples
burned—all this is a matter of history. But no writer has chronicled
how the young husband carried the news from Kailua to the grass house
under the cocoanut trees. No one has written of the joy of Oluolu in
the life of broader privileges secured by abolishing the tabu system.
And no one has described the old woman who could not understand the new
order of things, but sat in the door of the grass house in the valley
and grieved over the shattered doctrines of her forefathers.
XIX
FIRST HAWAIIAN PRINTING
Foreigners from all over the world called on the Hawaiians and remained
with them forty years before the missionaries came. Their influence was
negative. They did not study the people or help them to study. John
Young, Don Marin and Isaac Davis were notable exceptions in a few
things, but the fact remains that no earnest effort was made by any one
to help the natives intellectually until the missionaries came.
Alexander Campbell, who, in 1809, was left in Honolulu by a whaling
ship on account of frozen feet, revealed the situation. The king
Tamaah-maah (Ka-meha-meha) ordered Boyd, his carpenter, to make a loom
for Campbell to use in weaving cloth for sails. Boyd declined, saying,
“The natives should be taught nothing that would render them
independent of strangers.”
Campbell places on record the feeling among the foreigners. “When a
brother of the Queen’s, whose name I do not remember—but who was
usually called by the white people John Adams—wished me to teach him to
read, Davis would not permit me, observing, ‘They will soon know more
than ourselves.’” It is interesting to note that Gov. Adams, whose
native name was Kuakini, did learn to read and write under the
missionaries and has left two short letters, in both of which he
presents a request for saws.
In one he says, “My wife is going away to Hawaii. If perhaps she can
carry, give you to me sahs tools,” signed “Gov. Adams.” In the other
letter he says he is building a house and wants a “sah tool” which he
will return when the work is done.
The missionaries landed at Kailua on the island Hawaii, April 4, 1820,
and there divided their party, the larger number coming to “Hanaroorah,
Honolulu, April 19.”
Mr. Bingham says, “They began at once to teach.—The first pupils were
the chiefs and their favourite attendants and the wives and children of
foreigners.” The first instruction was necessarily in English, but the
missionaries used every opportunity to become acquainted with the
speech of the people and make it a written language. They wrote down as
carefully as they could every new word which came to their ears. This
was no small task and was absolutely necessary as the foundation of a
written language.