A Hawaiian Feast--Amusing Joke Played Upon White Men
Returning from the volcano towards Upolu, we had a meeting house to
dedicate at a place called Pololu, and the Saints there had prepared a
feast on the occasion.
An account of a Hawaiian feast may be interesting to my readers and I
will describe this one. The vegetable portion of the feast consisted of
_poi_. This I have before described to you. It is not kept in dishes of
earthenware but in calabashes, some of which are very large and will
hold several gallons of the food. On this occasion the people sat on
the ground on mats. For tablecloths there were large green leaves of
the plant called _ki_. On these were placed packages of beef, pork,
fowl, dog, and goat, done up in the leaves in which they had been
cooked. Fish also was served up in this manner.
As soon as the blessing was asked, every one dipped his or her
forefingers into the "_poi_," and lifting as much as the fingers would
hold, they passed them into their mouths, throwing their heads back as
they did so, to get a good mouthful. The hogs, chickens and little dogs
were speedily dissected, the fingers being the only knives, forks and
spoons used among them. The scene was one of true enjoyment.
The Sandwich Islander is never so happy, so musical, so full of
pleasant talk, as when seated at a good meal; and the quantity one eats
on such occasions would astonish an American who had never seen them.
Usually they are particular about having their hands clean, and eating
with due respect to each other's rights. One waits for the other to put
his fingers in the _poi_ and their ideas of decorum and manners, such
as they are, are as strict as ours.
We Elders who ate with them were also seated on mats and ate the same
kind of food that they did, only in place of using our fingers we
either used spoons or small paddles which we whittled out of wood, to
convey the food to our mouths, thinking it would be better to set them
an example in this respect.
I scarcely think, though, that any of our party would prefer dog meat
to beef, goat or chicken, though I must say that if it were not for
prejudice, I think the dog meat as wholesome and as clean as the pork;
for the dogs which they eat in that country are a peculiar breed, the
flesh of which is very sweet and tender. They are very particular
in feeding them; they keep them cleaner and do not give them such
disagreeable food as they do to their hogs. But there is something
repugnant to people raised as we have been, in the idea of eating dog
meat.
A story was told me by Brother Napela of a trick which he and some
other natives played off on some white men at a feast which they
partook of at a place called Waikapu on the island of Maui. The white
men were merchants from Lahaina, and had been invited over to this
feast. They had meats and fish of every kind nearly, and among the
rest had a number of roasted pigs and roasted dogs. One of the natives
suggested, as a good trick to play on the white men, that they sever
the heads of the pigs, and put them with the dogs, and take the dogs'
heads and put them with the pigs. They did so. Of course the merchants
did not want to eat dog meat, and would not touch any of the meat where
the dogs' heads were, but ate heartily of what they supposed were pigs.
The natives tried to persuade them to eat the other meat. "Oh no," they
said, "these delicious pigs are good enough for us," and they would not
touch the other.
I may say here that the native method of cooking meat is superior to
ours. They contrive to preserve all the juices of the meat in it while
it is being cooked.
Nothing was said to the merchants about the trick that had been played
upon them until the feast was ended, and they could not be persuaded
that they had eaten dogs, until the bones were shown to them, which
they knew to be not those of pigs. They tried hard to be sick at the
thought of having eaten dog meat, but had to confess that it was as
good meat as they ever ate.
An unsuspecting person, if served with dog meat, would never dream that
it was anything but sucking pig.