The Story of Hawaii (Illustrated Edition). Fowke Gerard

sadder the breaking up of the race, because too often in the half-Hawaiian it is the moral weakness that will be noted and imputed to the native blood, not the physical strength; the love of gambling, not the honesty; the vacillation, not the loyalty; the trickiness, not the childlike simplicity. An ethnologist a few generations hence, in attempting to reconstruct from the predominant characteristics of their mongrel descendants a picture of the ancient Hawaiian race, will make them a people despicable and thoroughly degraded. And those who have known them in their integrity, like children faulty and volatile, but like children eager to be taught and susceptible to every good influence, will no longer be there to defend them. The man. who would see the remnants of a genial, kindly, affectionate race must see them now or never.

      HAWAIIAN HISTORY TO 1898

       Table of Contents

      From the time of settlement to about the end of the thirteenth century the Hawaiian Islands, divided almost from the first into independent kingdoms, seem on the whole to have been peaceful. From this time on, however, strife became more and more general, and after 1450 a.d. there were continual wars, which had the inevitable effect of lowering standards, materially, as well as intellectually and morally, and also of seriously decreasing the population. Many and barbarous were the battles and, as no quarter was given the conquered, whole districts were devastated and depopulated. One chief after another, arrogant and rapacious, led his brutal army from district to district, from island to island. Sometimes a chief gained control of a large part of the group, only to lose what he had conquered through successful rebellion during his own lifetime; surely, so far as the establishment of a dynasty was concerned, to lose it when, after his death, quarrels broke out as to redistribution of land among the competing nobles. In November, 1786, during one of these ferocious and unnecessary civil wars, Kamehameha I was born, but before his work of uniting the country under one sovereign was begun, the Islands were discovered by Captain Cook. From old maps it is clear that the Spaniards had known as early as the sixteenth century that there was land somewhere in the vicinity of the Islands, but the world had no information as to its exact position and extent until Captain Cook, on a voyage of discovery to the northwest coast of America, sighted the Island of Oahu on January 18th, 1778. He saw soon afterwards the Islands of Niihau and Kauai, and landed at Waimea Bay on the latter island on the 20th. He then sailed to Niihau, where he spent a week taking on provisions and water, and trading. The general impression among the natives seems to have been that Captain Cook was a reincarnation of the god Lono, and that his crew were supernatural beings. Runners, who sailed in the swiftest canoes, and ran from end to end of the successive islands, were sent to carry to the different chiefs the news of these strange arrivals. This is a translation of their message: "The men are white; their skin is loose and folding; their heads are angular; fire and smoke issue from their mouths; they have openings in the sides of their bodies into which they thrust their hands and draw out iron, beads, nails, and other treasures, and their speech is unintelligible. This is the way they speak: 'a hikapalale, hikapalale, hioluai, oalaki, walawalaki, waiki poha.'" Apocryphal as this account may conceivably be, it differs from similar accounts in history and fiction of the effect produced on the savage mind by the first sight of civilised white men, in the extraordinary and probably authentic exposition of the English language as it sounded to the astonished ears of the Hawaiians. It will be noted that no letters are used which are unknown in the native tongue.

      In the following November Captain Cook returned, and, after cruising about among the Islands, in January set up winter quarters for purposes of trade and for making observations, at Kealakekua Bay, on the southwest coast of Hawaii. The priests constituted themselves his bodyguard, offered sacrifices to him in the temple, and made the people worship him as a god. Large quantities of provisions were supplied and there was no more question of payment than there would have been for offerings made to any other god. But in this case the offerings were in large quantities and were continuous, so that, after the novelty had worn off, the heavy tax began to make the people restless. The outrageous conduct of the crew, also, over whom there seems to have been no control, disgusted them, and only their terror of the priests kept them in subordination. The departure of the strangers, therefore, after about three weeks, was a time of great rejoicing among the natives—a joy unfortunately shortlived, as the ships ran into a severe storm and were compelled to return for repairs. The reception this time was very different. The priests were still faithful, so provisions were grudgingly supplied, but the people were convinced that the white men were not gods, treated them with contempt, and finally became so bold as to steal a ship's boat. In the fighting which ensued Captain Cook was killed by being stabbed in the back with an iron dagger. His body was held by the natives and was that night given formal funeral rites. His bones were deified. There is no doubt that in this last affray the natives were the aggressors. There is also no doubt that, had the sailors been kept in check and the people been treated with decent consideration, the final tragedy would not have occurred. Stories, believed at the time and by many believed to this day, that Captain Cook's body was eaten, are absolutely groundless. The Hawaiians were never at any time in their history cannibals.

      Captain Cook named this new land the Sandwich Islands, in honour of his patron, the Earl of Sandwich, but it was a name never adopted officially and is gradually falling out of use the world over. The discovery of the Islands was the Inauguration of a new era in Hawaiian affairs. Their isolation was over. New forces were henceforth to control their destiny, but it is sad that the first gift of the white men was disease and that the feeling for them left in the minds of the natives was one of fear mingled with contempt.

      The history of the next thirty years is the story of the gradual conquest of the Islands by Kamehameha. Left, on the death of the old King, as second in power on the Island of Hawaii, he was soon involved in one of the endless civil wars, and after many reverses succeeded in making himself the most powerful chief in the island, not even excepting the King, to whom he was nominally subject. In 1790 a great eruption of Kilauea, which destroyed a large part of his rival!s army that was actually marching against him, convinced Kamehameha that the goddess Pele was on his side. It was, however, not a brilliantly successful battle, but an act of gross treachery, culminating in the murder of the King of Hawaii, which gave him the sovereignty of the island. In 1795 dissensions in the leeward islands made Kamehameha believe that the time had come to carry his conquests across the water. Tradition reports the strength of his army as 16,000 men. Maui he took with comparative ease, and Oahu after a fierce struggle in Nuuanu Valley, where the survivors of the opposing army were driven over the precipice at the head of the valley. The invasion of Kauai was prevented once by a storm which destroyed many of the canoes which had already set sail, once by a pestilence which carried off half of Kamehameha's army. The island was finally, in 1810, voluntarily ceded by its king, who was, however, given permission to hold it in fief during his lifetime on condition that he make Liholiho, Kamehameha's heir, his successor. The conquest of the Islands was greatly facilitated by the facts that Kamehameha was superior to other chiefs in the number of his firearms and that he had in his service two or three intelligent white men.

      After the death of Captain Cook the Islands were visited by successive expeditions, among them those of the well-known navigators, Portlock and Dixon, and La Perouse, both in 1786. Captain Mears in 1787 took a high chief, Kaiana, a friend of Kamehameha, on a visit to China. On the whole, explorers were friendly, but when the captains of ships visiting the Islands did not treat the natives fairly reprisals were often severe. Thus, for example, in 1789, a sloop, the Fair American, was captured and the crew killed. The sloop was for years used by Kamehameha. Firearms were obtained by barter and sometimes by theft. One explorer, Captain George Vancouver, who had been sent out by the British Government, made three visits to Hawaii and has always been considered a benefactor of the Hawaiian people. He refused to sell firearms; he gave much good and sadly needed advice; he tried to act as mediator between warring factions; and landed cattle, which had been hitherto unknown, but which now increased rapidly and were of great benefit to the people. He it was, also, who superintended the construction of the first vessel built in the Islands, the Britannia, which formed an important addition to Kamehameha's little navy. At his instigation a council of the chiefs was held in 1794, at which it was determined ,to place the Islands under the protection of Great Britain, and in February