The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai. S. N. Haleole

about at the feast, the taboo signs, feather cloak, and wedding paraphernalia, the power over life and death, and the choice among virgins. Then, on the other hand, the wonder and delight of the common people, their curious spying into the chief's affairs, the treacherous paddlers, the different orders of landowners; in the temple, the human sacrifices, prayers, visions; the prophet's search for a patron, his wrestling with the god, his affection for his chief, his desire to be remembered to posterity by the saying "the daughters of Hulumaniani"—all these incidents reflect the course of everyday life in aristocratic Polynesian society and hence belong to the common stock of Hawaiian romance.

      Such being the material of Polynesian romance—a world in which gods and men play their part; a world which includes the heavens yet reflects naturalistically the beliefs and customs of everyday life, let us next consider how the style of the story-teller has been shaped by his manner of observing nature and by the social requirements which determine his art—by the world of nature and the world of man. And in the first place let us see under what social conditions Polynesia has gained for itself so high a place, on the whole, among primitive story-telling people for the richness, variety, and beauty of its conceptions.[1]

      Polynesian romance reflects its own social world—a world based upon the fundamental conception of social rank. The family tie and the inherited rights and titles derived from it determine a man's place in the community. The families of chiefs claim these rights and titles from the gods who are their ancestors.[2] They consist not only in land and property rights but in certain privileges in administering the affairs of a group, and in certain acknowledged forms of etiquette equivalent to the worship paid to a god. These rights are administered through a system of taboo.[3]

      A taboo depends for its force upon the belief that it is divinely ordained and that to break it means to bring down the anger of the gods upon the offender. In the case, therefore, of a violation of taboo, the community forestalls the god's wrath, which might otherwise extend to the whole number, by visiting the punishment directly upon the guilty offender, his family or tribe. But it is always understood that back of the community disapproval is the unappeased challenge of the gods. In the case of the Polynesian taboo, the god himself is represented in the person of the chief, whose divine right none dare challenge and who may enforce obedience within his taboo right, under the penalty of death. The limits of this right are prescribed by grade. Before some chiefs the bystander must prostrate himself, others are too sacred to be touched. So, when a chief dedicates a part of his body to the deity, for an inferior it is taboo; any act of sacrilege will throw the chief into a fury of passion. In the same way tabooed food or property of any kind is held sacred and can not be touched by the inferior. To break a taboo is to challenge a contest of strength—that is, to declare war.

      As the basis of the taboo right lay in descent from the gods, lineage was of first importance in the social world. Not that rank was independent of ability—a chief must exhibit capacity who would claim possession of the divine inheritance;[4] he must keep up rigorously the fitting etiquette or be degraded in rank. Yet even a successful warrior, to insure his family title, sought a wife from a superior rank. For this reason women held a comparatively important position in the social framework, and this place is reflected in the folk tales.[5] Many Polynesian romances are, like the Laieikawai, centered about the heroine of the tale. The mother, when she is of higher rank, or the maternal relatives, often protect the child. The virginity of a girl of high rank is guarded, as in the Laieikawai, in order to insure a suitable union.[6] Rank, also, is authority for inbreeding, the highest possible honor being paid to the child of a brother and sister of the highest chief class. Only a degree lower is the offspring of two generations, father and daughter, mother and son, uncle and niece, aunt and nephew being highly honorable alliances.[7]

      Two things result as a consequence of the taboo right in the hands of a chief. In the first place, the effort is constantly to keep before his following the exclusive position of the chief and to emphasize in every possible way his divine character as descended from a god. Such is the meaning of the insignia of rank—in Hawaii, the taboo staff which warns men of his neighborhood, the royal feather cloak, the high seat apart in the double canoe, the head of the feast, the special apparel of his followers, the size of his house and of his war canoe, the superior workmanship and decoration of all his equipment, since none but the chief can command the labor for their execution. In the second place, this very effort to aggrandize him above his fellows puts every material advantage in the hands of the chief. The taboo means that he can command, at the community expense, the best of the food supply, the most splendid ornaments, equipment, and clothing. He is further able, again at the community expense, to keep dependent upon himself, because fed at his table, a large following, all held in duty bound to carry out his will. Even the land was, in Hawaii and other Polynesian communities, under the control of the chief, to be redistributed whenever a new chief came into power. The taboo system thus became the means for economic distribution, for the control of the relation between the sexes, and for the preservation of the dignity of the chief class. As such it constituted as powerful an instrument for the control of the labor and wealth of a community and the consequent enjoyment of personal ease and luxury as was ever put into the hands of an organized upper class. It profoundly influenced class distinctions, encouraged exclusiveness and the separation of the upper ranks of society from the lower.[8]

      To act as intermediary with his powerful line of ancestors and perform all the ceremonials befitting the rank to which he has attained, the chief employs a priesthood, whose orders and offices are also graded according to the rank into which the priest is born and the patronage he is able to secure for himself.[9] Even though the priest may be, when inspired by his god, for the time being treated like a god and given divine honors, as soon as the possession leaves him he returns to his old rank in the community.[10] Since chief and priest base their pretensions upon the same divine authority, each supports the other, often the one office including the other;[11] the sacerdotal influence is, therefore, while it acts as a check upon the chief, on the whole aristocratic.

      The priest represented in Polynesian society what we may call the professional class in our own. Besides conducting religious ceremonials, he consulted the gods on matters of administration and state policy, read the omens, understood medicine, guarded the genealogies and the ancient lore, often acted as panegyrist and debater for the chief. All these powers were his in so far as he was directly inspired by the god who spoke through him as medium to the people.[12]

       Footnotes to Section II, 6: The story as a reflection of aristocratic social life

      [Footnote 1: J.A. Macculloch (in Childhood of Fiction, p. 2) says, comparing the literary ability of primitive people: "Those who possess the most elaborate and imaginative tales are the Red Indians and Polynesians."]

      [Footnote 2: Moerenhout, II, 4, 265.]

      [Footnote 3: Gracia (p. 47) says that the taboo consists in the interdict from touching some food or object which, has been dedicated to a god. The chief by his divine descent represents the god. Compare Ellis, IV, 385; Mariner, II, 82, 173; Turner, Samoa, pp. 112, 185; Fison, pp. 1–3; Malo, p. 83; Dibble, p. 12; Moerenhout, I, 528–533. Fornander says of conditions in Hawaii: "The chiefs in the genealogy from Kane were called Ka Hoalii or 'anointed' (poni ia) with the water of Kane (wai-niu-a-Kane) and they became 'divine tabu chiefs' (na lii kapu-akua). Their genealogy is called Iku-pau, because it alone leads up to the beginning of all genealogies. They had two taboo rights, the ordinary taboo of the chiefs (Kapu-alii) and the taboo of the gods (Kapu-akua). The genealogy of the lower ranks of chiefs (he lii noa), on the other hand, was called Iku-nuu. Their power was temporal and they accordingly were entitled only to the ordinary taboo of chiefs (Kapu-alii)."]

      [Footnote 4: Compare Krämer, Samoa Inseln, p. 31; Stair, p. 75; Turner, Samoa, p. 173; White, II, 62, and the Fornander stories of Aukele and of Kila, where capacity, not precedence of birth, determines the hero's rank.]

      [Footnote 5: In certain groups inheritance descends on the mother's side only. See Krämer, op. cit., pp. 15, 39; Mariner, II, 89, 98. Compare Mariner, II, 210–212; Stair, p. 222. In Fison (p. 65) the story of Longapoa, shows what a husband of lower rank may endure from a termagant wife of high rank.]

      [Footnote