Literary Extracts. Hawaii in the Past. (From the King’s Own). Evening Telegraph, 21 March 1894.

It was in the year 1778 that Captain Cook, in company with Captain King, was voyaging in the North Pacific Ocean, and discovered the lovely cluster of islands called by him “Sandwich Islands,” after the names of the First Lord of the Admiralty. Beautiful indeed are the isles of which Hawaii is chief! “sitting,” as Sir Edwin Arnold expresses it, “like a cluster of jewels on the purple cushion of the sea.” The sky is bright and clear, and the shores and groves are rich with varied colouring. And yet – what might have been the Paradise of the Pacific was, at that time, turned into a veritable Inferno by the “horrible genius of superstition.” The cringing fear (which has so often been mistaken for religious relevance), inspired by their beliefs and the cruelty of their priests, led the Hawaiian people to the use of the most grotesque and horrible modes of worshipping their gods. They were the victims of a religion of fear, which was only another names for a religion of slavery. The natives of Hawaii are usually above middle height, well formed, with fine muscular limbs and open countenances. Their complexions are of an olive tint, and their hair either black or brown. By nature they are gentle, intelligent, and both ready and quick to acquire knowledge. This natural sweetness, however, was so perverted and destroyed by the evils of their government (priestly and otherwise), that sometimes they are described as behaving more like demons than human beings. When

MOURNING THE DEAD,

the Hawaiians, in addition to the nanal prolonged wailings, were in the habit of knocking out their front teeth, casting off their clothing, and cutting their hair in all sorts of extraordinary ways. Sometimes they would shave both sides of their heads and only leave one long tuft of hair on the top. On these occasions also it was deemed allowable to take revenge for injuries of however long standing; so that none felt safe from reprisals. Even as late as the year 1823 many of the natives fled to the mountains to hide themselves from possible danger; others carried their wordly goods into the enclosures of the missionaries and begged for protection and the right to remain with them. Marriage was entered upon “with less ceremony than fishing or planting” – no religious ceremony at all was connected with it. The people believed in

THE POSSESSION OF TWO SOULS

one of which occasionally left the body as in trances or dreams, and returned to it again. This belief was traded upon by the Diviners or Soothsayers, who pretended to meet and comsume with these disembodied souls, thereby gaining power over the simple minds of the people, who dreaded above all things the refusal of the truant soul to return to them. To avert this calamity they would cheerfully pay the Diviner whatever he required – sometimes fish, sometimes chicken or white dogs. Everywhere in the beautiful islands the lives of the people were made hard and bitter by the

REQUIREMENTS OF THE RULERS AND THE PRIESTS,

and by the intolerable obligations imposed by a religion which covered existence with a network of rules and penalties. Suicide from one the most beautiful headlands of Hawaii was a common mode of escape from the life that was thus made miserable. The system of Tahn was most elaborate and inexorable. It was tabu for men and women to eat together, or even to partake of food that had been cooked in the same ovens. Infringement of this rule was punished with death. The eating of pork, bananas, cocoa-nuts, turtles, and certain kinds of fish was forbidden to women under the same death penalty. At festivals and all important occasions

HUMAN SACRIFICES

were offered, the victims being either prisoners taken in war, or persons accused of some violation of tabu. “Mu” was a word which exercised a spell of terror over all who heard it; even now Hawaiian children would shrink and tremble were one to whisper it to them. The “Mu” was the man employed by the priests to procure victims for the sacrifice. When an important occasion was in prospect, the people would fly wildly to the mountains and hide themselves till the immediate peril was over. In these islands, their discoverer, Captain Cook, met his death February 14th, 1779. One of his boats had been stolen by a native, and the Captain imprudently went on shore with the intention of seizing the king and holding him as a hostage till the boat was restored. This the people resisted, and in attempting to regain his ship Captain Cook was killed.

THE DEITY MOST FEARED BY THE HAWAIIANS

was Pele, the goddess of volcanoes. Her headquarters were in the crater of Kilanea, and none dared to approach her abode without an offering of the ohelo berries that grew in the neighbourhood. In times of eruption, hogs and many articles of value were thrown into the lava stream to appease her anger. The conical craters were thought to be the houses of the fire gods, where they frequently “amused themselves by playing draughts; the roaring of the furnaces and the crackling of the flames were the music of their dance, and the red fiery surge was the surf in which they played.”

White encounters with cultures they did not understand were used to justify the colonisation of large parts of the world. Katie Barclay thinks about such encounters whilst living in a country with a very similar legacy.