Historical Collections of The Hawaiian Islands -  Part 1 - The Ancients

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Historical Collections of Hawaii
Keepers of the Culture
Influence of Foreigners on the ancients.
Part 1 - The Ancients  
How They lived.
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Part 1 - The Ancients 

As stated before the Hawaiian Islands are situated in the north central
portion of the Pacific Ocean, and lie almost wholly within the western
hemisphere. The main islands being more than two thousand miles distant
from the American continent. The seas from the south and west of Hawaii
are dotted with thousands of islands lying in the ocean like stepping
stones to the continents of Asia and Australia. But the nearest
inhabited islands are far off; and Hawaii is geographically the most
isolated of the larger island groups within the Pacific. In ancient
times, when craft were driven by sail and paddle, its affiliations were,
through the islands, with Asia; while in this day of modern
transportation, Hawaii is attached politically, economically, and
culturally to America. 

The Hawaiian islands, as a whole, consist of a chain of islands
extending over a distance of two thousand miles. If the ocean were
drained of its water, this chain would appear as a lofty mountain range.
The whole range is of volcanic origin, the separate islands having been
built up by out pourings of lava from vents along a crack in the earth's
crust. Raised up by volcanic action, they have been sculptured by
geological processes and modified by growth of coral into their present
forms. It is supposed that the volcanic action bagan in the northwest;
the islands at that end  have been reduced to a status of low coral
atolls, while the upbuilding by lava flows is still in progress at the
other end of the chain, on the island of Hawaii.

The main Hawaiian group, comprises of eight inhabited islands, Hawaii,
Maui, Kahoolawe, Lanai, Molokai, Oahu, Kauai, and Niihau, together with
adjacent islets. At some time in the past, two other islands of the
chain, Nihoa and Necker, were occupied by the Polynesians, but that
occupation had ceased and the islands were nearly forgotten before the
end of the eighteenth century. The inhabited islands are all of the high
volcanic type. The total area of the group is 6,435 square miles, but
the greater part of this area is mountainous and incapable of economic
utilization. The agricultural land. consisting of coastal plain,
valleys, and upland, is equally distributed among the group of islands.
Each of the larger islands have their share of forest land, and the
group as a whole has a scenic features of beauty and grandeur which
together make up a varied panorama of surpassing beauty. The best
natural harbor is located at the island of Oahu.

While sunshine is one of the distinctive features of Hawaiian climate,
clouds are always to be seen; they drift across the sky and rest on the
mountain summits and within the space of minutes a gentle shower or
pelting rain can appear, and then vanish within equal speed. spreading a
rainbow across the sky of liquid sunshine. 

It is a pleasant land in which to live in, and hence it is no matter of
surprise that the Hawaiian people. who dwelt close to nature were a
healthy, robust, intelligent, and good tempered folk.

They were a branch or sub-group of the great Polynesian family, which at
the dawn of modern history occupied the eastern tier of islands in the
Pacific Ocean, and other branches of the family being the Maori of New
Zealand, the Samoans, Tongans, Tahitians, Cook Islanders, and
Marquesans. It has been customary to speak of them as the Polynesian
race. It is now recognized that the Polynesian is a composite, in
physical type, in culture, and in language; and ethnologists are seeking
to isolate and define the various elements that have gone into their
making and to discover whence they came and how and when they entered
into the composition. The problem is yet far from a definate solution.

So far as Hawaii is concerned, it is quite generally believed that there
were successive arrivals of settlers extending over some hundreds of
years. It is also believed that these ancestors of the modern Hawaiians
came from the Society Islands ( Tahiti ); and it is almost certain that
the later ones came from there. The first human beings who came to
Hawaii - the real discovers of the islands may have come as much as a
thousand years ago. It is been surmised that the first comers were the
Menehunes of Hawaiian legends, and that they were driven out or
conquered and absorbed by the later invaders. Archeological remains on
the islands of Nihoa and Necker indicate that the people who lived there
belonged to this first cultural stratum. There is convincing evidence
that a period of about two centuries some six or eight hundred years
ago, the route between Tahiti and Hawaii was well known and was used by
numerous voyagers. The last immigration to Hawaii occurred in that
period; and that time were introduced some important new cultural
elements. The leaders of these later immigrants were the ancestors of
the historical chiefly class of the Hawaiian Islands. At the end of this
period of the long voyages, communication ceased between Hawaii and
central Polynesia, and the Hawaiians lived in nearly complete isolation
from the rest of the world until the year 1778.

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How They Lived.

Confined within the narrow bounds of a small group of islands, with only
the resources possessed by the islands when they arrived, supplimented
by the few plants and small animals, they were able to bring with them
on their long and perilous voyages, the Hawaiians showed much skill and
ingenuity in adapting themselves to their environment. In that
enviroment the most serious limitations were the absence of metals, such
as copper and iron, in usable form, confining the people to stone age
tools and utensils; and the absence of the larger domesticated animals,
such as cattle, horses, sheep, and goats. The machine age was far from
them; they learned how to get their living direct from the sea and the
soil. Without hamperng themselves with superfluous clothing, they lived
a natural life, working as much as necessary, and by means of their
recreations giving the air, sunshine, and sea water full opportunity to
exert a beneficient influence upon their bodies and spirits. The result
was that they were strong in body and cheerful in disposition. They were
a primitive folk, having fruits as well as merits common to people in a
primitive state.

The sea was for them a familiar element. They had come to Hawaii over
the sea and they lived near it. It was the lowland zone extending from
the strand or sea shore back inland to an elevation of a thousand feet
or more that most of the population lived; but the habitable inland
areas became occupied to some extent. From the sea they obtained an
important part of their food: fish, salt, and sea-weed necessary to
balance their somewhat limited diet. They used the sea water for its
medicinal effect. In the sea were spent many of their leisure hours, in
swimming and aquatic sports. They had an amazing agility and dexterity
in the water, a skill which was noticed with admiration by the earliest
visitors from Europe and America. They were expert fisherman, knowing
the habits and characteristics of the many kinds of fish in the waters
about the islands and off-shore, the times and places and manner of
their taking. In connection with fishing, they developed an elaborate
and exacting technique and skill, not alone in the direct art of
fishing, but also the art of making fish hooks, lures, lines, and nets.
They had kapus
( Tabu days ) which operated to protect fish at certain seasons and thus
conserve the supply, and they built fish-ponds for the raising and
fattening certain kinds of fish.

Fishing was intimately associated with navigation, in which the
Hawaiians were very skillful. They needed to be expert in handling ther
boats and in swimming, for the waters surrounding the islands are very
rough at times. Especially is this true in some of the channels
separating the islands.Upsets were not infrequent, but accidents of this
kind rarely disconcerted the Hawaiian; with little difficulty he would
right his boat, climb into it, free it of water, and proceed on his way.
Even sharks, which live in the water outside the reefs, do not seem to
have bothered them very much. [ T. Edgar, master of Captain Cook's ship
Discovery, gives in his log book under the date of Dec 23, 1778, an
incident which illustrates this point.]

The simplest and basic vessel used by the Hawaiians was a single canoe
made by hollowing ot the trunk of a tree. The depth
of this vessel might be increased by lashing planks on the sides; the
ends were shaped and partially covered over to fend off the spray and
surf. In central and southeastern Polynesia, canoes were commonly made
of planks sewed together at the edges, built up from the keel or from
the dugout base. However made, a single canoe was sometimes rendered
more stable by attaching an outrigger to one side. The canoe was
propelled by a paddle or paddles, but sometimes a crude mat sail was set
up to gain the assistance of the wind. The outrigger canoe is remarkably
seaworthy vessel within its limitations; the Hawaiians and other
Polynesians made a larger and more substancial craft by fastening two
large single canoes together at a short distance from each other. Along
the middle of the double canoe a platform was lashed, on which something
roughly corresponding to a cabin might be erected. One or two sails were
used on some double canoes to aid paddlers in propelling the vessel. A
large double canoe was capable of carrying scores of people and a
considerable amount of cargo. It is supposed that it was in such craft
as these, that the long voyages of the Polynesians were made. There was
a danger that in violent storms the two canoes might break apart; in
that case the whole was almost certain to be lost, and it is likely that
many such tragedies occurred in the long course of the Polynesian
wanderings.

On land the everyday activities were devoted mainly to routine business
of supplying food, shelter, and clothing. The Hawaiian house consisted
of a framework of posts, poles, and slender rods, fitted and lashed
together with fiber lashings and covered with a thatch of pili grass or
such other appropriate material as was most available. It was a simple
thing, architecturally considered, and not very durable, but required
more than a little skill to build it well. A complete esablishment for
one family included five or six of these structures, subsequently
equivalent, to a five or six room house; and the use of the various
structures in the Hawaiian families were mostly used. It is true that
not all families had a complete structure, but were built according to
the availability of materials.

The furnishings of the domestic establishment were few, consisting of
some containers of several kinds, poi boards, and calabashes carved out
of wood or made of gourds; mats for floor coverings and beds; simple
tools ( adzes,
poi pounders, knives, fish-hooks and etc ) of stone, wood, and bone;
Kapa (tapa) for clothing and for bed coverings; fish lines, nets, and
cordage for various purposes; a spear and other weapons of warfare.

In the Hawaiian domestic household, the raising and preparation of food
was the man's work; he was the fisherman, farmer, and cook. The
principal agriculture operation was the raising of taro of the wet land
variety, a laborous and exacting task, requiring the laying out of
terraced ponds with carefully compacted borders to retain the water.
This was preliminary to the actual planting and the care of the growing
crop. To bring water onto the terraces involved the construction of
irrigating ditches, engineering works of no little intricacy. In the
raising of taro, the Hawaiians perfected a technique that has not been
improved. After the taro had come to maturity, it had to be converted
into poi. which was the Hawaiian staff of life. The process included
steaming the tubers in the underground oven, peeling them, and pounding
with heavy stone pounders on the poi board. Most of the cooking of other
kinds was also done in the underground oven. Next to taro, the most
important vegetable food was the sweet potato; others were bread fruit,
yams, bananas, coconuts, arrowroot, sugar cane, and several of minor
importance. Fish and sea foods occupied a place only a little less
important tha taro in the diet of the Hawaiians; and large numbers of
pigs, dogs, and chickens were eaten.

Womens work included the care and early training of children; the
plaiting of mats, which were made principally of the leaf of the
pandanus tree called Lauhala; and the preparation of clothing. In the
latter work the fundamental operation ws the making of Kapa ( or bark
cloth, as it is sometimes called.) The raw material of Kapa was the
inner bark of the paper mulberry, which had to be peeled off, soaked in
water, scraped to remove the pulp, and then beaten out into thin, narrow
strips; several strips would be overlapped and beaten together along the
edges to make wider pieces, and one layer might be put on top of another
to make thicker sheet. The beating was done with wooden mallets or
beaters upon a long anvil carefully hewn into a shape from a log, and
the sound of the kapa beater was a familiar one in old Hawaii.

There was little need for clothing from a climatic point of view but
such as it was, the ordinary clothing of both men and women was made
from kapa; and kapa was used also for bed covers. In battle and on
ceremonial occasions the chiefs adorned themselves with magnificent
feather cloaks, capes, and helmets, in making of which Hawaiian art ad
manual skill attained their highest expression.

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To be continued in part 2.