Historical Collections of The Hawaiian Islands -  Part 2 - The Ancients

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Historical Collections of Hawaii
Keepers of the Culture
Influence of Foreigners on the Ancients
Part 2. The Ancients 
How they lived.
The coming of Foreigners to Hawaii
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Part 2.

The religion of the Hawaiians was essentially a nature worship. They
were profoundly impressed with the mystery of nature, with the
manifestions on every side of a power which they could not see and did
not understand. The ceremonial system was designed to establish and
preserve the right relationship between man and this unseen power.

The native's sense of the presence of his gods was by no means a vague
feeling. In the elements and in nature about him, he saw and felt the
beings whom he venerated. In Hawaii the rain clouds are referred to in
prayer as the bodies of Lono, the rain god, The more immediate features
and objects of nature were all the children of the gods.

The gods of the Polynesians were personified concepts that, on the one
hand, embodied the desires and needs, the hopes and dreads of their
worshippers; and, on the other hand, individualized the elements and
forces that they observed in nature.

As one might expect from this concept, there were many gods. One chant
speaks of four hundred thousand gods and there was of necessity a
graduation of rank and a difference of character among them. The great
gods of Hawaii were Kane, Ku, Lono, and Kanaloa. Each of these four gods
was worshipped under various special attributes or functions, which
afterwards came to be regarded as different persons, so that there were,
in a manner of speaking, several different varieties of Kane, Ku, and
Lono. The god Ku-kailimoku, a war god and the special god of the kings
of Hawaii, was of great importance during the latter part of Hawaii's
ancient history, and in the reign
of Kamehameha I. Pele, goddess of the volcano, was especially feared and
worshipped in the southern part of Hawaii. Among the higher ranks of the
Hawaiian priesthood there may have existed a conception of a Supreme
Being, who over topped all the other gods.

The place devoted for the public worship of the gods was called a heiau;
it consisted of one or more stone paved patforms or terraces enclosed by
stone walls and containing various objects, houses, and other
structures, each of which had some special use in the ceremonies. There
were several classes of heiau, in one of which human sacrifices were
offered. There were certain tabu days in each month, when the rites of
the heiau were attended to, besides the formal services in the heiau,
religious ceremonies were performed in connection with all important
activities in which the Hawaiians engaged, whether in fishing, in
agriculture, in war, or in the making of a house or a canoe. The object
being to gain the favor of the god of the particular activity and thus
insure success for the enterprise.

The makahiki season, the four months, beginning in October or November
was tax gathering time. This was a period which warfare was not carried
on, but in which sports were more extensively practiced than at other
times. Lono
( Lono-makua, father Lono ) was the god of the makahiki. Usually as one
of the activities of the season, an image of the god was made,
consisting of a small figure on a long pole. Below the image was fixed a
crosspiece on which were hung several leis and a sort of banner made of
kapa. This god thus adorned, was carried all around the island, stopping
at the boundary of each district to receive the taxes. On this circuit,
Lono-makua is accompanied by another god, an akua paani ( god of
sports.)

Interwoven with the religion of ancient Hawaii and all the Polynesians
and with governmental and social organization, was the kapu system. This
was the feature of the Hawaiian culture which made the deepest
impression upon most of the early foreign visitors, who saw only the
outer manifestations of the system and who in their descriptions
emphasize its bizarre restrictions and cruel sanctions.
In one aspect, the kapa system of rules which regulated the daily life
of the different classes of society and insured the subordination of the
lower to the higher, the maintenance of an aristocratic type of
government and a caste sytem. From a more fundamental viewpoint,the kapu
system grew out of a dualistic conception of nature which placed on the
one side that which was sacred and divine, the male principle, light,
life, etc.; while on the otherside were the common and unsacred, the
female principle, darkness, death, and etc. As a substantive, the word
kapu means a prohibition or restriction.

Anything associated with the gods acquired sacredness; hence there were
kapus relaing to the priests, heiaus, and all other things dedicated to
the gods. The chiefs ( alii ) were believed to be descended from the
gods, hence there were many kapus referring to them; they were ,
however, degrees of sacredness among the chiefs; the highest of all, the
alii-kapu, was thought of as being, in some sense, an actual god.
Through him the nation was kept in rapport with the supernatural realm.
Hence he was surrounded with many and very rigid kapus, in order to
prevent any interruption of good relationship between the people
collectively and the gods. In this manner the interests of all were
deeply involved and there was little likelihood of these kapus being
violated. In the fundamental conception noted above can be discovered,
likewise, the reasons for the eating kapus and the restrictive kapus
affecting women.

Besides the permanent kapus, there were kapus of a periodical character,
and the chiefs and priests might impose special and temporary ones.
Penalties for violation of kapu without being aware of the fact, did not
save him from penalty, As might be expected, the kapu system was most
hampering, if not actually oppressive in its effect on the common people
and upon women of all classes. It was, moreover, susceptible of great
abuse and unquestionably was abused at times.

At the top of the social scale were the alii or chiefs, a highly
privileged class. Closely associated with them were the priests. Below
the chiefs were the mass of the people, called the makaainana, those who
lived on the land. It is described as follows; 
" The condition of the common people was that they were in subjection to
the chiefs, compelled to do their heavy tasks, burdened and oppressed,
some even to death. The life of the people was one of patient endurance,
of yielding to the chiefs to purchase their favor. It was from the
common people, however, that the chiefs received their food and their
apparel for men and women, also their houses and many other things. When
the chiefs went forth to war some of the commoners also went out to
fight on the same side with them. It was the commoner also that did all
the work on the land; yet all they produced from the soil belonged to
the chiefs, who had the power to expel a man from the land and rob him
of his possessions." 

The people had different occupations; some were farmers, others were
fisherman, house builders, canoe builders, bird catchers ( who collected
the feathers for capes, cloaks, and helmets), and so on. Below the
commoners was a dispised class of slaves called kauwa, but apparently
they were not very numerous and not much is known about them.

Although the Hawaiians had not reduced their language to writing, they
had an extensive literature accumulated in memory, added to from
generation to generation, and handed down by word of mouth. Children
learned from the parental family, at their knee, by stories and chants
handed down as they before had been told. Stories consisted of songs (
meles ) of various kinds, genologies and honorific chants, stories and
traditional lore in which were imbeded fragaments of history and
biography. Much of this composed in the form of poetry characterized by
imaginative art and literary skill of a high order.

Emerson states," that the poetry of ancient Hawaii evinces a deep and
genuine love of nature, and a minute, affectinate, and untiring
observation of her moods, which it would be hard to find surpassed in
any literature. Her poets never tire of depicting nature; sometime,
indeed, their art seems heaven-born. The mystery, beauty, and
magnificence of the island world appealed profoundly to their souls; in
them the ancient Hawaiian found the image of man the embodiment of
Diety; and their myrid moods and phases were for him an inexhaustible
spring of joy, refeshment, and delight."

Much of the poetry of the old Hawaii was used as an accompaniment to the
hula, a large part of it being composed especially for that purpose. The
hula was in a sense a religious exercise, its main purpose being to
honor the chiefs, and was carried on under the patronage of the goddess
Laka. Whatever the hula may have become in later days, competant
students of Hawaiian culture have declared that the sacred hula of the
olden time was a delicate, graceful, artistic, and apropriate form of
dancing. The hula was not a sport, not something that could be engaged
by anyone; to become a dancer required a long and rigid course of
training under a teacher of the hula. ( kumu-hula .) The hula was a form
of entertainment that could be witnessed and enjoyed by people of all
ranks, high or low, and took the place of our concert hall, opera and
theater, and thus became one of their chief means of social enjoyment. 

Of the sports and games of old Hawaii, the most exhilerating and
heathful were swimming and surf-riding, which was enjoyed by all classes
of the population, young and old alike. Coasting down steep slopes on
specially prepared courses covered by dried grass laid over stones and
earth was a sport practiced extensively by the alii; it required skill
and daring, the sled used having runners only a few inches apart.
Children played a simular game, sliding down hills on ti or coconut
leaves. Boxing and wrestling were much favored, especially during the
makahiki season when large tournaments were held. Foot racing was a
popular sport. The Hawaiians had several games of skill such as bowling
with ulumaika stones and throwing darts of various kinds, arrows, and
spears. They also had a number of guessng games which were very popular,
and a game called Konane that was somewhat like checkers but played on a
larger board with more pieces. Interest in games and sports heightened
by bets laid on their outcome by participants and spectators; this was
sometimes carried to such extreme that an unlucky wager on a foot race
or a wrong guess in the game "puhenehene" might cost a person all his
possessions and even his life. Military exercises and sham battles,
training the people for warfare, had many of the characteristics of
games.

Viewed as a whole, the ancient Hawaiian civilization had some
resemblance to the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean
region and Asia; it exhibited a highly cultivated upper class supported
upon a substucture composed of an under- priviledged lower class. The
common peoples of Hawaii had little opportunity and a little incentive
to improve their status; but on the other hand they were probably less
down trodden than the lower classes of Europe in the eighteenth century
and they lived certainly in a more comfortable environment.

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The coming of Foreigners in Hawaii

In the last quarter of the eighteenth century the Hawaiian islands were
visted by representatives of a strange foreign culture, that of Europe
and America. The first group was a British exploring expedition, and it
was followed by other simular expeditions and by traders. From time to
time a few foreigners left the ships on which they came to Hawaii and
remained on the islands, some as transient visitors, some as traders who
stayed for a few months or a few years, some as permanent residents.
Little by little the invading culture made its impress and became a
major factor in the life of Hawaii aand fairly disorganized and
overwelmed the old culture of the islands.
In Hawaii, as did in other parts of the world, the main carriers of the
foreign culture were traders and missionaries, though in Hawaii the
missionaries came considerably later than the traders, supplimented by
the official representatives of foreign governments, such as navel
officers and consular agents.

Unfortunately, none of the foreigners who came to the Islands in the
early period, including the missionaries who followed soon after, had
any adequate understanding or appreciation of the native culture or
considered it, or any important part of it, worth perserving. None of
them had the knowledge or the training that would have fitted them to
help the natives find a new way of life based on the old culture but
reconciled with the new. The strange new ideas and practices broke the
force of the old kapus, weakened the relationship between the common
people and their leaders from time immemorial, and set the Hawaiians
adrift on a competitive sea whose winds and currents baffled them for
many years.

It was Captain James Cook of the British navy who brought Hawaii once
more into contact with the outside world. When he visited the islands,
Cook was at the top of a brilliant career, engaged in the last of three
prolonged voyages which gained for him enduring fame as one of the
world's greatest navigators and explorers. In the early part of 1778,
the two ships of his squadron, the Resolution and the Discovery, were
sailing north from the Society Islands toward the northwest coast of
America, when on the morning of January 18, they found themselves in the
midst of the western islands of the Hawaiian group. Oahu was first seen
and Kauai not long afterwards. The explorers shaped their course for the
latter island and came to anchor off the village of Waiimea on the
afternoon of January 20.
1778.

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To be continued in part 3.