Statewide County HI Archives News.....Letters of Isabella L. Bird Bishop. - Part 12. October 13, 2008
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Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 October 23, 2008, 12:38 am

Keepers Of The Culture, A Study In Time Of The Hawaiian Islands October 13, 2008

Contributed for use in 
USGenWeb Archives
by Darlene E. Kelley
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374
October 13, 2008

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Historical Collections of Hawai'i
Keepers of the Culture
A Study in Time, of the Hawai'ian Islands
Letters of Isabella L. Bird Bishop
" Six Months Among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the
Sandwich Islands."
Letter # VII - Part 1
Transcribed.

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Letter # VII

" Six Months Among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the
Sandwich Islands."


Hilo, Hawaii

The white population here,which constitutes " society," is very small.
There are two venerable missionaries " Father Coan " and " Father
Lyman," the former pastor of a large native congregation, which, though
much shrunken, is not only self-sustaining, but contributes $1200 a year
to foreign missions, and the latter, though very old and frail, the
indefatigable head of an industrial school for native young men. Their
houses combine the trimness of New England, with the luxuriance of the
tropics; they are cool retreats, emboweed among breadfruit, tamarind,
and bamboo, through whose gracful leafage the lue waters of the bay are
visible. Innumerable exotics are domesticated round these fai
homesteads. Two of " Father Lyman's "sons are influential residents, one
being the Lieutenant-Govenor of the island. Other sons of former
missionaries are settled here in business, and there are a few strangers
who have attracted hither. r. Wetmore, formally of the mission, is a
typical New Englander of the old orthodox school. It is pleasant to see
him brighten into almost youthful ethusiasm on the subject of Hawaiian
ferns. My host, a genial, social, intelligent American, is sheriff of
Hawaii, postmaster, &c., with his charming wife ( a missionary's
daughter ), and some friends who live with them, make their large house
a centre of kindliness, friendliness, and hospitality. Mr. Thompson,
pastor of the foreign church, is a man of very liberal culture, as well
as wide sympathies. The lady principal of the Government school is a
handsome, talented Vermont girl, and besides being an immense favourite,
well deserves her unusual and lucrative position.

There are hardly any young ladies, and a very few young men, but plenty
of rosy, blooming children, who run about barefoot all the year. Besides
the Hilo residents, there are some planters' families within seven
miles, who come in to sewing circles, church, &c. There is a small class
of reprobate white men who have ostracized themselves by means of drink
and bad morals, and are a curse to the natives. The half whites, among
whom 
" Bill Ragsdale " is the leading spirit, are not numerous. Hilo has no
carriage roads and no carriages: every one must ride or travel in a
litter. People are very kind to each other. Horses, dresses, paterns,
books, and articles of domestic use, are lent and borrowed continually.
The smallness of the society and the close proximity are too much like a
ship. People know everything about the details of each other's daily
life, income, and expenditure, and the day's doings of each member of
the little circle are matters of conversation. Indeed, were it not for
the volcano and its doings, convesation might degenerate into gossip.
There is an immense deal of personal talk; the wonder is that there is
so little ill-nature. Not only is what everybody does here common
property, but the sayings, doings, goings, comings, and purchases of
every one in all the other islands are common property also, made so by
letters and oral communication. It is all very amusing, and on the whole
very kindly, and human interests are always interesting; but it has its
perilous side. They are very kind to each other. There is no distress
which is not alleviated. There is no nurse, and in case of sickness the
ladies take it by turns to wait on the sufferer by day and night for
weeks and even months. Such inevitable mutual dependence of course
promotes friendliness.

The foreigners live very simply. The eating-rooms are used solely for
eating, the " parlours " are always cheerful and tastefull, and the
bedrooms very pretty, adorned with all manner of knick-knacks made by
the ladies, who are indescribably deft with their fingers. Light Manilla
matting is used instead of carpets. A Chinese man-cook, who leaves at
seven in the evening, is the only servant, except in one or two cases,
where, as here, a native woman condescends to come in during the day as
a nurse. In the morning the ladies, in their fresh pretty wrappers and
ruffled white aprons, sweep and dust the rooms, and I never saw women
look more truly graceful and refined than tey do, when engaged in the
plain prose of these domestic duties. They make all their own dresses,
and when any lady is busy and wants a dress in a hurry, two or three of
them meet and make it for her. I never saw people live such easy
pleasant lives. They have such good health, for one thing, partly no
doubt because their domestic duties give them wholesome exercise without
pressing upon them. They have abounding leisure for reading, music,
choir practising, drawing, fern-painting, fancy work, picnics, riding
parties, and enjoy sociablity thorughly. They usually ride in dainty
bloomer costumes, even when they don't ride astride. All the houses are
pretty, and it takes little time to make them so in this climate. One
novel fashion is to decorate the walls with festoons of the beautiful
fern Microlepia tenuifolia, which are renewed as soon as they fade, and
every room is adornd with a profusion of bouquets, which are easiy
obtained where flowers bloom all the year. Many of the residents possess
valuable libraries, and these, with cabinets of minerals, vocanic
specimens, shells, and coral, with weapons, calabashes, ornaments, and
cloth of native manufacture, almost furnish a room in themselves. Some
of the volcanic specimens and the coral are of almost inestimable value,
as well as of exquisite beauty.

The gentlemen don't seem to have near so much occupation as the ladies.
There are two stores on the beach, and these and the Court-house they
aggregate, for lack of club-house and exchange. Business is not here a
synonym for hurry, and official duties are light; so light, that in
these morning hours I see the Governor, the Sheriff, and the Judge, with
three other gentlemen, paying an interminable croquet game on the
Court-house lawn. They purvey gossip for the ladies, and how much they
invent, and how much they only circulate can never be known ! 

There is a large native population in the village, along the beach, and
on the heights above the Wailiku River. Frame houses with lattices, and
grass houses with deep verandahs, peep out everywhere from among the
mangoes and bananas. The Governess of Hawaii, the Princess Keelikalani,
has a house on the beach shaded by a large unbrella tree and a
magnificent clump of bamboos, 70 feet in height. The native life with
which one comes constantly in contact, is very interesting.

The men do whatever hard work is done in cultivating the kalo patches
and pounding the kalo. This kalo, the Arum esculentum, forms the
national diet. A Hawaiian could not exist without his calabash of poi.
The root is an object of the tenderet solicitude, from the day it is
palnted until the hour when it is lovenly eaten. The eating of poi seems
a ceremony of profound meaning; it is like eating salt with an Arab, or
a Masonic sign. The kalo root is an ovate oblong, as bulky as a
California beet, and it has large leaves, shaped like a broad arrow, of
a singularly bright green. The best kinds grow entirely in water. The
patch is embanked and frequently inundated, and each plant grows on a
small hillock of puddled earth. The cutting from which it grows is
simply the top of the plant, with a little of the tuber. The men stand
up to their knees in water while cultivating the root. It is excellant
when boiled and sliced; but the preparation of poi is an elaborate
process. The roots are baked in an underground oven, and then are laid
on a slightly hollowed board, and beaten with a stone pestle. It is hard
work, and the men don't war any clothes while engaged in it.It is not a
pleasant-looking operation. They often dip their hands in a calabash of
water to aid them in removing the sticky mass, and they always look hot
and tired. When it is removed from the board into large calabashes, it
is reduced to paste by the addition of water, and set aside for two or
three days to ferment.
When ready to use it is either lilic or pink, and tastes like sour
bookbinders' paste. Before water is added, when in a dry state, it is
called paiai, or hard food, and then packed in ti leaves in 20 lb.
bundles for inland carriage, and is exported to the Guano Islands. It is
a prolific and nutritious plant. It is estimated that forty square feet
will support an Hawaian for a year.

The melon and kalo patches represent a certain amount of spasmodic
industry, but in most other things the natives take no thought for the
morrow. Why should they indeed ? For while they lie basking in the sun,
without care of theirs, the cocoanut, the breadfruit, the yam, the
guava, the banana, and the delicious papaya, which is a compound of a
ripe apricot with a cataloupe melon, grow and ripen perpetually. Men and
women are always amusing themseves, the men with surf-bathing, the women
with making leis --- both sexes with riding, gossiping, and singing.
Every man and women, almost every child, has a horse. There is a perfect
plague of badly bred, badly developed, weedy looking animals. The beach
and the pleasant lawn above it are always covered with men and women
riding at a gallop, with bare feet, and stirrups tucked between their
toes. To walk even 200 yards seems considered a degradation. The people
meet each other' houses all day long, and sit in picturesque groups on
their mats, singing, laughing, talking, and quizzing the haoles, as if
the primal curse had never fallen. Pleasant sights of out-door cooking
gregariously carried on greet one everywhere. This style of cooking
prevails all over Polynesia. A hole in the fround is lined with stones,
wood is burned within it, and when the rude oven has been sufficiently
heated, the pig, chicken, breadfruit, or kalo, wrapped in ti leaves is
put in, a little water is thrown on, and the whole is covered up. It is
a slow but sure process.

Bright dresses, bright eyes, brigh sunshine, music, dancing, a life
without care, and a climate without asperities, make up the sunny side
of native life  as pictured at Hilo. But there are dark moral shadows,
the population is shrinking away, and rumours of leprosy are afloat, so
that some of these fair homes may be desolute ere long. However many
cases for regret exist, one must not forget that only forty years ago
the people inhabiting this strip of land between the volcanic wilderness
and the sea were a vicious, sensual, shameless herd, that no man among
them, except their chiefs, had any rights, that they were harried and
oppressed almost to death, and had no consciousness of any moral
obligations. Now, order and external decorum at least prevail. There is
not a locked door in Hilo, and nobody makes anybody afraid.

The peoples of Hawaii-nei are clothed and civilized in their habits;
they have equl rights; 6,500 of them have kuleanas o freeholds, equable
and enlightened laws are impartially administered; wrong and oppression
are unknown; they enjoy one of the best administered governments in the
world; education is universal, and the throne is occupied by a liberal
sovereign of their own race and election.

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Letter # VII continued in part 2.


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