Part 1

[Illustration: Statue of Kamehameha I, Honolulu.]

Hawaiian Idylls of Love and Death

BY THE REV. HERBERT H. GOWEN F.R.G.S., M.R.S.A. (LOND.) _Author of “The Paradise of the Pacific,” etc._

[Illustration]

NEW YORK COCHRANE PUBLISHING CO. 1908

Copyright, 1908, by COCHRANE PUBLISHING CO.

INTRODUCTION

The following stories are concerned mainly with incidents bearing on the career of the first sovereign of the Hawaiian archipelago, Kamehameha I, worthily distinguished from his successors as “Kamehameha the Great,” who, born about the year 1736, achieved the unification of the group in 1795, and died in 1819, leaving behind him no one capable of following in his footsteps.

A few words about this notable ruler of a kingdom now no more may not be amiss as introductory to the stories to follow.

* * * * *

Every visitor to Honolulu finds his way in course of time to the splendid square between the Iolani Palace and the Aliiolani Hale. At least, such were the names borne till recent years by the dwelling-place of the sovereign and the meeting-place of the legislators of Hawaii. But times are changed, and names have changed with them. Now more prosaic names have been adopted by more prosaic times.

Changing times, however, can never take away the interest attaching to one prominent object in this square, just in front of the Legislative Buildings. For monarch and legislature, ay, and people, too, may pass away and only bring into greater relief the true greatness of the man whose statue here keeps sentry guard.

It is the statue of the chief who made Hawaii a kingdom, and gave it such cohesion and such stability that as a kingdom it endured for just a century. Here stands Kamehameha I, “the lonely one,” as his name implies, represented by the artist as he might have appeared in life at the head of his army in those heroic days when the chiefs of Hawaii fought “like gods of war dispensing fate.”

We see him here a man of gigantic mould, with furrowed and smileless countenance, as of one who seldom spoke save to command, and who commanded to be obeyed. Spear in hand, feather-helmet on head, and on his shoulders the famous feather cloak which took nine generations of kings to construct--we seem to see before us that “Mars armipotent,” of whom it might be said, as it was said of the Homeric hero:

“On him the war is bent, the darts are shed, And all their falchions wave about his head: Repulsed, he stands, nor from his stand retires, But with repeated shouts his army fires.”

The statue was modelled after a fine specimen of the Hawaiian race, named Kaopuiki, with whom the writer has several times crossed the channel from Maui to Lanai, but we have authority for the features in the portrait painted by M. Choris, the artist attached to Kotzebue’s expedition in 1816. This is the only authentic picture of Kamehameha in existence, and was painted when he was nearly eighty years old.

Over a hundred and ten years ago, in the year of our era 1795, this man effected what, under the circumstances, seemed a task of insuperable difficulty--the union of the eight islands of the Hawaiian group under one government. What those difficulties were only those who have studied the matter will be able to appreciate. Here it will suffice to say that of his race there was none like him before, there has been none like him since. In all that shadowy time from the dawn of Hawaiian history to the establishment of intercourse with the western world, the time of heroes eight or nine feet high, who wielded spears ten yards long; heroes who fought with gods and received aid from gods, as the Greek warriors at Troy from Minerva and Apollo--heroes like Kiha of the magic conch, like Liloa and Umi and Lono, there was none who accomplished what Kamehameha did by the patient toil and dauntless courage of forty years.

And in all the time since, in spite of that unexampled advance in civilization, which has made of Hawaii a land of telephones, electric light, public schools, universal suffrage and the rest, there has arisen no Hawaiian with one-tenth part of the manhood possessed and used, mainly for good, by this heroic savage.

If the conquests of Kamehameha were inferior in extent to those of Alexander, it was because he had not Alexander’s scope. At any rate, he fought till he had no more worlds to conquer, and what he conquered he kept for himself and his family until the dynasty expired. Like Napoleon (and Kamehameha is often spoken of as the “Napoleon of the Pacific”), he had an unswerving faith in his destiny. Otherwise, he never could have overcome so completely the obstacles in his way.

For, although the uniting of eight small islands into one kingdom may appear to us a slight achievement, as a matter of fact, the task was anything but easy. Each of the islands had its traditions of pre-eminence, and the relations of island with island were marked by furious jealousy and hostility. Intercourse, for many generations, was almost suspended, except for purposes of war. Even a few years ago the natives of the windward and the leeward islands could be distinguished by their language--the Kauai and Oahu people using _t_ and _r_ in the Tahitian dialect, where the natives of Hawaii and Maui used _k_ and _l_. But the fusion commenced by Kamehameha has progressed so well that the ancient differences of language are nearly as much obliterated as the desire for separate and independent governments.

The consolidation of the kingdoms had been attempted before by able soldiers and statesmen, but had failed. Even the wise and philanthropic Vancouver tried to dissuade Kamehameha from what he believed a Utopian scheme which must result disastrously. Nevertheless, the savage followed his stars and prevailed.

The late king--Kalakaua--an unbiased witness, since he succeeded to the throne as the first of a new line, unconnected with and in a measure hostile to the dynasty of the Kamehamehas--thus passes judgment on his illustrious predecessor:

“Kamehameha was a man of tremendous physical and intellectual strength. In any land, and in any age, he would have been a leader. The impress of his mind remains with his crude and vigorous laws, and wherever he stepped is seen an imperishable track. He was so strong of limb that ordinary men were but children in his grasp, and in council the wisest yielded to his judgment. He seems to have been born a man and to have had no boyhood. He was always sedate and thoughtful, and, from his earliest years, cared for no sport or pastime that was not manly. He had a harsh and rugged face, less given to smiles than frowns, but strongly marked with lines indicative of self-reliance and changeless purpose. He was barbarous, unforgiving and merciless to his enemies, but just, sagacious and considerate in dealing with his subjects. He was more feared than loved or respected; but his strength of arm and force of character well fitted him for the supreme chieftaincy of the group, and he accomplished what no one else could have done in his day.”

This extract does no more than justice to Kamehameha’s powers of body and mind. Indeed it was his intellectual greatness which distinguished him so much from his contemporaries, and which forms his chief claim to the recognition of thoughtful men of all times and races.

He is, in the first place, worthy to be put beside Fabius Maximus for his invincible pertinacity and patience. “_Unus homo cunctando restituit rem_,” was said of Hannibal’s great conqueror, and of the conqueror of Kalanikapule and _la haute noblesse_ of all Hawaii it might be said with truth that not less by waiting than by fighting did he make for himself a kingdom. There may have been something of the Hawaiian indifference to the flight of time in the patience which enabled Kamehameha to take defeat so easily and to retire so contentedly, like another Cincinnatus, to cultivate his patrimonial fields at Waipio, but there was also without doubt abundant faith in waiting for the fullness of time--a faith the very reverse of common in barbarous or semi-civilized communities.

None knew, like Kamehameha, how to endure defeat so as to make it but a step to a deferred but more complete victory. Had he been a student of history he might well have adopted the words of Admiral Coligni, who said of himself: “In one respect I may claim superiority over Alexander, over Scipio, over Cæsar. They won great battles, it is true. I have lost four great battles; and yet I shew to the enemy a more formidable front than ever.”

Nevertheless, Kamehameha knew when to strike and did strike hard. Like Napoleon, he could hurl all his force at a given point with marvellous celerity and precision, and, once having developed his plan, he suffered no obstacle to prevent its being carried into effect.

In the third place, he had a singular power of knowing the right instruments to employ in his undertakings. Very many great men ruin the work they take in hand, either by undertaking too much personally, or else by employing inefficient and unsuitable instruments. In either case, the work fails to outlive the worker, even if he be not destined to see the ruin himself. It is sometimes said that such and such a successful ruler had the good fortune to be surrounded by such and such a brilliant galaxy of statesmen. The good fortune is in reality the good sense and insight which lead a ruler to select the fit instruments for his purpose.

Kamehameha’s throne had for its pillars of support men who might very well have been his rivals, and among all the notable chiefs of the time none was discarded or neglected, save such men as Kaiana, whose fickleness made him more of a menace than a mainstay. As it was, few kings ever had an abler council--more conspicuous for courage in battle or for wisdom in the arts of government--than that which included men like Kalanimoku, _alias_ William Pitt, Kameeiamoku and Keeaumoku, and the Englishmen--Young and Davis.

Kamehameha, too, lived long enough after he had crushed out all opposition to his rule to show that he understood the art of consolidating as well as that of establishing a monarchy. For twenty-five years he governed Hawaii with steadily increasing skill and enlightenment, piloting the new kingdom through every kind of embroilment with the nations represented in the realm.

Like William the Conqueror, he purposed to govern with good laws what he had won with a cruel sword, and, if he was overstern to repress, he undoubtedly spared the country much misery which a weaker or more lenient policy might have entailed.

Finally, looking at Kamehameha as a man, rather than as a ruler, we need not deny him the title of “Great.” He could be loved as well as feared. He was scrupulously just, even when it came to the condemnation of his own past actions, and perhaps greater than any victory over the rival chiefs was the victory he won over himself when he broke free from the trammels the “fire-water” of the foreigner were fast making for him, and bade his countrymen imitate him and be free.

Enough has been suggested in these introductory remarks to make clear that not only to the antiquary, searching amid the ruins of a perishing people for some faded remnants of romance; not only to the historian, seeking here and there in the archives of nations to glean illustrations of some great historical generalization; not only to the lover of the story of war and adventure; but, above all, to the student of men as men the memory of the first monarch of Hawaii ought to be of sufficient interest not to pass into oblivion.

For heroism is of no one age, and of no one race. It commands the sympathy and respect of all, and it is the writer’s hope that these simple sketches may show, in the story of the first Kamehameha, that touch of Nature which makes the whole world kin, that quality of manhood which obliterates the distinction between white and black, between East and West, between the man of yesterday and the man of to-day.

“For East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth.”

CONTENTS

PAGE

I--THE POISON GODDESS OF MOLOKAI 11

II--THE STORY OF THE KIHA-PU 19

III--THE SPLINTERED PADDLE 27

IV--THE SLANDERED PRIEST OF OAHU 34

V--KEALA 43

VI--PELE DECLARES FOR KAMEHAMEHA 51

VII--THE CITY OF REFUGE 59

VIII--SWEET LEILEHUA 67

IX--THE SPOUTING CAVE OF LANAI 78

X--LONO’S LAST MARTYR 89

XI--KEOUA, A STORY OF KALAWAO 101

Hawaiian Idylls of Love and Death

I

THE POISON GODDESS OF MOLOKAI

Kaneakama was as handsome a young fellow as you could have found on the eight islands; neither unknown to war nor unskilled in divination and the learning of the priests. But he had one vice--he was an inveterate gambler.

And here he sat in his grass hut on the slopes of the Olukui, feeling as miserable as any wretch of to-day who had squandered his patrimony at Monte Carlo, for he had been playing _maika_ the whole day long and luck had been against him at every throw. The devil, he thought, must have been in the smooth black stones; throw as he might, they would not go straight. Yes, they were certainly bewitched. And now he had nothing to call his own but one little pig--everything was lost.

Why did he not stake the pig? you ask. Ah! Kaneakama had asked himself that question many a time that evening, but had each time repelled the very thought as a temptation. For he had dedicated this pig to his Aumakua, or tutelary divinity, and with all his faults he was too pious to break his vows to the gods.

So, although happy thus far in the possession of a good conscience, he nursed his grief until the kind divinities sent their messenger, sleep--welcome to all men everywhere.

And, as Kaneakama slept, he had a wonderful vision. The song of a bird broke upon his ear, then the sweet sounds transformed themselves into an aura of radial light and in the light he beheld the loveliest form he had ever seen.

It was that of a young girl, but Kaneakama’s first impression was that it was some glorious bird, for he wanted to get up and throw a mat across the door lest she should fly away. Her black hair fell in a great shadow behind her like a pair of wings; no chief arrayed for battle had feather cloak so rich in orange and scarlet as that which clung to her perfect form from throat to shapely knee. Her eyes, too, even in the bright aura which encircled her, shone like stars in the night.

Kaneakama gazed he knew not how long, and when he came to himself he was only conscious of having received a command from the goddess (for such indeed was his adorable visitant) to take his dedicated pig and stake it as he had done the rest. You see, the gods and goddesses of ancient Hawaii had rather backward ideas regarding the morality of gambling.

However, Kaneakama is not to be blamed for this. He did as his divinity had told him, and now if the ill-luck of his former experience had been surprising, still more so was the turn of fortune which seemed to pour riches into his lap. He went home from that day’s _maika_-playing a rich man, but, remembering the source of his wealth, he determined to dedicate one-half of it to the service of the goddess, and to build a temple where she might dwell and receive his worship.

This he did, and no sooner was the temple so far completed that it only lacked its central idol, than once more the vision of the Aumakua broke in upon his sleep.

This time there was no doubt about the voice. It was as sweet to hear as the vision was to see.

“Go to the king, O Kaneakama,” it said; “tell him that the _akua_ wish to dwell in the temple made by man in the shadow of his court. Power shall be his if he will shelter them. Let him send warriors with their axes and knives to the top of Maunaloa. Out of the wood let them hew me an image, and this shall be my shrine in the _heiau_ you have built, and you, O Kaneakama, shall be my high-priest, worshipper and lover of Kalaipahoa, terrible to mortals.”

When Kaneakama awoke he hastened to obey the command, and the king was pleased to hear of the honours in store. Three hundred men were chosen; and these, carrying, besides their weapons, great folds of _kapa_ (for the venom of the poison goddess was a thing to be dreaded), set out on their march. Kaneakama, commissioned by the king, went before them as a guide to the spot designated in his sleep.

As they marched they recalled all they had heard of the poison goddess--how she had come from an unknown land to Molokai and had made her home on Maunaloa. There, so it was said, the earth was burnt and blackened, and the birds fell dead as they flew over it. It was, moreover, the dwelling-place of Laamaomao, the god of the winds, and at any moment a strong spirit of the air might break loose from the calabash of the god and hurl the intruders afar into the Paiolo Channel.

So they journeyed on with teeth chattering and hearts cold within them. They climbed upwards along the torrent-bed over boulders for two hours or more; then they came to the forest belt where the silver leaves of the _kukui_ seemed to shiver with sympathetic fear; then they came to the black lava slopes, where they had to look carefully to their steps.

At last they heard a rumbling like that of the winds of Laamaomao wrestling in his calabash, and suddenly before them lay the vast extinct crater, half hidden in the mist.

Their way lay downwards, the mist parting to receive them, until they saw in front of them a great black blot, such as a fire would make in some weird forest which shrivels and blackens but will not burn. The only whiteness was the whiteness of the bones strewn around, and the only greenness came from one tree in the centre, which rose erect and plumy in this wilderness of death. Some said they beheld a scarlet and yellow bird perched in its branches, but many doubted, as they saw strong-winged birds fly right up to the rim of the circle and fall dead as though pierced by an arrow.

It was true, then, this story of the poison goddess; it was true that her touch was death. One hundred men went straightway back to the king, afraid. But Kaneakama stayed the fear of the others and commanded them to do their work.

Twenty men took their axes and went forward to hew down the tree, but, alas! they fell dead before they had advanced twenty yards. Five times did Kaneakama send fresh detachments forward, moving slowly in a circle, and five times did they perish as beneath a blast of death. So five circles of dead men lay round about the tree.

Then Kaneakama commanded half the remaining hundred to take _kapa_ and wrap themselves in it, making of it masks and shields, and they went forward till they reached the tree. Then they hewed at it, each man dying with the blow he struck, till, with a noise that awoke echoes in Maunaloa, the great tree fell crashing through the shrivelled trunks around it. Then the remaining band, still shielding themselves as best they could with the _kapa_, took their _pahoas_ and cut away the branches, working feverishly, for men fainted and fell apace, till at last a rough shape was ready to be carried back to the _heiau_.

It was a rough and ugly idol, with widely distended mouth (to be filled presently with hideous rows of shark’s teeth), extended arms, hands and fingers, but Kaneakama looked beyond the art of the craftsman, and, wrapping the image in fold upon fold of _kapa_, he with his few remaining men wended his way down the mountainside, through the long valley to the seashore.

There was great rejoicing at the court when Kalaipahoa, for so the goddess hewn out with daggers was named, was placed in her shrine, and the temple dedicated with many victims; but all the rejoicing was faint and hollow as compared with the joy of the man who was at once the high-priest and lover of the goddess.

When he ministered before the shrine he saw not the rough and hideous idol, but the celestial beauty of the birdlike maiden who had visited him in the night visions. If she was terrible to others, she was always smiling and beneficent to him.

Yet, though he faithfully performed his duties at the _heiau_, carrying and presenting the offerings, interpreting the wishes of the goddess to the king, performing all the accustomed rites and observing all the prescribed tabus, he was not yet satisfied. It grew more and more hard to nourish himself on visions of the past. He recalled how that Pele, the volcano goddess, had had a mortal lover and had come down on earth to dwell. Why should not Kalaipahoa give him at least a sign? From pitying those who had died in the mountain, he began to envy them.

O man of little faith! The sign came. He dreamed and seemed in his dreams in Paliuli, the Elysian land, land of the blue mountain and the water of life, and, as soon as his eyes could bear the light, he saw Kalaipahoa in all her radiance, and around her stood the men who had perished at the shaping of the idol. They bore her calabashes, waved her _kahilis_, and stood about her as her soldiers and her slaves. But after one swift glance around him, Kaneakama saw only Kalaipahoa, and she, so he believed, saw only him.

“O Kalaipahoa,” he cried, “why am I worse off than the serfs who died in Maunaloa? They stand in thy presence and see thy face, while I toil in thy service and have no reward!”

Kalaipahoa’s face lightened with a smile.

“Foolish mortal!” she cried, “did you not see that my court is incomplete, wanting its greatest? The great chiefs have their ‘companions in death,’ but you have your household gone before you. However, you shall have your reward to-night.”

Then she bade him bring the _puhenehene_ board and play.

He played; but, alas! such was his confusion that he lost every game, and such his preoccupation that he was not even sorry to find himself once again a pauper. At last he had nothing left to lose, and knew not what to do.

“Stake yourself!” cried a sweet voice.

No sooner said than done. Once more the stones were thrown. Once more Kaneakama lost. And the vision vanished, the goddess with a smile still upon her face.

“Ah, well!” said Kaneakama, “I am the lover of the goddess; I will die. Let me prepare an offering for her; I will place bananas in her hands and will share her feast. It may be she will bid me come sit at her feet.”