Our Hawaii

by Charmian London

In the silvering light across the dewy hemisphere a cavalcade of pa’u riders took shape, coming on larger and larger with a soft thunder of hoofs, wild draperies straight out behind in the speeding rush, and drawing up with a flourish, horses on haunches, before the Superintendent’s house. The vivid hues of the long skirts intensified in the increasing daylight—some of them scarlet, some blue, or orange, while one proud equestrienne sued for favor with a flaunting panoply of Fourth of July red, white, and blue.

Many of the girls were mercifully still comely, even pretty, and rode superbly, handling their curvetting steeds with reckless grace and ease.

All forenoon these gala-colored horsewomen trooped singing and calling over the rises and hollows of the countryside, to incessant blaring of the bands of both villages combined. The whole was a picture of old Hawaii not to be composed elsewhere in the Territory, and certainly nowhere else in the world. For no set reproduction of the bygone customs could equal this whole-souled exhibition, costumed from simple materials by older women who remembered days of the past, carried out in the natural order of life in one of the most beautiful spots in the Islands, if not on the globe. No description can depict the sight that was ours the forenoon long.

To our distress, we were appointed to award prizes at the race track. We feared hurting the contestants by injudicious choices. But Jack McVeigh pooh-poohed our diffidence, and insisted that we serve on the committee. Horseback we went to the races, and found the track like any other, with its grand stand, its judges, its betting and bickering—the betting running as high as $150—its well-bred horses, and wild excitement when the jockeys came under the wire.

Jack tied his fractious pony, and I saw him on foot over by the judges’ stand, waving arms and cowboy hat and yelling himself hoarse, just as crazy as the crowd of lepers he jostled, who were as crazy as he. Later, he was conversing soberly with a Norwegian and his wife, both patients, who told us we had no idea what it meant to them all for us to come here and mingle among them as friends, and that people were very happy about it. This was good tidings, for the lepers are so little forward in manners that invariably we must accost them first, whereupon they break into the smiling Aloha of their land.

Between heats, there were footraces, and screaming sack races, and races to the slowest, in which McVeigh figured on the rump of a balking donkey, and won; then followed a wahine contest of speed, and a wahine horse race.

But the most imposing event of the afternoon, as of the morning, was enacted by the pa’u riders, who paced leisurely in stately procession once around the course, then circled once in a swinging canter, and, finally, with mad whoopings, broke into a headlong stampede that swept twice and a half around before the Amazons could win control of their excited animals. A truly gorgeous spectacle it was, the flying horses with their streaming beribboned tails, the glowing riders, long curling hair outblown, and floating draperies painting the track with brilliant color—all mortal decay a thing forgot of actors and onlookers alike, in one grand frolic of bounding vitality and youth.

The three prizes were for $5, $3, and $2, and it would not be guessing widely to say that they came out of the private pocket of the Superintendent, along with numerous other gifts during the day. He is not the man to go about with his heart’s good intentions pinned on his sleeve—indeed, a supersensitive character would be out of place as manager of such an institution; but hand in hand with iron will and executive ability, he carries a heart as big as the charge he keeps, and a keen gray eye quick to the needs of his children, as he calls them.

The three beaming winners galloped abreast once around the track, and then rode out; but suddenly the buxom wahine, bright and bold of eye and irresistible of smile, who had taken second, wheeled about and came to attention before the judges’ stand with the request, to our surprise, that I ride once around with her. “Oh, do, do!” Jack under his breath instantly prompted, fearing I might hesitate. Of course I mounted forthwith, and together we pranced the circuit, to deafening cheers.

But I was not riding with a leper, for it turned out that this inviting girl is a kokua, an assistant at the surgery, from whom the bid to ride with her was in the best Kalaupapa social usage.