The ancients of Hawaii were keen sportsmen—and gamblers. One historian asserts that many of their games were resorted to primarily for the betting, which was pursued by both sexes, and often resulted in impromptu pitched battles. We should hesitate before speaking loosely of “modern” sports, for in Old Hawaii boxing, moko-moko, regulated by umpires who rigidly enforced strict rules, was the favorite national sport, often attended by spectators numbering ten thousand.
And there was wrestling, hakoko, and the popular kukini, foot-racing. Disk-throwing, maika, was done with a highly polished stone disk, ulu, three or four inches in diameter, slightly convex from edge to center, on a track half a mile long and three feet broad. The game was either to send the stone between two upright sticks fixed but a few inches apart at a distance of thirty or forty yards, or to see which side could bowl it the greater length. The champions would sometimes succeed in propelling it upward of a hundred rods.
They also knew a complicated game of checkers, played with black and white pebbles upon a board marked with numerous squares. These irrepressible gamesters raised cocks for fighting, and wagered hotly around the ringside. The tug-of-war was not unknown, hukihuki; and there was a polite parlor game, loulou, the pulling of crooked fingers hooked in those of an opponent. Another mild amusement was similar to “cat’s cradle,” the hei. A wide variety of ball-playing was done with a round ball, and called kini-popo. Po-hee was a contest in which darts or spears were made to skip along the ground or over the grass. Even children played at this, with reeds or sugar-canes, getting their hand in for adult spear-throwing, in which Kamehameha was so proficient. There were schools for warriors, in which the use of the sling-shot, maa, was taught as a fine art with warlike purpose.
Mr. Ford should resurrect some of the games of Hawaii—even to the restoration of the Great Slide—as he has done with surf-boarding, for not only would the natives doubtless be interested, but haole residents have their lives enriched by either the novelty or the resemblance of the ancient sports to modern ones. Visitors would welcome the innovations. I do not mean merely as a spectacle, such as Honolulu resurrects so splendidly from time to time, but that some of these forgotten athletics be incorporated into the life of the Islands.
That monster scenic railway, holualoa, of Polynesian forefathers, lies in flowing undulations like our twentieth century ones, showing the engineers to have been men of calculation. One old Hawaiian told us the story that the arduous toil of building it was performed by amorous youths contesting for a single look at the loveliness of a favorite of the moi, king.
Despite the fact that wahines existed under severe and sometimes heartless tabus and punishments for the infringement thereof, they played the usual important role of femininity among superior races. For one thing, they were exempt from sacrifice; and rank was inherited chiefly from the maternal parents. War canoes were christened for the loved one of the chiefs, as evidenced by Kamehameha, whose sentiment for Kaahumanu caused him to rename for her the brig Forester, bought from Captain Piggott in exchange for sandalwood. And after Kamehameha II, Liholiho, had removed the ban of Adamless feasting, woman’s emancipation went on apace. When, in the past century, the “people” were called by their white government to vote, there was no murmur from the husbands, fathers, and brothers, if report can be credited, at having their womenkind accompany them to the polls to cast their own ballot. The haole law-makers, however, not ripe to tolerate woman suffrage, and equally unwilling to cause hurt, got around the embarrassing difficulty by merely neglecting to count the feminine names![[9]]
The “free life of the savage” is a myth, so far as concerns the early Hawaiians. Almost every act was accompanied by prayer and offering, to the tutelar deities. Every vocation had its patron gods, who must be propitiated, and innumerable omens were observed. A fisherman could not use his new net without sacrifice to his patron fane, more especially the shark-god. A professional diviner, kilokilo, had to be called in for advice as to the position of a house to be erected; and no tree must stand directly before the door for some distance, lest bad luck be the portion of the householder. Canoe-building was a ceremonial of the strictest sort; while, most important of all, the birth of a male child was attended by offerings to the idols, with complicated services.
Again am I lost in the labyrinth of Hawaii’s tempting history, for between the lines one may find the utmost romance.
The Kona coast is said to be as primitive in its social status as anywhere in Hawaii to-day, but we saw none but wooden dwellings, tucked in the foliage of the high bank behind Keauhou’s miniature crescent beach with its miniature surf—a mere nick in the snowy coastline, where small steamers call at a little roofed pier. In a small lot inclosed by a low stone wall, gravely we were shown by the natives a large sloping rock, upon which, they said, Kamehameha III, grandson of the Great Ancestor, was born. Queen Liliuokalani has lately caused the wall to be built around the sacred birthplace.
August 23.