Mr. Tommy White, aided and abetted by Mrs. Tommy, making good the determination that we should see a real, untarnished-by-haole luau, had us down once more to the jewel-sanded horseshoe of Keauhou waterside, and gave us what bids fair to rival all memories of Hawaiian Hawaii that have yet been ours.
Our one responsibility, at ease on yielding layers of ferns and flowers and broad ti-leaves that brown hands had spread, was to strike the exact right human note with the Keauhou dwellers. The essential thing a foreigner, who would know them, should avoid is the slightest spark of condescension toward the free, uncapturable spirit-stuff of the race. Proud, with fine, light scorn of lip and eye, volatile if you will, they are still unhumiliated by circumstance. Grudges they do not harbor; but pride bulks large in their natures. Affection spent upon them returns in tenfold meed of love and confidence that to forfeit would be one of the few true sins of mankind.
Arriving early to observe the bustle of preparation, we peeped into an improvised kitchen over by the bank, near which sucking-pigs were barbecued in native fashion, stuffed with hot stones and wrapped in ti-leaves and laid among other hot roasting-stones in the ground; and wahines sat plaiting individual poi-baskets from wide grasses.
The men were approachable, and ready to chat upon the least encouragement. One in particular was an elegantly mannered man, of fine form and carriage and handsome face, hair touched with gray at the temples and corners of eyes sprayed with the kindly wrinkles that come from much smiling through life. Educated at Punahou College in Honolulu, he speaks noticeably correct English. Again to-night we observed that the elderly men are even more distinguished in appearance than their sons, with unmistakably aristocratic air, something lion-like about their gray-curled heads, the leonine note softened by smile-wrought lines and wonderfully sweet expression of large, wide-set, long-lashed eyes. And in their bearing is a slow stateliness of utter serenity, and gentlehood, as of souls born to riches of content. Many tend to obesity; but this superior specimen was slim, and clean-limbed, and muscularly graceful as a cadet in marching trim.
Mr. Kawewehi, a full-blooded Hawaiian who ran for the Legislature last year, was cordial as ever and entirely at ease, while his pretty hapa-paké wife, amiably non-committal at a former meeting, blossomed out deliciously, talking excellent English and doing much by her unaffected example to draw the other women from their cool aloofness.
One unforgettable picture I must give: Upon arrival we had observed a more than ordinarily large and elegant canoe of brilliant black and yellow, fitted with mast and sail, hauled out upon the sunset-saffron strand. “The Prince’s canoe,” was the word, and a perfect thing it was in the semi-torrid scene. And then came Prince Cupid, and we knew, once and for all, why he was so called. In careless open-breasted fishing clothes, a faint embarrassment in his otherwise calm expression as he regretted his absence the day of our call, he was another creature from the formal Prince of Honolulu. Despite mature years, he looked a beautiful boy as he stood before us, holding his hat in both tapering hands, showing a double row of white teeth in a smile that spread like breaking sunlight to his warm brown eyes. He declined an invitation to remain to the luau, pleading as excuse his rough attire and that he was expected home; and by the time we were taking our places around the feast on the pier, the great barbaric canoe floated alongside and presently sailed out leisurely, two men resting on the steering-paddles, their graceful, indolent Prince, crowned with red bugles of stephanotis, in the stern sheets.
In the past, the physical difference between the nobility—alii—and the common or laboring people was far more conspicuous than to-day, when practically all Hawaiians are well nourished. “No aristocracy,” says one historian, “was ever more distinctly marked by nature.” Death was the penalty for the most trifling breach of etiquette, such as for a commoner to remain on his feet at mention of the moi’s (king’s) name, or even while the royal food or beverage was being carried past. This stricture was carried even to the extent of punishing by death any subject who crossed the shadow of the sacred presence or that of his halé, house.
Besides the ordinary household officials, such as wielder of the kahili, custodian of the cuspidor, masseur (the Hawaiians are famous for their clever massage, or lomi-lomi), as well as chief steward, treasurer, heralds, and runners, the court of a high chief included priests, sorcerers, bards and story-tellers, hula dancers, drummers, and even jesters.
The chiefs were as a rule the only owners of land, appropriating all that the soil raised, and the fish adjacent to it, to say nothing of the time and labor of the makaainana (workers) living upon it—a proper feudal system. The only hold the common people and the petty chiefs had upon the moi was their freedom to enter, service with some more popular tyrant; and as wars were frequent, it behooved monarchs not to act too arbitrarily lest they be caught in a pinch without soldiery.
To dip into the lore of Hawaii, is to be stirred by the tremendous romance of it all. Visioning the conditions of those days, one sees the people slaving and sweating for their warlike masters, and, after the manner of slaves the world over down the past, worshiping the pageantry supported by their toil, whether of white invention, or that of the most superb savagery—priceless feather-mantles, ornaments, weapons of warfare, or red-painted canoes with red sails cleaving the blue of ocean.