The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume 2 (of 3) / The Belief Among the Polynesians

by James George Frazer

CHAPTER VII

THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE HAWAIIANS

§ 1. The Sandwich or Hawaiian Islands

The Sandwich or Hawaiian Islands form an archipelago lying in the North Pacific Ocean just within the northern tropic. They stretch in a direction from north-west to south-east for more than four hundred miles and include eight inhabited islands, of which the most important are Hawaii, Maui, Oahu, and Kauai. Of these Hawaii is by far the largest; indeed it is the largest island in Polynesia with the exception of New Zealand. The islands are all mountainous and of volcanic formation. In Hawaii two of the mountains are between 13,000 and 14,000 feet in height, and two of them are active volcanoes; one of them, named Kilauea, possesses the greatest active crater in the world, a huge cauldron of seething lava, which presents a spectacle of awe-inspiring grandeur when seen on a moonless night. The other and much loftier volcano, Mauna Loa, was the scene of a terrific eruption in 1877 and of another in 1881. Craters, large and small, hot springs, and other evidences of volcanic activity, abound throughout the archipelago. One of the craters on the island of Maui is said to be no less than fifteen miles in circumference and about two thousand feet deep. The islands appear to have been known to the Spaniards as early as the sixteenth century; but they were rediscovered in 1778 by Captain Cook, who was afterwards killed in a fight with the natives in Hawaii.[1]

Viewed from the sea the islands are apt to present an appearance of barrenness and desolation. The mountains descend into the sea in precipices often hundreds of feet high: their summits are capped with snow or lost in mist and clouds; and their sides, green and studded with clumps of trees in some places, but black, scorched and bare in others, are rent into ravines, down which in the rainy seasons cataracts rush roaring to the sea. With the changes of sunshine and shadow the landscape as a whole strikes the beholder now as in the highest degree horrid, dismal, and dreary, now as wildly beautiful and romantic with a sort of stern and sombre magnificence.[2] Inland, however, in many places the summits of the ridges crowned with forests of perpetual verdure, the slopes covered with flowering shrubs or lofty trees, the rocks mantled in creepers, the waterfalls dropping from stupendous cliffs, and the distant prospects of snowy peaks, bold romantic headlands, and blue seas, all arched by a summer sky of the deepest azure, combine to make up pictures of fairy-like and enchanting loveliness.[3]

The climate naturally varies with the height above the sea. On the coasts, though warm, it is remarkably equable, and perhaps no country in the world enjoys a finer or healthier climate than some parts of Hawaii and Maui. On the mountains all varieties of climate are to be found, from the tropical heat of the lowlands to the arctic cold of the two great peaks of Hawaii, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa with their perpetual snows, which are not, however, always visible from the sea or from the foot of these giants. In the lowlands frost is unknown. The fresh breezes, which blow from the sea during the day and from the mountains at night, temper the heat of the sun, and render the evenings delicious; nothing can surpass the splendour and clearness of the moonlight. Rain falls more abundantly on the windward or eastern side of the islands than on the leeward or western side. Thus at Hilo, on the eastern side of Hawaii, it rains almost every day, whereas in Kena, on the western side, rain hardly ever falls, and along the coast not a single water-course is to be seen for many miles. In general it may be said that the archipelago suffers from drought and hence occasionally from dearth.[4]

§ 2. The Natives and their Mode of Life

The natives of the Sandwich Islands are typical Polynesians. In general they are rather above the middle stature, well formed, with fine muscular limbs, open countenances, and features frequently resembling those of Europeans. The forehead is usually well developed, the lips thick, and the nostrils full, without any flatness or spreading of the nose. The complexion is tawny or olive in hue, but sometimes reddish brown. The hair is black or brown and occasionally fair or rather ruddy in colour, in texture it is strong, smooth, and sometimes curly. The gait is graceful and even stately. But in these islands, as in other parts of Polynesia, there is a conspicuous difference between the chiefs and the commoners, the superiority being altogether on the side of the chiefs. "The nobles of the land," says Stewart, "are so strongly marked by their external appearance, as at all times to be easily distinguishable from the common people. They seem, indeed, in size and stature to be almost a distinct race. They are all large in their frame, and often excessively corpulent, while the common people are scarce of the ordinary height of Europeans, and of a thin rather than full habit."[5] And the difference between the two ranks is as obvious in their walk and general deportment as in their stature and size, the nobles bearing themselves with a natural dignity and grace which are wanting in their social inferiors. Yet there seems to be no reason to suppose that they belong to a different race from the commoners; the greater care taken of them in childhood, their better living, sexual selection, and the influence of heredity appear sufficient to account for their physical superiority. The women are well built and "beautiful as ancient statues" with a sweet and engaging expression of countenance. Yet on the whole the Hawaiians are judged to be physically inferior both to the Tahitians and to the Marquesans; according to Captain King, they are rather darker than the Tahitians, and not altogether so handsome a people. On the other hand they are said to be more intelligent than either the Tahitians or the Marquesans. Captain King describes them as of a mild and affectionate disposition, equally remote from the extreme levity and fickleness of the Tahitians, and from the distant gravity and reserve of the Tongans.[6] They practised tattooing much less than many other Polynesians, but their faces, hands, arms, and the forepart of their bodies were often tattooed with a variety of patterns.[7]

The staple food of the Hawaiians consists of taro (kalo), sweet potatoes, and fish, but above all of taro. That root (Arum or Caladium esculentum) is to the Hawaiians what bread-fruit is to the Tahitians, and its cultivation is their most important agricultural industry. It is grown wherever there is water or a marsh, and it is even planted on some arid heights in the island of Hawaii, where it yields excellent crops. Artificial irrigation was practised and even regulated by law or custom in the old days; for it was a rule that water should be conducted over every plantation twice a week in general, and once a week during the dry season. The bread-fruit tree is not so common, and its fruit not so much prized, as in the Marquesas and Tahiti. The natives grew sweet potatoes even before the arrival of Europeans. Yams are found wild, but are hardly eaten except in times of scarcity. There are several sorts of bananas; the fruit for the most part is better cooked than raw. In the old days the cooking was done in the ordinary native ovens, consisting of holes in the ground lined with stones which were heated with fire. After being baked in an oven the roots of the taro are mashed and diluted with water so as to form a paste or pudding called poe or poi, which is sometimes eaten sweet but is more generally put aside till it has fermented, in which condition it is preferred by the natives. It is a highly nutritious substance, and though some Europeans complain of the sourness of taro pudding, others find it not unpalatable. Fish used to be generally eaten raw, seasoned with brine or sea-water. But they also commonly salt their fish, not for the sake of preserving it for a season of scarcity, but because they prefer the taste. They construct artificial fish-ponds, into which they let young fish from the sea, principally the fry of the grey mullet, of which the chiefs are particularly fond. Every chief has, or used to have, his own fish-pond. The natives are very skilful fishermen. In the old days they made a great variety of fish-hooks out of mother-of-pearl and tortoise shell as well as out of bone, and these they dragged by means of lines behind their canoes, and so caught bonettas, dolphins, and albicores. They took prodigious numbers of flying fish in nets. At the time when the islands were discovered by Captain Cook, the natives possessed pigs and dogs. The flesh of both of these animals was eaten, but only by persons of higher rank. Fowls were also bred and eaten, but they were not very common, and their flesh was not very much esteemed. The sugar-cane was indigenous in the islands, and the people ate it as a fruit; along with bananas and plantains it occupied a considerable portion of every plantation. Captain Cook found the natives skilful husbandmen, but thought that with a more extensive system of agriculture, the islands could have supported three times the number of the existing inhabitants.[8] He remarked that the chiefs were much addicted to the drinking of kava, and he attributed some of the cutaneous and other diseases from which they suffered to an immoderate use of what he calls the pernicious drug.[9]