This John Young, who gave Lisiansky information as to the customs and religion of the Hawaiians, was an Englishman who had resided in the islands for many years at the time of the Russian navigator's visit in 1804. Originally a sailor, born at Liverpool, he had been compulsorily detained by the natives when he landed from his ship in Hawaii in March 1790. But from the first he received the kindest treatment from the king, Kamehameha, whose full confidence and high esteem he enjoyed and deserved. The king gave him a fine estate and appointed him to several responsible offices; in particular Young was governor of Hawaii for no less than nine years during the king's absence. He married a native woman of rank, by whom he had six children. While he remained warmly attached to his native country and rendered essential services to English vessels touching at the islands, he remained a voluntary exile for forty-five years in Hawaii, where he died at the patriarchal age of ninety-two in December 1835. During this long period he enjoyed the favour of the kings, chiefs, and people, and was highly respected and esteemed for his intelligence and good offices by European voyagers to the islands.[144] Thus he had the best opportunities for acquainting himself with the customs and beliefs of the natives, and it is much to be regretted that of the ample store of knowledge which he thus acquired nothing remains but a few scattered notices recorded by travellers to whom he had verbally communicated them.
In 1809, some five years after Lisiansky's visit to Hawaii, the Scotch sailor Archibald Campbell witnessed one of these Saturnalia held on the occasion of the death of the king's brother. He says: "The public mourning that took place on this occasion was of so extraordinary a nature that had I not been an eye-witness, I could not have given credit to it. The natives cut out their hair, and went about completely naked. Many of them, particularly the women, disfigured themselves, by knocking out their front teeth, and branding their faces with red-hot stones, and the small end of calabashes, which they held burning to their faces till a circular mark was produced; whilst, at the same time, a general, I believe I may say an universal, public prostitution of the women took place. The queens, and the widow of the deceased, were alone exempted. When the captain of a ship that lay in the harbour remonstrated with the king upon these disgraceful scenes, he answered, that such was the law, and he could not prevent them."[145]
To these enormities the French navigator L. de Freycinet bore similar testimony a few years later. He says: "The despair which is affected after the loss of royal personages or great nobles presents also a remarkable resemblance to what takes place under similar circumstances among the inhabitants of the Marianne Islands. When we landed in Owhyhi [Hawaii], signs of sorrow everywhere presented themselves to our eyes and witnessed to the excesses that had been committed at the recent death of Tamehameha. At such a crisis anarchy displays all its horrors: the laws and the rules of taboo are broken without shame: the prohibited foods are devoured without scruple, chiefly by the women: the rights of property are ignored; force becomes the supreme law: the voice of chiefs is powerless: old enmities are avenged by blood or pillage: in a word, incredible scenes of disorder, of cruelty, and of lust are everywhere renewed under the stimulus of impunity. Calm does not begin to reign again until the heir is definitely invested with the royal power. Such is the mode in which the common people, freed for the moment from all restraint, express the grief which they are supposed to feel at the death of their sovereign."[146]
The early missionaries to Hawaii also testified to the disorders which prevailed on these occasions, though they seem not to have witnessed them. From their accounts we gather that at such times the rights of property were as little respected as the chastity of women. "On such an occasion," says Stewart, "every restraint was cast off, and all were in the habit of following the impulse of any and every wild passion that might seize them. Rights of person or of property were no longer regarded; and he who had the greatest muscular powers committed whatever depredation he chose, and injured any one he thought proper. Even the chiefs lost their ordinary pre-eminence, and could exert no influence of restraint on the excesses of their subjects. It was the time of redressing private wrongs, by committing violence on the property and person of an enemy; and everything that any one possessed was liable to be taken from him. Their grief was expressed by the most shocking personal outrages, not only by tearing off their clothes entirely, but by knocking out their eyes and teeth with clubs and stones, and pulling out their hair, and by burning and cutting their flesh; while drunkenness, riot, and every species of debauchery continued to be indulged in for days after the death of the deceased."[147] To the same effect Ellis writes that "as soon as the chief had expired, the whole neighbourhood exhibited a scene of confusion, wickedness, and cruelty, seldom witnessed even in the most barbarous society. The people ran to and fro without their clothes, appearing and acting more like demons than human beings; every vice was practised, and almost every species of crime perpetrated. Houses were burnt, property plundered, even murder sometimes committed, and the gratification of every base and savage feeling sought without restraint. Injuries or accidents, long forgotten perhaps by the offending party, were now revenged with unrelenting cruelty."[148] According to Jarves, the early historian of Hawaii, on these occasions no women were exempt from violation except the widows of the deceased.[149]
Such outbursts of passion, released from all restraints of custom or law, are not unknown elsewhere on the occasion of a death. Among the Ba-ila of Northern Rhodesia it is customary at funerals for the women to sing lewd songs. "Under ordinary circumstances it would be reckoned taboo for women to utter such things in the presence of men; but at funerals all restraints are removed. People do as they like. Grass may be plucked out of the thatched roofs; the fields may be robbed of the growing corn; all passions are let loose; and no complaint for damage, theft, or adultery can be made. This last item used to be the case; nowadays fines are claimed."[150]
The number of human victims sacrificed at the death of a chief varied with his rank. For a king of Hawaii the general number would seem to have been ten or twelve.[151] But when King Kamehameha died in 1819, the priest declared somewhat differently the custom in regard to human sacrifice on such an occasion. When the corpse had been removed from the king's own dwelling to a consecrated house for the performance of the proper rites, a sacred hog was baked and offered to it by the priest; for the dead king was now deemed to be a god. Then addressing the chiefs and the new king, the priest spoke as follows: "I will now make known to you the rules to be observed respecting persons to be sacrificed on the burial of his body. If you obtain one man before the corpse is removed, one will be sufficient; but after it leaves this house four will be required. If delayed until we carry the corpse to the grave, there must be ten; but after it is deposited in the grave, there must be fifteen. To-morrow morning there will be a tabu, and if the sacrifice be delayed until that time, forty men must die." However, on this occasion, no human blood was shed, but three hundred dogs were sacrificed.[152] The victims who were killed at the death of the king, princes, and distinguished chiefs, and were buried with their remains, belonged to the lowest class of society. In certain families the obligation of dying with the different members of such or such a noble house was hereditary, so that at the birth of a child it was known at whose death he must be sacrificed. The victims knew their destiny, and their lot seems to have had no terror for them.[153]
At Honaunau, in the island of Hawaii, there was a sort of mausoleum in which the bones of dead kings and princes were deposited. For some reason it was spared in the general destruction of pagan monuments which took place in 1819, and it was still almost intact when the missionary Ellis visited and described it a few years later. It was a compact building, twenty-four feet long by sixteen feet wide, built of the most durable timber, and thatched with leaves. It stood on a bed of lava jutting out into the sea, and was surrounded by a strong fence, leaving a paved area in front and at the two ends. Several rudely carved male and female images of wood were placed on the outside of the enclosure, some on low pedestals under the shade of a tree, others on high posts planted on the jutting rocks which overhung the edge of the water. A number of effigies stood on the fence at unequal distances all around; but the principal assemblage of idols was at the south-east end of the enclosed space, where twelve of them stood in a semicircle on a crescent-shaped basement of stone raised about two feet above the pavement. Some of them rested on small pedestals, others on pillars eight or ten feet high. The principal idol, distinguished by the variety and superiority of the carving on its body and especially on its head, stood in the middle, the others on either side of it, "as if perpetual guardians of 'the mighty dead' reposing in the house adjoining."[154]
When a death had taken place, the house in which it occurred, was deemed defiled, and continued in that state until after the burial. But if the deceased was a chief, the whole land was polluted, and the heirs sought a residence in another part of the country, until the corpse was dissected and the bones tied in a bundle; for when that was done the season of defilement terminated. Hence on the death of King Kamehameha, his son and successor, Liholiho, had to retire for a time to another district.[155]
§ 10. Fate of the Soul after Death
The Hawaiians in general believed that the human soul exists after death, but their notions on the subject were, as usual, vague, confused, and contradictory. Some said that all the souls of the departed went to the Po, or place of night, and were there annihilated or eaten by the gods.[156] According to another account, the souls of the dead that had no claim to divinity fluttered about their old homes till the moment arrived when they became the food of the gods. It is not certain, adds de Freycinet, that they recognised the immortality of the soul in the case of persons of the lowest class.[157] Others said that some souls went to the regions of Akea (Wakea) and Miru (Milu), two ancient kings of Hawaii. Of these two, Akea was reported to have been the first king of the island. When he died, he descended into the nether world and there founded a kingdom. His successor on the throne of Hawaii, by name Miru or Milu, also descended into the underworld at death, and shared the government of the infernal realm with his predecessor Akea. Their land is a place of darkness, their food, lizards and butterflies. But there are streams of water of which they drink, and wide-spreading trees under which they recline.[158] Milu is described as the Hawaiian Pluto, the lord of the lower world to whose dominions departed spirits go. His abode was in the west, hence the ghosts of such as died on the eastern shore of an island always had to cross to the western shore before they could set out for their final place of rest in the spirit land. Some said that Milu had his dwelling under the ocean, and that he was the prince of wicked spirits.[159] However, according to some accounts, the two ancient kings, Milu and Akea, ruled over separate regions in the spirit land, which were tabooed to each other, so that nobody could pass from the one to the other. Akea or Wakea dwelt in the upper region, and there the souls of chiefs dwelt with him; whereas Milu occupied the muddy lower region, and there the souls of common folk abode with him. In the upper region all was peaceful and orderly, and there persons who had faithfully complied with the precepts of religion in life were received after death. On the other hand the lower region, ruled over by Milu, was noisy and disorderly; evil spirits played their pranks there, and the souls of the dead subsisted on lizards and butterflies.[160] When persons recovered from a death-like swoon, it was supposed that their souls had gone to the underworld and been sent back to earth by Milu. The best account of the spirit land was given by one who had spent eight days in it, and on returning to life reported to his family what he had seen. According to his observations, the spirit land is flat and fruitful, it is tolerably well lighted, and everything grows there spontaneously, so that, contrary to some reports, the palace of Milu is a really delightful place. Milu himself is not married to any one particular wife; but from time to time he chooses for his consorts the most beautiful of the female ghosts when they arrive in deadland, and the women thus honoured are naturally taboo for the male ghosts. All souls live there in exactly the same state in which they quitted their bodies. The souls of those who died young, especially of those who fell in battle, are hale and strong; whereas the souls of those who perished of disease are sickly and weak, and weak, too, are the souls of such as died in old age.[161]