"Thefts, robberies, murders, infanticide, licentiousness of the most debased and debasing character, burying their infirm and aged parents alive, desertion of the sick, revolting cruelties to the unfortunate maniac, cannibalism and drunkenness, form a list of some of the traits in social life among the Hawaiians in past days.
"Their drunkenness was intense. They could prepare a drink, deadly intoxicating in its nature, from a mountain plant called the awa (Piper methysticum). A bowl of this disgusting liquid was always prepared and served out just as a party of chiefs were sitting down to their meals. It would sometimes send the victim into a slumber from which he never awoke. The confirmed awa drinker could be immediately recognized by his leprous appearance.
"By far the darkest feature in their social condition was seen in the family relation. Society, however, is only a word of mere accommodation, designed to express domestic relations as they then existed. 'Society' was, indeed, such a sea of pollution as cannot be well described. Marriage was unknown, and all the sacred feelings which are suggested to our minds on mention of the various social relations, such as husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, were to them, indeed, as though they had no existence. There was, indeed, in this respect, a dreary blank—a dark chasm from which the soul instinctively recoils. There were, perhaps, some customs which imposed some little restraint upon the intercourse of the sexes, but those customs were easily dispensed with, and had nothing of the force of established rules. It was common for a husband to have many wives, and for a wife also to have many husbands. The nearest ties of consanguinity were but little regarded, and among the chiefs, especially, the connection of brother with sister, and parent with child, were very common. For husbands to interchange wives, and for wives to interchange husbands, was a common act of friendship, and persons who would not do this were not considered on good terms of sociability. For a man or woman to refuse a solicitation was considered an act of meanness; and this sentiment was thoroughly wrought into their minds, that, they seemed not to rid themselves of the feeling of meanness in a refusal, to feel, notwithstanding their better knowledge, that to comply was generous, liberal, and social, and to refuse reproachful and niggardly. It would be impossible to enumerate or specify the crimes which emanated from this state of affairs. Their political condition was the very genius of despotism, systematically and deliberately conducted. Kings and chiefs were extremely jealous of their succession, and the more noble their blood, the more they were venerated by the common people."
Mr. Sheldon Dibble is a historian whose work was published in 1843. He complains most bitterly that the natives bothered the missionaries by trying to give them the benefit of native thought. They wanted to do some of the talking, and said very childish things, and were so intent on their own thoughts that they would not listen to the preachers. But it ought not to have been held to be an offense for a procession of heathen to march to a missionary's house and tell him their thoughts. That was an honest manifestation of profound interest—the slow ripening of a harvest field. Mr. Dibble's book is printed by the Mission Seminary, and Mr. Dibble says, page 21: "We know that all the inhabitants of the earth descended from Noah," therefore, the Hawaiians "must once have known the great Jehova and the principles of true religion." But the historian says on the next page that the Hawaiians were heathen from time immemorial, for, "Go back to the very first reputed progenitor of the Hawaiian race, and you find that the ingredients of their character are lust, anger, strife, malice, sensuality, revenge and the worship of idols." This is the elevation upon which Mr. Dibble places himself to fire upon the memory of the English navigator Captain James Cook. The first paragraph of the assault on Cook is this:
"How unbounded the influence of foreign visitors upon the ignorant inhabitants of the Pacific! If the thousands of our countrymen who visit this ocean were actuated by the pure principles of the religion of Jesus, how immense the good they might accomplish! But, alas! how few visitors to the Western hemisphere are actuated by such principles."
This is preparatory to the condemnation of Cook in these terms: "Captain Cook allowed himself to be worshipped as a god. The people of Kealakeakua declined trading with him, and loaded his ship freely with the best productions of the island. The priests approached him in a crouching attitude, uttering prayers, and exhibiting all the formalities of worship. After approaching him with prostration the priests cast their red kapas over his shoulders and then receding a little, they presented hogs and a variety of other offerings, with long addresses rapidly enunciated, which were a repetition of their prayers and religious homage.
"When he went on shore most of the people fled for fear of him, and others bowed down before him, with solemn reverence. He was conducted to the house of the gods, and into the sacred enclosure, and received there the highest homage. In view of this fact, and of the death of Captain Cook, which speedily ensued, who can fail being admonished to give to God at all times, and even among barbarous tribes, the glory which is his due? Captain Cook might have directed the rude and ignorant natives to the great Jehovah, instead of receiving divine homage himself.
"Kalaniopuu, the king, arrived from Maui on the 24th of January, and immediately laid a tabu on the canoes, which prevented the women from visiting the ship, and consequently the men came on shore in great numbers, gratifying their infamous purposes in exchange for pieces of iron and small looking-glasses. Some of the women washed the coating from the back of the glasses much to their regret, when they found that the reflecting property was thus destroyed.
"The king, on his arrival, as well as the people, treated Captain Cook with much kindness, gave him feather cloaks and fly brushes and paid him divine honors. This adoration, it is painful to relate, was received without remonstrance. I shall speak here somewhat minutely of the death of Captain Cook, as it develops some traits of the heathen character, and the influence under which the heathen suffer from foreign intercourse."
After setting forth the horrible character of the natives, Captain Cook is condemned and denounced because he did not refuse the homage of the ferocious savages, paid him as a superior creature. One of Cook's troubles was the frantic passion the islanders had to steal iron. The common people were the property of the chiefs, and they had no other sense of possession. They gave away what they had, but took what they wanted.