Roughing It

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> Roughing It





CHAPTER LXVII.

I still quote from my journal:

I found the national Legislature to consist of half a dozen white men and
some thirty or forty natives. It was a dark assemblage. The nobles and
Ministers (about a dozen of them altogether) occupied the extreme left of
the hall, with David Kalakaua (the King's Chamberlain) and Prince William
at the head. The President of the Assembly, His Royal Highness M.
Kekuanaoa, [Kekuanaoa is not of the blood royal. He derives his princely
rank from his wife, who was a daughter of Kamehameha the Great. Under
other monarchies the male line takes precedence of the female in tracing
genealogies, but here the opposite is the case--the female line takes
precedence. Their reason for this is exceedingly sensible, and I
recommend it to the aristocracy of Europe: They say it is easy to know
who a man's mother was, but, etc., etc.] and the Vice President (the
latter a white man,) sat in the pulpit, if I may so term it.
The President is the King's father. He is an erect, strongly built,
massive featured, white-haired, tawny old gentleman of eighty years of
age or thereabouts. He was simply but well dressed, in a blue cloth coat
and white vest, and white pantaloons, without spot, dust or blemish upon
them. He bears himself with a calm, stately dignity, and is a man of
noble presence. He was a young man and a distinguished warrior under
that terrific fighter, Kamehameha I., more than half a century ago. A
knowledge of his career suggested some such thought as this: "This man,
naked as the day he was born, and war-club and spear in hand, has charged
at the head of a horde of savages against other hordes of savages more
than a generation and a half ago, and reveled in slaughter and carnage;
has worshipped wooden images on his devout knees; has seen hundreds of
his race offered up in heathen temples as sacrifices to wooden idols, at
a time when no missionary's foot had ever pressed this soil, and he had
never heard of the white man's God; has believed his enemy could secretly
pray him to death; has seen the day, in his childhood, when it was a
crime punishable by death for a man to eat with his wife, or for a
plebeian to let his shadow fall upon the King--and now look at him; an
educated Christian; neatly and handsomely dressed; a high-minded, elegant
gentleman; a traveler, in some degree, and one who has been the honored
guest of royalty in Europe; a man practiced in holding the reins of an
enlightened government, and well versed in the politics of his country
and in general, practical information. Look at him, sitting there
presiding over the deliberations of a legislative body, among whom are
white men--a grave, dignified, statesmanlike personage, and as seemingly
natural and fitted to the place as if he had been born in it and had
never been out of it in his life time. How the experiences of this old
man's eventful life shame the cheap inventions of romance!"

The christianizing of the natives has hardly even weakened some of their
barbarian superstitions, much less destroyed them. I have just referred
to one of these. It is still a popular belief that if your enemy can get
hold of any article belonging to you he can get down on his knees over it
and pray you to death. Therefore many a native gives up and dies merely
because he imagines that some enemy is putting him through a course of
damaging prayer. This praying an individual to death seems absurd enough
at a first glance, but then when we call to mind some of the pulpit
efforts of certain of our own ministers the thing looks plausible.

In former times, among the Islanders, not only a plurality of wives was
customary, but a plurality of husbands likewise. Some native women of
noble rank had as many as six husbands. A woman thus supplied did not
reside with all her husbands at once, but lived several months with each
in turn. An understood sign hung at her door during these months. When
the sign was taken down, it meant "NEXT."

In those days woman was rigidly taught to "know her place." Her place
was to do all the work, take all the cuffs, provide all the food, and
content herself with what was left after her lord had finished his
dinner. She was not only forbidden, by ancient law, and under penalty of
death, to eat with her husband or enter a canoe, but was debarred, under
the same penalty, from eating bananas, pine-apples, oranges and other
choice fruits at any time or in any place. She had to confine herself
pretty strictly to "poi" and hard work. These poor ignorant heathen seem
to have had a sort of groping idea of what came of woman eating fruit in
the garden of Eden, and they did not choose to take any more chances.
But the missionaries broke up this satisfactory arrangement of things.
They liberated woman and made her the equal of man.

The natives had a romantic fashion of burying some of their children
alive when the family became larger than necessary. The missionaries
interfered in this matter too, and stopped it.

To this day the natives are able to lie down and die whenever they want
to, whether there is anything the matter with them or not. If a Kanaka
takes a notion to die, that is the end of him; nobody can persuade him to
hold on; all the doctors in the world could not save him.

A luxury which they enjoy more than anything else, is a large funeral.
If a person wants to get rid of a troublesome native, it is only
necessary to promise him a fine funeral and name the hour and he will be
on hand to the minute--at least his remains will.

All the natives are Christians, now, but many of them still desert to the
Great Shark God for temporary succor in time of trouble. An irruption of
the great volcano of Kilauea, or an earthquake, always brings a deal of
latent loyalty to the Great Shark God to the surface. It is common
report that the King, educated, cultivated and refined Christian
gentleman as he undoubtedly is, still turns to the idols of his fathers
for help when disaster threatens. A planter caught a shark, and one of
his christianized natives testified his emancipation from the thrall of
ancient superstition by assisting to dissect the shark after a fashion
forbidden by his abandoned creed. But remorse shortly began to torture
him. He grew moody and sought solitude; brooded over his sin, refused
food, and finally said he must die and ought to die, for he had sinned
against the Great Shark God and could never know peace any more. He was
proof against persuasion and ridicule, and in the course of a day or two
took to his bed and died, although he showed no symptom of disease.
His young daughter followed his lead and suffered a like fate within the
week. Superstition is ingrained in the native blood and bone and it is
only natural that it should crop out in time of distress. Wherever one
goes in the Islands, he will find small piles of stones by the wayside,
covered with leafy offerings, placed there by the natives to appease evil
spirits or honor local deities belonging to the mythology of former days.

In the rural districts of any of the Islands, the traveler hourly comes
upon parties of dusky maidens bathing in the streams or in the sea
without any clothing on and exhibiting no very intemperate zeal in the
matter of hiding their nakedness. When the missionaries first took up
their residence in Honolulu, the native women would pay their families
frequent friendly visits, day by day, not even clothed with a blush.
It was found a hard matter to convince them that this was rather
indelicate. Finally the missionaries provided them with long, loose
calico robes, and that ended the difficulty--for the women would troop
through the town, stark naked, with their robes folded under their arms,
march to the missionary houses and then proceed to dress!--The natives
soon manifested a strong proclivity for clothing, but it was shortly
apparent that they only wanted it for grandeur. The missionaries
imported a quantity of hats, bonnets, and other male and female wearing
apparel, instituted a general distribution, and begged the people not to
come to church naked, next Sunday, as usual. And they did not; but the
national spirit of unselfishness led them to divide up with neighbors who
were not at the distribution, and next Sabbath the poor preachers could
hardly keep countenance before their vast congregations. In the midst of
the reading of a hymn a brown, stately dame would sweep up the aisle with
a world of airs, with nothing in the world on but a "stovepipe" hat and a
pair of cheap gloves; another dame would follow, tricked out in a man's
shirt, and nothing else; another one would enter with a flourish, with
simply the sleeves of a bright calico dress tied around her waist and the
rest of the garment dragging behind like a peacock's tail off duty; a
stately "buck" Kanaka would stalk in with a woman's bonnet on, wrong side
before--only this, and nothing more; after him would stride his fellow,
with the legs of a pair of pantaloons tied around his neck, the rest of
his person untrammeled; in his rear would come another gentleman simply
gotten up in a fiery neck-tie and a striped vest.

The poor creatures were beaming with complacency and wholly unconscious
of any absurdity in their appearance. They gazed at each other with
happy admiration, and it was plain to see that the young girls were
taking note of what each other had on, as naturally as if they had always
lived in a land of Bibles and knew what churches were made for; here was
the evidence of a dawning civilization. The spectacle which the
congregation presented was so extraordinary and withal so moving, that
the missionaries found it difficult to keep to the text and go on with
the services; and by and by when the simple children of the sun began a
general swapping of garments in open meeting and produced some
irresistibly grotesque effects in the course of re-dressing, there was
nothing for it but to cut the thing short with the benediction and
dismiss the fantastic assemblage.

In our country, children play "keep house;" and in the same high-sounding
but miniature way the grown folk here, with the poor little material of
slender territory and meagre population, play "empire." There is his
royal Majesty the King, with a New York detective's income of thirty or
thirty-five thousand dollars a year from the "royal civil list" and the
"royal domain." He lives in a two-story frame "palace."

And there is the "royal family"--the customary hive of royal brothers,
sisters, cousins and other noble drones and vagrants usual to monarchy,
--all with a spoon in the national pap-dish, and all bearing such titles as
his or her Royal Highness the Prince or Princess So-and-so. Few of them
can carry their royal splendors far enough to ride in carriages, however;
they sport the economical Kanaka horse or "hoof it" with the plebeians.

Then there is his Excellency the "royal Chamberlain"--a sinecure, for his
majesty dresses himself with his own hands, except when he is ruralizing
at Waikiki and then he requires no dressing.

Next we have his Excellency the Commander-in-chief of the Household
Troops, whose forces consist of about the number of soldiers usually
placed under a corporal in other lands.

Next comes the royal Steward and the Grand Equerry in Waiting--high
dignitaries with modest salaries and little to do.

Then we have his Excellency the First Gentleman of the Bed-chamber--an
office as easy as it is magnificent.

Next we come to his Excellency the Prime Minister, a renegade American
from New Hampshire, all jaw, vanity, bombast and ignorance, a lawyer of
"shyster" calibre, a fraud by nature, a humble worshipper of the sceptre
above him, a reptile never tired of sneering at the land of his birth or
glorifying the ten-acre kingdom that has adopted him--salary, $4,000 a
year, vast consequence, and no perquisites.

Then we have his Excellency the Imperial Minister of Finance, who handles
a million dollars of public money a year, sends in his annual "budget"
with great ceremony, talks prodigiously of "finance," suggests imposing
schemes for paying off the "national debt" (of $150,000,) and does it all
for $4,000 a year and unimaginable glory.

Next we have his Excellency the Minister of War, who holds sway over the
royal armies--they consist of two hundred and thirty uniformed Kanakas,
mostly Brigadier Generals, and if the country ever gets into trouble with
a foreign power we shall probably hear from them. I knew an American
whose copper-plate visiting card bore this impressive legend:
"Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Infantry." To say that he was proud of
this distinction is stating it but tamely. The Minister of War has also
in his charge some venerable swivels on Punch-Bowl Hill wherewith royal
salutes are fired when foreign vessels of war enter the port.

Next comes his Excellency the Minister of the Navy--a nabob who rules the
"royal fleet," (a steam-tug and a sixty-ton schooner.)

And next comes his Grace the Lord Bishop of Honolulu, the chief dignitary
of the "Established Church"--for when the American Presbyterian
missionaries had completed the reduction of the nation to a compact
condition of Christianity, native royalty stepped in and erected the
grand dignity of an "Established (Episcopal) Church" over it, and
imported a cheap ready-made Bishop from England to take charge. The
chagrin of the missionaries has never been comprehensively expressed, to
this day, profanity not being admissible.

Next comes his Excellency the Minister of Public Instruction.

Next, their Excellencies the Governors of Oahu, Hawaii, etc., and after
them a string of High Sheriffs and other small fry too numerous for
computation.

Then there are their Excellencies the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister
Plenipotentiary of his Imperial Majesty the Emperor of the French; her
British Majesty's Minister; the Minister Resident, of the United States;
and some six or eight representatives of other foreign nations, all with
sounding titles, imposing dignity and prodigious but economical state.

Imagine all this grandeur in a play-house "kingdom" whose population
falls absolutely short of sixty thousand souls!

The people are so accustomed to nine-jointed titles and colossal magnates
that a foreign prince makes very little more stir in Honolulu than a
Western Congressman does in New York.

And let it be borne in mind that there is a strictly defined "court
costume" of so "stunning" a nature that it would make the clown in a
circus look tame and commonplace by comparison; and each Hawaiian
official dignitary has a gorgeous vari-colored, gold-laced uniform
peculiar to his office--no two of them are alike, and it is hard to tell
which one is the "loudest." The King had a "drawing-room" at stated
intervals, like other monarchs, and when these varied uniforms congregate
there--weak-eyed people have to contemplate the spectacle through smoked
glass. Is there not a gratifying contrast between this latter-day
exhibition and the one the ancestors of some of these magnates afforded
the missionaries the Sunday after the old-time distribution of clothing?
Behold what religion and civilization have wrought!




CHAPTER LXVIII.

While I was in Honolulu I witnessed the ceremonious funeral of the King's
sister, her Royal Highness the Princess Victoria. According to the royal
custom, the remains had lain in state at the palace thirty days, watched
day and night by a guard of honor. And during all that time a great
multitude of natives from the several islands had kept the palace grounds
well crowded and had made the place a pandemonium every night with their
howlings and wailings, beating of tom-toms and dancing of the (at other
times) forbidden "hula-hula" by half-clad maidens to the music of songs
of questionable decency chanted in honor of the deceased. The printed
programme of the funeral procession interested me at the time; and after
what I have just said of Hawaiian grandiloquence in the matter of
"playing empire," I am persuaded that a perusal of it may interest the
reader:

After reading the long list of dignitaries, etc., and remembering
the sparseness of the population, one is almost inclined to wonder
where the material for that portion of the procession devoted to
"Hawaiian Population Generally" is going to be procured:

Undertaker.
Royal School. Kawaiahao School. Roman Catholic School. Maemae School.
Honolulu Fire Department.
Mechanics' Benefit Union.
Attending Physicians.
Knonohikis (Superintendents) of the Crown Lands, Konohikis of the Private
Lands of His Majesty Konohikis of the Private Lands of Her late Royal
Highness.
Governor of Oahu and Staff.
Hulumanu (Military Company).
Household Troops.
The Prince of Hawaii's Own (Military Company).
The King's household servants.
Servants of Her late Royal Highness.
Protestant Clergy. The Clergy of the Roman Catholic Church.
His Lordship Louis Maigret, The Right Rev. Bishop of Arathea,
Vicar-Apostolic of the Hawaiian Islands.
The Clergy of the Hawaiian Reformed Catholic Church.
His Lordship the Right Rev. Bishop of Honolulu.
Her Majesty Queen Emma's Carriage.
His Majesty's Staff.
Carriage of Her late Royal Highness.
Carriage of Her Majesty the Queen Dowager.
The King's Chancellor.
Cabinet Ministers.
His Excellency the Minister Resident of the United States.
H. B. M's Commissioner.
H. B. M's Acting Commissioner.
Judges of Supreme Court.
Privy Councillors.
Members of Legislative Assembly.
Consular Corps.
Circuit Judges.
Clerks of Government Departments.
Members of the Bar.
Collector General, Custom-house Officers and Officers of the Customs.
Marshal and Sheriffs of the different Islands.
King's Yeomanry.
Foreign Residents.
Ahahui Kaahumanu.
Hawaiian Population Generally.
Hawaiian Cavalry.
Police Force.

I resume my journal at the point where the procession arrived at the
royal mausoleum:

As the procession filed through the gate, the military deployed
handsomely to the right and left and formed an avenue through which
the long column of mourners passed to the tomb. The coffin was
borne through the door of the mausoleum, followed by the King and
his chiefs, the great officers of the kingdom, foreign Consuls,
Embassadors and distinguished guests (Burlingame and General Van
Valkenburgh). Several of the kahilis were then fastened to a
frame-work in front of the tomb, there to remain until they decay
and fall to pieces, or, forestalling this, until another scion of
royalty dies. At this point of the proceedings the multitude set
up such a heart-broken wailing as I hope never to hear again.

The soldiers fired three volleys of musketry--the wailing being
previously silenced to permit of the guns being heard. His Highness
Prince William, in a showy military uniform (the "true prince," this
--scion of the house over-thrown by the present dynasty--he was formerly
betrothed to the Princess but was not allowed to marry her), stood guard
and paced back and forth within the door. The privileged few who
followed the coffin into the mausoleum remained sometime, but the King
soon came out and stood in the door and near one side of it. A stranger
could have guessed his rank (although he was so simply and
unpretentiously dressed) by the profound deference paid him by all
persons in his vicinity; by seeing his high officers receive his quiet
orders and suggestions with bowed and uncovered heads; and by observing
how careful those persons who came out of the mausoleum were to avoid
"crowding" him (although there was room enough in the doorway for a wagon
to pass, for that matter); how respectfully they edged out sideways,
scraping their backs against the wall and always presenting a front view
of their persons to his Majesty, and never putting their hats on until
they were well out of the royal presence.

He was dressed entirely in black--dress-coat and silk hat--and looked
rather democratic in the midst of the showy uniforms about him. On his
breast he wore a large gold star, which was half hidden by the lapel of
his coat. He remained at the door a half hour, and occasionally gave an
order to the men who were erecting the kahilis [Ranks of long-handled
mops made of gaudy feathers--sacred to royalty. They are stuck in the
ground around the tomb and left there.] before the tomb. He had the
good taste to make one of them substitute black crape for the ordinary
hempen rope he was about to tie one of them to the frame-work with.
Finally he entered his carriage and drove away, and the populace shortly
began to drop into his wake. While he was in view there was but one man
who attracted more attention than himself, and that was Harris (the
Yankee Prime Minister). This feeble personage had crape enough around
his hat to express the grief of an entire nation, and as usual he
neglected no opportunity of making himself conspicuous and exciting the
admiration of the simple Kanakas. Oh! noble ambition of this modern
Richelieu!

It is interesting to contrast the funeral ceremonies of the Princess
Victoria with those of her noted ancestor Kamehameha the Conqueror, who
died fifty years ago--in 1819, the year before the first missionaries
came.

"On the 8th of May, 1819, at the age of sixty-six, he died, as he
had lived, in the faith of his country. It was his misfortune not
to have come in contact with men who could have rightly influenced
his religious aspirations. Judged by his advantages and compared
with the most eminent of his countrymen he may be justly styled not
only great, but good. To this day his memory warms the heart and
elevates the national feelings of Hawaiians. They are proud of
their old warrior King; they love his name; his deeds form their
historical age; and an enthusiasm everywhere prevails, shared even
by foreigners who knew his worth, that constitutes the firmest
pillar of the throne of his dynasty.

"In lieu of human victims (the custom of that age), a sacrifice of
three hundred dogs attended his obsequies--no mean holocaust when
their national value and the estimation in which they were held are
considered. The bones of Kamehameha, after being kept for a while,
were so carefully concealed that all knowledge of their final
resting place is now lost. There was a proverb current among the
common people that the bones of a cruel King could not be hid; they
made fish-hooks and arrows of them, upon which, in using them, they
vented their abhorrence of his memory in bitter execrations."

The account of the circumstances of his death, as written by the native
historians, is full of minute detail, but there is scarcely a line of it
which does not mention or illustrate some by-gone custom of the country.
In this respect it is the most comprehensive document I have yet met
with. I will quote it entire:

"When Kamehameha was dangerously sick, and the priests were unable
to cure him, they said: 'Be of good courage and build a house for
the god' (his own private god or idol), that thou mayest recover.'
The chiefs corroborated this advice of the priests, and a place of
worship was prepared for Kukailimoku, and consecrated in the
evening. They proposed also to the King, with a view to prolong his
life, that human victims should be sacrificed to his deity; upon
which the greater part of the people absconded through fear of
death, and concealed themselves in hiding places till the tabu [Tabu
(pronounced tah-boo,) means prohibition (we have borrowed it,) or
sacred. The tabu was sometimes permanent, sometimes temporary; and
the person or thing placed under tabu was for the time being sacred
to the purpose for which it was set apart. In the above case the
victims selected under the tabu would be sacred to the sacrifice]
in which destruction impended, was past. It is doubtful whether
Kamehameha approved of the plan of the chiefs and priests to
sacrifice men, as he was known to say, 'The men are sacred for the
King;' meaning that they were for the service of his successor.
This information was derived from Liholiho, his son.

"After this, his sickness increased to such a degree that he had not
strength to turn himself in his bed. When another season,
consecrated for worship at the new temple (heiau) arrived, he said
to his son, Liholiho, 'Go thou and make supplication to thy god; I
am not able to go, and will offer my prayers at home.' When his
devotions to his feathered god, Kukailimoku, were concluded, a
certain religiously disposed individual, who had a bird god,
suggested to the King that through its influence his sickness might
be removed. The name of this god was Pua; its body was made of a
bird, now eaten by the Hawaiians, and called in their language alae.
Kamehameha was willing that a trial should be made, and two houses
were constructed to facilitate the experiment; but while dwelling in
them he became so very weak as not to receive food. After lying
there three days, his wives, children and chiefs, perceiving that he
was very low, returned him to his own house. In the evening he was
carried to the eating house, where he took a little food in his
mouth which he did not swallow; also a cup of water. The chiefs
requested him to give them his counsel; but he made no reply, and
was carried back to the dwelling house; but when near midnight--ten
o'clock, perhaps--he was carried again to the place to eat; but, as
before, he merely tasted of what was presented to him. Then
Kaikioewa addressed him thus: 'Here we all are, your younger
brethren, your son Liholiho and your foreigner; impart to us your
dying charge, that Liholiho and Kaahumanu may hear.' Then Kamehameha
inquired, 'What do you say?' Kaikioewa repeated, 'Your counsels for
us.'