Part 18 (1/2)
The Samoans are not vanis.h.i.+ng as rapidly as are the Hawaiians and the Maories, for two very simple reasons: their climate is not so suitable to the white man as is that of New Zealand and of Hawaii. Nor, like Fiji, has Samoa been hampered by indentured coolieism, though Chinese do come. Racially there seems no immediate prospect of Samoa being submerged, though politically it fell before Hawaii did. Socially, however, it is going, as are the native features of most of the more progressive and more a.s.similable peoples of the Pacific.
Simple naturalness is fast fading even from Samoa. I do not mean to say that because Samoans are drifting farther and farther from their primitive customs they are losing their ”charm.” With progress, one expects not oddity, but simplicity; not s.h.i.+ftlessness, but a certain tightening up of the finer fibers of the race. It is satisfying to see the contrast between the loosely built native hut and that whose pillars are set in concrete and roofed with durable materials. But it is disheartening when the change is only from thatch, which needs to be replaced every so often, to corrugated iron, without any other signs of durability. In other words, the corrugated iron roof is no proof that the race is becoming more thrifty, less lazy,--but the reverse. It indicates that indolence has found an easier way, a more permanent manner.
My presence at the ceremony in honor of the royal demise gave me an opportunity to see at once some of the best specimens of Samoan manhood.
It left me with the impression that no race capable of mustering so many men of such build was on the decline. There was nothing in their manner to indicate servility or despair. And some day Setu, with his knowledge of Western civilization gained at first hand, may be the means of arousing his fellow-Samoans to great things.
4
The process of a.s.similation and decline is taking place with far more rapidity in Hawaii. Hawaii crashed like a meteor into America and was comminuted and absorbed. The finer dust of its primitive civilization is giving more color to our atmosphere than any other American possession.
But the real Hawaii is rapidly receding into the past. On the beach at Waikiki there is a thatch-roofed hut, but like most of the Hawaiians themselves, it bears too obviously the ear-marks of the West, the imprint of invasion.
What there is left of the Hawaiians still possesses a measure of strength and calmness. Big, burly, self-satisfied, they wend their way unashamed of having been conquered. Only a few thousand can now claim any racial purity. The mixture of Hawaiians with the various peoples now in occupation of their lands is growing greater every year; those of pure Hawaiian blood, fewer. And after all, is it any reflection upon any race that it has been a.s.similated by its conquerors?
And a.s.similated to the point of extinction Hawaii has been. It has become an integral part of a continental nation of whose existence it had hardly known a hundred years ago. When Captain Cook discovered Hawaii he estimated its population at 400,000. Fifty years later there were only 130,000. To-day there may not be more than 30,000. The white race has had its revenge on these natives for the death of this intrepid captain. And the last of the great Hawaiian rulers, Queen Liliuokalani, shorn of her power, pa.s.sed away on November 11, 1917. She, the descendant of great warriors and remarkable political leaders, had turned to the only thing left her--expressing the sentiments of her people in music.
The submersion is nearly complete. Politically, there isn't a son among them who would feel any happier for a revival. So little fear is there of such a hope ever rising even for a moment in the Hawaiian breast that the key to the former throne-room hangs indifferently on a nail in the outer office of the present government. I believe that that is the only throne-room under the American flag. It is a small room, modern and finished in every detail. On its walls hang paintings of kings and queens and ministers of state. There is a musty odor about it, which could easily be removed. All one need do is open the windows and an inrush of sensuous air would sweeten every corner of it. This would be doing only what the race is doing with every intake of alien blood.
A broad-shouldered, broad-nosed, broad-faced--and seemingly broad-hearted--Hawaiian clerk took me into the room. As we wandered about he told who the worthies were, enframed in gilt and under gla.s.s.
Interspersed with some facts was inherited fancy. His enthusiasm rose appreciably when he recited the deeds of Kamehameha I, their most renowned king.
”Once he saw an enemy spy approach,” said my guide. ”He threw his spear with such force that it penetrated the trunk of the cocoa-palm behind which the traitor was hiding, and pierced the man's heart.” A merry twinkle lit up the cicerone's eyes. That twinkle was something almost foreign to the man: it must have been the white blood in him that was mocking the tales of his native ancestry.
Aside from these few portraits there was nothing in the throne-room which gave evidence of Hawaii's former prestige. Here that king's descendants planned to lead his race to glory among nations. And here they were outwitted. The guide had recounted among the king's exploits his ability to break the back of his strongest enemy with his naked hands. Yet the white man came along and broke the Hawaiian back. And to-day he who wishes to learn the habits, the arts, and the exploits of these people has to go to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu.
A primer got up for children, to be learned parrot-like, and distributed to tourists, tells us ”the Hawaiians never were savages.” We are also a.s.sured they ”never were cannibals,” and ”speedily embraced religion.”
The first is an obvious misstatement; the second is an apology of uncertain value; as to the third, the son of one of Hawaii's best missionaries, who just died in his eighty-fifth year, said: ”Not until the world shall learn how to limit the quant.i.ty and how to improve the quality of races will future ages see any renewal of such idyllic life and charm as that of the ancient Polynesians.” Dr. t.i.tus Munson Coan, whose father converted some fifteen thousand Hawaiians to Christianity, deplored the effect on the native of the high-handed suppression of native taboos and attributes their extinction--which seems inevitable--to the imposition of clothes which they put on and off according to whim, and to customs unsuited to their natures. Dr. Coan said that though his father had a powerful voice he remembered that often he could not hear him preach because of the coughing and sneezing of the natives.
Be that as it may, a visit to the Bishop Museum would quickly contradict the primer. There the array of weapons shows that the natives were not only barbarous but savage. This is no serious condemnation, for none of Europe's races can show any cleaner record. Arts, indeed, the Hawaiians had, and sense of form and color. An ap.r.o.n of feathers worn by the king required a tax of a feather apiece on hundreds of birds. After this feather was extracted, the bird was set free, an indication of thrift if not kindliness. Yet they did not hesitate to strip the flesh off every bone of Captain Cook and distribute portions among the native chiefs. No one has proved that they ate it; but cannibalism is, after all, a relative vice and was not unknown in northwestern Europe.
5
The pa.s.sing of the Hawaiians, like that of many other races in the Pacific, is due to a cannibalism and a barbarism which are less emphasized in the ordinary discussions of the problem. There are more ways than one of eating your neighbor. However harrowing that savage diet was, it did not work for the destruction of any of these South Sea islanders as ruthlessly as did the practice among the Hawaiians of infanticide. Mothers were in the habit of disposing of their impetuous children by the simple method of burying them alive, frequently under the very shelter of their roofs, lying down upon the selfsame floor and sleeping the sleep of the just with the tiny infant squirming in its grave beside them. Parents were not allowed to have more than a given number of children because of the strain on the available food supply.
This more than anything else depleted the number of natives most disastrously. But in addition came the white man with his diseases, contagious and infectious,--a form of destruction that, from the native point of view, is quite as dastardly as eating the flesh of the vanquished.
Certainly, whatever the viciousness of the occasional or annual outbursts of pa.s.sion among these primitive folk, there was no example of regulated, insistent pandering to vice such as has been set them by the Europeans, especially in Hawaii. There one evening I wandered through the very depths of degradation; there I witnessed a process of fusion of races which had only one possible end,--extinction. Its Hawaiian name had a strange similarity to the word evil: it is _Iwilei_. McDuffie, Chief of Detectives of Honolulu, was making his inspection of medical certificates, which was part of the work of ”restriction,” and took me with him.
Mr. McDuffie had been standing near the window of the outer office, with one foot upon a chair, talking to another detective, when I called out his name. Tall, ma.s.sive, with hair almost gray, a rather kindly face, he looked me up and down without moving. I explained my mission.
”Who are you?” he asked bluntly.
A mean question, always asked by the white man in the tropics. Well, now, who in thunder was I, anyway? I murmured that I was a ”writer.”
”Be round at seven-thirty, and you can come along,” he said dryly.
On his office walls hung hatchets, daggers, pistols, sabers, and many other such toys of a barbarous world hacking away against or toward perfection. On the floor were dozens of opium pipes, taken in a raid upon Chinese dens,--toys of another kind of world trying to forget its progress away from barbarism. One j.a.panese continued his game of cards nonchalantly. Flash-lights were in evidence, fearlessly protruding from hip pockets.
At half-past seven I was there again. As we were about to enter the motor-car, I ventured some remark, thinking to make conversation. ”Get in there,” said the chief, abruptly. For an instant he must have thought he was taking a criminal to confinement.