Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii (10 page)

The ABCFM could hardly have asked for a more auspicious beginning for the evangelizing of Hawai‘i. All five students had their portraits painted by Samuel F. B. Morse, and electroplate engravings of them were sold to raise money; in 1816 the society published
A Narrative of Five Youths from the Sandwich Islands
to generate more support. The Hawaiians were enrolled in a religious school at Litchfield until the spring of 1817, when they began studying at the ABCFM’s own new missionary school in Cornwall. And then disaster struck, as Opukaha‘ia took a fever at the start of 1818. Diagnosed with typhus, he lingered for six weeks. “Oh! How I want to see Hawaii,” he said. “But I fear I never shall—God will do right—He knows what is best.” As he neared the end, his much-loved native confederates—Thomas Hopu, John Honoli‘i, Prince George Kaumuali‘i, and William Kanui—all pledged to him that they would continue in the new religion, return to Hawai‘i, and end the horrors of
kapu
.
14

“Go see my uncle,” said Opukaha‘ia. “Tell him I love him. I thank him for his care so long ago. And if my grandmother still lives, tell her I will return to her in my spirit.”
15
He died on February 17, 1818. The passing of their star proselyte dismayed but did not dissuade American Congregationalists, for by his serene death in the faith Opukaha‘ia finally galvanized what he had not been able to forge in life: the resolution to actually send missionaries to Owhyhee. His funeral was preached by Lyman Beecher himself, the forty-two-year-old lion of the Second Great Awakening. “We thought,” he lamented, “we saw so plainly the hand of God in bringing him hither; in his instruction, his conversion, talents, and missionary zeal.” His passing, however, must turn Christian eyes toward the Foreign Mission School. “His death … will awaken a tender sympathy for Owhyhee, and give it an interest in the prayers and charities of thousands.… Instead of fainting under the stroke, we are animated by it, to double confidence in God, and double diligence in this work.”
16

The churches of New England made good on Beecher’s exhortation; they did not insist on a Congregationalist affiliation for candidates: Presbyterians or any other good Calvinist Protestant would serve as well. The understanding was that once they reached the Sandwich Islands, doctrinal quibbling was to be put aside in the greater effort to convert the heathen. Leadership of the forming expedition was awarded to Rev. Hiram Bingham. He was a Vermonter, a graduate of Middlebury College and Andover Theological Seminary, and newly wedded to Sybil Moseley. Unmarried persons were discouraged from emigrating as missionaries, so like Bingham, the other single men in the company made it their business to find eligible, zealous young women, marry them, and combine missionary effort with honeymoon—to say nothing of getting acquainted. With Bingham would go Rev. Asa Thurston and his wife, Lucy, who was destined to be the last survivor of the company; Samuel Whitney and his wife, Mercy, and Rev. Samuel Ruggles with his wife, Nancy, schoolteachers. Elisha Loomis, a young printer who had to ask for release from his apprenticeship in order to volunteer, was in danger of being left behind until he found Maria Sartwell during his trip home to say farewell to his family; there was also a doctor named Thomas Holman, and the farmer Daniel Chamberlain, taking passage with his five children. Like many of the more than one hundred missionaries who followed them, they had little expectation of seeing their homes again. Accompanying them, not least, were the four young Hawaiian men: John Honoli‘i, Thomas Hopu, William Kanui, and George Kaumuali‘i, the prince of Kaua‘i.

The brig
Thaddeus
was chartered and loaded, sailing on October 19, 1819, one week before Bingham’s thirtieth birthday.

*   *   *

Back in Hawai‘i, changes were afoot. The first and smaller change was that the natives were becoming more vocal in their displeasure at their country being known to the outside world as the Sandwich Islands, which was a foreign designation wholly unknown to them. When the Russian captain Wassily Golovnin had an audience with the aging Kamehameha in 1818, the Conqueror went “so far as to object to the name ‘Sandwich Islands,’ … insisting that each one should be called by its own name, and the group, that of the king of Hawaii.” The islanders themselves referred to the entire archipelago as
Hawai‘i nei pae aina
, “these Hawaiian islands,” and gradually, informally, the outside world began to use the names interchangeably. On official documents, however, the “Sandwich Islands” survived for another twenty years.
17

The larger change was, to the native culture, cataclysmic. Among Polynesian women, fat was beautiful, and Kamehameha’s favorite wife, Ka‘ahumanu, was very beautiful. This imposing woman, estimated to have weighed five hundred pounds,
18
was also gracious, hospitable, and funny—important qualities in the wife to whom the king turned first for pleasure. However, she was also forceful and shrewd enough for Kamehameha as he grew old to name her as
kuhina nui
, or principal adviser and in effect coruler, to steady the coming reign of his son. He knew that the dissolute Liholiho would not be nearly the presence as king that he had been. The sacred royal wife, Keopuolani, had never regarded Ka‘ahumanu’s favored position as any degree of threat. As the mother of the new king, and herself possessing the highest possible rank, her social position was secure. Ka‘ahumanu’s position in retirement was less certain, however, and the favorite consort of the Conqueror had no intention of retiring from public life.

After his death, the two queens took charge of Kamehameha’s body, assigning its preparation to male relatives. The corpse was baked in an
imu
and the flesh stripped from the bones that contained his immense
mana
. The bones of Hawai‘i’s previous kings were bundled and deposited in the cliff cave overlooking Kealakekua Bay, inaccessible but known. Kamehameha had proved himself greater than any of his predecessors, and it was imperative that the
mana
of such a protean figure should be sacrosanct. To those who believed in the gods, if his bones fell into the hands of enemies, they could cause incalculable harm. Even in benign hands, such as those of a fisherman, they could be crafted into hooks that, while they would be believed to possess near-magical powers, would be an end of incomprehensible humiliation for such a king.

As Kamehameha’s body was prepared for burial, it fell to Liholiho to decree how many sacrifices were required to usher the king’s spirit into the next life. As word spread that the time was drawing near, the commoners who had assembled to mourn began to vanish back to their homes. They may have venerated the Conqueror, but not enough to be strangled on the altar for him. Hawaiian mythology warned people against clever
kahunas
who would trick people into violating a
kapu
in order to nab a sacrifice;
19
far better for them simply to disappear. However, taking the example that the Conqueror allowed no sacrifice to win his recovery, Liholiho ordered no sacrifices to mark his passing—a startling change in custom.

Kamehameha’s body was buried secretly, reputedly deposited in a cave whose only entrance was offshore, and the resting place of his bones has never been discovered. Liholiho at length returned to Kailua for his investiture, a ceremony now colored with Western touches. He emerged from a
heiau
“robed in scarlet and a feathered mantle, with several chiefs on either side bearing
kahili
[tall, feather-festooned standards that proclaimed royal rank] and spittoon, having on his head a princely hat from Britain.” His retainers were armed not with spears but with muskets. It was his stepmother, as
kuhina nui
and guardian of the kingdom, who presided, addressing him as the Heavenly One. “O Kalani, I report to you what belonged to your father—Here are the chiefs, and the men of your father—there are your guns, and this is your land.” Then came what was, for her, the moment of truth: “But you and I will share the land together.”
20
The new king agreed, opening his reign as Kamehameha II, but sharing actual power with Ka‘ahumanu as queen regent.

She realized there was only one way for her to maintain her power, and that was to destroy the
kapu
system. Not to break this
kapu
and that one—she had already done that with impunity—but to gut the whole system and destroy it, to pull down the altars, burn the idols. Nor was it entirely about maintenance of personal power. For years, as the king’s hostess, she had observed foreigners break
kapus
repeatedly, and no volcanoes erupted, no wooden, shark-toothed
ki‘i
roused themselves to life and smote them. The gods had not forestalled the advent of the foreigners’ diseases, seen most terribly in the cholera that destroyed the army that was to invade Kaua‘i. The officers and traders who called at the islands had no
kapus
, and they lived healthier and more abundantly than her people, even the
ali‘i
, had ever imagined. It seemed perfectly plausible that in overthrowing the system, she had a rich new life to gain, and—apart from her life—only some old wooden statues and rockpiles to lose.

In this purpose she was joined by Keopuolani, and the way they chose to open their campaign was stunning. During the feast that followed Liholiho’s installation, Ka‘ahumanu in feather regalia, leaning on the Conqueror’s tall spear, told him,

If you wish to observe
kapu
, it is well and we will not molest you. But as for me and my people we intend to be free from
kapu
. We intend that the husband’s food and the wife’s food shall be cooked in the same oven, and that they shall be permitted to eat from the same calabash. We intend to eat pork and bananas and coconuts. If you think differently you are at liberty to do so; but for me and my people we are resolved to be free. Let us henceforth disregard
kapu
.
21

Liholiho stared at her, perhaps drunk, perhaps in shock, perhaps incredulous that she might just have pronounced her own death sentence. But he said nothing. At that moment Keopuolani put her hand to her mouth, signaling her assent that he end
kapu
and eat with the women. So entrenched was the
kapu
against mixed eating that the men dared reproach even the sacred royal wife for suggesting this. It was true that in the paroxysms of grief that followed the death of a king, acts were permitted that would be forbidden at any other time, but for men to eat with women was an outrage. Liholiho was demoralized by the prospect, and his response was to absent himself. Thwarted only briefly, the queen mother then importuned her younger son, Kauikeaouli, who was only six, into taking food with the women, all but daring the men to do something about it. And they backed down, unwilling to challenge her
ni‘aupi‘o
rank.

Another step in the self-immolation of
kapu
occurred soon after. The new king journeyed to Honokohau nearby to dedicate a new temple, indicating that perhaps he was not of the same mind as his mothers. However, such a consecration required reciting a lengthy, complicated prayer, uninterrupted and unbroken, without mistake. Rum, which of all the imported liquors had become the most popular, flowed so freely that this could not be done, so the new
heiau
stood useless. Liholiho was only the most visible example of a surrender to alcohol that afflicted many of the
ali‘i
, who discovered that its “euphoria which was so new and exhilerating [
sic
] … was so pleasantly different from the semi-paralysis brought on with the drinking of
awa
.” And already sensuous by cultural heritage, the Hawaiians enthusiastically adopted a beverage that lowered their inhibitions even more.
22

The party was broken up when a messenger from the queen regent arrived to announce that this god would not be respected at Kailua—her way of proclaiming the new order, and her control. Liholiho’s response was to load his rum and retainers onto his ship and sail aimlessly off the Kona coast for a two days’ bender. Ka‘ahumanu used the time profitably, lobbying key chiefs to end the
kapu
system and winning over the islands’ most powerful priest, Hewahewa. Finally she dispatched double-hulled canoes to fetch the king back to Kailua; the messengers reached him, found his ship becalmed, and towed him in. Again he was offered food with the women, and this time he relented. The shattering event was called
‘ai noa
, “the free eating.” The gods were dead, the only known time in the history of the world when a people threw over a long-established religious system with nothing to replace it.
23

Ka‘ahumanu had good reason to destroy the
kapu
system. But apart from maybe saving Ka‘ahumanu’s life, why the sacred widow, the new king’s birth mother, went along with it is a harder question. She had always done well by
kapu
. She was an
ali‘i
of the
naha
class. She was the offspring of a half-sister marriage, and the granddaughter of a full-sister marriage. She was one of the few women in the islands who possessed the
kapu moe
: Commoners had to prostrate themselves before her, and even her husband the Conqueror had to partially strip in humility at her presence. Herself so highborn, her children also outranked their father. If foreigners beheld Kamehameha’s children playing on his lap, they would have been wrong to believe that he was merely being paternal and affectionate. Lesser children, not sparing his own offspring by lesser wives, would have been executed for such an affront. For him to allow Keopuolani’s children on his lap, or for him to lie on his back and let them play on his chest, was in fact his own submission to rank. Throughout her tenure as his consort, she gained fame for her kindness and amiability. (The same could not be said for her mother, who once hounded one of Kamehameha’s lesser wives to suicide for miscarrying the Conqueror’s baby.) How a child played was significant; Keopuolani’s mother also once sent her grandson Liholiho, when he was very small, to climb on that wife’s back to demonstrate that they were of higher rank than she.
24
There were times during Keopuolani’s reign when commoners’ shadows crossed hers, and she forgave them when she could have had them killed; in fact there is no story that she ever had any of her subjects executed for breaking
kapu
.
25