Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii (53 page)

BOOK: Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii

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Antecedent: Captain Cook

20
That precontact Hawaiians actually took Cook for Lono was expounded by the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, and quickly challenged by the Sri Lankan scholar Gananath Obeyesekere, who denied “the right of any non-Polynesian to speak with authority” on the subject. Smith, “John Ledyard Revisited,” 45. While that particular dispute degenerated into an epic pissing match of political correctness over who has the “right” to study non-Western cultures—itself a stunningly antiintellectual notion—the timing of Cook’s visit, his circumnavigation of Hawai‘i Island during
makahiki
, his landing in Kealakekua Bay of all places, Ledyard’s memory of his acclamation as “Orono,” the reception accorded him, and the forbearance demonstrated by the natives at his partial dismantling of the Hikiau
heiau
seem to justify a conclusion that he was regarded, at first, as more than a mortal visitor. Although they may not rise to the level of historical testimony, the sources used by the folklorist W. D. Westervelt included a rather lengthy excerpt of the prayers offered to Cook as Lono; indeed, in Westervelt’s account, the natives of Kaua‘i had debated and concluded him to be Lono the year before, but apparently made less fuss over him since Hawai‘i Island was the locus of his cult. Westervelt,
Hawaiian Historical Legends
, 104, 108–9. See also Obeyesekere,
The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific
(Princeton: Princeton University Press/Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1992); versus Sahlins,
How “Natives” Think: About Captain Cook, For Example
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

1. The Loneliness of a God

9
Silverman, “Young Paiea,” 105, doubted this, pointing out that Keoua was one of Alapa‘i’s closest confederates, but this assumes first, that Keoua was indeed his father, and second, the birth year of 1758, which is disputed. Silverman is a good source for many of the malleable aspects of the Conqueror’s biography—that he may have been named Pai‘ea later, after showing himself inflexible in battle, etc. The best a reader can do is accept an account of his life as true in its impressionistic whole but subject to dispute in its particulars. See for instance Kamakau,
Ruling Chiefs
, 66–120. It is Kamakau who asserts that Alapa‘i died in 1754, so if he had any cognizance of Kamehameha at all, the latter must have been born about 1750 at the latest for the traditional rendition of his early years to be true, which would still make him less than seventy at the time of his death.