The
Hawaiian People
Earliest
History
Early Hawaiian
history is entirely legendary. There was no written
language, although certain cruse outline pictures
and characters, apparently depicting historical events,
have recently been found. These, however, have not
yet been deciphered. The history, therefore, can be
traced only through the ancient ’meles’ or songs,
poems without rhyme or meter, but strictly accented
and often several hundred lines in length, which were
handed down orally for many generations. Every high
chief had in his retinue professional bards who, like
the minstrels of England, kept alive the transitions
of wars and heroes and who, s well, chanted love songs
and dirges and composed poems in honour of the chief.
The Islands
were settled as early as 500 A.D., a fact proven b
the discovery of human bones under ancient lava and
coral beds. The Hawaiian people are clearly of the
Polynesian race, all branches of which can almost
certainly be traced back to the Island of Cavaii in
the Samoan group. The Hawaiian language is but one
dialect of the Polynesian tongue. Indeed, so similar
are these dialects that an intelligent man, well versed
in Hawaiian, can understand almost everything said
by a Maori of New Zealand. Not only the people, moreover,
but the animals and plants in Hawaii, are related
to the islands of the southern Pacific. This means
that the early settlers must have come from the south
and the southwest, whereas the prevailing winds and
currents are from the northeast. Wonderful this passage
must have been in any case, across tow thousand miles
of open ocean in canoes; still more extraordinary
when the voyage was made against the winds and currents.
There were
two periods of migrations to Hawaii, but of the first
there are few legends, although to it are ascribed
certain temples and the great fish ponds along the
coast of Molokai. In the eleventh or twelfth century
intercourse with the south was renews and in the songs
are recorded many voyages both to and from Tahiti
or Samoa, and voyagers traveling in fleets of canoes
and steering by the stars. The canoes were probably
built of planks, decked over, and large enough to
carry a certain amount of live stock. For some unknown
reason the period of this intercourse was very short.
During the next five hundred years there are no legends
of distant voyages, and ideas of any country beyond
the Hawaiian group became indistinct. This time of
isolation brought about, naturally, fixed national
customs and a very definite and individual national
religion.
From Hawaii
Past and Present
By William
R Castle Jr.
1925
The
Hawaiian People
Hawaii
Past and Present By William R Castle Jr. 1925