# The Overland Monthly/Volume 1/Favoring Female Conventualism

FAVORING FEMALE CONVENTUALISM.
"WOMAN'S Mission" is today the conservative bugbear. Her inability to break into the circles of exclusiveness built up by men, and weakly assented to by herself during past generations, the precarious condition of her employments, and her nothingness in political spheres, have been the texts from which much common-place preaching has been done, and much argument, logical and illogical, taken rise. The battle, so far, has not, in every particular, been as glorious for womanhood as it might have been; her champions, male and female, have not been the ablest she might have commanded; and the gaunt finger of ridicule has often been pointed with effect at the gracelessness of her appearance as she struggled in the fight.
But certain facts have come to be already admitted by the pleadings, that begin to point in what direction the essential truth of feminine duty may be found.
First: It is the general tendency of modern society to view the position of woman, without some relation to marriage, present or in prospect, as abnormal.
Second: A certain ratio, more or less constant, as the nature of the community varies, exists between the percentages of married and unmarried women. A certain number never can marry; another class have suffered some sad accident in their relations with the opposite sex, and they do not wish to marry; and another class are widows, or those deserted by their legal protectors, through no fault of their own, who still require efficient guardianship.
Third: All unmarried women, whether rich or poor, in consequence of their abnormal relations and of the prejudices of society, have not that proper place and consideration granted them to which they are entitled by the laws of existence and civilization, and with which they can be content.
Fourth: The sphere of employment for women is contracted, either by reason of irrational prejudice, or of usurpations by certain classes of men, or by force of the chains of habit.
Fifth: To broaden the field of feminine labor, anything tending to render woman less feminine, less modest, or less pleasing in her companionship with man, raises a violent distrust in the minds of conservative thinkers of both sexes, and arouses the vigilance of prejudices, that impede the work for any effectual purpose whatever.
Sixth: To obviate the difficulty, something must be done that, leaving women free in every respect, will yet place and maintain them in a well-de- ​fined honorable position, which they can abdicate, should they ever think it necessary, or into which they can step temporarily, waiting for marriage or any other settlement in life.
The so-thought normal condition of woman—that of waiting from the age of puberty in listless idleness, or at best, taking a feeble part in the round of househoid duties, until some one chooses to admire and ask her to share his fortunes—has about it something almost as degrading as is the condition of a Georgian girl, standing in the slavemarket and waiting for the lordly Turk, her purchaser. The young man of the same lustrum is occupying no such false and undignified position. He is under no such uncertainty of fortune, but is busy at his trade, his business, or profession.
That the doubt thus hanging over her future should give, at times, an unfortunate turn to the mind of an American girl, and cause her to pay more regard to the attentions of the young men whom she meets than to her own subjective fitness for her future duties, and that she should learn to look upon matrimony with something of the excitement of a gambler, is but the moral result of her unstable position.
But once employ her time; mark out a path in which she can advance to some goal of feminine honor; give her a career, in which healthy excitement can be induced; and if "he comes not," she will no longer be "aweary," but can wait in happy independence until her master chooses to be lonely, leaves his bachelor pleasures, and saunters in to win her; and she can be far more critical in her choice, besides.
There is also a class of young women—orphans, and the like—who need protection, as well because of their poverty, as that there is no special guardian to bestow upon them that care which all girls absolutely require. The position of many becomes more and more painful as years slip by, and no admirer carries them off. The helplessness of needlewomen, of female teachers, and of all those classes whom misfortune has thrown upon their own resources, has become so great an evil that already philanthropy is beginning to think in that behalf; and "Ladies' Relief," "Female Co-operative," and other associations are being established in order to lessen the 'harshness that colors the prospect to those who are cast out by poverty to struggle for themselves.
The fact that the evil is so widespread, and that every class of society is interested in remedying it, encourages the belief that some united effort might be organized, against which unreasonable opposition from prejudice would be powerless.
There is one method that classes suffering from an evil always adopt, and one, in which lay part of the success of the early Christian church. Community life has always been a favorite dogma of the Greek and Latin Christians. It was no doctrine of self-abnegation that first made the Church a family, but the helpless and despised condition of the New Faith. The organization grew as much out of the necessity for combined effort on the part of the proscribed religionists to have a means of subsistence, as from the sympathy and fellowship taught by the apostles. The early missions of the church too, were in many instances centres of an increasing civilization of a secular character, as well as outposts of a new faith.
A convent in the middle ages did not mean altogether a fortress, in which Christianity, as a dogma, entrenched itself; but it was commonly a school of practical art. Monks were not only and not always preachers of the Word: they were masons, carpenters, weavers, scribes, farmers, physicians, and even lawyers; in short, they were of every ​
trade and profession imaginable. The romantic idea of a conscientious friar— one whose physical system was worn down by fasts, whose knees were like Daniel's—callous from prayer—is hardly the monk in fact, who had callous hands, a good appetite, and a practical eye for worldly business. We have a shallow impression that the vast estates given the church in those ages were but illconceived liberality based on superstition; but when we consider the social purpose they served, and the interests they aggregated, and what protection they offered to those who would otherwise have been at the mercy of every wind of misfortune, we begin to imagine the early pious donors and testators by no means so irrational.
The monastery began at last to be a refuge for all classes of persons, whose wants and aspirations in life were not satisfied by the few callings left the masses by the troubles of the times. If a man wished a life of letters, he became a monk; if he desired a home by reason of some accident of constitution or feelings, he sought 2 monastery; the hood and gown became profession and position to all human waifs, and covered charitably all lackings in the matters of birth and position; nor was his usefulness by any means limited to the barren callings of prayer and praise. Palimpsest vandalism was not a general failing: there might be found many cloistered scholars, whose Latinity was Ciceronian enough, and monkish labors were of no insignificant character. There was scope for the most laudable ambitions; and the Abbot Samsons of those days acted their parts quite as heroically as any secular enthusiasts do to-day.
Before the Revolution in France, convent-life for women was a solace and resort to which they applied themselves in quite a matter-of-fact sort of way. There grew up to supply the wants of the times, sisterhoods of all degrees of laxity and restraint. It is true
there were the most frightful abuses in every corner of ecclesiastical life; but it is much to be questioned whether the vices attendant upon convents were any more monstrous than might be noted in every department of French society during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, or were particularly attributable to the nature of the establishments. A social generation, that accepted Pompadours, du Barris, and Parcs aux Cerfs, might well suffer a little licentious extravagance in its devotes. It can hardly be charged upon monastic doctrines, that in an administrative light they proved failures. They were but too successful; and it needed the severest exercise of arbitary power to break them up. Corporations, however soulless, have exhibited an extraordinary vitality. England swarms with eleemosynary establishments that have retained in petrifaction the most minute eccentricities of their foundation, to the disgust of all who have agrarian desires. Such abstract too much from the tide of public prosperity to be gratifying to the greed and selfishness of the public. There is an uncontrollable desire always to cut canals from these banked-up reservoirs to the common stream. In this land, the simple followers of Father Junipero were by no means offensive on account of their vices; they had done a good work in the civilization of California, as any one who has observed the docile character for usefulness of our civilized Indian in contrast with the almost idiotic stupidity of his wild brother, can testify: they were by no means lazy or luxurious; but they could not help making their work show itself in the acquirement and enhancement of the value of their lands, and they were stripped of their possessions with a grasping violence that would have done credit to the needy creatures of bluff Harry.
But there are directions that monastic organization might take to-day without ​
arousing the least feeling of covetousness on the part of other classes. Civil death is now an absurdity for a sane mind. No one chooses to put up barriers forever shutting out humanity; but the uses of combined effort are still as important, and protection against modern ills can be acquired in that way now as well as when the convent doors opened kindly to the distressed and persecuted.
There is even an affection for the ancient forms and designations still lingering in the most Protestant in faith. Young women band themselves into dainty associations under pleasant corporative names, such as the "Sisterhood of St. James" or "St. Luke;" and though the aims are limited in the main to the decorating of churches and the superintending of religious bazaars, they give promise of more substantial results hereafter.
That single women, capital being furnished them for the inception of the work, may successfully combine into a power for the foundation of establishments in which to learn and practice every art and duty of which they are capable, sheltering and supporting themselves materially and intellectually, furnishing a scope for any "mission," which they may choose to adopt, with a loss of no tittle of feminine grace and dignity, is a proposition that no misogynist, however contemptuous, after a careful consideration of the ecclesiastical and feminine experience chronicled in European history, will seek to combat. They might, as they do now, take charge of educational interests, manage hospitals, manufacture a thousand articles capable of a constant market, and enjoy varied accomplishments limited only by their tastes.
It is not necessary to become Amazonian for all this. The heroine of such a movement would not be a coarse Hippolyte, but an Eloise secured from persecutions, with energies turned from
sentimental brooding into practical channels. There would be no fossilizing for the outward world; but however temporary each individual worker might consider her life, there would be nothing precarious about it.
Such an organization, or system of organizations, with its element of rivalry, its claims for distinction, and its incentives to ambition, would give to each a position entitling her to a well-defined respect both in and out of her college; and about the conduct of those so associated, wherever they went, the reputation of their establishment would hang as a mantle of protection and honor.
As to the details of the enterprise, they would suggest themselves to the practical workers-out of the system, as circumstances might require. The humorous absurdities of the "Princess " need by no means be classed as essential vices rendering feminine organizations impracticable. It is very fine for chivalrous Tories to smile half playfully, half doubtfully, at the prospect of "sweet girl graduates with their golden hair;" to depict the ridiculous airs of female masters and proctors; but there is nothing in the whole range of powers sarcastically laid upon feminine shoulders by the poet, that has not been exercised by woman with effectual success. Margaret Roper, Queen Elizabeth, Mary Stuart, and a host of others, down to Mrs. Browning, have exhibited acquirements of a depth and extent that would astonish the lazy mass of passmen and bachelors of English and American colleges. These they wore with no unfeminine awkwardness; but flirted quite as artistically and broke hearts as deftly as their shallower sisters. In the feudal days, when.men were reputed so very manly, and women so very womanly, if the warrior was brought in, wounded and bleeding, his lady did not stand sobbing and wringing her hands, while the servant rushed off for the gouty ​
family doctor, but like an experienced leech, as she was, with no nonsense about her, took hold of the matter, bound up the hurts, and returned her lord as expeditiously as possible to his jolly head-breaking professional engagements.
When Faust, the modern typical man, clasps in his arms the ancient Helen, she melts away, leaving nothing but her limp mantle in his grasp. Many a man to-day has secured a supposed heroine; but the touch has shown him that he has nothing from his struggle but a beautiful rag hanging on his arm and encumbering his motions. This helplessness arises mainly from the false position taken by woman because of her faith in the proffer of civilized man to take upon himself all the labors of life external to the home existence, and to leave to her the guardianship of the individual interests of the family nest. She has taken him at his word, and has been misled thereby to her own discom
fort and poverty. She finds that she must lay aside her household isolation and go out into the world, or sit at the
hearthstone and starve. It ill becomes us, then, to take the tools from her hands and push her aside as a child, when we are unable to manage the work ourselves.
We may laugh at the first attempts of women to fight the moral battle unaided by men; but we smile also at the toddling infant who will one day outstrip us in the race; the goose-step performances of the young cadet are ridiculous; but the day may come when his genius will control the battle-field; and though female organizations may break and scatter wildly on their first parades, yet victory must eventually perch on their banners.
Nor are there any essential habits to be unlearned. The government of female schools and of Roman Catholic convents, stricter far than may be necessary for mature women, is a thing of
established success resting solely with woman; for, as a general thing, the male authorities of such establishments are the least capable of enforcing discipline.
Take a school of girls, where no fixed period is in prospect for the pupil to quit it; extend its sphere so that it may be a home for any spinsters choosing it; unite with it any and all means and machinery for employment, of which women are capable; make it in fact a university, with its resident fellows, its circles of doctorates; its laws and regulations neither so lax as to create confusion and impair its success, nor so severe as to hamper the material advantages of freedom; and the intellectual sphere of woman will be widened to an extent commensurable to the capital and labor expended.
Such a seminary can act as a cooperative union for feminine labor; for it will have a plenty of talent and energy to detail for the service of finding and uniting the two complemental interests of supply and demand. It can carry on hospitals, giving an almost angelic support to homeless humanity in the hour of sickness and death. It can take charge of many public charities, and distribute the eleemosynary surplus of the public in uniform and equitable ways, without calling upon the time and attention of business men or matrons, whose family duties are now broken in upon for charitable visits. It will have all the emulation of an enthusiastic army, where each member will seek daily to add to the glory of her record. It will be an aristocracy, where every one will take precedence according to her deservings, and where every form of practical ability, judgment, talent, or genius will meet with its due appreciation.
The society of men need be avoided only in so far as it would be hurtful, impede duty or the purposes of the organization; and when admitted, their ​
coming would not be, as now, the great daily event, but merely one of a variety of pleasures attached to woman's life.
Outside of the walls of such a convent and wearing its zzsignia, the law would cheerfully grant an extra degree of sacredness in its protection, analogous to that given the custodians of the public peace.
Perhaps its pecuniary success at the outset would not astonish us; but as for that, feminine employment by no means abounds in swift or large fortunes; and if women only live at all by their own exertions, it is saying a great deal for their capacity under untoward circumstances.
The great aim to be attained would be—not to take the woman from her affections of the home circle, if she is so fortunate as to possess them, nor to dole out to her merely a means of living; but to so open up refuges for her that she need never become aimless and hopeless in life—not to take from those who have a degree of contented happiness already insured them, and call upon them for the performance of unreasonable duties and unattractive labors, but to devote that surplus of energy, now chafing them into listless
discontent, to the work of sympathy with their sisters of less fortunate surroundings. That sympathy given by the socially strong to the socially weak would not, as now it unfortunately too often does, take the odious form of arbitrary charity, returning to the giver nothing beyond the sense of a humane duty performed. But the weakest member of such an association, however dependent upon her sisterhood upon her entry therein, would feel that the future gave promise to her endeavors of something of feminine glory and independence.
If by such means, organizing women into small communities, and these chapters into broader sisterhoods, and finally into one great order, little by little, the aimless, hopeless state of isolated female exertions were broken up, and a healthy energy instilled into the daily life of all, rich and poor, cultivated and ignorant, the great cloud now resting upon woman's advancement would be lifted, and her aimless murmurings, her misunderstood discontents, her aspirations, either noble or ill-advised, would find aid or antidote in her own world of action and enterprise, and a long stride would be taken in the progress of woman.
HAWAIIAN CIVILIZATION.
THE people of the Hawaiian Islands used to eat each other. Starting from such a fact, the imagination might take its wildest flight in the regions of conjecture, and not go much amiss from the truth of tradition and history in portraying the life and character of the Hawaiian people. They had little knowledge of right or wrong. They had no idea of what was bad, and what was worse, had no idea of what was good. They lived in abject fear and servitude, under the rule of an iron
tyranny, and subject to the will of a savage despotism. They were a nation of thieves, and murderers, and fighters. They revelled in the vilest intoxication, and rioted in all the excesses of human degradation, till nature sank exhausted under the burden and they had perforce to cease. The men were slaves to the chiefs, and the women were slaves to the men, and were degraded by the burden of every labor which their strength could endure. To kill a man (fepehi hanaka) was an art to be cultivated, and ​
there were those who taught how "to strangle and break men's bones, and how to despatch a man with one blow of the fist without bruising him." Any weakness or infirmity was a reason for abuse. Their old men, whose tenacity of life was a source of displeasure to them, they hurried into their graves, reversing the ancient sequence of death and burial; and little children, who had not begun to make any figure in life, they sent too hastily to their last accounts. They recognized nothing like the marriage relation, every man attaching to himself as many women as he chose, and every woman as many men as her desires prompted. What was a brother or a sister no one knew; who was one's father he could not tell, and after a few years of age mothers could hardly designate their offspring. They were a nation having none but brutal ideas, and it is not strange that in their language is no expansion or elasticity, and no synonyms by which it is possible to express any delicate shade of thought. Their life was the life of alternate crimes and repose, and their language is full of words to designate the former state; but in the current of their monotonous degradation, there was no ripple of virtue, and in their language is no word for chastity, for modesty, for virtue, or for any noble or refined sentiment. There is nothing like gratitude in the race, and their is no word in their language for rendering thanks. Yet, in view of the moral darkness that impended over them, it is perhaps doubtful whether they were absolutely a bad race. After nearly half a century of lifting up, it is much more doubtful if we can say they are a good people.
In the hands of the chiefs were held the lives and fortunes of every one of the people. They were the most eminent, physical representatives of the race. In the time of peace they indulged to its fullest extent their indolence, one of the characteristics of the people, gorging
themselves with food, reclining upon couches of mats made from the split leaf of an indigenous tree. By them stood servants to brush away the flies, feed them and dress them, and who were employed in luxurious kneading, shampooing, cracking the chieftainsjoints to renovate their system and excuse them from other exercise. Sometimes they were borne about upon the shoulders of their servants, but this custom became afterwards unfashionable, it being narrated of one chief, that being crabbed and petulant when carried to the brink of the precipice, the bearers retorted and relieved themselves of their burden by pitching him headlong over the steep place, "which," adds the historian, "put an end to him and the custom."
The chiefs had generally permanent establishments of their own, and held in menial service as officers of the household, "purloiners," "assassins," "cooks," "kahili (bunches of feathers) bearers," "spittoon carriers," and "pipe lighters;" the whole retinue eating, drinking, cooking and sleeping in common. Having complete control over the property, lives and liberty of the people, the record of their lives was often dark and bloody beyond description. The prisoners in war, especially if ancient enemies, 'were sacrificed to some god, or were roasted and eaten, for then the victors were certain of their destiny. Most of them died violent deaths, and it is noted as a marked and wonderful event in their history, that one, Luamuo, actually died a natural death amid his court, which was accounted as a reward for his extraordinary merits. But there were degrees of brutality even among these savage despots. It is remembered that Huakau, an ancient king of Maui, seeing a face more handsomely tattooed than his own, would have the head removed and in his presence horribly mangled; and a hand or a leg comelier than his own would be cut down as ​
the reward of its impertinent existence. When a chief died it was an occasion of universal notice. From the dwelling of the dead commenced the mournful auwe, which taken up from dwelling after dwelling, was carried on by all the people, at first in subdued tones, then prolonged and increasing in sound, till the monotonous cry was borne upon the air from hillside unto hillside over the land. The ceremonies of his burial were characteristic of the most dissolute and degraded people, none of either sex venturing into the presence of the dead except in a state of complete nudity, and there pursuing a round of beastly dissipation, tearing the hair with mournful howls, drinking awa till in a state of insensate drunkenness, knocking out the front teeth, carrying to their greatest height licentiousness, rioting, revelling, murder and every form of dissoluteness known to the savage mind. And this was continued for days together, and did not finally cease from any sense
of completeness of the ceremony, but only when nature, over-taxed and exhausted, could execute no further devil
ish intent. It was a time when no man's life or property was in the slightest degree regarded, when all pretense to decency was thrown aside—an era of unrestrained riot and wanton debauchery.
It may be to some minds almost a palliation of the somewhat unpleasant and continuous barbarity to know that they were a religious people. Throughout the land were seen the Aetaus (temples) which they had erected to the gods, consecrated with many ceremonies and frequented for religious offerings, and whose ruins are to-day visible in various localities. The priestly office was hereditary and they who filled it numerous, and of very powerful influence. The gods they worshipped were as numerous as the sources of danger to the barbaric mind. Every high chief had his family priest, who went always with him into
battle carrying the image of the chieftian's god. The essence of their religion was only the fear they entertained lest some calamity should come upon them. Their gods were in all things that could bring them misfortune; in nothing that brought to them any favor or benefit. To them was a special god in every volcano, in» every earthquake, in every singular and unusual appearance of nature. There were gods of war, of the sea, of the winds; in every dangerous cavern lurked a divinity and over every precipitous cliff, and for their protection they placed in those localities images of the presiding deities.
But to call any belief which could prevail among such a people religion, is to give dignity and character to the common expression of a gigantic selfishness and slavish fear, with which was never allied anything noble or elevating, nor with whose existence was ever any sentiment or feeling of duty or obligation, of love or gratitude. They appealed to the gods that their enemies might be destroyed; they prayed that the tempest and the earthquake might be averted; they offered sacrifices of animals in the building of a temple, and whenever a house had been built, before entering it to dwell in, they performed mysterious ceremonies to exorcise the evil spirits that might lurk about. They prayed in sickness to the little gods of the mountains, the hills, the streams, to turn away misfortune and disease. Sacrifices of some living thing accompanied every religious rite of importance. Held ina state of degraded serfdom, and bearing the burdens imposed by cruel and exacting chiefs whom they knew to be their superiors, what else could a god be but a great chief of temper and character like theirs, only vastly superior in size and strength, and a disposition more savage and more exacting? Their religious idea could be nothing more than a scheme of appeasing this over-wrathful spirit, that was ever waiting for an ​
opportunity of inflicting misery—a system of bribery, in which it was not always certain what nor how great offerings to bring. But the priests were the teachers, and in them was put implicit faith. By them, under the direction of the gods, were the sacrifices designated, and by them often for months and sometimes years beforehand were the human beings marked out for immolation—and the chroniclers intimate, that they were chosen among those most hateful and offensive to the priests. The sacrifice which seemed to best propitiate the gods was the human. It came before battle accompanying the prayer for victory, and came after it, not in grateful rememberance, but because the gods demanded it. It came at the consecration of heathen temples, when a chief had died, and in celebration of any great public event. If it were not so appalling, it would be ludicrous to remember, how Umi, a celebrated king of Hawaii, after a victory, offered human victims to his god, who, after several were slain, being insatiate called for more, "which were granted," says the chronicler, "until none were left except Umi and the priest."
Even among them there was some pretense to science. The art of the sorcerer was prevalent and feared, and as among the ancient Greeks there were those who could read the entrails of dead animals, who could divine the future from the flight of birds, and could read auguries in the heavens, the clouds, the rainbow and the storm. There were physicians among them who were as mysterious in their manner and as mystifying in their prescriptions as any modern Aésculapius, and, if the chronicles tell truly their remedies, new terrors were added to disease by their presence. They had some knowledge of herbs, which had been first received from the gods by Koleamoku, and by him taught to two disciples. The profession was hereditary, and being exceedingly lucra tive it was kept always in the same families. They feigned great knowledge of diseases, and it was believed that by prayer and ceremonies of a wonderful nature they could even inflict such diseases upon one as could not be cured. Various herbs were cooked or mashed with a stone, mixtures of which were given in liberal allopathic doses. "Their knowledge of the medicinal properties of herbs," writes one historian, "was considerable," but there is a touch of scepticism as he concludes, "though fatal results often followed their application." Nature taught them that friction would mitigate many minor pains, but it is hard to believe that the same kind mother ever hinted to them those more singular prescriptions according to which "stones of twelve pounds weight and upwards were rolled over the afflicted parts," and "patients were steamed over ovens of hot stones, or held over the smoke of fires prepared from green succulent herbs." It is less difficult to believe, that, if moved by anger or hatred in the treatment of sick persons, they could even cause death. They knew there was a future state for some, for the priests brought messages to the living from the dead, which at times seemed to redound mysteriously to the priestly benefit, and they were accepted as divine revelations. The souls of some of the people "went to Po (the place of night) where they were annihilated or eaten up by the gods;" others went to the dwelling places of Akea and Milu, former kings of Hawaii, where darkness prevailed, and where "lizards and butterflies were the orly articles of diet." The chiefs, the priests had kindly provided, were conducted, by " Kaonohioka/a, the eye-ball of the sun," to some unnamed place in the heavens, whence they occasionally returned to watch over their people. What happy abode was prepared for themselves, the cunning priests never revealed; but for the common people who lived here in ​
servitude, "no hope enlightened their souls for the future."
The story of the Hawaiian people down to the early part of the present century is told from tradition, from conjecture, invention of priests, and from the historical sze/és, (songs) which are said to narrate the genealogy of seventyfour kings, from the last of whom descended Kamehameha I, the first and greatest ruler of whom we have any true account, and from whose time history began to gather up and preserve the facts of interest to that nation. In their traditions we recognize the story of a great deluge; of how the island of Hawaii was produced from the bursting of a large egg as it was deposited on the water by a bird of immense size; of the god Mauz, who held the sun in his course one day, so that his wife might finish her work before dark; and of Wazola-loa, "the water of enduring life," by bathing in which the aged, ugly and diseased were restored to youth, strength and beauty.
The islands were first found by Spanish voyagers in 1542, but the knowledge gained thus was not availed of, and the civilized world knew nothing of them till their re-discovery by Capt. Cook in 1778. The natives received Cook with feelings of interest, and accepted in him the fulfillment. of an ancient belief, that the god Zozo, who had once been one of their kings, would return again. From an intimation of their religious belief, we can easily understand the respect and courtesy with which this white god was received and entertained; but the real principles and depravity of this man we can as easily understand, when we know that he accepted their worship as the god whom they believed him to be, and took their many gifts without offering remuneration. The first appearance of the ships afar off was to them the movement of an island grove, and they spoke of them as moku, (surrounded land) and as the
ships came nearer and people were seen walking upon their decks, their first impressions were confirmed, and to-day the word in their language meaning "ship" is the same as that first uttered. To the childish mind the death of Capt. Cook was represented by a woodcut in the geography with accompanying text, by which we were impressed with the idea of the Captain's singular goodness, as we were with the christian virtue of the young "Pocahontas, the King's daughter." But what a common distrust has come upon us in the truth of chroniclers, as we come in later life to know that the story of the fair Pocahentas is now, on historical evidence, assumed to be false, and that Capt. Cook, gratifying his cupidity by exhausting demands upon the barbariansfaith, and by desecrating their temples: merely to supply himself with fuel, met his death not blamelessly at the hands of an awakened intelligence in that savage people, in whom patient endurance would not have been longer a virtue.
The advent of foreigners, following the visit of the first ships, opened the eyes of the natives, who were: naturally interested in the aspect and manners of a new and evidently superior people, and unceasingly curious in the methods and accomplishments of the strangers. Personal contact with repeated collections of civilized people could not but have its effect in mollifying and moderating the habitual barbaric life. Trade and the acquisition of new things excited and developed in them new desires and capacities. The occasional addition to the population of the islands by runaways from ships, and the gradual increase of traders, who settled for a time, gave the natives some insight into another mode of life, which, if not inspired by the best cultivation or highest principles of morality, was yet much more elevated and civilized than had ever come within cheir ​
experience. Among the natives the " tabu," a method of exercising power by the priests, was held in absolute awe, and influenced the whole nation as nothing else did. What was declared tabu must be respected and inviolable, or death would follow. There was ¢adu at certain seasons upon different articles of food, when they could not be touched. Under its restrictions no persons of different sexes could eat together, neither of the same food, nor at the same table, nor under the same roof. A native home consisted of various houses—made of straw, thatched upon light wooden frames—and the builder must build one for himself to eat in, and one for his wife, one to sleep in, and another for his god. Days were tabu, and then silence prevailed; no man could be with woman, and if a woman ate pork, cocoa-nuts, or bananas on that day, she must die. The teaching was, that for violation of the ¢abu the gods would kill them, and their experience was, that the priests and chiefs were the divine instruments that obeyed the high behest.
It took but a short time for the foreigners, who must have been in continual intercourse with this people, to learn their religious rites, and their slavish idolatry; and the natives, if not equally swift in learning the absence of any religious ceremonies among the former, could not fail soon to perceive that the strangers not only lived free from harm, without heeding the ¢adu of their priests, or the admonitions of their gods, but that they looked only with derision upon their rites, and their slavish subjection to the priests. And as it resulted after many years of such intercourse, that the people and the chiefs perceived the useless cruelty of the ¢abu, and the insignificance of the wooden gods they had set up, and so broke up the former and destroyed the latter, it seems hardly necessary to have recourse to a special Providence
to explain the slow and gradual awakening in the heathen mind of a practical common sense.
When the American missionaries reached the islands in 1820, they found them just rising from the depths of a wild debauch, which had accompanied the funeral ceremonies of Kamehameha I. He is represented as a man of unusual activity and strength of intellect, who had taken counsel! of the possible superiority of the white race, and who had learned and taught his people much that his keen observation had acquired. Writers speak of him as above the ordinary vices of his people, and he was remembered with such fondness and tenderness as could exist in the savage breast. He was so great as a warrior, that Jarves speaks of him as_ the " Napoleon of the Pacific," and denominates him as the "good and noble savage "—a conjunction of words which seems hardly congruous. The issue of his last sickness seems to have been awaited with considerable anxiety by his whole people. When he had died, "the chiefs held a consultation. One of them spoke thus: 'This is my thought: we will eat him raw.' Kaahumanu (a daughter of the King) replied, ' Perhaps his body is not at our disposal; that is more properly with his successor. Our part in him—the breath—has departed; his remains will be disposed of by Liholiho (his son and successor)'"—a speech perhaps correctly reported, but which is quite unlike any other in the records. The great respect and reverence with which he was held can be partly estimated, when we read, that "a sacrifice of three hundred dogs attended his obsequies," an animal of considerable scarcity in the islands, and held in ancient and present estimation as the choicest article of diet. "When the sacred hog was baked, the priest offered it to the dead body, and it became a god."
In the volumes which have been writ ​ten, giving the history of this people since the advent of the first missionary delegation, we have no detail of the slow and almost fruitless work which it must certainly have been to them—the gradual rise and the certain relapse, the brilliant hope and promise, and the despairing outbreak anew of savage habits. The prophecy of success came in the dawning of their intelligence, and was followed by the all but hopeless return to their barbaric fears. It must have been nothing other than the alternation of hope and despair.
The time of the missionaries' coming was fortunate in this, that having just broken up the faéu and thrown down their idols, they had not found, nor sought, nor felt the need of anything to take their place. The missionary idea is one of self-sacrifice and toil; the missionary experience has proved equal to their completest expectation. We have no right to be late in our recognition of the services which they have rendered,
nor chary of our praise to those whose spirit of disinterestedness and lofty principle led them to attempt and pursue the
task of civilizing this people. Codperating with this active purpose has always been that other civilizing influence, unconscious and unintentional, the commercial contact with the representatives of our own race. These two active influences have made the Hawaiian people, from the nothing they were as a nation, the little which they are to-day. The movement has been slow, and it has been difficult to tell, from books alone, how the work has been thus far consummated. The enthusiasm of the missionaries has credited all the civilizing influences to themselves, and it has seemed as though the language of courtesy was hardly strong or elastic enough, to properly characterize the depth of depravity, want of moral principle, and actual wicked intent, which found their consummation in the lives and habits of the foreigners, who for
many years were the only other white residents in those lands. On the other side, the bounds of politeness have had no restraint upon the denunciations which have been poured forth on what has been called the officious meddling and selfish aggrandizement of those, who, by virtue of their professed purpose and expressed intent, were in closer relations with the reigning powers. It is the story over again of the contact of hard practical sense, with honest and impracticable theory. Barbarism cannot credit equal results to each influence, but that will be an untrue account which fails to concede much to the example of common life, even if it concedes much more to religious precept and noble intent, and can point to invaluable gains which were their logical result.
The Hawaiian people of to-day, by those who like to congratulate themselves and their clerical brethren upon an extraordinary result of noble toil and devotion, are called a civilized people. One writer, who believes in the converted natives, with whom he has lived more than twenty years, and, possibly, too much distrusts the earlier civilized people, from whom he has been absent most of the years of his discretion, comes to "the honest conclusion that, in proportion to the population of the islands, there are, upon an average, as many true Christians among them as there are among the people of America or Europe," and excepts neither New or Old England, nor Scotland, nor the most favored portion of either.
The natives have professedly given up their idol-worship and their false religion; in the settled communities they clothe themselves; churches have been built for them, and they attend in vast numbers and with apparent zeal; an educational system, fostering schools of the higher studies, has been established, which is of such completeness, that scarcely a native can be found who cannot read and write his native lan ​guage. They read such books as have been printed in the native dialect, chief of which is the Bible, which they quote with a volubility and correctness that may astonish the stranger. Under the persuasions and injunctions of the missionaries, upon whom they look with somewhat of the old superstition with which they contemplated the savage priests, they have given up the heathen ceremonies attending all occasions of public interest. They have learned the relation of man and wife, and observe the marriage ceremony, which was not conceded till several years after the arrival of the missionaries. They have become farmers and mechanics, and engage in trade to a considerable extent; some of them are teachers in the elementary schools; some have become constables, some school inspectors; some even are entitled lawyers, and others occupy seats upon the bench. The government is monarchical, having a legislature of nobles and representatives, a large portion of whom are whites, besides a cabinet of ministers, all but one of whom are resident foreigners, and some of whom are men of education and character.
But this is not the perfect picture. The teaching of the nation has been in the native language, which, in itself, is of narrow and limited scope, which has never been the vehicle of any lofty ideas, into which no perfect translation can be made, and which has not and can never have the elasticity which must be characteristic of all languages used by peoples not altogether savage. The Bible and but a few religious and elementary works, translated from the English, compose the Hawaiian library. There is no literature, no books of science, of art, of travel, of philosophy, and can never be in that language. When one has learned to read and write the Kanaka \anguage, his course of study in that channel is nearly complete. If he would receive a liberal education, he
must throw off the old philological shell, and acquire the vocabulary of a language which, once attained, opens to intelligence exhaustless and invaluable stores of learning. But the native mind seems as listless and inactive as his body. At school he may have acquired something of education, but in his life it is useless, and he adds nothing to that which has been taught him. As a people they are good-natured, amiable and docile to a remarkable degree, but are lazy and indolent, taking no interest in any matter of real public importance, and caring nothing for what is not absolutely personal. They have no pride in themselves as a nation, caring and thinking nothing of a possible future for the kingdom, with no ambition and no self-reliance. They exhibit no marked original strength in any direction. Although they are mechanics of every kind, they are foremen and leaders in none. They know nothing of foreign governments, take no interest in the life of political principles, and have and seek no further enlightened connection with their own government, than to fill such offices as can give them power, position and pecuniary gain, in which they resemble some in a civilized nation, but which, after all, is but responding to a barbaric instinct, which was theirs when they were confessedly savages. Their lawyers only pettifog, and their most noted judge used to sleep on the bench. They attend church because of their superstitious regard of missionaries, and because they like the excitement and sociability of a crowd. They are proud in being church members, render the most accomplished lip-service, are fluent in prayer, and continue the outer religious life from love of approval. In old age they are pious, because they have outlived the years of sinful vigor; but not till then. Piety and youth or manhood, in the Hawaiian life, do not know each other. Religion is the day's garb, but ​
not the night's. In sickness they almost invariably pay tribute to their uplifted sense by calling educated physicians, and tribute to their ancient credulity by employing also the native doctor. The duplicity they conceal from one— from both, if they can. In paying the tributes and taking both prescriptions, the mixtures too often create equal derangement in intellectual and physical life. Many still keep concealed their old idols, and when they die, the heathen dread not unfrequently overcomes what they have of Christian trust, and they flee for safety to the gods of their pagan days, for they believe they are acquainted with them.
Until the very fibre of the native mind is changed, there will be still left thereon the pictures which the superstitions of ages have impressed. When the native body has become spiritualized and the mind infused, through long intercourse, with lofty thoughts and holy emotions, the licentiousness, which is inborn and so extensive as to be national, may be exiled; and drunkenness, whether in response to the heathen taste for awa, which they have always known, or the modern taste for the most wretched alcoholic compounds, may be banished and forgotten. The old language had in it no word that signified the quality of chastity, and it is doubtful, if to-day the language were any richer, whether there could be found anything among the whole native population of the full blood to which the word could be applied. Decent living is so monotonous to their instincts, that it is not strange that every occasion of excitement has a tendency to drag them, temporarily, back into the stupendous revelry that was the glory and the consummation of the barbaric life. Thus, while it may have been a matter of profound regret, it need not have been of surprise to a sensible mind, that at the recent (1864) death of the Princess Victoria, whose life and character could be amply described without seeking for
words outside the native dialect, the king and his native court within the palace indulged in the old time Awlahuda. Assuring the absence of anything civilized or humane by a native patrol, in the nude presence of both sexes they kept up the revelry of drunkenness and dissoluteness about the corpse of the poor royal sinner, till human nature could not bear the burden longer.
The government is nominally under the rule of the King, Kamehameha V, who succeeded, by appointment, his brother. But the native blood is evident in his royal veins, acknowledging the superiority of the white, and putting no confidence in the wisdom of his own race, and placing foreigners in the places of his cabinet and upon the bench of the Supreme Court. The natives occupy seats as nobles and representatives, the king. being always able to hold a majority, but the guiding force of legislation is the intelligence of the foreigners, who are virtually in all matters of consequence the rulers of the kingdom. A peculiarity of the higher classes is that ofrank. They still talk of chiefs and chiefesses, taking their rank from the mother, in memory, perhaps in respect, of an ancient wisdom of that people, that while his paternal derivative was to every child a matter of profoundest doubt, and might even fade from the maternal memory, it was a matter of comparative certainty who was his mother. The Hawaiian people are not yet a civilized people, although they are not indeed savages. As individuals they excite no personal interest or sympathy, and as a nation they are uninteresting to the last degree.
It is the drivel of selfishness that charges the deficiency in their civilization to what is called, in the impertinent phrase of interested traders, "the meddling of the missionaries "with the government. That an inferior people, looking up for light, should ask every aid from those who came professedly to teach them any good thing, and but little from ​
those who did not, is in the course of nature. Perhaps the practical observer, however, could have told just where to refuse, and would have refused, to give any counsel in matters somewhat out of the sphere of his experience; but what if not? To have resolved comeliness and completeness of sovereignty out of the chaos of heathendom, would have demanded that the missionaries should also have been statesmen, which they were not—else they would never have been missionaries. Their idea was rather to build a church than a state. They were inexperienced, fresh from the schools, clergymen, teachers, physicians, civilizers, in so far as each might be, of a savage people, but not learned in creating civil governments. With theories of how to live nobly and a burden of high resolve, they knew nothing of the cunning alchemy by which experience tempers the harshness of impracticable rules of right. Before them was a field rich in labor, but not fertile in the highest results. Grafting something of sweetness into the barbaric life, they had themselves to learn something of action in their contact with a common human nature.
The Hawaiian, as every other man, needs something more than religious culture, although combined with such moral and intellectual development as comes from schools, to make him anew, thoroughly out of heathendom and thoroughly into christendom. Although Paul plants, if Apollos does not water, we shall be over-hopeful if we look illogically for the increase. And so for a higher position, this nation must rely much upon its own energy and capacity, not in isolation, but in fullness of intercourse with civilization in its best phases, if possible; if not always its best, then the best that can be. Its contrasts are not without their teaching.
It is not half a century since the representatives of civilization first sought to plant its seeds in the heathen
fields. We know "the mills of God grind slowly," and that the story of mental unfolding and growth is the story of eternal patience. The history of civilization has been, after barbarism, first the poetic impulse, then the philosophic reason, then the christian man. We find our virtue resting upon a mental texture inherited from the early nations of Europe; but how much better than barbarian were our Saxon ancestors? Better, perhaps, than these cannibals and image-worshippers fifty years ago; but centuries have passed in the blooming and maturing of our civilization, which is not yet perfect; and the analogies of history afford us no hope of anything substantial or worthy coming from this people, till after centuries of contact with a superior race. If they were left to weave the fine fabric of civilization from the native product alone, we should soon see how much easier "the descent to Avernus," than the ascent to any higher place, of which they have now no real conception. If they are sustained by their present religious support, they will doubtless hold their own place, such as it is, among the nations, for the limited period which, judging from the past, they are likely to remain a distinct people. It would almost seem, however, as if the determination of that period were an easy problem in mathematics.
It is believed that at the time of Capt. Cook's visit, the population was 300,ooo. In 1823 it was estimated at 140,000. This decrease may be attributed to the diseases brought on by the terrible excesses of the nation, to infanticide, to wars, to comparative cessation of any natural increase during such a period, to the prevalence of epidemics—the small-pox, measles and whooping-cough. The promiscuous intercourse of the natives among themselves has tended to engender the worst form of sensual diseases, and the ​
advent of ship-loads of sailors from the time of Cook till now, has completed the work. In 1832 the population was, by census, 130,315; in 1836 it had fallen to 108,579; in 1850, to 84,165. The year 1848 is remembered as "the year of death," when 10,000 died from the specific diseases named above. In 1860 the number of natives had decreased to 61,800; at present it is estimated at about 50,000. It is believed that in the progress of civilization the great mortality of the nation will be stayed. The experience in our own country does not encourage that hope. The degraded native seems to adopt the vices of the civilized race quite as soon as its virtues. In the old Kanaka language there was no oath, but these natives early acquired an education in profanity, and now mingle the English oath and the Hawaiian speech with considerable ease.
To speak of the civilization of the
Hawaiian people, is but following a priestly fashion and acknowledging the
existence of what is not. For civilization, in modern phrase, is the structure of the people, representing the highest results of average modern culture. It answers any question concerning the capacity and reasonable hope and expectation of a people. The nation that has reached it asks no stranger's arm, for it is sustained by its own strength. We recognize the best results of the missionaries' work, but in the heartiest expression of their self-congratulations we can hear no syllable of trust in this people's self-sustenance. If one should hint of the native ministers and teachers as a sufficient stay and support of their civilization, and earnest of their future progress, not one but would answer doubtingly of reeds—bent, and too easily broken.
To say boldly that by natural inheritance, as the yet unreclaimed estate coming to us, "the heir of all the ages and the youngest born of Time," these
lands and their people should be ours, might meet some opposition. It would come from those who never favor the extension of our sovereignty over territory which has not always been ours, and from those who recognize no national safeguards in those stations, that stand like trusty sentinels on our distant right and left. But we take what to such may appear a worthier position, affirming that to make them ours, so that they be a part with us and of us, will be the consummation of the missionary labor—the final and complete conquest of the latest and thus far best civilization, over the reluctant and unyielding stronghold of heathenism. He would indeed be a poor political economist, who would ask a demonstration of benefits to them and to us from bringing a people of unmatured capacities and a land of indefinite possibilities, with all its uncultivated fertility, into the fold of our nationality, and with them an unrestrained competition with our Saxon sinews, our straightest furrows and our proudest sheaves. Perhaps the commercial argument is the strongest with which to attack any prejudice against their annexation to our republic. It touches the Hawaiians as well as ourselves. The earnest hope with which the people there look for our ratification of the treaty of reciprocity, already ratified by their government, and which proposes such a change in the present revenue system, indicates how much they estimate the necessity that they and we should be brought into nearer mercantile contact. Whether or not it originated with them, it meets the swift and earnest advocacy of all the brain and active sinew of that kingdom. We cannot here examine critically and specifically the whole instrument, but only say in general that it preposes free importation hence of those articles most necessary in the islands, and free importation hither of every except the most desirable article produced there. Of sug ​ars, whose production and importation greatly exceed the aggregate of all other articles, the treaty proposes to import free only those purchased by the refiners, and by none other; te duty to remain upon the rest, which is much the greater part, and which, as imported, is used in all our homes. The duty at present is said to be oppressive upon producers.
The islands are believed to contain 500,000 acres of arable and pasture land. Of this 100,000 acres are adapted to the sugar cane, but not above 20,000 are so cultivated, producing an average of 4,000 pounds per acre. Those islands sent to California, during the last fiscal year, 14,219,414 pounds, and other countries the balance of 40,000,000 pounds. Merchants in the Eastern States imported 810,000,000 pounds from other countries.
The advent hence to the Hawaiian Islands of capital, commercial enterprise and additional labor, sufficient to develope their resources, it is believed would be justified by the operation of the treaty. If this were practicable, the Islands might supply to us nearly one-half of the entire consumption of sugar in. the United States. And much might be said of the other productions of that country—molasses, paddy, rice, coflee, fungus, pulu, wool, cotton, hides, and tallow, and the various tropical fruits.
The mercantile activity at the islands has always been among the foreigners, and has been dependent almost wholly upon the activity and prosperity of the whalers who resort there for supplies and refreshment. That interest has declined much of late years, and a feeling is now prevalent there that some effort must be made or their commerce will entirely fail. i The treaty, therefore, has the support of
that class of the community. The king and government hope for its ratification also as of benefit to their country. The king himself is not personally friendly to the United States, from his chagrin at the treatment he received when travelling in
this country ten years ago, and where the all but "black prince" learned by experience, that "negroes were not allowed to sit at the fable d'hote;" while in England and on the continent he was received as one included within that divinity which "doth hedge a king." Most of his ministers and advisers also, being Englishmen, Frenchmen, and apostate Americans, apart from their certain loss of places of emolument in case of annexation, favor the treaty in opposition to real American interests, knowing that no idea of annexation to the republic could outlive the ordeal of prosperity which they think would obtain under the treaty. With all the commercial advantages of intercourse which exists between the states, why should any one there think of annexation?
The treaty would undoubtedly sustain the apparent falling fortunes of that kingdom, and would stimulate its planters and merchants to new activity. But that is no argument to us for its ratification. Moreover, a treaty is only ephemeral at best, and capital is too sensitive to emigrate with no security longer than seven years, the term fixed in this instrument. Halfof that time would pass before there could be any returns. And we look in vain, through the treaty, for any reciprocity. We can find as resulting to our country only the certain loss of all that duty upon imported articles which, in the event of the great predicted increase of commerce, under the treaty, would then come from those islands, which duty would otherwise amount annually to several millions of dollars. We see most of the energy of the islands devoted to the production of the inferior grades of sugars, and other articles in the schedule. We see no public gain compensate to our loss, and only the private emolument of a few manufacturers to whose manipulations we should all have to render compensation. We see all hope of acquisition of those lands slip through our hands, and the firmer estab ​lishment of a monarchical government as a neighbor, whose acts will not tend to the benefit of the republic.
If there should still be no treaty, the efforts to maintain the commercial life of the kingdom may take up the suggestion of annexation to our government. They have need of all the benefits which the
treaty could confer to sustain themselves. A union with these states will not only confer all those benefits, but will insure a tendency to a complete civilization of the native people. That is the only treaty concerning which, as merchants, diplomatists and civilizers, we should hold any argument.