The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1873-01-23

I am truly sorry that these people are
dying out, for they are about the most
savages- there are. Their
language is soft and musical, it has not
a kissing sound in it, and all their
words end with vowel They would
call Jim Fisk Jimmy Fgkki, for they
will even do violence to a proper name
if it CRATES too harshly in its natural
state The italian is raspy and disagree
able compared to the Hawaiian tongue.
These people used to go naked. but
the missionaries broke that up. In the
towns the men wear clothing now, and
in the country plug and a hreach-
clOUt; or if they have company they
put on a shirt-collar and vest. Moth
ing but religion and education could
have wroght these admirable changes.
The women wear single loose calico
gown that falls without break from
neck to heels.
In the old times, to speak plainly,
there was absolutely no bar to the COM
merce of the sexes. To refuse the So
hcitation of a stranger was regarded as
a contemplate thing for girl or a wo-t
man to do; but the missionaries have so
bitterly fought this thing that they have
succeeded at least in driving it out of
sight-and now it exists only in reality
not in name.
These natives are the simplest, the
kindest-hearted, the most unseIfish
creatures that bear the image of the
Maker. Where white influence has not
changed them, they viii make any
chance stranger welcome, and divide
their all with him-a trait which has
never existed among any other people,
perhaps. They live only to-day; to-
morrow is thing which does not enter
into their calculations
had native youth in my employ in
Honolulu, a graduate of missionary
college, and he divided his time between
translating the Greek Testament and
taking care of a piece of property of
mine which I considered a horse.
Whenever this boy could collect his
wages, he would go and lay out the en-
tire amount, all the way up from fifty
cents to dollar, in poi (Which IS paste
made of tarO root, and is the national
dish, and call in the native raganuffins
that came along to help him eat it.
And there, in the rich grass, unoer the
tararind trees, the gentle savages would
sit and gorge till all was gone. My
boy would go hungry and content for a
day or two, and then some Kanaka he
probably had never seen before would
invite him to a similar feast, and give a
fresh start
CURIOUS, MORAL AND RELIGIOUS ASPECTS.
The ancient religion was only ium-
BILE of curious superstitions. The shark
seems to have been the god they chiefly
worshiped-or rather sought to propiti-
ate. Then there was PeIe, a goddess
who presided over the terrible fires of
Kileauea; minor gods were not scarce.
| The natives are all Christians now
every one of them; they all belong to
the church, and are fonder of theology
than they are of pie; they will sweat out
a sermon as long as the Declaration OF
Independence; the dulIer it is the more
it infatuates them; they would sit there
and stew and stew in trance of enjoy
ment till they hOated away in their own
! grease if the ministers would stand
watch-and-watcha and see them through.
! Sunday schools are favorite dissipa-
| ton with them, and they never. get
enough. If there was physical as well as
mental intoxication in this limb of the
service, they would never draw sober
breath. Religion is drink and meat to
the native. He can read his neatly
printed Bible lin the native tongue
every solitary man, woman and little
child III the islands can,) and ne reads
it over and over again. Aud he reads
a whole world of moral tales, built on
the good old Sunday-school book pat
tern exaggerated, and he worships their
heroes-heroes who walk the world with
their mouth full of butter, and who are
SIMPLY impossibly chuckle-headed and
pious. And he knows all the hymns You
ever heard in your life, and he sings
them in a soft, pleasant voice, to native
words that make "On Jordan's stormy
banks I stand sound as grotesquely
and sweetly foreign to you as if it were
a dictionary grinding wrong end first
through a sugar-mill
Now you see how these natives, great
and small, old and young, are saturated
with religion-at least the poetry and
the music of it. But as to the practice
of it they vary. Some of The noble pre-
cepts ofsChristianity they have always
practiced naturally, and they always
will. Some of the minor precepts they
as naturally do not practice, and us ma
turally they never Will The white
man has taught them 10 lie, and they
take to it pleasantly and without sin
for there cannot be much sin In a thing
which. they cannot be made to compre-
bend is a sin. Adultery they look upon
as POLITICALLY wrong and practically
proper.
These people are sentimentaily reli-
gious- perhaps that describes it. They
pray and sing andJ noralize in fair
weather, but when they get into trouble
that is =" business then they are
tolerably apt to drop poetry and call on
the Great Shark God of their fathers to
give them lift Their ancient super
stitions are in their blood and bones,
and they keep cropping out now and
then in the most natural and pardonable
way
The natives make excellent seamen,
and the whalers would rather have
them than any other race. They are so
tractable, docile and willing, and with
Al so faithful, that they rank first in the
sugar-planters' esteem as laborers. Do
not these facts speak we'll for our poor,
brown Sunday-sehool children of the
far island
There Is small property tax, and
any native who has an income Of $50 a
year can vote.
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