The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1901-04-12
SHIRTS HAVE DONE HARM
THE DEADLY SHIRT IN ISLES OF
THE PACIFIC.
A New York View of the Native Ha-
waiian Death Rate Since Missionary
Days.

The fact that the decline of the Co
copah Indians in Arizona has been at
tributed to their donning trousers re-
calls the harm that has been done by
inducing natives of the Pacific Islands
to wear shirts. Whenever the mission
teachers have induced the islanders to
wear shirts the people have so dwindled
in little more than half a century as to
be on the verge of extinction. Where
others of the same race in neighboring
archipelagoes were left to their ancient
style of dress the population has re-
NAMED at least an upward tendency.
Naturally, the missionaries would be
the last people knowingly to introduce
to their charges anything that might
harm, and when they found their fiocks
dying off they looked for the cause in
the rum which the whalers and traders
sold. Left to their own devices, the
Pacific Islanders are little likely to fall
victims in any large numbers to the use
of alcoholic stimulants, for which they
seem TO have little liking.
There have been notable cases of
horrible example but these are excep-
tions in proof of the rule. A very glar-
ing case was in Hawaii under it's bur-
lesque monarchy; almost any time in
the reign of the last kings of the race
of Kamehameha it would have puzzled
one to draw a hard and fast distinc-
ZION between Ine InTOn6-TOOIl ana an
alcoholic ward. Yet careful observers
who are familiar with the conditions of
island life do not hesitate to express the
opinion that the shirt draped on the
islander by his missionary has slain
more than the rum poured into him by
the trader.
Not all the missionaries in the South
Sea have raised the shirt to the plane
of Christian dogma and regulated its
nv the hook of ph1lrph 6iGpinlina
So far as there may be deduced any
general rule on the subject, it would
seem to be that the missionaries of the
Catholic and Episcopal churches have
not attempted to force the shirt upon
their converts at ALL that the London
Mission Society insists only that it shall
be worn when attending church and not
necessarily for daily habit that the
American and Australian missions
make a point that the shirt shall be
worn at all times. The depopuIatIon OF
the Pacific has proceeded farthest in
the islands where the last nave had I'M
divided sway.
Hawaii is CONSPICUOUS example. Its
missionary hierarchy came from Salem
and Boston with all the fixed ideas OF
old New England rural life, and when
they found a simple race that went
about unabashed with never a shirt on
their backs they certainly had connip-
ton fits.
They lost no time in calling upon all
the Dorcas societies to hem a sufti-
cheney of shirt to cover Hawaii. AS
an article of faith the Hawaiian was
made to wear shirt, and now there
are precious few Hawaians left. For
the same cause the depopulation has
progressed in the track OF the New
England missionary in the Marquesas
and the Line Islands. The same is be-
coming true of Tonga and Niue in the
South Pacific, where the Australian
missions insist upon shirts all the time.
This view of the shirt as a source of
deadly disease is by no means fanciful,
for 1t is based upon the principles of
hygiene. In lands so humid as the ISL
ands of the torrid Pacific the least exer-
ton brings profuse perspiration When
clad in accordance with the wisdom of
his ancestors, that is to say, in no more
above the waist than a wreath of flow
ers and clubbing of cocoanut OIL the
islanders could sit down anywhere i'm
the shade and cool off without harm.
But put upon him cotton shirt and
teach him that his first step toward a
better life is to wear that garb, then let
him get his shirt wringing wet with
perspiration and let him sit in his door
way to cool off in the draught, and il is
a moral certainty that ne will be so
chilled by the evaporation from the cot
ton tissue that in short order his lungs
will break down.
That Is why the shirt Is regarded in
the South Seas as almost a deadly wea-
DOn.-NeW York SIM