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August 30, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

View of Hawaiians in 1828

“Almost all travelers have been pleased to endow with surpassing beauty the women of the different archipelagos of the South Seas. I cannot speak of those in the Marquesas or Society Islands, but if one may judge by the Sandwich Islanders, on whom they have heaped the same praises, I am obliged to say that they are far from living up to this portrait.”

“But I must agree that they possess a natural grace that, without matching the fine and regular features of a white and delicate skin has nevertheless an almost irresistible attraction. Their movements are smooth and supple, their postures enchanting and easy, and their glances, more than anything, are indescribably alluring.”

“The freedom they enjoy means that they are strangers to anxiety or constraint, and this state of tranquility is reflected in all their bodily manners.”

“If they suffer storms of the heart these must be of a passing nature because there is no need for these to persist. Their ways appear to be based on inconstancy; they need never suffer the boredom of an ill-matched union.”

“Amused by the veriest trifles, they wear only smiles on their lips, and their mouths never open to say no. It is surprising that that the stranger, finding such an easy welcome among them, lets himself pain =t them with flattering praise if only to enlarge on and embellish his own conquests.”

“When, several days after our arrival, the young king wished to visit the Heros, we prepared a small collation, and he came on board with the regent and a numerous suite.”

“Kauikeaouli drank with pleasure our best liquors and ate our cakes with eagerness. We noticed that he did not touch the poi that he always has brought along wherever he goes; he preferred our good bread.”

“When he got into his boat to return we saluted him with thirteen guns, a courtesy that he found quite flattering. On the quay his bodyguard awaited: a score of fine young men fitted out simply but uniformly in blue pantaloons, short blue jackets, round hats, guns, bayonets, and ammunition pouches.”

“The king’s house is located in the same compound as that of the regent and is of the same style and size. It has a very high roof supported by low sidings that incline to the inside.”

“This shape imparts to these dwellings of wood and straw more strength than if the sustaining walls were perpendicular. The king has another house built according to the rules of our architecture but he never lives in it, preferring this one of thatch.”

“In fact, this sort of dwelling is better suited to their mode of life. They love to stretch out on mats, letting themselves drop wherever the fancy strikes them, and there they spend the greatest part of the day lying together helter-skelter on their rush carpets. This could not be done in lodgings furnished like ours, where they would need a sofa for each person.”

“The young king sleeps in his thatched great house only in bad weather; when the night is fine he stays in a small hut that has to be entered on hands and knees and that is barely large enough for four people sitting or stretched out.”

“Those of his young court follow his example; each constructs a small hut close to his, all of them together forming a sort of camp around the principal house, which hardly serve for more than to store the furniture.”

“The king and the regent are not the only principal authorities in the archipelago. A wife of the famous Kamehameha I, Queen Kaahumanu, exercises much power in fact if not legally.”

“She has her private court and her own coterie of followers. She lives in the city during the winter but passes the summer in a pretty valley a league to the east of Honolulu.”

“Along with the English consul I went one day to see her at her residence, which consisted of two main houses and a number
of huts.”

“We found her seated on a mat and leaning back on cushions covered in silk. Although she was not much interested in us, she received us in a dignified way. A woman of forty-two, she appeared to have once had much embonpoint, but bad health, caused by her well-known excesses, had brought on premature old age, which left her little hope of a long life.”

“Thus the adherents of the young king were being patient while awaiting the death of Kaahumanu, which they expected soon and believed would deliver him from a feminine yoke.”

French sea captain Auguste Dehaut-Cilly made round-the world travels between 1826 and 1829; all of the above is from his account of the Islands following his trip from California to Hawai‘i, in 1828.

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  • Alphonse_Pellion,_Sandwich Islands-Houses of Kalanimoku, Prime Minister of the King_(c._1819)
  • Alphonse_Pellion,_Îles_Sandwich;_Maisons_de_Kraïmokou,_Premier_Ministre_du_Roi;_Fabrication_des_Étoffes_(c._1819,_detail)

Filed Under: Ali'i / Chiefs / Governance, Hawaiian Traditions, Place Names, General Tagged With: Hawaii, 1828, Hawaiians

August 24, 2015 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

The Islands in 1828

Paul-Emile Botta was born to Carlo Botta, an eminent historian and educator, and Antoinette de Vierville of Chambery, in Turin on December 6, 1802. His mother died when he was still a child. In 1815, he became naturalized as a Frenchman.

In 1826, the French prepared for a round-the-world voyage on Le Heros, On board regulations required that there be a surgeon; Botta, though not yet a full-fledged doctor, was appointed to that post. He was also charged with the duties of naturalist aboard, with the mission of collecting examples.

The Heros, a three-masted ship of 362 tons, with 32 men on board, left the port of Le Havre on April 9, 1826, circumnavigated the globe. The following, in Botta’s words, are his observations of the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands (Hawaiʻi) when he and Le Heros visited the Islands from September 17, 1828 to November 15, 1828. (The quotation marks are dropped.)

The natives of the Sandwich Islands are for the most part large and well built. Among them are often found men who, in figure and proportion, recall the most beautiful statues of antiquity.

They vary a great deal in color. Sometimes it is a very dark brown, almost black, but at other times, to the contrary, it is a rather light brown, almost yellow. Their faces are pleasing, especially because of the expression of goodness and joviality always displayed on them … their hearts are full of goodness and friendliness.

The men are completely naked except for a type of belt of which one portion passes between their thighs, called by them maro. They have … a custom of knotting about the end of the prepuce a piece of reed, when they are not wearing the maro; this is the last bit of clothing that they are accustomed to take off.

The women … ordinarily wear a cloth skirt and a garment made of a fabric of the islands covering their thighs. Yet I saw some of them indoors having as their sole clothing a belt of leaves. This is the attire of the common people; the chiefs, however, as well as their women, at present dress in European fashion, some indeed with a studied affectation.

The Sandwich islanders, at least the common people, eat chiefly vegetables. Their principal food is taro, root of a type of arum which when raw is very bitter and even poisonous, but when cooked has an excellent flavor, superior to that of the potato.

They eat it either cooked in their underground ovens or pounded into a paste, often half fermented, which they call poi, and which is the basis of their meals.

Potatoes, carrots, and fish, which they eat raw most of the time, or else pounded with water and salt, are, after taro, their commonest foods.

Their customary drink is only water … very few islanders are to be seen giving themselves up to drunkenness. They still, however, make use of the infusion of ava to get intoxicated.

They also prepare a type of brandy with the root of a plant very common in the island, which they call lahi. The root is thick, fibrous, though rather tender and of a very sweet and sugary flavor when cooked. The brandy made of it through fermentation is very strong. This root is called ti.

The islanders’ homes are small houses made with a light scaffolding covered over by dry grasses. They are formed with a roof, the sides rising obliquely almost from the ground. They usually have two doors, set in accordance with the direction of the most frequent winds, providing for coolness inside.

The floor is formed by a layer of dry rushes covered over by a rather large number of mats. The floor usually serves as table and as bed, some chiefs’ homes excepted; the latter are sometimes furnished most elegantly in European style.

These very simple houses are cool and inexpensive and islanders as well as some Europeans prefer them to houses built of stone or wood, as some quite pretty ones transported from America are.

The chief occupation of the islanders is the cultivation of taro, which requires much toil and care. This plant grows well only in marshy terrain, and even in mud; therefore, all the upper valleys and terrain at the foot of the mountains are divided into small plots covered with water and separated by narrow embankments, which are the only paths.

Taro is planted in rows or in regular quincunxes in little ponds, into which the natives are often obliged to dive, either to harvest the roots, or to pull out the reeds and other grasses which might hinder their growth.

The water is brought there by means of little irrigation canals, made with great care, and which divide infinitely, passing from one taro field to another, so that a small stream can irrigate a great number of fields placed in terraces one above another on a hill slope. All this cultivation gives an impressive notion of the industriousness of these people.

Fishing is, next to taro, the principal resource of the Sandwich islanders; they now use European hooks. In order to catch great sea fish such as the bonitos or the dorados, however, they join them to bits of polished mother-of-pearl with bristles at one end, which, in the water, gives the appearance of a small fish, with sufficient exactness for the big fish to be deceived by them.

Their nets are very well made and they have some, I have been told, that are large and are the common property of several villages.

The dug-out canoes used by the islanders have the bottom made from a hollowed out tree, pointed at the two ends; it is raised by two boards joined to the two ends tapering; they are provided with a balance, formed by a piece of wood parallel to the dug-out canoe and sustained by two cross-bars. The paddles have rounded blades. When they desire, they add a mast and a trapezoidal sail to the canoes.

The recreation of the islanders consists only of lascivious dances, and I have always seen them performed by women and never by men. … The tunes have, properly speaking, no melody, for they are made of only one or two notes. To hear them sung, one would believe that they are rather being chanted. I have not seen any musical instrument except a small drum made out of coconut.

But their favorite pleasure is swimming. Men, women, and children all know how to swim and they are all constantly in the water.

Nothing is more interesting than to see them devoting themselves to the exercise they call henalou, that is, mounting the waves. In the places where the coral reef surrounding the island and stretching far out causes the water to have a depth of only between seven and eight feet, the sea rolls its waves in a frightening manner, sometimes for a distance of over a mile, until they come to break at the shore.

In these places the Sandwich islanders place themselves on their stomachs on a board oval in shape, elongated, somewhat convex on each side. They then swim with their hands and feet, passing over or under the waves constantly rolling over the reef, going out to sea where they wait for a wave which they think will inevitably reach the shore.

Then they place themselves in front of it, letting themselves be carried thus with incredible speed, without losing their balance, continually pushed forward by the wave the summit of which, towering above, seems destined to engulf them. This exercise which has always seemed terrifying to me is just a game for them.

The language of the Sandwich islanders is sweet and harmonious, because of the great number of vowels and few consonants found in it. …. The vowels are a, e, i, o, and u. The consonants are f, h, k, 1, m, n, p, r, t, and v. But the number of consonants should be reduced, for the inhabitants use some of them indifferently for others; thus r and l, k and t, p and f, are letters which seem for them to have the same sound.

Such are the observations which a stay of two months on Wahou has permitted me to make. They are most incomplete, and I greatly desire to be one day in a position to make a better study of these people, rendered so likeable by their goodness and sweetness …. (This summary is based on a translation and summary from Knowlton.)

The image shows the town of Honolulu as it looked when Botta arrived in the Islands. (Beechey)

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View_near_the_Town_of_Honoruru,_Sandwich_Islands_from_the_Taro_Patches-Beechey-1826
View_near_the_Town_of_Honoruru,_Sandwich_Islands_from_the_Taro_Patches-Beechey-1826

Filed Under: General, Economy Tagged With: Hawaii, 1828

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