“The will of the high chief was a law from which there was no appeal. He could decide all cases of disputation, levy taxes, and proclaim war, just as best suited his purposes, and none but the royal counselors were permitted to take the least exception.”

“During their life, they were approached with the most absolute veneration; and after death, they were deified and worshiped.”

“A system of landlordism existed, decreasing in subserviency until it reached the monarch, whom it left an absolute lord. This system was originated and sustained by war.”

“The victors always seized the lands of the vanquished, and then gave them their followers. If a king, or chief, or sub-landlord, when passing through his district, happened to see a fine taro-patch, a hog, a mat, or a calabash, that suited his ideas, he had only to claim it, and it became his own.”

“If they wished to build a house, cultivate a tract of land, turn a water-course, or erect a temple for the gods, they had only to summon the people from a district, the entire island, or a neighboring island, and the work was speedily accomplished.”

“To refuse to obey the summons was to insure instant death. There were no courts of justice, no trials by jury, no fixed law, either oral or written.”

“The property, the services, the life, and almost the souls of the people, were claimed by their rulers.”

“But the broadest and most gloomy page of their past history is that which records their religious condition. It was a unity of Church and State.”

“The two heads of the nation were the king and priest, but the hierarch was paramount. There was a reciprocity of sacerdotal and kingly power: the first promised the favor of the gods, the latter the support of the spears hurled by banded warriors.”

“The paramount claims of the hierarch soon found a solid support in the foundation of the most hellish system … that has ever cursed fallen humanity. This was the tabu system.”

“As the tabu system expanded and strengthened, it imposed restrictions on every act, word, and thought; it covered every article of food, and related to every act of religious worship; it was so framed, that it was absolutely impossible not to violate its bloody requirements; its mandates even entered the sanctuaries families, and imposed a heavy restriction upon the rights of men and women.”

“When a couple entered the marriage state, the man must build an eating-house for himself, another for his god, another for a dormitory, another for his wife to eat in, and another in which to beat kapa: these four the men had to build.”

“In addition to this, he had food to provide; then he heated the oven and baked for his wife; then he heated the oven and baked for himself; then he opened the oven containing his wife’s taro, and pounded it; then he performed the same operation on his own.”

“The husband ate in his house, and the wife ate in hers. They did not eat together, lest they should be slain for violating the tabu.”

“A tabu existed in relation to idols. The gods of the chiefs and common people were of wood. If one made his idol of an apple-tree, the apple-tree was afterward tabu to him. So of all the trees of which idols were made.”

“So, too, of articles of food. If one employed taro as an object of his idolatry, to him the taro became sacred, and might not be eaten by him. Thus it was with every object of which a god was made.”

“Birds were objects of worship. If a hen, the hen was to him sacred. So of all the birds which were deified. Beasts were objects of worship. If a hog, the hog was sacred to him who chose it for his god. So, too, of all quadrupeds of which gods were made.”

“Stones were objects of worship, and tabu, so that one might not sit on them.”

“Fish were idolized. If one adopted the shark as his god, to him the shark was sacred. So, also, of all fish; so of all things in heaven and earth: even the bones of men were transformed into objects of worship.”

“A tabu was imposed on such accidental events as it was impossible for the common people to avoid. Hence, if the shadow of a common man fell on a chief-if he went into a chief’s yard-if he put on a kapa or malo of the chief, or wore the chief’s consecrated mat, or if he went upon the chief’s house, it was death!”

“So, if he stood when the king’s bathing-water, or kapa, or malo were carried along, or when the king’s name were mentioned in song, or if he walked in the shade of a chief’s house with his head besmeared with clay, or with a wreath round it, or wearing a kapa mantle, or with his head wet, it was certain death!”

“There were many other offenses of the people which were made capital by the chiefs and priests. H a woman ate pork, cocoanuts, bananas, a certain kind of fish, or lobster, it was death. To be found in a canoe on a tabu, day was death.”

“If a man committed a crime, he died; if he was irreligious, he died; if he indulged in connubial pleasures on a tabu, day, or if he made the slightest noise while prayers were saying, he had to die.”

“While the common people could commit no crime under penalty of death, the priests did as they pleased.”

“When one deemed it desirable that a temple should be built, he applied to the king, who commanded the natives to construct it; which being done, the king and priest were sacred; and on the day when a log of wood was obtained for a god, a man was sacrificed in order to impart power to the wooden deity.”

“When sacrifices were offered, men were slain and laid upon the altar with swine; if a fish proper for an offering could not be obtained, a man was sacrificed in its stead; and human victims were required on other occasions.”

“The king and the priest were much alike, and they constituted the main burden of the nation.” (All here is from Bates.)

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