Images of Old Hawaiʻi

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Cook’s Concern

In the dawn hours of January 18, 1778, on his third expedition, British explorer Captain James Cook on the HMS Resolution and Captain Charles Clerke of the HMS Discovery first sighted what Cook named the Sandwich Islands (that were later named the Hawaiian Islands.)

Cook continued to sail along the coast searching for a suitable anchorage. His two ships remained offshore, but a few Hawaiians were allowed to come on board on the morning of January 20, before Cook continued on in search of a safe harbor.

“At nine o’clock [January 20, 1778}, being pretty near the shore, I sent three armed boats, under the command of Lieutenant Williamson, to look for a landing-place, and for fresh water. I ordered him, that if he should find it necessary to land in search of the latter, not to suffer more than one man to go with him out of the boats.”

“Just as they were putting off from the ship, one of the natives having stolen the butcher’s cleaver, leaped overboard, got into his canoe, and hastened to the shore, the boats pursuing him in vain.”

“The order not to permit the crews of the boats to go on shore was issued, that I might do every thing in my power to prevent the importation of a fatal disease into this island, which I knew some of our men laboured under, and which, unfortunately, had been already communicated by us to other islands in these seas.”

“With the same view, I ordered all female visitors to be excluded from the ships. Many of them had come off In the canoes. Their size, colour, and features did not differ much from those of the men ; and though their countenances were remarkably open and agreeable, there were few traces of delicacy to be seen, either in their faces, or other proportions.”

“The only difference in their dress, was their having a piece of cloth about the body, reaching from near the middle to half-way down the thighs, instead of the maro worn by the other sex. “

“They would as readily have favoured us with their company on board as the men ; but I wished to prevent all connection, which might, too probably, convey an irreparable injury to themselves, and through their means, to the whole nation.”

“Another necessary precaution was taken, by strictly enjoining, that no person, known to be capable of propagating the infection, should be sent upon duty out of the ships.”

“Whether these regulations, dictated by humanity, had the desired effect, or no, time only can discover. I had been equally attentive to the same object, when I first visited the Friendly Islands ; yet I afterward found, with real concern, that I had not succeeded.”

“And I am much afraid, that this will always be the case, in such voyages as ours, whenever it is necessary to have a number of people on shore.”

“The opportunities and inducements to an intercourse between the sexes are then too numerous to be guarded against; and however confident we may be of the health of our men, we are often undeceived too late.”

“It is even a matter of doubt with me, if it be always in the power of the most skillful of the faculty to pronounce, with any certainty, whether a person who has been under their care, in certain stages of this malady, is so effectually cured, as to leave no possibility of his being still capable of communicating the taint.”

“I think I could mention some instances which justify my presuming to hazard this opinion. It is likewise well known, that, amongst a number of men, there are generally to be found some so bashful as to endeavour to conceal their labouring under any symptoms of this disorder.”

“And there are others, again, so profligate, as not to care to whom they communicate it. Of this last, we had an instance at Tongataboo, in the gunner of the Discovery, who had been stationed on shore to manage the trade for that ship.”

“After he knew that he had contracted this disease, he continued to have connections with different women, who were supposed not to have already contracted it.”

“His companions expostulated with him without effect, till Captain Clerke, hearing of this dangerous irregularity of conduct, ordered him on board.”  (All here is from Cook’s Journal; 2nd of 3rd Voyage, pgs 181-182)

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“Once upon a time, only the other day …”

“Hawaii is the home of shanghaied men and women, and of the descendants of shanghaied men and women. They never intended to be here at all.” (London)

“Come with your invitations, or letters of introduction, and you will find yourself immediately instated in the high seat of abundance.”

“Or, come uninvited, without credentials, merely stay a real, decent while, and yourself be ‘good,’ and make good the good in you- but, oh, softly, and gently, and sweetly, and manly, and womanly – and you will slowly steal into the Hawaiian heart …”

“… which is all of softness, and gentleness, and sweetness, and manliness, and womanliness, and one day, to your own vast surprise, you will find yourself seated in a high place of hospitableness than which there is none higher on this earth’s surface.”

“You will have loved your way there, and you will find it the abode of love.” (Jack London)

“I remember a dear friend who resolved to come to Hawaii and make it his home forever. He packed up his wife, all his belongings including his garden hose and rake and hoe, said ‘’Goodbye, proud California,’ and departed.”

“Now he was a poet, with an eye and soul for beauty, and it was only to be expected that he would lose his heart to Hawaii as Mark Twain and Stevenson and Stoddard had before him.”

“So he came, with his wife and garden hose and rake and hoe.”

“Heaven alone knows what preconceptions he must have entertained. But the fact remains that he found naught of beauty and charm and delight.”

“His stay in Hawaii, brief as it was, was a hideous nightmare. In no time he was back in California. To this day he speaks with plaintive bitterness of his experience”.

“Otherwise was it with Mark Twain, who wrote of Hawaii long after his visit: ‘No alien land in all the world has any deep, strong charm for me but that one; no other land could so longingly and beseechingly haunt me sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done.”

“Other things leave me, but it abides; other things change, but it remains the same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of its surf-beat is in my ears; I can see its garlanded crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloudrack …”

“… I can feel the spirit of its woodland solitudes; I can hear the plash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago.’”

“I doubt that not even the missionaries, windjamming around the Horn from New England a century ago, had the remotest thought of living out all their days in Hawaii. This is not the way of missionaries over the world.”

“They have always gone forth to far places with the resolve to devote their lives to the glory of God and the redemption of the heathen, but with the determination, at the end of it all, to return to spend their declining years in their own country.”

“But Hawaii can seduce missionaries just as readily as she can seduce sailor boys and bank cashiers, and this particular lot of missionaries was so enamored of her charms that they did not return when old age came upon them.”

“But to return. Hawaii is the home of shanghaied men and women, who were induced to remain, not by a blow with a club over the head or a doped bottle of whisky, but by love.”

“Hawaii and the Hawaiians are a land and a people loving and lovable. By their Ianguage may ye know them, and in what other land save this one is the commonest form of greeting, not ‘Good day,’ nor ‘How d’ye do,’ but ‘Love?’”

“That greeting is Aloha – love, I love you, my love to you.”

“Good day – what is it more than an impersonal remark about the weather? How do you do- it is personal in a merely casual interrogative sort of a way.”

“But Aloha! It is a positive affirmation of the warmth of one’s own heart-giving. My love to you ! I love you! Aloha!”

“Well, then, try to imagine a land that is as lovely and loving as such a people.”

“Hawaii is all of this.”

“Not strictly tropical, but sub-tropical, rather, in the heel of the Northeast Trades (which is a very wine of wind), with altitudes rising from palm-fronded coral beaches to snow-capped summits fourteen thousand feet in the air; there was never so much climate gathered together in one place on earth.”

“The custom of the dwellers is as it was of old time, only better, namely: to have a town house, a seaside house, and a mountain house. All three homes, by automobile, can be within half an hour’s run of one another …”

“… yet, in difference of climate and scenery, they are the equivalent of a house on Fifth Avenue or the Riverside Drive, of an Adirondack camp, and of a Florida winter bungalow, plus a twelve-months’ cycle of seasons crammed into each and every day.”

“Indeed, Hawaii is a loving land.”

“Hawaii has been most generous in her hospitality, most promiscuous in her loving. Her welcome has been impartial.” (This is Jack London’s view of the Islands.)

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Hawaiʻi Nei Pae ʻĀina

Captain James Cook made three voyages into and around the Pacific.  On the first voyage (1768-1771,) the Royal Society had petitioned the British government and the Admiralty to send astronomers to observe the Transit of Venus from Tahiti in 1769 – they were also looking for the great southern continent, Terra Australis Incognita (Australia.)

His second voyage (1772-1775) expanded on the exploration of the South Pacific (he finally found Australia on this trip, as well as other locales (Easter Island, the Marquesas Islands, Tonga and the New Hebrides.)

Cook’s third and final voyage (1776-1780) took him to the North Pacific, seeking a navigable northwest passage.  On this trip, in 1778, Cook made contact (‘discovered’) the Hawaiian Islands (he was killed there in 1779 and his crew completed the voyage.)

Cook first sighted Oʻahu on January 18, 1778. On February 2, 1778 his journal entry named the island group after his patron: “Of what number this newly-discovered Archipelago consists, must be left for future investigation.”

“We saw five of them, whose names, as given by the natives, are Woahoo (Oʻahu,) Atooi (Kauaʻi,) Oneeheow (Niʻihau,) Oreehoua (Lehua) and Tahoora (Kaʻula.) … I named the whole group the Sandwich Islands, in honour of the Earl of Sandwich.”  (Cook’s Journal)

The name ‘Sandwich Islands’ stuck, at least for a while; and later foreign, as well as Hawaiian, writers referred to the Islands this way.

As an example, on May 23, 1786, Captain Portlock referenced the islands in his journal, as he made way to “Owhyhee, the principal of the Sandwich Islands.”

Later, in instructions to Captain George Vancouver (March 8, 1791,) “The King, having judged it expedient, that an expedition should be immediately undertaken for acquiring a more complete knowledge, than has yet been obtained, of the north-west coast of America” and further told him to proceed “to the Sandwich islands in the north pacific ocean, where you are to remain during the next winter”.  (Vancouver’s Journal)

Missionary Hiram Bingham in recounting the time he spent in the Islands (April 4, 1820 – August 3, 1840) named his book “A Residence of Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Islands”.   The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, sponsors, named the mission the “Sandwich Islands Mission.”

The first English language newspaper in the islands was named the Sandwich Islands Gazette and Journal of Commerce, published in Honolulu from July, 1836 to July, 1839. Another early Honolulu newspaper was entitled the Sandwich Island Mirror.

But the “Sandwich Islands” reference was not limited to foreigner use.

In one of the first written laws in the Islands, “He Mau Kanawai no ke Ava o Honoruru, Oahu (Some Laws for the Harbor of Honolulu, Oʻahu),” noting seven rules, written in Hawaiian and English in parallel columns, Kalanimōku signed the measure noting their location, “Oahu, Sandwich Islands, June 2, 1825.” (Hawaiian Historical Society)

Another law begins with the clause, “Be it enacted by the king and Chiefs of the Sandwich Islands, in council assembled, That, after the first of January 1839, the importation of rum, brandy, gin, alcohol and all distilled spirits whatsoever, shall be entirely prohibited to be landed at any port, harbor or any other place on the Sandwich Islands ….” (Report of the Executive Committee of the American Temperance Union)

Hawaiʻi’s first treaty, signed December 23, 1826 between Hawaiʻi and the United States, notes in Article 1, “The peace and friendship subsisting between the United States, and their Majesties, the Queen Regent, and Kauikeaouli, King of the Sandwich Islands, and their subjects and people, are hereby confirmed, and declared to be perpetual.”  Further references to the Sandwich Islands are noted throughout.

The move toward constitutional governance (through the Declaration of Rights) by King Kamehameha III proclaimed the rights of the people, ensuring equal protection for both the people and the chiefs. Written by Kamehameha III and the Chiefs, and enacted on June 7, 1839, its translation notes …

“Whatever chief shall perseveringly act in violation of this Constitution, shall no longer remain a chief of the Sandwich Islands, and the same shall be true of the governors, officers and all land agents.”

Shortly after, however, was an apparent concerted effort to drop the Sandwich Islands reference, in favor of referring to the islands as the Hawaiian Islands.

“It may be safely said that the term ‘Sandwich Islands’ was never accepted by local authority, or had official use, and hence called for no legal act, or by authority notice, for the adoption of what was their own.”

“That important cluster of Islands, situated in the North Pacific Ocean, commonly known as the Sandwich Islands, were so named by Captain Cook, at the date of their discovery by him, in honor of his patron, the Earl of Sandwich, then first Lord of the Admiralty.”

“Their legitimate appellation, and the one by which they still continue to be distinguished by the aboriginal inhabitants, is ‘Hawaii nei pae ʻāina,’ a collective term, synonymous with ‘these Hawaiian Islands.’”    (Thrum, 1923)

“This term is derived from the largest of the group, Hawaiʻi, whence the reigning family originated, and is gradually taking the place of the former.”  (Jarves, 1847)

A notable change in the Constitution of 1840 shows the substitution of “Hawaiian Islands” for “Sandwich Islands,” specifically the clause from the Declaration of Rights noted above, as well as other similar references.  It is suggested that the 1840 Constitution officially named the islands the Hawaiian Islands.  (Clement)

After a transition period, generally, after that point the Hawaiian Islands label took hold.

However, still into the 1880s, when King Kalākaua was visiting New York, his spokesman it speaking with New York Times reporter noted …

“Now, before you ask me a single question, let me ask just two favors. One is that you won’t speak of the King as ‘King of the Sandwich Islands,’ the title grates on our nerves, as it were, you, know, and then, too, it is altogether improper.”

“There is now no such thing as the ‘Sandwich Islands’ — that is all changed; it is the Hawaiian Islands, and please write it that way and we will all be obliged, greatly obliged.”  (NY Times, September 24, 1881)

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Seeds to the Hawaiian Mission

American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) had its origin in the desire of several young men in the Andover Theological Seminary to preach the gospel in the heathen world. (The term ‘heathen’ (without the knowledge of Jesus Christ and God) was a term in use at the time (200-years ago.))

“The Board has established missions, in the order of time in which they are now named at Bombay, and Ceylon; among the Cherokees, Choctaws, and the Cherokees of the Arkansaw ….” (Missionary Herald)

The following are portions of a December 20, 1809 letter written by Samuel J Mills to the Rev. Gordon Hall, then a student in the Theological Seminary at Andover (he was later a Missionary in the island of Bombay.)

It speaks of ‘Ōpūkaha’ia and his influence in establishing the Hawaiian Islands Mission.

“Very Dear Brother, I received your kind letter, and feel much indebted to you. I have been in this place about two months. When I came, I found my worthy friend E. Dwight here …”

“… I roomed with him about two weeks, and then removed my quarters to the Rev. Mr. Stewart’s, with whom I have lived to the present time. As every day is not so singularly spent by me as this has been, I will notice something not a little extraordinary.”

“To make my narrative understood, you must go back with me to my first arrival in this place. Mr. Dwight, I then found, was instructing a native Owhyean boy. Two natives of this island arrived here five or six months ago, and this was one of them.”

“As I was in the room with Mr. Dwight, I heard the youth recite occasionally, and soon became considerably attached to him. His manners are simple; he does not appear to be vicious in any respect, and he has a great thirst for knowledge.”

“In his simple manner of expressing himself, he says, ‘The people in Owhyhee very bad – they pray to gods made of wood. Poor Indians don’t know nothing.’”

“He says, ‘Me want to learn to read this Bible, and go back then, and tell them to pray to God up in heaven.’ (Not having a place to stay,) I told him he need not be concerned; I would find a place for him. …”

“I told him he might go home with me, and live at my father’s, and have whatever he wanted. He then came with me to my room. I heard him read his lesson, and attempted to instruct him in some of the first principles of Christianity, of which he was almost entirely ignorant. …”

“I told him further, that as my father was one of the Missionary Trustees, he would no doubt obtain for him a support, if it was thought best to educate him, which is my intention to attempt so far as that he may be able to instruct his countrymen, and, by God’s blessing, convert them to Christianity. To this he could hardly object. …”

“He had been talking with the President of the College, and I told him I would see him on the subject … (and I) related to him a part of my plan, which was that Obookiah should go with me to my father’s, and live with him this winter …”

“… and be instructed in the first principles of reading and writing, as well as of Christianity, where he would be abundantly furnished with the means of acquiring both. …”

“The President came fully into the opinion that this was the most eligible course which could be pursued, if Obookiah was willing to go. Obookiah is his Indian name, and he is seventeen years old, I told him he would be glad to go; he was without a home – without a place to eat, or sleep.”

“The poor and almost friendless Owhyean would sit down disconsolate, and the honest tears would flow freely down his sunburn face; but since this plan has been fixed upon, he has appeared cheerful, and feels quite at ease.”

“I propose to leave town in two weeks, with this native of the South to accompany me to Torringford, where I intend to place him under the care of those whose benevolence is without a bond to check, or a limit to confine it. Here I intend he shall stay until next spring, if he is contented. Thus, you see, he is likely to be firmly fixed by my side.”

“What does this mean? Brother Hall, do you understand it? Shall he be sent back unsupported, to attempt to reclaim his countrymen?”

“Shall we not rather consider these southern islands a proper place for the establishment of a mission?”

“Not that I would give up the heathen tribes of the west. I trust we shall be able to establish more than one mission in a short time, at least in a few years; and that God will enable us to extend our views and labours further than we have before contemplated.”

“We ought not to look merely to the heathen on our own continent, but to direct our attention where we may, to human appearance, do the most good, and where the difficulties are the least. We are to look to the climate – established prejudices – the acquisition of language – the means of subsistence, &c. &c.”

“All these things, I apprehend, are to be considered. The field is almost boundless; in every part of which, there ought to be Missionaries.”

“In the language of an animated writer, but I must say, ‘he is of another country – O that we could enter at a thousand gates, that every limb were a tongue, and every tongue a trumpet to spread the Gospel sound!’”

“The men of Macedonia; cry, Come over and help us. This voice is heard from the north and from the south, and from the east, and from the west.”

“O that we might glow with desire to preach the Gospel to the heathen, that is altogether irresistible! The spirit of burning hath gone forth. The camp is in motion. The Levites, we trust, are about to bear the vessels, and the great command is, Go Forward.”

“Let us, my dear brother, rely with the most implicit confidence, on those great, eternal, precious promises contained in the word of God: …”

“‘And Jesus answered and said, verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake and the Gospel’s, but he shall receive an hundred fold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come, eternal life.’”

“Be strong, therefore, and let not your hands be weak, for your work shall be rewarded. ‘Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty; and in thy majesty ride prosperously, because of truth, and meekness, and righteousness; and thy right hand “shall teach thee terrible things.’” Let us exclaim with the poet:

Come then, and added to thy many crowns,
Receive yet one, the crown of all the earth.
Thou who alone art worthy! It was thine
By ancient cov’nant, e’er nature’s birth,
And thou hast made it thine by purchase since,
And overpaid its value with thy blood.”

By 1816, contributions to the ABCFM had declined. There were several reasons including post-War of 1812 recession and the fact that India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) were too remote to hold public interest. (Wagner)

Folks saw a couple options: bring Indian and foreign youth into white communities and teach them there, or go out to them and teach them in their own communities. They chose the former. They formed the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall CT.

The school’s first student was Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia (Obookiah,) a native Hawaiian from the Island of Hawaiʻi who in 1808-1809 (after his parents had been killed) boarded a sailing ship anchored in Kealakekua Bay and sailed to the continent. In its first year, the Foreign Mission School had 12 students, more than half of whom were Hawaiian.

At the beginning of the school’s tenure, ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia was considered a leader of the student body, excelling in his studies, expressing his fondness for and understanding of the importance of the agricultural labor, and qualifying for a full church membership due to his devotion to his new faith.

ʻŌpūkahaʻia was being groomed to be a key figure in a mission to Hawai‘i, to be joined by Samuel Mills Jr. Unfortunately, ʻŌpūkahaʻia died at Cornwall on February 17, 1818, and several months later Mills died at sea off West Africa after surveying lands that became Liberia.

ʻŌpūkahaʻia, inspired by many young men with proven sincerity and religious fervor of the missionary movement, had wanted to spread the word of Christianity back home in Hawaiʻi; his book inspired missionaries to volunteer to carry his message to the Hawaiian Islands.

On October 23, 1819, a group of northeast missionaries, led by Hiram Bingham, set sail on the Thaddeus for the Sandwich Islands (now known as Hawai‘i.) With the missionaries were four Hawaiian students from the Foreign Mission School, Thomas Hopu, William Kanui, John Honoliʻi and Prince Humehume (son of Kauaʻi’s King Kaumuali‘i.)

Over the course of a little over 40-years (1820-1863 – the “Missionary Period”), about 184-men and women in twelve Companies served in Hawaiʻi to carry out the mission of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in the Hawaiian Islands.

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Henry_Opukahaia,_ca. 1810s
Henry_Opukahaia,_ca. 1810s

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First Descriptions of the Islands and the People

“On the 19th (of January, 1778,) at sunrise, the island first seen, bore east several leagues distant. … At this time, we were in some doubt whether or not the land before us was inhabited; but this doubt was soon cleared up, by seeing some canoes coming off from the shore, toward the ships”.

“In the course of my several voyages, I never before met with the natives of any place so much astonished, as these people were, upon entering a ship. Their eyes were continually flying from object to object …”

“… the wildness of their looks and gestures fully expressing their entire ignorance about every thing they saw, and strongly marking to us, that, till now, they had never been visited by Europeans, nor been acquainted with any of our commodities except iron …”

” Of what number this newly-discovered Archipelago consists, must be left for future investigation. We saw five of them, whose names, as given to us by the natives, are Woahoo (O‘ahu,) Atooi (Kauai,) Oneeheow (Ni‘ihau,) Oreehoua (Lehua) and Tahoora (Ka‘ula.)”

“Besides these … which we can distinguish by their names, it appeared, that the inhabitants of those with whom we had intercourse, were acquainted with some other islands both to the eastward and westward. I named the whole group the Sandwich Islands, in honour of the Earl of Sandwich.”

“The inhabitants are of a middling stature, firmly made, with some exceptions, neither remarkable for a beautiful shape, nor for striking features, which rather express an openness and good-nature, than a keen, intelligent disposition.”

“Their visage, especially amongst the women, is sometimes round; but others have it long; nor can we say that they are distinguished, as a nation, by any general cast of countenance.”

“Their colour is nearly of a nut-brown, and it may be difficult to make a nearer comparison, if we take in all the different hues of that colour; but some individuals are darker.”

“They are vigorous, active, and most expert swimmers; leaving their canoes upon the most trifling occasion; diving under them, and swimming to others though at a great distance.”

“It was very common to see women, with infants at the breast, when the surf was so high that they could not land in the canoes, leap overboard, and without endangering their little ones, swim to the shore, through a sea that looked dreadful.”

“They seem to be blest with a frank, cheerful disposition; … They seem to live very sociably in their intercourse with one another; and … they were exceedingly friendly to us.” “(T)hey spoke the language of Otaheite, and of the other islands we had lately visited.”

Men wore a ‘maro’ (malo,) “pieces of cloth tied about the loins, and hanging a considerable way down.” “The only difference in (women’s) dress, was their having a piece of cloth about the body, reaching from near the middle to half-way down the thighs, instead of the maro worn by the other sex.”

“The habitations of the natives were thinly scattered about … (part of Cook’s crew) had an opportunity of observing the method
of living amongst the natives, and it appeared to be decent and cleanly.”

“Though they seem to have adopted the mode of living in villages, there is no appearance of defence, or fortification, near any of them; and the houses are scattered about, without any order, either with respect to their distances from each other, or there position in any particular direction.”

“Their amusements seem pretty various; for, during our stay, several were discovered. The dances … from the motions which they made with their hands, on other occasions, when they sung, we could form some judgment that they are, in some degree at least, similar to those we had met with at the southern Islands”.

“They did not, however, see any instance of the men and women eating together; and the latter seemed generally associated in companies by themselves.”

“They eat off a kind of wooden plates, or trenchers; and the women, as far as we could judge from one instance, if restrained from feeding at the same dish with the men … are at least permitted to eat in the same place near them.”

“It was found, that they burnt here the oily nuts of the doee dooe for lights in the night, … and that they baked their hogs in ovens”.

“They met with a positive proof of the existence of the taboo (or as they pronounce it, the tafoo), for one woman fed another who was under that interdiction.”

“They also observed some other mysterious ceremonies; one of which was performed by a woman, who took a small pig, and threw it into the surf, till it was drowned, and then tied up a bundle of wood, which she also disposed of in the same manner. The same woman, at another time, beat with a stick upon a man’s shoulders, who sat down for that purpose.”

“They have salt, which they call patai; and is produced in salt ponds. With it they cure both fish and pork; and some salt fish, which we got from them, kept very well, and were found to be very good.”

“Fish, and other marine productions were, to appearance, not various; as, besides the small mackerel, we only saw common mullets; a sort of a dead white, or chalky colour; a small, brownish rock-fish, spotted with blue; a turtle, which was penned up in a pond; and three or four sorts of fish salted. The few shellfish that we saw were chiefly converted into ornaments”.

“Of animal food, they can be in no want; as they have abundance of hogs, which run, without restraint, about the houses ; and if they eat dogs, which is not improbable, their stock of these seem to be very considerable. The great number of fishing-hooks found among them, showed, that they derive no inconsiderable supply of animal food from the sea.”

“Judging from what we saw growing, and from what was brought to market, there can be no doubt that the greatest part of their vegetable food consists of sweet potatoes, taro, and plantains; and that bread-fruit and yams are rather to be esteemed rarities.”

“(T)he vale, or moist ground, produces taro, of a much larger size than any we had ever seen; and the higher ground furnishes sweet potatoes, that often weigh ten, and sometimes twelve or fourteen pounds; very few being under two or three.”

(This summary comes entirely from the Journals of Captain Cook, explaining what he saw immediately after contact.)

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View of the Sandwich Islands_Webber-Achorage at Atooi
View of the Sandwich Islands_Webber-Achorage at Atooi