Hawaiian idylls of love and death

The following stories are concerned mainly with incidents bearing on the career of the first sovereign of the Hawaiian archipelago, Kamehameha I, worthily distinguished from his successors as “Kamehameha the Great,” who, born about the year 1736, achieved the unification of the group in 1795, and died in 1819, leaving behind him no one capable of following in his footsteps.

A few words about this notable ruler of a kingdom now no more may not be amiss as introductory to the stories to follow.

Every visitor to Honolulu finds his way in course of time to the splendid square between the Iolani Palace and the Aliiolani Hale. At least, such were the names borne till recent years by the dwelling-place of the sovereign and the meeting-place of the legislators of Hawaii. But times are changed, and names have changed with them. Now more prosaic names have been adopted by more prosaic times.

Changing times, however, can never take away the interest attaching to one prominent object in this square, just in front of the Legislative Buildings. For monarch and legislature, ay, and people, too, may pass away and only bring into greater relief the true greatness of the man whose statue here keeps sentry guard.

It is the statue of the chief who made Hawaii a kingdom, and gave it such cohesion and such stability that as a kingdom it endured for just a century. Here stands Kamehameha I, “the lonely one,” as his name implies, represented by the artist as he might have appeared in life at the head of his army in those heroic days when the chiefs of Hawaii fought “like gods of war dispensing fate.”

We see him here a man of gigantic mould, with furrowed and smileless countenance, as of one who seldom spoke save to command, and who commanded to be obeyed. Spear in hand, feather-helmet on head, and on his shoulders the famous feather cloak which took nine generations of kings to construct—we seem to see before us that “Mars armipotent,” of whom it might be said, as it was said of the Homeric hero:

The statue was modelled after a fine specimen of the Hawaiian race, named Kaopuiki, with whom the writer has several times crossed the channel from Maui to Lanai, but we have authority for the features in the portrait painted by M. Choris, the artist attached to Kotzebue’s expedition in 1816. This is the only authentic picture of Kamehameha in existence, and was painted when he was nearly eighty years old.

Over a hundred and ten years ago, in the year of our era 1795, this man effected what, under the circumstances, seemed a task of insuperable difficulty—the union of the eight islands of the Hawaiian group under one government. What those difficulties were only those who have studied the matter will be able to appreciate. Here it will suffice to say that of his race there was none like him before, there has been none like him since. In all that shadowy time from the dawn of Hawaiian history to the establishment of intercourse with the western world, the time of heroes eight or nine feet high, who wielded spears ten yards long; heroes who fought with gods and received aid from gods, as the Greek warriors at Troy from Minerva and Apollo—heroes like Kiha of the magic conch, like Liloa and Umi and Lono, there was none who accomplished what Kamehameha did by the patient toil and dauntless courage of forty years.

And in all the time since, in spite of that unexampled advance in civilization, which has made of Hawaii a land of telephones, electric light, public schools, universal suffrage and the rest, there has arisen no Hawaiian with one-tenth part of the manhood possessed and used, mainly for good, by this heroic savage.

If the conquests of Kamehameha were inferior in extent to those of Alexander, it was because he had not Alexander’s scope. At any rate, he fought till he had no more worlds to conquer, and what he conquered he kept for himself and his family until the dynasty expired. Like Napoleon (and Kamehameha is often spoken of as the “Napoleon of the Pacific”), he had an unswerving faith in his destiny. Otherwise, he never could have overcome so completely the obstacles in his way.

For, although the uniting of eight small islands into one kingdom may appear to us a slight achievement, as a matter of fact, the task was anything but easy. Each of the islands had its traditions of pre-eminence, and the relations of island with island were marked by furious jealousy and hostility. Intercourse, for many generations, was almost suspended, except for purposes of war. Even a few years ago the natives of the windward and the leeward islands could be distinguished by their language—the Kauai and Oahu people using t and r in the Tahitian dialect, where the natives of Hawaii and Maui used k and l. But the fusion commenced by Kamehameha has progressed so well that the ancient differences of language are nearly as much obliterated as the desire for separate and independent governments.

The consolidation of the kingdoms had been attempted before by able soldiers and statesmen, but had failed. Even the wise and philanthropic Vancouver tried to dissuade Kamehameha from what he believed a Utopian scheme which must result disastrously. Nevertheless, the savage followed his stars and prevailed.

The late king—Kalakaua—an unbiased witness, since he succeeded to the throne as the first of a new line, unconnected with and in a measure hostile to the dynasty of the Kamehamehas—thus passes judgment on his illustrious predecessor:

“Kamehameha was a man of tremendous physical and intellectual strength. In any land, and in any age, he would have been a leader. The impress of his mind remains with his crude and vigorous laws, and wherever he stepped is seen an imperishable track. He was so strong of limb that ordinary men were but children in his grasp, and in council the wisest yielded to his judgment. He seems to have been born a man and to have had no boyhood. He was always sedate and thoughtful, and, from his earliest years, cared for no sport or pastime that was not manly. He had a harsh and rugged face, less given to smiles than frowns, but strongly marked with lines indicative of self-reliance and changeless purpose. He was barbarous, unforgiving and merciless to his enemies, but just, sagacious and considerate in dealing with his subjects. He was more feared than loved or respected; but his strength of arm and force of character well fitted him for the supreme chieftaincy of the group, and he accomplished what no one else could have done in his day.”

This extract does no more than justice to Kamehameha’s powers of body and mind. Indeed it was his intellectual greatness which distinguished him so much from his contemporaries, and which forms his chief claim to the recognition of thoughtful men of all times and races.

He is, in the first place, worthy to be put beside Fabius Maximus for his invincible pertinacity and patience. “Unus homo cunctando restituit rem,” was said of Hannibal’s great conqueror, and of the conqueror of Kalanikapule and la haute noblesse of all Hawaii it might be said with truth that not less by waiting than by fighting did he make for himself a kingdom. There may have been something of the Hawaiian indifference to the flight of time in the patience which enabled Kamehameha to take defeat so easily and to retire so contentedly, like another Cincinnatus, to cultivate his patrimonial fields at Waipio, but there was also without doubt abundant faith in waiting for the fullness of time—a faith the very reverse of common in barbarous or semi-civilized communities.

None knew, like Kamehameha, how to endure defeat so as to make it but a step to a deferred but more complete victory. Had he been a student of history he might well have adopted the words of Admiral Coligni, who said of himself: “In one respect I may claim superiority over Alexander, over Scipio, over Cæsar. They won great battles, it is true. I have lost four great battles; and yet I shew to the enemy a more formidable front than ever.”

Nevertheless, Kamehameha knew when to strike and did strike hard. Like Napoleon, he could hurl all his force at a given point with marvellous celerity and precision, and, once having developed his plan, he suffered no obstacle to prevent its being carried into effect.

In the third place, he had a singular power of knowing the right instruments to employ in his undertakings. Very many great men ruin the work they take in hand, either by undertaking too much personally, or else by employing inefficient and unsuitable instruments. In either case, the work fails to outlive the worker, even if he be not destined to see the ruin himself. It is sometimes said that such and such a successful ruler had the good fortune to be surrounded by such and such a brilliant galaxy of statesmen. The good fortune is in reality the good sense and insight which lead a ruler to select the fit instruments for his purpose.

Kamehameha’s throne had for its pillars of support men who might very well have been his rivals, and among all the notable chiefs of the time none was discarded or neglected, save such men as Kaiana, whose fickleness made him more of a menace than a mainstay. As it was, few kings ever had an abler council—more conspicuous for courage in battle or for wisdom in the arts of government—than that which included men like Kalanimoku, alias William Pitt, Kameeiamoku and Keeaumoku, and the Englishmen—Young and Davis.

Kamehameha, too, lived long enough after he had crushed out all opposition to his rule to show that he understood the art of consolidating as well as that of establishing a monarchy. For twenty-five years he governed Hawaii with steadily increasing skill and enlightenment, piloting the new kingdom through every kind of embroilment with the nations represented in the realm.

Like William the Conqueror, he purposed to govern with good laws what he had won with a cruel sword, and, if he was overstern to repress, he undoubtedly spared the country much misery which a weaker or more lenient policy might have entailed.

Finally, looking at Kamehameha as a man, rather than as a ruler, we need not deny him the title of “Great.” He could be loved as well as feared. He was scrupulously just, even when it came to the condemnation of his own past actions, and perhaps greater than any victory over the rival chiefs was the victory he won over himself when he broke free from the trammels the “fire-water” of the foreigner were fast making for him, and bade his countrymen imitate him and be free.

Enough has been suggested in these introductory remarks to make clear that not only to the antiquary, searching amid the ruins of a perishing people for some faded remnants of romance; not only to the historian, seeking here and there in the archives of nations to glean illustrations of some great historical generalization; not only to the lover of the story of war and adventure; but, above all, to the student of men as men the memory of the first monarch of Hawaii ought to be of sufficient interest not to pass into oblivion.

For heroism is of no one age, and of no one race. It commands the sympathy and respect of all, and it is the writer’s hope that these simple sketches may show, in the story of the first Kamehameha, that touch of Nature which makes the whole world kin, that quality of manhood which obliterates the distinction between white and black, between East and West, between the man of yesterday and the man of to-day.