The best of food was reserved for the nobles. Their houses, bathing places, and domestic utensils, were tabu from vulgar use. They even used a language or courtly dialect unintelligible to their subjects. Their deportment was based upon the innate consciousness of mental superiority and long inherited authority. Rank was derived from the mother as the only certain fountain of ancestry. In size and dignity of personal carriage they were conspicuous from the crowd. In short, the difference was so marked in Hawaii between the chief and his serf, as to suggest to a superficial observer the idea of two distinct races. Hospitality was a common virtue. There was no beggary, as there was no need of begging, for the simple wants of the natives were easily supplied. The poorest man never refused food to his worst enemy, should he enter his house and demand it. Indeed so freely were presents made, that the absolute law of “meum and tuum,” as it exists among commercial races, with its progeny of judges and gaols, locks and fetters, had with them scarcely a defined meaning. Where there was so much trust and generosity, any violation of them met with prompt and severe retribution. Theft was visited upon the offender by the injured party, even if the weaker, by the seizure of every movable article belonging to him. In this wild justice they were sustained by the whole population. If the property of a high chief suffered, the thief was sometimes placed in an old canoe, bound hand and foot, and set adrift upon the ocean.
[78]
Kiana’s people were wealthy in their simple way. His reign was the golden age of Hawaii. This was owing mainly to his own character, which took delight in the happiness and prosperity of his subjects. No lands were so well cultivated as his. No rents were more ample or more cheerfully paid. His people had easy access to him. In their labors as in their sports he often mingled. If at times he was hasty or severe, it was owing rather to the quickened indignation of offended justice than to selfish passion.
A very striking reform in the rites if not in the principles of their religion had been peacefully brought about by him. In general, the savage mind is more influenced by fear than by love; that is, it seeks by worship to avoid harm from natural objects, which from ignorance of their laws he considers to be evil spirits, rather than to do homage to those whose direct beneficence is readily recognized. But Kiana, like Manco Capac with the Peruvians, taught them a less slavish ritual. Instead of sacrifices of animals to deities whose attributes solely inspired dread, he led them to rejoice in the bounteous seasons, the vivifying sun, the winds that refreshed their bodies, and the clouds that watered their thirsty soil. He taught them that the waters that bore them so pleasantly from island to island, were much more to be regarded lovingly, than the devouring shark with superstitious fear. Thus without fully, or perhaps in any degree recognizing the principles of the One God, the people were led more into harmony with those of his[79] works, which were suggestive of good and kind attributes, which they symbolized in idols, to which they offered chiefly the fruits of the earth. They were indeed idolaters, because their minds seldom, if ever, separated the image from the ideas, but it was an idolatry that made them cheerful and truthful, and not gloomy and cruel.
Contented under their government, reposing on their religion, these islanders presented a picture of happiness, which, if we consider only the peaceful, joyous flow of the material life, we might well envy. They had no money to beget avarice, or to excite to the rivalries and dishonesties of trade. There were no more prosperous territories and bounteous soils for them............