The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1929, Page 4

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4 THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

hibition on the part of the priests laid upon the
use of certain words and things or the performance
of certain actions by the common people. The vio-
lation of the tabu was punished with death. Thus
the temples, idols, and persons of the king and
great chiefs were always tabu and dare not be
touched. <Any place or any object could be made
tabu by a sign or mark or proclamation. Of course,
the best lands, fishing-places, and hunting-grounds
were declared tabu by the chiefs and priests. Now
and then a whole season was declared tabu. During
such a season the people cowered for fear.
a season was a time of fasting and rest from labor
and all amusement. Silence and dread reigned
everywhere. Thus the chiefs and priests sought to
retain their hold on the people by excluding them
from the enjoyment of privileges they wished to
enjoy alone. In turn, the men among the common
people found the tabu a fine instrument to use to
keep the women in subjection. Girls from child-
hood were trained to look up to the men as their
lords and to regard bananas, cocoanuts, pork, and
turtle as poisonous to them. No matter how highly
connected a woman might be by birth, she could
not eat in the presence of men. The lowliest man
was her superior. What a relief it must have been
to all when Christianity came to free them from
the irksome. restraint of tabu and all the super-
stitious ideas and customs connected with it!

The White Man Comes to Hawaii.

Already in the sixteenth century the Spaniards
visited the Hawaiian Islands; but when Captain
Cook came in 1778, the natives had lost all memory
of the earlier visit and were ready to regard the
men who had come to them in their white-winged
ships as gods. They loaded Cook and his men down
with gifts and entertained them for a hundred days.
It is claimed that the presents given to the visitors
were well worth the sum of a million dollars! But
Cook and his men shamefully abused the hospitality
of their kind hosts and violated almost every law
of God and man. The shameful exactions of Cook
and the brutality of his men gradually led the
Hawaiians to see that their visitors were more like
devils than gods, and when finally Cook tried to
kidnap their king, they up and killed him.

The visit of a certain American Captain Met-
calf brought no credit to our country. The natives
sought to revenge themselves by destroying all the
crew of one of Metcalf’s boats except two sailors,
Davis and Young. This was at the time when
Kamehameha was living and had succeeded in

Such:

uniting almost all the islands into one state. This
man had risen from a petty chief to the position of
a king by sheer force of character and courage.
Kamehameha I soon made Young and Davis his
counselors. They taught the king the laws and
customs of our country and led him in the ways of
humanity and justice. This great native king died
in 1819, a short time before the first Christian
missionaries arrived on the islands.

Not enough credit can be given to these two
American sailors for not sinking to the level of the
uncivilized people about them, but rather doing
their utmost to raise these to a higher level of
civilization. Young especially used all his influ-
ence in opposing idolatry, tabu, and the immoral
lives of the people. He told the king of Chris-
tianity, and’ what Kamehameha heard from Young
and what he heard concerning the change the Chris-
tian religion had brought about in Tahiti led him
to examine into the new faith. When he died, con-
ditions had gradually and imperceptibly so shaped
themselves, as a result of many circumstances and
various influences, that not a few were ready to
cast off the old chains of custom and superstition
that had so long enslaved them.

Upon the occasion of Kamehameha’s death his
three wives decided that they would seize the op-
portunity offered them at the orgies attending his
death to break away from the custom of tabu by
eating with the men and eating food forbidden
women. The new king Liholiho’s mother, Keopu-
olani, ate in public with the king’s younger brother,
and Kaahumanu, who had been the late king’s favo-
rite wife, induced the new king to eat in public
with the women of his family. When the people
saw that no evil followed, they exultantly shouted,
“The tabu is broken!” “The idols are a lie!”
The head priest himself set fire to the heathen
temples and led the way in the destruction of the
hideous idols they had worshiped.

These actions led an idolatrous party to raise
the standard of rebellion against the new king
because of the encouragement he had given to the
violation of the law of tabu. However, when these
defenders of the old customs were defeated in
battle and their leader was slain, they vented their
tage upon the idols who had failed to stand by

them, destroying their images and demolishing

their temples.

Just while all this was occurring in the islands,
God was getting His messengers ready to bring to

the Hawaiians His Word of Light and Life.