Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
foothold that Chieftess Keopuolani, the first wife of Kamehameha and mother of Kame-
hameha II, climbed to the fire pit atop Kilauea and defied the volcano goddess Pele. This
was even more striking than the previous breaking of the food
kapu
because the strength
of Pele could be seen. Keopuolani ate forbidden
'ohelo
berries and cried out, “Jehovah is
my God.”
The year 1824 also marked the death of Keopuolani, who was given a Christian burial.
She had set the standard by accepting Christianity, and several of the
ali'i
had followed the
queen's lead. Liholiho had sailed off to England, where he and his wife contracted measles
and died. During these years, Ka'ahumanu allied herself with Reverend Richards, pastor of
the first mission in the islands, and together they wrote Hawai'i's first code of laws based
on the Ten Commandments. Foremost was the condemnation of murder, theft, brawling,
and the desecration of the Sabbath by work or play. The early missionaries had the best
of intentions, but they were blinded by the single-mindedness that was also their greatest
ally.
Anything
native was felt to be inferior, and they set about wiping out all traces of the
old ways. In their rampage they reduced the Hawaiian culture to ashes—more so than the
diseases brought in by the whalers.
Whalers
A good share of the common sailors of the early 19th century came from the lowest levels
of the Western world. Many a whoremongering drunkard had awoken from a stupor and
found himself on the pitching deck of a ship, discovering to his dismay that he had been
“pressed into naval service.” These sailors were a filthy, uneducated, lawless rabble. Their
present situation was dim, their future hopeless, and they would live to be 30 if they were
lucky and didn't die from scurvy or a thousand other miserable fates. They snatched brief
pleasure in every port and jumped ship at any opportunity, especially in an easy berth such
as Lahaina. In exchange for
aloha
they gave drunkenness, sloth, and insidious death by
disease. By the 1850s, the population of native Hawaiians had tumbled from the estimated
300,000 reported by Captain Cook in 1778 to barely 60,000. Common conditions such as
colds, flu, venereal disease, and sometimes smallpox and cholera more than decimated the
Hawaiians, who had no natural immunities to these foreign ailments.
Two Worlds Collide
The 1820s were a time of confusion for the Hawaiians. When Kamehameha II died, the
kingdom passed to Kauikeaouli (Kamehameha III), who made his residence in Lahaina.
The young king was only nine years old when the title passed to him. His childhood was
spent during the cusp of the change from old ways to new, and he was often pulled in two
