The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume 2 (of 3)

§ 5. Religion, the Gods

Of the native Hawaiian religion, as it existed before the advent of Europeans and the conversion of the people to Christianity, we possess no adequate account. The defect is probably due in great measure to the readiness with which the islanders relinquished their old faith and adopted the new one. The transition seems to have been effected with great ease and comparatively little opposition; hence when the missionaries settled in the islands a few months after the formal abolition of the ancient religion, paganism was already almost a thing of the past, and the Christian teachers were either unable or perhaps unwilling to record in detail the beliefs and rites which they regarded as false and pernicious. Be that as it may, we possess no such comparatively full and accurate records of the old Hawaiian religion, as we possess, for example, of the old pagan religion of the Tongans and the Samoans, who clung much more pertinaciously to the creed of their fathers than their more enlightened or more fickle kinsfolk in the Sandwich Islands. Hence we are obliged to content ourselves with some more or less meagre and fragmentary notices of the ancient Hawaiian system of religious belief and practice. But as the Hawaiians are, or were, pure-blooded Polynesians, we may assume with a fair degree of probability that in its broad lines their religious system conformed to the ordinary Polynesian type.

On this subject Captain King, the colleague and successor of Captain Cook in his last voyage, observes as follows: "The religion of these people resembles, in most of its principal features, that of the Society and Friendly Islands. Their Morais, their Whattas, their idols, their sacrifices, and their sacred songs, all of which they have in common with each other, are convincing proofs that their religious notions are derived from the same source. In the length and number of their ceremonies this branch indeed far exceeds the rest; and though in all these countries there is a certain class of men to whose care the performance of their religious rites is committed, yet we had never met with a regular society of priests, till we discovered the cloisters of Kakooa in Karakakooa Bay [in the island of Hawaii]. The head of this order was called Orono; a title which we imagined to imply something highly sacred, and which, in the person of Omeeah, was honoured almost to adoration… It has been mentioned that the title of Orono, with all its honours, was given to Captain Cook; and it is also certain that they regarded us generally as a race of people superior to themselves; and used often to say that great Eatooa [atuas, spirits] dwelled in our country. The little image, which we have before described as the favourite idol on the Morai in Karakakooa Bay, they called Koonooraekaiee, and said it was Terreeoboo's god, and that he also resided amongst us. There are found an infinite variety of these images both on the Morais, and within and without their houses, to which they give different names; but it soon became obvious to us in how little estimation they were held, from their frequent expressions of contempt of them, and from their even offering them to sale for trifles. At the same time there seldom failed to be some one particular figure in favour, to which, whilst this preference lasted, all their adoration was addressed. This consisted in arraying it in red cloth, beating their drums, and singing hymns before it, laying bunches of red feathers, and different sorts of vegetables, at its feet, and exposing a pig or a dog to rot on the whatta that stood near it. In a bay to the southward of Karakakooa, a party of our gentlemen were conducted to a large house, in which they found the black figure of a man, resting on his fingers and toes, with his head inclined backward, the limbs well formed and exactly proportioned, and the whole beautifully polished. This figure the natives call Maee; and round it were placed thirteen others of rude and distorted shapes, which they said were the Eatooas [spirits] of several deceased chiefs, whose names they recounted. The place was full of whattas, on which lay the remains of their offerings. They likewise give a place in their houses to many ludicrous and some obscene idols, like the Priapus of the ancients."¹⁰⁷⁹

The general Hawaiian name for god was akua, corresponding to the more usual Polynesian form atua.¹⁰⁸⁰ The four principal Hawaiian deities were Ku, Kane, Kanaloa, and Lono.¹⁰⁸¹ Their names are only dialectically different forms of Tu, Tane, Tangaroa or Tagaloa, and Rongo, four of the greatest Polynesian gods.¹⁰⁸² Of these deities it is said that Ku, Kane, and Lono formed the original Hawaiian triad or trinity, who were worshipped as a unity under the name of Ku-kau-akahi, "the one established."¹⁰⁸³ The meaning or essence of the three persons of the trinity is said to be Stability (Ku), Light (Tane), and Sound (Lono).¹⁰⁸⁴ "These gods," we are told, "created the three heavens as their dwelling-place, then the earth, sun, moon, and stars, then, the host of angels and ministers. Kanaloa (Tangaroa), who represented the spirit of evil, was a later introduction into the Hawaiian theology; he it was who led the rebellion of spirits, although Milu is in other traditions credited with this bad pre-eminence."¹⁰⁸⁵ We read that when the trinity were at work on the task of creating the first man, the bad spirit Kanaloa, out of rivalry, also made an image, but he could not endow it with life. So, in a rage, he cried to Kane, "I will take your man, he shall die!" And that, it is said, was the origin of death. The reason why the spirits, under the leadership of Kanaloa, rebelled was that they had been denied the sacrifice of kava. For their rebellion they were thrust down to the lowest depth of Darkness or Night (Po).¹⁰⁸⁶

A fuller account of these momentous transactions presents a close, perhaps a suspicious, resemblance to the Biblical narrative of the same events. It runs as follows:

"According to ancient Hawaiian traditions, there existed in the chaos three mighty gods, Kane, Ku, and Lono. By their common action light was brought into the chaos. Then the gods created three heavenly spheres, in which they dwelt, and last of all the earth, sun, moon, and stars. Out of their spittle they thereupon created a host of angels, who had to render service to the three original deities. Last of all came the creation of man. His body was fashioned out of red earth, and his head out of white clay, and Kane, the highest of the gods, breathed into this Hawaiian Adam the breath of life. Out of one of his ribs the Hawaiian Eve was created. The newly formed pair, by name Kumuhonua and Keolakuhonua, were placed in a beautiful paradise called Paliuli, which was watered by the three rivers of life, and planted with many fine trees, among them the sacred bread-fruit tree. The mightiest of the angels, Kanaloa, the Hawaiian Lucifer, desired that the newly created human pair should worship him, which was forbidden by God the Father, Kane. After vain attempts to create a new man devoted to himself, Kanaloa, out of desire for vengeance, resolved to ruin the first human pair created by the gods. In the likeness of a great lizard he crept into Paradise and seduced the two inhabitants of the same into committing sin, whereupon they were driven out of Paradise by a powerful bird sent by Kane. Then follow, as in the Bible, the legends of the Hawaiian Cain (Laka) and the Hawaiian Noah (Nuu), by whom the ancestors of the Hawaiian people are said to have been saved from the universal flood."¹⁰⁸⁷ The story of the creation of the first woman out of a rib of the first man appears to have been widespread in Polynesia, for it is reported also from Tahiti,¹⁰⁸⁸ Fakaofo or Bowditch Island,¹⁰⁸⁹ and New Zealand.¹⁰⁹⁰

Of the three persons in the Hawaiian trinity, Kane (Tane) is said to have been the principal. He was especially associated with light; in a fragment of an ancient liturgy he is called Heaven-father (Lani-makua) and in a very ancient chant he is identified with the Creator. When after the great flood the Hawaiian Noah, who is called Nuu, left his vessel, he offered up sacrifice to the moon, saying, "You are doubtless a transformation of Tane." But the deity was angry at this worship of a material object; nevertheless, when Nuu expressed his contrition, the rainbow was left as a pledge of forgiveness.¹⁰⁹¹

According to one account, the two great gods Kane and Kanaloa were twins. In Hawaii twins are regarded as superior to ordinary mortals both in mind and body; hence it was natural to conceive of a pair of divine twins, like the Dioscuri in Greek mythology. And, like the Dioscuri, the divine Hawaiian twins sometimes appeared together to their worshippers as helpers in time of need. Thus, in a season of dearth, when people were dying of hunger, a poor fisher lad in the island of Lanai set up a tiny hut on the sea-shore, and there day by day he offered a little from the scanty store of fish which his family had caught; and as he did so he prayed, saying, "Here, O god, is fish for thee." One day, as he sat there, racked with unsatisfied yearning for the divine assistance, two men came walking that way and rested at the hut; and, taking them to be weary wanderers, the fisher lad willingly gave them what little food he had left over. They slept there that night, and next day, when they were departing, they revealed themselves to him as the two gods Kane and Kanaloa, and they told him that his prayer had been heard, and that salvation would follow. Sure enough, plenty soon returned to the land, and on the spot where the little hut had stood, a stone temple was built in stately terraces.¹⁰⁹² Again, we hear how when drought had lasted long in the island of Oahu, and death stared the farmers in the face for lack of water, the gods Kane and Kanaloa appeared in the likeness of two young men and showed them a spring, which was afterwards consecrated to the divine twins.¹⁰⁹³ Once more, it is said that, when the two deities were in Oahu, it chanced that they could find no water with which to moisten their dry food. Then at Kane's direction Kanaloa struck a stone with his spear, and from the stone there sprang a fountain, which bears the name of Kane to this day, and still it rises and sinks on the day of the moon which is sacred to that divinity.¹⁰⁹⁴

The god Lono was, as we have seen, no other than the great Polynesian deity Rongo, the two names being the same word in dialectically different forms. He was one of the most popular gods of Hawaii;¹⁰⁹⁵ the seasons and other natural phenomena were associated with him, and prayers for rain were particularly addressed to him.¹⁰⁹⁶ According to one account, he was an uncreated, self-existent deity;¹⁰⁹⁷ but according to another account he was an ancient king of Hawaii, who rashly killed his wife on a suspicion of infidelity, and then, full of remorse, carried her lifeless body to a temple and made a great wail over it. Thereafter he travelled through Hawaii in a state of frenzy, boxing and wrestling with every one whom he met. The people in astonishment said, "Is Lono entirely mad?" He replied, "I am frantic with my great love." Having instituted games to commemorate his wife's death, he embarked in a triangular canoe for a foreign land. Before he departed, he prophesied, saying, "I will return in after times, on an island bearing coco-nut trees, swine, and dogs." After his departure he was deified by his countrymen, and annual games of boxing and wrestling were instituted in his honour.¹⁰⁹⁸ When Captain Cook arrived in Hawaii, the natives took him to be their god Lono returned according to his prophecy. The priests threw a sacred red mantle on his shoulders and did him reverence, prostrating themselves before him; they pronounced long discourses with extreme volubility, by way of prayer and worship. They offered him pigs and food and clothes, and everything that they offered to the gods. When he landed, most of the inhabitants fled before him, full of fear, and those who remained prostrated themselves in adoration. They led him to a temple, and there they worshipped him. But afterwards in a brawl, when they saw his blood flowing and heard his groans, they said, "No, this is not Rono," and one of them struck him, so that he died. But even after his death, some of them still thought that he was Rono, and that he would come again. So they looked on some of his bones, to wit his ribs and his breastbone, as sacred; they put them in a little basket covered all over with red feathers, and they deposited it in a temple dedicated to Rono. There religious homage was paid to the bones, and thence they were carried every year in procession to several other temples, or borne by the priests round the island, to collect the offerings of the faithful for the support of the worship of the god Rono.¹⁰⁹⁹

The great Polynesian god or hero Maui was known in Hawaii, where the stories told of him resembled those current in other parts of the Pacific. He is said to have dragged up the islands on his fishing-hook from the depths of the ocean, and to have brought men their first fire.¹¹⁰⁰ One day, when his wife was making bark-cloth and had not time to finish it before night, Maui laid his hand on the sun and prevented it from going down till the work was completed.¹¹⁰¹

The national war-god of Hawaii was named Tairi (Kaili). In the evening he used to be seen flitting about near his temple in the form of a sort of luminous vapour, like a flame or the tail of a comet. A similar appearance is also occasionally seen in the Society Islands, where the terrified natives formerly identified it with their god Tane, and supposed that the meteor was the deity flying from temple to temple or seeking whom he might destroy.¹¹⁰² The image of the war-god Tairi used to be carried to battle by the priest, who held it aloft above the ranks. It was four or five feet high; the upper part was of wicker-work, covered with red feathers; the face grinned hideously; the mouth displayed triple rows of dog's or shark's teeth; the eyes gleamed with mother of pearl; and the head was crowned with a helmet crested with long tresses of human hair. In the battle the priest used to distort his face into a variety of frightful grimaces and to utter appalling yells, which were supposed to proceed from the god whom he bore or attended. But the national war-god was not the only deity whose image was borne to battle. Other chiefs of rank had their war-gods carried near them by their priests; and if the king or chief was killed or taken, the god himself was usually captured also. The presence of their deities inspired the warriors with courage; for they imagined the divine influence to be essential to victory.¹¹⁰³ The diviners were consulted immediately before a battle. They slew the victims, and noticed the face of the heavens, the passage of clouds over the sun, and the appearance of a rainbow. If the omens were favourable, the image of the principal war-god was brought out in front of the whole army and placed near the king. The priest then prayed to the gods, beseeching them to prove themselves stronger than the gods of the enemy in the ensuing engagement, and promising them hecatombs of victims in the event of victory. The bodies of foes slain in the battle were dragged to the king or priest, who offered them as victims to his gods.¹¹⁰⁴

The gods of Hawaii fell into two classes, according as they were believed to have been primaeval deities born of Night (Po), or the souls of men who had been deified after death. For it was believed to be possible to detain the soul of a beloved or honoured person at death by keeping his clothes or his bones; and the soul could thereafter be invoked and could speak through the mouth of the person into whom it had entered. Both classes of deities, the primaeval and the human, were credited with the power of making people ill.¹¹⁰⁵ One way of obtaining a guardian deity for a family was to take the body of a still-born child and throw it into the sea or bury it in the earth; in the former case the embryo was supposed to turn into a shark, in the latter case into a grasshopper. When it was deemed necessary to obtain the help of a deity (akua) for a special purpose, such as success in fishing or in canoe-building, the divine spirit could be conjured into an image (kii), and could thereafter appear in a dream to his worshipper and reveal to him what food he desired to have dedicated to him, and what accordingly the worshipper must abstain from eating. Often the god showed himself to the dreamer in the shape of a stone or other object; and on awakening the man was bound to procure the object, whatever it was, and to honour it with prayer and sacrifice, in order to ensure the protection of the deity. Prayers addressed to private gods were usually the property of the owner, who was commonly also their author; whereas prayers addressed to a public god, such as Kane, had to be learned from a priest or other adept.¹¹⁰⁶

Among the deities who had once been men would seem to have been the god of medicine, the Hawaiian Aesculapius. It is said that many generations ago a certain man named Koreamoku received all medicinal herbs from the gods, who also taught him the use of them. After his death he was deified, and a wooden image of him was placed in a large temple at Kairua, to which offerings of hogs, fish, and coco-nuts were frequently presented. Oronopuha and Makanuiairomo, two friends and disciples of Koreamoku, continued to practise the healing art after the death of their master, and they too were deified after death, particularly because they were often successful in driving away the evil spirits which afflicted the people and threatened them with death. To these deified men the priests addressed their prayers when they administered medicine to the sick.¹¹⁰⁷

Of all the deities of Hawaii the most dreaded was Pele, the goddess of the volcanic fire, whose home was in the great and ever active volcano of Kilauea. There she dwelt with the other members of her family, brothers and sisters. They were all said to have come to Hawaii from a foreign country called Tahiti after the great deluge had subsided. The cones which rise like islands from the vast sea of boiling lava, vomiting columns of smoke or pyramids of flame, were the houses where these volcanic deities lived and amused themselves by playing at draughts: the crackling of the flames and the roaring of the furnaces were the music of their dance; and the red flaming surge was the surf wherein they sported, swimming on the rolling fiery waves.¹¹⁰⁸ The filaments of volcanic glass, of a dark olive colour and as fine as human hair, some straight, some crimped or frizzled, which are to be seen abundantly on the sides of the crater, and on the plain for miles round, are called by the natives "Pele's hair"; in some places they lie so thick as to resemble cobwebs covering the surface of the ground.¹¹⁰⁹ Near the crater grow bushes bearing clusters of red and yellow berries resembling large currants; of these the natives formerly would never eat till they had thrown some of the clusters into the thickest of the smoke and vapour as an offering to the goddess of the volcano.¹¹¹⁰ Vast numbers of hogs, some alive, others cooked, used to be cast into the craters when they were in action or when they threatened an eruption; and when they boiled over, the animals were flung into the rolling torrent of lava to appease the gods and arrest the progress of the fiery stream. For the whole island had to pay tribute to the gods of the volcano and to furnish provisions for the support of their ministers; and whenever the chiefs or people failed to send the proper offerings or incurred the displeasure of the dreadful beings by insulting them or their ministers, or by breaking the taboos which had to be observed in the vicinity of the craters, the angry deities would spout lava from the mountain or march by subterranean passages to the abode of the culprits and overwhelm them under a flood of molten matter. And if the fishermen did not offer them enough fish, they would rush down, kill the fish with fire, and, filling up the shoals, destroy the fishing-grounds entirely.¹¹¹¹ People who passed by the volcano of Kilauea often presented locks of hair to Pele by throwing them into the crater with an appropriate address to the deity.¹¹¹² On one occasion, when a river of lava threatened destruction to the people of the neighbourhood, and the sacrifice of many hogs, cast alive into the stream, had not availed to stay its devastating course, King Kamehameha cut off some of his own sacred locks and threw them into the torrent, with the result that in a day or two the lava ceased to flow.¹¹¹³ In the pleasant and verdant valley of Kaua there used to be a temple of the goddess, where the inhabitants of Hamakua, a district of Hawaii, formerly celebrated an annual festival designed to propitiate the dread divinity and to secure their country from earthquakes and floods of lava. On such occasions large offerings of hogs, dogs, and fruit were made, and the priests performed certain rites.¹¹¹⁴ Worshippers of Pele also threw some of the bones of their dead into the volcano, in the belief that the spirits of the deceased would then be admitted to the society of the volcanic deities, and that their influence would preserve the survivors from the ravages of volcanic fire.¹¹¹⁵ Nevertheless the apprehensions uniformly entertained by the natives of the fearful consequences of Pele's anger prevented them from paying very frequent visits to the vicinity of the volcano; and when on their inland journeys they had occasion to approach the mountain, they were scrupulously attentive to every injunction of her priests, and regarded with a degree of superstitious veneration and awe the appalling spectacle which the crater, with its sea of molten and flaming lava, presented to their eyes.¹¹¹⁶ They even requested strangers not to dig or scratch the sand in its neighbourhood for fear of displeasing the goddess and provoking her to manifest her displeasure by an eruption.¹¹¹⁷

The service of Pele was regularly cared for by an hereditary steward (kahu) and an hereditary priestess. The duty of the steward was to provide the materials for the public sacrifices, including the food and raiment for the goddess; it was for him to furnish the hogs and fowls, to cultivate the taro, sweet potatoes, and sugar-cane which were to serve her for nourishment, to tend the plants from which her garments were to be made, and to have all things in readiness for the offerings at the appointed seasons. Of the plantations sacred to this use, one was on the sea-shore, and another in the broken ground within the precincts of the crater; and the steward with his family resided sometimes in the one place and sometimes in the other. When the time came for offering the sacrifice, the priestess descended into the depths of the volcano, and there approaching as near as possible to the spot where the fire burned most furiously, she cast into it her gifts, saying, "Here, Pele, is food for you, and here is cloth," whereby she mentioned each article as she flung it into the flames.¹¹¹⁸ Sometimes the priestess claimed to be inspired by Pele and even to be the goddess in person. One of the priestesses, in an interview with the missionary William Ellis, assumed a haughty air and declared, "I am Pele; I shall never die; and those who follow me, when they die, if part of their bones be taken to Kilauea, will live with me in the bright fires there." In a song she gave a long account of the deeds and honours of the goddess, who, she said, dwelt in the volcano and had come in former times from the land beyond the sky. This song she chanted or recited in a rapid and vociferous manner, accompanied by extravagant gestures, working herself up to a state of excitement in which she appeared to lose all self-command. She also claimed to be able to heal the sick through the indwelling spirit of the goddess.¹¹¹⁹ But the goddess was served also by priests. We read of one such who offered prayers to her and assured the people that thereafter she would do them no harm.¹¹²⁰

The Hawaiians also paid religious reverence to certain birds, fish, and animals. In a village Captain King saw two tame ravens which the people told him were eatooas (atuas, akuas), that is, gods or spirits, cautioning him at the same time not to hurt or offend them.¹¹²¹ The native authors of a work on the history of Hawaii, speaking of the ancient religion of their people, tell us that "birds served some as idols; if it was a fowl, the fowl was taboo for the worshippers, and the same for all the birds which were deified. The idol of another was a four-footed animal, and if it was a pig, the pig was taboo for him. So with all the animals who became gods. Another had a stone for his idol; it became taboo, and he could not sit upon the stone. The idol of another was a fish, and if it was a shark, the shark was taboo for him. So with all the fish, and so they deified all things in earth and heaven, and all the bones of men."¹¹²² Further, the same writers observe that "the trees were idols for the people and for the chiefs. If a man had for his idol the ohia tree, the ohia was taboo for him; if the bread-fruit tree was the idol of another, the bread-fruit tree was taboo for him. The taboo existed likewise for all the trees out of which men had made divine images, and it was the same also for food. If taro was a person's idol, taro was taboo for him. It was the same for all the eatables of which they had made gods."¹¹²³ This deification of birds, fish, animals, plants, and inanimate objects resembles the Samoan system and may, like it, be a relic of totemism.¹¹²⁴ Among the living creatures to which they thus accorded divine honours were lizards, rats, and owls.¹¹²⁵

Among the deified fishes it would seem that the shark held a foremost place. On almost every cape jutting out into the sea, a temple used to be built for the worship of the shark. The first fish of each kind, taken by the fishermen, were always carried to the temple and offered to the god, who was supposed to have driven them towards the shore.¹¹²⁶ When the king or the priests imagined that the shark wanted food, they sallied forth with their attendants, one of whom carried a rope with a running noose. On coming to a group or crowd of people, they threw the rope among them, and whoever happened to be taken in the snare, whether man, woman, or child, was strangled on the spot, the body cut in pieces, and flung into the sea, to be bolted by the ravenous monsters.¹¹²⁷ Fishermen sometimes wrapped their dead in red native cloth, and threw them into the sea to be devoured by the sharks. They thought that the soul of the deceased would animate the shark which had eaten his body, and that the sharks would therefore spare the survivors in the event of a mishap at sea.¹¹²⁸ It was especially stillborn children that were thus disposed of. The worshipper of the shark would lay the body of the infant on a mat, and having placed beside it two roots of taro, one of kava, and a piece of sugar-cane, he would recite some prayers, and then throw the whole bundle into the sea, fully persuaded that by means of this offering the transmigration of the soul of the child into the body of a shark would be effected, and that thenceforth the formidable monster would be ready to spare such members of the family as might afterwards be exposed to his attack. In the temples dedicated to sharks there were priests who, at sunrise and sunset, addressed their prayers to the image which represented the shark; and they rubbed themselves constantly with water and salt, which, drying on their skin, made it appear covered with scales. They also dressed in red cloth, uttered piercing yells, and leaped over the wall of the sacred enclosure; moreover they persuaded the islanders that they knew the exact moment when the children that had been thrown into the sea were transformed into sharks, and for this discovery they were rewarded by the happy parents with liberal presents of little pigs, roots of kava, coco-nuts, and so forth.¹¹²⁹ The priests also professed to be inspired by sharks and in that condition to foretell future events. Many people accepted these professions in good faith and contributed to support the professors by their offerings.¹¹³⁰

From the foregoing account it appears that some at least of the worshipful sharks were supposed to be animated by the souls of the dead. Whether the worship of other sacred animals in Hawaii was in like manner combined with a theory of transmigration, there seems to be no evidence to decide. We have seen that a similar doubt rests on the worship of animals in Tonga.¹¹³¹