Hawaiian History

Arrival of the Missionaries (2)

By Lucy Goodale Thurston

For several days we received calls from the queens and their whole train of attendants, three or four times in a day, and at each time were solicited to hear them read. When the queens were at our house, we sisters were Marys; when they were away, we were Marthas...

April 29. For two days we heard one continued yell of dogs. I visited their prison. Between one and two hundred were thrown in groups on the ground, utterly unable to move, having their forelegs brought over their backs and bound together. Some had burst the bands that confined their mouths, and some had expired. Their piteous moans would excite the compassion of any feeling heart. Natives consider baked dog a great delicacy, too much so in the days of their idolatry ever to allow it to pass the lips of women. They never offer it to foreigners, who hold it in great abhorrence. Once they mischievously attached a pig's head to a dog's body, and thus inveigled a foreigner to partake of it to his great acceptance.

The above-mentioned dogs were collected for the grand feast which is this day made to commemorate the death of Kamehameha I. The king departed from his usual custom and spread a table for his family and ours. There were many thousand people present. The king appeared in a military dress with quite an exhibition of royalty.

Kamamalu, his favorite queen, applied to me for one of my dresses to wear on the occasion; but as it was among the impossibles for her to assume it, the request happily called for neither consent nor denial. She, however, according to court ceremony so arranged a native-cloth pa-u, a yard wide, with ten folds, as to be enveloped round the middle with seventy thicknesses. To array herself in the unwieldy attire, the long cloth was spread out on the ground, where beginning at one end, she laid her body across it, and rolled herself over and over till she had rolled the whole around her.

Two attendants followed her, one bearing up the end of this cumbrous robe of state, and the other waving over her head an elegant nodding fly-brush of beautiful plumes, its long handle completely covered with little tortoise-shell rings of various colors.

Her head was ornamented with a graceful yellow wreath of elegant feathers of great value, from the fact that after a mountain bird been caught in a snare, but just two small feathers of rare beauty, one under each wing, could be obtained from it. A mountain vine, with green leaves, small and lustrous, was the only drapery which went to deck and cover her neck and the upper part of her person.

Thus this noble daughter of nature, at least six feet tall and of comely bulk in proportion, presented herself before the king and the nation, greatly to their admiration. After this presentation was over, her majesty lay down again upon the ground and unrolled the cloth by reversing the process of clothing.

The first time that Mr. Thurston preached before the king through an interpreter was from these words: "I have a message from God unto thee." The king, his family, and suite listened with attention. When prayer was offered, they all knelt before the white man's God.

The king's orders were that none should be taught to read but those of rank, those to whom he gave special permission, and the wives and children of white men. For several months his majesty kept foremost in learning, then the pleasures of the cup caused his books to be quite neglected. Some of the queens were ambitious, and made good progress, but they met with serious interruptions, going from place to place with their intoxicated husband.

The young prince, seven years of age, the successor to the throne, attended to his lessons regularly. Although the king neglected to learn himself, yet he was solicitous to have his little brother apply himself, and threatened chastisement if he neglected his lessons. He told him that he must have learning for his father and mother both, that it would fit him for governing the nation, and make him a wise and good king when old.

The king brought two young men to Mr. Thurston, and said: "Teach these, my favorites, Ii and Kahuhu. It will be the same as teaching me. Through them I shall find out what learning is." To do his part to distinguish and make them respectable scholars, he dressed them in a civilized manner. They daily came forth from the king, entered the presence of their teacher, clad in white, while his majesty and court continued to sit in their girdles. Although thus distinguished from their fellows, in all the beauty and strength of ripening manhood, with what humility they drank in instruction from the lips of their teacher, even as the dry earth drinks in water!

After an absence of some months, the king returned, and called at our dwelling to hear the two young men, his favorites, read. He was delighted with their improvement, and shook Mr. Thurston most cordially by the hand - pressed it between both his own - then kissed it.

For three weeks after going ashore, our house was constantly surrounded, and our doors and windows filled with natives. From sunrise to dark there would be thirty or forty at least, sometimes eighty or a hundred. For the sake of solitude, I one day retired from the house and seated myself beneath a shade. In five minutes I counted seventy companions. In their curiosity they followed the ladies in crowds from place to place, with simplicity peering under bonnets, and feeling articles of dress. It was amusing to see their efforts in running and taking a stand, that so they might have a full view our faces.

As objects of curiosity, the ladies were by far the most prominent. White men had lived and moved among them for a score of years. In our company were the first white women that ever stepped on these shores. It was thus the natives described the ladies: "They are white and have hats with a spout. Their faces are round and far in. Their necks are long. They look well.". . .

We could command only green brushwood, brought two miles on the backs of men, for cooking and heating our one iron, for smoothing all our light, thin, tropical dresses, which had been so abundantly prepared for us. But to such dresses we were limited. Every quart of water was brought to us from two to five miles in large gourd shells, on the shoulders of men.

The natives were too ignorant to wash without superintendence. A new article was sent to be washed at the fountain, but five holes were made in it by being rubbed on sharp lava. We had entered a pathway that made it wisdom to take things as they came - and to take them by the smooth handle.

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