Traditional Hawaiian History. 



I HAVE read with a great deal oi interest the efforts made bv varicius writers in the 

 Hawaiian journals to restore and to ]niblish the traditions, histories, songs and sagas, 

 pertaining to the Hawaiian people. They have a value and being far greater than 

 nian\' would at first conceive of, whether historically, ethnologicallv or philologically con- 

 sidered ; and their preservation and critical collation and analvsis are objects well wor- 

 thy of the time and trouble of men of leisure and ability. I have every reason to believe 

 that what has so far been jjublished is but a small ])art of the material that may yet 

 be collected, if ]iro])er inquiries were made. It would be as absurd and incorrect to 

 date Hawaiian history from the time of Cai)tain Cook, as it would be to date English 

 history from the time of the Norman Conquest, while the ])revious national life of 

 the Hawaiian ])eople is laid bare to the critical observer in numerous iiiclcs, kaaos. and 

 iiioolclos, ])reserved and handed down from generation to generation, not by foreign 

 dilettante or men of no standing, but by the most jealous care of chiefs, priests, and 

 bards, indei)endent in their source and preservation, crossing, clashing or confirming 

 each other. Though the historical thread which underruns these traditions is often over- 

 laid \\ilh fables, superstitions and exaggerations, yet I contend that from the very 

 nature of their independent sources they are a most valuable material from which to 

 rehabilitate Hawaiian history for centuries anterior to Capt. Cook. The critical canon 

 which refuses to build Uj) history from tradition, and receives nothing but contemporarv 

 writers or monumental records as evidences of fact, seems to me more nice than wise 

 under certain circumstances. When Niebhur ran his pen through Roman history pre- 

 vious to the sack of the city by the Gauls, it was not on account of the worthlessness of 

 the Roman traditions, for he never had them in their pure and simple archaic form, nor 

 yet a trust-worthy translation of them in either Greek or later Latin, but only such as the 

 prejudice, credulity, ignorance and uncritical manipulation of Troy, Dionysius of Hali- 

 carnassus and others, had made them. And I am fain to believe that had either Nieb- 

 hur or Sir Cornwall Lewis stood face to face with the Roman, Etruscan and Sabinian 

 traditions in their original, unadulterated form, while yet presenting a living impress of 

 their respective peoples, so far from rejecting, they would have turned them to the best 

 account in elucidating the times of which they treated. 



Now as regards Hawaiian traditions, we ha\-e, or may have — if proper and speedy 

 means are taken before the present generation of quinquagenarians becomes extinct, — a 

 number and various series of traditions, genealogies, songs, histories, tales, prayers, rites 

 of worshi]:), land divisions, social and economical rules, agricultural and maritime instruc- 

 tions, all of them in the original language, bearing intrinsic and unmistakable proofs not 

 only of their genuineness and great age, but also of different e])ochs of composition ; and 

 all of them issuing from and attached not to one grand overshadowing dynasty of chiefs 

 to whose vanity, ambition and pretensions they might have been made subservient, — but 



to three, four, sometimes five or more eqvially independent rival dynasties, scanning each 



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