On Hawaiian Rank. 



SOME years ago, in the spring and summer of 1883, a sharp and bitter controversy 

 arose between the two native Hawaiian newspapers, the Kiiokoa and the Elclc Po- 

 akolii. as to the dii^^iiits and status of the Hawaiian nobiHty in olden time and more 

 especially the rank and ])retensions of two families, of which the Kiiokoa re])resented one, 

 and the lllclc the other. I noted and made memoranda of the controversy for further 

 use, but as the legislative committee on the genealogy of the chiefs had been appointed 

 and was supposed to be actively at work at that time, I looked upon the controversy of 

 the two newspapers as an intrusion, if not an impertinence, and reserved my own opinion 

 on the subject in dispute until said committee shovtld have, in a manner authoritatively, 

 settled and published the rules for determining the ancient degrees of nobility, their num- 

 ber and their relative status with their kajnis or privileges, whether inherent and inalien- 

 able or incidental and changeable. 



At the legislative session of 1884 said committee on the genealogy of the chiefs 

 made a report which no doubt was very valuable for the information it rendered on many 

 subjects, but through some unfortunate oversight it did not touch on the genealogy of 

 the chiefs, and I and the public generally were left in doubt as to the jxisition that the 

 committee would take touching the rank and privileges of the nobility. The committee, 

 however, was continued in its labors by the legislature of 1884, and during these last 

 two years expectation stood on tip-toe among not a few of His Majesty's subjects, whose 

 family records tell them that the blue blood of the Kawelos, the Kakuhihewas, the 

 Kaulaheas, the Kiha-nuis and Keakealanis, is still coursing in their veins as well as in 

 those of their sovereigns, and whose public recognition as such descendants de])ended 

 on the faithful, intelligent and impartial investigation of said genealogy committee. The 

 legislative session of 1886 has closed, but the committee on the genealogy of the chiefs, 

 whatever may have occupied its attention during the last two years, has not spoken on the 

 subject which was especially entrusted to it. 



Unable, therefore, to ascertain from the committee which families, claiming de- 

 scent from the ancient noblesse, it would have recognized as entitled to a page on "The 

 Golden Book" of the Hawaiian (////; and equally uncertain as to the rules, methods or 

 principles the committee might have adopted in order to decide, first, whether a person 

 was a noble at all, secondly, what is or would have been his rank and status under the 

 old regime, before nobles created by the king plus the Constitution filled the seats in 

 the Hawaiian House of Lords formerly, up to 1845 and 6, occupied by native born 

 Hawaiian chiefs. Unable to find this out from the committee, I am obliged to fall back 

 upon my own resources, such as the reading of the ancient legends and chants, and 

 the writings of those Hawaiians who wrote upon the subject some thirty or forty 

 years ago, before the rising generation became smitten with the mania of interpolat- 

 ing history and fabricating genealogies to order. 



(307) 



