KUNGL. SV. VET. AKADEMIENS HANDLINGAR. BAND 57. N*:0 4- 147 



The same holds good of the other supposed evidences of European influence, that is to 

 say, they are put forward without suff icient knowledge of ethnological and ethnographical 

 phenomena in other parts of the world. Thus it is incorrect to say that the decorative 

 helmets made of feathers which the chiefs wore on ceremonious occasions, were imitations 

 of »Spanish helmets from the period of discovery, and that they have nothing corresponding 

 to them on other Polynesian islands. 1 Gerland shows that helmet-shaped head-gear was 

 not unusual in Polynesia;- and W. D. Alexander remarks correctly enongh, that the 

 Hawaiian helmets 3 resembled those of the ancient Greeks, but not at all those worn by 

 the Spaniards in the sixteenth centurv. 1 The legends about the Spring of Youth or the 

 Water of Life occur among many peoples in widely seattered parts of the earth: opinions 

 are divided as to whether they could be referred to a common origin; but it is scarcely 

 conceivable that such a legend could have been imported to Hawaii by the Spaniards. 

 The tale of Aina wai-ola a Kane, "the living water of Kane", as given by Fornander, 5 

 exhibits moreover verv substantial differences from the story which was told by the 

 natives in Cuba and which led Juan Ponce de Leon to make the expedition in the course 

 of which Florida was discovered (1512 or 1513). In the latter case it was a spring whose 

 water could transform any one who bathed in it or dränk of it from an old man to a youth ;'• 

 on Hawaii, on the other hand, the beneficent effect of the water consisted in the fact that 

 a dead man who was sprinkled with it came to life again, and that fishes that swam in 

 the spring could not die, even if they were put on the fire. Absolutely meaningless, of 

 course, are such allegations as that "the skill displayed in their martial manoevres, their 

 phalanxes of bristUng spears, their well drawn up lines of battle" 7 would point to European 

 influence, or that the cruciform pavements of the temples indicate acquaintanceslii|» 

 with the symbol of Christianity, especially if there be compared therewith the statement 

 that "no traces of the crucifix have been discovered". 8 Nor is it necessary to waste many 

 words on the analogies that have been pointed out between certain Hawaiian traditions, 



1 Jarves, Op. <it.. p. 55. The hypothesis goes back as far as Cook*s time; Captais King says {A 

 Voyage tu the Pacific Ocean. III. p. 137): "The exact resemblance between this habit and the cloak and helmet 

 formeriv worn by the Spaniards, was too striking not to excite our curiosity to inquire whether there were any 

 probable grounds for supposing it to have been borrowed from them. After exerting every means in our power 

 of obtaining information on this subject, we found that they had no immediate knowledge of any other nation 

 whatever; nor any tradition remaining among them of these islands having been visited before by sucli ships as 

 ours. But, notwithstanding the result of these inquiries, the uncommon form of this habit appears to me a 

 sufficient proof of its European origin: e-pecially when added to another circumstance. that it is a singular 

 deviatiou from the general resemblance in dress, which prevails amongst all the brauches of this tribe, dispersed 

 through the South Sea. We were driven indeed. by this conclusion, to a supposition of the shipwreck of some 

 buccaneer, or Spanish ship, in the neighbourhood of these islands. But when it is recollected that the course 

 of the Spanish trade from Acapulco to the Mauillas is but a few degrees to the southward of the Sandwich 

 Islands, in their passage out. and to the uorthward. on their return, this supposition will not appear in the 

 least improbable.'" 



- Waitz. typ. cit.. VI, p. 416. 



3 See illustrations of them in Cook'- Voyage, Pl. 64: and in Bahnson, Etnografien. I, p. 64. 



4 Papers of the Hawaiian Hist. Soc. No. 1, p. 3. Alexander adds: "Xo trace of Spanish influence on 

 the ancient Hawaiian arts, religion or language has been proved to exist/' 



5 Op. cit., I, p. 78. Cf. Jarves, p. 17. 



6 Petrus Martyr. De Orbe Xovo, Decada II. ch. 10, and Dec. VII, ch. 7. Hekkeka. Historia de las 

 Indias. Dec. I, lib. ix, cap. 12. 



7 Jarves, op. cit.. p. 55. 



8 Jarves, p. 54. 



