KAPIOLANI AND THE GODDESS OF THE VOLCANO
Opukahaia at the gates of Yale—The expedition to Hawaii—Titus Coan—New Acts of the Apostles—An adventurous tour—Kapiolani—The march to the volcano—The pythoness of Pele—On the floor of the crater—The challenge to the fire-goddess—Sudden fall of the Hawaiian Dagons.
ONE morning in the second decade of the nineteenth century, as some Yale students passed up the college steps on their way to their class-rooms, they found sitting at the entrance door a dark-skinned lad who was crying silently. When they asked who he was and what was wrong, he told them in his broken English a story at once strange and sad.
He was a native of the Hawaiian Islands. In one of the constant and barbarous inter-tribal fights his home had been destroyed by the victors and his father and mother cut down before his eyes. Taking his infant brother on his back, he had tried to escape, but was soon noticed, pursued, and overtaken. A ruthless spear was thrust through the body of the child he bore, while he himself was seized and dragged away into slavery.
He had gained his liberty by hiding himself on board an American ship which had called at Hawaii and was homeward bound for New Haven, in Connecticut. On the long voyage round Cape Horn he was treated kindly enough, but when the vessel reached its destination he was of no use to any one, and was turned adrift to follow his own devices.
Unlike Neesima of Japan, of whom at some points his story reminds us, Opukahaia, for that was the name of this Hawaiian lad, had no Mr. Hardy waiting for him in the strange port. But as he roamed about the town, wondering what was to become of him, he came to Yale College, and saw the bands of students passing in and out. In the few words of English which he had picked up from the sailors he asked a passer-by what that great building was, and why those young men kept coming and going. He was told that this was a school of learning, and that those who entered its walls did so that wise men might teach them all that it was best to know.
Now though a Pacific islander and half a savage, Opukahaia had that same thirst for knowledge which delighted Dr. Samuel Johnson so greatly when he discovered it one day in a young waterman who was rowing him across the Thames, and which frequently appears in persons who would hardly be suspected of having any intellectual tastes at all. In this youth from Hawaii, with his dark skin and restless eyes and broken speech, there burned an eager longing to know much more than he did, and especially to learn the secret of the white man's wisdom. It seemed natural to him to turn his feet towards the College, since there, it seemed, the fountain of truth and knowledge was to be found.
But when he climbed the steps and reached the portal his heart had failed him utterly; and that was why the students found him crouching there that morning with the tears rolling down his cheeks.
His questioners were half-amused by this curious tale. But there were kind men among them, and many kind and Christian hearts among the good folk of the old Puritan town. An interest was awakened in Opukahaia, which led to his being provided for, and taught not only something of the wisdom of the white men, but the great saving truths of the Christian faith.
After some years had passed, Opukahaia felt that he must go back to his own islands and tell his people the good news that he had learned himself. But meanwhile the romantic story of this Hawaiian youth had become widely known, and an interest in him and his country had grown up among the American Churches. The American Board of Foreign Missions took up the matter, and decided to begin missionary work in the Hawaiian Islands. The scheme was entered into with a great deal of popular enthusiasm. And when at length in 1820 the pioneers set sail on their long voyage round the South American continent, the party included no fewer than seventeen persons besides Opukahaia himself.
In a very real sense Opukahaia may be looked upon as the founder of the American mission in Hawaii. If lie had not sat weeping some years before on the doorstep of Yale College, that band of missionaries would never have sailed in the Thaddeus for those far-off heathen islands. But here his share in the enterprise conies to an end. He was not destined to carry the Gospel to his countrymen. The harsh New England winters had been too much for one born amidst the soft, warm breezes of the Pacific Ocean. He died of a decline, and it was left to others to carry out that idea, which his mind had been the first to conceive, of giving to the Hawaiian people the blessings of a Christian civilization.
Beginning so romantically, the story of this American expedition grew even more romantic as time went on. Perhaps there has never been in the whole history of Protestant missions another record of such rapid and wholesale transformation of a degraded heathen race as took place in connection with this enterprise which had been inspired by the strange vision of a Sandwich Islander knocking at the gates of a Christian college. The Rev. Titus Coan, for example, one of the leading figures of that stirring period, baptized more than 1700 persons on a single Sunday, and in one year received considerably more than 5000 men and women into the full communion of the Church. Persons who up to the time of their conversion had lived the lawless life of the savage-robbers, murderers, drunkards, the former high priests of a cruel idolatry, "their hands but recently washed from the blood of human victims"—all assembled together in Christian peace and love to partake of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. As Dr. A. T. Pierson remarks in his New Acts of the Apostles, the transforming energies which swept through the islands in the early years of the Mission "find no adequate symbols but those volcanic upheavals with which the Kanakas are familiar." And yet, sudden as it was, this was no transient emotional result. It was a reconstruction of the community from its very base, "the permanent creation of an orderly, decorous, peaceful Christian State.”
Of all the arresting incidents of this great religious revolution, the most dramatic is one which took place within the very crater of Kilauea, the largest and most awful of the active volcanoes of the world. In this dread amphitheatre, on the very brink of the eternal "Fire Fountains of Hawaii," Kapiolani, the high chieftainess of Kaavaroa, openly challenged and defied Pele, the indwelling goddess of the volcano, as every Hawaiian believed. Her act has been likened to that of Boniface at Geismar, when with his axe he hewed down the venerable oak which had been sacred for centuries to Thor the Thunderer, while those around looked on with the fascination of horror, expecting every moment to see him struck dead by a bolt from heaven. Still more aptly the incident is compared by Miss Gordon Cumming to the great scene on Carmel, when Elijah challenged the idolatrous priests of Baal in the name of Israel's God.
In 1825 one of the missionaries, the Rev. Mr. Bishop, made a preaching tour right round the main island of Hawaii. An adventurous tour it was, for he constantly had to clamber on hands and knees up the face of precipitous cliffs, and to make his way over rugged lava beds or across deep gullies and swollen mountain torrents. At other times it was necessary to skirt the frowning rocky coast in a frail canoe, so as to circumvent those inland barriers which could not be crossed.
The native villages were often difficult to find, hidden as they were in almost inaccessible glens. But whenever this brave, adventurous preacher stood face to face with the people, the most wonderful results followed, and he was amply repaid for all his dangers and toils.
Among the converts of that time was Kapiolani, the most noted of all the female chiefs of Hawaii, who ruled over large possessions in the southern part of the main island. Previous to this, she had been intensely superstitious, and like most of the natives, had lived a reckless and intemperate life. Now she was utterly changed. First she set herself to reform her own life, dismissing all her husbands but one, who like herself professed Christianity, and adopting strictly sober habits. Next she did her utmost to uproot idolatrous notions and customs among her people, putting down infanticide, murder, drunkenness, and robbery with a firm hand, and without counting the possible cost to herself.
She soon realized that the great obstacle to the progress of the Gospel among the Hawaiians was their superstitious faith in the divinities of Kilauea, and above all in Pele herself, the grim and terrible goddess who was supposed to have her dwelling-place within the crater of the burning mountain. Feld had her retinue of priests and prophets, both male and female, whose hold upon the popular imagination was nothing short of tremendous. Their false teaching seemed to be reinforced by the great volcano with its smoking summit—an ever-present reality in the eyes of all. Its frequent eruptions revealed the might of the unseen goddess. The deep thunders of Kilauea were Pelt's own voice. The long filaments spun by the wind from the liquid lava and tossed over the edge of the crater were Pelt's dusky, streaming hair. And those priests and priestesses who offered daily sacrifice to her divinity were the living oracles of her will. Upon their most cruel and licentious dictates and practices there rested the sanctions of the invisible world.
Kapiolani saw quite clearly that the power of the fire-goddess must be broken before Christianity could spread in Hawaii. She accordingly resolved to challenge that power in its innermost stronghold and sanctuary, by defying Feld to her face on the very floor of the crater of Kilauea.
When she announced her intention to her followers, they did everything they could to hold her back from such a project. Even her husband, though himself a professed Christian, begged her to abstain from a deed so rash and dangerous. But to all expostulations she had one reply. "All tabus," she said, "are done away. We are safe in the keeping of the Almighty God, and no power of earth or hell can harm His servants." When her people saw how determined she was they gave up trying to dissuade her, and about eighty of them were even so bold as to volunteer to accompany her to the summit of the fiery mountain.
From Kapiolam's home Kilauea was distant about one hundred miles in a straight line. To reach it was a toilsome journey—a journey which took her and her companions over jagged mountain peaks and rough lava-beds. But no detour would she make. She pressed straight on towards the volcano, over which there ever hung a dark pall of smoke by day, a lurid cloud of fire by night.
As she advanced, the people came in crowds out of the valleys to watch the progress of this strange pilgrimage. Many of them implored her to turn back ere it was too late, and not to draw down upon herself and others the vengeance of the fire-gods. But this was her invariable reply: "If I am destroyed, you may all believe in Pele; but if I am not destroyed, you must all turn to the only true God.”
At length, after a most fatiguing march, this bold champion of the new faith reached the base of Kilauea and began the upward ascent. As she approached the cone, one of Pele's weird prophetesses appeared and warned her back in the name of the goddess. In her hand this Hawaiian pythoness held a piece of white bark-cloth, and as she waved it above her head she declared it to be a message from Pele herself. "Read the message!" exclaimed Kapiolani. Upon which the woman held the pretended oracle before her, and poured out a flood of gibberish, which she declared to be an ancient sacred dialect. Kapiolani smiled. "You have delivered a message from your god," she said, "which none of us can understand. I too have a Pala Pala, and I will read you a message from my God, which everyone will understand." Whereupon she opened her Hawaiian Bible and read several passages that told of Jehovah's almighty power and of the heavenly Father's saving love in Jesus Christ.
Still pressing on, Kapiolani came at length to the very edge of the vast crater, which lies one thousand feet below the summits of the enclosing cone, and led the way down the precipitous descent towards the black lava-bed. On the crater's brink there grew, like the grapes of Vesuvius, clusters of the refreshing ohelo berry, sacred to Pele herself, which no Hawaiian of those days would taste till he had first cast a laden branch down the precipice towards the fiery lake, saying as he did so: "Pele, here are your ohelos. I offer some to you; some I also eat"—a formula which was supposed to render the eating safe, but without which an awful tabu would be infringed.
Seeing the berries hanging all around her, Kapiolani stopped and ate of them freely without making any acknowledgment to the goddess. She then made her way slowly down into the bowl of the crater, and when she reached the bottom, walked across the undulating crust of lava till she came to the Halemaumau itself, the "House of Everlasting Burning." Standing there, she picked up broken fragments of lava and flung them defiantly towards the seething cauldron, which writhed and moaned and flung out long hissing tongues of red and purple flame.
Having thus desecrated Pele's holy of holies in the most dreadful manner of which a Hawaiian imagination could conceive, she now turned to her trembling followers, who stood at some distance behind, and in a loud clear voice, distinctly heard above all the deep whispers and mutterings of the volcano, she spoke these words, which were engraved for ever afterwards on the memories of all who heard them: "My God is Jehovah. He it was who kindled these fires. I do not fear Pele. Should I perish by her wrath, then you may fear her power. But if Jehovah saves me while I am breaking her (alms, then you must fear and love Him. The gods of Hawaii are vain.”
Kapiolani then called upon her people to kneel down on that heaving floor and offer a solemn act of adoration to the One Almighty God, and thereafter to join their voices with hers in a hymn of joyful praise. And so by Christian praise and prayer the very crater of Kilauea, formerly the supposed abode of a cruel goddess, was consecrated as a temple to the God of holiness and love.
The news of Kapiolani's bold deed soon ran from end to end of Hawaii. It sent a shiver of despair through the hearts of Pele's priests and votaries. Everyone felt that the old dominion of the fire-gods must be tottering to its fall. Ere long the people began to turn in crowds from their idolatries. Even the heathen priests and priestesses renounced their allegiance to dark and bloody altars, and made profession of their faith in Christ.
One day a sinister figure presented itself before one of the missionaries, among a number of people who were waiting to receive some Christian instruction. It was a man whose gruesome office it had been, in the service of Pele's altar, to hunt and catch the victims that were needed for the human sacrifices demanded by the goddess. This dreadful being had acquired the skill of a wild beast in lurking in the by-paths of the forests to leap upon the passers-by, and was possessed of such enormous strength besides that he could break the bones of his victims by simply enfolding them in his iron embrace. No wonder that on seeing him the people shrank back in terror as if from some monster of the jungle. But even this man was conquered by the gospel of love and peace, and turned from serving Pele to follow Jesus Christ.
In the larger centers of population the natives gathered in vast multitudes to listen to the missionaries. More than once Mr. Bishop preached to assemblages that numbered upwards of ten thousand persons. Other chiefs and chieftainesses followed Kapiolani's example by openly professing their Christian faith. One chief showed his earnestness and zeal by building a church large enough to accommodate four thousand people. For weeks his whole tribe flung themselves joyously into the task—hewing timber in the forests, dragging it to the appointed place, cutting reeds for the thatch, and binding it carefully to the roof.
If ever there were romantic days in the history of a Christian mission, such days were experienced by those who witnessed the sudden glory of the Christian dawn that rose upon the Hawaiian Islands, flushing mountain, shore, and ocean with the radiance of the skies. There were giants and heroes, moreover, in those days; for pioneers like Mr. Bishop and Titus Coan deserve to be described by no lesser words. But so long as men tell the wonderful story of the spread of Christianity over the islands of Oceania and recall the heroes and heroines of the past, the figure of Kapiolani will stand out bravely, as she is seen in the strength of her new-born faith defying Pee's wrath in the dark crater of Kilauea.
The story of the American Mission to Hawaii, and in particular the incident of Kapiolani's challenge to the fire-goddess, are drawn almost entirely from Miss C. F. Gordon Cumming's Fire Fountains: The Kingdom of Hawaii (William Blackwood and Sons), which she has generously permitted the author to make free use of for the purposes of this book.