Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/418

 402 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Captain Cook commanded that " all female visitants should be excluded from both the ships," in order that "he might'prevent, if possible, the importation of a dangerous disease into this island," which he knew some of his men then "labored under." But Cook was received as the long-expected and venerated god Lono ; and the natives were enraptured on seeing the ships con- tain large quantities of iron a metal they had already learned to prize more highly than silver or gold, from some small pieces that had drifted ashore haphazard on wreckage. A council hav- ing been held to determine how to obtain iron, it was decided that the best method would be to propitiate the "god." The Hawaiians offered the best of everything they had "hogs, vegetables, kapa, and women;" and, according to all native accounts, Cook himself accepted as his companion for the night the daughter of the highest chiefess on the island. It was a costly sacrifice to the self-interested worshipers. Within a year the disease imparted by the guests to their too hospitable enter- tainers had spread from one end of the group to the other. Malo's statement regarding the plague of 1804 may be exagger- ated, but there is no question that throughout this period pesti- lence and disease decimated the population.

During the second period, from 1820 to the present time, two of the causes above mentioned infanticide and war may be said to have been inoperative. The few revolutions and rebel- lions that have taken place were almost bloodless ; and infanti- cide, owing to the disappearance of the economic ground for it, as well as to the teaching of the missionaries, has practically ceased. Some new causes, however, have arisen.

From 1820, or even earlier, to almost the present time, the decrease of the Hawaiian people has come about through the twofold process of a small number of births and a large number of deaths in proportion to population. Thus, according to Jarves, in 1839, on the island of Kauai, with a population of 8,853 (8,754?), including 3,070 adult women, there were only 65 women who had three or more children each; and in 1840, in the district of Ewa, Oahu, with a population of 2,792, there were 132 deaths, but only 6 1 births.