Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 09.djvu/705

HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. and tuition is free. Ninety-six per cent. of all children of the above class attend school; 83 per cent. of all those of Hawaiian blood above six years old can both read and write. In all schools the English language is the basis of instruction. The supervision of the schools is in the hands of a Minister of Public Instruction and six commissioners. No person in holy orders nor any minister of the gospel is eligible as commissioner. The salaries of teachers are high compared with those received by teachers in the States. There were 559 teachers in 1900, of whom 299 were American. The climatic conditions do not necessitate heavy investments in school buildings, and the tuition constitutes about 73 per cent. of the total cost. The per capita expenditure is about $2.17, which amounts to $23.36 per capita for those who attend school. There are a normal training school, high school, and an endowed college at Honolulu. There are six private boarding schools for Hawaiian girls. See.

. The principal public charitable enterprise is the maintenance of the leper settlement on the island of Molokai. The settlement is located on a peninsula which is shut off from the mainland by mountains. The number of lepers is decreasing, there being at present in the settlement about 900, nearly all of whom are natives. Some of them own property in the settlement and are self-supporting, but the Government makes every effort properly to care for them, and the annual expense is heavy. A certain amount of local self-government is allowed in the settlement.

. By an act of Congress in 1900, Hawaii was organized with a Territorial form of government, similar to that of the other organized Territories of the United States. It has a Territorial representative in Congress. The capital is Honolulu. See the article on.

. Peopled probably from the Polynesian Islands, the Hawaiian Islands when first known to white men had passed through the first stages of savagery, and were progressing toward civilization. The particular stage which it had reached was that of feudalism. Instead of a heterogeneous collection of tribes, there were in the eighteenth century as many kings as there were inhabited islands in the group, and in the island of Hawaii there were at least two kings. The people held the land which they tilled in tenancy to a class of middlemen, or gentry, who served subordinate chiefs, who were themselves under the control of the dukes or high lords, who owed allegiance to the King. The land was held in military tenure. Society was highly organized into orders, religious and social, with a system of checks, by means of laws and ceremonies. The whole tendency of political movement was toward centralization.

The first white men in Hawaii were the survivors of the crews of two Spanish vessels which were wrecked on the islands as early, possibly, as 1527. They intermarried with the natives, and their descendants, recognized by their Caucasian characteristics in complexion and features, are known to this day at Kekea. Gaetano, in 1542, made a landfall here, and in 1567 Mendena located scientifically the position of Kauai, as has been shown by Spanish scholars; but it was reserved for (q.v.), while on his third

voyage in the Pacific, to find this group in 1778. After returning from Bering Strait, to pass the winter in Hawaii, he abused the hospitality of the natives, and in a squabble lost his life. His estimate of the popuhition at 400,000, though an undoubted exaggeration, shows that the group was densely inhabited. Cook named the group Sandwich Islands, after John Montague, tho fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-92). In 1790 Kamehameha, one of the kings of the main island, defeated Keoua, a rival in another portion of the same island, and thus paved the way for the establishment of a single dynasty. Kamehameha's ambition was to bring the whole group of islands under his sway, but with ordinary weapons it is uncertain whether he could have succeeded. In the nick of time, American whalers and fur traders brought the King firearms, which gave him a tremendous advantage over his opponents, who were still living as in the Stone Age. In 1792 the British navigator George Vancouver brought over cattle, and taught the inhabitants ship-building. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the fur trade on the Pacific coast received a tremendous impulse as a result of the epoch-making expedition of Lewis and Clark. American vessels, reaching the northwest coast in the spring, traded up and down it with the Indians for peltries. Spending the winter in the Sandwich Islands, the American shipmen dressed their furs, refitted, laid in fresh provisions, and bought the sandalwood then so abundant in the islands, besides sharks' fins and tortoise-shells, for the China trade. To this day in China the name for Hawaii is ‘Sandalwood Islands.’ In the second spring season they went north on the American coast for furs, stopping again at Hawaii, and then sailing to China and exchanging their cargo of furs and sandalwood for tea, silk, porcelain, matting, ginger, and firecrackers, they sailed homeward with a favorable monsoon. Native Hawaiians served on these ships, and thus became known in the United States, stimulating missionary interest.

This trade in sandalwood enriched the chiefs and kings, but especially Kamehameha, who thus secured the sinews of war by sending his people all over the island to cut and transport the fragrant wood, which he traded for vessels, arms, ammunition, and military stores. Master of a navy and an army, he was able, after several campaigns, to conquer the whole of the Hawaiian archipelago. He made the once feudalized islands a central monarchy, and established the royal succession in his own line. He died May 8, 1819, and his oldest son, Liholiho, succeeded him, under the title of Kamehameha II., though the real power behind the throne was an ‘empress dowager,’ the widow of Kamehameha I. Under the old religious system of (q.v.), which represented conservatism, a class of men corresponding to the ‘literati’ of other lands existed who were more or less hostile to change, and especially to centralization. So, exactly as in the case of China, when feudalism was overthrown by She-Hwang-Ti, the new King, advised by his Premier, the widow of Kamehameha I., abolished by decree the hoary system of taboo. This bold reform met with organized resistance, and in the appeal to arms a bloody battle was fought. The conservatives were overthrown, and the iconoclasts went through the islands smashing and burning the idols, or tossing them into the