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Show y- : TK . -- " - - - . it s .. - , '"s" a - i Making Poi IT IS announced that the territorial government of Hawaii will restore to their former grandeur the ancient an-cient temples upon the islands. Several impressive examples of these twelfth century edifices are said to be In such a state of preservation that work upon them may be undertaken with certainty as to the correctness of the restoration. The Mookiui temple, one of the most striking, is described as having walls aggregating over 800 feet, with a breadth of eight feet and a height of 20 feet. The Hawaiians are an interesting people doomed, seemingly, to early extinction ex-tinction as a result of their contact with the invading and appropriating white man who brought them, along with the consolations of his religion, decimating disease, devastating vices to which the Kanakas took like ducks to water and advice upon the importance of abstemiousness and Bix days work a week which has been neglected by the natives, as it is usually In balmy climates. Primitive Conditions Changed. The Hawaiians, when their Eden was discovered, were as a race wholly unconventional, in the sense in which the term is used against what agitators of a sort term the nar-rowmindedness nar-rowmindedness of the conventions Saxon vindicate his moral conquest of the people and his appropriation of the land unless he sticks to "in spite of"? Dressed in European Garb. As a result of civilization the half million has shrunk to 40,000 or so. The men who survive still are, in many cases, well proportioned, strong and athletic. But the women, once prolific, are, in two cases in Ihree, sterile. Those who have children have few. The men who wore, in pagan days, nothing more than a loin cloth, wear European trousers and shirts. The women whose only clothing was a "tapa" petticoat, made from mulberry-bark mulberry-bark an1 reaching from the waist to the knee, wear the enveloping "holo ka," counterpart of "mother hubbard," which Christian modesty dictated. Nearly everyone understands the European Eu-ropean moral code. But the race is dying! In a little while the "Sandwich "Sand-wich islanders" who were in many ways an unusual people, and who, because be-cause of the benign climate and their exceptional health, enjoyed a life of much singing, dancing and surf bath ing with few difficulties and little dole will have gone the way of the Carib Indians under Spanish rule. A people whose kings iand great chieftains wore flaming robes made of . v.ts i&ss .w. ........v.v.'.;--.- HAWAI IAN3 AT A TEA5T which govern the relations of the sexes in nearly all civilized countries; conventions differing in detail, but based in common upon the require ment of chastity in women and fixing for failure to meet that requirement sundry social penalties. There was no word in the Hawaiian language for chastity. Children bore the names of their mothers because that method of naming them was the only practical one where the question of paternity was so frequently unanswerable. "The habits of the people were extremely ex-tremely licentious," writes a chronicler, chron-icler, imbued with the spirit of the spiritual conquest of the pagans by the Anglo-Saxon with his sturdy virtues vir-tues of honesty, thrift and industry and his moral austerity, "but this slate of things was greatly altered by the missionaries." How greatly the state of things was altered is indicated by figures less hopeful than the reports of the missionaries. mis-sionaries. A half million light-hearted, pleasure-loving, sport-loving, singing, garland weaving, athletic, aquatic, shockingly idle and care-free Kanakas soon began to disappear under the curse of European disease like mist before a burning sun. "In spite of moral and material progress," says the chronicler, "in Bplte of better food, better clothing, better houses and many other advantages advan-tages of civilization, the race is dying out." "In spite of" should have been "because of," but how Bhall the Anglo- the feathers of tropical birds of resplendent re-splendent plumage, somewhat outdoing outdo-ing iin effulgence the raj.ihs and sultans sul-tans of "Ormuz and of Ind;" a people who builded majestic temples to obscure ob-scure insular gods; a people whose sons were warriors and whose daughters daugh-ters were the mothers of many warriors' war-riors' sons until white men came to tell them that their way of life was wholly wrong, that their moral character char-acter was atrocious, and taught them a better way of life which proved to be racial death, make an interesting study. It is Interesting at least to persons per-sons who are not of "missionary families" fami-lies" resident In Hawaii and under an everlasting moral obligation to vindicate vindi-cate the white man's occupancy of the sugar lands. The restoration of their ancient temples tem-ples would be commendable. It would give Hawaii an added attraction for tourists. That Is a matter in which the Honolulu promotion committee cannot fail to be interested. |