Hawaii - James Michener [190]
"Captain Cook vouches for the first. I vouch for the second. Abner, have you ever seen measles strike a Hawaiian village? Don't. Ppppsssshhhh!” He made a sound like fire rushing through the grass walls of a house. "The entire village vanishes. For example, do you make your church members wear New England clothes?"
"I have only nine members," Abner explained.
"You mean that in this entire . . ." Dr. Whipple threw a pebble into the blue waters and watched a near-naked Hawaiian riding the surf onto the kapu beach. "On Sundays, for example, do you require a man like that one out there to wear New England clothes?"
"Of course. Doesn't the Bible specifically state, 'And thou shall make them linen breeches to cover their nakedness'?"
"Do you ever listen to the hacking coughs that fill the church?"
"No."
"I do, and I'm terribly worried."
"What about?"
"I'm afraid that in another thirty years the Hawaiians will be not a hundred and thirty thousand but more likely thirty thousand. Out of all those who were here when we came, twelve out of thirteen will have been destroyed."
"Lahaina was never any bigger," Abner replied prosaically.
"Not the town, perhaps, but how about the valleys?" Whipple, as was his practice in touring the islands, called an old man to the seaside and asked in Hawaiian, "In that valley, did people used to live?"
"More thousand was stay before."
"How many live there now?"
"Tree. Ikahi, ilua, ikulu. Tree."
"In that valley over here, did people used to live?"
"More two t'ousand was stay before."
"How many live there now?"
"All dis fellow stay before, now make . . . die," the old man answered, and Whipple dismissed him.
"It's that way in all the valleys," he said gloomily. "I think the only thing that will save Hawaii is some radical move. There has got to be a big industry of some kind. Then we must bring in some strong, virile new people. Say from Java, or perhaps China. And let them marry with the Hawaiians. Maybe . . ."
"You seem beset with doubts," Abner marked.
"I am," Whipple confessed. "I am terribly afraid that what we are doing is not right. I am certain that we are sponsoring the spread of consumption and that these wonderful people are doomed. Unless we change things right away."
"We are not concerned with change," Abner said coldly. "Hawaiians are the children of Shem, and God has ordained that they shall perish from the earth. He has promised that their lands shall be occupied by your children and mine, Genesis 9, verse 27: 'God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem.' The Hawaiians are doomed, and in a hundred years they will have vanished from the earth."
Whipple was aghast, and asked, "How can you preach such a doctrine, Abner?"
"It is God's will. The Hawaiians are a deceitful and licentious people. Even though I have warned them, they continue to smoke, they circumcise their sons and abandon their daughters. They gamble and play games on Sunday, and for these sins God has ordained that they shall be stricken from the face of the earth. When they are gone, our children, as the Bible directs, shall inherit their tents.
"But if you believe this, Abner, why do you remain among them as missionary?"
"Because I love them. I want to bring them the consolation of the Lord, so that when they do vanish it will be to His love and not to eternal hellfire."
"I do not like such religion," Whipple said flatly, "and I do not aspire to their tents. There must be a better way. Abner, when we were students at Yale, the first tenet of our church was that each individual church should be a congregation unto itself. No bishops, no priests, no popes. Our very name bespoke that conviction. The Congregationalists. But what do we find here? A system of bishoprics! A solemn convocation to throw a poor, lonely man out or the ministry. In all these years you've allowed nine people to join your church as full members. Somewhere, Abner, we've gone wrong."
"It takes time to convert the heathen to true . . ."
"No!"