Hawaii - James Michener [241]
Whipple also prospered in trade, for whalers now jammed the roads--325 in 1844; 429 in 1845--and they had to buy from J & W. Following Captain Janders' driving precept, "Own nothing, control everything," John had become a master in manipulating the lands and wealth of others, and if an upstart attempted to open a major industry in Lahaina, it was usually Whipple who discovered the tactic whereby the man could be either bought out or squeezed out. When Valparaiso begged for more hides, it was Dr. Whipple who recalled seeing huge herds of goats on neighboring Molokai, and it was he who organized the expeditions to the windward cliffs. As honest as he was clever, he paid any man he employed a fair wage, but when his most skilled huntsman was tempted to organize a goat-shooting team of his own, selling the hides and tallow directly to an American brigantine for extra profit, the man suddenly found he could hire no boats to transport his hides, and after three months' labor had rotted away on Molokai, the venture was abandoned and he returned to work for J & W. Abner never understood how John Whipple could have learned so much about business.
Once, on a trading mission to Valparaiso, Whipple's schooner was laid over for two weeks in Tahiti, and John, as was his custom, improved the wasting hours by studying something of Tahitian ways and words, and it was out of this casual experience that he wrote the essay which dominated Polynesian research for some decades: "The Theory of Kapu," in which he made this provocative suggestion. "In our concern over why the Tahitian says tabu and the Hawaiian kapu we are apt to digress into theories which, while entrancing, are probably irrelevant. What we must remember is that a group of learned English scientists transliterated the Tahitian language and set it into western ways, while a body of not so well-trained American missionaries did the same job for Hawaiian. In each case we must suspect that the visitors crystallized what was not really there. Would it not be wiser to believe that when the English spelled their word tabu, what they actually heard was something different--somewhere between tabu and kapu, but slightly inclining toward the former-- whereas when the Americans wrote their word kapu, what they heard was also something quite different--somewhere between tabu and kapu, but inclining slightly toward the latter? Much of the difference that we now observe between written Tahitian and written Hawaiian must be accountable for not by the actual differences between the languages but by the differences in the ears of the men who transliterated them.
"Thus we have many words for house: whare, fale, fare, hale, but they are all one word, and we should like to know how many of these differences can be attributed to the defective ear of the white man, whose system of spelling did much to crystallize error. I recall an educated Hawaiian who said to me one day in his native tongue, 'I am going to see Mr. Kown.' I replied, 'Kimo, you know his name is Mr. Town," and he agreed, pointing out, 'But in Hawaiian we have no letter T, so we can't stay Town.' And he pronounced the name perfectly. We had imposed limits on his speech that did not exist before we arrived on the scene.
"At the same time, however, the visitor from Hawaii to Tahiti is visibly struck by the changes that occurred when Polynesians from the latter islands journeyed north. In Hawaii their stature increased. Their skin became tighter. Their speech became sharper. Their tools underwent obvious changes, and of course their gods were transmuted. Most spectacular was the transformation of the bold, angular and oftentimes lascivious Tahitian hula into the languorous, poetic dance of Hawaii. Change occurred in all things: religion changed from wild vitality to stately formalism; government became stable and self-perpetuating; and what in Tahiti was merely ornamental featherwork became in Hawaii a subtle art