🧚 The Law of the Splintered Paddle · page 2

The men turned back and struck at him with their paddles, but after a few blows the paddles were destroyed.106 He managed to grasp a large piece of lava.107 The men ran away.108 “The thrown stone struck the trunk of a Noni tree, broke it off and with the tree fell to the bottom of a small ravine, and the spot is shown to this day.”109

The steersman became anxious concerning his chief and came up from the boat.110 Meantime the fishermen had secured spears and were returning to kill Ka-meha-meha.111 The steersman broke the sharp edges of lava away from the imprisoned foot, but did not succeed in liberating his chief before the natives began to thrust at him with their spears.112

The agile chief, fettered as he was, avoided the thrusts, but the steersman was awkward.113 One of the spears pierced him.114 Ka-meha-meha seized this spear and quickly broke it near the body.115 When the men saw that he had a weapon they ran away.116

When Ka-meha-meha had freed himself he and his companion came down to the shore.117 He warned the men not to repeat the story of the injured man and the battle between himself and the flying fishermen of Puna.118 He did not want his high chiefs to know that he had been struck and hurt by a common man.119 The chiefs were very strenuous in upholding the dignity of their caste.120 They thought but little of putting to death their servants.121 That some of the lower classes should have struck their highest chief was sufficient ground for killing any of his companions who had failed to protect him even at the cost of their own lives.122

Ka-meha-meha knew how unreasonably wilful he had been in forbidding his steersman to join in the pursuit, and therefore felt the injustice of permitting him to be punished.123 It was a weary journey for the defeated king and his wounded steersman.124

The spear-head and part of the shaft still rested in the side of the wounded man.125 The king could not have the spear removed without great danger, so waited, thinking to have the wound well cared for after reaching Lau-pa-hoe-hoe.126 However, it was impossible to keep the boatmen from telling the story of the splintered paddle and the wounded steersman.127 The chiefs soon heard the particulars and called the council of chiefs.128 There they grimly voted to “heal” the wounded man.129

Ka-meha-meha appealed to them:130

“O chiefs!131 The night of our going away was a very evil night.132 There was storm and wind and thunder; yet I received no injury, nor was I even wet by the sea.133 Nor was I permitted to feel the least fear.134 My steersman was wise and skilful.135 He was my close friend on the deceitful and dangerous sea.136 Therefore I ask you, if you wish to see him healed, have him brought before my eyes for the treatment.”137

But some of the chiefs went out and instead of bringing the wounded man into the council took him and twisted the spear-point, pulling it back and forth, until he died.138

After Ka-meha-meha returned from his Puna excursion he rested for a time.139 His adventure was not encouraging.140 He decided that he could not hasten the plans of the gods.141 The ancient Hawaiian was very much of a fatalist.142 So also is the Hawaiian of to-day.143 What has to be is accepted without rebellion.144

Ka-meha-meha realised that he was too weak, both in personal strength and in the number of warriors, to make further effort for the time being.145 Therefore, he sent his warriors home to cultivate their fields and prepare new war material for future conflicts.146

While this preparation was going on, a new element entered into Hawaiian warfare.147 The white man’s ships and the white man’s weapons were becoming familiar to the great king.148

White men were secured to take charge of small cannon, and to drill squads of warriors equipped with the rude firearms of a century ago.149

Some of these white leaders and their muskets found their way into the service of almost all the important chiefs throughout the islands.150

Ka-meha-meha owned the best harbours and offered the best inducements for trade with the foreigners.151 He secured the best equipment of arms and men.152 This gave Ka-meha-meha a vast advantage over the antagonistic kings and chiefs of his own and other islands.153 He had large boats built and armed with small swivel cannon.154 He had sixteen foreigners in his service.155 He led his victorious warriors from island to island.156 In his last campaign it is said his fleet of canoes lined the beach of one of the islands for a distance of four miles.157

In a few years his friends saw the prophecy fulfilled.158 “His cloud was resting on the mountains of all the islands.”159 He had unified the group under one autocratic government, and had established the Ka-meha-meha dynasty.160

Then came the memory of that excursion made in 1783 to Puna for the sake of robbery and possible murder.161 The king wondered what had become of the men who had attacked him.162 He had gone to Hilo and was having a fine fleet of wide and deep canoes made in the splendid koa forests back of Hilo.163 While waiting here, some time between the years 1796 and 1802, he determined to find the men of the splintered paddle.164 He knew that these men might have changed their residence from the Puna district to Hilo.165 So he sent messengers throughout both districts summoning all the people to a great meeting in Hilo.166 Certain large grass houses were set apart for the large assembly.167 The Hilo people were separated from the families of the other district.168 When the people were thus gathered together they found themselves prisoners.169 They feared wholesale destruction.170 The days of human sacrifices among the Hawaiians had not passed by.171 The new king, against whom they had at one time fought, might intend their sacrifice in numbers.172 They were his property to be burned or cut to pieces and placed in the temples of the gods.173 No one could dispute the will of the chief.174 It was a political condition which the Hawaiians of a hundred years later could scarcely begin to realise.175 That man is very ignorant who thinks the old days best.176

The king passed through the houses allotted to the Hilo people.177 It must have been an anxious time for the prisoners.178 Wholesale destruction, possibly because of the bitter war of 1783, stared them in the face.179 But the chief touched them not and passed through their lines out to the houses in which the Puna people were confined.180

A suspicion at least of the reason for their imprisonment must have come to the guilty men.181 The story runs that when they saw Ka-meha-meha they bowed their heads, hoping to escape recognition.182 But this revealed them at once to Ka-meha-meha, and he approached them with the command to raise their heads.183 It was an interesting scene when these common men were brought before the chiefs for final judgment.184 It is said the chief asked them if they were not at the sea of Papai.185 They assented.186 Then came the question to two of them:187

“You two perhaps are the men who broke the paddle on my head?”188

They acknowledged the deed.189

“To the death, to the death!” cried the chiefs around the king.190

“Down the face!”191 “Command the stones!”192 “Let the man and his friends be stoned to death!”193

The king listened to the suggestions of his companions.194 Then he said: “Listen!195 I attacked the innocent and the defenceless.196 This was not right.197 In the future no man in my kingdom shall have the right to make excursions for robbery without punishment, be he chief or priest.198 I make the law, the new law, for the safety of all men under my government.199 If any man plunders or murders the defenceless or the innocent he shall be punished.200 This law is given in memory of my steersman and shall be known as ‘Ke Kana-wai Ma-mala-hoa,’ or the law of the friend and the broken oars.201 The old man or the old woman or the child may lie down to sleep by the roadside and none shall injure them.”202

The law with the name Ma-mala-hoa is still on the statute books of Hawaii.203 It has been greatly modified and enlarged, but the decree against robbery by any man, and especially the plunder of the weak by the powerful, had its beginning for Hawaii in the days of Ka-meha-meha.204

Alexander says in his history of the islands: “During the days of Ka-meha-meha energetic measures were taken for the suppression of brigandage, murder and theft throughout the kingdom.”205

“The Law of the Splintered Paddle” marked the awakening of a pagan conscience to a sense of just dealing between the strong and the weak.206

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