CA USES OF DECREASE OF HA WA1IAN PEOPLE 399
the Hawaiian Spectator, 1838; one by David Malo, the native historian, Hawaiian Spectator, 1839; and another by Rev. S. E. Bishop read before the Social Science Association of Honolulu in 1888.
As the causes of this decrease have varied at different times, I shall deal with them during two separate periods, taking 1820, the year of the arrival of the missionaries, as the dividing line.
In the first period, from the discovery of Cook to the arrival of the missionaries, the decrease was not so great as the figures just given would indicate. The estimate of King is now univer- sally conceded to have been too high ; 300,000 would have been more correct. When Vancouver returned in 1792, the natives did not gather around the ships in such numbers as formerly, partly because white men had somewhat ceased to be objects of curiosity, and partly because Vancouver, refusing to sell firearms, was not favorably received. Hence the difference in population seemed to him to be greater than it really was. Nevertheless, the decrease during the first period must have been excessive. The chief causes were three : infanticide, war, and pestilence.
I. Among every people, whether savage or civilized, infanti- cide to a greater or less extent has always existed some small communities, perhaps, for short periods, excepted. But among the Hawaiians it became a social custom, for the following rea- sons : In former times the Polynesian race inhabited many small islands in the Pacific. Living in a state of nature, in a congenial climate, they were a vigorous people, peaceable, and practically free from disease. They soon stocked their island homes. The only alternatives then before them being desti- tute of metals or the physical conditions of progress were famine, inter-tribal warfare, or limitation of births. The first meant extinction. The second was tried, with greater or less success. And the third was generally adopted as the method best suited to the temperament of the people and to the condi- tions of their existence. It became a social institution, essential, in that state of society, to race-preservation.
It might be supposed, perhaps, that after the settlement in Hawaii infanticide would cease, on these islands, as being no
