The passing of the Hawaiians, like that of many other races in the
Pacific, is due to a cannibalism and a barbarism which are less
emphasized in the ordinary discussions of the problem. There are more
ways than one of eating your neighbor. However harrowing that savage
diet was, it did not work for the destruction of any of these South Sea
islanders as ruthlessly as did the practice among the Hawaiians of
infanticide. Mothers were in the habit of disposing of their impetuous
children by the simple method of burying them alive, frequently under
the very shelter of their roofs, lying down upon the selfsame floor and
sleeping the sleep of the just with the tiny infant squirming in its
grave beside them. Parents were not allowed to have more than a given
number of children because of the strain on the available food supply.
This more than anything else depleted the number of natives most
disastrously. But in addition came the white man with his diseases,
contagious and infectious,--a form of destruction that, from the native
point of view, is quite as dastardly as eating the flesh of the
vanquished.