{"id":109639,"date":"2025-04-01T04:11:02","date_gmt":"2025-04-01T10:11:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=109639"},"modified":"2025-04-01T13:27:58","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T19:27:58","slug":"still-thinking-about-kamehameha-the-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2025\/04\/still-thinking-about-kamehameha-the-great.html","title":{"rendered":"Still thinking about Kamehameha the Great"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Dankfest\"<\/a>
Thanksgiving Point, at the north end of Utah Valley (fair use). \u00a0The Barn is visible in the background, just right of the center of the photograph<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Please make a note of this: \u00a0Annual FAIR Conference \u2014 August 7-8, 2025<\/p>\n

Mark your calendars for our FAIR Conference<\/a><\/b> this August at The Barn at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah! We are thrilled to host a variety of speakers, scholars, and experts who will provide faithful responses to challenging questions. Some of the speakers will include: Come Back Podcast, Adassa, Al Fox Carraway, Matthew Godfrey, Benjamin C. Peterson, Josh Coates, Zach Wright, Matt Christiansen, Dan Peterson [sorry about this one \u2013 dcp], Mike Ash, Brad Whitbeck, Brandon Mull, Women of Ward Radio, and more.<\/p>\n

Tickets are available now at fairlatterdaysaints.org<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Publicity material for FAIR\u2019s October virtual conference<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And please make a note of this, as well: \u00a0October Virtual Conference \u2013 Old Testament<\/p>\n

Join us this fall for our Virtual Conference on the Old Testament.<\/b><\/a> Stay tuned for speaker announcements and registration details.<\/p>\n

Reminder:<\/b> Intention of paper submissions are due by Tuesday, April 1st!<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Just<\/a>
The ruins of Kamehameha the Great\u2019s Pu\u2019ukohol\u0101 Heiau \u2014 a \u201cheiau\u201d is a temple \u2014 on the Kohala coast of Hawaii\u2019s Big Island \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We spent two hours or three hours on Monday morning in Honolulu\u2019s very interesting Bishop Museum, immersed in exhibits about Polynesian culture and religion. \u00a0On the way out, I bought a copy of Mary Kawena Pukui, Samuel H. Elbert, and Esther T. Mookini, eds., Place Names of Hawaii<\/em>, revised and expanded edition (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1974). \u00a0I\u2019m not quite sure why I bought it, of course, since, as my anonymous critic Dumb-Dud has astutely observed, I don\u2019t read and I refuse to learn anything. \u00a0Still, the fact remains that I did buy it.<\/p>\n

And, later, while browsing in it, I read the entry for a place called Kawaiku\u2019i, which is located on the Big Island near South Point. \u00a0This is the place \u201cwhere Ka-mehameha ordered a kahuna<\/em> [that is, a native Hawaiian priest] to try to get water (wai<\/em>); the kahuna<\/em> pounded (ku\u2019i<\/em>) the earth to no avail, and he was hanged for his failure.\u201d \u00a0(98)<\/p>\n

Now, Dumb-Dud and some of his associates on the Peterson Obsession Board have been highly indignant over the past couple of days at the reservations that I\u2019ve expressed about declaring such conquerors as Kamehameha and Napoleon \u201cgreat\u201d because they killed a lot of people and stole a lot of land. \u00a0My behavior has been termed ugly, despicable, lacking empathy, lazy, racist, white privileged, white colonialist, and demeaning to Hawaiians. \u00a0Perhaps, they suggest, it merits a reprimand from the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And surely they\u2019re right! \u00a0Who else but a lazy, ugly, despicable, unempathetic racist and colonialist could possibly see anything not to admire in a king who not only forced several hundred islanders to fall to their deaths from a tall cliff at the Battle of Nu\u02bbuanu but who also ordered a man to pound water out of dry earth and then hanged that man because the task was completely impossible?<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s yet another story about King Kamehameha I that should make it clear that only a morally ugly, lazy, despicable, unempathetic, racist, colonialist, and privileged white man such as I am could possibly have even the slightest reservation about pronouncing the man \u201cgreat\u201d:<\/p>\n

By 1782,\u00a0Kamehameha I had taken control of western and northern Hawai\u02bbi island (i.e., the Kona and Kohala districts where we recently spent a few days). \u00a0Over the eight years, however, he fought a number of inconclusive further battles. \u00a0And then, after returning from his conquest of Maui in 1790, he was attacked by his cousin Ke\u014dua Kuahu\u02bbula, who still controlled the eastern side of the island, over by Hilo. \u00a0Presumably frustrated, Kamehmeha thereupon returned to the seaside village of Kawaihae, where he had spent some time earlier. \u00a0There, a respected kahuna<\/em> or priest suggested the building of a luakini heiau<\/em> or sacrificial temple as a method of gaining the favor of the war god K\u016bka\u02bbilimoku.<\/p>\n

The massive temple \u2014 see the photograph above \u2014 was completed in the summer of 1791. \u00a0So Kamehameha invited his cousin Ke\u014dua Kuahu\u02bbula to come for a visit of the new temple, offering the false promise of a peace treaty. \u00a0As Ke\u014dua Kuahu\u02bbula stepped ashore, he and his entourage were captured and killed. \u00a0And, with the offering of their bodies, the new temple was officially dedicated.<\/p>\n

The, umm, \u201cbattle\u201d between Ke\u014dua Kuahu\u02bbula and his kindly host Kamehameha the Great has sometimes been called the \u201cSlaughter at Kawaihae.\u201d \u00a0But why?<\/em> \u00a0It\u2019s difficult to imagine how anybody other than a white supremacist could see anything at all reprehensible in it. And yet, weirdly, some sort of healing ceremony was held there in 1991, on the two hundredth anniversary the butchery, by some of the descendants of those who were involved in the event.<\/p>\n

\"Oahu<\/a>
A sunset on the island of Oahu (Wikimedia Commons public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But enough of King Kamehameha the Great. \u00a0I want to turn, instead, to Mark Twain, and to a quotation from him that I\u2019ve shared here before. \u00a0Mark Twain was a deeply cynical man, albeit a very, very funny one. \u00a0But he had an almost reverent love for Hawaii:<\/p>\n

\u201cNo alien land in all the world has any deep strong charm for me but that one, no other land could so longingly and so beseechingly haunt me, sleeping and walking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other things leave me, but it abides; other things change, but it remains the same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of its surfbeat is in my ear, I can see its garlanded crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud wrack; I can feel the spirit of its woodland solitudes, I can hear the splash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Posted from Honolulu, O\u02bbahu, Hawai\u2019i<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Please make a note of this: \u00a0Annual FAIR Conference \u2014 August 7-8, 2025 Mark your calendars for our FAIR Conference this August at The Barn at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah! We are thrilled to host a variety of speakers, scholars, and experts who will provide faithful responses to challenging questions. 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