en. It is a convincing proof that women were regarded as
inferior to men, that they could in no case eat with their husbands, and
that the kapu was often put upon their eating the most delicious food.
Thus bananas were prohibited on pain of death. Their principal occupations
consisted in making kapa, the malo and pau, and in preparing food.

Marriage was performed by cohabitation with the consent of the relations.
Polygamy was only practiced by the chiefs. Children were very independent,
and although their parents respected them so much as seldom to dare lay
hands on them, they were quite ready to part with them to oblige a friend
who evinced a desire for them. Often an infant was promised before birth.
This singular custom still exists, but is much less frequent.

They had little regard for old men who had become useless, and even killed
them to get them out of the way. It was allowable to suffocate infants to
avoid the trouble of bringing them up. Women bestowed their affection upon
dogs and pigs, and suckled them equally with their children. Fleas, lice,
and grasshoppers were eaten, but flies inspired an unconquerable horror;
if one fell into a calabash of poi, the whole was thrown away.[11]

The Hawaiians practiced a sort of circumcision, differing from that of
the Jews, but having the same sanitary object. This operation _(mahele)_
consisted in slitting the prepuce by means of a bamboo. The mahele has
fallen into disuse, but is still practiced in some places, unbeknown to
the missionaries, upon children eight or ten years old. A sort of priest
(kahuna) performs the operation.[12]

The Hawaiian women are always delivered without pain, except in very
exceptional cases. The first time they had occasion to witness, in the
persons of the missionaries' wives, the painful childbirths of the white
race, they could not restrain their bursts of laughter, supposing it to
be mere custom, and not pain, that could thus draw cries from the wives of
the Haole (foreigners).

The ancient Hawaiians cared for their dead. They wrapped them in kapa
with fragrant herbs, such as the flowers of the sugar-cane, which had the
property of embalming them. They buried in their houses, or carried
their bodies to grottoes dug in the solid rock. More frequently they were
deposited in natural caves, a kind of catacombs, where the corpses were
preserved without putrefaction, drying like mummies. It was a sacred duty
to furnish food to the dead fo