merican missionary government in Hawaii, in the name
of an avenging and critical Lord. No people believed in the dignity
of labor more than the Tahitians, because they refused to do any more
than was requisite for health, cleanliness, comfort, and pleasure,
and saw no more dignity or greater indignity in helping me on with my
boots or bringing me my dinner or massaging my body than in listening
to a sermon or catching fish.

They thought absurd and artificial the ideas foisted by politicians,
merchants, and lawyers that it was dignified to sit in an office, to
sell goods, or to draw up agreements, or undignified to disembowel a
pig, make a net, or dig an oven. They saw governors and bankers spend
all day chasing a boar or angling for a fish which they did not eat
when they possessed it. They thought them queer, and that their own
regimen of work and play was more sensible.

"What land is this?" asked Cook, and understanding him, the Tahitians
answered, "Otaiti oia" or, "This is Tahiti."

Cook put it down as Otaheite, pronounced by him Otahytee. It was Cook's
carpenter who was building a house for a chief, a friend of Cook's,
and lost all his tools during the visit of the high priest of the
god Hiro and his acolytes. Hiro was the first king in their myths,
and, until Christianity came, the god of business. When Cook sailed
away, the tools were taken to the marae, or temple of Hiro, where
the priest said he would cause the prized tools to reproduce their
kind, like fruit. He planted them in a field near by and watched for
results. The lack of any result except rust was an able argument for
the Christian missionaries, when they came, to destroy his cult by
laughing at the foolishness of his ideas and the weakness of his god.

The discoverers reported that the Tahitians and all other Polynesians
were thieves and liars, for the reason that they often seized pieces
of iron, tools, and firearms that they saw on the ships or ashore
in the houses occupied by the first whites, and then lied about
their actions. The whites killed scores for these crimes, one of the
initial murders of Cook's crew being the shooting of Chief Kapupuu
as he departed in his canoe from their ship with some bits of metal
he had taken. Malo, the native historian, who heard the account from
eye-witnesses, explained the incident as follows, first mentioning
the sighting of Cook's vessels and the wonder of the natives:

One said to another, "What is tha