Snag Hawaiian Antiquities (BERNICE PAUAHI BISHOP MUSEUM SPECIAL PUBLICATION) Expressed By David Malo Expressed As Softcover

book is definitely a treasure! I've seen it referenced in so many other books e, g. La'au Hawaii and in many interesting panels at the Bishop Museum, so I knew I had to read it, Even though Emerson is definitely patronizing/rude, I appreciated his notes and many of the facts he had to add, and the translation is still very readable despite being published more thanyears ago.
It was interesting to compare this translation with the Chun translation, This is a staple for anyone interested in Hawaiian culture, This text becomes more complex when you take into account Malo's influences at the time, He had Christianity on one side and tradition on the other, In a lot of ways, Malo is trying to write about everything that is Hawaiian and does a good job at it, It becomes a very modern text due to Hawaii's contextual nature, Interesting as a cultural document generally, although I'd question its veracity as a whole, The author has obvious biases that show up throughout the text andas the footnotes make clearsome of his interpretations and translations are up for debate,

The end result is an interesting and valuable OBSERVATION of ancient Hawaiian culture, but one that by no means represents a truly objective historical document, Skimmed more than read. This book was mentioned in Sarah Vowell's Unfamiliar Fishes as a primary source, which led me to it,

The intros explain that Davida Malo was Hawaiian nobility and mingled with kings / had access to folklore that was all oral tradition before Hawaiian had a written language.
He was the first only to write these things down, in Hawaiian, in the earlys, after he'd converted from native religion to Christianity, Then translated to English, with a terribly patronizing intro, by Emerson,

The book is an ethnography of ancient Hawaiians, as well as a record of flora/fauna, and Malo editorializes a few times re: his Christian beliefs where they're at odds with what he calls "idol worship.
" The facts as he presents them can get a little dry: "There are many kinds of fish, These are the kinds of fish, " Etc. I was in it for the stories mythologies and religious practices hence skimming, and those sections were worth it, Tabu, gender roles, festivals, creation myths, all good stuff, Also, though I found the translator to be irritatingly, . . white, it's true his footnotes helped fill in gray areas here and there,

Worth skimming if you're curious, Basically, this is an account of a Hawaiian native who was raised in a traditional lifeway and then converted to Christianity later in life, He gives a unique historical narrative about how native Hawaiians lived in the first years postcontact,

A lot of it is pretty dry and is like, "Here's a list of the names of some fish, etc, " but the long, detailed descriptions of the taboo systems make it pretty important, I had no idea how much killing there was under the kapu system,

This is a pretty important historical document, even if the author became slanted against "idolatry" by the time he was writing it, This is a text, of sorts, The book is a collection of thoughts and details acquired by author, David Malo, a native Hawaiian born in, who converted to Christianity and which may have shaded some of his recollections as he rejected the heathen ways of his ancestors.
Nevertheless, his writings add to an understanding of the ways of the ancients,

Much of the book addresses definitions of Hawaiian language and lineages, It is not for anyone seeking a cogent story, but, rather, relevant to those seeking particulars about Hawaii's cultural and religious practices prior to missionary contamination, This is a hard book to review, It is by all accounts an amazing resource, a primary source document of premissionary Hawaiianlife,

However, we have an author who, as much as he's trying to document this knowledge, is also in the process himself of becoming a Westerneducated priest, which is a bias you have to keep in mind when reading his words, especially his opinions.


You also have to take into consideration the biases of the translator, and their own limitations, as they frequently in rather lengthy footnotes refer to random unnamed third parties as to further eludiate topics that the author doesn't describe too clearly.
Then there's all the expected "savage race" garbage,

On top of all that, you have later editors commenting about the problems of author amd the translator, often refuting the translator's unnamed sources, and directly questioning the results, yet still maintaining the racism.


So you have to parse all of this information with the understanding that all three, author, translator, and editor have ulterior motives in this work,

The part that disappointmented me the most was the "chapter" on hula, one of, if not the prime symbols of Hawiian culture, given scarcely a single page.
And its given more hate, more derision and disgust than any of the previous material, which the three were all too happy to salaciously describe,

It's like sometimes they decide to describe something as it was, sometimes they describe something to point out "look at these despicable savages", and sometimes they describe something as "woo, did you hear what the sexy savages do".


But for hula, they all went straight Puritan dancingistheultimateevilthatmustnotbenamed, Pages and pages of Leviticusstyle descriptions of exactly how temples are measured, built, and blessed, Hula: the worst thing Hawai'i ever produced, so let's not talk about it at all, The two here is more for the version I downloaded for Amazon Kindle than the work itself, as whatever scanner used to make this book digital completely mangled many Hawaiian words, making it very difficult to actually learn what some of the words meant.
Other than that, this was a sometimes interesting, sometimes sloggy treatise by a native Hawaiian circas on the basics of Hawaiian culture, from its line of kings to what people liked to do for fun, what they ate, what they wore, and how they worshipped.
There were certainly some fascinating tidbits to digest here, but I wish there was another, less officious translation than that by Nathanial Bright Emerson, who kept butting in in his notes to say in various way how David Malo was wrong.
Little difficult to read primary source Hawaiian history, Must read for all who are interested in Hawaiian history, This is thereprint of the Paperbacknd Edition, published by Bishop Museum Press, .