The Hawaiians honored canoe-builders and great fishers as privileged citizens.  The chiefs themselves granted them some consideration; but it must be confessed that the honorable position they occupied in society was due to their skill in their calling rather than to any thing else.  These builders were generally deeply in debt.  They ate in advance the price of their labor, which usually consisted of hogs and fowls, and they died of starvation before the leaves ceased to sprout on the tree their adze had transformed into a canoe.

The kauwa, servants, must not be confounded with the kauwa maoli, actual slaves.  A high chief, even a wohi, would call himself without dishonor ke kauwa a ke ’lii nui, the servant of the king.  At present, their excellencies the ministers and the nobles do not hesitate to sign their names under the formula kou kauwa, your servant; but it is none the less true, for all that, that formerly there were among the common people a class, few in number, of slaves, or serfs, greatly despised by the Hawaiians, and still to our days so lowered in public opinion that a simple peasant refuses to associate with the descendants of this caste.

They point the finger at people of kauwa extraction, lampoon them, and touch the soles of their feet when they speak of them, to mark the lowness of their origin.  If they were independent, and even rich, an ordinary islander would deem himself disgraced to marry his daughter to one of these pariahs.

The slaves were not permitted to cross the threshold of the chiefs’ palace.  They could do no more than crawl on hands and knees to the door.  In spite of the many changes infused into Hawaiian institutions, the kauwa families remain branded with a stigma, in the opinion of the natives, and the laws, which accord them the same rights as other citizens, can not reinstate them.

It seems certain that the origin of slavery among the Hawaiians must be sought in conquests.  The vanquished, who were made prisoners, became slaves, and their posterity inherited their condition.

From time immemorial the islanders have clothed themselves, the men with the malo, the women with the pau.  The malo is bound around the loins, after having passed between the legs, to cover the pudenda.  The pau is a short skirt, made of bark cloth or of the ki leaves, which reaches from the waist half down to the knees.  The old popular songs show clearly that this costume has always been worn by the natives.  To go naked was regarded as a sign of madness, or as a mark of divine birth.  Sometimes the kings were attended by a man sprung from the gods, and this happy mortal alone had the right to follow, puris naturalibus, his august master.  The people said, in speaking of him, He akua ia, he is a god.

Kapa, a kind of large sheet in which the chiefs dressed themselves, was made of the soaked and beaten bark of several shrubs, such as the wauke, olona, hau, oloa.  Fine varieties were even made of the kukui (Aleurites moluccana).  In ancient times it was an offense punishable with death for a common man to wear a double kapa or malo.