In my latest Objective Standard historical profile, I tell the story of the Hawaiian queen Ka‘ahumanu—widow of the famous Kamehameha—who led the greatest religious revolution in recorded history, abolishing the evil and misogynistic religion known to us as kapu. This event, known as the ‘ai noa, occurred 199 years ago this month, and it is the only instance known to history of a people abolishing their own religion without substituting another in its place. Excerpt:
The true impact of the revolution is revealed by a story in the diary of Laura Judd, the wife of a later missionary. One evening in 1821, she was conversing with the chiefess Kapi‘olani, and the story came up of the time she had been caught eating a banana [which was a capital offense under kapu]. Apparently unaware that the priests had killed her friend Mau in her stead, Kapi‘olani now summoned the priest to explain. When he admitted strangling the boy on an altar, Kapi‘olani burst into tears. “Those were dark days,” the man muttered. “We priests knew better all the time. It was power we sought over the minds of the people, to influence and control them.”
There must have been a sense among the ali‘i that they were entering dangerous waters. There were holdouts, after all. After the proclamation of ‘ai noa in November 1819, traditionalists rallied around Kamehameha’s nephew, Kekuaokalani, who clung to the old religion. A month later, he raised an army, intending to resist the government. This was no minor insurrection: Kekuaokalani expected his rebellion would lead to the overthrow of the monarchy and the massacre of all Europeans in the islands. Hoping to avert war, Ka‘ahumanu dispatched two messengers in a canoe to encourage the rebels to surrender, but just as the messengers departed, Keopuolani insisted on accompanying them. This may have doomed whatever chance the peace mission would have had, because her presence in a canoe with two men demonstrated once more that she and Ka‘ahumanu were committed to abolishing kapu forever.
Kekuaokalani ordered his army to march swiftly on Kailua, hoping to capture the government leaders before they could react. But they were intercepted at a place called Kuamo‘o on the western shore of the island of Hawai‘i. In the ensuing battle, the rebels were slowly pushed back toward a sea cliff made of razor-sharp lava rocks. There they came under fire from the government’s ships, armed with muskets and cannon. Kekuaokalani and some three hundred soldiers were killed. The revolution had triumphed—and the rebels’ bodies still lie buried in a place labeled on maps as The End of The World.
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