Origins
The kapu system (from which the English word “taboo” derives) governed Hawaiian society from Polynesian settlement through the early nineteenth century. Hawaii was settled by Polynesian voyagers from the Marquesas Islands around 400 CE, with a second wave from Tahiti around 1000-1200 CE. The Tahitian migrations, traditionally associated with the priest Pa’ao, intensified the hierarchical and religious elements of Hawaiian society, establishing the elaborate kapu system that distinguished Hawaiian civilization from its Polynesian cousins.
The kapu system rested on the concept of mana—spiritual power or efficacy that pervaded all things but concentrated especially in chiefs (ali’i), sacred objects, and certain places and times. Contact between those with high mana and those with low mana was dangerous, polluting the sacred and potentially destroying the profane. The kapu—a complex web of prohibitions, restrictions, and requirements—managed these spiritual dangers. Violations threatened not just individuals but cosmic order; punishment was typically death, often carried out immediately.
Hawaiian society was among the most stratified in Polynesia. At the apex stood the ali’i nui (high chiefs), whose genealogies traced to the gods and whose mana required elaborate protection through kapu. Below them ranked lesser chiefs, priests (kahuna), warriors, and commoners (maka’āinana). The distinction between ali’i and commoners was categorical and hereditary. Sacred chiefs were so charged with mana that their shadows could not fall on commoners, they could not walk on ordinary ground, and their possessions became permanently sacred. This spiritual hierarchy legitimated and enforced political domination.
Structure & Function
The kapu system organized all aspects of Hawaiian life through an elaborate classification of persons, objects, actions, places, and times as sacred or profane, permitted or forbidden. Some kapu were permanent: men and women could never eat together; certain foods (pork, certain fish, bananas, coconuts) were forbidden to women; commoners could not look at sacred chiefs or enter their presence unbidden. Other kapu were temporary, proclaimed by priests or chiefs for specific purposes—protecting resources, preparing for war, or observing religious ceremonies.
Four major kapu periods structured the lunar month, each lasting one to two days. During these times, commoners remained in their houses, fires were extinguished, silence prevailed, and normal activities ceased while priests performed rituals at the heiau (temples). The kapu system thus functioned as both religious observance and social control: periodic interruptions of normal life reinforced hierarchical authority and reminded all Hawaiians of the sacred foundations of their social order.
Enforcement was severe and certain. The penalty for most kapu violations was death, typically administered immediately by the offended party or their agents. There was no trial, no defense, no appeal. The system’s harshness may partly explain Hawaii’s relatively peaceful internal order despite lack of a unified polity: social control was internalized through religious belief and externalized through immediate lethal sanction. Chiefs competed for territory and tribute, but the kapu system remained the unquestioned framework within which all operated.
Historical Significance
The kapu system demonstrates how religious belief can organize complex societies without bureaucratic administration. Hawaii developed intensive agriculture, supported dense populations, and built monumental architecture (heiau platforms) without writing, metal tools, or formal government structures familiar from other civilizations. Mana and kapu provided the conceptual framework that made Hawaiian civilization possible, legitimating chiefly authority, organizing labor for public works, and maintaining social order across multiple islands.
The system’s end came with dramatic suddenness. When Kamehameha I, who had united the islands through conquest (1795-1810), died in 1819, his son Liholiho faced a succession crisis. Queen regent Ka’ahumanu and other powerful chiefs, possibly influenced by Western contact and eager to break the priests’ power, persuaded Liholiho to commit the ultimate kapu violation: eating with women. This act, impossible within the system’s logic, declared the system null. Temples were destroyed, priests lost authority, and in a matter of weeks, the institutional framework governing Hawaii for centuries collapsed.
The timing proved fateful. American Protestant missionaries, arriving in 1820, found a society in spiritual crisis, its traditional religion abolished, its people seeking new meaning. Christianity filled the vacuum. The ease with which Hawaii converted reflected not just missionary zeal but the void left by kapu’s abolition. The word “taboo” entered English through Captain Cook’s voyages (1778), transmitting a Pacific Island concept to global usage. But in Hawaii itself, the kapu system became history—a remarkable example of revolutionary institutional change accomplished in days rather than decades.
Key Developments
- c. 400 CE: Polynesian settlers arrive in Hawaii from Marquesas
- c. 1000-1200 CE: Tahitian migrations intensify hierarchy; Pa’ao traditions
- c. 1200-1400: Hawaiian culture develops distinctive characteristics
- c. 1400-1600: Four major chiefdoms emerge on Hawaii Island
- c. 1500: Population reaches perhaps 400,000-800,000
- 1778: Captain Cook arrives; first sustained European contact
- 1779: Cook killed at Kealakekua Bay
- 1782: Kamehameha begins rise to power
- 1790: Battle of Kepaniwai; Kamehameha conquers Maui
- 1795: Kamehameha conquers Oahu at Nu’uanu
- 1810: Kauai cedes; Hawaiian Islands unified
- 1819 May 8: Kamehameha I dies; Liholiho succeeds as Kamehameha II
- 1819 November: ‘Ai Noa (free eating); kapu system abolished
- 1819-1820: Temples destroyed throughout islands
- 1820 April: First American missionaries arrive
- 1824: Liholiho dies in London; Kamehameha III succeeds
- 1840: Hawaii adopts first constitution
- 1898: United States annexes Hawaii
- 1959: Hawaii becomes 50th U.S. state