Note 96 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.

In Hawaii, four social ranks existed. The members of the third rank held land, “cultivating it either by their own dependents and domestics, or letting it out in small allotments to tenants.… In the fourth rank may be included the small farmers, who rent from ten to twenty or thirty acres of land; the mechanics, namely, canoe and house builders, fishermen, musicians, and dancers; indeed, all the labouring classes, those who attach themselves to some chief or farmer, and labour on his land for their food and clothing, as well as those who cultivate small portions of land for their own advantage.” “Sometimes the poor people take a piece of land, on condition of cultivating a given portion for the chief, and the remainder for themselves, making a fresh agreement after every crop. In addition to the above demands, the common people are in general obliged to labour, if required, part of two days out of seven, in cultivating farms, building houses, etc. for their landlord. A time is usually appointed for receiving the rent, when the people repair to the governor’s with what they have to pay. If the required amount is furnished, they return, and, as they express it (komo hou), enter again on their land. But if unable to pay the required sum, and their landlords are dissatisfied with the presents they have received, or think the tenants have neglected their farm, they are forbidden to return, and the land is offered to another. When, however, the produce brought is nearly equal to the required rent, and the chiefs think the occupants have exerted themselves to procure it, they remit the deficiency, and allow them to return”96. This is quite the reverse of what occurs in slave countries. The slave or serf is prevented from escaping and compelled to remain with his master; the Hawaiian tenant, if the landlord is dissatisfied with the produce brought, is forbidden to return to the land of his employer. In the same sense, Wilkes remarks: “What appears most extraordinary, this bond [i.e. the bond between landlord and tenant] was more often severed by the superiors than by their vassals”97.