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Each society has its own
myths of kava origin. According to Tahitians, kava was
introduced to the first people by the goddess Hinanui.
For traditional Hawaiians, kava was a gift of the gods
Kane and Kanaloa. And western Europeans…well, naturally
they proclaimed kava to be the devil's drink.
Missionaries in the 1800s
used the allegedly unhygienic nature of kava
mastication, recounted by the botanist Johann Georg
Forster as a rationale to press for a total ban on kava.
Forster was a crew member aboard Captain Cook's ship
moored off Raiatea when he witnessed two young men
prepare and drink kava by mastication inside Cook's
cabin.
Even though the youths
apparently exhibited profound respect for Cook and his
mission, Forster was transfixed with revulsion at the
native ritual. Forster's observations and illustrations
of the plant set off a firestorm of interest in kava
around the world, not all of which was favorable. As a
result, native peoples were pressured to abandon
mastication in the preparation process.
The journal entries of James Morrison didn't help the
cause of kava outside the islands. Morrison visited
Tahiti between 1788 and 1791 and offered this no-doubt
exaggerated account of the effects of kava consumption
on the native population:
[Kava] almost immediately deprives them of the use of
their limbs and speech, but does not touch the mental
faculty and they appear to be in a thoughtful mood and
frequently fall backwards before they have finished
eating. Some of their attendants then attend to chafe
their limbs all over until they fall asleep and the rest
retire and no noise is suffered to be made near them.
After a few hours they are as fresh as if nothing had
happened and are ready for another dose.
Again, the idea of black-skinned natives chewing kava
root into a pulp and making a psychoactive beverage from
it was more than most white Westerners in the 1800s and
early 1900s could handle. To many of the self-righteous
Christian missionaries, kava drinking was seen as a
devilish act. And like all acts of the devil, kava
drinking badly needed eradication.
In the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), Anglican and Catholic
priests for the most part tolerated and accepted kava,
even to the point of drinking it with the natives on
occasion. But Protestant missionaries attacked kava with
such savage ferocity that one is left wondering if they
simply suffered from little else to do. The pleasure
derived by kava drinkers so irked the Protestant
missionaries that they became obsessed in their efforts
to stamp out kava.
When the missionaries discovered that kava was sometimes
used by natives to gain access to the spirit world,
their antagonism toward the plant boiled to roiling
outrage. Kava was an impediment to the establishment of
God's law in a heathen land, they blustered. Kava
ceremonies among natives often began with prayers to the
natives' own gods for health, longevity, good crops, and
success in various endeavors. The missionaries instead
wanted prayers directed solely toward their own
Christian god and wanted the peaceful sunset kava
ceremonies replaced with repetitive, mind-numbing Bible
study. Reflecting on the two choices, I have to say
unabashedly that I would opt for kava every time.
The Presbyterians referred to kava as "grog," a
pejorative term long associated with alcohol, and
described kava drinkers as "drunkards." A pledge offered
by the Presbyterian Church of the New Hebrides read
thus: "I promise as a follower of Jesus Christ not to
drink grog. When temptation comes to me I will seek the
help of God's holy spirit." Dr. William Gunn, a medical
missionary on Futuna, wrote, "[Kava] makes those who
drink it drunk.
Like alcohol, it does not equally affect all; but the
drunkard from kava is intoxicated head to foot, body and
mind. Though never hilarious or pugnacious, he is
blear-eyed, staggeringly, helplessly, disgustingly
drunk. Secondly, kava-drinking, as the natives
themselves assert, is a heathen custom, and contrary to
Christianity. Therefore, our members are all
teetotalers." Actually, for the most part, the native
people sought the gentle peace and help of the spirit of
kava instead. But the Presbyterians were not to be
deterred by the facts.
Marching onward as to war, the Christian soldiers
implemented campaigns to eradicate the use of kava and
were successful in some parts of the Pacific, including
Tahiti and Kosrae. In Hawaii, the use of kava was banned
except on the advice of a physician. In the New
Hebrides, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, and Adventist
missions attacked kava culture more successfully on some
islands than others.
In 1885, a meeting of all Presbyterian missionaries was
held on Epi. Reverend Milne of Nguna made the following
motion to ban all use of kava: "It be hereby enacted
that no teacher connected with the mission be allowed to
drink kava, eat things sacrificed to demons, or in any
other way take part in heathen ceremonies." Not all
attending missionaries supported the harsh motion, and
this caused a rift in the assembly.
In 1886, strident Presbyterian exponents of kava
prohibition went on the offensive again, and a
convention of missionaries meeting on Tanna Island
prohibited kava drinking for all teachers of the church.
To the chagrin of the clergy, numerous individuals opted
to continue drinking kava rather than to join God's
heavenly legions and spread the joyous Gospel.
This campaign against kava resulted in full-blown
harassment of the Tannese people. Those who drank kava
were threatened by the missionaries, and kava growers
and drinkers were frequently arrested for nothing more
than practicing their native custom. Those who were
known or suspected kava drinkers were ostracized by
mission members and were prohibited from attending
church. Fortunately, they could seek soothing comfort in
the calm peace of kava. The peace plant of paradise
surely afforded more succor than the railings of the
Church.
All this religious outrage undoubtedly had an effect on
how kava was received and related to in the West. As
proof, witness some of the distorted and deprecating
accounts of kava drinking that were published during
that dark period.
In the 1833 publication Polynesian Researches, William
Ellis, a missionary in the Society and Sandwich Islands
from 1817 to 1824, railed unrestrained against native
kava users.
They were sometimes engaged for several days together,
drinking the spirit as it issued from the still, sinking
into a state of indescribable wretchedness and often
practicing the most ferocious barbarities…Under the
unrestrained influence of their intoxicating draught, in
their appearance and actions, they resembled demons more
than human beings." Ellis exemplified the blind zeal
with which many missionaries have attacked native
customs deemed inconsistent with the principles and
practices of the Church.
"Copious draughts cause a dizziness and a horribly
distorted countenance," was the skewed view of kava
consumption presented in Torrey j Narrative; or, The
Life and Adventures of William Torrey in 1848. "They
lose the use of their limbs and fall and roll about on
the ground, until the stupefaction wears away."
In 1908, Sir Basil Thompson, in The Fijians: A Study of
the Decay of Custom, delivered a strident indictment of
kava consumption. "The body becomes emaciated. The skin
becomes dry and covered with scales, especially the
palms of the hands, the soles of the feet and the
forearms and the shins. Appetite is lost. Sleep is
disordered. Eyes become bloodshot. There are pains in
the pit of the stomach. The drinker sinks into
unwholesome lethargy."
A more balanced appraisal of kava drinking appeared in a
Berlin Medical Society paper on kava published in 1886.
The author was researcher Louis Lewin, M.D., one of the
pioneering luminaries in the field of psychoactive
drugs. According to Dr. Lewin, kava is "a real
euphoriant which in the beginning made speech more
fluent and lively and increased sensitivity to subtle
sounds." Describing the peaceful effects of kava on
drinkers, he added, "The subjects were never angry,
aggressive or noisy."
Finally, in 1929, A. M. Hocart offered a sympathetic and
accurate account of kava drinking: "It gives a pleasant,
warm and cheerful, but lazy feeling, sociable, though
not hilarious or loquacious; the reason is not
obscured."
But then in 1948, Margaret Titcomb wrote a less
flattering account of kava drinking, reportedly related
by a Hawaiian named Kaulilinoe. "There is no admiration
for the body and face of a [kava] drinker whose eyes are
sticky and whose skin cracks like the bark of the kukui
trees of Lilikoi in unsightliness. If you are drunk with
[kava], you will find your muscles and cords limp, the
head feels weighted and the whole body too."
Ironically, in 1900, at the very same time that kava was
being bashed by Protestant missionaries in the Pacific,
"kava kava extract" was being sold in the Sears, Roebuck
& Co. catalog as "A Home Made Temperance Drink of the
Purest Ingredients" and "the most healthful wine to be
had at any price." The marketers at Sears went
overboard, describing their kava as "exceedingly
pleasant to taste."
They remarked that their kava kava extract was "of great
value as a drink for invalids, children, weak and
delicate ladies, in fact, for everyone suffering from
nervousness, low spirits or brain fatigue." Those who
purchased a large package for $5.00 (about $100 today)
received a set of six wine glasses and a decanter for
free.
Meanwhile, back in paradise, the strident crusade
against kava wore on. At the Council at Synod of the
Presbyterian Church in 1947, a medical missionary named
Dr. Armstrong prevailed upon the missionaries to pass a
resolution stating "that since in the New Hebrides, kava
is an undoubted intoxicant, and its preparation a dirty
and unhygienic process, its drinking and use are
therefore inconsistent with the Christian life, that it
is the duty of missionaries concerned to appeal to
Christians to refrain from kava."
At the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church of
the New Hebrides in 1948, a further resolution was
passed, stating, "The making of intoxicants inside the
islands, particularly the notorious 'kava,' is to be
discouraged as strongly as possible by all Christian
workers. Office-bearers of the Church will abstain from
all traffic in the kava root, and steps are to be taken
to see whether the Condominium will make its use
illegal."
The resolutions passed by the Presbyterians initiated a
Hurry of urgent correspondence with the British and
French commissioners, who rejected a ban on kava as
unnecessary and impossible to enforce. By 1950,
prohibition efforts were abandoned; the Presbyterian
missionaries were too whipped to fight any more. God's
mighty soldiers had been repelled by a peaceful plant
firmly entrenched in island culture, and kava had the
last word.
Today in Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti, and other
South Pacific islands, kava is experiencing an
unprecedented resurgence. Churchgoers and traditional
natives, many of them government officials and
administrators, drink kava as an expression of
traditional custom and as a way of relaxing, for all the
beneficial reasons previously described. The tyrannical
crusade of the Church is ended, and the kava-filled
coconut shell remains both a punctuation to the end of
the day and a means by which one may be conjoined with
spirits and ancestors.
Excerpted from "Psyche Delicacies" by Chris Kilham. |
