ied away to be deified or to
represent deities. They were generally taken in couples, a male and a
female, and having been wrapt up very carefully together in a piece of
native cloth, they were conveyed to a temple (_heiau_), where ceremonies
of consecration or deification were performed over them.[114]

[108] Tyerman and Bennet, _op. cit._ i. 450.

[109] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 92 _sq._

[110] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 91.

[111] A. Marcuse, _Die Hawaiischen Inseln_, p. 101.

[112] J. Cook, _Voyages_, vii. 6, 15; compare A. Campbell, _op.
cit._ p. 76.

[113] U. Lisiansky, _op. cit._ p. 107.

[114] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 212 _sq._

The human sacrifice offered at the making of an idol was intended to
impart strength to the image.[115] But human sacrifices were offered on
many other occasions, such as on the approach of war, on the death of a
chief, and so forth. There is a tradition that Umi, a famous king of
Hawaii, once offered eighty men to his god as a thank-offering for
victory. The victims were generally prisoners of war, but in default of
captives any men who had broken taboos or rendered themselves obnoxious
to the chiefs were sacrificed. It does not appear that they were slain
in the presence of the idol or within the temple, but either on the
outside or where they were first taken; in all cases an attempt seems to
have been made to preserve the body entire or as little mangled as
possible. Generally the victims were despatched by a blow on the head
with a club or stone; sometimes, however, they were stabbed. Having been
stripped naked, the bodies were carried into the temple and laid in a
row, with their faces downwards, on the altar immediately before the
idol. The priest thereupon, in a kind of prayer, offered them to the
gods; and if hogs were sacrificed at the same time, they were
afterwards piled on the human bodies and left there to rot and putrefy
together.[116]

[115] J. Remy, _op. cit._ p. 161.

[116] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 150-152; J. J. Jarves, _op. cit._
pp. 47 _sq._; J. Remy, _op. cit._ pp. xl _sq._ Compare U.
Lisiansky, _op. cit._ pp. 121 _sq._; Tyerman and Bennet, _op.
cit._ i. 423 _sq._

When a new temple was about to be dedicated, some of the people used to
flee into the mountains to escape being sacrificed. The last human
sacrifices are said to have been offered in 1807, when the queen of the
islands was seriously ill.[117]