Legend of Gourd Compass Proves Fairy Tale
HONOLULU.—American science has linaily debunked Hawaii’s popular “sacred calabash” legend of early Polynesians who were able to navigate outrigger canoes over thousands of miles of trackless ocean by use of a gourd or bowl. A calabash is a deep wooden bowl used by Hawaiians for holding clothing, water and foodstugs. The legend is, that by boring holes in the rim of the calabash and filling it with water, natives had a usable instrument for navigation.
4 ‘ Early Hawaiians made long voyages and they did navigate by the stars,” says E. H. Bryan Jr., curator of collections at Bishop Museum, only institution of its kind in American territory specialising in Polynesia. “But there was no ‘sacred calabash’ to holp them navigate. Ethnologists at the musqum have made special efforts to investigate this subject, because it is stated in various accounts of the .instrument that one 1 sacred calabash’ is preserved in our extensive collections. However, careful research fails to show that such a navigating instrument ever existed, or that the Polynesians ever had the remotest idea about it.”
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Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 57, 9 March 1937, Page 9
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184Legend of Gourd Compass Proves Fairy Tale Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 57, 9 March 1937, Page 9
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