W. D. Westervelt

“ No hand could be seen holding it, no strong arm swinging it, and no chief near it save those stricken by it. Dead and dying warriors covered the ground in its path. Sometimes when Kamapuaa had been caught in his marauding expedition, he would escape from the ropes tying him, change into a man, seize a club, become invisible and destroy his captors. He took from the fallen their rich feather war cloaks, carried them to his dwelling-place and concealed them under his mats. The people of Kauai were terrified by the marvellous and powerful being who dwelt in their midst. ”

“ One day Kapalama, who was living in her group of houses in the part of Honolulu which now bears her name, said to her husband: “O Honouliuli, our daughter on Kauai will have a child of magic power and of kupua character. Perhaps we should go thither, adopt it, and bring it up; there is life in the bones.”
They crossed the channel, carrying offerings with them to their gods. Concealing their canoes, they went up into the forest. Their daughter’s child was already born, and behold, it was only an egg! ”

“ The spear replied: “That is one of your ancestors, a kupua. She has a double body, sometimes appearing as a bird and sometimes in human form. Her name is Ka-iwa-ka-la-meha. She has dwelling-places in all the islands, and even in Kahiki. She has come to your sister, Lepe-a-moa, over the seas of the gods Ka-ne and Kanaloa.”
Kauilani watched the great bird as it rose from the sea and flew in mighty circles around the heavens, rising higher and higher until it was lost in the sky.
Soon the atmosphere began to clear, and he saw the rainbow and the girl in the far distance. ”

“ The next morning the king of Maui sent his messenger to the king of Oahu, asking if all things were ready for the battle of that day.
The king of Oahu replied: “Yes; we will go to the place of death. If they win, we die; but if we win, there shall be no death. I do not know how to kill a man in this way.”
So they all went to the battlefield. As soon as all the chiefs and the people were assembled, Maui-nui, king of Maui, leaped up and began his boast, proposing the battle and stating the conditions, “Death for the defeated.” Kakuhihewa quietly answered: “If I win, I shall not kill you. ”

“ There came a sound of raindrops falling on the leaves of the forest trees, and a rainbow stood over the door. The voices of beautiful green birds (the Elepaio) were heard all around, and rats ran over the thatch of the roof. Then the old people said: “This child has become an eepa. He will appear as man or bird or fish or rat.”
Other children were born, then Kawelo, and last of all his faithful younger brother, Kamalama. The old people who took care of Kawelo were his grandparents. They taught the signs and incantations and magic of Hawaiian thought. ”

“ Some legends say that Kauilani’s ancestress, Ke-ao-lewa, who had watched over his sister, the bird-child, Lepe-a-moa, had come from her home in the clouds to aid in the defeat of Akua-pehu-ale.
All forces uniting drove their enemy into a great, mysterious cloud of mana, or miraculous power, and he fell dead under a final blow of the cutting spear Koa-wi Koa-wa. Then Kauilani and his warriors rolled the dead body into one of the large houses. There he offered a chant of worship and of sacrifice, consecrating it as an offering to all the gods who had aided him in his battle. ”

“ While he lived on the Koolau coast he was simply a devastating, brutal monster, with certain powers belonging to a demi-god, which he used as maliciously as possible. After being driven out to the Honolulu side of the mountains, for a time he led his band of robbers in their various expeditions, but after a time his miraculous powers increased and he went forth terrorizing the island from one end to the other. He had the power of changing himself into any kind of a fish. As a shark and as a hog he was represented as sometimes eating those whom he conquered in battle. ”

“ The bird then left him and went out before the people. They made a great noise, laughing and crying out: “A hen! A hen! To fight the great rooster!”
But she was very beautiful in her shining coat of feathers as she waited for the battle. Then the rooster came in, and Kauilani saw that he did not recognize his grandchild. Lepe-a-moa clucked and moved her head and wings like a hen calling to her young chickens. Ke-au-hele-moa was angry. His feathers rose as he came up and he changed their color into red. His antagonist became white. ”

“ Kakuhihewa was kind, and yet this offence of Kapoi was serious in the eyes of the people in view of their ancient customs and ideas. Kakuhihewa had made a law for his temple which he was building at Waikiki. He had established his tabu over all the people and had made the decree that, if any chief or man should build a temple with a tabu on it and should lift that tabu before the tabu on the king’s temple should be over, that chief or man should pay the penalty of death as a rebel. ”

“ It is difficult to analyze the influences which brought the beautiful nature-myth down to the degradation of the sensuous life of a brute. Perhaps the simplest thought is the best, and the problem is solved by supposing that a chief by the name of Ku became imbued with cannibalistic desires and when driven away from his fellow-men made his home among the almost inaccessible peaks where cloud-myth and cannibal-legend could very easily be interwoven with each other as the memory of his horrible cannibal life became dimly connected with the mysterious cloud-forms among which he died. ”

“ Then Mainele said: “There is no rat in that place. I have looked where you said. You are a lying child when you say that you see the whiskers of a rat.”
Pikoi insisted that the rat was there. Mainele was vexed, and said: “Behold all the treasure I have won from the chiefess and the treasure which we are now betting. You shall have it all if you shoot and strike the whiskers of any rat in that small tree. If you do not strike a rat I will simply claim the present bet.”
Then Pikoi took out of the bundle held by his father a bow and an arrow. ”

“ In this beautiful little valley which opened into Nuuanu Valley was the heiau Waolani built for Ka-hanai-a-ke-Akua (The chief brought up by the gods) , long before the days of Kakuhihewa. It was said that the two divine caretakers of this chief were Kahano and Newa, and that Kahano was the god who lay down on the ocean, stretching out his hands until one rested on Kahiki (Tahiti or some other foreign land) and the other rested on Oahu. Over his arms as a great bridge walked the Menehunes, or fairy people, to Oahu. They came to be servants for this young chief who was in the care of the gods. ”

“ The wonderful bread-fruit1 tree was a great tree growing on the eastern bank of the rippling brook Puehuehu.2 It was a tabu tree, set apart for the high chief from Kou and the chiefs from Honolulu to rest under while on their way to bathe in the celebrated diving-pool Wai-kaha-lulu. That tree became a god, and this is the story of its transformation:
Papa and Wakea were the ancestors of the great scattered sea-going and sea-loving people living in all the islands now known as Polynesia. They had their home in every group of islands where their descendants could find room to multiply. ”

“ The legends of a people are of interest to the scholar, the thinker, and the poet.
The legends tell us of the struggles, the triumphs, and the wanderings of the people, of their thoughts, their aspirations; in short, they give us a twilight history of the race. ”

“ Tales of fisher folks, of mountain habitants, of magic fishhooks and of creatures who could take on the form of man or of sea monster at will—such are the legends handed down from generation to generation among these mid-Pacific people. ”

“ This pool of fresh water has been known since the days of old as Ka-puka-Wai-o-Kalihi (The water door of Kalihi) . The gods, stupefied by the liquor, lay down and slept. When at last they were weary of that resting-place, they passed Nuuanu Valley and went into the most beautiful rainbow valley of the world, Manoa Valley, the home of the rainbow princess. This [41] valley is one of the well-settled suburbs of Honolulu.
Well-wooded precipices guard the upper end of the valley and make difficult the path to the tops of the mountains rising thousands of feet above. ”

“ As the geologist finds in the rocks the dim records of the beginnings of life on our planet, the first foreshadowings of the mighty forests that have since covered the lands, and of the countless forms of animal life that have at last culminated in Man, so does the historian discover in the legends of a people the dim traces of its origin and development till it comes out in the stronger light of the later day. ”

“ The last great battle between sea and fire was connected with Pele as a fire-goddess and Kamapuaa, the demi-god, part hog and part man. It is a curious legend in which human and divine elements mingle like the changing scenes of a dream. This naturally follows the statement in some of the legends that Ku, one of the highest gods among the Polynesians as well as among the Hawaiians, was an ancestor of Kamapuaa, protecting him and giving him the traits of a demi-god. Kamapuaa had passed through many adventures on the islands of Oahu and Kauai, and had lived for a time on Maui. ”

“ From the devouring shark the Hawaiian imagination conceived the idea of the shark-man who indulged in cannibalistic tendencies. From the devastations of the hogs they built up the experiences of an rude vicious chief whom they called Kamapuaa, who was the principal figure of many rough exploits throughout the islands. Sometimes he had a hog’s body with a human head and limbs, sometimes a hog’s head rested on a human form, and sometimes he assumed the shape of a hog—quickly reassuming the form of a man. ”

“ The story I am about to tell you came to me as a marvellous, mysterious, miraculous myth of the long ago, when strange powers dwelt in both animals and men, and when cannibalism might have been carried on to be reported later under the guise of eating the flesh of beast or fish. In the long ago there were two “fish” crossing the trackless waters of the Pacific Ocean. Their home was in one of the far-away lands, known as Tahiti. These “fish” were great canoes filled with men. ”

“ To the Hawaiian, “Chief Man-eater” was the unique and horrid embodiment of an insane appetite. He was the “Fe-fi-fo-fum” giant of the [193] Hawaiian nursery. The very thought of his worse than brutal feast made the Hawaiian blood run cold.
One of the legends of Ke-alii-ai Kanaka (The-chief-who-eats-men) tells of the sudden appearance on the island of Kauai, in the indefinite past, of a stranger chief from a foreign land, with a small band of followers. The king of Kauai made them welcome. ”

“ When he died, the people worshipped him as a god. They said he had become a divine shark, watching over the seacoasts of his island. At last they thought it had become a stone god—one point the head and one the tail, one side red and the other black. His grandson, Kawelo-aikanaka, who became king of Kauai, was born the same day that brought Kawelo-lei-makua into the world. They were always known as Aikanaka and Kawelo. There was also born that same day Kauahoa, who became the giant of Kauai, and the personal enemy of Kawelo. ”

“ He could also extend himself to Nuuanu Valley and sometimes spread his body over all the island. Probably the only real connection of Chief Boki with the wonder-dog Poki is the similarity of names. But the chief has been almost forgotten. Even the wonder-dog is known only by the story-tellers, while the night clouds, sometimes darkened by [89] falling rain, sometimes enriched by the halo of lunar rainbows, and sometimes glorified by the silver moonlight, continue to stretch from peak to peak along the mountains and watch over all the various forms of life in the valleys below. ”

“ Honolulu, while Kapalama gave hers to the place where they lived. The bird-child’s parents still dwelt in their forest home on Kauai, hidden from their enemy Akua-pehu-ale.
Note: In Hawaiian legends and even in history, down to the last ruler of the islands, a divinely given rainbow was supposed to be arched from time to time over those of high-chief birth. A child of divine and human or miraculous power in the family of a high chief would almost invariably have its birth attended by thunder, lightning, storm, and brilliant rainbows. ”

“ At this time Kakuhihewa was entertaining his sister and her husband, Maui-nui, who was king of the island of Maui. According to custom, the days were devoted to sports and gambling.
Maui-nui had a kupua, a rooster, which was one of the ancestors of Kauilani’s family, but was very cruel and destructive. He could assume a different bird form for each magic power he possessed. This, with his miraculous human powers, made him superior to all the roosters which had ever been his antagonists in cock-fighting. ”

“ Ka-ne and Kanaloa made many springs of fresh waters in all the different islands. Sometimes a watchman refused to let them take the desired awa—the legends say that they called such persons stingy, and caught them and put them to death. At Honuaula they broke a large place and made a great fish-pond.
They went to Kohala, Hawaii, and found a temple in which they lived for a long time, and the people of Hawaii thought they were gods. Therefore they brought sacrifices and offered worship, and Ka-ne and Kanaloa were satisfied to remain as two of the gods of the islands. ”

“ That the Hawaiian chiefs and priests set small value upon life is well attested by the large number of human sacrifices required for almost all civil and religious ceremonies. For instance, when the famous war-god Kaili was taken to a temple dedicated to it by Kamehameha, eleven human victims were placed at once upon the altar before it. When a chief desired a new canoe a man was usually slain at the foot of the tree from which the canoe was to be made. ”