Legends of Gods and Ghosts (Hawaiian Mythology) Part 3

Because of their great affection for each other they determined to cling to life as long as possible, and therefore moved to another part of the taro patch, leaving their neighbors to be pulled up instead of themselves.

But the chief soon saw them in their new home and again ordered their destruction. Again they fled. This happened from time to time until the angry chief determined that they should be taken, no matter what part of the pond they might be in.

The two taro plants thought best to flee, therefore took to themselves wings and made a short flight to a neighboring taro patch. Here again their enemy found them. A second flight was made to another part of South Kona, and then to still another, until all Kona was interested in the perpetual pursuit and the perpetual escape. At last there was no part of Kona in which they could be concealed. A friend of the angry chief would reveal their hiding-place, while one of their own friends would give warning of the coming of their pursuer. At last they leaped into the air and flew on and on until they were utterly weary and fell into a taro patch near Waiohinu. But their chief had ordered the imu (cooking-place) to be made ready for them, and had hastened along the way on foot, trying to capture them if at any time they should try to light. However, their wings moved more swiftly than his feet, so they had a little rest before he came near to their new home. Then again they lifted themselves into the sky. Favoring winds carried them along and they flew a great distance away from South Kona into the neighboring district of Kau. Here they found a new home under a kindly chief. Here they settled down and lived many years under the name of Kalo-eke-eke, or "The Timid Taro." A large family grew up about them and a happy old age blessed their declining days.

It is possible that this beautiful little story may have grown out of the ancient Hawaiian unwritten law which sometimes permitted the subjects of a chief to move away from their home and transfer their allegiance to some neighboring ruler.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FROM A TARO PATCH]

V

LEGENDARY CANOE-MAKING

Some of the Hawaiian trees have beautifully grained wood, and at the present time are very valuable for furniture and interior decoration.

The koa is probably the best of the trees of this cla.s.s. It is known as the Hawaiian mahogany. The grain is very fine and curly and wavy, and is capable of a very high polish. The koa still grows luxuriantly on the steep sides and along the ridges of the high mountains of all the islands of the Hawaiian group. It has great powers of endurance. It is not easily worn by the pebbles and sand of the beach, nor is it readily split or broken by the tempestuous waves of the ocean, therefore from time immemorial the koa has been the tree for the canoe and surf-board of the Hawaiians. Long and large have been the canoes hewn from the ma.s.sive tree trunks by the aid of the kohi-pohaku, the cutting stone, or adze, of ancient Hawaii. Some times these canoes were given miraculous powers of motion so that they swept through the seas more rapidly than the swiftest shark. Often the G.o.d of the winds, who had especial care over some one of the high chiefs, would carry him from island to island in a canoe which never rested when calms prevailed or stopped when fierce waves wrenched, but bore the chief swiftly and unfailingly to the desired haven.

There is a delightful little story about a chief who visited the most northerly island, Kauai. He found the natives of that island feasting and revelling in all the abandon of savage life. Sports and games innumerable were enjoyed. Thus day and night pa.s.sed until, as the morning of a new day dawned, an unwonted stir along the beach made manifest some event of very great importance. The new chief apparently cared but little for all the excitement. The king of the island had sent one of his royal ornaments to a small island some miles distant from the Kauai sh.o.r.es. He was blessed with a daughter so beautiful that all the available chiefs desired her for wife. The father, hoping to avoid the complications which threatened to involve his household with the households of the jealous suitors, announced that he would give his daughter to the man who secured the ornament from the far-away island.

It was to be a canoe race with a wife for the prize.

The young chiefs waited for the hour appointed. Their well-polished koa canoes lined the beach. The stranger chief made no preparation. Quietly he enjoyed the gibes and taunts hurled from one to another by the young chiefs. Laughingly he requested permission to join in the contest, receiving as the reward for his request a look of approbation from the handsome chiefess.

The word was given. The well-manned canoes were pushed from the sh.o.r.e and forced out through the inrolling surf. In the rush some of the boats were interlocked with others, some filled with water, while others safely broke away from the rest and pa.s.sed out of sight toward the coveted island. Still the stranger seemed to be in no haste to win the prize. The face of the chiefess grew dark with disappointment.

At last the stranger launched his finely polished canoe and called one of his followers to sail with him. It seemed to be utterly impossible for him to even dream of securing the prize, but the canoe began to move as if it had the wings of a swift bird or the fins of fleetest fish. He had taken for his companion in his magic canoe one of the G.o.ds controlling the ocean winds. He was first to reach the island. Then he came swiftly back for his bride. He made his home among his new friends.

The Hawaiians had many interesting ceremonies in connection with the process of securing the tree and fashioning it into a canoe.

David Malo, a Hawaiian writer of about the year 1840, says, "The building of a canoe was a religious matter." When a man found a fine koa tree he went to the priest whose province was canoe-making and said, "I have found a koa-tree, a fine large tree." On receiving this information the priest went at night to sleep before his shrine. If in his sleep he had a vision of some one standing naked before him, he knew that the koa-tree was rotten, and would not go up into the woods to cut that tree. If another tree was found and he dreamed of a handsome well-dressed man or woman standing before him, when he awoke he felt sure that the tree would make a good canoe. Preparations were made accordingly to go into the mountains and hew the koa into a canoe. They took with them as offerings a pig, cocoanuts, red fish, and awa. Having come to the place they rested for the night, sacrificing these things to the G.o.ds.

Sometimes, when a royal canoe was to be prepared, it seems as if human beings were also brought and slain at the root of the tree. There is no record of cannibalism connected with these sacrifices, and yet when the pig and fish had been offered before the tree, usually a hole was dug close to the tree and an oven prepared in which the meat and vegetables were cooked for the morning feast of the canoe-makers. The tree was carefully examined and the signs and portents noted. The song of a little bird would frequently cause an entire change in the enterprise.

When the time came to cut down the tree the priest would take his stone axe and offer prayer to the male and female deities who were supposed to be the special patrons of canoe building, showing them the axe, and saying: "Listen now to the axe. This is the axe which is to cut down the tree for the canoe."

David Malo says: "When the tree began to crack, ready to fall, they lowered their voices and allowed no one to make a disturbance. When the tree had fallen, the head priest mounted the trunk and called out, 'Smite with the axe, and hollow the canoe.' This was repeated again and again as he walked along the fallen tree, marking the full length of the desired canoe."

Dr. Emerson gives the following as one of the prayers sometimes used by the priest when pa.s.sing a long the trunk of the tree:

"Grant a canoe which shall be swift as a fish To sail in stormy seas When the storm tosses on all sides."

After the canoe had been roughly shaped, the ends pointed, the bottom rounded, and perhaps a portion of the inside of the log removed, the people fastened lines to the canoe to haul it down to the beach. When they were ready for the work the priest again prayed: "Oh, canoe G.o.ds, look you after this canoe. Guard it from stem to stern, until it is placed in the canoe-house."

Then the canoe was hauled by the people in front, or held back by those who were in the rear, until it had pa.s.sed all the hard and steep places along the mountain-side and been put in place for the finishing touches.

When completed, pig and fish and fruits were again offered to the G.o.ds.

Sometimes human beings were again a part of the sacrifice.

Prayers and incantations were part of the ceremony. There was to be no disturbance or noise, or else it would be dangerous for its owner to go out in his new canoe. If all the people except the priest had been quiet, the canoe was p.r.o.nounced safe.

It is said that the ceremony of lashing the outrigger to the canoe was of very great solemnity, probably because the ability to pa.s.s through the high surf waves depended so much upon the out rigger as a balance which kept the canoe from being overturned.

The story of Laka and the fairies is told to ill.u.s.trate the difficulties surrounding canoe making. Laka desired to make a fine canoe, and sought through the forests for the best tree available. Taking his stone axe he toiled all day until the tree was felled. Then he went home to rest. On the morrow he could not find the log. The trees of the forest had been apparently undisturbed. Again he cut a tree, and once more could not find the log. At last he cut a tree and watched in the night. Then he saw in the night shadows a host of the little people who toil with miraculous powers to support them. They raised the tree and set it in its place and restored it to its wonted appearance among its fellows.

But Laka caught the king of the gnomes and from him learned how to gain the aid rather than the opposition of the little people. By their help his canoe was taken to the sh.o.r.e and fashioned into beautiful shape for wonderful and successful voyages.

VI

LAU-KA-IEIE

"Waipio valley, the beautiful: Precipices around it, The sea on one side; The precipices are hard to climb; Not to be climbed Are the sea precipices."

--_Hawaiian Chant._

Kakea (the white one) and Kaholo (the runner) were the children of the Valley. Their parents were the precipices which were sheer to the sea, and could only be pa.s.sed by boats. They married, and Kaholo conceived.

The husband said, "If a boy is born, I will name it; if a girl, you give the name."

He went up to see his sister Pokahi, and asked her to go swiftly to see his wife. Pokahi's husband was Kaukini, a bird-catcher. He went out into the forest for some birds. Soon he came back and prepared them for cooking. Hot stones were put inside the birds and the birds were packed in calabashes, carefully covered over with wet leaves, which made steam inside so the birds were well cooked. Then they were brought to Kaholo for a feast.

On their way they went down to Waipio Valley, coming to the foot of the precipice. Pokahi wanted some sea-moss and some sh.e.l.l-fish, so she told the two men to go on while she secured these things to take to Kaholo.

She gathered the soft lipoa moss and went up to the waterfall, to Ulu (Kaholo's home). The baby was born, wrapped in the moss and thrown into the sea, making a shapeless bundle, but a kupua (sorcerer) saw that a child was there. The child was taken and washed clean in the soft lipoa, and cared for. All around were the signs of the birth of a chief.

They named him Hiilawe, and from him the Waipio waterfall has its name, according to the saying, "Falling into mist is the water of Hiilawe."

Pokahi took up her package in which she had brought the moss and sh.e.l.l-fish, but the moss was gone. Hina-ulu-ohia (Hina-the-growing ohia-tree) was the sorcerer who took the child in the lipoa moss. She was the aumakua, or ancestor G.o.ddess, of the boat-builders.

Pokahi dreamed that a beautiful woman appeared, her body covered with the leaves of koa-trees. "I know that you have not had any child. I will now give you one. Awake, and go to the Waipio River; watch thirty days, then you will find a girl wrapped in soft moss. This shall be your adopted child. I will show you how to care for it. Your brother and his wife must not know. Your husband alone may know about this adopted girl."

Pokahi and her husband went down at once to the mouth of the river, heard an infant cry in the midst of red-colored mist, and found a child wrapped in the fragrant moss. She wished to take it up, but was held back by magic powers. She saw an ohia-tree rising up from the water,--branches, leaves, and flowers,--and iiwi (birds) coming to pick the flowers. The red birds and red flowers were very beautiful. This tree was Hina. The birds began to sing, and quietly the tree sank down into the water and disappeared, the birds flying away to the west.

Pokahi returned to her brother's house, going down to the sea every day, where she saw the human form of the child growing in the shelter of that red mist on the surface of the sea. At the end of the thirty days Pokahi told her friends and her husband that they must go back home. On their way they went to the river. She told her husband to look at the red mist, but he wanted to hurry on. As they approached their house, cooking-odors welcomed them, and they found plenty of food prepared outside. They saw something moving inside. The trees seemed to be walking as if with the feet of men. Steps were heard, and voices were calling for the people of the house.

Kaukini prepared a lamp, and Pokahi in a vision saw the same fine tree which she had seen before. There was also a hala-tree with its beautiful yellow blossoms. As they looked they saw leaves of different kinds falling one after another, making in one place a soft fragrant bed.

Then a woman and a man came with an infant. They were the G.o.d Ku and Hina his wife. They said to Pokahi and her husband, "We have accepted your sacrifices and have seen that you are childless, so now we have brought you this child to adopt." Then they disappeared among the trees of the forest, leaving the child, Lau-ka-ieie (leaf of the ieie vine).

She was well cared for and grew up into a beautiful woman without fault or blemish. Her companions and servants were the birds and the flowers.

Lau-ka-pali (leaf of the precipice) was one of her friends. One day she made whistles of ti leaves, and blew them. The Leaf-of-the Morning-Glory saw that the young chiefess liked this, so she went out and found Pupu-kani-oi (the singing land-sh.e.l.l), whose home was on the leaves of the forest trees. Then she found another Pupu-hina-hina-ula (sh.e.l.l beautiful, with rainbow colors). In the night the sh.e.l.ls sang, and their voices stole their way into the love of Lau-ka-ieie, so she gently sang with them.

Nohu-ua-palai (a fern), one of the old residents of that place, went out into the forest, and, hearing the voices of the girl and the sh.e.l.ls, came to the house. She chanted her name, but there was no reply. All was silent. At last, Pua-ohelo (the blossom of the ohelo), one of the flowers in the house, heard, and opening the door, invited her to come in and eat.

Nohu-ua-palai went in and feasted with the girls. Lau-ka-ieie dreamed about Kawelona (the setting of the sun), at Lihue, a fine young man, the first-born of one of the high chiefs of Kauai. She told her kahu (guardian) all about her dream and the distant island. The kahu asked who should go to find the man of the dreams. All the girl friends wanted to go. She told them to raise their hands and the one who had the longest fingers could go. This was Pupu-kani-oi (the singing sh.e.l.l). The leaf family all sobbed as they bade farewell to the sh.e.l.l.

The sh.e.l.l said: "Oh, my leaf-sisters Laukoa [leaf of the koa-tree] and Lauanau [leaf of the tapa, or paper-mulberry, tree], arise, go with me on my journey! Oh, my sh.e.l.l-sisters of the blue sea, come to the beach, to the sand! Come and show me the path I am to go! Oh, Pupu-moka-lau [the land-sh.e.l.l clinging to the mokahana leaf], come and look at me, for I am one of your family! Call all the sh.e.l.ls to aid me in my journey! Come to me!"