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Fornander collection of Hawaiian antiquities and folk-lore, Volume 3 (of 3)

Note 4 — Traditional Hawaiian History.

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Probably the best informed Hawaiian archaeologist of the present day is S. M. Kamakau, but even he is often very credulous, inconsistent and uncritical. He has published, through the various newspapers, several genealogies of the ancient chiefs, but beyond the time of Umi-a-Liloa of Hawaii, Piilani of Maui and Kaihikapu-a-Manuia and Kakuhihewa of Oahu, his love of antiquity often lead him into irreconcilable difficulties. For instance, when Lauli-a-laa, the son of Laamaikahiki, who is forty-sixth from Haloa on the Ulu and Puna-imua line of descent, is represented as having married Maelo (w), daughter of Kuolono, and who is thirty-fourth on the Nanaulu straight line from Haloa, there is evidently either a large gap in the Nanaulu line or a corresponding increase by the insertion of collateral branches in the Puna-imua line. When Kelea, the wife of Kalamakua, the thirty-ninth on the Nanaulu straight line, is represented as the sister of Kawaokaohele, the fifty-sixth on the Hema and Hanalaaiki line, the same discrepancy appears. The Kauai genealogies, which I have received from Hon. D. Kalakaua, make only forty-five generations from Wakea, through the Nanaulu-Muliele-alii-Kumuhonua-Elepuukahonua line, to Kamakahelei and to Kumahana who were contemporaries of Kamehameha I, the sixty-fourth, if not the sixty-fifth from Wakea through the Ulu-Hema-Hanalaanui line. The Kauai genealogy makes Kualii the forty-third from Haloa, whereas the Oahu genealogy, through Moikeha, the brother of Kumuhonua, makes Kualii the forty-ninth from Haloa; the discrepancy lying between the thirty-first and thirty-eighth of the Kauai-Elepuukahonua line.4

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