Note 7 — Traditional Hawaiian History.

That the social and religious condition of the Hawaiian people underwent at about that time several great and important changes,—caused no doubt by the influx of foreign material and the intercourse with foreign lands7—may safely be concluded from express statements and more or less plain allusions in the traditions now extant. Thus the custom of circumcising is plainly traceable up to the time of Paumakua, while it is nowhere spoken of or alluded to as forming a religious necessity or a social custom among chiefs or common people before that time, unless in the Moolelo of Kumuhonua.