Volume 6 / Part 2 — Traditional Hawaiian History.

I have read with a great deal of interest the efforts made by various writers in the Hawaiian journals to restore and to publish the traditions, histories, songs and sagas, pertaining to the Hawaiian people. They have a value and being far greater than many would at first conceive of, whether historically, ethnologically or philologically considered; and their preservation and critical collation and analysis are objects well worthy of the time and trouble of men of leisure and ability. I have every reason to believe that what has so far been published is but a small part of the material that may yet be collected, if proper inquiries were made. It would be as absurd and incorrect to date Hawaiian history from the time of Captain Cook, as it would be to date English history from the time of the Norman Conquest, while the previous national life of the Hawaiian people is laid bare to the critical observer in numerous meles, kaaos, and moolelos, preserved and handed down from generation to generation, not by foreign dilettante or men of no standing, but by the most jealous care of chiefs, priests, and bards, independent in their source and preservation, crossing, clashing or confirming each other. Though the historical thread which underruns these traditions is often overlaid with fables, superstitions and exaggerations, yet I contend that from the very nature of their independent sources they are a most valuable material from which to rehabilitate Hawaiian history for centuries anterior to Capt. Cook. The critical canon which refuses to build up history from tradition, and receives nothing but contemporary writers or monumental records as evidences of fact, seems to me more nice than wise under certain circumstances. When Niebuhr ran his pen through Roman history previous to the sack of the city by the Gauls, it was not on account of the worthlessness of the Roman traditions, for he never had them in their pure and simple archaic form, nor yet a trust-worthy translation of them in either Greek or later Latin, but only such as the prejudice, credulity, ignorance and uncritical manipulation of Troy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and others, had made them. And I am fain to believe that had either Niebuhr or Sir Cornwall Lewis stood face to face with the Roman, Etruscan and Sabinian traditions in their original, unadulterated form, while yet presenting a living impress of their respective peoples, so far from rejecting, they would have turned them to the best account in elucidating the times of which they treated.

Now as regards Hawaiian traditions, we have, or may have—if proper and speedy means are taken before the present generation of quinquagenarians becomes extinct,—a number and various series of traditions, genealogies, songs, histories, tales, prayers, rites of worship, land divisions, social and economical rules, agricultural and maritime instructions, all of them in the original language, bearing intrinsic and unmistakable proofs not only of their genuineness and great age, but also of different epochs of composition; and all of them issuing from and attached not to one grand overshadowing dynasty of chiefs to whose vanity, ambition and pretensions they might have been made subservient,—but to three, four, sometimes five or more equally independent rival dynasties, scanning each other’s claims and pretensions with jealous care and asserting their own with the fullest freedom.

Of the almost incredible tenacity and faithfulness with which these traditions were preserved and handed down, abundant proofs exist in the uncorrupted exactness with which they are repeated even at this late day, when collected and written down as delivered by the old people in various parts of the islands. I have two independent sets of the prayer and chant of “Kapaahulani” (“He Elele kii na Maui”), recounting the genealogy and exploits of Kualii, a famous King of Oahu,—one collected on Hawaii, the other on Oahu—and yet—though it is perhaps the longest poem in the Hawaiian language, having six hundred and eighteen lines—the two versions do not differ to a word; so tenacious was the memory, so faithful the preservation of the original composition. I have also a double version of the remarkable chant or prophecy of Kaulumoku (“O Haui ka lani etc.”) regarding Kamehameha I, composed years before the conquest of the islands by the latter, and containing five hundred and twenty-seven lines; one version collected on Maui, the other on Hawaii, and the only difference between the two is the omission of one line in the Hawaii version. Though parts of the first poem are evidently of older date than the others, yet the poem as a whole can not well, from merely genealogical consideration, be less than two hundred years old. The latter poem was evidently composed before the year 1786, the approximate date of the author’s death, while Kamehameha I was still ruling over only one third of Hawaii and struggling with no marked success against the combined forces of Keawemauhili and Keoua. And thus with many other meles and chants of much older date, bearing record of contemporary events and of the past reminiscences of this people.

Whether that arrival of foreigners of European extraction was the only one which occurred during the time that the Spaniards monopolized the navigation in the North Pacific, I have found nothing positive in the native traditions, to either affirm or deny; though I have inferential reasons to believe that others besides those alluded to above did touch at some of these islands. In the well-known pule or chant of Kapaahulani, the King of Oahu, Kualii,—who during some portion of his life at least was contemporary with Keawe, the great grandfather of Kamehameha—is made to say of himself that he knew Tahiti. I quote the verse as it has been handed down:

Ua ike hoi wau ia Tahiti,

He moku leo pahaohao wale Tahiti.

No Tahiti kanaka i pii a luna

A ka iwikuamoo o ka lani

A luna keehi iho,

Nana iho ia lalo.

Aole o Tahiti kanaka;

Hookahi o Tahiti kanaka, he haole.

Me ia la he Akua,

Me oe la he kanaka

At the time when Kualii lived and ruled, (say 1675 as the central epoch of his exploits,) the visits and excursions of the Hawaiians in their own canoes to foreign lands had been discontinued for many generations, and, while the memories of former journeys were kept green in numerous families, yet since the days of … no song nor saga records such journeys by the boldest and bravest of Hawaiian heroes, until this avowal of Kualii stands forth in its solitary grandeur, awakening discussion on the following points:—1. Which was the Tahiti that Kualii visited? 2. Did he visit it in his own vessel, canoe or peleleu, or was he, like Kaiana in after years, taken away by a foreign vessel and returned by the same?

1. To the Hawaiian people, in their own language, Tahiti means generally a foreign country,—a country outside of and beyond their own group. When reference is made in the Hawaiian songs and sagas to any of the Tahitis with which they had frequent and intimate intercourse up to a certain period, the particular Tahiti is generally specified with some special epithet affixed, as Tahiti-ku, Tahiti-moe, Holani-ku, Nuumealani, Holani-moe, Lulokapu, etc., but these and others, representing islands to the south and southwest of this group, are nowhere spoken of as with a leo pahaohao—an entirely different language—not different in dialect, but different in kind. When therefore Kualii about the middle or latter part of the seventeenth century speaks of the Tahiti which he visited as being a country with a leo pahaohao, he did not and could not mean any of the Central or South Polynesian Islands. Moreover, when he says that he there saw the “haole”—the white-skinned man—the inference is plain that it was not a Tahiti inhabited by kindreds of his own race; for the South Pacific Tahitis had not then been taken possession of, or settled upon by Europeans. The probability therefore is strong that the Tahiti he refers to was either the western coast of Mexico or Manila where the Spaniards were settled and held possession.

I have no doubt that the ancient Hawaiians had a knowledge of the mainland of America—at present Mexico or California—and that they designated it under the rather indefinite appellation of Kukulu o Tahiti—the farthest ends of foreign lands;—but that knowledge was acquired before that coast was occupied by the Spaniard, for the meles and legends which refer to it make no mention of the “haole” up to the time of Kualii.

2. How did Kualii get to Tahiti? The intercourse between this group and other groups of Polynesia or the American mainland of which the older meles speak so frequently, had ceased many generations before Kualii’s time, and Hawaiian navigation was then limited to the seas and islands comprising the group. Even the Kauai rovers, noted as the most daring and skilful throughout the group, had lost the knowledge or the means of going to Tahiti. I have shown that Kualii lived within the period when the Spanish-Manila trade from the Mexican coast was at its height. It is historically on record that the Spanish discovered this group about 1542; it is traditionally on record that Spaniards (for no other foreigners or “haoles” then navigated the North Pacific) were cast away on Hawaii within a range of twenty years, above or below that period; and there are reasons for believing that more than one galleon, during the time of the Spanish monopoly of the Manila trade, either visited the islands directly, or went so near to them as to be able to pick off any natives who might have been at sea in their canoes at the time of the passing of the galleon.

Though Hawaiian tradition is silent as to the manner in which Kualii visited Tahiti the land of the “haole,” it is positive as to the fact; and the only reasonable explanation I can offer is that a Spanish galleon in passing these islands picked up Kualii, at sea or ashore, voluntarily or as a hostage, and returned him on its next trip. And what was thus done in one instance, and of which tradition has been retained because the object of it was one of the highest chiefs in the country, whose renown in after times filled the land from one end to the other, may have occurred in other instances before or since with men of lesser note of whom tradition is silent or has been lost.

It is well known to tradition and recorded in songs and sagas that before the time of Pili-Kaaiea there was a vacuum in the Hawaii-Hanalaanui-Hema line of aliis, and from the antiquarian lore of S. M. Kamakau, throwing light on the ante-“Pili” period, I am forced to conclude that at least seventeen generations, as quoted in the Hema genealogy of the Hawaii chiefs, must be thrown out in order to make subsequent well-known generations fall into their places as indicated by the Oahu, Kauai or Molokai lines of descent from Maweke and his sons. Thus when all the traditions and meles make Kaaipahu the forty-ninth on the recognized Hawaii-Hanalaanui-Hema line, the husband of Hualani, the great-great-granddaughter of Keaunui-a-Maweke and thirty-third on the Nanaulu line, then inferentially but effectively confirm the statement of Kamakau of the displacement of the seventeen generations interpolated on the Hawaii line, either immediately preceding Pili, or between Ulu and Aikanaka. At any rate it makes Pili,—who, it is well known, arrived from Tahiti with Paa and became the founder of the new and later line of Hawaii aliis—contemporary with the grand period of migrations recorded in the meles and sagas of the sons and successors of Maweke.

The Maui-Hanalaa-iki line must suffer a similar curtailment in order to bring its prominent historical figures in consonance with Oahu and Kauai genealogies. Thus when all accounts agree in making Kelea, the sister of Kawaokaohele of Maui and aunt of Piilani, the wife of Lo Lale—brother of Piliwale of Oahu—there can be no doubt of their contemporaneity. But the Oahu-Nanaulu line makes Lo Lale the thirty-ninth or forty-first from Wakea, and the Maui-Hanalaa-iki line makes Kelea the fifty-sixth from Wakea, thus showing the same irreconcilable difference of from fifteen to seventeen generations as we encountered in the Hawaii-Hanalaa-nui line.

I am further more inclined to consider the Oahu-Nanaulu straight line of descent as the most correct and reliable, inasmuch as I find it corroborated by an examination of nearly all the correlative branches originating from the children and grandchildren of Maweke, the twenty-eighth on the Nanaulu line from Wakea. Thus the line of Kalehenui-a-Maweke, culminating in Kaakaualani, the wife of Kakuhihewa, corresponds exactly with the line of Mulielialii-a-Maweke ending in Kakuhihewa. Thus the line of Keaunui-a-Maweke, through Nuakea, Kalahumoku, Moku-a-Hualeiakea, to the children and grandchildren of Umi-a-Liloa in Hawaii, the uncontested contemporaries of Kakuhihewa, is equally full and correct. I am therefore inclined to consider the Nanaulu line, including its branches, not only as the most correct, but as the main trunk of Hawaiian genealogy. And that it was so considered by the ancient Hawaiians themselves, I infer from the evident and repeated desires of the Hawaii and Maui chiefs to connect themselves with the Kauai and Oahu branches of this line, and by the fact that Kauai was looked upon by them as the cradle of knowledge, skill, laws and religion.

Between the different genealogies, as I have received them, the following discrepancies appear, which in my opinion, indicate either gaps in one line, or additions in another. There are certain luminous points of coincidence or contemporaneity, well established by the uniform tradition accompanying all the lines of descent, which in a measure will help to correct some of the lines of descent. The discrepancies are these:

1. From Wakea to Kakuhihewa, on the straight Nanaulu line, through Mulielealii and Maelo (w), there are forty-five generations, Kakuhihewa included.

2. From Wakea to Kakuhihewa, on the Ulu-Puna-imua line, through Laulialaa—Maelo’s husband—there are fifty generations, the difference lying between Ulu and Laulialaa.

3. From Wakea to Kahoukapu, on the Ulu-Hema-Hanalaanui line, there are fifty-one generations; but from Wakea to Laakapu (w) (the wife of Kahoukapu and sister of Laulialaa) there are only forty generations on the Ulu-Puna-imua line. The difference lying probably between Hema and Pili-Kaaiea, whom all the traditions correspond in asserting as having come from Tahiti with Paao the Kahuna about the time of the great migration which characterized the age of Moikeha, Olopana, etc., children of Mulielealii and their contemporaries.

4. The traditions all agree that Kanipahu of Hawaii married Hualani (w) of Molokai. But Kanipahu stands forty-sixth on the Ulu-Hema and Hanalaanui line, whereas Hualani stands thirty-fourth on the Nanaulu straight line through Keaunui-a-Maweke and his daughter Nuakea. Kaakaualani (w) the wife of Kakuhihewa, stands forty-sixth on the Nanaulu straight line, through Kalehenui-a-Maweke; but her mother, Kauhiiliula-a-Piilani, stands fifty-eighth on the Ulu-Hema and Hanalaa-iki line; thus showing that notwithstanding the era of commotion, displacement and migration, above referred to, the Nanaulu straight line, through Maweke, his children and grandchildren, not only maintain a wonderful correspondence and regularity between themselves, but each and all of them unite in pointing out the discrepancies and probable interpolation on the Hema-Hanalaa lines of descent. The first mentioned contemporaneity is those of Auanini on the Ulu-Puna-imua line, and of Mua and her husband Kaomealani on the Maweke-Kalehenui line from Nanaulu. Auanini stands thirty-first on his line from Wakea, and Mua stands thirty-second on the other line. Tradition is circumstantial that in their time the first foreigners (haole) came to this group—to Oahu, off Mokapu.

5. The second recognized contemporaneity, that I have been able to find in the meles and kaaos in my possession—saving and excepting always what may hereafter come to light—is that of Kanipahu and his wife Hualani. According to the genealogy published by D. Malo, Kanipahu was the forty-ninth from Wakea, and according to the Nanaulu-Keaunui-a-Maweke line Hualani was the thirty-fourth from Wakea.

6. The next recognized contemporaneity is that of Kalaunuiohua, according to D. Malo the fifty-second from Wakea on the Hema-Hanalaanui line, and Kukona of Kauai with whom he made war, and who is the forty-third on the Ulu-Puna-imua line.

7. The next is that of Luakoa of Maui, forty-eighth or forty-ninth on the Hema-Hanalaa-iki line, who made war on Mailikukahi who stands thirty-ninth on the Nanaulu straight line through Mulielealii and Moikeha.

8. The next is that of Kahoukapu of Hawaii, standing fifty-fourth on the Hema-Hanalaa-nui line, who married Laakapu, daughter of Laamaikahiki, and who consequently stands fortieth on the Ulu-Puna-imua line.

9. The next is what may be considered as the historical, though medieval, period of Hawaiian national life, viz: that of Piilani of Maui, Umi of Hawaii, and Kalaimanuia of Oahu. The second stands fifty-eighth from Wakea, according to D. Malo; the first is fifty-seventh on the Hema-Hanalaa-iki line, and the third is forty-third on the Nanaulu straight line.

From this time the different lines run with great regularity and correspondence, and were proper authorities available, I think every apparent discrepancy could be satisfactorily explained.

I regret that I have only two genealogies of the Kauai chiefs: one furnished me by the Hon. D. Kalakaua, the other published by S. M. Kamakau. The first gives only forty-four generations from Wakea to Kualii of Oahu and Kauai; the second gives sixty generations during the same period. The first counts through Mulielealii, Kumuhonua and Elepuukahonua; the latter through Ulu and Puna-imua, and Ahukini-a-laa. The first falls five generations short of the Nanaulu line through Moikeha to Kualii. The latter over-runs six generations, counting from Laulialaa and Ahukini-a-laa who were brothers, besides the discrepancy of five generations already noticed between the Nanaulu and Puna-imua lines, previous to Laulialaa.

But, if we cannot reconcile the line of Hema-Hanalaa-nui with that of Nanaulu in descending the two streams from Wakea, let us ascend the streams of two such well-known contemporaries as Kualii of Oahu (Nanaulu) and Keawe of Hawaii (Hema-Hanalaa-nui). If we thus ascend sixteen generations on each line, we shall meet again with Hualani (w) on the Nanaulu-Keaunui-a-Maweke line, and with her husband Kanipahu on the so-called Hema-Hanalaa-nui. Thus showing that from Kanipahu, perhaps even from Kaniuhi, there has been no break or discrepancy in the latter line. Sixteen or seventeen generations upward from Kualii, however, bring us to the grandchildren of that boisterous period in Hawaiian history when Moikeha, Kumuhonua and Olopana, the children of Mulielealii-a-Maweke, filled Hawaiian tradition with their exploits and adventures abroad and at home; when voyages to and from Tahiti were of common occurrence; and when many changes and additions to the customs and worship of the people were introduced.

Are we then to conclude that the so-called Hanalaanui line of Hawaiian chiefs does not go any further back on Hawaii than the time of Pili? I think not. The traditions tell us fully and circumstantially that both Olopana and Kumuhonua, the sons of Mulielealii were established and living on Hawaii, that Moikeha’s son Kila, their nephew, settled there. They tell us that Hikapoloa (k) and his wife Mailelaulii were noted chiefs in Kohala before this time; that their granddaughter Luukia was the wife of Olopana, and that their grandson Kaumailiula married Olopana’s daughter, Kaupea. Although, therefore, it is impossible at this time to say with which of the Ulu or Nanaulu branches Kanipahu or Kaniuhi were related; yet that they were so related and that directly, is a certainty beyond doubt, to those who are acquainted with the tabu systems and the social institutions and customs which, however modified at different times, never abated an iota of their rigour as affecting the laws of descent.

From the fact that Ouanini, the grandson of Puna-imua, was contemporary with Mua, on the Nanaulu-Kalehenui line,—their standing respectively thirty-first and thirty-second from Wakea on their different lines—inclines me strongly to look for the difference or discrepancy between these two lines among the names that follow Paumakua until Ahukai, the father of Laamaikahiki.

Although there certainly are not a few persons on these, the principal, lines of descent from Wakea, to whom tradition has affixed a local habitation and a name; yet I think it in vain to look for genealogical precision or historical data before the period of Maweke and his affiliations on the Nanaulu line, or his probable contemporary Paumakua and his near predecessors on the Ulu line.

I have seen no mention of human sacrifices, before this period, either of captives in war or on other solemn occasions. To this period is to be referred the powerful priestly family of Paao, who came with Pili from Tahiti; and Kaekae, Maliu and Malela, who were brought by Paumakua from abroad and are said to have been white people and kahunas. The “Aha Kapu o na ’lii” is not of older date than the time of Paumakua—the “Kapu moe o na ’lii” is of much later origin.

Taking then thirty years as the measure of a generation, and the Nanaulu straight line, as the least inflated and most reliable, we have twenty-six generations from the time of Maweke to the present time, which places Maweke at the commencement of the twelfth century, say A.D. 1100. And during that century those great migrations to and fro with their resultant influx of new men and new ideas occurred. It was an era of intense restlessness and great activity and daring. Up to this time Hawaiian history is merely a register of names with only here and there a passing allusion to some event, barely sufficient to give a locus standi to some prominent name, such as the building and inauguration of Kukaniloko as a royal birth-place by Nanakaoko and his wife Kahihiokalani. This however must have happened close upon the twelfth century, for their son and grandson—Kapawa and Heleipawa—were no doubt contemporaries with Maweke or with Pili-Kaaiea. After the time of Maweke of the Nanaulu line, and after Paumakua of the Ulu line, however, Hawaiian history commences to flow with a fuller tide, and most of the principal names on either line have some account or mele connected with them; the traditions and songs become more numerous and circumstantial in their details, and, by crossing or confirming each other, enable the critical student to arrive at a considerable degree of precision in eliminating facts from myths and placing names and events in a proper succession and in an approximately correct time.

What the gradually growing or abruptly determining causes of this national restlessness of these series of migrations may have been, either here or in central and western Polynesia—perhaps also to and from the North American coasts—Hawaiian traditions and meles throw no light upon, so far as I have been able to ascertain; and with the history and traditions of those other countries I am not sufficiently acquainted to offer an adequate or precise answer. The only corresponding movement in Central and Southern Polynesia that I can now refer to is—I believe, but have not the authority by me—the settlement of New Zealand by its present Polynesian race. Their traditions and genealogies bring that event the fifteenth century of our era, and they came from Savaii, one of the Navigator’s Islands. Our own traditions refer the advent here of Paao and Pili from Wawau and Upolo, to an earlier period. Both were probably cases of expulsion caused by civil wars.

It is a somewhat remarkable circumstance that the first appearance of white men in this Archipelago refers to this same period of migrations. The traditions state that in the time of Auanini, the grandson of Puuaimua, and a chief living at Kapalawai in Kailua, Oahu, and while Mua-o-Kalani and her husband Kaomealani were chiefs at Kaopulolia in Kaneohe, Oahu, a vessel arrived off Mokapu; that the name of the vessel was “Ulupana;” the name of the captain was Molo-Lana, and of his wife, Malaea; that the names of the people on board were Olomana, Aniani and Holokaniakani; that these however were not their proper names, but names given them by those chiefs on whose territories they landed; the tradition however does not say whether these people went away again or whether they remained and settled in the country.

The next account of white people arriving here is found in the tradition and mele of Paumakua, grandson of Auanini aforesaid, and an Oahu chief, who is said to have visited numerous foreign lands (“Kaapuni ia Kahiki”), and who brought back with him two white men, Auakahinu and Auakaaiea, who afterwards were called Kaekae and Maliu and were said to have been kahunas (priests). Paumakua also brought back with him another stranger called Malela who was a kaula (prophet), but as to whether this latter was also a white man the tradition is not so explicit. The two former however are described in the tradition as “Ka haole nui, maka alohilohi, ke aholehole maka aa, ka puaa keokeo nui maka ulaula.” These, it would appear, remained and settled in the country, as in later times we find several priestly families claiming and proving their descent from the two former.

This period of great migrations, of national activity and restlessness and of grand enterprises, having passed, comparative quiet seems to have succeeded for several generations; and the meles and legends become silent upon the subject of foreign voyages or foreign arrivals until the time of Kakaalaneo, King of Maui and brother to the great-grandfather of Piilani—about fourteen generations from the present—at the close of the fifteenth or the commencement of the sixteenth century. The traditions as written down by S. M. Kamakau runs thus: “In the time of Kakaalaneo several foreigners (haole) arrived at Waihee in Maui, two of whom only were or became remarkable, viz.: Kukanaloa and Pele, who was Peleie, and the name of the vessel was Konaliloha. They landed at Kiwe in the night and when discovered in the morning by the natives, they were taken to the village and fed and brought to the king and the chiefs who treated them kindly and made friends of them (hoopunahele) and admitted them to all the privileges of the kapu. They settled in the country, married some of the chief-women and became progenitors of both chiefs and commoners, and some of their descendants survive to this day.” “They were called Kanikawi and Kanikawa after the beautiful flowers of Haumea.”—“Their speech sounded like a bird’s, like the lale of the mountain, a chattering, vociferous bird.”—“They said they came from Kahiki, from the very interior.” “Their land was a fertile land with plenty of fruits and large animals.”—“Their parents dwelt far inland (uka) on the side of the mountain, away up in the forest (ukaliloloa, i ka waonahele).”—“They were acquainted with the banana, the breadfruit, the ohia-apples, and the kukui nuts.”

The tradition which refers to the wrecking and landing of the foreigners (haole)—two men and one woman, at Keei, South Kona, Hawaii, in the time of Keliiokaloa, the son of Umi-a-Liloa, before the middle of the sixteenth century,—is well known and has long been recorded. There is some obscurity however thrown over both this and the foregoing tradition, inasmuch as the names of the vessel (“Konaliloha”) and of the principal personage (Kukanaloa) are the same in both traditions, and also some of the attending circumstances. But whether it was only one and the same event, adopted—mutalis mutandis—on both islands, or two separate occurrences, the fact of the arrival, and the retention of that fact in the Hawaiian memory, are none the less established.

How these voyages were accomplished will not now excite any surprise when we know, not only from the traditions, but from the ocular testimony of the grandparents of the present generation, that the canoes of those times were of an enormous size compared with the canoes of the present day. Double canoes carrying eighty men were not uncommon; and it is reported by eye-witnesses that, as late as the year 1740, the favorite war canoe, or admiral’s ship, “Kaneaaiai,” of Peleioholani of Oahu carried on board from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty men, besides their provisions, water, etc. And it is further reported that this canoe, and possibly others of similar dimensions, was made of pieces of wood or planks fastened together, somewhat after the manner of Malay proas or Western Polynesian canoes at the present day. Though the Hawaiians had not the compass or any substitute for it, yet they were fully and correctly acquainted with the bearing and rising and setting of a large number of stars, by which they steered during the night. It is reported as of no uncommon occurrence, for instance, that the Kauai sea-rovers would make their descent on the Hawaii or Maui shores, plunder or slay or capture whatever or whomsoever they could lay their hands on and then, in order to elude pursuit, stand off, straight out of sight of land on the open ocean, for two or three days, and return to their own homes by some circuitous route, either to the windward or the leeward of the islands. There is now, or was not long ago, the wreck of a large canoe lying on the shore near the southern point of Hawaii, which measured one hundred and eight feet in length, and was said to have been one of a double-canoe belonging to Kamehameha I.

The Hawaiians being thus possessed of vessels capable of performing long voyages in open sea, possessed of sufficient astronomical and practical knowledge to navigate them, and of daring and enterprise to match with the boldest, it is but natural that their traditions, sagas and songs, should be replete with their adventures and exploits in foreign lands. In that they are overloaded with marvels, fables and exaggerations, they only resemble the early and medieval periods of other countries. But when all these are stripped, there still remains an undisputable residium of facts to show that from the eleventh and during the twelfth century, and subsequently, not only were these islands visited by people of kindred and alien races whether arriving here by accident or design, but also that the Hawaiians, themselves, performed frequent though desultory voyages to the countries and islands lying south and west from their own group; that from this period dates the establishment, or at least the prominence of the principal dynasties and chief-families in the islands; and that from this time the genealogical succession on Hawaiian soil may be pretty accurately ascertained.

I know that Papa and Wakea, the reputed progenitors of the Hawaiian race of chiefs, were also considered as gods, demi-gods, heroes and progenitors in nearly every other Polynesian group of islands. I have seen it assumed that the twelfth or thirteenth first names of the Haloa line were common to the Marquesan pedigrees and considered as their ancestors. I know that Maui-a-kalana, who is said to have collected the sun’s rays, to have discovered the fire, and to have nearly succeeded in joining these islands together into one large continent, and whose name stands twenty-second on the Ulu line,—I know that he is the hero of the same legends in the Samoan, Society, Marquesan and New Zealand islands. While therefore I have no means of disputing the correctness of the succession of names borne on Hawaiian pedigrees from Wakea to nearly the period of Maweke, I am yet strongly of the opinion that those names, their legends and meles, were introduced into this group about the time of Maweke and his contemporaries and compeers, and during some of the next following generations. I am inclined to that opinion from the fact that, while almost every Hawaiian chief-family that at some time or other obtained prominence or influence in the country traced their pedigree up to Maweke, his contemporaries or successors, and claim their descent from Wakea through some one or other of the numerous branches springing from Maweke, Kapawa, Paumakua or later offshoots from these, not one family, that I am aware of, pretends to connect with either the Nanaulu or the Ulu lines beyond this period; thus proving to me that these heroes were the first and actual progenitors of the Hawaiian families of chiefs on Hawaiian soil, and that they brought with them from Kahiki their own pedigrees up to their own time.

Whoever knew this people some forty or fifty years ago, and more so if further back, could not fail to observe the remarkable difference of appearance between the chiefs and the makaainana (commoners) and the Kauwa-makauuli (slaves) indicating the former as, if not of a different race, at least of a different and superior class to the common multitude. And the feeling, solicitude and pride, with which that difference was kept up, show that they looked upon themselves not only as a different class politically, but also as of different birth socially. It was an heirloom from their ancestors and came with them from Tahiti. No poverty, misery or misconduct could efface it. Though there are many instances where chiefs were slain by their subjects in revolt, or were deposed from supremacy by their peers or subordinate chiefs, yet there never was a Bill of Attainder in those days, nor is there an instance of a chief who ever forfeited his own rank as a chief (of the “Papa Alii”) or that of his children. Those chiefs, those ancestors of the Hawaiian aristocracy, did not however, as I have endeavored to show, appear on Hawaiian soil much earlier than the period of those great migrations, that national or intertribal displacement of the Polynesian race which occurred during the eleventh and twelfth centuries of our era. It may have commenced a generation or two before Maweke,—it certainly continued several generations after him—but I use his name as a kind of central figure, seeing that the line upon which he stands (the Nanaulu straight line) is probably the most correct of existing genealogies.

I would not be understood as asserting that there were neither chiefs nor people on the island of this group before this period of migrations. The meles and legends are full to the contrary. This very family of Kamauaua and its kindred on Molokai; those of Pueonui and Kealiiloa on Kauai; those of Hikapoloa on Hawaii and Kaikipaananea and Puna on Kauai, and others, whose names and whose pedigrees have never been transferred or connected with the lives of Haloa, attest the presence, and previous occupation of the islands by both chiefs and people. But these chiefs were gradually displaced, and disappeared before the new element, the Tahitian influx, with its new gods, its new tabus, and its greater vigour and moral and intellectual power. Whatever the causes that brought these latter ones here, yet, to judge from the case of Pili and Paao, they were not low-born adventurers, but men of mark in their own country, alii kapu, with whom alliances were sought, to whom the vacant chief-seats and the ahuula naturally fell in the lapse of time, and who kept bards to sing their own names and those of their ancestors, and heralds to proclaim their unbroken descent from Wakea and from Haloa.

The strongest proof, however, as I think, of the absence of Hawaiian genealogies and of the utter darkness which enveloped Hawaiian history proper before that period, is to be found—as I have already stated—in the fact that all the prominent Hawaiian chief-families connect with the line of Wakea through Ulu or Nanaulu about this time, and that, in order to establish that connection, they counted through females as well as through males, and dropped the latter whenever they did not lead up to the main trunk of Wakea or someone of that Tahitian element which made its appearance about the eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenth centuries of our era, and who are invariably called “na kupuna alii”—founders of dynasties,—on this or that island.

While the Hawaiian cosmogonies abundantly betray their Tahitian origin, they also develop some interesting facts which will throw some light on the subject of the Tahitians’ (I mean in the Hawaiian sense of the word) settling here at the period to which I have referred. Thus, though the traditions and meles differ as to the actual origin of these islands, some stating them to have been born of Papa and Wakea—a kind of mythical setting back their creation to the oldest known period of time, and others assuming them to be fished up from the sea by Kapuhauanui, a fisherman from Kapaahu in Tahiti, and others again that they sprung forth from the night, yet several concur in representing them as forming only a group in a chain of groups of islands extending from Nuumealani on one side to Holani, Nuuhiwa and Polapola on the other; and the Mele of Kamahualele, the kahuna of Moikeha, who accompanied him from Kahiki, distinctly states that long before his time Nuuhiwa and Polapola were severed from this chain. Thus the existence and bearings of these islands were known to the Tahitians before their last settlement here; and they knew of the existence of other islands contiguous to this group, or intermediate between this and the eastern and central Polynesian groups, of which neither the names nor the location can now be traced. Another circumstance connected with these lost islands is, that while the meles and traditions referring to times and persons anterior to the last Tahitian settlement here are full of notices of Nuumea-lani and Holani and Kuaihelani, as within easy reach of, and having had frequent intercourse with this group, yet none of the meles and traditions that I possess makes any mention of them as existing at the time of, or subsequent to, that last Tahitian emigration. Thus the Mele of Kamahualele and the traditions of Moikeha, Olopana, Kila, and Laamaikahiki, make no mention of them as having been visited by these worthies or seen by them in their voyages to and from Tahiti. The traditions of Hema, Paumakua and Kahai also ignore them as existing at that time. The tradition of Paao does not refer to them in his voyage with Pili from Tahiti (Moaulanuiakea) to Hawaii.

In comparing the New Zealand legends as published by Sir George Grey, I find that the New Zealanders count fifteen generations from the time of their ancestors leaving the land of Hawaiki, in the Samoan or Navigator’s group and settling in New Zealand, which was called by them “Aotearoa.” Fifteen generations or four hundred and fifty years bring the approximate period of that settlement to about 1400 our era, or from two hundred and fifty to three hundred years later than the last Tahitian settlement in this group, the Hawaiian. In the legends, however, which they carried with them to New Zealand, occurs not only the well-known story of Maui-a-Kalana (Maui-o-Taranga) and his exploits by sea and land, and of his grandmother, who pulled out her nails to furnish him with fire and who is called Mahu-ika—in the Hawaiian genealogy she is called Hina-Mahu-ia; but there also occurs four prominent and comparatively late names in the Hawaiian Ulu and Hema line of descent, viz: Hema, Tawhaki (Kahai), Wahieroa (Wahieloa) and Raka (Laka). In the New Zealand legends they figure as chiefs and arikis of Hawaiki, following one another in the same succession as in the Hawaiian genealogy.

Thus, on New Zealand testimony, Hema, Kahai, Wahieloa and Laka were chiefs of Hawaiki or Sawaii in the Samoan group, and not of Hawaii in this group. These names and their pedigrees must then have been carried from Hawaiki to Tahiti and from Tahiti to this group, unless we assume a direct settlement from Hawaiki to Hawaii.

It is true, certainly, that the Hawaiian legends ascribe a local habitation as well as a name to each of these four chiefs, either on Maui, Oahu or Kauai, and places and monuments connected with their names are existing to this day; yet, as there is no reasonable probability that the New Zealanders took their departure from this group instead of the Samoan, and as their evidence is positive as to the residence of these chiefs in the Hawaiki which they knew and from which they departed for New Zealand,—I am forced to conclude that the connecting of their names with places in this group was merely adaptation in after ages, an appropriation to Hawaiian soil, when the memory of the mother-country had become indistinct and when little if anything was known of them except the one main fact that they stood on the genealogical list of the Hawaiian chiefs, a fact, which was never allowed to be forgotten under the old system, however much local associations may be forgotten or altered.

It is hardly historically possible that there could have been two series of chiefs in Hawaiki (Samoa) and Hawaii with identical names and in the same succession; and, with one transposition only, the identity holds good also in the names of their wives—e.g.:

New Zealand Hawaii

Hema. Uru-tonga. Hema. Ulu-mahehoa.

Tawhaki. Hine-piripiri. Kahai. Hina-uluohia.

Wahieroa. Kura. Wahieloa. Koolaukahili.

Raka. Tonga Sautaw-hiri. Laka. Hikawaelena.

I am justified therefore in concluding that the Ulu-Hema line of chiefs was not indigenous to the Hawaiian Islands until after the time of Laka. But Laka was the third from Hema who, by all the Hawaiian traditions, was the brother of Puna-imua, and consequently the contemporary of Paumakua on the Ulu-Puna line, and probably of Maweke or his father on the Nanaulu straight line.

I am thus led back to the proposition which I have already enunciated, that, whichever was the branch of the great Polynesian family, that in ages long past first settled upon these islands and here remained and increased, yet about twenty-eight generations ago, and for several generations succeeding, there arrived here an influx of new-comers from the same Polynesian family, who through their superior intellectual and physical prowess obtained the supremacy,—politically, morally and socially,—brought with them their genealogies, their religion, and their customs; and with whom, and from whom only, Hawaiian history can be traced downward through its heroic, medieval and modern pagan development. It will be observed by the different pedigrees that all the chief-families, which connect with the Nanaulu line, do so immediately through someone of the children or grandchildren of Maweke, who is either the twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth ancestor of these families, as the case may be. Whereas, on the other hand, no family that connects with the Ulu-Puna line, does so above Laamaikahiki’s children who stand seventh from Paumakua, thus making him the twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth ancestor; and several families, connecting with both lines, make both Maweke and Paumakua either twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth in the line. With the Ulu-Hema-Hanalaa-nui line, however, no family that I am aware of connects as one of the children of Kanipahu, who stands sixth from Pili-Kaaiea, which makes the latter the twenty-fourth ancestor. Kanipahu’s son Kalahumoku is sixth from Maweke through his mother Hualani. Kanipahu’s son Kalapana is also sixth (?) from Pili, and I consequently infer that Pili and Maweke were contemporaries.

Pili’s arrival from Tahiti—some traditions specify the island of Wawau—is one of the most noted events of this period. Of the arrivals of Maweke and Paumakua, or their immediate ancestors, the traditions are silent, but their immediate descendants were famous for their voyages to and from Tahiti. The traditions are conflicting in regard to Maweke’s grandchildren, from Mulielealii, some representing them as born in this country and properly belonging here, while others represent them as settlers arriving from Tahiti. However that may be, they named numerous places, mountains, rivers and headlands either after persons accompanying them, or after similar places in the land from which they came. Yet strange to say, although the island of Hawaii was evidently so called after the Samoan “Hawaiki” or Tongan “Hapai” and that island was known to the Tongans, New Zealanders, Tahitians and Marquesans, yet none of the Hawaiian legends, meles or genealogies, that I have seen, refer to it by that name, though Upolo, Wawau, and probably other islands of that and neighboring groups, are referred to by their special names.

On the Ulu line, previous to Puna-i-mua and Hema, occur the names of Kapawa and of his parents Nanakaoko and Kahihiokalani, which stand too conspicuously connected with the traditions of purely Hawaiian origin and with that famous birth-place of Hawaiian chiefs, Kukaniloko, to doubt that they belonged and lived on Hawaii-nei, or to include them among those prehistoric names which figure on the genealogies previous to the Tahitian settlements, tempore Maweke, Paumakua and Pili. In a fragment of the legend (or rather synopsis) of Paao, which I have, while speaking of the arrival of Pili, it is expressly stated that, when Pili came to these islands, Hawaii was without chiefs on account of the crimes of Kapawa (“Ua pau na Alii mua o Hawaii-nei i ka hewa o Kapawa, ke alii o Hawaii nei ia manawa”); thus evidently making Kapawa contemporary with the period of the Tahitian migrations.

The New Zealand legends have shown that the four chiefs Hema, Kahai, Wahieloa and Laka were Samoan chiefs and not Hawaiian, and as Kapawa is represented on the Hawaiian genealogy of Ulu as being the great-grandfather of Hema and his brother Puna-imua; and further as he is only third in descent from that mythical demi-god Maui-a-Kalana and only second in ascent from the almost equally mythical Hinahanaiakamalama, the wife of Aikanaka and mother of Hema, who went up to the moon and whose leg was pulled off by her husband while ascending, I therefore think myself justified in concluding that Kapawa and probably his parents are misplaced on the genealogy of Ulu, and that they belong to a much later period—the period of Tahitian migrations.

I have hitherto not referred to the Hanalaa-nui or Hanalaa-iki lines in their earlier portions. It is well-known that before the consolidation of the islands under one government, by Kamehameha I, the Maui bards and genealogists claimed Hanalaa-nui as the ancestor of their race of chiefs, while the Hawaiians proper also set up the same claim. But it would seem that even the Hawaiian bards and genealogists were not agreed on this subject; for I possess an ancient mele, evidently composed in the interest of Kamehameha I and his dynasty, which traces his descent from Paumakua and Hanalaa-nui—not Hanalaa-iki—through Maui-loa and not through Lanakawai, and then through Alo, Waohaakuna, etc., to Kikamanio Laulihewa and Maili-kukahi, and thence down the Oahu-Maweke line to Kalanikauleleiaiwi etc. But this mele makes Laulihewa the seventh from Paumakua in the descent, or the sixteenth from Kamehameha I in the ascent. Now on the uncontested Nanaulu-Maweke line Laulihewa is the seventeenth from Kamehameha, and on the equally uncontested Paumakua-Lauli-a-laa line Laulihewa is also the seventeenth from Kiwalao, Kamehameha’s cousin, this latter line having the double advantage of having been crossed both by the Maui and Oahu lines. Assuming, therefore, that Laulihewa’s position is correct in this mele, or nearly so, Hanalaa-nui’s place on the pedigree will be fifth or sixth from Laulihewa, or a contemporary with Moikeha on the Nanaulu straight line, or with Nana or Kumakaha on the Ulu-Paumakua line. In either case Hanalaa, whether “nui” or “iki,” falls within the period of the Tahitian migrations, and their lines must suffer a proportionate curtailment of the names which now figure on them. That Haho, who in this mele stands next after Paumakua, and second above Hanalaanui, belonged to the new era, inaugurated by the arrivals from Tahiti, I conclude from the fact that with him commences the record of the Aha-alii, a peculiar institution not known before this time, and an indispensable accompaniment of an Alii-kapu (a sacred chief).

Without such excision of names I can see no way of reconciling the Nanaulu straight line and its numerous branches, or the Puna-imua-Paumakua-Laamaikahiki line and its equally numerous branches, with the Hema-Hanalaa lines, so as to bring known contemporaries on a nearly parallel step of descent from those whom they all claim as common ancestors. For instance, on her father’s side, H. R. H. Kinau (the present King’s mother) was sixty-eighth from Wakea, counting by the commonly received Hanalaa-nui line; and on her mother’s side she was seventy from Wakea, counting by the Hanalaa-iki line. But by the Nanaulu straight line, connecting at Kalanikauleleaiwi I, Kinau was only fifty-third from Wakea, and even by the Ulu-Puna line and several of its branches she was only fifty-seventh from Wakea. The difference of fifteen and seventeen generations between the Hanalaa lines and the Nanaulu straight line, and even the difference of eleven and thirteen between the Hana and Puna lines, is too great to be accounted for in a natural way, such as the earlier marriages in one line than in another. I am therefore forced to conclude that this excess of names on the Hanalaa-Hema lines was made up of contemporaries or collaterals and engrafted in aftertimes on the original lines. From the present time up to Maweke, Paumakua, and Pili, who stand respectively twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh from Kamehameha I and his contemporaries the genealogical lines cross each other by intermarriages so often, and traditional notices of contemporary chiefs are so frequent, that there is comparatively little difficulty in verifying any given name or finding its proper place. Here then, properly speaking, Hawaiian history commences, and I will now endeavor to show the most prominent names on the different lines, their connection and their exploits.