With gods, as with men, who would speed his affairs must keep them in his own hands. Pele, the volcano goddess, fell in love with Lohiau, a Kauaian prince, and in human guise remained with him so long that her sisters were afraid the Kilauea fires would go out. The prince took an illness, and appeared to die, ere the honeymoon was over, so, wrapped in cloth of bark, he was put under guard to lie in state. When Pele had gone back alone to her mountain home a longing came upon her to feel the young man’s arms about her once more and hear the words of love he had such a pretty talent for telling. But, instead of going herself, she sent her sister Hiika to rescue his soul and bring it to her. This was a mistake, for the sister was not a serious creature. Stopping to brave the devils and giant lizards of the woods, turning the boards of surf-riders to stone for a prank, and scaring a fisherman by causing him to pull a human head out of the sea, the sister next found a half-released spirit hovering near a dying chief. She tied it in a corner of her skirt and slapped the skirt against a rock, so the chief finished his dying promptly. In Kauai, at last, her search was rewarded. She saw the ghost of Lohiau beckoning from a cave, in which it had been imprisoned by demons, who fled, hissing, on her approach. She broke the bars of moonbeam that confined it, tied it in her skirt, carried it to its body, restored the prince to life, then led him to Hawaii and with him scaled the mountain where Pele was waiting in great dudgeon. For Hiika had been gone so long on this journey that a wrong construction had been put on her delay. Lohiau and Hiika had, indeed, learned to esteem each other, but they had not violated the trust imposed in them by the goddess.
Pele was madly jealous, however. She turned the prince to stone on the crater brink,—the poor fellow was growing used to dying now,—and, dismayed by this act of cruelty, Hiika descended through the five spheres to the dark underworld where the spirits lived. She hoped that the young man’s ghost would follow her, for pity in his sufferings had fast increased to love. As the spirit did not come, she returned to the surface of the earth and went on a voyage of search in a boat that a god had lent to her,—a boat of cowrie shell, which in overland travel would shrink so that it could be carried in the hand; then, at the word, would swell to a stately barge of pearl with ivory masts and sails as white as the snow on the mountain. This vessel moved with the speed of the wind in any direction the occupant indicated by pointing the finger. The prince’s wandering spirit was found in Kauai, its old home; was taken by a messenger to the stone image on the crater, and put back into the body, and the prince lived again. Pele was by this time in a soft and repentant humor. She asked forgiveness of Lohiau and bade him love and wed her sister, who was good, and had earned his love. This Lohiau did, whereupon Pele restored to life several of Hiika’s friends whom, also, in her first anger, she had turned to statues of lava.
While a great storm was raging over Hawaii a boy was born to a woman chief in the camp of King Alapai. At once the soothsayers proclaimed him as the man of prophecy who should conquer the eight islands and end their strifes. It seemed as if for once—or oftener—the kahunas were wrong, for the babe disappeared that very night. There were rumors of foul play; rumors that Alapai had killed him, that he might not stand in the way of his own progeny, for this barbarian Macbeth would have no Banquo to intercept his line or wrest the crown from him. It was five years before the fate of the child was known. He was not dead: Naole, a chief, had kidnapped him that the prophecy might come to pass. When the king heard of this he commanded that the boy be placed at court, where he might learn manners and the laws, and be kept under the eyes of the great; but, doubting his master’s motive, Naole did not send the child; he sent another of the same age, who was to cut no figure in the history of the islands, not being the favored of the gods.
The real prince was kept in so secluded a place and the secret of his parentage so well preserved—it was prophecy that he should be fathered of three kings—that he had reached the age of twenty before Naole deemed it safe to let him mingle with the multitude. He then made it known that the young man was Kamehameha. By this time King Alapai was dead, or helpless with age; but the prince, albeit liberal and just, was rough, strong, dictatorial, a natural military leader, and he did not lack enemies. Worst among these was his uncle, Pepehi, an elderly chief, who had read omens in the entrails of sacrifice warning him to be discreet and guarded in his life or it would be taken from him by one related to him, and of greater power. He could not brook the thought of Kamehameha’s ascendency, for he was a man used to deference, a man of weight and dignity, while this new-found prince was a boor. He therefore made himself unpleasant by criticisms and carpings, by false interpretations of signs, by implications against his nephew, and finding that the young man did not retaliate, he resolved to have his life.
Pretending anger with Kamehameha because he would not study for the priesthood and succeed to his honors, the soothsayer dinned a tirade into his ears in the temple ground, hoping to receive a blow, that he might stab, in return, for he wished the killing to appear as if done in self-defence. Stung by his insolence, Kamehameha did knock him down: a good, stout blow, well won. So soon as he had recovered his wits and got upon his feet the priest plucked out his long bone knife and made a stroke, but the priestess of the temple, her eyes blazing with anger at this trespass, caught his wrist and cried, “Down to your knees! Ask pardon of your future king and mercy of the gods.”
At that instant came a rush of wings and a blaze of light filling the temple space. All fell to the earth, for they had recognized the tall form before them with the coronet of vari-colored sparks bound on the golden hair that swept around it like a cloud of glory, and the robe of tissue that was like flame of silver whiteness. It was the volcano goddess.
“Peace!” she commanded. “This boy is in the charge of Pele. Let no hand be lifted against him. No knife, no art, no poison, and no spell shall shorten his life. He will be your greatest king: your best. He will put an end to these wretched wars between your families, and prepare for the day when a pale race will come to these lands, making them a step in their conquering march around the world. As for you, Pepehi, speak another word against those I love, lift a hand against them, and I turn you to a cinder. Aloha!” She had vanished like flame. Kamehameha, on this revelation of his destiny, sprang to his feet. His breath was quick and strong, a smile was on his lips, and he looked into the distance with lifted face and flashing eye, as if a glorious vision had arisen there. A touch on his foot brought him to himself. Pepehi was grovelling before him, baring his breast and offering to Kamehameha the poisoned dagger he had but a few moments before aimed at the young king’s heart. Lifting him from the ground, Kamehameha comforted the priest with a few words and sent him homeward with bowed head and dragging step.
Hua, the licentious king of Maui,—who kept a hundred hula dancers, was drunk for days together on awa, and spared no wife or daughter of a friend or subject if she took his fancy,—had been chafing under the restraints imposed or attempted by his high priest, a blameless man whose age and long service should have gained even a king’s consideration. It was approaching a new-year feast (the end of December), toward the close of the twelfth century, and Hua had made such levies on his people for useless wars and wasteful orgies that the old man was moved to protest. Hua paid no attention to him, but loudly ordered his hunters to go to the mountains and bring him some water-birds for his table.
“Those birds can be found only by the sea,” ventured the priest.
“You countermand my orders, do you?” roared the monarch.
“I gave no order,” protested the venerable man.
“Hark you,” insisted the king. “My men are going to the mountain. If they find the birds there—and they will—you shall be slain as a rebel and a false prophet.”
Seeing that his master desired his death, the priest bowed and made no answer. He went to his sons, who were studying for the priesthood, prevailed on them to fly to Mount Haleakala, and probably hoped to follow them, but being slow and lame with years, the hunters had returned before he could escape. They bore their prey, the water-birds, and said they had found them inland. Knowing this to be a lie, told by the king’s command, the priest said, “These birds came from the sea. You can smell it upon them. Look.” And he cut open two or three of their bodies. “Here are little fish and bits of seaweed they have eaten within the hour.”
Enraged at the discovery of his paltry subterfuge, the king caught up a spear and thrust it into the old man’s heart. Though everything is permitted to a king, the people could not repress a groan of horror, and one by one they stole away from the spot, fearful of what might follow this sacrilege. Well might they fear. The body of the priest had barely reached the wooden cross that marked the temple-ground as sacred when its bearers dropped it upon the earth and fled, for a sudden fever smote the ground; hot, stifling winds began to blow; the images of the gods wailed and moaned; the sky was red and dripped blood, and the altar that was to have received the body sank through the rock, leaving a hole from which gushed steam and dust. At that hour every well, brook, and spring in the island went dry, save a rill in a cave back of Hana that the gods devoted to the daughter-in-law of the murdered priest and to the old woman who attended her, while a nightly dew fell thereafter about the sons of the dead man, providing drink to them and encouraging a growth of fruit and taro sufficient for their needs.
In a day or two the people were desperate. Their crops were withering, the forests shedding their leaves. Some men killed their neighbors and drank their blood; others drank from the ocean and their increased thirst drove them mad; a few took poison; several offered themselves as sacrifices and were forthwith killed on the altars; but in vain. Prayer and offering were unheeded. The wickedness of the people in submitting to a king like Hua had brought its punishment. Frightened, repentant, maybe, Hua himself fled to Hawaii, and his retainers scattered themselves in Molokai, Oahu, and Kauai. They could not escape the curse. Like the Wandering Jew, they carried disaster with them. Blight, drouth, thirst, and famine appeared wherever they set foot, and though the wicked king kept himself alive for three and a half years, he succumbed to hunger and thirst at last, and in Kohala his withered frame ceased to be animate. To this day “the rattle of Hua’s bones in the sun” afford a simile in common speech. And the wrath of the gods was heavy, so that the people died by thousands.
Hua being dead, the survivors looked anxiously for a return of rain and of life to the islands, and many turned to Naula, of Oahu, imploring him to intercede with the gods in their behalf. This priest was of great age, and was reverenced and feared. He could command the spirits of the living, as well as the spirits of the dead, and talk with them, far from the place where their bodies lay in trance. He had descended into hell, had risen to paradise, and had brought back from the region of the blessed a calabash of the water of life. The animals knew and obeyed him so well that when he journeyed to Kauai and his canoe capsized, a whale swallowed him and vomited him forth on the beach at the very spot where he had intended to land, while at another time two sharks towed his vessel against a head wind with such speed that the sea fowl could hardly keep him in sight. Clearing his eye by a fast and prayer, he climbed to the topmost height of the Waianae Mountains and closely scanned the horizon. The earth was as brick, and the sky as brass, and the sea as silver, save in one quarter: a tiny blur on the universal glare could be seen, he fancied, over Maui. He would wait, in order to be sure. Yes, in the morning the vapor was still there.
“The sons of the murdered priest are in Maui. I will go to them,” he said, and descending to the shore he entered his canoe alone, with neither oar nor sail, yet in the dawn he was at Maui, and the cloud was now plainly seen waving about the great peak of Hanaula. From their eyrie on the mountain the two young men had seen the approach of Naula, for his boat shone in the dark with a moon-like radiance. They knew that it bore some message for them, and when the old man arrived at Makena landing they were there to meet him. His white beard swept the earth as he bowed, and they bent low while waiting for him to speak. “You are the sons of the most worthy priest who was slain by Hua,” he said. “That evil man has expiated his crime, and his bones lie unburied in the light. The people suffer and die. The punishment for Hua’s crime has been severe and long. Let us join our prayers to the gods that they may turn to mercy. I am Naula.”
The elder of the sons replied, “Great priest, we will gladly pray with you for our people, but first tell me of my wife. Is she alive?”
The old man wrapped his head in his cloak and put against his forehead an amulet of stone. After some moments of silence he flung off the covering and spoke, “She lives, and is well. The gods have cared for her in the valley back of Hana.”
This announcement carried joy to the heart of the questioner, and he began at once the erection of an altar, the aged priest sprinkling it with blessed water and placing beside it the phallic symbol of the trinity. The invocation was over, but no living creature appeared in the desert to serve as a sacrifice. A rustling was heard among the dead bushes and the snout of a black hog was thrust out. Before it could escape they had seized the creature, with a cry of joy, lifted it to the altar, stabbed it again and again, and its blood flowed over the stones. Then all bent about it and prayed with fervor. As they prayed their shadows grew fainter, and the hot wind lulled. A low rumble was heard in the south. They looked up. The heavens were darkening. The rain was coming. “Praise the gods, who are merciful and who receive our sacrifice!” the priests cried. And with that immolation the days of suffering were over.
Waipio, in Hawaii, is claimed by people who live thereabout to be the loveliest valley on the island. It was a low and marshy stretch until a great fish that lived there begged the god Kane to give him sweeter water and more of it. Kane therefore tumbled rocks across the stream, so as to dam it into wide pools, and also opened new springs at the source. The marks of his great hands are still seen on the stone. In this valley, now so peaceful and so rich in charm, lived Kiha, king of Hawaii, in the earlier years of the fifteenth century, a great and dreaded monarch. Of all his possessions he valued none more highly than his war-trumpet, a large shell adorned with the teeth of chiefs who had been killed in war. The roar of this instrument could be heard for ten miles, for it was a magic shell, and when blown in battle it reproduced the cries of victory and shrieks of the dying; when blown to summon the people it was like the gale in the forest, and when it called a sea-god to listen to a prayer it was like surges thundering against the cliffs.
That day was long remembered when the horn was stolen. It had been taken from its wrapping and its box, and a hideous mask of stone had been found in its place. Search availed nothing, and the only comfort that the priests could offer was a promise of restoration by a being without cloak or hands, when a cocoa palm, to be planted by the king at the next full moon, should bear fruit. The tree was planted, but seven years passed before the nuts appeared. These were eaten by the king, and on that very night a strange man was arrested on a charge of thieving and taken before the king for sentence. All through the questioning a dog with one white eye and a green one kept close beside the prisoner, appearing to understand every word that was spoken. The intelligence of this animal was so remarkable as to divert all thought of punishment for the time, and when the robber had given instances of the creature’s more than human cleverness, Kiha realized suddenly that this was the agency whereby the magic horn was to be restored to him.
If the dog could find and restore that shell the captive should not merely be set free, but should be fed at the royal table for the rest of his life. On hearing this promise, the dog, who had been watching the king so fixedly out of his green eye as to make his Majesty uncomfortable, sprang up with a joyous bark, and capered about with every token of enthusiasm for the task that was to be put upon him.
At the time when the trumpet disappeared from Kiha’s house a band of mountebanks and thieves disappeared from Hawaii. They had camped in the woods above Waipio, and had been stealing pigs, fowls, fruit, and taro from the farmers, and had occasionally visited the settlements to show their skill in juggling and hanky-panky, hoping to earn as a reward some drinks of the native beer, and perhaps a weapon or a strip of cloth. It was the chief of this band who had stolen the trumpet. He had learned its history,—how the god Lono had blown it on the top of Mauna Kea until trees were uprooted in the blast that came from it, until the fires kindled in the crater below and threw a red light against the stars, until the earth shook and the sea heaved like a monster sighing. It had the voice of a god from that hour, and other gods obeyed it. The band fled to Oahu with the prize and there led a graceless life until the populace drove them out, and they returned to Hawaii.
The arrival of these suspicious characters had been reported to the king, and he suggested that the dog seek the shell in their camp at the head of the valley. No sooner was the suggestion made than the animal rushed away in that direction with the speed of the wind. Some hours passed, and the night was wearing on wearily, when a tremendous burst of sound issued from the hills, echoing far and wide. The king leaped to his feet, the men of his village roused and grasped their spears, for this was the call to arms,—the first time they had heard it in seven years. But who was blowing it? Nearer and nearer came the sky-shaking peal, and presently the dog, bearing the magic shell in his mouth, ran in, sank at his master’s feet, gasped, shook, stiffened. He was dead from exhaustion.
His master, overcome with grief for the loss of his little friend, was liberated at once; then, confident that the returned thieves had had the trumpet in their possession, the king led his forces against them without waiting for the sun to rise, and slew nearly all. From one or two survivors of the band he learned that their captain had offended them by his arrogance and selfishness until they were forced to reduce him to their own state by silencing the instrument whereby he called to the gods and gained their help. During one of his drunken sprees they carried the shell to a wizard, who put a secret taboo mark on its lip, and when the pirate blew it, on regaining his wits, it made only a low, dull moaning. Try as he would, he could never restore it. It was chiefly to propitiate the gods and give its notes back to the trumpet that he had returned to Hawaii.
When the dog seized the shell, as it lay on the earth near the sleeping chief, he bit off the edge that had been marked by the wizard and instantly its voice came back. The wind blown into it long before by the robber chief was now liberated in quantities in those tremendous blasts that had roused the king and his people and appalled the robbers. In this respect it resembled the post-horn of Baron Munchausen’s story, which, on being hung before a fire, allowed the notes that had been played into it (but not heard) to thaw out and entertain the company. And if the story of the shell is doubted, one has only to look at it in the Honolulu Museum to be convinced.
Puna, lord of Kauai, was a well-beloved and merciful man. Though he would not brook insolence, he was always ready to pardon a fisherman or servant who, in ignorance of his personality, broke the taboo by stepping on his shadow. His love for Hooipo, his daughter, was so strong that he delayed her marriage until the gallants began to complain, and the girl herself became uneasy, lest her charms should expand to a maturity that might hurt her matrimonial chances. As she had no preference, however, she agreed that her father might name the happy man. He, loth to incur the enmity of any at his court, resolved to offer her as a prize, and the fairest contest seemed in his mind to be a run to Kaula and back, each contestant to be allowed to use sail and carry four oarsmen, and the winner of the race to marry Hooipo.
A couple of days before the race was undertaken there arrived at Kauai a sturdy mariner, one Moikeha, who had just returned from a voyage to Raiatea, two thousand five hundred miles to the southward. Long trips of this sort were not unusual among the adventurous islanders, and there is a tradition that one of them brought to Hawaii two white men who became priests, and on a later exploration secured four “foreigners of large stature, bright, staring, roguish eyes, and reddish faces,” who may have been American Indians. Moikeha became the guest of Puna. He had not been long in the daughter’s company before Hooipo regretted the arrangement for a race, for she had found a man whom she could love. It was too late to argue with the candidates; there could be no hope of peace if the princess were withdrawn as an object of competition and thrown at the head of this stranger. By general consent he was allowed to take part in the race, provided he could cite an honorable parentage. This he did, for he was the son of a former chief in Oahu, and he rattled off the names of his ancestors for sixteen generations, ending the catalogue in this fashion, “Maweke and Niolaukea, husband and wife; Mulilealii and Wehelani, husband and wife; Moikeha and Hooipo, husband and wife.” This little joke, his assumption that the girl was already his, made everybody laugh and put the company in good humor.
At the word of command a score or more of lusty fellows pushed their boats through the surf, hoisted sail, and pointed their prows for Kaula, fifty miles away. Moikeha alone showed no haste. He bade a cheerful farewell to his host and the pretty daughter, marked with delight her serious look as he took his leave, then, with a single attendant and the smallest boat in the fleet, he set off across the blue water. Directly that her sail was up the little craft sprang through the sea as if blown by a hurricane, while the other boats slid over the glassy waves under the push of oars. “It is the fish-god, Apukohai, who drags his canoe,” declared the rowers, as he passed. In twenty-four hours he was at the side of Kooipo with the whale-tooth, proof of his voyage, that was delivered to him at Kaula by a servant who had been sent there with it in advance. He was easily the victor, the other contestants arriving from one to three days later. No objection being offered, the couple were married with rejoicings, and on the death of Puna the husband became chief, and married off eight or ten youngsters of his own. Not for a long time was it known that in the race for a wife his lone but potent companion was Laamaomao, the wind-god, who, loosing favorable breezes from his magic calabash, that blew whither he listed, carried him swiftly past all other competitors.
Paao, who afterward became a high priest in Hawaii, migrated thither in the eleventh century from Samoa, after a quarrel with his brother, Lonopele. Both of these men were wizards, and were persons of riches and influence. It came about that Lonopele had missed a quantity of his choicest fruit, which was conveyed away at night, and although he could see visions and tell fortunes for others, he could not reveal for his own satisfaction so simple a matter as the source of these disappearances. In a foolish rage he accused his nephew, the son of Paao. Paao was indignant, but, with even greater foolishness, he killed his son, in order to open the boy’s stomach and prove that there was no fruit in it. This act so rankled in his mind that he decided to leave the country and forget it, and to that end he built several strong canoes and stored them well with food and water.
Before sailing, Paao revenged himself for his own folly by killing a son of Lonopele. The latter discovered the murder too late to retaliate with weapons, so he summoned the powers of magic to his aid. He sent a hurricane in chase of the receding boats, but a great fish pushed them on, despite the wind, which was against them, while another friendly monster of the sea swam around and around the little fleet, breaking the force of the waves. Lonopele then sent a colossal bird to vomit over the canoes and sink them, but mats were put up in tent-form as protections, and this project also failed.
Paao landed in Hawaii with about forty followers, one of whom was a powerful prophet. As the canoes were setting off, several would-be wizards begged to be taken to the new land. Paao called to them to leap into the sea, if they trusted their own powers, and he would take them on board. All who jumped were killed by striking on rocks or by drowning,—all but the real prophet, who did not leave the shore till the boats were a mile or so away from land. Paao answered his thunderous hail by an equally thunderous refusal to return, as to go back after starting was bad luck, but added, “There is room for you, if you will fly to us.” Putting all his strength into his arms and legs, the prophet swam through the air and reached the boats without injury.
The real Paao is said to have been a Spanish priest who was cast away on the islands by the wreck of the galleon Santo Iago in 1527. The ship was bound from Acapulco to Manila with shrines and images. The priest grafted Christian practices on the native religion, abolished sacrifice, and begat a line of chiefs.
In 1530, or thereabout, a Spanish ship from Molucca was driven across the Pacific and flung, in a dismantled condition, on the Keei Reefs, Hawaii. Only the captain and his sister were rescued. Until it was discovered that these strangers required food and sleep, like themselves, the natives worshipped them as gods. They were hardly less welcome when it was found that they were human, and they married among the islanders. The woman’s grandchild, Kaikilani, was reputed to be the most beautiful woman ever born in Hawaii. Kaikilani became the wife of the heir-apparent, who cared so little for government, however, that the young woman was made chief. Her marriage to this easy-going, ambitionless, though generous prince had been a failure. As it was a state marriage, she cared little for him. His stalwart brother, Lono, was the object of her love and admiration. When the people resolved that Lono should be king, Kaikilani was divorced and given to him as queen, for her first husband prized her happiness above his own. Lono built a yacht worthy of this Cleopatra, a double canoe eighty feet long and seven wide, floored and enclosed for twenty feet amidships, so that the queen had an apartment which was luxuriously furnished with couches, cloths, festoons of flowers, shells, and feathers, and containing a sacred image and many charms against evil. The twin vessels were striped with black and yellow, figures of big birds with men’s heads were at the prow, and on calm days, when the sails hung idly, forty oarsmen pulled the royal barge at a gallant rate.
During a long honeymoon tour the bridal party landed on Molokai, to await the passing of heavy weather, and the young couple were playing draughts to beguile the time, when a dark and sudden cloud fell upon their happiness. One of the servants of the queen was a girl named Kaikinani, who had a lover, and while the king was studying his next move he heard a man’s voice call, as he thought, “Come, Kaikilani, your lover is waiting.” The man was calling Kaikinani. He abruptly asked his wife who had dared to address the queen in that easy fashion, and taking her own surprise and confusion for a token of guilt, he struck her with the checker-board, rushed away to the beach, ordered his private canoe to be launched, and seizing one of the paddles, he rowed with his twenty attendants until he was exhausted. That night he gained the shores of Oahu.
When Kaikilani had come out of a delirium of nine days, and understood the nature of the mistake that had separated her from her husband, she hastily equipped her barge and began a search for him,—a search that lasted for months. Lono, ensconced at the court of Oahu, was trying to stifle his regrets; he would not reveal his name; he refused all companionship with women; he worked at play most earnestly, hunting, rowing, swimming, surf-riding, racing, leaping, casting the spear, halting at nothing that involved peril or that would tire him at night to a forgetful sleep. His stay was drawing to an end. He was to sail for Hawaii in a day or two, for rebellions were threatening in his absence, and his departure was none too early, for certain of the gallants were jealous of his success in sports and of the unrewarded admiration that the fair sex gave to him. One of these men taunted him with being a nameless chief. Lono, scowling down on him, answered that he would tear the skin from his living body if he ever caught him beyond his king’s protection, and producing a big calabash filled with rebels’ bones, he chanted the names of those he had slain.
He was interrupted by a soft voice, outside of the enclosure, chanting his name-song. Who could have learned his name? The court had risen. “Yes,” he said, “the singer is true. I am Lono, and she whom I hear is my wife. The gods be praised.”
Leaping the wall, he found, as he had hoped, Kaikilani, smiling through her tears. He held her in a long embrace. Next day they returned to their native island, where they reigned to an old and happy age.
Kaululaau, prince of Maui, had misbehaved so grossly, painting the sacred pigs, imitating the death-bird’s call before the doors of nervous people, opening the gates of fish-ponds, tippling awa, and consorting with hula dancers, that his father, believing him to be incorrigible, shipped him off to Lanai in disgust. Knowing that island to be infested with gnomes, dragons, and monsters, the lad would fain have turned the usual new leaf, but he had promised reform so many times and failed that his father was deaf to his pleadings. Just before he embarked the old high priest called him aside—he always had a soft spot in his heart for this scape-grace—and entrusted to him an ivory spear which had been dipped in the river of the dead and left on an altar by Lono, the third person of the trinity. With that, which was both weapon and talisman, the possessor need fear nothing.
Kaululaau had been but a little while in his new home when he was compelled to put his gift to use. There were malignant beings on Lanai who hurt people, hogs, fowls; blighted cocoanuts, bananas, and taro patches, and were a common sorrow to the inhabitants. Worst among these tormentors was the gnome Mooaleo, who, in the guise of a big mole, burrowed under houses and caused them to settle, with a thump. The prince caught this fellow within a circle he had drawn on the earth, for the witchery of the spear was so strong that the effect of drawing that line was felt to the centre of the globe. Burrow as he would,—and he did burrow until he reached fire,—Mooaleo could not escape from it. The magic barrier confined him like iron. He came to the air at last and begged to be released, promising to leave the island forever, if he might gain his liberty. Kaululaau rubbed out twenty or thirty yards of the enchanted line, whereupon the creature rushed madly through the gap and dived into the sea, never again emerging in the sight of men.
For a year the prince kept up his war against the demons and slew or banished every one of them. For this the men rewarded him with praise and gifts and service, the women with love, the children with trust. He was glad he had been exiled. Of course, so soon as his father heard of his changed life and his courage in knight-errantry he repented his hardness of spirit and sent messengers to bid Kaululaau return. This was an unwelcome summons, and while he dared not refuse, he took his own time in getting home again, his alleged reason for delay being that he wished to see the world and further instruct himself; his real reason being a love of praise and adventure. He stirred up strife in Hawaii; visited, without harm, the wind-god’s home on Molokai and Kalipahoa’s poison grove, and on Oahu found another chance to win the people’s favor. A bird so huge that its head weighed near two hundred pounds had been depredating among the villages, tearing children from their mothers and killing domestic animals, yet always defended by the priests, who, having confused it with a strange species of owl, considered it as sacred. The rover did not ask permission to slay it. Nobody knew him, or guessed why he was going among the hills. He came upon the bird in the mountains, when its beak was dripping with human blood, and at a mile distance hurled the spear, which flew through the air, as if self-directed, and pierced the creature through and through. For this he was arrested and consigned to the sacrificial altar; but when he abandoned his disguise, appeared in the feather cloak and helmet of a chief, and made known that he was Kaululaau, the trembling, stammering priest owned that he was mistaken in supposing the bird to be taboo. Its huge head was produced; its eyes rolled, its jaws clashed, and with a scream an evil human spirit that had lived in its body flew into the air. The ne’er-do-weel had a royal reception when he returned. Finding that his old friend, the high priest, was dead, he fulfilled a promise by secretly burying the magic spear-point in his grave.
Avenue of Palms, Hawaii.
To the native Hawaiian, who shuns work, dresses only for decorative purposes, and is willing to subsist on fruits that grow without teasing, life is not so simple as we should suppose, to look at him. Nature abhors a vacuum, even in a man’s head, and when the man cares to put nothing in his noddle that will increase his understanding and resource, his ancestry will have planted something there which is sure to swell and grow until it may dominate his conduct and his fate. And if you open the head of an average barbarian you will find a flourishing crop of superstition fungi inside. So surely as he is a barbarian he will believe in witches. If he contents himself with imagining wizards and spooks, he may find recreation enough in the dark, but when he accuses other people of practising against him, and gets them hanged or roasted, his imagination has become too frisky to be at large. Death for the practice of witchcraft is no longer possible, however, unless it results from private revenge.
To this day fear and ignorance paint gnomes and elves in the palm groves and among the wild Java uplands of the mid-Pacific, and Honolulu itself is not free from the lingering and traditionary kahuna. This is the wizard, or medicine man, or voodoo worker, who does by prayer and spell what his employers would do with a club if it were not for the awkward institution of the law. When a Kanaka has endured an injury he hires a kahuna to pray his enemy to death. This imposes on the victim the necessity of hiring a kahuna to pray down the other one, or of running away, if he cannot afford the expense. The wizard calls on his intended victim and tells him what is about to happen, and you would naturally suppose that the visitee would take the visitor by the collar and the “bosom of his pants” and persuade him away from the premises, even if he did not go out and exercise upon him in the yard. In fact, record has been made of explosive exits of these wizards from Americans’ houses when they made their usual courtesy call before praying the resident out of existence, and ’tis said that they bore marks of Lynn-made shoe-soles on their seats of honor for a week after.
But your Kanaka fears his medicine man and receives the news of doom politely. The kahuna tells him that his conduct has displeased some god or goddess and that he must die. Every kahuna claims what statesmen call a “pull” with his deities that enables him to have his prayers answered, while opposition kahunas are snubbed. After a couple of days the kahuna drops around to see how his victim is getting on, and generally he finds him in low spirits, with a meagre appetite, because this process is as reliable as its opposite, which is called faith-cure. If a man can sufficiently persuade himself that nothing ails him, he is almost sure to recover from an illness that he hasn’t got; and, by the same token, if he makes himself believe that he is going to have indigestion, or a fall on the ice, or must die, he unnerves himself and makes it easy for the expected to happen. If he runs away and hides, the kahuna’s prayers do not work as well, and if he has been to school and reads the papers, they do not work at all. Indeed, the islanders have given up white people as tough subjects, so seasoned in whisky and a wrong religion that curses are wasted on them as water is wasted on ducks and Kentucky colonels. The goddess Pele has resigned the foreigner in discouragement.
Well, on this second visit the victim remembers all his misfortunes of the past two days, his stomach ache, his thirst, his stubbed toe, his failure to collect eight cents that a neighbor owes him, his nightmare after a supper of poi,—not mince-pie: just poi,—his discovery of a bottle too late to know what was in it, and his wife’s demand for a new dress. All these miseries he ascribes to the left-handed prayers of which he is the subject, and he offers to temporize. As in other parts of the world, silver is a strong dissuader. If he has hired a kahuna himself to neutralize his enemy’s bad prayers with good ones, the two voodoo workers will retire and consult as to a settlement, each preserving a dignity and courtesy worthy of his high profession, for, although the Roman soothsayers could not keep from snickering when they met one another in the street, these kahunas really believe in themselves, for they have prayed too many people out of the world not to do so.
If an apology and a couple of dollars fail to soften the enemy, or if the kahunas believe they can raise the stake to three dollars by toiling a while longer, a prayer duel follows and the best man wins. Kahuna number one delivers a veritable anathema, bestowing on his subject more aches and illnesses and deformities and difficulties than Pius IX. conferred on Victor Emmanuel, while number two sweats with the haste and force of his invocations for the continued or increased health and fortune of his client. If he can afford them, the victim may hire two kahunas and have them pray around the house until the opposition is silenced or the malevolent employer’s money gives out. When one of the two prays for his patron, in such a case the other may pray against the enemy who began the trouble, so that, instead of doing a deadly injury, the instigator of the disturbance may discover, to his alarm, that he is in more danger than his foe, and some morning he may find himself dead.
King David Kalakaua made a law against praying folks into their graves, but the kahunas, to a man, cried, “Why, this will kill business! If you don’t abolish that law we will pray you to death in two days.” And King David took the law away, quick. In order to make a prayer for death effectual the kahuna must possess himself of some object closely associated with the person he intends to kill. Finger-nails, hair, and teeth are especially desired, but if they cannot be had, a few drops of saliva will do. The kings were always so careful of their precious selves that nail-parings and hair-croppings were burned to keep them from falling into the hands of ghoulish kahunas, and they were always attended by a spittoon-bearer, who was a chief of high rank, and whose duty it was to see that none of the royal spittle was accessible to wizards or suspicious strangers. The spittoon was emptied into the sea at a distance from land secretly and in the middle of the night. What a lecture Charles Dickens would have read to the Americans out of this circumstance!
The last death attributed to the kahunas was that of Princess Kaiulani in the spring of 1899. Though this young woman was enlightened, had travelled and studied in Europe and America, and presumably disbelieved in the superstitions of her ancestors, it is whispered that the rumor of kahuna influence against her shortened her days by many. The people believed so, at any rate, though they were perplexed by the failure of the little red fish to run into the harbor just before she breathed her last, as it was believed that they always made their appearance prior to a death in the royal family. The rumbling and hissing and the sounding of a heavy major chord in the depths of Kilauea that followed the funeral of Kaiulani were directly attributed to her death.