Note: Mauka [21] of Honolulu rises a cloud-capped range. Beyond this is
the place where Kamakau, a native historian of about sixty years ago,
says that the Hawaiian gods created the first inhabitants of these
islands. The story has been repeated in several Hawaiian papers and
with embellishments, was adopted by Judge Fornander and mentioned in
notes in his work “The Polynesian Race.” Parts of the story are
evidently old Hawaiian, but the part which describes the creation of
man is thoroughly Biblical with the addition of a few touches of the
imagination.
“The sky is established.
The earth is established.
Fastened and fastened,
Always holding together,
Entangled in obscurity,
Near each other a group of islands
Spreads out like a flock of birds.
Leaping up are the divided places.
Lifted far up are the heavens.
Polished by striking,
Lamps rest in the sky.
Presently the clouds move,
The great sun rises in splendor,
Mankind arises to pleasure,
The moving sky is above.” Hawaiian Chant.
Ku, Ka-ne, Lono and Kanaloa were the first gods made.
The gods had come from far-off unknown lands. They brought with them
the mysterious people who live in precipices and trees and rocks. These
were the invisible spirits of the air.
The earth was a calabash. The gods threw the calabash cover upward and
it became the sky. Part of the thick “flesh” became the sun. Another
part was the moon. The stars came from the seeds.
The gods went over to a small island called Mokapu, and thought they
would make man to be chief over all other things. Mololani was the
crater hill which forms the little island. On the sunrise side of this
hill, near the sea, was the place where red dirt lay mixed with dark
blue and black soil. Here Ka-ne scratched the dirt together and made
the form of a man.
Kanaloa ridiculed the mass of dirt and made a better form, but it did
not have life. Ka-ne said, “You have made a dirt image; let it become
stone.”
Then Ka-ne ordered Ku and Lono to carefully obey his directions. They
were afraid he would kill them, so at once they caught one of the
spirits of the air and pushed it into the image Ka-ne had made.
When the spirit had been pushed into the body, Ka-ne stood by the image
and called, “Hiki au-E-ola! E-ola!” (“I come, live! live!”)
Ku and Lono responded “Live! live!” Then Ka-ne called again, “I come,
awake! awake!” and the other two responded, “Awake! awake!” and the
image became a living man.
Then Ka-ne cried, “I come, arise! arise!” The other gods repeated,
“Arise! arise!” and the image stood up—a man with a living spirit. They
named him Wela-ahi-lani-nui, or “The great heaven burning hot.”
They chanted, giving the divine signs attending the birth of a chief:
Note: Fornander, in his book “The Polynesian Race,” says that Lono
brought whitish clay from the four ends of the world, with which to
make the head, but there is no foundation for this statement in the
legends. This must have been a verbal statement made to him by Kamakau.
“The stars were burning.
Hot were the months.
Land rises in islands,
High surf is like mountains,
Pele throws out her body (of lava).
Broken masses of rain from the sky,
The land is shaken by earthquakes,
Ikuwa [22] reverberates with thunder.”
The gods took this man to their home and nourished him. When he became
strong he went out to walk around the home of the gods. Soon he noticed
a shadow going around with his body. It walked when he walked, and
rested when he rested. He wondered what this thing was, and called it
“aka,” or “shadow.”
When he slept, Ku, Ka-ne and Lono tore open his body, and Ka-ne took
out a woman, leaving Ku and Lono to heal the body. Then they put the
woman by the side of the man and they were alike.
Wela-ahi-lani-nui woke and found a beautiful one lying by him, and
thought: “This is that thing which has been by my side, my aka. The
gods have changed it into this beautiful one.” So he gave her the name
“Ke-aka-huli-lani” (The-heaven-changed-shadow). These were the
ancestors of the Hawaiians and all the peoples of the islands of the
great ocean.
It must be remembered that there are many other Hawaiian legends which
mention other first men and women as ancestors of the Hawaiian people.