I.

The story of the Iliad is a dramatic record of the love and hate,

wrong and revenge, courage and custom, passion and superstition, of

mythical Greece, and embraces in a single brilliant recital events

which the historic bards of other lands, lacking the genius of Homer,

have sent down the centuries in fragments. Human nature has been

substantially the same in all ages, differing only in the ardor of

its passions and appetites, as affected by the zone of its habitat

and its peculiar physical surroundings. Hence almost every nation,

barbarous and civilized, has had its Helen and its Troy, its Paris

and its Agamemnon, its Hector and its demi-gods; and Hawaii is not

an exception. The wrath of no dusky Achilles is made the thesis of

the story of the Hawaiian abduction, but in other respects the Greek

and Polynesian legends closely resemble each other in their general

outlines.

The story of Hina, the Hawaiian Helen, and Kaupeepee, the Paris of

the legend, takes us back to the twelfth century, near the close of

the second and final era of migration from Tahiti, Samoa, and perhaps

other islands of Polynesia--a period which added very considerably

to the population of the group, and gave to it many new chiefs, a

number of new customs, and a few new gods. That the tale may be better

understood by the reader who may not be conversant with the legendary

history of the Hawaiian Islands, it will be necessary to refer briefly

to the political and social condition of the group at that time.

Notwithstanding the many sharply drawn and wonderfully-preserved

historic legends of the Hawaiians, the early settlement of the little

archipelago is shrouded in mystery. The best testimony, however,

warrants the assumption that the islands were first discovered and

occupied by a people who had drifted from southern Asia to the islands

of the Pacific in the first or second century of the Christian era,

and, by migratory stages from the Fijis to Samoa and thence to Tahiti,

had reached the Hawaiian group in about A.D. 550. The first discovery

was doubtless the result of accident; but those who made it were able

to find their way back to the place from which they started--either

Tahiti or Samoa--and in due time return with augmented numbers,

bearing with them to their new home pigs, fowls, dogs, and the seeds

of such fruits and vegetables as they had found to be wanting there.

The little colony grew and prospered, and for nearly five hundred years

had no communication with, or knowledge of, the world beyond. At the

end of that time their geographical traditions had grown so faint

that they spoke only of Kahiki, a place very far away, from which

their ancestors came. First landing on the large island of Hawaii,

they had spread over the eight habitable divisions of the group. The

people were ruled by district chiefs, in fief to a supreme head on

some of the islands, and on others independent, and the lines dividing

the masses from the nobility were less strictly drawn than during the

centuries succeeding. Wars were frequent between neighboring chiefs,

and popular increase was slow; but the tabus of the chiefs and priests

were not oppressive, and the people claimed and exercised a degree

of personal independence unknown to them after the eleventh century.

In about A.D. 1025, or perhaps a little earlier, the people of the

group were suddenly aroused from their long dream of six centuries

by the arrival of a large party of adventurers from Tahiti. Their

chief was Nanamaoa. Their language resembled that of the Hawaiians,

and their customs and religions were not greatly at variance. They

were therefore received with kindness, and in a few years their

influence began to be felt throughout the group. They landed at Kohala,

Hawaii, and Nanamaoa soon succeeded in establishing himself there as

an influential chief. His sons secured possessions on Maui and Oahu,

and on the latter island one of them--Nanakaoko--instituted the sacred

place called Kukaniloko, in the district of Ewa, where it was the

desire of future chiefs that their sons should be born. Even Kamehameha

I., as late as 1797, sought to remove his queen thither before the

birth of Liholiho, but the illness of the royal mother prevented. This

became the sacred birth-place of princes, as Iao, in Wailuku valley,

on the island of Maui, became their tabu spot of interment.

It was at Kukaniloko that Kapawa, the son of Nanakaoko, was

born. His principal seat of power was probably on Hawaii, although

he retained possessions on Maui and Oahu. It was during his life

that the celebrated chief and priest Paao made his appearance in the

group. He came from one of the southern islands with a small party,

bringing with him new gods and new modes of worship, and to him the

subsequent high-priests of Hawaii traced their sacerdotal line, even

down to Hevaheva, who in 1819 was the first to apply the torch to

the temples in which his ancestors had so long worshipped. Paao was a

statesman and warrior as well as a priest, but he preferred spiritual

to temporal authority; and when Kapawa died and was buried at Iao,

leaving his possessions without a competent ruler and his subjects in

a state bordering upon anarchy, Paao did not assume the chieftaincy,

as he manifestly might have done, but despatched messengers--if,

indeed, he did not go himself--to the land of his birth, to invite

to Hawaii a chief capable of restoring order.

Such a leader was found in Pilikaekae, of Samoa, who migrated to

Hawaii with a goodly number of retainers, and was promptly established

in the vacant sovereignty, while Paao continued in the position of

high-priest. Pili extended his authority over the six districts of

Hawaii; but beyond Kohala and the northern part of the island the

recognition of his sovereignty was merely nominal, and internal wars

and revolts were frequent.

The next arrivals of note from the southern islands were the two

Paumakua families, one of which settled in Oahu and Kauai and the other

in Hawaii and Maui. Whether, as averred by conflicting traditions,

they arrived contemporaneously or two or three generations apart, is

a question in nowise pertinent to our story. The legend is connected

with the Hawaii branch alone, and the order of their coming need not,

therefore, be here discussed.

The Paumakua family, which became so influential in Hawaii and

Maui, arrived during the early part of the reign of Pili, in about

A.D. 1090. A large party accompanied the family, and they brought with

them their gods, priests, astrologers and prophets. They first landed

and secured possessions in Maui; but the sons and other relatives of

Paumakua were brave and ambitious, and soon by conquest and marriage

secured an almost sovereign footing both in Maui and Hawaii.

One of the nephews of Paumakua, Hakalanileo, who was the son of

Kuheailani, as an entering wedge to further acquisitions became in some

manner possessed of a strip of land along the coast in the district

of Hilo, Hawaii. It was a large estate, and the owner availed himself

of every opportunity to extend its boundaries and increase the number

of his dependents. His wife was the beautiful Hina of Hawaiian song

and daughter of the seeress Uli, who had migrated from Tahiti with

some one of the several expeditions of that period--possibly with

the Paumakua family, although tradition does not so state.

At that time Kamauaua, a powerful chief of the ancient native line

of Nanaula, held sway over the island of Molokai. He proudly traced

back his ancestry to the first migration in the sixth century, and

regarded with aversion and well-founded alarm the new migratory tide

which for years past had been casting upon the shores of the islands

a flood of alien adventurers, whose warlike and aggressive chiefs

were steadily possessing themselves of the fairest portions of the

group. He had sought to form a league of native chiefs against these

dangerous encroachments; but the wily invaders, with new gods to awe

the masses and new customs and new traditions to charm the native

nobility, had, through intermarriage and strategy rather than force,

become the virtual rulers of Hawaii, Maui, Oahu, and Kauai, and he had

abandoned all hope of seeing them supplanted. Molokai alone remained

exclusively under native control, and its resolute old chief had from

their infancy instilled into his sons a hatred of the southern spoilers

and a resolution to resist their aggressions to the bitter end.

The eldest of the sons of Kamauaua was Kaupeepee. He was a warlike

youth, well skilled in arms and mighty in strength and courage, and

so profound was his detestation of the alien chiefs that he resolved

to devote his life to such warfare as he might be able to make upon

them and their subjects. With this view he relinquished his right

of succession to his first brother, Keoloewa, and, gathering around

him a band of warriors partaking of his desperation and courage,

established a stronghold on the promontory of Haupu, on the north

side of the island, between Pelekunu and Waikolo. At that point,

and for some miles on each side of it, the mountains hug the ocean so

closely as to leave nothing between them and the surf-beaten shores

but a succession of steep, narrow and rugged promontories jutting out

into the sea, and separated from each other by gorge-like and gloomy

little valleys gashing the hills and, like dragons, for ever swallowing

and ejecting the waves that venture too near their rocky jaws.

One of the most rugged of these promontories was Haupu. It was

a natural fortress, precipitously fronting the sea with a height

of five hundred feet or more, and flanked on the right and left by

almost perpendicular declivities rising from narrow gulches choked with

vegetation and sweetening the sea with rivulets of fresh water dashing

down from the mountains seamed by their sources. It was connected

with the range of mountains back of it by a narrow and rising ridge,

which at a point something less than a mile inland, where opposite

branches of the two flanking gulches approached each other closely, was

contracted to a neck of not more than fifty paces in width. The summit

of the point abutting the ocean was a comparatively level plateau,

or rather series of three connecting terraces, embracing in all an

area of nearly a hundred acres. Surrounded on three sides by almost

perpendicular walls, and accessible on the fourth only by a narrow and

easily-defended ridge extending to the mountains, little engineering

skill was required to render the place well-nigh impregnable.

Setting himself earnestly to the task, Kaupeepee soon transformed the

promontory of Haupu into one of the strongest fortresses in all the

group. He surrounded the plateau with massive stone walls overlooking

the declivities, and across the narrow neck leading to the mountains

raised a rocky barrier ten feet in thickness and twenty feet in height,

around which aggression from without was rendered impracticable by

the excavation of precipices leading to, and in vertical line with,

the ends of the wall. Instead of a gate, a subterranean passage-way

led under the wall, the inside entrance being covered in times of

danger with a huge flat stone resting on rollers.

Although the passage was rough and in unfavorable weather attended with

danger, canoes could enter the mouths of both gulches and be hauled

up beyond the reach of the waves, and beyond the reach of enemies as

well; for above the entrances, and completely commanding them, frowned

the broad battlements of Haupu, from which might be hurled hundreds

of tons of rocks and other destructive missiles. With ingenuity and

great labor narrow foot-paths were cut leading from the middle terrace

to both gulches, some distance above their openings, and affording

a means of entering and leaving the fortress by water. These paths

connected with the terrace through narrow passage-ways under the walls,

and a single arm could defend them against a host.

Within the walls buildings were erected capable of accommodating in an

emergency two or three thousand warriors, and on the lower terrace,

occupied by Kaupeepee and his household, including his confidential

friends and captains, a small heiau overlooked the sea, with a priest

and two or three assistants in charge. Mountain-paths led from the

fortress to Kalaupapa and other productive parts of the island; and

as fish could be taken in abundance, and Kaupeepee and many of his

followers controlled taro and other lands in the valleys beyond, it

was seldom that the stronghold was short of food, even when foraging

expeditions to the neighboring islands failed.

The services of the courageous alone were accepted by Kaupeepee,

and it was a wild and daring warfare that the little band waged for

years against the alien chiefs and their subjects. They could put

afloat a hundred war-canoes, and their operations, although usually

confined to Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii, sometimes in a spirit of bravado

extended to Kauai. Leaving their retreat, they hovered near the coast

selected for pillage until after dark, and then landed and mercilessly

used the torch and spear. This part of their work was quickly done,

when they filled their canoes with the choicest plunder they could

find or of which they were most in need, and before daylight made sail

for Haupu. Women were sometimes the booty coveted by the buccaneers,

and during their raids many a screaming beauty was seized and borne to

their stronghold on Molokai, where in most instances she was so kindly

treated that she soon lost all desire to be liberated. Occasionally

they were followed, if the winds were unfavorable to their retreat,

by hastily-equipped fleets of canoes. If they allowed themselves to

be overtaken it was for the amusement of driving back their pursuers;

but as a rule they escaped without pursuit or punishment, leaving their

victims in ignorance alike of the source and motive of the assault.

A prominent chief of Oahu, whose territory had been ravaged by

Kaupeepee, traced the retiring fleet of the plunderers to the coast of

Molokai, when it suddenly disappeared. He landed and paid his respects

to the venerable Kamauaua, then at Kalaupapa, and craved his assistance

in discovering and punishing the spoilers, who must have found shelter

somewhere on the island. The old chief smiled grimly as he replied:

"It is not necessary to search for your enemies. You will find them

at Haupu, near the ocean. They are probably waiting for you. They

do not disturb me or my people. If they have wronged you, land and

punish them. You have my permission."

The Oahu chief offered his thanks and departed. He made a partial

reconnoissance of Haupu, ascertained that it was defended by but a

few hundred warriors, and shortly after returned with a large fleet of

canoes to capture and retain possession of the place. Arriving off the

entrance to the gulches, and discovering a number of war-canoes drawn

up on their steep banks, he opened the campaign by ordering their

seizure. Sixty canoes filled with warriors rode the surf into the

gulches, where they were met by avalanches of rocks from the walls of

the fortress, which dashed the most of them in pieces. The chief was

startled and horrified, and, believing the gods were raining rocks

down upon his fleet, he rescued such of his warriors as were able

to reach him from the wrecked canoes, and hastily departed for Oahu,

not again to return.

It is said that Kamauaua watched this assault upon Haupu from the hills

back of the fortress, and, in token of his pleasure at the result,

sent to Kaupeepee a feather cloak, and gave him the privilege of

taking fish for his warriors from one of the largest of the royal

ponds on the island. He also quietly presented him with a barge,

than which there were few larger in the group. It would accommodate

more than a hundred warriors and their equipments, and was intended

for long and rough voyages.

These barges were constructed of planks strongly corded together over

a frame, and calked and pitched. They were sometimes ten or more feet

in width, and were partially or wholly decked over, with a depth of

hold of six or eight feet. It was in vessels of this class, and in

large double canoes of equal or greater burden, that distant voyages

were made to and from the Hawaiian Islands during the migratory

periods of the past, while the single and double canoes of smaller

dimensions, hollowed from the trunks of single trees, were used in

warfare, fishing, and in general inter-island communication. After the

final suspension of intercourse, in the twelfth century, between the

Hawaiian and Society Islands--the possible result of the disappearance

of a guiding line of small islands and atolls dotting the ocean at

intervals between the two groups--the barges referred to gradually

went out of use with the abandonment of voyages to distant lands, and

were almost unknown to the Hawaiians as early as one or two centuries

ago. Their spread of sail was very considerable, but oars were also

used, and the mariner shaped his course by the sun and stars, and was

guided to land by the flights of birds, drifting wood, and currents

of which he knew the direction.

Some of the double canoes with which the barges were supplanted were

scarcely less capacious and seaworthy than the barges themselves. They

were hollowed from the trunks of gigantic pines that had drifted to

the islands from the northern coast of America, and when one was found

years sometimes elapsed before wind and current provided a proper

mate. One of the single-trunk double canoes of Kamehameha I. was one

hundred and eight feet in length, and both single and double canoes

of from fifty to eighty feet in length were quite common during his

reign, when the native forests abounded in growths much larger than

can now be found. But the native trees never furnished bodies for

the larger sizes of canoes. They were the gifts of the waves, and

were not unfrequently credited to the favor of the gods.

Kaupeepee was delighted with the present of the barge. It gave him one

of the largest vessels in all the eight Hawaiian seas, and rendered

him especially formidable in sea-encounters. He painted the sails

red and the hull to the water-line, and from the masthead flung a

saucy pennon to the breeze, surmounted by a kahili, which might have

been mistaken for Von Tromp's broom had it been seen a few centuries

later in northern seas. He provided a large crew of oarsmen, and made

a more secure landing for it in one of the openings near the fortress.

With this substantial addition to his fleet Kaupeepee enlarged the

scope of his depredations, and his red sails were known and feared

on the neighboring coasts of Oahu and Maui. Haupu was filled with the

spoil of his expeditions, and the return of a successful raiding party

was usually celebrated with a season of feasting, singing, dancing,

and other boisterous merriment. Nor were the gods forgotten. Frequent

festivals were given to Kane, Ku, and Lono; and Moaalii, the shark-god

of Molokai--the god of the fisherman and mariner--was always the

earliest to be remembered. A huge image of this deity overlooked

the ocean from the north wall of the heiau of Haupu, and leis of

fresh flowers adorned its shoulders whenever a dangerous expedition

departed or returned. On one occasion this god had guided Kaupeepee

to Haupu during a dark and rainy night, and on another had capsized

a number of Oahuan war-canoes that had adroitly separated him from

his fleet in Pailolo channel.

At that period the islands were generally ruled by virtually

independent district chiefs. They recognized a supreme head, or

alii-nui, but were absolute lords of their several territories, and

wars between them were frequent; but they were wars of plunder rather

than of conquest, and sometimes continued in a desultory way until

both parties were impoverished, when their chiefs and priests met

and arranged terms of peace. But Kaupeepee was inspired by a motive

higher than that of mere plunder. He hated the southern chiefs and

their successors, and his assaults were confined exclusively to the

territories over which they ruled. His sole aim was to inflict injury

upon them, and the spoils of his expeditions were distributed among

his followers. Brave, generous and sagacious, he was almost worshipped

by his people, and treason, with them, was a thing unthought of.

It was indeed a wild and reckless life that Kaupeepee and his daring

associates led; but it lacked neither excitement abroad nor amusement

at home. On the upper terrace a kahua channel had been cut, along which

they rolled the maika and threw the blunted dart. They played konane,

puhenehene, and punipeki, and at surf-riding possessed experts of both

sexes who might have travelled far without finding their equals. The

people of the island were friendly with the dashing buccaneers, and

the fairest damsels became their wives, some of them living with their

husbands at Haupu, and others with their relatives in the valleys.