invocation of your childhood, when you were made sacred and guarded by
charms, I forgot a part of the ceremony. And for this you are to die."
Then Maui said, "Will this be by Hine-nui-te-po? What is she like?"
The father said that the flashing eyes they could see in the distance
were dark as greenstone, the teeth were as sharp as volcanic glass, her
mouth was large like a fish, and her hair was floating in the air like
sea-weed.
One of the legends of New Zealand says that Maui and his brothers went
toward the west, to the edge of the horizon, where they saw the goddess
of the night. Light was flashing from her body. Here they found a great
pit--the home of night. Maui entered the pit--telling his brothers not
to laugh. He passed through and turning about started to return. The
brothers laughed and the walls of night closed in around him and held
him till he died.
The longer legend tells how Maui after his conversation with his father,
remembered his conflict with the moon. He had tied her so that she could
not escape, but was compelled to bathe in the waters of life and return
night after night lest men should be in darkness when evening came.
Maui said to the goddess of the moon: "Let death be short. As the moon
dies and returns with new strength, so let men die and revive again."
But she replied: "Let death be very long, that man may sigh and sorrow.
When man dies, let him go into darkness, become like earth, that those
he leaves behind may weep and wail and mourn."
Maui did not lay aside his purpose, but, according to the New Zealand
story, "did not wish men to die, but to live forever. Death appeared
degrading and an insult to the dignity of man. Man ought to die like the
moon, which dips in the life-giving waters of Kane and is renewed again,
or like the sun, which daily sinks into the pit of night and with
renewed strength rises in the morning."
Maui sought the home of Hine-nui-te-po--the guardian of life. He heard
her order her attendants to watch for any one approaching and capture
all who came walking upright as a man. He crept past the attendants on
hands and feet, found the place of life, stole some of the food of the
goddess and returned home. He showed the food to his brothers and
persuaded them to go with him into the darkness of the night of death.
On the way he changed them into the form of birds. In the evening they
came to the house of the goddess on the island long before fished up
from the seas.
Maui warned the birds to refrain from making any noise while he made the
supreme effort of his life. He was about to enter upon his struggle for
immortality. He said to the birds: "If I go into the stomach of this
woman, do not laugh until I have gone through her, and come out again
at her mouth; then you can laugh at me."
His friends said: "You will be killed." Maui replied: "If you laugh at
me when I have only entered her stomach I shall be killed, but if I have
passed through her and come out of her mouth I shall escape and
Hine-nui-te-po will die."
His friends called out to him: "Go then. The decision is with you."
Hine was sleeping soundly. The flashes of lightning had all ceased. The
sunlight had almost passed away and the house lay in quiet gloom. Maui
came near to the sleeping goddess. Her large, fish-like mouth was open
wide. He put off his clothing and prepared to pass through the ordeal of
going to the hidden source of life, to tear it out of the body of its
guardian and carry it back with him to mankind. He stood in all the
glory of savage manhood. His body was splendidly marked by the
tattoo-bones, and now well oiled shone and sparkled in the last rays of
the setting sun.
He leaped through the mouth of the enchanted one and entered her
stomach, weapon in hand, to take out her heart, the vital principle
which he knew had its home somewhere within her being. He found
immortality on the other side of death. He turned to come back again
into life when suddenly a little bird (the Pata-tai) laughed in a clear,
shrill tone, and Great Hine, through whose mouth Maui was passing,
awoke. Her sharp, obsidian teeth closed with a snap upon Maui, cutting
his body in the center. Thus Maui entered the gates of death, but was
unable to return, and death has ever since been victor over rebellious
men. The natives have the saying:
"If Maui had not died, he could have restored to life all who had gone
before him, and thus succeeded in destroying death."
Maui's brothers took the dismembered body and buried it in a cave called
Te-ana-i-hana, "The cave dug out," possibly a prepared burial place.
Maui's wife made war upon the spirits, the gods, and killed as many as
she could to avenge her husband's death. One of the old native poets of
New Zealand, in chanting the story to Mr. White, said: "But though Maui
was killed, his offspring survived. Some of these are at Hawa-i-i-ki and
some at Aotea-roa (New Zealand), but the greater part of them remained
at Hawa-i-ki. This history was handed down by the generations of our
ancestors of ancient times, and we continue to rehearse it to our
children, with our incantations and genealogies, and all other matters
relating to our race."
"But death is nothing new,
Death is, and has been ever since old Maui died.
Then Pata-tai laughed loud
And woke the goblin-god,
Who severed him in two, and shut him in,
So dusk of eve came on."
--Maori death chant, New Zealand.
XII.
HINA OF HILO.
Hina is not an uncommon name in Hawaiian genealogies. It is usually
accompanied by some adjective which explains or identifies the person to
whom the name is given. In Hawaii the name Hina is feminine. This is
also true throughout all Polynesia except in a few cases where Hina is
reckoned as a man with supernatural attributes. Even in these cases it
is apparent that the legend has been changed from its original form as
it has been carried to small islands by comparatively ignorant people
when moving away from their former homes.
Hina is a Polynesian goddess whose story is very interesting--one worthy
of study when comparing the legends of the island groups of the Pacific.
The Hina of Hilo is the same as the goddess of that name most widely
known throughout Polynesia--and yet her legends are located by the
ancient Hawaiians in Hilo, as if that place were her only home. The
legends are so old that the Hawaiians have forgotten their origin in
other lands. The stories were brought with the immigrants who settled on
the Hilo coast. Thus the stories found their final location with the
families who brought them. There are three Hawaiian Hinas practically
distinct from each other, although a supernatural element is connected
with each one. Hina who was stolen from Hawaii by a chief of the Island
of Molokai was an historical character, although surrounded by mythical
stories. Another Hina, who was the wife of Kuula, the fish god, was
pre-eminently a local deity, having no real connection with the legends
of the other islands of the Pacific, although sometimes the stories told
concerning her have not been kept entirely distinct from the legends of
the Hina of Hilo.
The Hilo Hina was the true legendary character closely connected with
all Polynesia. The stories about her are of value not simply as legends,
but as traditions closely uniting the Hawaiian Islands with the island
groups thousands of miles distant. The Wailuku river, which flows
through the town of Hilo, has its own peculiar and weird beauty. For
miles it is a series of waterfalls and rapids. It follows the course of
an ancient lava flow, sometimes forcing its way under bridges of lava,
thus forming what are called boiling pots, and sometimes pouring in
massive sheets over the edges of precipices which never disintegrate.
By the side of this river Hina's son Maui had his lands. In the very bed
of the river, in a cave under one of the largest falls, Hina made her
own home, concealed from the world by the silver veil of falling water
and lulled to sleep by the continual roar of the flood falling into the
deep pool below. By the side of this river, the legends say, she pounded
her tapa and prepared her food. Here were the small, graceful mamake and
the coarser wauke trees, from which the bark was stripped with which she
made tapa cloth. Branches were cut or broken from these and other trees
whose bark was fit for the purpose. These branches were well soaked
until the bark was removed easily. Then the outer bark was scraped off,
leaving only the pliable inner bark. The days were very short and there
was no time for rest while making tapa cloth. Therefore, as soon as the
morning light reddened the clouds, Hina would take her calabash filled
with water to pour upon the bark, and her little bundle of round clubs
(the hohoa) and her four-sided mallets (the i-e-kuku) and hasten to the
sacred spot where, with chants and incantations, the tapa was made.
The bark was well soaked in the water all the days of the process of
tapa making. Hina took small bundles of the wet inner bark and laid them
on the kua or heavy tapa board, pounding them together into a pulpy mass
with her round clubs. Then using the four-sided mallets, she beat this
pulp into thin sheets. Beautiful tapa, soft as silk, was made by adding
pulpy mass to pulpy mass and beating it day after day until the fibres
were lost and a sheet of close-woven bark cloth was formed. Although
Hina was a goddess and had a family possessing miraculous power, it
never entered the mind of the Hawaiian legend tellers to endow her with
ease in producing wonderful results. The legends of the Southern Pacific
Islands show more imagination. They say that Ina (Hina) was such a
wonderful artist in making beautiful tapas that she was placed in the
skies, where she beat out glistening fine tapas, the white and glorious
clouds. When she stretches these cloud sheets out to dry, she places
stones along the edges, so that the fierce winds of the heavens shall
not blow them away. When she throws these stones aside, the skies
reverberate with thunder. When she rolls her cloud sheets of tapa
together, the folds glisten with flashes of light and lightning leaps
from sheet to sheet.
The Hina of Hilo was grieved as she toiled because after she had pounded
the sheets out so thin that they were ready to be dried, she found it
almost impossible to secure the necessary aid of the sun in the drying
process. She would rise as soon as she could see and hasten to spread
out the tapa made the day before. But the sun always hurried so fast
that the sheets could not dry. He leaped from the ocean waters in the
earth, rushed across the heavens and plunged into the dark waters again
on the other side of the island before she could even turn her tapas so
that they might dry evenly. This legend of very short days is strange
because of its place not only among the myths of Hawaii but also because
it belongs to practically all the tropical islands of the Pacific Ocean.
In Tahiti the legends said that the sun rushed across the sky very
rapidly. The days were too short for fruits to ripen or for work to be
finished. In Samoa the "mats" made by Sina had no time to dry. The
ancestors of the Polynesians sometime somewhere must have been in the
region of short days and long nights. Hina found that her incantations
had no influence with the sun. She could not prevail upon him to go
slower and give her more time for the completion of her task. Then she
called on her powerful son, Maui-ki-i-ki-i, for aid.
Some of the legends of the Island Maui say that Hina dwelt by the sea
coast of that island near the high hill Kauwiki at the foot of the great
mountain Haleakala, House of the Sun, and that there, facing the
southern skies under the most favorable conditions for making tapa, she
found the days too short for the tapa to dry. At the present time the
Hawaiians point out a long, narrow stone not far from the surf and
almost below the caves in which the great queen Kaahumanu spent the
earliest days of her childhood. This stone is said to be the kua or
tapa board on which Hina pounded the bark for her cloth. Other legends
of that same island locate Hina's home on the northeast coast near
Pohakuloa.
The Hilo legends, however, do not deem it necessary that Hina and Maui
should have their home across the wide channel which divides the Island
Hawaii from the Island Maui in order to wage war successfully with the
inconsiderate sun. Hina remained in her home by the Wailuku river,
sometimes resting in her cave under Rainbow Falls, and sometimes working
on the river bank, trusting her powerful son Maui to make the
swiftly-passing lord of day go more slowly.
Maui possessed many supernatural powers. He could assume the form of
birds or insects. He could call on the winds to do his will, or he
could, if he wished, traverse miles with a single stride. It is
interesting to note that the Hilo legends differ as to the way in which
Ma-ui the man passed over to Mau-i the island. One legend says that he
crossed the channel, miles wide, with a single step. Another says that
he launched his canoe and with a breath the god of the winds placed him
on the opposite coast, while another story says that Maui assumed the
form of a white chicken, which flew over the waters to Haleakala. Here
he took ropes made from the fibre of trees and vines and lassoed the sun
while it climbed the side of the mountain and entered the great crater
which hollows out the summit. The sun came through a large gap in the
eastern side of the crater, rushing along as rapidly as possible. Then
Maui threw his lassoes one after the other over the sun's legs (the rays
of light), holding him fast and breaking off some of them. With a magic
club Maui struck the face of the sun again and again. At last, wounded
and weary, and also limping on its broken legs, the sun promised Maui to
go slowly forevermore.
"La" among the Polynesians, like the word "Ra" among the Egyptians,
means "sun" or "day" or "sun-god"--and the mountain where the son of
Hina won his victory over the monster of the heavens has long borne the
name Hale-a-ka-la, or House of the Sun.
Hina of Hilo soon realized the wonderful deed which Maui had done. She
spread out her fine tapas with songs of joy and cheerily performed the
task which filled the hours of the day. The comfort of sunshine and
cooling winds came with great power into Hina's life, bringing to her
renewed joy and beauty.
XIII.
HINA AND THE WAILUKU RIVER.
There are two rivers of rushing, tumbling rapids and waterfalls in the
Hawaiian Islands, both bearing the name of Wailuku. One is on the Island
of Maui, flowing out of a deep gorge in the side of the extinct volcano
Iao. Yosemite-like precipices surround this majestically-walled crater.
The name Iao means "asking for clouds." The head of the crater-valley is
almost always covered with great masses of heavy rain clouds. Out of the
crater the massed waters rush in a swift-flowing stream of only four or
five miles, emptying into Kahului harbor. The other Wailuku river is on
the Island of Hawaii. The snows melt on the summits of the two great
mountains, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. The water seeps through the porous
lava from the eastern slope of Mauna Loa and the southern slope of Mauna
Kea, meeting where the lava flows of centuries from each mountain have
piled up against each other. Through the fragments of these volcanic
battles the waters creep down the mountain side toward the sea.
[Illustration: Rainbow Falls, Hina's Home.]
At one place, a number of miles above the city of Hilo, the waters were
heard gurgling and splashing far below the surface. Water was needed for
the sugar plantations, which modern energy has established all along the
eastern coast of the large island. A tunnel was cut into the lava, the
underground stream was tapped--and an abundant supply of water secured
and sluiced down to the large plantations below. The head waters of the
Wailuku river gathered from the melting snow of the mountains found
these channels, which centered at last in the bed of a very ancient and
very interesting lava flow. Sometimes breaking forth in a large,
turbulent flood, the stream forces its way over and around the huge
blocks of lava which mark the course of the eruption of long ago.
Sometimes it courses in a tunnel left by the flowing lava and comes up
from below in a series of boiling pools. Then again it falls in majestic
sheets over high walls of worn precipices. Several large falls and some
very picturesque smaller cascades interspersed with rapids and natural
bridges give to this river a beauty peculiarly its own. The most weird
of all the rough places through which the Wailuku river flows is that
known as the basin of Rainbow Falls near Hilo. Here Hina, the moon
goddess of the Polynesians, lived in a great open cave, over which the
falls hung their misty, rainbow-tinted veil. Her son Maui, the mighty
demi-god of Polynesia, supposed by some writers to be the sun-god of the
Polynesians, had extensive lands along the northern bank of the river.
Here among his cultivated fields he had his home, from which he went
forth to accomplish the wonders attributed to him in the legends of the
Hawaiians.
Below the cave in which Hina dwelt the river fought its way through a
narrow gorge and then, in a series of many small falls, descended to the
little bay, where its waters mingled with the surf of the salt sea. Far
above the cave, in the bed of the river, dwelt Kuna. The district
through which that portion of the river runs bears to this day the name
"Wai-kuna" or "Kuna's river." When the writer was talking with the
natives concerning this part of the old legend, they said "Kuna is not a
Hawaiian word. It means something like a snake or a dragon, something we
do not have in these islands." This, they thought, made the connection
with the Hina legend valueless until they were shown that Tuna (or kuna)
was the New Zealand name of a reptile which attacked Hina and struck her
with his tail like a crocodile, for which Maui killed him. When this was
understood, the Hawaiians were greatly interested to give the remainder
of this legend and compare it with the New Zealand story. In New Zealand
there are several statements concerning Tuna's dwelling place. He is
sometimes represented as coming from a pool to attack Hina and sometimes
from a distant stream, and sometimes from the river by which Hina dwelt.
The Hawaiians told of the annoyances which Hina endured from Kuna while
he lived above her home in the Wailuku. He would stop up the river and
fill it with dirt as when the freshets brought down the debris of the
storms from the mountain sides. He would throw logs and rolling stones
into the stream that they might be carried over the falls and drive Hina
from her cave. He had sought Hina in many ways and had been repulsed
again and again until at last hatred took the place of all more kindly
feelings and he determined to destroy the divine chiefess.
Hina was frequently left with but little protection, and yet from her
home in the cave feared nothing that Kuna could do. Precipices guarded
the cave on either side, and any approach of an enemy through the
falling water could be easily thwarted. So her chants rang out through
the river valley even while floods swirled around her, and Kuna's
missiles were falling over the rocky bed of the stream toward her. Kuna
became very angry and, uttering great curses and calling upon all his
magic forces to aid him, caught a great stone and at night hurled it
into the gorge of the river below Hina's home, filling the river bed
from bank to bank. "Ah, Hina! Now is the danger, for the river rises.
The water cannot flow away. Awake! Awake!"
Hina is not aware of this evil which is so near. The water rises and
rises, higher and higher. "Auwe! Auwe! Alas, alas, Hina must perish!"
The water entered the opening of the cave and began to creep along the
floor. Hina cannot fly, except into the very arms of her great enemy,
who is waiting to destroy her. Then Hina called for Maui. Again and
again her voice went out from the cave. It pierced through the storms
and the clouds which attended Kuna's attack upon her. It swept along the
side of the great mountain. It crossed the channel between the islands
of Hawaii and Maui. Its anguish smote the side of the great mountain
Haleakala, where Maui had been throwing his lassoes around the sun and
compelling him to go more slowly. When Maui heard Hina's cry for help
echoing from cliff to cliff and through the ravines, he leaped at once
to rush to her assistance.
Some say that Hina, the goddess, had a cloud servant, the "ao-opua," the
"warning cloud," which rose swiftly above the falls when Hina cried for
aid and then, assuming a peculiar shape, stood high above the hills that
Maui might see it. Down the mountain he leaped to his magic canoe.
Pushing it into the sea with two mighty strokes of his paddle he crossed
the sea to the mouth of the Wailuku river. Here even to the present day
lies a long double rock, surrounded by the waters of the bay, which
the natives call Ka waa o Maui, "The canoe of Maui." It represents to
Hawaiian thought the magic canoe with which Maui always sailed over the
ocean more swiftly than any winds could carry him. Leaving his canoe,
Maui seized the magic club with which he had conquered the sun after
lassoing him, and rushed along the dry bed of the river to the place of
danger. Swinging the club swiftly around his head, he struck the dam
holding back the water of the rapidly-rising river.
[Illustration: Wailuku River, the Home of Kuna.]
"Ah! Nothing can withstand the magic club. The bank around one end of
the dam gives way. The imprisoned waters leap into the new channel. Safe
is Hina the goddess."
Kuna heard the crash of the club against the stones of the river bank
and fled up the river to his home in the hidden caves by the pools in
the river bed. Maui rushed up the river to punish Kuna-mo-o for the
trouble he had caused Hina. When he came to the place where the dragon
was hidden under deep waters, he took his magic spear and thrust it
through the dirt and lava rocks along one side of the river, making a
long hole, through which the waters rushed, revealing Kuna-mo-o's hiding
place. This place of the spear thrust is known among the Hawaiians as Ka
puka a Maui, "the door made by Maui." It is also known as "The natural
bridge of the Wailuku river."
Kuna-mo-o fled to his different hiding places, but Maui broke up the
river bed and drove the dragon out from every one, following him from
place to place as he fled down the river. Apparently this is a legendary
account of earthquakes. At last Kuna-mo-o found what seemed to be a safe
hiding place in a series of deep pools, but Maui poured a lava flow into
the river. He threw red-hot burning stones into the water until the
pools were boiling and the steam was rising in clouds. Kuna uttered
incantation after incantation, but the water scalded and burned him.
Dragon as he was, his hard, tough skin was of no avail. The pain was
becoming unbearable. With cries to his gods he leaped from the pools and
fled down the river. The waters of the pools are no longer scalding, but
they have never lost the tumbling, tossing, foaming, boiling swirl which
Maui gave to them when he threw into them the red-hot stones with which
he hoped to destroy Kuna, and they are known today as "The Boiling
Pots."