Read Ebook: The Knickerbocker or New-York Monthly Magazine March 1844 Volume 23 Number 3 by Various Clark Lewis Gaylord Editor

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Part of an ancient chant concerning Punchbowl reads as follows:

"O the raging tabu fire of Keaka, O the high ascending fire of the sacrifice! Tabu fire, scattered ashes. Tabu fire, spreading heat."

Nuuanu Valley is full of interesting legendary places. The most interesting, however, is the little valley made by a mountain spur pushing its way out from the Kalihi foothills into the larger valley, and bearing the name "Waolani," the wilderness home of the gods, and now the home of Honolulu's Country Club. This region belonged to the eepa people. These were almost the same as the ill-shaped, deformed or injured gnomes of European fairy tales. In this beautiful little valley which opened into Nuuanu Valley was the heiau Waolani built for Ka-hanai-a-ke-Akua , long before the days of Kakuhihewa. It was said that the two divine caretakers of this chief were Kahano and Newa, and that Kahano was the god who lay down on the ocean, stretching out his hands until one rested on Kahiki and the other rested on Oahu. Over his arms as a great bridge walked the Menehunes, or fairy people, to Oahu. They came to be servants for this young chief who was in the care of the gods. They built fish-ponds and temples. They lived in Manoa Valley and on Punchbowl Hill. Ku-leo-nui was their master. He could call them any evening. His voice was heard over all the island. They came at once and almost invariably finished each task before the rays of the rising sun drove them to their hidden resorts in forest or wilderness.

Waolani heiau was the place where the noted legendary musical shell "Kiha-pu" had its first home--from which it was stolen by Kapuni and carried to its historic home in Waipio Valley, Hawaii. Below Waolani Heights, the Menehunes built the temple Ka-he-iki for the "child-nourished-by-the-gods," and here the priest and prophet lived who founded the priest-clan called "Mo-o-kahuna," one of the most sacred clans of the ancient Hawaiians. Not far from this temple was the scene of the dramatic plea of an owl for her eggs when taken from Kewalo by a man who had found her nest. It forms part of the story of the battle of the owls and the king.

At the foot of Nuuanu Valley is Pu-iwa, a place by the side of the Nuuanu stream. Here a father, Maikoha, told his daughters to bury his body, that from it might spring the wauke- tree, used for making kapa ever since. From this place, the legend says, the wauke-tree spread over all the islands.

In the bed of the Nuuanu is the legendary stone called "The Canoe of the Dragon." This lies among the boulders in the stream not far from the old Kaumakapili Church premises.

In Nuuanu Valley was the fierce conflict between Kawelo, the strong man from Kauai, assisted by two friends, and a band of robbers. In this battle torn-up trees figured as mighty war-clubs.

Enormous quantities of stone were used in the construction of all these heiaus often passed by hand from quarries at great distances so the work of erection was one consuming much time and energy.

According to the latest investigations there were one hundred and eight heiaus on the island of Oahu, some evidences of which may still be traced, showing the far-reaching influence of kings and priests over these primitive people.

THE GOD OF PAKAKA TEMPLE

Pakaka was a heiau, or temple. There are several legends connected with this heiau. One of the most interesting is that which tells how the god of the temple came into being.

The story of the god of this temple is a story of voyages and vicissitudes. Olopana had sailed away from Waipio, Hawaii, for the islands of distant seas. Somewhere in all that great number of islands which were grouped under the general name "Kahiki" Olopana found a home. Here his daughter Mu-lei-ula was experiencing great trouble being near to childbirth. For some reason Haumea, one of the divine Polynesian ancestors, had stopped for a time to visit the people of that land. When the friends were afraid that Mu-lei-ula would die, Haumea came to help, saying: "In our land the mother lives. The mother and child both live." The people said, "If you give us aid, how can we render payment or give you a reward?"

Haumea said: "There is a beautiful tree with two strange but glorious flowers, which I like very much. It is 'the tree of changing leaves' with two flowers, one kind singing sharply, and the other singing from time to time. For this tree I will save the life of the chief's daughter and her child."

Gladly the sick girl and her friends promised to give this beautiful tree to Haumea. It was a tree dearly loved by the princess.

Haumea commenced the prayers and incantations which accompanied her treatment of the sick, and the chiefess rapidly grew stronger. This had come so quickly and easily that she repented the gift of the tree with the beautiful flowers, and cried out, "I will not give the tree."

Immediately she began to lose strength, and called to Haumea that she would give the tree if she could be forgiven and healed. However, as strength came to her once more she again felt sorry for her tree and refused to let it go. Again the incantations were broken off and the divine aid withdrawn.

Olopana in agony cried to his daughter: "Give up your tree. Of what use will it be with its flowers if you die?" Then Haumea, with the most powerful incantations, gave her the final strength, and mother and child both lived and became well and strong.

Haumea took the tree and travelled over the far seas to distant Hawaii. On that larger island she found no place to plant the tree. She crossed over to the island Maui, and came to the "four rivers." There she found the awa of the gods and prepared it for drinking, but needed fresh water to mix with it.

She laid her tree on the ground at Puu-kume by the Wai-hee stream and went down after water. When she returned the tree had rooted. While she looked it began to stand up and send forth branches. She built a stone wall around it, to protect it from the winds. When it blossomed Haumea returned to her divine home in Nuumealani, the land of mists and shadows where the gods dwelt.

That night a fierce and mighty storm came down from the mountains. Blood-red were the streams of water pouring down into the valleys. During twenty nights and twenty days the angry rain punished the land above and around Wai-hee. The river was more than a rushing torrent. It built up hills and dug ravines. It hurled its mighty waves against the wall inside which the tree stood. It crushed the wall, scattered the stones, and bore the tree down one of the deep ravines. The branches were broken off and carried with the trunk of the tree far out into the ocean.

For six months the waves tossed this burden from one place to another, and at last threw the largest branch on the reef near the beach of Kailua, on the island Hawaii. The people saw a very wonderful thing. Where this branch lay stranded in the water, fish of many kinds gathered leaping around it. The chiefs took this wonderful branch inland and made the god Makalei, which was a god of Hawaii for generations.

Another branch came into the possession of some of the Maui chiefs, and was used as a stick for hanging bundles upon. It became a god for the chiefs of Maui, with the name Ku-ke-olo-ewa.

The body of the tree rolled back and forth along the beach near the four waters, and was wrapped in the refuse of the sea.

A chief and his wife had not yet found a god for their home. In a dream they were told to get a god. For three days they consulted priests, repeated prayers and incantations, and offered sacrifices to the great gods, while they made search for wood from which to cut out their god. On the third night the omens led them down to the beach and they saw this trunk of a tree rolling back and forth. A dim haze was playing over it in the moonlight. They took that tree, cut out their god, and called it Ku-hoo-nee-nuu. They built a heiau, or temple, for this god, and named that heiau Waihau and made it tabu, or a sacred place to which the priests and high chiefs alone were admitted freely.

The mana, or divine power, of this god was very great, and it was a noted god from Hawaii to Kauai. Favor and prosperity rested upon this chief who had found the tree, made it a god, and built a temple for it.

The king who was living on the island Oahu heard about this tree, and sent servants to the island Maui to find out whether or no the reports were true. If true they should bring that god to Oahu.

They found the god and told the chief that the king wanted to establish it at Kou, and would build a temple for it there. The chief readily gave up his god and it was carried over to its new home.

So the temple, or heiau, was built at Kou and the god Ku-hoo-nee-nuu placed in it. This temple was Pakaka, the most noted temple on the island Oahu, while its god, the log of the tree from a foreign land, became the god of the chiefs of Oahu.

LEGEND OF THE BREAD-FRUIT TREE

The wonderful bread-fruit tree was a great tree growing on the eastern bank of the rippling brook Puehuehu. It was a tabu tree, set apart for the high chief from Kou and the chiefs from Honolulu to rest under while on their way to bathe in the celebrated diving-pool Wai-kaha-lulu. That tree became a god, and this is the story of its transformation:

Papa and Wakea were the ancestors of the great scattered sea-going and sea-loving people living in all the islands now known as Polynesia. They had their home in every group of islands where their descendants could find room to multiply.

They came to the island of Oahu, and, according to almost all the legends, were the first residents. The story of the magic bread-fruit tree, however, says that Papa sailed from Kahiki with her husband Wakea, landing on Oahu and finding a home in the mountain upland near the precipice Kilohana.

Papa was a kupua--a woman having many wonderful and miraculous powers. She had also several names. Sometimes she was called Haumea, but at last she left her power and a new name, Ka-meha-i-kana, in the magic bread-fruit tree.

Papa was a beautiful woman, whose skin shone like polished dark ivory through the flowers and vines and leaves which were the only clothes she knew. Where she and her husband had settled down they found a fruitful country--with bananas and sugar-cane and taro. They built a house on the mountain ridge and feasted on the abundance of food around them. Here they rested well protected when rains were falling or the hot sun was shining.

Papa day by day looked over the seacoast which stretches away in miles of marvellous beauty below the precipices of the northern mountain range of the island Oahu. Clear, deep pools, well filled with most delicate fish, lay restfully among moss-covered projections of the bordering coral reef. The restless murmur of surf waves beating in and out through the broken lines of the reef called to her, so, catching up some long leaves of the hala-tree, she made a light basket and hurried down to the sea. In a little while she had gathered sea-moss and caught all the crabs she wished to take home.

She turned toward the mountain range and carried her burden to Hoakola, where there was a spring of beautiful clear, cold, fresh water. She laid down her moss and crabs to wash them clean.

She looked up, and on the mountain-side discerned there something strange. She saw her husband in the hands of men who had captured and bound him and were compelling him to walk down the opposite side of the range. Her heart leaped with fear and anguish. She forgot her crabs and moss and ran up the steep way to her home. The moss rooted itself by the spring, but the crabs escaped to the sea.

On the Honolulu side of the mountains were many chiefs and their people, living among whom was Lele-hoo-mao, the ruler, whose fields were often despoiled by Papa and her husband. It was his servants who while searching the country around these fields, had found and captured Wakea. They were forcing him to the temple Pakaka to be there offered in sacrifice. They were shouting, "We have found the mischief-maker and have tied him."

Papa threw around her some of the vines which she had fashioned into a skirt, and ran over the hills to the edge of Nuuanu Valley.

Peering down the valley she saw her husband and his captors, and cautiously she descended. She found a man by the side of the stream Puehuehu, who said to her: "A man has been carried by who is to be baked in an oven this day. The fire is burning in the valley below."

Papa said, "Give me water to drink."

The man said, "I have none."

Then Papa took a stone and smashed it against the ground. It broke through into a pool of water. She drank and hastened on to the bread-fruit tree at Nini, where she overtook her husband and the men who guarded him. He was alive, his hands bound behind him and his leaf clothing torn from his body. Wailing and crying that she must kiss him, she rushed to him and began pushing and pulling him, whirling him around and around.

Suddenly the great bread-fruit tree opened and she leaped with him through the doorway into the heart of the tree. The opening closed in a moment.

Papa, by her miraculous power, opened the tree on the other side. They passed through and went rapidly up the mountain-side to their home, which was near the head of Kalihi Valley.

As they ran Papa threw off her vine pa-u, or skirt. The vine became the beautiful morning-glory, delicate in blossom and powerful in medicinal qualities. The astonished men had lost their captive. According to the ancient Hawaiian proverb, "Their fence was around the field of nothingness." They pushed against the tree, but the opening was tightly closed. They ran around under the heavy-leaved branches and found nothing. They believed that the great tree held their captive in its magic power.

Quickly ran the messenger to their high chief, Lele-hoo-mao, to tell him about the trouble at the tabu bread-fruit tree at Nini and that the sacrifice for which the oven was being heated was lost.

The chiefs consulted together and decided to cut down that tree and take the captive out of his hiding-place. They sent tree-cutters with their stone axes.

The leader of the tree-cutters struck the tree with his stone axe. A chip leaped from the tree, struck him, and he fell dead.

Another caught the axe. Again chips flew and the workman fell dead.

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