Ku

Kii: Ron Dahlquist

HAWAIIAN

MYTHOLOGY

 Martha Beckwith

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII PRESS

HONOLULU

pgs. 26-29

https://ulukau.org/ulukau-books/?a=d&d=EBOOK-BECKWIT1.2.4.15&e=-------haw-20--1--txt-txPT-----------

At the time of Cook’s discovery of the Hawaiian group, priests of the strictest religious order followed the Ku ritual. According to the Ku worship any public calamity which threatened the whole people, like prolonged drought, was to be averted by the erection of a special form of heiau (luakini) in which was observed a prolonged ritual involving the whole people as participants and demanding exorbitant offerings to the gods in the shape of pigs, coconuts, redfish, white cloth, and human victims. This was especially the practice in time of war. The ruling chief alone could erect such a heiau, but subject to the advice of the priests, who picked out a favorable site and decided whether an old heiau was to be repaired or a new one set up. Tradition was consulted to determine the plans of heiau whose erection had been followed by success in battle. Variations in plan might occur, but all must include the essential parts laid down at the time of the building of the first heiau by the gods at Waolani on Oahu, and it was to the national god Ku-nui-akea that such a heiau was erected.

Ku-nui-akea was represented in the heiau by a block of ohia wood freshly cut under strict ritual ceremonies. A human sacrifice was offered as payment for the tree both at the spot where it was cut down and at the posthole where the image was set up. In the forest the gods of the growing tree were invoked in a prayer which seems, with its reiterative phrasing, a very old one:

Ku of the forest, Ku-lono, strike gently,

Ku-pulupulu, Ku-mokuhaliʻi, strike gently,

Cut a pathway, strike gently,

Cut a pathway above, strike gently,

Cut a pathway below, strike gently,

Hew down the ohia Ku-makua, strike gently,

Hew down the ohia of the forest, strike gently,

Hew down the ohia of the moist forest, strike gently,

Hew down the ohia of the koa forest, strike gently.…

The public ceremonies at the heiau covered ten days, or might be extended if the auspices were unfavorable. They have not been studied in detail, but the accounts include a circuit run about the images in the heiau carrying the portable gods and led by a naked man impersonating Ka-hoaliʻi; recitation of sacred “binding prayers” during a period of complete silence, called an aha (assembly); dedication of the mana (sacred) sanctuary where the priests assembled for two days to chant prayers; another aha ceremony followed by a symbolic “binding of the heavenly to the earthly realm” by means of a rope of sennit run around the inside of the sacred house; the offering to Ku of a human victim or of an ulua fish whose eye was plucked out for Ka-hoaliʻi; the cutting of the god’s navel string, represented by a girdle of coconut leaves, in a ceremony corresponding to that for a chief’s son, and the girding of the god and of each of the other images with a loincloth; the dressing with white tapa of the three-tiered prayer tower, into which the priest then entered; a visit to the mountains by priests and people carrying the portable war gods of the chiefs and returning with shouts and singing, bearing branches of koa trees to make a temporary booth; the sacrifice of a pig and its entire consumption, each man in the group sharing the feast; a ceremonial bath in the sea from which each returned with a piece of coral in his hand and piled it upon a heap outside the temple; and finally the presentation by the female chiefs of the ruling family of a great loincloth for Ku.

The occasion of the offering of human sacrifices brought together only those of rank and those who had prepared themselves under careful discipline. It followed, according to Kamakau, a strict period of prayer during which the audience all “sat firmly on their buttocks, the left leg crossed over the right leg in the position called neʻepu and the left hand crossed over the right.” At the command of the priest everyone held up the right hand pointing toward heaven, kept this position while the group prayed in unison, and then went back to the first position, all exactly at the same time and without moving the body. A mistake meant death to the awkward or careless. If the body to be offered was that of a chief

slain in battle the ruling chief took hold of the hook Manaikalani (the famous hook that drew up land), which hung from a cord, and hooked it into the mouth of the victim, at the same time reciting the prayer which condemned the traitor, and the body was laid on the altar with each arm embracing the body of a hog laid on either side of the dead man. After a war there might be many such victims.

Four feather war gods were worshiped in the heiau in the time of Kamehameha as visible forms of the god Ku-nui-akea under the Paao priesthood. These gods are described by Kamakau as “sticks of wood below, draped in folds of tapa … and at the head a very fine feather hung dangling so as to cover the head. When the god was consulted to know the truth, the feather stood straight up, whirling about like a waterspout as if full of electricity, and flew from its place and rested on the head of a person and trembled on his head, his arm, or shoulder. This was a sign that the god would help and bless him in war and give him prosperity.” Impotent gods who remained obstinately passive were rejected by war leaders or the battle was called off. Kawelo, the story says, smashed the god Ku-lani-hehu with a club and called it a coward because it showed not even a flutter of feathers when consulted about the success of his expedition to Kauai.

Kukailimoku is the most famous of the Ku gods of battle owned by Kamehameha. Kalakaua describes the image as “a small wooden figure, roughly carved, with a headdress of yellow feathers.” This god was said to utter cries during a battle which could be heard above the sounds of the fight. It was supposed to represent the god Kaili of Liloa, which was given to Umi at the time when the rule over the land was given to Hakau, to have been carefully preserved and worshiped by Umi, and to have descended to Keawe-nui-a-Umi and from him to his son Lono-i-ka-makahiki. Ka-lani-opuʻu gave it to Kamehameha. This was not, however, the original Kaili god, according to some old Hawaiians. The original god (akua) was a stone (or gourd) about the size of two fists, bound about with sennit, and having at the top two feathers from the mythical bird called Hiva-oa, which were secured by prayer. When Kamehameha conquered all the islands, the saying was “E ku kaili moku,” that is, “Kaili has risen over the islands.” This expression became attached to the image. After the abolition of the tapu by the chiefs after Kamehameha’s death, the keeper of Kaili in Kohala made a canoe and placed the god in it, together with food, awa, and tapa cloth. He wept over the god, saying, “O Kaili, here is your canoe, here is food, here is awa, here is tapa; go back to Kahiki.” Then he set the god adrift on the ocean and by the mana of the god the canoe sailed onward to Kahiki and was never seen again.

All of these war gods were ultimately regarded as gods of sorcery. It was for this reason that Kamehameha was careful to secure the gods of the islands over which he had gained rule. Ku-hoʻo-neʻe-nuʻu was the god of the Pakaka temple at Kou (Honolulu) and the principal god of Oahu ruling chiefs. Ku-ke-olo-ewa was worshiped on Maui and became a god of Kamehameha when he gained possession of that island. Ku-kaili-moku was the most powerful sorcery god of Hawaii until the rise of the famous sorcery god of Molokai, Ka-lei-pahoa, whose story will be told later.

Ku-waha-ilo (Ku maggot-mouth) was by tradition a maneater and the god responsible for the introduction of human sacrifice. Ellis’s story is that, after Umi’s victory over his elder half-brother Hakau, the voice of “Kuahiro his god” was heard demanding more men for the sacrifice, until eighty of the enemy had been offered. The legend runs that when the body of Hakau himself was laid on the altar the god came down from heaven in a pillar of floating clouds with thunder and lightning and dark clouds, and “the tongue of the god wagged above the altar.”