Kalaipahoa gods

HAWAIIAN

MYTHOLOGY

Martha Beckwith

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII PRESS

HONOLULU

pgs. 111-117

LEGEND OF KALAIPAHOA

kii: Bishop museum

Kamakau version. A man of Molokai named Kane-ia-kama (Kane-a-Kama) joins a gambling game at Hale-lono, the gambling place at Ka-lua-koi, and wins the stakes. On his way home, he gambles again at the famous gambling place on Maunaloa and loses everything he has except his bones, which he is afraid to stake. That night, the god Kane-i-kaulana-ula (Kane in the red flush of victory) comes to him in a dream and bids him stake his life the next day, promising him victory if he will take him as his god. In vision, he sees this god lead a procession of gods, three of whom enter trees in a grove which springs up where no grove had been before. The next day, he stakes and wins and gains back all that he has lost. From the nioi tree entered by the god, he carves an image of his god. This is the Kalai-pahoa (Cut with a pahoa axe). Two other gods enter trees: Ka-huila-o-ka-lani (The lightning in the heavens) enters an ae tree, Kapo enters an ohe (bamboo). The wood of the Kalaipahoa tree is so poisonous that anyone upon whom a chip falls is killed by it. Every waste piece, after the image has been carved with proper prayers and offerings, is sunk in the sea.

The Kalaipahoa god belongs to the ruling chief of Molokai, and Kane-ia-kama is its keeper. It is not used at this time for sorcery. Later, in the time of Peleioholani (son of Kualiʻi) on Oahu, Kamehamehanui on Maui, and Kalani-opuʻu in Hawaii, an influential man of Kalae on Molokai named Kai-a-kea sets up a god house to Pua and Kapo under the name of “The grove of Maunaloa” (Ka-ulu-o-Maunaloa). He, too, has a vision, and in this waking vision, there comes to him a procession of beautiful women led by the god Pua and the goddess Kapo, who bid him take them as his gods and tell him to go to a spring, where he will find a flock of mud hens (alae) and a calabash containing mana. He then begins to worship Kalaipahoa in the form of these spirits. Not until these gods have passed to his daughter are they used for sorcery. She prophesies that Oahu will pass to Kahekili. When this happens her claim to be inspired by Pua and Kapo is believed, and she and her husband, Puhene at Kapulei are sought for purposes of protection and vengeance. Kamehameha has god houses built for both these gods when he becomes ruler over the islands.

Such is Kamakau’s account of the poison god called Kalaipahoa. Other versions say that the tree sprang up in a single night during the time of the chief Kamauaua, father of Kapeʻepeʻe and Keoloewa of Molokai. Three sisters came from an unknown land and one of them entered the tree and poisoned it. Others say that Kane-kulana-ula entered the tree in a flash of light just before it was felled and was unable to escape. The grove is said to have been so poisonous that birds fell dead as they flew over it.

Kii: British Museum

The flash of light which marks the entrance into the tree of the god of lightning is a very old conception, preserved in two South Sea areas in connection with gods of war and perpetuated in Hawaii in folk beliefs about Kalaipahoa sorcery. The first Kalaipahoa image is said to have been cut into bits and distributed among the chiefs after Kamehameha’s death. Bundles of blocks made from nioi wood and graded in size if they had been brought into contact with the Kalaipahoa, were supposed to partake of its mana.

 They might then be used as fetchers and sent out at night in the form of a streak of light, large at the head and tapering into a tail. In Puna district, twenty years ago, obscure diseases like tuberculosis were invariably laid to sorcery, and many reported seeing the Kalaipahoa poison fly from the house of the sorcerer to that of his victim. The fetcher as a streak of light may have a long history in Hawaii, since Ka-ili (The snatcher), described by Ellis in 1823 as a god seen at evening “flying about in the form of a comet,” is the name of Liloa’s war god bequeathed to his favorite son Umi, who eventually seized the rule from his less able and less devout brother. In New Zealand, the god Rongo-mai came to earth and led the attack of the Nga-ti-hau against the Nga-ti-awa in the form “like a shooting star or comet, or flame of fire.” In Tahiti, Ave-aitu (Tailed god) is a god with a long tail who guides the hosts of Tane (Kane) in time of war. Taylor says, probably in reference to the same figure, “The ancient image of Tane in Tahiti was represented as a meteor, cone-shaped with a large head, the body terminating in a point, with a long tail.” This may be called akualele by us today.

The idea of fetchers in the form of a streak of light may derive from a primitive idea like that reported from Dobu, where people believe that fire from the pubes of flying witches is seen at night. This would explain such incidents in Hawaiian stories as the display of her person by a supernatural woman to frighten off a malicious ghost, or the use of her skirt to raise a thunderstorm. Kapo, with her flying vagina, is worshiped as an akua noho. She is one of the daughters of the sorceress Haumea, who entered a growing tree to save her human husband, thereby so infecting it with deity as to be poisonous to all who cut it. From Haumea also came the mysterious tree out of which were cut the sorcery gods Kuhoʻoneʻenuʻu worshiped by Oahu chiefs as god of war, and Kukeoloewa, god of war for Maui and Molokai. The Pele family is linked with sorcery.

Another sorcery figure in the story is that of Pua, whom Malo names with Kapo as an akua noho feared, the one on Molokai, the other on Maui, because believed to take possession of people and cause swelling of the abdomen. In Tahiti, pua wood is said to be a favorite for the carving of fetchers. Puaraʻi names “a famous Tahitian warrior of old” worshiped as one of three ‘oromatua set up in the image house of the national marae of Tane at Maeva in Huahine. The pua (bua) tree is found in many South Sea stories at the entrance to the land of the dead. Here then is another link with Tahitian sorcery.

Some confusion in sex is perhaps to be explained by the dual character of these sorcery gods. Male sorcerers seem to work through a female companion as akua noho. A wooden image of the Kalaipahoa poison god in the Bishop Museum is realistically carved in the form of a female human figure with knees slightly flexed, arms hanging away from the body, fingers apart, and mouth open. A female figure of Keoloewa in the same stylized position carries a small human figure on its back. Keoloewa holds the same position in ancient tradition as the leading spirit of Maui that Pahulu is said to have held on to Molokai. Ellis describes a Keoloewa image as of wood dressed in native tapa with head and neck of wickerwork covered with red feathers to look like a birdskin, and wearing a native helmet hung with human hair, the mouth large and distended. It was placed in the inner room of the temple at the left of the door, with an altar before it. Keoloewa is said to have been worshiped as an akua noho up to the time of Kamehameha.

Among other names connected with sorcery in Hawaii, that of Uli is the one most invoked. Rice calls her the sister of Manua, god of the underworld, whose place Milu has usurped in popular tradition, and of Wakea, god of the upper world and an equivalent on the genealogical line to the god Kane as spiritual procreator. The name Uli may hence possibly be derived from that of Milu, goddess of the underworld in many South Sea mythologies. In Rice’s account, she is to be found grouped with two brothers, like Kapo in the Kalaipahoa story.

On Molokai, Uli-laʻa (laau?) is the god of medicine, “a god of invincible laws.” Kamakau cites two Uli goddesses, sisters to the chief Kuheilani, son of Hua-nui-ka-laʻilaʻi: Uli of the uplands, sorceress grandmother of Kana and Niheu, and Uli of the seashore who marries a fisherman at Kualakoi, teaches the art of praying to death, and becomes the aumakua of the kahuna anaana who pray people to death.

Streaks of light, trees informed with deity — to these two phenomena as part of the machinery of the poison-god legend, is joined a third element, that of the bird form as a transformation body of the flying god. A white hen and a flock of white chickens Kamakau describes as part of the Kalaipahoa keeper’s outfit, reminiscent of the white haupu bird of Kahoaliʻi, the white albatross of Kane, and in Tahiti the white heron of Tiʻi. The feathered head of the image of Keoloewa and the feathers from the mythical seabirds which wave from the heads of sorcery gods of war may be emblems of the same shape-shifting power. Uli is named with Maka-ku-koae and Alae-a-Hina as gods invoked by sorcerers for the purpose of bringing death to an enemy.

Alae 'ula

Kii: David Croxford

Maka-ku-koae is the god who brings madness (pupule) or raving insanity (hehena) or imbecility (lolo). Alae-a-Hina (Mud hen of Hina) is the sorceress from whom Maui wrested the secret of fire. Mud hen, tropic bird, and plover are all birds implicated in the sorcery pattern, perhaps because they are thought of as strangers, birds from Kahiki, as well as because of a certain eeriness in their cry. Uli may be the Ulili, the wandering tattler, which migrates with the plover from Alaska for nesting.

ˊŪlili

Kii: Ted Floyd

A fourth element that these stories of the origin of orders of sorcery have in common is the likeness to be observed in the makeup of the group that initiates poison or healing. Uli is associated with two brothers in one version of her story; Haumea comes with Kane and Kanaloa “moving across the sea”; two brothers accompany Pele, one of them called the chief aumakua of those to whom bodies are dedicated to becoming sharks. The sorceress Kamaunu, grandmother of the hog-man Kamapuaʻa, comes to Maui with two men, both of whom at different times claim her as wife. Stories of the introduction of medicine to cure disease caused by sorcery show a similar grouping. Two men and a woman are named among the “strangers” who scatter disease over the islands, and two brothers land with a sister on the eastern point of Hawaii and become aumakua respectively of plover and fowl. A formal element of this kind repeated in so many similar instances must derive from some common idea about which each school of sorcery practice has built up its legend. The two men perhaps represent the two keepers (kahu) whose business it is to care for the god and order its activities; the woman is the akua noho, the goddess who acts as their servant and goes forth on errands of sorcery; the bird's body or the flash of light is the form she takes in her flight.

The object of Kamehameha in setting up god houses for the gods of the various island districts under his rule was to ensure, to his own service, not only his own war god (and probably also god of sorcery) Kukailimoku, but also the gods of the chiefs subject to him. The Kalaipahoa sorcery on Molokai is only a single instance of the way in which rival schools of sorcery arose to terrorize the land, and their method was to draw into their own service such names as had already gained prestige as gods of possession (akua noho). One school borrowed its pattern from another.

Closely related to these schools of sorcery was the art of the healer. The herb doctor (kahuna-lapaau-laau) studied the properties of healing herbs to combat sickness. Tradition preserves the names of a number of these herb doctors who combined practical knowledge of the medicinal effect of herbs with the priestly office. Many of these doctors worked under the supposition that disease, especially when accompanied by swelling of the abdomen, was caused by the arts of sorcery. Lono-puha (Lono of the ulcer) is said to be the first to practice the art of healing through medicinal herbs in Hawaii, and to find a school upon this system. The Lono-puha order of kahunas diagnoses by means of pebbles arranged to outline the body of a man and to show the parts of the body known to be attacked by a disease whose symptoms they understand. By feeling the body with the tips of the fingers and referring to the chart of pebbles to verify the part afflicted, they are able to name the disease and apply the proper remedies. Every step of the treatment must be accompanied by prayer to the aumakua of healing. The old order was revived in the time of Kamehameha under the famous kahuna Palaka, son of the herb doctor Puheke and direct descendant from Lonopuha. He is said to have cut open his father when he died to see the course the disease had taken and to have “thought out the enema to relieve pain,” trying it first on a dog with the use of a polished bamboo as a tube.