Kanaka Mano

Kii: Ku'ialuaopuna

 In our Lua traditions of Hawaiʻi, there is an old account concerning a group of warriors known as the Kanaka Mano, or “Warrior Sharks.” This tradition was passed down to Kawena Pukui through her family, from her grandmother Naaliipoaimoku and her mother Paahana. Pukui later shared the tradition with Olohe Lua Likeke Paglinawan of Waiahole, Oʻahu.

According to the story, the Kanaka Mano were warriors who arrived by waʻa, or canoes, from a distant island. They came ashore along the coastline of Kaʻū on Hawaiʻi Island. Their faces were painted, and their bodies were adorned with the traditional tattoos of their people. The people already living in Kaʻū recognized these newcomers as the Kanaka Mano, the “Warrior Sharks.”

The Kanaka Mano settled in the coastal communities of southern Hawaiʻi Island. The tradition does not describe them as an invading force. Instead, they appear to have arrived seeking a place to live. There was apparently no major conflict between the newcomers and the people already occupying the land. The Kanaka Mano settled among them, eventually intermarrying with local families and becoming part of the population.

It is possible that this occurred before a strong political or governmental structure had developed in the area. There may simply have been little competition for the land, allowing the newcomers to establish themselves without warfare. The tradition places their arrival in a very early period of Hawaiian settlement, perhaps more than a thousand years ago. It is remembered as being so ancient that the name of the land now called Kaʻū, before the arrival of the Kanaka Mano, has been lost to memory.

According to the tradition, the newcomers renamed the land Taʻu, after their homeland in Samoa. This connection is significant because other Hawaiian place names also recall places and ancestral lands throughout the Pacific, including Upolu and Manuʻa. These names reflect a time when our ancestors traveled widely across the ocean, carrying with them their names, genealogies, languages, customs, fighting arts, and traditions.

The Kanaka Mano story is therefore part of a much larger history of Pacific migration and interconnection. Our traditions remember migrations from many islands and island groups. There are traditions of people leaving Ka Lae in Kaʻū and traveling onward to Aotearoa, while ancestral traditions throughout Polynesia connect Hawaiʻi with places such as Savaiʻi in Samoa and Hawaiki, which is associated in some traditions with Raiatea in Tahiti.

These traditions remind us that the people of Hawaiʻi come from many Pacific migrations and ancestral lineages, rather than from a single migration or a single tribe. Over generations, people from Samoa, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Rapa, Aotearoa, and other islands voyaged, settled, intermarried, and contributed to the communities that became the Hawaiian people.

Our Lua traditions are part of this same Pacific heritage. The fighting arts of Hawaiʻi did not develop in isolation. They belong to a wider family of Pacific warrior traditions carried by people who traveled across the ocean and brought their knowledge with them.

The story of the Kanaka Mano, therefore, is not simply a story about warriors arriving on the shores of Kaʻū. It is a story about migration, settlement, intermarriage, and the continuing connections among the peoples of the Pacific. Our ocean was not a barrier separating our ancestors. It was the pathway that connected them.