Legends of Olohe and Dog Men

Kii: Jack Becket

HAWAIIAN MYTHOLOGY

Martha Beckwith

with a new introduction by

Katharine Luomala

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII PRESS

HONOLULU Copyright © 1970 by University of Hawaiʻi Press

pgs. 344-351

Kapakohana, after killing the kupua Kalae-hina who has terrorized the island of Maui, goes on to Oahu to challenge the hairless cannibal (olohe) of Hanakapiai. Finding himself unable to overcome the olohe in wrestling, he pretends friendship and gathers men to burn him while asleep in his grass house. The olohe overhears the plot and, making a hole in the top of the house, crawls into a tree, then begins eating the men until he comes to Kapakohana, who grapples with him and eventually kills him and sets up his bones to hang gourds upon.

Kapuaeuhi, an olohe of Olaʻa, uses his two strong daughters to decoy travelers to his cave, where he has a stone, or, as most say, a beam, which he causes to fall and kill the traveler as he enters. Finally two cousins of a plundered man are successful in setting upon and killing the daughters, then the old man himself, whom they leave in the cave. Some say that he lies there yet, but since the death of the olohe no one has been able to raise the stone (or beam).

On the shore road toward Ka-u district just out of Kalapana is a spot where the lava rock is contorted as if by a great struggle. A famous robber used to live in a cave above this road with his two daughters. He hides himself along the road and the daughters watch from the cave. If many people are coming together along the road they signal “High tide!” but when a single traveler comes along they give the sign for “Low tide!” and the olohe drops a great tree upon the man, thus disabling him, and then kills and robs him.

Uma, a dwarf skilled in the art of bone breaking, lives at Puehuehu in Kohala in the days of Kamehameha the first. On a journey through the country, which is at that time infested by robbers, he repels every attack by his swiftness and skill.

Similar conditions seem to have prevailed among the Maori.

Moko is a robber chief who establishes himself in a cave beside the highway traveled by those who trade up and down the coast. Finally he kills the brother of the chief Tu-te-wai-mate and the chief goes with a body of men to avenge the dead, but Moko takes advantage of his chivalrous warning to give an unexpected thrust which kills the avenger.

Kanaka Uri

Hawaiian moʻolelo also speaks of supernatural dogs called the “dog men.” They were described as being hairless, but their skin was often dark red and brindled. Because they were hairless, they were referred to as “ʻōlohe.”

Among dog-men represented as overthrowing the chief of a district and terrorizing the country, the most famous is the cannibal dog-man Kaupe who overthrew the government of Ka-hanai-a-ke-akua (Reared by the gods) and ruled the land from Nuʻuanu to the sea.

Kaupe lives at Lihue on Oahu. He never attacks a high chief but eats some of the people both of Oahu and Maui. At last he crosses over to Hawaii and brings back a chief’s son to sacrifice in the heiau at Lihue. The father follows to Oahu and consults Kahilona, the great kahuna at the heiau of Kaheiki just below the hill called today Pacific Heights, which was built by the Menehune and which becomes under Kahilona the center for the moʻo-kahuna class of priests; that is, for kilokilo who read the signs of earth and sky and sea. This kahuna teaches the chief from Hawaii the prayer to recover his son, which runs

    “O Ku,! O Lono! O Kanaloa!

     By the power of the gods, by the strength of this prayer,

     Save us two, save us two!”

The prayer unfastens the boy’s fetters and father and son flee and hide under a rock at Moanalua while Kaupe goes on to look for them on Hawaii. The father learns the prayer for killing an enemy, and overcomes Kaupe on Hawaii. The story resembles one told locally of the heiau of Waha-ula in Puna district on Hawaii.

The smoke from the altar at Waha-ula is regarded as the shadow cast by the god of the heiau and hence to cross through the smoke is sacrilege. A young chief, forgetful of the tapu, allows himself to be touched by the smoke and is accordingly seized and sacrificed and his bones thrown into the bone pit. His spirit comes in dream to his father, who is the high chief of Ka-u, and the father sets out at once to recover his son’s bones. After first encountering and killing the olohe who slays travelers along the sea road out of Kalapana, he arrives at the heiau. As the spirits dance at night, he recognizes and seizes the spirit of his son, who points out to him where the bones are to be found. Some say that the father restores his son to life, others that he merely gives the bones a proper burial.

As a ghost god resting in the clouds stretched over the mountaintops of the Koolau range on Oahu, Kaupe’s spirit body is today confused with legends of a dog-like creature called Poki, spotted or brindled in color and very long in body, who guards a certain section outside Honolulu, although he may appear at other places. Some say it is the spirit of the old chief Boki who in 1829 filled two ships for the sandalwood trade and sailed away and never came back, but the legend is doubtless much older. Travelers report having seen the creature and having made a long detour to avoid it. It sometimes appears as a form in the clouds, either resting or in motion. A foreigner reports seeing, as he was entering Moanalua valley from Honolulu just as the moon was rising, “a shapeless white form,” a mist “convulsed with movement,” which passed over the treetops from the Koolau range, preceded as it came by “the wailing of dogs” and followed as it passed by “a deathlike stillness.”

Both the shape-shifting hog-man Kamapuaʻa and the dog-man Ku-ilio-loa, together with the spirit forms of Kaupe and Poki, are in some way connected with those signs in the sky called oila which the Hawaiians worshiped, believing that the  animal shapes in such clouds could be used to foretell the movements of chiefs descended from their kupua ancestors because denoting the presence of their aumakua protectors in the heavens.

Kamakau says of the dog-man Ku-ilio-loa (Ku long dog) that Lono-ka-ehu came to Oahu from Kahiki with his “great dog” Ku-ilio-loa to seek his brother. He pierced the hill Kane-hoa-lani at Kualoa, cleft Kahuku and Kahipa apart, and broke Ka-pali-hoʻokuʻi at Kailua. He found his brother in the heiau at Palaa near Kuone at Waialua and took him back to Kahiki. The heiau named is the ancient heiau Kapukapu-akea said to have been built by Menehune out of kauila wood. The heiau of Lono-a-ke-ahu (Lono-ka-ehu?) at Keehu is said to have “worked with” that of Kapukapu-akea and at Kane-ilio at the lighthouse point stood the heiau of Ku-ilio-loa.

Ku-long-dog is described as a dog with a human body and supernatural power, “a great soldier and famous warrior,” who terrorizes Kahiki. His wives betray him to Kamapuaʻa and the hog-man conquers him by stuffing his own supernatural plant bodies between the gaping jaws of the dog and “eating his inwards”; that is, by performing the common folktale trick of allowing himself to be swallowed by a monster and then cutting his way out. The contest follows directly that with Lono-ka-eho, elsewhere described as the dog’s master. In the Ka-ulu legend the fight with Lono-ka-eho (The stone god) is similarly followed by an attack upon a “dangerous kupua” of Kualoa who waylays and kills travelers at the narrow pass about Kaoio point. Ka-ulu lifts the kupua and dashes him down, breaking his body into bits, one of which forms the rock islet Mokoli'i just off Kualoa.The kupua is evidently not a “rat” as the story says, but the “great dog” of Lono, and the islet Mokoliʻi (Little moʻo), by adding elided sounds and transposing, becomes Mok(u)-ilio (Dog island), the part played by the kupua as a waylayer of travelers classing him unquestionably with the dog-men or olohe of other stories.

Ku-ilio-loa passes into legend as “the man-eating dog of Hina” whom travelers fear, in the Waha-nui legend, and in that of Ka-ulu as the monster whom Ka-ulu tears into bits with his hands; hence dogs are small today. Although these encounters take place on an ocean voyage it may be significant that Kane and Kanaloa, whom Waha-nui voyages to “tread upon,” are represented in Hawaiian tradition as gods dwelling at Waolani on Oahu, the same island upon which is localized the Lono-ka-ehu legend.

Ku-ilio-loa, as “the great dog of Hina,” is also connected with the Pele cycle of romances. The foster parents of Ke-ahi-wela (Hot fire) send Ku-ilio-loa in the shape of a dog to the Rolling island to save the girl from the wrath of her older sister, and he loses both ears and tail in the fight and goes to live on Kauai. Na-maka-o-kahaʻi, the analogous figure in the Aukelenuiaiku legend to the chiefess of the Rolling island, has a guardian dog Moela who is reduced to ashes when he touches Aukele. In the Laieikawai romance, Aiwohikupua, a chief of Kauai, brings his kupua dog Kalahumoku to fight against the moʻo guardian of Paliuli named Kiha-nui-lulu-moku, and the dog runs home stripped, like Ahi-wela’s pet, of both ears and tail. Finally, Ku-ili(o)-loa, “a girl of fire,” is the fifth child born to Kane-huna-moku and his wife in Kuaihelani.

A somewhat similar story to that of Ku-ilio-loa is told in Tonga among the adventures of Muni-of-the-torn-eye. Muni comes to Fiji and finds the people harassed by a being “part man and part god,” and wrestles with him in the cave where he lives until both fall dead. In another version a man-eating dog lives in a cave and terrorizes the people into giving up a man daily. The king’s daughter is about to be sacrificed when Muni appears, takes her place, and slays the monster, this last evidently a foreign turn to the story See also Caillot’s version where Maui kills the great cannibal dog of Fiji. In Samoa one of Maui-tiʻitiʻi’s feats is the slaying of a big red dog.

The Maori are said to know two varieties of native dogs, one, generally regarded as sacred, with soft white hair and traced to the Pomeranian breed found on the shores of the Baltic, the other larger with coarse short hair and very strong, of Asiatic pariah breed. The legendary dog Mohorangi is left to guard the steep rock island of Whanga-o-kino when Tara-whata made it sacred for his reptiles. Ponui-o-hine goes with her father to help kindle fire in order to remove the tapu on this island but forgets to veil her eyes and is hence turned to stone. Women today fear to go near this island and strangers veil their eyes lest they see the dog Moho-rangi.

In a Dobu story a monster dog acts as the savior of the land by slaying an ogre and his wife who have devastated the country. A woman digs the dog out of a heap of rubbish and the inhabitants return and give him a wife to tame him down. He is believed still to roam the country.

Another famous dog kupua of Hawaiian story is Puapualenalena (Pupualenalena), a great thief and runner of Waipio valley who can take the shape of a yellow dog and thus provide his master with all possible good things. He is finally engaged to steal for the chief the famous conch shell called Kiha-pu (or puana) which has been stolen from its place in a heiau on Oahu by the spirits of the valley. The place is still shown along the road leading down into Waipio where the spirit (eepa) beings lived who disturbed the chief’s repose with their eerie sounding of the sacred conch, and a shell called Kiha-pu has been handed down by Kamehameha kings and is now preserved in the Bishop Museum, a small piece broken from it serving to motivate an incident which has since been incorporated into the legend.

 a) Westervelt version. Kapuni is brought up in the heiau of Pakaalana in Waipio. Two “gods,” Kaakau and Kaohu-walu, look down into the valley and see him practising the art of leaping and they cut off a part of his body to make him lighter, teach him to fly, and take him with them overseas to Kauai. There they hear the sound of the Kiha-pu at Waolani: “The voice of Kiha-pu calls Kauai,” is the saying. Flying across from Kauai to Oahu, Kapuni waits until the guards are asleep, then flies into the heiau and steals the Kiha-pu and hides it under the waves until he can reach the heiau on Hawaii where live the eepa beings to whom it is entrusted. The bones of Kapuni are worshiped as a god at Kaawaloa.

Kiha-lulu-moku has set a tapu, which is broken by the continual blowing of the conch by the gods on the plateau above. In the meantime the dog-man Puapualenalena has joined a new master who is a great awa drinker, and is sent to steal awa from the chief’s tapu crop. The dog is traced and the chief agrees to pardon both man and master if the dog is cunning enough to steal the conch Kiha-pu from its new owners.

(b) Fornander version. The dog Pupualenalena is a clever thief living at Puako on Hawaii. When his new master goes fishing he finds the dog eating the fish as fast as he pulls them up. The master promises him pardon if he will bring him awa from the chief Hakau’s tapu crop. This the dog achieves, until he is followed and both master and dog brought before the chief. Hakau promises them their lives if the dog will bring him the Pu-ana (trumpet) which the spirits living above Waipio blow every night, disturbing the chief’s sleep.

(c) Kalakaua version. The Kiha-pu is owned by Kiha-lulumoku in Waipio valley and if properly blown can control the hosts of the gods. Its sound is like weird music and if blown during battle it repeats the cries and groans of conflict. It was Lono (as god of sound) who gave it this power by blowing into it.

The Kiha-pu is stolen by a band of spirit beings under their leader Ika (Iku) and carried away to Waimea on Kauai and thence to Oahu to a place in the neighborhood of Waolani. A rival places a magic mark upon the shell in the shape of a cross (peʻa) which takes away its power of sound. A kahuna tells Ika that the shell will not sound again except on Hawaii. On the way thither the shell is chipped by the waves and the sign lost. Above Waolani the spirit band blow the shell once more and Kiha engages the dog Puapualenalena to steal it back from Ika.

(d) Emerson version. Kane and his companions revel all night above Waipio and blow blasts upon their conch shells which prevent the proper observance of religious ceremonies, until the chief Liloa sends the clever thief Puapualenalena to steal the Kiha-pu away from Kane, and this puts an end to the reveling.

Emerson prints a hula on the subject, part of which reads:

Meha na pali o Waipio

A ke kani mau o Kiha-pu;

A ono ole ka awa a ke aliiI

Ke kani mau o Kiha-pu;

Moe ole kona po o ka Hooilo;

Uluhua, a uluhua,

I ka mea nana e huli a loaa

I kela kupua ino i ka pali,

Olali la, a olali.

“Wearisome the cliffs of Waipio

With the constant sounding of the Kiha-pu;

Ineffective is the chief’s awa

With the constant sounding of the Kiha-pu;

The chief cannot sleep all winter,

Vexed and worried

With the search for someone who will find

That cursed kupua on the cliff

Where it gleams there.”