Mālama Pūʻolo

Kii: Ku'ialuaopuna

Nānā I Ke Kumu

(LOOK TO THE SOURCE)

Volume I

Mary Kawena Pukui

E.W. Haertig, M.D.

Catherine A. Lee

Published by Hui Hānai

1972

pg 25-27

 In ʻunihipili, the spirit was that of a close, dearly loved and fairly recently departed relative. This spirit helped or harmed as the keeper requested. The concept here is "recalling the beloved dead."

Belief in "mālama pūʻolo" as a harmful practice is still related by Center clients. One client felt family troubles had increased after an old man moved in with the family. Said the client, "the old man's got something Hawaiian hidden under the bed." On advice of a kahuna, the client got the old man out of the house long enough to discover a pūʻolo or "bundle" which she promptly burned.*

"I heard breathing sounds and cries of pain while it burned. And I think drops of blood came out of it!" said the client. "After the old man discovered the burning, he got mad and moved out."

This is an example of remedial action within the framework of Hawaiian cultural beliefs. The client was disturbed because she believed a traditional pūʻolo was being kept, communicated with and ritually fed. To her this meant that a spirit, sinister and possibly not too quiescent, pervaded her home. With bundle and boarder both out of the house and the spirit consumed in flames, some very troublesome elements were removed. The client was better able to focus on her principal problems.

In some present day examples, walking sticks, canes or heirloom spears of kauila wood have been considered hosts to the poison god. These are not, as far as we know, wrapped in tapa or in any way made into a pūʻolo or "bundle," though in at least one case, "spirit-feeding" lived on. Some instances show fear for the spirit in the wood; others almost affectionate attachment.

About three years ago, Mrs. Pukui was told the following during a visit on Molokai:

"N died, and after death, nobody could stay in the house. Noises! Walking sounds! Everybody felt funny ... uneasy. So N 's family searched and found a kauila cane high up over a window. They took the cane to N 's grave and buried it on top of him and said, ‘Here is your cane. Take it with you and leave us be.’ After that the house was all right. Everybody could sleep."

An almost opposite example—that of attachment—came to Mrs. Pukui's attention at Bishop Museum.

"A very nervous young woman came to the Museum and asked to see a spear her sister had brought in. After she identified it, she asked to come back with offerings ... She came early the next day. With her was a small octopus,

* "You may also dispose of a pūʻolo by throwing it in the ocean. After your throw it, never look back." M.K. Pukui a hīnālea (type of fish), a weke (fish) and a small container of poi. After muttering a prayer she ate the food. Then she came smiling to me and said, ‘The stick stays with you, but the spirit goes home with me.’"

The weke signified opening or removal, hīnālea meant "clearance" due to a play on the word lea (clear), even the octopus was once used to make sickness or sorcery "flee," "slip" or "slide out", Mrs. Pukui explained. The woman was ceremonially "freeing" the spirit so it could come back home.

The spear had belonged to the woman's older sister. During family parties, the younger sister had put filled liquor glasses near it and, unknowingly, fed the spirit. After the older sister's death, the spear was given to the museum. It was after this that the younger sister began to be tormented "night after night by something that said ‘Go and get me.’"

The "spirit that was homesick" is one of several modern instances in which the original connotation of harm has been lost. Mrs. Pukui detected no feeling that akualele, instrument of death, lurked in the kauila wood. Rather, the spirit, like a lonesome, devoted pet, wanted to come back to its friend, companion and provider of "food."

If we put the woman's attachment to the spirit within the framework of behavioral sciences, something like this may be seen:

Dr. Haertig suggests two interpretations. Both, he stresses, are speculative and based on no personal professional knowledge of the case.

"In Freudian interpretation, the kauila stick or spear would be the obvious phallic symbol," he says.

"But in Hawaiian cultural belief, kauila wood and its spirit could be male or female. So I would wonder instead about the younger woman's association with her sister. The older sister died. Went away. Then the kauila wood was given to the museum. Went away. The kauila spirit the younger sister was trying to bring back home could be a kind of symbolic focus for the woman's need for and memories of the older sister. She may really have been trying to call back the sister—or at least all the values, memories and associations that her sister represented."

In a quite separate conversation with the editor, Mrs. Pukui recalled that the older sister had "been like a second mother" to the younger woman, and that the younger sister had addressed the kauila spirit as tūtū!*