Na Loea o Koolaupoko

Kii: David Chatsuthiphan

Loea, skilled kupuna of Koolaupoko, carried knowledge of the traditional Hawaiian Lua. This was a form of ike that was rarely spoken about openly. Both kane and wahine inherited this knowledge through their own ohana, where it was passed down from one generation to the next.

From the stories shared by these kupuna, it became clear that this knowledge was not necessarily taught through formal instruction or even identified as Lua. For many, the learning began during childhood, while spending time under the care and guidance of their grandparents. For others, this learning continued into their opio years.

These kupuna regarded what they carried as a special family art, something belonging to their mookuauhau and not meant to be shared with just anyone. There was an understanding that certain knowledge was to remain within the ohana and eventually be passed on to a chosen punahele, someone entrusted with carrying that knowledge into the next generation.

Many of these kupuna rarely spoke about what they knew, sometimes not even with members of their own families. This was not necessarily because they lacked trust in their ohana, but because they understood that certain things were not meant to be discussed or shared openly. They recognized that some knowledge carried an old kuleana and that not everyone was meant to receive it.

As these kupuna grew older, they often continued living ordinary lives without maintaining any formal physical training or conditioning. Yet what they had learned remained with them. It was as though the ike they had received as keiki had become an inseparable part of who they were, deeply embedded within them and available when the need arose.

Throughout our youth, and continuing into the present day, these stories have remained within our ohana. They are remembered in considerable detail. The loea, or skilled Hawaiians, included both kane and wahine. They did not speak about their abilities or try to impress anyone. Instead, they went about their daily lives, kept to themselves, and rarely gave others a reason to question what they might know.

There are stories of wahine defending themselves when necessary, even against men who were much larger and physically stronger than they were. Some were said to possess extraordinary strength, including the ability to lift a man off the ground with their fingers and throw him across a room. These were not stories the women themselves went around telling. Rather, they were accounts remembered and shared by those who had witnessed or heard about what had taken place.

Some of these wahine were also known to stand their ground when their husbands came home ona, or drunk, and became abusive. They were not easily intimidated, and those who knew them understood that they were not women to be mistreated. They carried themselves with a quiet confidence that required neither explanation nor demonstration.

There was something about that older generation of Hawaiians that is difficult to explain. They carried themselves differently. They did not need to talk about what they knew or feel compelled to demonstrate their abilities to anyone. Yet people seemed to recognize something about them. They were respected, and those who knew them understood that certain boundaries were never to be crossed.

Certain wahine of Koolaupoko never openly identified what they knew as Lua. They did not explain where their abilities came from or how they had acquired their knowledge. They understood these abilities as family gifts, and family gifts were meant to be protected. They were not intended for everyone. They were to remain within the ohana and eventually be entrusted to the chosen punahele, the person selected to receive that ike.

Moolelo a Ka Loea

I remember my uncles, who have since passed on, sharing stories about the hana their own makua were capable of doing. They often spoke about experiences they had witnessed while growing up, things that, even as adults, they could never quite understand.

One uncle, in particular, used to tell stories about working alongside his father building stone walls. His father was already an older man, in his late sixties. He was neither particularly tall nor heavily built, but rather small in stature. Yet he could construct stone walls that stood much higher than his own height.

My uncle described how they worked together, stacking the pohaku and carefully positioning each stone within the wall. Every so often, his father would tell him to take a break, eat something, and return to work later.

On one occasion, there was an old backhoe at the job site, but it had broken down and would not be repaired for several days. Without the backhoe, there was no heavy equipment available to help move the larger stones.

When my uncle returned from lunch, however, he would sometimes find several enormous pohaku already positioned in the upper sections of the wall. Some were more than seven feet above the ground. These stones were estimated to weigh between 250 and 300 pounds each. They were the kind of stones that would normally require two or more men to lift and position, or heavy equipment to raise them to that height.

Yet there they were, already sitting in place, as though someone had simply picked them up and set them where they belonged.

My uncle could never understand how his father had managed to position those pohaku. He would ask him how he had moved such heavy stones by himself, but his father never offered an explanation. He simply continued working, as though nothing unusual had happened.

After a while, my uncle became determined to discover how his father was doing it. Sometimes, when they stopped for lunch, he would deliberately leave the work area, knowing his father would remain behind and continue working alone. He wanted to see with his own eyes how a man of his father's age and size could move stones that heavy and position them high within a wall without the help of heavy equipment.

But he said that whenever he hid and tried to watch him, he never saw anything unusual. His father would simply be there working, just as he always had. Then, sometime later, another large pohaku would be sitting high in the wall, already in place.

My uncle would laugh whenever he reached this part of the story because he could never figure out how his father managed to do it. Sometimes, he felt as though his father knew he was trying to watch him and somehow made sure he never witnessed what was actually taking place.

He experienced this on only a few occasions, yet his father never explained himself. He never demonstrated anything or offered an explanation, even when his son asked him directly. He simply went about his work as though there was nothing unusual about what he was doing.

These were the kinds of stories our older Hawaiian families carried with them throughout their lives. They remembered what their fathers were capable of doing, even though they never fully understood how they did it. These loea were not found only in Koolaupoko, but throughout Hawaii. I am writing specifically about our kupuna from Koolau because that is the history I know through our own ohana.

Keiki Mano

I remember a baby being born into our ohana some thirty years ago in the area of Koolaupoko. This boy had three similar small openings, or what appeared to be gill slits, on both sides of his neck. I carried the keiki mano and saw small bubbles coming out of these gill slit openings when he breathed.

As the baby grew older, his parents became concerned about the possibility of infection and how these openings might affect his health. The keikis parents both young, eventually decided to have doctors surgically close them. The kupuna were against it but it was the parents choice.

To me and the kupuna, the child was part of our mano, or shark, ancestral ohana. I believed he would have made a great diver and wondered whether he might have possessed an unusual ability to remain underwater and hold his breath for extended periods.

The boy, now a man still lives in Koolaupoko and loves the kai.

Kanaka lawaia

Another story, shared by a different uncle, involved his experiences as a young fish diver. He was in his early eighties when he passed away a few years ago. As a young boy, he and his older brother worked with a fishing crew that went out by boat in the early morning hours. Their work involved surrounding schools of fish in the deeper sections of the reef with long nets, several miles offshore.

As the boat left the ramp, it would pass the stone wall of the old boat ramp. Every morning, a Hawaiian man could be seen sitting on that wall. As the boat passed the stone breakwater and entered the channel, the man would get into the water and swim out to meet the boat. He would then climb aboard as the crew headed toward the open sea.

The Hawaiian man rarely spoke. He was said to be an older man who was skilled in Lua. He would simply enter the water, swim out, and wait for the boat to pick him up.

Most of the fishing was for akule. With a good kilo, or spotter, aboard the boat, the crew could locate schools of akule and direct the captain on where and when to set the nets. Once a school of fish was located, the nets were dropped and positioned to completely surround the school.

The kanaka lawaia would then dive into the sea alongside the other divers. They would work beneath the surface, pressing the nets inward and freeing them from the bottom of the reef as the nets were closed and brought toward the boat. This was important because the nets could become caught on the reef, making it difficult to retrieve the catch. The crew also surrounded other types of fish in deeper water.

According to my uncle, this man could remain underwater for more than half an hour without returning to the surface for air. He would dive down and watch the nets as they were pulled away from the reef. My uncle described how effortlessly the man moved through the water and how unconcerned he seemed about the need to surface for air.

My uncle said that he and his older brother remembered seeing four small slits on each side of the man's neck, resembling shark gills. These openings were approximately two inches long and appeared to move as he breathed. As young boys, they wondered whether these unusual openings had something to do with his ability to remain underwater for such a long time. I heard this story about this old Hawaiian diver about ten years ago, long after the keiki mano had been born into our ohana of Koolaupoko.

Traditional K.K -Ku'ialuaopuna

Hookapu ia o Ahualaka i ke au o Wakea

He ahu one, he ahu pukoa owahawaha

Ino Koolau, ka ua loloku

He aina Koolaupoko i hoa me Loa

He moku Koolau i ka wai a Kane

Pipii ae ka lapa o ka lau hoe

Ke olapalapa ae ka peahi a ka wahine

Ka wahine tuketuke i na papali

He wahine mu leo mai oe

Mai nana ae, nana iho no

Ka ruau a ka halau

Ahualaka was consecrated in the time of Wakea

A clump of sand, a heap of worn gouged coral

Koolaupoko is intense with rain

A companion to Koolauloa

Koolaupoko is an island of Kane

The edge of the blade curls up

The blade of the woman flashes by you

The woman who strikes at the stones

A woman that does not make a sound

Do not look around, look within

The old one of the forest

Ka ike i koe

Like many of the other stories shared by our kupuna, these accounts involved things families had witnessed during their younger years and carried with them throughout their lives. They remembered what they had seen their elders do, even though they never fully understood how they did it.

What has always stayed with me is that these men and women were not people who went around talking about their abilities. They lived ordinary lives, worked hard, raised their families, and kept much of what they knew to themselves. Yet behind that quiet way of living was a knowledge that had been carried through generations and was understood to belong to their ohana.

Perhaps this was part of the way certain teachings were protected. Not everything was meant to be explained, and not everything was meant to be demonstrated. Sometimes a child was simply allowed to observe, remember, and carry those experiences with them until they were old enough to understand what they had witnessed.

Looking back on the stories shared by our kupuna, particularly the accounts of the wahine of Koolaupoko, one cannot help but wonder how much knowledge was carried by that older generation that was never written down or openly discussed. Some of it may have been associated with Lua, while other abilities may have been understood within the family simply as ancestral gifts.

Whatever the case, these kupuna never seemed concerned with proving what they could do. They understood that what had been entrusted to them was something to be protected, not displayed.

There is also something important to recognize about the way this knowledge was passed down. It was not always through formal instruction, nor was it necessarily taught through words. It could be learned through observation, through spending time with grandparents, through working alongside parents, and through the everyday experiences of growing up within the ohana.

A child might witness something extraordinary without receiving an explanation, only to understand its significance much later in life. Perhaps that was part of the wisdom of our kupuna. They understood that knowledge did not always need to be explained immediately. Some things were learned through experience, while others required maturity, patience, and the right person to receive them.

The responsibility of carrying such knowledge was just as important as possessing it.

These stories remind us that the knowledge of our ancestors was not limited to what was written in books or preserved through formal instruction. Much of it lived within the people themselves. It was carried in their experiences, their abilities, their practices, and their understanding of the world around them.

Perhaps that is why so many of these stories have remained within the memories of their descendants, passed from one generation to another, much like the knowledge itself.

They leave us with the understanding that some of the greatest teachings of our kupuna were never found in books or formal lessons. They were carried quietly by the people themselves, protected within the ohana, and passed on only when the time was right and the person was ready to receive them.

For those of us who come after them, these stories are more than memories. They are reminders that our ancestors carried knowledge, experiences, and gifts that we may never fully understand.

They also remind us that not all knowledge was meant to be shared openly. Some knowledge came with a responsibility to protect it, honor its origins, and ensure that it remained within the lineage to which it belonged.

In this way, the legacy of our kupuna continues, not necessarily through what they openly taught us, but through what they allowed us to witness, what they entrusted to us, and what we continue to remember.