THE genealogists of each island are said to favor a particular account of the beginnings of mankind and the ancestry of the Hawaiian people. The Kumuhonua tradition, according to which Ho‘okumu-ka-honua (Founding of the race), as his name implies, is the original ancestor, is recited on Molokai. Hawaii and Maui genealogists favor the O-puka-honua (Opu‘u-ka-honua) or Budding-of-the-race. Oahu and Kauai follow the Kane-huli-honua (Over-turner of the race) ancestral line. 1 On the Kumuhonua genealogy a line of chiefs leads down from Kumuhonua, the first man descended from the gods, through Laka, or Kolo-i-ke-ao (Creeping toward the light), brother of Kolo-i-ka-po (Creeping toward the night), to Nu‘u (Ka-hina-li‘i) in whose time came the great flood known as the Sea-of-Kahinali‘i, and thence to Lua-nu‘u (Lu son of Nu‘u), called also Kane-hoa-lani, ancestor of the Mu and Menehune people; to Hawaii-loa, called Ke-kowa-i-Hawaii (The channel to Hawaii), and from him to Eleeleua-lani and from him to Ku-kalani-ehu and his wife Ka-haka-ua-koko, parents of Papa-hanau-moku the wife of Wakea. 2 Malo calls Kumuhonua the father, through his wife Ka-mai-eli (The digger), of the root of the land (mole o ka honua), which may be interpreted as the rootstock of the race. 3 An invocation for curing the sick begins:GENEALOGIES
A spirit out of earth, a spirit out of heaven.
The Opuka-honua (Opu‘u-ka-honua) genealogy opens with the coming to Hawaii, after the islands are already peopled, of the chief Opukahonua and his younger brothers Lolo-mu and Mihi and the woman Lana, and leads down to Papa and thence to the Kamehameha line. According to the Opukahonua legend the islands were fished up out of the ocean by the great fisherman Kapuhe‘euanui (The large headed octopus).
Fornander version. Kapuhe‘euanui lets down his fishline into the sea from Kapaahu and fishes up a piece of coral, which the kahuna Laulialamakua advises him to throw back into the sea with prayer and the sacrifice of a pig, at the same time pronouncing a name over the coral, and for each piece he throws there rises an island, first Hawaii, then Maui, then Oahu, and so on.
The Kumu-uli genealogy, employed instead of the Kumuhonua on Kauai and Maui, is sacred to chiefs; to teach it to commoners is forbidden. The name is explained to mean "Fallen chief" (Ke-ali‘i-kahuli) from kumu meaning "chief" in poetic diction and (kah)uli, "fallen." 6 It resembles the Kumu-honua up to a certain point, but differs in that it opens with the gods Kane, Kanaloa, Kauakahi, and their sister Maliu and wife Ukina-opiopio as ancestors of Huli-honua, and leads down through Laka instead of Pili to Wakea through Kahiko and his wife Kapulanakehau, instead of to Papa through her parents Ka-lani-ehu and Kahakauakoko. In the legend of Kuali‘i it is quoted as the genealogical tree which leads down to Kamehameha. 7 It names Kane-huli-honua and his wife Ke-aka-huli-lani as the first parents after the group of gods named above. A variant on the twelfth branch of the Kumulipo says that at the close of the Ololo line were born Kumuhonua, Kane, Kanaloa, and Ahukai, the last three represented as triplets. Kahiko names follow among others, and the line closes with
Wela-ahi-lani-nui (Fiery-hot heavenly one) the husband, Owe the wife,
Kahiko-lua-mea the husband, Kupulanakehau the wife,
The Kuali‘i genealogy, as it follows the Kumu-uli down to Wakea, is incorporated into a chant of 618 lines in praise of the famous Oahu chief of the northern district who is said to have ruled the whole island during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and descent from whom is claimed on the line of Pinea-i-ka-lani, wife of Liloa of Hawaii. The story of its composition illustrates the high position given to professional poets among a people depending wholly upon oral memorizing.
Two brothers, Kapaahu-lani and Kamakaau-lani, desire to better their position by securing a powerful patron. They are kahunas and skilled composers. They compose a panegyric to Kuali‘i, then stir up a conflict between him and a weaker rival, join opposite sides, lead the two forces to a concerted spot, and at the moment of joining battle, one brother chants the hymn of praise from the opposing side and Kuali‘i, pacified, gives up the battle; whereupon the deluded chief against whom the plan is laid hastens to bestow upon his supposed savior lands and honors, which the chanter loyally shares with his younger brother. 9
The Kumulipo genealogy (Kumu-[u]li-po, Beginning in the darkness of night, that is, in the spirit world) is contained in a long chant of 2,077 lines divided into two periods, the first that of the po or spirit world, the second that of the ao or world of living men; that is, of ancestors who have lived on earth as human beings. The first part tells of the birth of the lower forms of life up through pairs of sea and land plants, fish and birds, creeping reptiles and creeping plants, to the mammals known to Hawaiians before the discovery by Europeans: the pig, the bat, the rat, and the dog. The second period opens with the breaking of light, the appearance of the woman La‘ila‘i and the coming of Kane the god, Ki‘i
There is no doubt that the first division of the chant is a reworking from old material. The conception of the birth from one form of matter to another, and from one form of life to another, corresponds with the text of the Wharewananga
The latter half of the chant from the dawn of light (ao), although phrased in chant language difficult to render with exactness into English, is nevertheless clearly designed to give the genealogical history of the family of Keawe to which the young chief belonged and from which the family of Kalakaua and his sister claimed descent. The first part must be regarded as originally a simple and literal story of the development of natural forms on the earth. The antithesis between darkness and light which forms the structural basis of the chant means, according to one Hawaiian informant (Kupihea), the division between the spirit world of the gods, which includes all natural forms, and the world of men with which the family history begins.
"Things born in the dark are of the night,
Things born from and sprung up in the day, they are of the light,"
are the original opening lines, says Kupihea, which were replaced in transcription by the fine scene of tumult with which, in our present copy of the chant, begins the birth of form in the po.
It was the correspondence of the chant with the evolutionary theory of creation which interested early scholars. A Hawaiian friend (Mrs. Pokini Robinson) who was familiar with old chief language and who read the chant for the first time was convinced that the various stages of the po are so phrased as to correspond with the development of a child from birth to the time when the light of reason dawns and he begins to act
307:1 For. Pol. Race 1: 188-209; Col. 4: 370-373, 404-407; Moolelo Hawaii (1838), 32-36; Pogue, 34-36; Kalakaua, Kumulipo; Liliuokalani, Kumulipo; Stokes, JPS 39: 1-41; Kepelino, 190-192. 307:2 For. Pol. Race 1: 181-185. 307:3 21. 308:4 For. Pol. Race 1: 77-82, 181-184; Col. 6: 267-269, 273-277; Kepelino, 32-35, 42-49. 309:5 For. Pol. Race 2: 18-19; Col. 4: 20-27; N. Emerson, HHS Papers 5: 10-11. 309:6 For. Col. 6: 268. 309:7 For. Pol. Race 1: 86-87, 184-185; Col. 4: 404. 310:8 Liliuokalani, 71, 72; For. Pol. Race 1: 187. 310:9 For. Col. 4: 364-405; 6: 240. 311:10 Heilige Sage, 68-158. 312:11 MPS 3: 136-137. 312:12 Easter island MS.