Hawaiian Mythology: Part Four. Heroes and Lovers in Fiction: XXXIII. The Kana Legend

XXXIII

THE KANA LEGEND

KANA, the stretching kupua, is the hero of a number of local legends explaining gashes in the contour of an island, or markings like a footprint in the rocks, or displacement of rock ledges as in some convulsion of nature. He travels about the islands destroying evil kupua, makes a journey to the entrance to the underworld to restore the stolen sun to his people, and, in association with his mischievous kupua brother Niheu (Sand crab), restores to her home and husband his mother Hina who has been abducted by a Molokai chief called Kapepe‘e-kauila (The jagged lightning) and carried away to his home on the hill Haupu.

LEGEND OF KANA AND THE RESCUE OF HINA

(a) Fornander versions. The firstborn of Hakalanileo and Hina is born in the form of a rope and brought up by his grandmother Uli in the uplands of Pi‘ihonua back of Hilo in a house called Halau-ololo. As the child grows, the house has to be lengthened from mountain to sea in order to contain him. The chief Kapepe‘ekauila sails over on the hill Haupu to the island of Mokuola off Hilo bay. Hina climbs upon the hill to take a look about and is borne off to Molokai to become the wife of the Molokai chief. Her husband appeals to his son Niheu, who sends him to Kana, at the sight of whose eyes the father flees terrified. Kana joins the war party, but twice the weight of his hand sinks canoes prepared by all the canoe builders of Hawaii. Finally Uli digs up the canoe Kau-mai-elieli in the uplands of Paliuli. In vain the prophet Moi, brother of Nuakea, warns the Molokai chief of defeat. Kapepe‘e trusts to his warriors to defend the hill. The messenger birds Kolea (Plover) and Ulili (Snipe) are sent to reconnoiter and the warrior snout-fish Ke-au-leina-kahi (or a monster turtle) is despatched to destroy the canoe. The warrior is slain with the club Wawa-i-ka-lani and a huge rock rolled

from the cliff is caught by Kana and propped with a pebble to check its progress (or the canoe turned aside to avoid a deceptive reef). Niheu lands, breaks down a barricade of ulei and ti leaves, and would have escaped with his mother from the house Hale-uki had not the birds laid hold of his sacred hair and Hina run back when he put up his hands to ward them off. Kana now attempts to raise himself above the hill and the two contestants stretch themselves up into the blue sky. Kana's body becomes like a spider web and to prevent starving he lays himself across to Hawaii, and puts his head in at his grandmother's door. As his feet become plump again with her feeding, Niheu cuts at them with his stone axe to remind him of his task. Uli tells him that the hill Haupu is a giant turtle named Ka-honu-nui-maeleka (or -maeaea) whose stretching power lies in its flippers. He breaks these off, crushes its back to pieces, and brings Hina back to her husband. From the pieces of the hill Haupu come the turtles today in Hawaiian waters.

 

(b) Rice version. Haka-lani-leo (Listener to the heavenly voice), child of Ku and Uli, weds Haka, ruling chief of Hilo district, and has ten giant sons, then a dwarfish son Niheu with strength and cunning beyond his brothers, and finally Kana, born in the shape of a rope and flung into the pigpen. Uli comes and carries it away to the uplands where she places it in a calabash of water and in a few days it develops into a child and in forty days has acquired forty feet in length and large bright eyes like the moon. Keoloewa abducts the beautiful Hakalanileo while she is out surfing and carries her away in his canoe to Haupu. The husband appeals to her sons, but Niheu is the only one able to tell where she is hidden and as his strength is good only for his own island he is unable to avenge his father on the Molokai chief. Kana appears among them in the form of a child and easily catches in his arms a great fish over which they are contesting in strength. His brothers bind him, but Uli appears and at her bidding he breaks the bonds. Niheu is now encouraged by this new supporter to attempt the Molokai expedition. He tries to fell a tree for canoes but each morning the tree is replaced, until Uli teaches him to make an offering to his ancestors and the forest god Kaikupake‘e is caught and made to promise

aid for the building. In two days all is complete. Kana in rope form joins Niheu for the launching and allows the canoes to run so swiftly over the shoulders of the giant brothers that all are knocked down and crushed to death. With a single helper called Stone the two brothers set out. The chief's bird scouts find the track of a giant on the sand but see no war party. In spite of Mo-i's warning the Molokai chief trusts to the stretching powers of Haupu and to his warrior swordfish. Stone kills the fish, Niheu fails when five hairs are pulled from his head, and Kana tries the stretching contest with the hill Haupu, using each of his five bodies in succession--human, rope, convolvulus vine, banana, and spider web. Fed and instructed by Uli, as in the other version, he crushes the backs of the turtles and so breaks their stretching power.

 

(c) Forbes version. The hairy chief Ka-pepe‘e-kauila desires the beautiful Hina (or Hoohoakalani) and when she and her husband Hakalanileo come to live on the east side of Haupu he takes her for his wife and has 'all his hairs plucked out to please her. The deserted husband goes to seek a strong man to restore his wife to him but finds even such kupua heroes as Kamalalawalu, Niuloihiki, Kaulu, and Lonokaeho unequal to the task. His kupua son Niheu fails also in bush-pulling and canoe-building tests, but his son Kana merely scratches about in the sand and a double canoe called Kaumueli is ready to set sail. The two brothers embark and while Kana sleeps, Niheu with Kana's rod Waka-i-lani crushes down a ledge on which the canoe runs aground, wards off a wall of water, a monster fish, a sharp-toothed shark, and a turtle, all warriors sent against them by the Molokai chief. In the morning they free the canoe from en-tangling trees. Niheu, however, fails to capture his mother and the stretching contest follows. One of Kana's legs is named Keanea, the other Kaipanea. It is by pruning the kamani trees that Kapepe‘e causes the hill to stretch upward. When these trees are destroyed the power of Haupu is ended. 1

2 In Rarotonga it is said of Tinirau, "If he desired to visit any island, his island would take him there." 3 In Mangaia, Tinirau calls his island Motutapu to shore and embarks upon it. 4 In Dobu, Nuakekepoaki's "underwater swift-moving rock is still one of the terrors of the seas to all bold sailors who hug the reef between Dobu and the Trobriands." By means of it he carries off a beauty of Tarawa whom men have courted in vain. 5 The case of Anaelike and her swimming island in Hawaiian romance is similar to these instances. The fact that the word moku, meaning "cut off," is used for both an island and a ship may have given impulse to this myth of the navigable island. The Maori Nga-i-tahu tradition is that "some of the mountains which we now see were ships in days gone by."

The stabilization of the hill Haupu is represented as depending upon either cutting the flippers of the turtle upon which it rests or thinning out the kamani trees that grow at the water's edge. A note in Malo records an enigmatical folk-tale about the hill Haupu to the effect that the hill sinks and rises again due to the movements of a giant turtle, and only by killing the turtle can the disturbance be stopped. Mo-i, the kupua ruler of Molokai, refuses to do this and the plovers accordingly tear out his eyes and are banished to the barren hill of Maakuewa. 6 In San Cristoval a turtle holds up a rock at Haununu. When an earthquake occurs it clasps the rock, otherwise the island would go under. 7 The legend of the island

8

The stretching contest of two kupua is told in Tahiti of Hiro and his grandfather, who can reach up only to Hiro's shoulderblades. 9 The Malay Nigritos of North Borneo say that two magicians, father and son, contend and the father wins because the son cannot attain the father's height. 10 The story suggests the central Polynesian myth of Tane pursuing his father Vatea. In San Cristoval two serpents have a stretching contest. In the Lau islands the kupua of Thakaundrove carries off a man's ornament while he is bathing. The god Tui Vutu runs after him, wins in a stretching contest, and brings back the ornament. 11

The incident of the desecrated head of Niheu which causes him to lose hold of Hina and permit her to escape to her new lover is not found in other groups. Hawaiians call by the name niheu (sand crab) a special method of head dressing, skewered on top, and plastered with red clay (alaea) such as is worn by the impersonator of deity who accompanies the kahuna when he removes the tapu and purifies the land during the ceremonies accompanying the erection of a luakini heiau. 12 The sacredness of the head of a chief, which must never be touched if it can be avoided, even the cutting of the hair being performed by a close relative, is reported also for the Marquesas and the Lau islands, and is probably true for other groups. 13

14 In the Aitutaki version he is born in Enuakura and sails to avenge the death of his younger brother. The clan inimical to him he crushes to death by sending the canoe along their shoulders at the launching. 15 This Aitutaki version resembles the Kaha‘i legend, and in fact episodes are readily borrowed from one hero tale to another.

A closer likeness to the kupua champion of the Kana legend is Hono‘ura (Honokura, Ono) of Rarotonga, the Tuamotus, Ra‘iatea, the Marquesas, Mangaia, and perhaps Rotuma. In Rarotonga, says Henry, Hono‘ura is a contemporary of the Naea reputed to have fled to Hawaii. He is poet, warrior, navigator. His name occurs in the genealogies of chiefs. He lives in the mountains of Tahiti and his food consists in edible fernroot and fresh-water fish. His canoe is named Te-ivi-i-kaua. He weds Ata-nui and has a son named The-double-headed. He follows the chief Ta‘ihia, wars with the Marquesans, and weds Ina. He dies at Tubai, but others say at Ra‘iatea. 16

(a) Marquesan version. Ono is born in the form of an egg to Kua-iana-nei when her husband Tana-oa-kauhue is slain by her second husband Aio. The egg enters a sacred temanu tree beside the gods' house. His grandfathers Iipo and Iiao learn this in a dream and rear Ono on air. Two of his brothers in succession are sent with offerings of fish to their grandparents. They eat the fish on the way, and Ono kills them and tears out their eyes, but subsequently restores them to life. In human form Ono makes a great catch of fish. He is girded with a loincloth and engages in wrestling matches, in which he kills Na-mahi-a-Tanaoa at Taaoa and Na-mahi-o-tu-Fiti, brother of his Fijian wife Peautona, at Atuona. The Atuona people try to put him to death. They set him tasks such as lifting a rock from a pit and cutting down a giant tree, both of which he easily performs and escapes their designs for putting him to death while so engaged. He bids them cast him into the sea, where he is caught in a net and his head cut off. The body remains as a coral formation off the coast. The head is cherished by his sisters and twelve births follow, each birth providing a portion of Ono's now restored body. He goes again to live with his grand-fathers. He sleeps and they plant a tree over him and flee in fear. While he sleeps darkness reigns; when he stands up his head towers above the clouds and it is light. In human proportions once more he contends with two magicians in magic and gets possession of the island of Mohotani, where he dwells thereafter. 17

 

(b) Tuamotu version. The grandson of a chiefess from Borabora and the chief of Ta‘aroa, upland on the island of Tahiti, weds a chiefess and a son is born "concealed in a great dormant clod." He is hidden in the cave Po-fatu-ra‘a on the side of the mountain Tahu‘a-reva where dwells the god Ra‘a, and out of the clod springs Hono‘ura, "a giant with telescopic powers." Three other shapely brothers are born to his parents. He is discovered in the cave living upon stones, which he alternately

swallows and rejects, and his mother hastens to bring him food and a girdle. When he is brought out before the people his head towers above the clouds. He is engaged to join an expedition of vengeance against Tuamotuan warriors who have slain the young chief Tuo-ha‘a and carried away his body to the royal altar at Takume. His weapon is the great spear Ruaipaoa. No one can budge the ship Aere in which they are to sail until he gives a shove. They pursue the enemy to Hiva (Nukuhiva), slay the demon beast Tu-ma-tahi who guards Hiva, its chief Tu-tapu, and the warrior billfish Te-a‘u-roa who leads the attack on Tahiti and now guards Ta-kume. There they find the bones of the slain chief, beguile and slay the hosts of the Toarere, and carry back the chiefess ‘Ata-ai (or Maruia) to Tahiti. 18

 

(c) Ra‘iatea version (from text by Williams in 1846). The grandchild of Ta‘ihia of Tahiti and child of the warrior chiefess of Puna-auia is born "a nondescript," placed in a cave, and develops into a man of giant proportions. The well-formed brothers are sent to propitiate him with food and a loincloth in order that he may join an expedition after masts for the chief's canoes. When he shows himself his head towers to the skies. They offer him a royal name, but he calls himself Maui-tua, Maui-aro (Backwoodsman in front, -behind). In a wrestling match he overcomes his warrior mother. The terrified father attempts to have him killed by throwing stones down upon him, all of which he catches in his hands. On a voyage in the ship Aere the sailors throw him into the sea in his sleep, but his brothers pull him in and he kills with his spear Rua-i-paoa the man-devouring beast (pua‘a) which has been ravaging Ra‘iatea. On a second expedition after parrot feathers he attacks the Hi-van warriors and finally leads his brothers against the giant billfish of Hiva who has overcome Borabora, kills him and the chief Tu-tapu, and takes back the chiefess Te-puna-ai-ari‘i to the chief Ta‘ihia of Tahiti. 19

 

(d) Mangaia version. Ono comes from the land whence came an ironwood tree to the valley of Angaruaau which all have tried in vain to cut down to make weapons out of the wood. It is

guarded by the demon boar Vaotere. With his spade Rua-i-paku he kills the boar after uprooting the tree, and carves from the wood the weapons of today. From the chips spring more iron-wood trees. In a chant the destruction of Nukuhiva is lamented. 20

 

(e) Rotuma version. Foouma is a tall boy who can walk across the sea. He is brought up in a house built in the bush and grows a fathom each year up to eight fathoms. He overthrows the people who have exacted tribute from his relatives and sets up and defends a ruling chief. 21

 

Still more closely related to the story of Kana at the hill Haupu is the Apakura legend as told in the Marquesas. Apakura is descended from Kae and his wife from the island of women. She has a kupua brother called Pakaha-ima-oa (The long-armed one with fear-compelling eyes) or Haa-tau-niva. Without his help, as in the Kana story, the other brother who takes up her cause is unable to provide a canoe for the journey of vengeance. Although the motive for revenge varies, the abduction of a wife as against the death of a young relative, the action of these stories follows exactly the same pattern, analyzed as follows:

(A) Search for a champion; (A1) one champion after another discarded; (A2) a long-armed fierce-eyed champion discovered.

(B) Building of war canoes; (B1) unsuccessful without aid of the champion; (B2) or some supernatural helper.

(C) Prophetic warnings disregarded by the enemy.

(D) Outguards of the enemy met and destroyed one by one.

(E) Defeat and death of the enemy; (E1) after a stretching contest.

APAKURA LEGEND

(a) Marquesas (Handy version from Atuona). Te-hina-tu-o-kae, chief of Taaroa, has eight children only two of whom have natural forms. The two human children are Apekua (called Peikua) and the youngest son E-tia-i-te-toua. Apekua's son Pota-a-te-mau

is affianced to the daughter of the chief Hatea-motua, but when he goes to get his bride he is not recognized and, in spite of the signs he shows and the warnings of Hatea-motua's priest, he is slain by Hatea-motua. Apekua seeks revenge, but each of her brothers turns a deaf ear to her plea until she comes to E-tia-i-te-toua, who arouses the allied tribes and sets out to build a great war canoe. The tree Aniani-te-ani resists felling and Etia is told in a dream to seek under a seven-branched coral in the sea for his brother Haa-tau-niva, who is called later Pakaha-ima-oa, "the long-armed one with fear-compelling eyes." This brother tells Etia where to find the adz with which to fell the tree. When the canoe is completed, Ima-oa stretches out his arm and snatches victims from Hatea-motua's household to serve as the dedicatory sacrifice. In vain Hatea trusts to his three defenders who have the bodies of a living vine which drags down canoes, weeds to entangle them, and a giant octopus to engulf them. All three are slain, the people flee, and Hatea-motua suffers a cruel death in revenge for his treatment of Apekua's sacred son. 22

 

(b) Samoa. Sons of Tu-i-fiti go to make war against the chief Vaea of Vaimauga village (on Upolu). While they sleep Vaea comes down and sets their canoes up in the boughs of the trees. To appease Vaea they offer him their sister Apa-‘ula. Her child is born on the return voyage. The brothers kill and eat the child. The mother goes back to Vaea to demand vengeance, but he is dead. His head speaks and tells her to apply to his brother Va‘atausili. She meets an uncouth lad who tells her that he is Va‘atausili. The lad enters a cave to sleep and his body grows long, straight, and beautiful. He tears up a coconut tree, goes with Apa‘ula to Fiji, and kills her brothers. Tu-i-savalalo is the name of the child, from the place Savalalo where the father "stood" (tu) to watch the boat off. 23

 

(c) Moriori (Shand version). Apukura avenges herself upon Maurea for the death of her son Tu who goes with his nine brothers, concealed, to the house of Maurea and, being discovered,

is killed and his eyes gouged out and eaten by the sacred woman Maurea. Apukura seeks her relative Whakatau to avenge her. As she passes along, each person she questions sends her on farther. Whakatau is finally found and proves to her his strength by leaping over a mountain. He refuses her request, she leaves him, he follows and is there before her. A canoe is manned and Whakatau is concealed among the rowers. Pairs of warriors approach and are slain. Whakatau hides in the house of the two leaders and, having put them to death, escapes and burns down the house and all within. 24

 

(d) Maori. Apakura bears to Tuhuruhuru, son of Rupe's sister, a son named Tuwhakararo, next a daughter named Mairatea, who marries Poporokewa of the Ati-Hapai tribe. Her brother comes to visit her and is killed by a young man who is jealous of his sweetheart's attentions to the stranger. The younger brother at home, named Whakatau-potiki, determines to avenge his death. He gets up a great war party, comes to the home of Poporokewa, gets inside in disguise, kills the chief, and burns the house down with all those within. 25

 

(e) Rarotonga. The oldest of Apakura's eight brothers becomes jealous of her son Turangataua because the nephew out-does him in reed casting, and orders him killed and eaten. Apakura goes to seek vengeance, but no one throughout the land is found to avenge her. The sons of Tangaroa-maro-uka become her champions. Only two of her brothers escape and one of these makes the first settlement on Rarotonga. The last encounter is between Vakatau-ii and the oldest brother who has given the order for her son's death. Her champion would have been slain in the fight had not his brothers noosed the opponent. 26

 

It may well be argued that such a succession of incidents is an exceedingly natural one for a revenge story which entails a journey overseas, and is to be recognized in the Kaha‘i and Laka legends. Nevertheless, the similarity of incident in connection with the particular powers ascribed to the kupua in

O Kana! O Kana!
Rough line of hala root or bark of hau tree,
Point and declare as to the sleeper,
The foster child of Uli,
Put on your rope body,
Lay off your human form
In this trick of yours and mine, O Kana! 27

A contemporary of Honokura in Tuamotuan legend may supply the abduction element of the Hawaiian Kana story. A Napuka legend tells how the beautiful Huarei, betrothed to the famous voyager Moeava, "had not her equal in all the surrounding isles"; how she was abducted by Patira, a giant from a distant place called Marama, so tall that he strode

28 Here again the rope element may have significance in connection with the wielding of the sling.

A journey to restore the sun to a darkened world is told of Kana in much the same terms as that told of Kahai's expedition in search of his father, with the kupua Niheu, whose power is said to extend no farther than his own island, playing the part of Alihi.

LEGEND OF KANA RESTORING THE SUN

Niheu treats roughly the messenger of Kahoalei(-li‘i) ruling chief of Kahiki, and the chief in anger takes away the sun, moon, and stars from Hawaii. Uli sends Kana with Niheu to bring them back. As Kana stretches to the sky to reach the light, Niheu dies of cold and is left behind, but Kana bends over to Kahiki and drops into the spring of two old relatives, who give him fire to' guide him ahead and wind to bear him behind until he reaches the border of Kahoalei's land. He finds Uli's brother Manu-a guarding the pit down which the food is kept by the people below and handed up to those above. He puts down a plump black hand which his relatives recognize and fill, first with food, then with water, then with the birds called Kaiwea (fishhawk) which signal the day, then birds and the cock that crows for dawn, finally stars, moon, and sun, all of which he places in the sky. The chief himself next emerges and returns with Kana to tour the land, restoring Niheu to life on the way. When Ka-hoa-lei reaches Hawaii he finds that Kana and Niheu have both died and he rules there many years. 29

The legend of the abduction of Hina is laid in the time of Keoloewa, son of Kamauaua and ruling chief on Molokai, whose name is in some versions given to the abductor; and since Niheu is said to have as grandmother Hina-i-kapa‘i-kua, wife of Nana-maoa of Oahu on the Ulu line, in common with Kapawa who came from the south and was contemporary

30

Kana is thought of, like the gigantic Lima-loa, as a being who can step from one island to another (seventy miles distant) or wade through the sea from island to island, but some say this is another Kana from the brother of Niheu. 31 On Kauai is shown his footprint where he stepped over from the island of Ni‘ihau to Ke‘e near Kalalau. On the Puna coast of Hawaii is to be seen that of his brother Niheu, made when he was chasing the mischievous kupua who used to change into a goby fish and nibble Sandcrab's bait, and the hollow in a rock close by where Goby-fish hid from his pursuer. The hill Haupu, where lived the. abductor, juts out as a steep headland from the precipitous north side of Molokai between Pelekunu and Halawa valleys. The mounds at the foot of Halawa valley, called "rocks of Kana," are said to have fallen from the heights of Haupu at the time of the fight with Kana; some say Molokini island was thus formed. A notch in the summit ridge of Haleakala on Maui is said to show where Kana leaned across the mountain in his rope form from Haupu to be fed at his grandmother's house in Hilo. The Kauai story is that he stood at Kipukai on Kauai and leaned across to Haupu and fed his starving brother through his own body.

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Footnotes

466:1 For. Col. 4: 436-449; 5: 518-521; 6: 158, 489-491; Pol. Race 2: 30-33; Rice, 93-102, 105; Thrum (from Forbes), Tales, 63-73; Malo, 298-301; Kalakaua, 67-94, 503; Dickey, HHS Reports 25: 21.

467:2 Collocott, Bul. 46: 27-28.

467:3 JPS 8: 118-119.

467:4 Buck, Bul. 122: 12.

467:5 Fortune, 267-270.

467:6 Malo, 126-127 note 29.

467:7 Fox, 133-134.

468:8 Henry, 437-443, 558.

468:9 Ibid., 539.

468:10 Evans, 195.

468:11 Hocart, 193.

468:12 Malo, 215 and note 13.

468:13 Hocart, 44; Handy, Bul. 9: 257-259.

469:14 Henry, 537.

469:15 JPS 12: 137-139.

469:16 535-536.

470:17 Handy, Bul. 69: 104-107; Von den Steinen, ZE 1933, 364-365.

471:18 Henry, 516-534.

471:19 JPS 4: 256-294.

472:20 Gill, 81-87.

472:21 Romilly, Letters, 129-138.

473:22 Handy, Bul. 69: 64-78; Von den Steinen, ZE 1933, 364-365.

473:23 JPS 18: 139-142.

474:24 JPS 4: 161-176.

474:25 Grey, 61-66.

474:26 JPS 30: 53-70.

475:27 Malo, 298.

476:28 JPS 28: 31-39.

476:29 Rice, 102-105; Ellis, Tour, 296.

477:30 Kamakau, Ke Au Okoa, July 21, 1870; For. Col. 4: 270.

477:31 Ellis, Tour, 296; Kalakaua, 502-503.