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Hawaiian - Legend Of Kumukahi
Kumukahi came from Kahiki at the time of Pele, whose relative he was, together with a brother Pala-moa born in the shape of a cock (moa) and a sister named Sun-rise (Ka-hikina-a-ka-la). He was able to take the form of a man or of a kolea bird at will. Today his spirit is able to possess a medium (haka) so that the person can hold out his hand and an awa plant will grow right out of it, or, if a pig is brought in, the medium can speak and the pig will drop dead at his feet. A medium possessed by Palamoa has similar powers but not so strong. Palamoa is god of fowls. His grandchild Lepe-a-moa (whose legend is told in detail on Oahu) was born in the shape of an egg. 30
A native of North Kona relates how he witnessed with his own eyes similar powers exhibited by a kahuna who had the mana of a god.
One of the deputy sheriffs of North Kona named Joseph K. Nahale was being done to death by sorcery. An eel of the kauila (red) variety was caught, salted, and put in the sun to dry. The kahuna called the people to build up a fire and heat hard stones (ala). When the stones were heated he prayed and threw the-eel into the fire. The eel "closed up and ran outside the fire." Had the eel died in the fire, Nahale would have died, but in this way the kahuna cured Nahale. At another time the same kahuna made a sign to cure a man who was ill. He sent the family to get a small banana plant. He prayed over the plant and it grew and a leaf appeared and a bunch of bananas. Everybody in the house ate from it. In half an hour it sprang up and ripened. This kahuna had power, but he never used it to kill people.
In all the stories here quoted sorcery is represented as brought in from abroad by parties of immigrants and as containing all the elements described in Tahiti in the Tane worship in connection with the figure of Ti‘i, first man and magician, as practised in the heiaus to protect the lives of ruling chiefs and detect and punish their enemies. The connection of the name of Lono with this system will thus become clear if the Lono of the medical kahunas is thought of as the god Ro‘o-te-roro‘o who was worshiped in Tahiti by the prayer-healing kahunas in special marae (temples) 31
In Hawaii the Ku ritual was practised in heiaus of a special class, belonged to the stricter order of priesthood, and could be employed by the ruling chief alone. It included human sacrifice and was set up by a war chief to protect him from enemy sorcery and insure his own success. The milder Lono ritual was practised in a heiau of an inferior class and without human sacrifice. It might be used, but not solely, by a ruling chief. Although no precise account has been given of the form which the worship took, it is likely that one of its objects was to invoke Lono as the god of healing to ward off evil influences.
Long journeys of Polynesian mythical heroes to the sun, to the underworld after fire, or to the upper heavens are, I venture to assert, more often than has been heretofore recognized built upon the idea of a sorcerer's quest after just such a system of control over the spirits who determine sickness and health, life and death. Folk versions have obscured this interpretation. The figure of Maui-tikitiki, son of Kalana and Hina, is generally conceded to represent the arch mischief maker of Polynesian mythology. Mischief making is sorcery, euphemistically phrased. In this art of sorcery all the Maui stories show him an adept. In Hawaii, where the kite-shaped god of the wind, Lo-lupe, is sent out to entangle the souls of enemies to the chief, we have a story of Maui as a kite flyer in control of the winds. The Polynesian story of Maui's visit to the underworld to obtain fire is a euphemistic folk version of the way in which he wrested from his sorceress grandmother her control of sorcery and threw it, as poison or healing, into the trees. The Hawaiian version in which he wins the secret from the little mud hen, the bird form taken by Pele sorceresses, is even more suggestive of a similar theme. When Kana goes to the underworld to restore the sun and moon to his people, when Aukele goes down into the pit of the sun in the east after the water of life, each of these heroes is defying the lord over death by sorcery. The water which restores to life is a literal rendering of the practice by which the healing kahuna brings back a patient to life at eastern points of the islands. Maui's journey through the body of his ancestress to secure everlasting life for man, an episode absent in Hawaii from the Maui cycle, is a story founded upon the common belief in a sorcerer's power to journey in the spirit to the land of the dead to pluck souls back into life.
Hawaiian Mythology, by Martha Beckwith, Yale University Press [1940, copyright not renewed] and is now in the public domain.
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