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Hawaiian - Legends Of Shark-Men
Kamaikaahui lives at Muolea in Hana district of Maui. He was born in the form of a rat, then became a bunch of bananas, then a man with a shark's mouth at his back, over which he always wears a cloth to conceal the mark. He is a man on land and a shark in the sea. He farms by the highway and when people pass, going down to the sea, he warns them against sharks. Then he runs ahead of them by a back way and devours them. At last he is suspected. Seeing people on the shore ready to attack him, he leaves his clothes at a place called Kau-halahala and swims to Waipahu in Waikele on Oahu and becomes ruling chief of Ewa district, where he terrorizes the country until slain by Palila. 54
Kawelo is a shark-man living on Kauai in the region of Mana. He has a shark mouth on his back, a tail and appendages on the lower part of his body. He can take the form, besides that of a shark, of a worm, a moth, a caterpillar, a butterfly, and thus escape an enemy. Two rocks shaped like grass houses, one under water in the Wailua river, the other a little below the cave of Mamaaku-a-Lono, represent his two houses as a shark and as a man. As a shark-man he lived between Kealia and Wailua and would eat up the children who ventured to swim out between those two places. Finally he was discovered and a long line of men formed who stoned him to death. He is identified with the famous chief Kawelomahamahaia (Kawelo with fins like a fish), grandfather of Kawelo and descended from Mano-kalani-po, who was believed to become a shark god (akua mano) at death. 55
Pau-walu (Eight dead) lives at Wailua, Maui. He warns men as they go to the sea that eight will be dead before they return and a shark always kills eight of them as predicted. He is therefore suspected as a shark-man. Akeake the strong is born beside the stream Hau-ola and while yet a little boy starts about Maui fighting champions. After overcoming Lohelohe, he, with his companion Pakolea, spends the night at a friend's house named Ohia and learns about Pauwalu. The shark-man scoffs at so little an antagonist, but Akeake easily binds him, exposes the shark's mouth on his back, and casts him into the fire. 56
Nenewe lives on Hawaii "beside the large basin at the bottom of the waterfall on the west side of Waipio valley." As men go to the sea to bathe at Muli-wai he warns them of the shark that may eat them and, as one man is always lost at such times, the people begin to suspect him. They catch him, pull off the cape which he always wears, and expose the shark's mouth on his back. 57
Nanaue is the shark-man of Waipio in the time of Umi, child of Ka-moho-ali‘i and Kalei. His maternal grandfather feeds him meat, hoping to make a warrior of him, and he develops a taste for human flesh. When detected at Waipio he turns into a shark and swims to Hana, where he marries the sister of a petty chief. At Molokai he lives at Poniu-o-Hua. When he is at last discovered the young demigod Unauna is employed to put him to death and the marks of the struggle are to be seen on the Kainalu hillslope and on a grooved rock called Pu‘u-mano about which the ropes were wound which held the net with which he was caught. The shark god punishes the desecration of a bamboo grove on this occasion by taking away the cutting qualities of the bamboo from this particular grove of bamboo unto this day. 58
Mano-niho-kahi (Shark with one tooth) lives near the water hole in Malae-kahana between Laie and Kahuku. When he sees a woman going to the sea to gather fish or limu he warns her against sharks, then comes himself and kills her. The chief lines up all the men and detects the shark-man by the mark of the shark's mouth on his back when the tapa garment which he wears is dragged off. 59
A similar story collected in Pukapuka runs as follows:
A man-eater, an atua-pule, lives in a hole. When two or more go by to fish he stays inside; when only one, he comes outside and kills him and drags him into his hole to eat. Two men steal upon him, entice him outside while they hide, and attack him together. He almost drags them in, but (in one version) a woman calls out to them to "brace the foot" or (in another version) to "lift it high" and they are able to save themselves. The atua slips away to the sea and goes to Samoa, leaving Pukapuka in peace. 60
Among the Rarotongans a child whose father is Moe-tarauri, an ancestor of Iro, bears on his back a birthmark in the form of a centipede which is seen to writhe when the child is angry. 61
Hawaiian Mythology, by Martha Beckwith, Yale University Press [1940, copyright not renewed] and is now in the public domain.
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