CHAPTER I
[Footnote 1: Haleole uses the foreign form for wife, wahine mare, literally "married woman," a relation which in Hawaiian is represented by the verb hoao. A temporary affair of the kind is expressed in Waka's advice to her granddaughter, "O ke kane ia moeia," literally, "the man this to be slept with".]
[Footnote 2: The chief's vow, olelo paa, or "fixed word," to slay all his daughters, would not be regarded as savage by a Polynesian audience, among whom infanticide was commonly practiced. In the early years of the mission on Hawaii, Dibble estimated that two-thirds of the children born perished at the hands of their parents. They were at the slightest provocation strangled or burned alive, often within the house. The powerful Areois society of Tahiti bound its members to slay every child born to them. The chief's preference for a son, however, is not so common, girls being prized as the means to alliances of rank. It is an interesting fact that in the last census the proportion of male and female full-blooded Hawaiians was about equal.]
[Footnote 3: The phrase nalo no hoi na wahi huna, which means literally "conceal the secret parts," has a significance akin to the Hebrew rendering "to cover his nakedness," and probably refers to the duty of a favorite to see that no enemy after death does insult to his patron's body. So the bodies of ancient chiefs are sewed into a kind of bag of fine woven coconut work, preserving the shape of the head and bust, or embalmed and wrapped in many folds of native cloth and hidden away in natural tombs, the secret of whose entrance is intrusted to only one or two followers, whose superstitious dread prevents their revealing the secret, even when offered large bribes. These bodies, if worshiped, may be repossessed by the spirit and act as supernatural guardians of the house. See page 494, where the Kauai chief sets out on his wedding embassy with "the embalmed bodies of his ancestors." Compare, for the service itself, Waka's wish that the Kauai chief might be the one to hide her bones, the prayer of Aiwohikupua's seer that his master might, in return for his lifelong service, "bury his bones"—"e kalua keai mau iwi," and his request of Laieikawai, that she would "leave this trust to your descendants unto the last generation.">[
[Footnote 4: Prenatal infanticide, omilomilo, was practiced in various forms throughout Polynesia even in such communities as rejected infanticide after birth. The skeleton of a woman, who evidently died during the operation, is preserved in the Bishop Museum to attest the practice, were not testimony of language and authority conclusive.]
[Footnote 5: The manini (Tenthis sandvicensis, Street) is a flat-shaped striped fish common in Hawaiian waters. The spawn, called ohua, float in a jellylike mass on the surface of the water. It is considered a great delicacy and must be fished for in the early morning before the sun touches the water and releases the spawn, which instantly begin to feed and lose their rare transparency.]
[Footnote 6: The month Ikuwa is variously placed in the calendar year. According to Malo, on Hawaii it corresponds to our October; on Molokai and Maui, to January; on Oahu, to August; on Kauai, to April.]
[Footnote 7: The adoption by their grandparents and hiding away of the twins must be compared with a large number of concealed birth tales in which relatives of superior supernatural power preserve the hero or heroine at birth and train and endow their foster children for a life of adventure. This motive reflects Polynesian custom. Adoption was by no means uncommon among Polynesians, and many a man owed his preservation from death to the fancy of some distant relative who had literally picked him off the rubbish heap to make a pet of. The secret amours of chiefs, too, led, according to Malo (p. 82), to the theme of the high chief's son brought up in disguise, who later proves his rank, a theme as dear to the Polynesian as to romance lovers of other lands.]