Traditionary Voyages.
During the period in Hawaiian History designated as that of Maweke and Paumakua, which was about the commencement of the 11th century, or from twenty-eight to thirty generations ago,[1] after a period of comparative quiet and obscurity, the Polynesian folk-lore in all the principal groups becomes replete with the legends and songs of a number of remarkable men, of bold expeditions, stirring adventures, and voyages undertaken to far-off lands. An era of national unrest and of tribal commotion seems to have set in from causes not now known. A migratory wave swept the island world of the Pacific, and left its traces on the genealogies of the chiefs, in the disuse of old and substitution of new names for places and landmarks, in the displacement of old, and setting up of new tutelar gods with enlarged rites of worship and stricter kapus. Chiefs from the southern groups visited the Hawaiian group, and chiefs from the latter visited the former, accompanied by their relatives, priests and retainers. Where this ethnic movement originated,—in the southern groups or in the northern,—it is now hardly possible to determine. That the Hawaiian group was known at that time to the southern chiefs and priests, may be shown from the legend of Paao, who, by every concurrent tradition was a southerner from the Society group, a high-priest of princely blood, and the founder of one of the high-priest families on Hawaii. In that legend occurs the song of Paao’s companion, Makuakaumana, a portion of which is still preserved, urging upon Lonokaeho, another southern chief, to come with them and take possession of Hawaii. Lonokaeho declined however and sent Pili in his place. That the Hawaii mentioned in this song is not the Samoan Hawaii, but that of this (Hawaiian) group, becomes evident by comparing the description of Hawaii in this song with the description given by Kamahualele, the high-priest of Moikeha, a Hawaiian chief of the same period, who had resided for many years on the southern groups, but returned to Hawaii and died on Kauai.
That the memory of the northern Hawaii should in process of time, and after the cessation of this period of intercourse, have faded from the minds of southern chiefs and bards, or been confounded with that of the Samoan Sawaii, is natural enough; though I think it possible, were Tahitian, Tongan and Samoan legends—if yet existing—properly compared with each other and with the Hawaiian, that many proofs may yet be drawn from that side of the frequent intercourse, hostile, or friendly, of those days between the northern and southern groups of the Pacific.
Though the northern Hawaii was apparently unknown to the Tonga and Society Islanders in Captain Cook’s time, yet the Marquesas retained the memory of former intercourse with that northern Hawaii whose burning mountain, Mounaoa (Maunaloa), is referred to in some of their songs, but these reminiscences are apparently [[339]]confused and mixed up with others of that older and far-off Hawaii and Vevao where they had sojourned before arriving at their own group of islands.
On October 31, 1527, according to Burney, three vessels left a port called Zivat-Lanejo, said by Galvoam to be situated in latitude 20 north, on the coast of New Spain, for the Moluccas or Spice Islands. They were the Florida with fifty men, the St. Jago with forty-five men, and the Espiritu Santo with fifteen men, under command of Alvaro de Saavedra, with thirty pieces of cannon and merchandise. These vessels were said to have sailed in company for 1000 leagues[2] and then to have been separated by bad weather. The two smaller vessels were never afterward heard of, and Saavedra pursued the voyage alone. (Burney, Discoveries in the South Seas, I, 147–148.) [[340]]
[1] Written probably about 1870. [↑]
[2] A Spanish or Portuguese league is 17¼ to an equatorial degree, 1000 = to 584⁄15 of a degree. [↑]