Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate

by Charles M. Skinner

The Little People

Hawaiians believe in “little people” that live in deep woods and peep and snicker at travellers who pass. This belief is thought to go back to the earliest times, and to hint at the smallness of the original Hawaiians, for one may take with a grain of salt these tales of the giant size of their kings and fighters. The first “little people” were grandchildren of Nuu, or Noah, and the big people who came after were Samoans. While anybody may hear these fairies running and laughing, only a native can see them. They are usually kind and helpful, and it is their law that any work they undertake must be finished before sunrise; for they dislike to be watched, and scuttle off to the woods at dawn.

Pi, a Kauai farmer, wanted a ditch to carry water from the Waimea River for the refreshment of his land near Kikiloa, and, having marked the route, he ordered the menehune, as they call the little people, to do the work. It would have been polite to ask rather than to command; still, they did what was required of them, each oaf lugging a stone to the river for the dam, which may be seen to this day. The hum and bustle of the work were heard all night, and so pleased was the farmer, when morning came and the ditch was built, that he set a feast for the menehune on the next night, and it was gone at daybreak. There were no tramps in Hawaii, so the menehune must have eaten it. Conceiving that he had acquired what our ward statesmen call a “pull” with these helpers, he planned an elaborate fish-pond and put them at work again. He had staked off such an immense area that the little people could not possibly finish it by morning. As light streaked the east and the cocks crew they scampered away to the mountains, dripping with sweat and angered at the man who had so abused their willingness. And they could never be induced to work for him again.

Although of supernatural power themselves, the little people are religious, and have built several houses to the gods. On the face of the mountain wall, two thousand feet high, back of the leper settlement at Molokai, is a ledge that can be reached neither from above nor below, and on it stands a temple of their construction. In Pepeeko, Hilo, the natives labored for a month in quarrying and dressing stone, but when it was ready the elves built their temple in a night. So at Kohala they formed a chain twelve miles long between the quarry and the site, and, passing the blocks from hand to hand, finished the great enclosure before sunrise.

Yet these fairies had a taste for mischief, and could be as active in it as so many boys. When a child on Maui, Laka was so loved by his father that he would travel many miles to buy a toy for him, and hearing of a strange new plaything in Hawaii, the father sailed to that island to get it. He never returned, for the natives killed him and hid his skeleton in a cave. When Laka had come to man’s estate he began preparations for a voyage to that island, that he might either find his father or know his fate, for of his death he did not learn until long after. In these preparations he was oddly thwarted. Every time he hewed down a tree for a canoe it was gone in the morning. Out of patience, he resolved to catch the thieves. In order to make their task especially hard, he dug a hole into which the tree fell, when he had chopped it, so that his enemies would have to lift it out before they could carry it away. Then, in the shadow, he waited. At midnight a small humming and giggling were heard in the bushes and a company of menehune stole out into the shine of the moon. They began to tug at the fallen tree. Laka sprang upon them and captured two, the others running away with shrill screams. Laka threatened to kill his prisoners for the trouble they had made, but he did not really intend to hurt them. Their tears and cries and the rapid beating of their hearts, that he could feel as he held them under his arms, stirred his pity, and he agreed to let them go if they would promise to assemble their tribe, drag the tree to his canoe shed on the shore and fashion it into a boat. This they promised so eagerly that he put them back on the earth and laughed as they scampered into the thicket. True to their promise, they dragged the tree to the ocean that very night, and carved and hollowed it into the finest vessel to be seen on the island; so, friendly relations being thus established, Laka set a feast for them, which they ate in thankfulness and never troubled him more. Whether he succeeded in the search for the parental bones, or left his own to whiten on the same soil, is not recorded, but you can see for yourself the hollow he dug for the tree, and his canoe shed was standing after white men reached the group.

The Hawaiian Iliad

Kaupepee, who might have governed Molokai in the twelfth century, had he not chosen war as his vocation, was a believer in home rule. He did not like the immigrants who were swarming northward from Tahiti and Samoa. Though they resembled his own race, to be sure, and spoke a language he could understand, he regarded them as greedy and revolutionary, and they worshipped strange gods and sometimes misused the people among whom they had cast their fortunes. So Kaupepee resigned his kingship to his brother, and became a fighter, a devastator. With some hundreds of hardy men at arms and the finest ships of the time, hewn from Oregon pines and Canada spruces that had drifted to the islands, he bitterly harassed the other kingdoms, dashing ashore at the principal towns in buccaneer fashion, laying violent hands on their stores, capturing their handsomest women, breaking the taboo in their temples, killing a dozen of their men, then flying to his canoes again, hoisting his red sails, and putting off before the astonished people knew exactly what had happened.

This prince had fortified himself in quite a modern fashion at Haupu, in his native kingdom. From the land side the tract was reached only by a narrow dike which he had walled across with lava blocks, a tunnel beneath this obstruction affording the only exit toward the mountains. On the ocean front he had also built his forts of stone, although the sea boiled five hundred feet below and the plateau ended in an almost sheer precipice. Deep ravines on either side of the stronghold bent around it to the rocky neck, thus making the place almost an island. In these ravines were narrow paths by which his people descended to their boats, secreted on the dark and winding waters or hoisted on the rocks. This was the Troy of the Pacific; Kaupepee was the Paris, and here he brought his Helen, who was Hina, the most beautiful woman of her day, and the wife of a chief in Hawaii. Kaupepee, encouraged by his oracles, inflamed by reports of the woman’s charm, had been lurking along the coast for some time, watching for his opportunity. It came when Hina ventured into the sea to bathe on a moonlight evening. Kaupepee, dashing from his concealment, intercepted her escape, shouted to his men who were in waiting behind a wooded point, and while the woman’s friends and attendants fled shrieking to the shore, he lifted her into his canoe, paddled away to his double barge a half mile out, placed his lovely captive in a shelter on board, and began the return voyage. The drum could be heard in the village rousing the people, and lights twinkled among the trees, showing that a pursuit was intended. In vain. The dusky Menelaus may have put to sea, but he never appeared in view of the flying ships. During the two days occupied in the run to Molokai the prisoner refused food, and begged to be put to death. She was assured that no harm was intended to her. On arriving at the fort of her captor she was surprised by the appearance of women who had been stolen from her villages before, and who were now to be her maids; nor could she restrain an exclamation of pleasure when she was ushered into what for the next eighteen years was to be her home. It was hung and carpeted with decorated mats; its wooden frame was brightly painted, festooned with flowers, and friezed with shells; couches of sea-grass were overspread with cloth beaten from palm fibre; heavy curtains hung at the doors; ranged on shelves were ornaments and carved calabashes, while there was a profuse array of feathered cloaks and other modish millinery and raiment.

All, from Kaupepee to the humblest soldier, had paid the respect to her that was the due of a queen. She was told that she could enjoy a certain amount of liberty, and if she suffered from her slight captivity she was asked what might be thought of her new lord whose heart she had absolutely in her keeping, and who was therefore less free than she. This pretty speech and the really kind treatment she had received, together with a hearty and needed meal of fruit, fish, potatoes, and poi, caused her to look on her situation with less of despair. She belonged to a simple race, whose moral code was different from ours; she was more luxuriously surrounded than she had ever been before; Kaupepee was bold and handsome; he was, moreover, strangely gentle in her presence, thoughtful of her comfort, and—well, she fell out of love with her old husband and in love with the new.