Umi, however, did not spend all his time in the mountains. He came to live at various times on the sea-shore at Kailua. He employed everywhere workmen to cut stones, to serve, some say, in the construction of a sepulchral cave; according to others, to build a magnificent palace. Whatever may have been their destination, the stones were admirably hewn.[[18]] In our days the Calvinistic missionaries have used them in the erection of the great church of Kailua, without any need of cutting them anew. There are still seen, scattered in various places, the hewn stones of King Umi, na pohaku kulai a Umi. It is natural to suppose that they used to hew these hard, and very large stones with other tools than those of Hawaiian origin. Iron must have been known in the time of Umi, and its presence is explained by the wrecks of ships which ocean currents may have drifted ashore. It is certain that they were acquainted with iron long before the arrival of Cook, as is proved by the already cited passage from an old romance: O luna, o lalo, kai, o uka, a o ka hao pae, ko ke'lii.
Umi, some time before his death, said to his old friend Koi: "There is no place, nor is there any possible way to conceal my bones. You must disappear from my presence. I am going to take back all the lands which I have given you around Hawaii, and they will think you in disgrace. You will then withdraw to another island, and as soon as you hear of my death, or only that I am dangerously sick, return secretly to take away my body."
Koi executed the wishes of the chief, his aikane. He repaired to Molokai, whence he hastened to set sail for Hawaii as soon as he heard of Umi's death. He landed at Honokohau. On setting foot on shore, he met a Kanaka, in all respects like his dearly-loved chief. He seized him, killed him, and carried his body by night to Kailua. Koi entered secretly the palace where the corpse of Umi was lying. The guards were asleep, and Koi carried away the royal remains, leaving in their place the body of the old man of Honokohau, and then disappeared with his canoe. Some say that he deposited the body of Umi in the great pali of Kahulaana, but no one knows the exact spot; others say that it was in a cave at Waipio, at Puaahuku, at the top of the great pali over which the cascade of Hiilawe falls.
From time immemorial it was the custom at Hawaii to eat the flesh of great chiefs after death, then the bones were collected in a bundle, and concealed far out of the way. Generally it was to a faithful attendant, a devoted kahu, that the honor of eating the flesh of his chief belonged by a sentiment of friendship, no ke aloha. If they did not always eat the flesh of high chiefs and distinguished personages, they always took away their dead bodies, to bury them in the most secret caves, or in most inaccessible places. But the same care was not taken with chiefs who had been regarded as wicked during their lives. The proverb says of this: Aole e nalo ana na iwi o ke 'lii kolohe; e nalo loa na iwi o ke 'lii maikai—The bones of a bad chief do not disappear; those of a good chief are veiled from the eyes of all the world.
The high chiefs, before death, made their most trusty attendants swear to conceal their bones so that no one could discover them. "I do not wish," said the dying chief, "that my bones should be made into arrows to shoot mice, or into fish-hooks." So it is very difficult to find the burial-place of such or such a chief. Mausoleums have been built in some places, and it is said that here are interred the nobles and kings; but it would seem that there are only empty coffins, or the bodies of common natives substituted for those of the personages in whose honor these monuments have been raised.
THE HISTORY OF KEAWE.
Whatever the historian, David Malo, may say, it is very doubtful whether there were several chiefs of the name of Keawe. It is probable that there was only one high chief of this name, that he was the son of Umi, and was called Keawe the Great—Keawe nui a Umi. David Malo was interested, as the natives know, in swelling the genealogy of the alii, and he wished to flatter both nobility and people by distinguishing Keawe nui, of the race of Umi, from another Keawe. There are two Keawe, as seven Maui, and nine Hina. It is not, indeed, so long a period from Umi to the present era, that we can not unveil the truth from the clouds which surround, it.
The people, in general, only speak of one Keawe, who inherited the power of his father Umi. He was supreme ruler in the island of Hawaii, and is even said to have united, as Kamehameha has since done, all the group under his sceptre. Kamehameha conquered the islands by force of arms; Keawe had conquered them by his travels and alliances. While he passed through the islands of Maui, Molokai, and Oahu, he contracted marriages everywhere, as well with the women of the people as with the highest chiefesses. These unions gave him children who made him beloved of all the high chiefs of that time. He was regarded at Maui and Oahu as supreme king. The king of Kauai even went so far as to send messengers to declare to him that he recognized his sovereignty. Such is the origin of Keawe's power.
By his numerous marriages with chiefesses and common women without distinction, this king has made the Hawaiian nobility, the present alii say, bastard and dishonored. The chiefs descended from Keawe conceal their origin, and are by no means flattered when reminded of it. From Keawe down, the genealogies become a focus of disputes, and it would be really dangerous for the rash historian who did not spare the susceptibilities of chiefs on this subject.
The principle on which those who condemn the conduct of Keawe rests is the purity of the blood of the royal stock, required by ancient usages, whose aim was to preserve the true nobility without alloy. Disdaining this rule, Keawe contracted numerous marriages, which gave him as mothers of his children women of low birth. The posterity of this chief, noble without doubt, but of impure origin, likes not to have its lame genealogy recalled. It is with the sensitiveness of the Hawaiians on this subject, as with many other things in this world: they attack bitterly the amours of Keawe, and seem to forget that Umi, their great chief, whose memory they preserve with so much care, was of plebeian blood by his mother.