Hiwa: A Tale of Ancient Hawaii

by Edmund P. Dole

They were by no means confined to fish and poi. Baked bread-fruit, pounded up and mixed with milk of cocoanuts and juice of sugar-cane and berries, made a luscious dish closely approaching a civilized pudding. Any quantity of fruit was to be had for the picking, and Hiwa often succeeded in snaring wild geese, rich and fat from their diet of berries, and ducks that visited the pool.

Before Aelani was six months old he added to his diet of mother’s milk and poi large yellow ohias and delicious berries, the ohelo, the poha, and the akala, sweetened with juice of sugar-cane. At the end of his first year he toddled down to the beach and swallowed the tiny fishes his mother gave him, their tails wiggling as they disappeared. At the end of his third year he swam like a fish himself, and felt as much at home in the water as out of it. And so, never seeing a human form or hearing a human voice save his mother’s and his own, he grew to be a strong, supple, active boy, of brave spirit and of thoughtful, inquiring mind.

In time there was a work-shop under the shade of the great koa tree, and tools—shells of all sizes and shapes, sharp stones that served for knives, and rough stones that served for saws and files—and coral sand for polishing. Sticks and pieces of wood, heavy and hard like iron, were selected with anxious care, and were cut and fashioned with infinite labor. Hiwa worked patiently with the tools Nature gave her week after week, and at length that task was finished—the complete arms of a warrior of sizes adapted to a boy—a sling woven from his mother’s hair, long spears, pololu, short spears, ihe, a war-club, newa, and a feather helmet, but not of the mamo, the oo, or the iiwi, for these were unattainable. There were also blunted darts, and circular, highly-polished disks of stone, swelling with a slight convexity from the edge to the centre, such as warriors used in athletic games.

Then a training, already begun, was patiently continued month after month and year after year. For two hours or more each day mother and son bowled the disks and fought sham battles. The teacher was intelligent and exacting. The pupil was apt. He was scarcely more than half grown when he could bring down a flying bird with his sling, and, while running at full speed, could hurl spear after spear at a hair’s-breadth and not miss. He could catch spears faster than they could be thrown at him; he could parry them; he could avoid them, twisting his body like a flash of lightning. He could hurl the disks farther and straighter, run faster, leap higher, and stay under water longer than Hiwa, although in training him she had equally trained herself. She had been familiar with such things from childhood, and knew that in these warlike feats her boy already excelled all men except Kaanaana. He was also immensely strong for his years, and gave promise of gigantic stature.

He fought his first battle when he was eleven. He was sitting, as he had been taught to do, on a rock at the bottom of the pool spearing fish, when his mother dived down and hastily beckoned him to the surface.

“It is a shark,” she said as soon as their heads were above water. “I am going to kill him.”

A man-eating monster eighteen feet long was swimming leisurely about, carrying terror to smaller fishes that had thus far found the pool a safe refuge from sharks, and had accordingly congregated in large numbers. It was the first fish larger than an ulua that Aelani had ever seen.

“Let me kill him!” he eagerly cried, catching hold of the stick, sharpened at both ends, which Hiwa held in her hands.

For a moment, as it seemed to Hiwa, her heart stopped beating. The boy was a mere child, and, if he should become frightened and lose his wits at the critical instant, he would surely be bitten in twain. But there was no sign of fear in his face. His eyes shone, and his pulses throbbed with the joy of coming battle. Why should not he do it? He was a fish himself almost, with human intelligence. He knew the trick perfectly, for in the training, in which nothing a warrior should know was forgotten, he had been exercised in it many times, his mother personating the shark. Even baseborn men faced sharks without fear, and Aelani, though but a child, was Aelani, The Pledge from Heaven.

“He is born to great deeds,” reflected Hiwa, “and must learn to do them. And there is no danger, for only the God of Sharks can swim before a child of Wakea and Papa.”