The Legends and Myths of Hawaii: The fables and folk-lore of a strange people

by King of Hawaii David Kalakaua

In the course of the day all returned to the deserted huts, where they had taken up their quarters, and reported that no traces of the missing colonists had been discovered, and the general opinion was that they had escaped across the mountains. Kamapuaa waited until all the rest had told the stories of their fruitless wanderings, when he announced that he had found what they had lacked the sagacity to discover. He informed them that the fugitives were secreted in a cavern some distance up one of the valleys, where they could be surrounded and captured without difficulty; but he did not mention that he had made the discovery by shrewdly following a dog into the hills, and watching the animal until it stopped in front of the entrance to the cavern. He was willing that his companions should believe that his success was due to some inspiration or prescience of his own.

A guard was immediately detailed to watch the cavern and see that no one escaped, and the next day the place was surrounded and formally besieged. Following these preparations, visible to Moho and his handful of warriors, Kamapuaa approached the entrance sufficiently near to be heard within, and demanded the surrender of the party, promising that the lives of all would be spared.

The demand was refused with words of insult and defiance, and Kamapuaa ordered an assault upon the entrance. Several attempts were made to force the protecting rocks from the opening, but their interstices bristled with spear-points, and, after a number of the assailants had been wounded, that plan of attack was abandoned as impracticable.

A large quantity of dry wood, leaves and grass was then heaped in front of the entrance and fired, in the hope of suffocating the inmates with the heat and smoke of the conflagration; but the draught of air through the cavern kept the smoke from entering, and, although the heat for a time became oppressive immediately around the opening, the connecting chambers were but slightly affected by it. The fire was allowed to die out, and Kamapuaa, on too closely approaching the entrance to note its effects, was made keenly aware of the failure of the project by receiving a sharp spear-thrust in the arm.

As fire and assault had proved unavailing, and a long siege did not accord with his purposes, Kamapuaa next endeavored to effect a breach through the top of the cavern in the rear of the entrance. As this necessitated the removal of an overlying mass of ten or fifteen feet of soil and rocks, the undertaking involved a very considerable amount of hard labor. But the plan met with general favor, and, with oos and other implements obtained from the valleys below, the besiegers entered upon the task of excavating through into the cavern.

For several days the work progressed almost uninterruptedly, and a large pit had been lowered to a depth of eight or ten feet, when the earth began to tremble violently, and a few minutes after the air was filled with sulphurous smoke and ashes. But this was not the most appalling sight beheld by Kamapuaa and his companions. Looking up the valley, which at that point was little more than a narrow gorge, they saw a flood of lava, full a hundred feet in width, bursting from the hillside and pouring down the ravine, its high-advancing crest aflame with burning timber, and sweeping before it a thundering avalanche of half-molten boulders.

With exclamations of dismay they started in full flight down the valley, closely followed by the devouring flood. On, on they sped, past the deserted huts of their victims, past the sandy foothills, past the cocoa-trees that fringed the beach. Turning at the water’s edge, they beheld the awful stream spreading its mantle of death over the broadening valley, and speeding to the sea in broken volumes. Leaping into their canoes, they plunged through the surf and paddled out to sea. Setting sail for Honuapo, Kamapuaa saw, as they left the coast, that the upper part of the valley from which they had fled was filled with lava, and knew that the cavern in which Pele and her companions had sought refuge from his wrath had been deeply buried by the flood.

Bird’s-eye View of the Crater of Kilauea.

When the news of the eruption reached Honuapo, the people, who had heard so many strange stories of Pele and her family, did not believe that they had perished. On the contrary, they declared that the eruption had been invoked by Pele to drive Kamapuaa from the district, and that if she had permitted her lands to be destroyed it was with the view of taking up her residence in the crater of Kilauea. This opinion soon crystalized into a belief which spread throughout the island of Hawaii, and another generation saw temples erected to Pele, the goddess of fire, and priests sanctified to her service. All but three of her brothers and sisters were the creations of her early priests, and their attributes gradually grew and took form as they floated down the stream of tradition.