At the time when Kualii lived and ruled, (say 1675 as the central epoch of his exploits,) the visits and excursions of the Hawaiians in their own canoes to foreign lands had been discontinued for many generations, and, while the memories of former journeys were kept green in numerous families, yet since the days of … no song nor saga records such journeys by the boldest and bravest of Hawaiian heroes, until this avowal of Kualii stands forth in its solitary grandeur, awakening discussion on the following points:—1. Which was the Tahiti that Kualii visited? 2. Did he visit it in his own vessel, canoe or peleleu, or was he, like Kaiana in after years, taken away by a foreign vessel and returned by the same?
1. To the Hawaiian people, in their own language, Tahiti means generally a foreign country,—a country outside of and beyond their own group. When reference is made in the Hawaiian songs and sagas to any of the Tahitis with which they had frequent and intimate intercourse up to a certain period, the particular Tahiti is generally specified with some special epithet affixed, as Tahiti-ku, Tahiti-moe, Holani-ku, Nuumealani, Holani-moe, Lulokapu, etc., but these and others, representing islands to the south and southwest of this group, are nowhere spoken of as with a leo pahaohao—an entirely different language—not different in dialect, but different in kind. When therefore Kualii about the middle or latter part of the seventeenth century speaks of the Tahiti which he visited as being a country with a leo pahaohao, he did not and could not [[242]]mean any of the Central or South Polynesian Islands. Moreover, when he says that he there saw the “haole”—the white-skinned man—the inference is plain that it was not a Tahiti inhabited by kindreds of his own race; for the South Pacific Tahitis had not then been taken possession of, or settled upon by Europeans. The probability therefore is strong that the Tahiti he refers to was either the western coast of Mexico or Manila where the Spaniards were settled and held possession.
I have no doubt that the ancient Hawaiians had a knowledge of the mainland of America—at present Mexico or California—and that they designated it under the rather indefinite appellation of Kukulu o Tahiti—the farthest ends of foreign lands;—but that knowledge was acquired before that coast was occupied by the Spaniard, for the meles and legends which refer to it make no mention of the “haole” up to the time of Kualii.
2. How did Kualii get to Tahiti? The intercourse between this group and other groups of Polynesia or the American mainland of which the older meles speak so frequently, had ceased many generations before Kualii’s time, and Hawaiian navigation was then limited to the seas and islands comprising the group. Even the Kauai rovers, noted as the most daring and skilful throughout the group, had lost the knowledge or the means of going to Tahiti. I have shown that Kualii lived within the period when the Spanish-Manila trade from the Mexican coast was at its height. It is historically on record that the Spanish discovered this group about 1542; it is traditionally on record that Spaniards (for no other foreigners or “haoles” then navigated the North Pacific) were cast away on Hawaii within a range of twenty years, above or below that period; and there are reasons for believing that more than one galleon, during the time of the Spanish monopoly of the Manila trade, either visited the islands directly, or went so near to them as to be able to pick off any natives who might have been at sea in their canoes at the time of the passing of the galleon.
Though Hawaiian tradition is silent as to the manner in which Kualii visited Tahiti the land of the “haole,” it is positive as to the fact; and the only reasonable explanation I can offer is that a Spanish galleon in passing these islands picked up Kualii, at sea or ashore, voluntarily or as a hostage, and returned him on its next trip. And what was thus done in one instance, and of which tradition has been retained because the object of it was one of the highest chiefs in the country, whose renown in after times filled the land from one end to the other, may have occurred in other instances before or since with men of lesser note of whom tradition is silent or has been lost.
Probably the best informed Hawaiian archaeologist of the present day is S. M. Kamakau, but even he is often very credulous, inconsistent and uncritical. He has published, through the various newspapers, several genealogies of the ancient chiefs, but beyond the time of Umi-a-Liloa of Hawaii, Piilani of Maui and Kaihikapu-a-Manuia and Kakuhihewa of Oahu, his love of antiquity often lead him into irreconcilable difficulties. For instance, when Lauli-a-laa, the son of Laamaikahiki, who is forty-sixth from Haloa on the Ulu and Puna-imua line of descent, is represented as having married Maelo (w), daughter of Kuolono, and who is thirty-fourth on the Nanaulu straight line from Haloa, there is evidently either a large gap in the Nanaulu line or a corresponding increase by the insertion of collateral branches in the Puna-imua line. When Kelea, the wife of Kalamakua, the thirty-ninth on the Nanaulu straight line, is represented as the sister of Kawaokaohele, [[243]]the fifty-sixth on the Hema and Hanalaaiki line, the same discrepancy appears. The Kauai genealogies, which I have received from Hon. D. Kalakaua, make only forty-five generations from Wakea, through the Nanaulu-Muliele-alii-Kumuhonua-Elepuukahonua line, to Kamakahelei and to Kumahana who were contemporaries of Kamehameha I, the sixty-fourth, if not the sixty-fifth from Wakea through the Ulu-Hema-Hanalaanui line. The Kauai genealogy makes Kualii the forty-third from Haloa, whereas the Oahu genealogy, through Moikeha, the brother of Kumuhonua, makes Kualii the forty-ninth from Haloa; the discrepancy lying between the thirty-first and thirty-eighth of the Kauai-Elepuukahonua line.[4]
From comparing the various genealogies, sagas and meles it becomes evident that the time of Maweke’s sons and grandsons, on the Nanaulu straight line, was a time of great and general convulsion. It was the Homeric period of Hawaiian history. This was the period of grand enterprises; of voyages to and from Tahiti. This period is the principal starting point of most of the Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, and some of the Maui and Hawaii genealogies; and Maweke is the only line which keeps the correlation of its branches in any way consistent and conformable, not only to their natural relation, but also to traditional evidence and to historical requirements.[5]
It is well known to tradition and recorded in songs and sagas that before the time of Pili-Kaaiea there was a vacuum in the Hawaii-Hanalaanui-Hema line of aliis, and from the antiquarian lore of S. M. Kamakau, throwing light on the ante-“Pili” period, I am forced to conclude that at least seventeen generations, as quoted in the Hema genealogy of the Hawaii chiefs, must be thrown out in order to make subsequent well-known generations fall into their places as indicated by the Oahu, Kauai or Molokai lines of descent from Maweke and his sons. Thus when all the traditions and meles make Kaaipahu the forty-ninth on the recognized Hawaii-Hanalaanui-Hema line, the husband of Hualani, the great-great-granddaughter of Keaunui-a-Maweke and thirty-third on the Nanaulu line, then inferentially but effectively confirm the statement of Kamakau of the displacement of the seventeen generations interpolated on the Hawaii line, either immediately preceding Pili, or between Ulu and Aikanaka. At any rate it makes Pili,—who, it is well known, arrived from Tahiti with Paa and became the founder of the new and later line of Hawaii aliis—contemporary with the grand period of migrations recorded in the meles and sagas of the sons and successors of Maweke.
The Maui-Hanalaa-iki line must suffer a similar curtailment in order to bring its prominent historical figures in consonance with Oahu and Kauai genealogies. Thus when all accounts agree in making Kelea, the sister of Kawaokaohele of Maui and aunt of Piilani, the wife of Lo Lale—brother of Piliwale of Oahu—there can be no doubt of their contemporaneity. But the Oahu-Nanaulu line makes Lo Lale the thirty-ninth or forty-first from Wakea, and the Maui-Hanalaa-iki line makes Kelea the fifty-sixth from Wakea, thus showing the same irreconcilable difference of from fifteen to seventeen generations as we encountered in the Hawaii-Hanalaa-nui line. [[244]]
I am further more inclined to consider the Oahu-Nanaulu straight line of descent as the most correct and reliable, inasmuch as I find it corroborated by an examination of nearly all the correlative branches originating from the children and grandchildren of Maweke, the twenty-eighth on the Nanaulu line from Wakea. Thus the line of Kalehenui-a-Maweke, culminating in Kaakaualani, the wife of Kakuhihewa, corresponds exactly with the line of Mulielialii-a-Maweke ending in Kakuhihewa. Thus the line of Keaunui-a-Maweke, through Nuakea, Kalahumoku, Moku-a-Hualeiakea, to the children and grandchildren of Umi-a-Liloa in Hawaii, the uncontested contemporaries of Kakuhihewa, is equally full and correct. I am therefore inclined to consider the Nanaulu line, including its branches, not only as the most correct, but as the main trunk of Hawaiian genealogy. And that it was so considered by the ancient Hawaiians themselves, I infer from the evident and repeated desires of the Hawaii and Maui chiefs to connect themselves with the Kauai and Oahu branches of this line, and by the fact that Kauai was looked upon by them as the cradle of knowledge, skill, laws and religion.