It was this same sorcerer-priest who saw the sun die and the earth become dark. He leaped across to the foreign land, caught the sun before it was buried, brought it back to Hawaii and placed it in the heavens, where it has been ever since. These are simply graphic descriptions of an eclipse, and [[40]]also of a chief who carried his common people—his servants—with him across the waters. The presence of this servant class in the very ancient times is unquestioned.
Chiefs coming later found this servant class which readily accepted new rulers.
Hawaii-loa—“the Great Hawaii”—may well be considered both a founder of the Polynesian race and the first settler of the Hawaiian Islands. Brave lover of the sea and founder of nations, Hawaii-loa deserves first place among the Vikings of the Pacific. [[41]]
V
LEGENDARY HOME OF THE POLYNESIANS
The Hawaiians, like the native residents of many other groups of islands in the Pacific Ocean, have not taken kindly to the European names tacked upon their doorposts by the sailors who discovered them. This is very fortunate for those who desire to gather together the facts out of which to weave a connected history of Polynesia.
It is also fortunate that the language spoken in the groups so widely diffused over the Pacific Ocean, has the same common structure, with only such differences as may be resolved into dialects.
The Tahitian, Samoan, New Zealander, and Hawaiian, though thousands of miles apart, are members of one family, and require but a short period to acquire the faculty of a free exchange of ideas.
Students find a slight difficulty in the different spellings which different voyagers have given to the native words according to the way in which they heard the sounds—for instance, “Hawaii” was “Owyhee” in the days of Captain Cook. [[42]]