When Ka-meha-meha became king of “The Rainbow Islands,” his royal chant took the supreme place. Other genealogies lost their importance except as they blended in that of the great king. He traced his royal blood to Pili, “from a foreign land,” and through Pili back to Wa-kea, a Polynesian chief of perhaps the second century; and thence back through a series of hero-gods to Kumu-Honua, “the first created.” It is a remarkable genealogy and worthy of study.
In November, 1736, he was born in North Kohala, Hawaii. Pili had settled in North Kohala [[66]]about thirty generations preceding. A quarter of a century is accepted as the average life of a generation. Pili, therefore, landed in Hawaii in the early part of the eleventh century.
The story of Pili depends upon another story which must be told first. In fact the Hawaiian traditions tell a great deal more about Paao, the founder of the high-priest family of Hawaii, than about Pili, the ancestor of kings.
Not far from the year 1100 A.D., two priest brothers were living on Upolu, one of the Samoan Islands. Lonopele, the elder, lived in one of the luxurious valleys opening upon the seacoast. Paao, the younger, was a seaman as well as a priest. He lived near the beach, where he kept a small fleet of canoes.
In some way bitter feeling arose between the two households, making them jealous and suspicious of each other. One day Lonopele came to the temple where his brother was making ready to sacrifice a sacred black hog.
“Where are you, O Paao,” he cried, “that you prepare a sacrifice for the favour of the gods, when you do not watch your oldest boy?”
“What is your thought?” asked Paao.
“Some of my choice fruits, brought from Tahiti, are beginning to ripen; and each night Kaino, your son, creeps under the low branches, and gathers whatever is good.”
“It is false!” angrily replied the father. [[67]]
Theft was considered the greatest of crimes among the Polynesians.