Folklore is sometimes the outgrowth of a sympathy with nature, resulting in nature myths and sometimes it is an outgrowth of sympathy with history. The imagination loves a truth in nature or in history and weaves around it a web of thoughts of things which might have been.
The story of Moi-keha, the restless, is an historical myth. There are some unquestioned facts and much which was impossible.
Fornander, the omnium-gatherum of Hawaii, thinks Moi-keha lived in the thirteenth century.
The two boys, Moi-keha and Olopana, were born on the island of Oahu.
Their boyhood was like that of other Hawaiian youths of high chief blood. They studied the spear and surf-board exercises. They gambled with hidden stones. They sported with discus and javelin throwing. They raced down green hillsides with their long coasting sleds. They wrestled and fought with their companions and listened to the tales of the sea rovers of the Pacific. They learned the routes to the southern and southeastern [[80]]islands and heard with fired imaginations the descriptions of Tahiti and Samoa. If the Romans believed that an ocean of thick mist, peopled with all imaginable terrors lay to the north of Europe, we can well accept the fact that strange fascinations and the hope of marvellous adventures in the South Pacific might stir the restless minds of young Hawaiian chiefs.
Moi-keha and Olopana gathered a strong band of brave retainers and, bidding farewell to Oahu, as their ancestors had done before them, sailed toward the South.
For some reason the brothers took with them a young chief of high position, whose ancestor, Pau-makua, had made renowned voyages to far-off lands. The story of Laa, who, in late life, was known as “Laa from Tahiti,” must be reserved for later record. Moi-keha, however, seems to have taken this young man under his own especial protection as his foster son.
The company from Kauai stopped at Waipio Valley, on the island of Hawaii, one of the most beautiful and inaccessible valleys of the whole Hawaiian group.
Here Olopana was set apart as ruler of the district.
The days and nights were filled with fishing and feasting, ruling and revelling. Olopana soon found a beautiful young chiefess, who was in full sympathy with his ambitions, whom he took from [[81]]her home as his life-companion. This woman, Luu-kia, was said to be a descendant of the Nanaulu line of chiefs, originally coming to Hawaii from Tahiti.