AUMAKUAS, OR ANCESTOR-GHOSTS
There are two meanings to the first part of this word, for "au" means a multitude, as in "auwaa" (many canoes), but it may mean time and place, as in the following: "Our ancestors thought that if there was a desolate place where no man could be found, it was the aumakua (place of many gods)." "Makua" was the name given to the ancestors of a chief and of the people as well as to parents.
The aumakuas were the ghosts who did not go down into Po, the land of King Milu. They were in the land of the living, hovering around the families from which they had been separated by death. They were the guardians of these families.
When any one died, many devices were employed in disposing of the body. The fact that an enemy of the family might endeavor to secure the bones of the dead for the purpose of making them into fish-hooks, arrow-heads, or spear-heads led the surviving members of a family either to destroy or to conceal the body of the dead. For if the bones were so used it meant great dishonor, and the spirit was supposed to suffer on account of this indignity.
Sometimes the flesh was stripped from the bones and cast into the ocean or into the fires of the volcanoes, that the ghost might be made a part of the family ghosts who lived in such places, and the bones were buried in some secret cave or pit, or folded together in a bundle which was thought to resemble a grasshopper, so these were called unihipili (grasshopper). The unihipili bones were used in connection with a strange belief called pule-ana-ana (praying to death).
When the body of a dead person was to be hidden, only two or three men were employed in the task. Sometimes the one highest in rank would slay his helpers so that no one except himself would know the burial-place.
The tools, the clothing, and the calabashes of the dead were unclean until certain ceremonies of purification had been faithfully performed. Many times these possessions were either placed in the burial-cave beside the body or burned so that they might be the property of the spirit in ghost-land.
The people who cared for the body had to bathe in salt water and separate themselves from the family for a time. They must sprinkle the house and all things inside with salt water. After a few days the family would return and occupy the house once more.
Usually the caretakers of a dead body would make a hole in the side of the house and push it through rather than take it through the old doorway, probably having the idea that the ghost would only know the door through which the body had gone out when alive and so could not find the new way back when the opening was dosed.