LAU-KA-IEIE
"Waipio valley, the beautiful:
Precipices around it,
The sea on one side;
The precipices are hard to climb;
Not to be climbed
Are the sea precipices."
—Hawaiian Chant.
Kakea (the white one) and Kaholo (the runner) were the children of the Valley. Their parents were the precipices which were sheer to the sea, and could only be passed by boats. They married, and Kaholo conceived. The husband said, "If a boy is born, I will name it; if a girl, you give the name."
He went up to see his sister Pokahi, and asked her to go swiftly to see his wife. Pokahi's husband was Kaukini, a bird-catcher. He went out into the forest for some birds. Soon he came back and prepared them for cooking. Hot stones were put inside the birds and the birds were packed in calabashes, carefully covered over with wet leaves, which made steam inside so the birds were well cooked. Then they were brought to Kaholo for a feast.
On their way they went down to Waipio Valley, coming to the foot of the precipice. Pokahi wanted some sea-moss and some shell-fish, so she told the two men to go on while she secured these things to take to Kaholo. She gathered the soft lipoa moss and went up to the waterfall, to Ulu (Kaholo's home). The baby was born, wrapped in the moss and thrown into the sea, making a shapeless bundle, but a kupua (sorcerer) saw that a child was there. The child was taken and washed clean in the soft lipoa, and cared for. All around were the signs of the birth of a chief.
They named him Hiilawe, and from him the Waipio waterfall has its name, according to the saying, "Falling into mist is the water of Hiilawe."
Pokahi took up her package in which she had brought the moss and shell-fish, but the moss was gone. Hina-ulu-ohia (Hina-the-growing ohia-tree) was the sorcerer who took the child in the lipoa moss. She was the aumakua, or ancestor goddess, of the boat-builders.
Pokahi dreamed that a beautiful woman appeared, her body covered with the leaves of koa-trees. "I know that you have not had any child. I will now give you one. Awake, and go to the Waipio River; watch thirty days, then you will find a girl wrapped in soft moss. This shall be your adopted child. I will show you how to care for it. Your brother and his wife must not know. Your husband alone may know about this adopted girl."
Pokahi and her husband went down at once to the mouth of the river, heard an infant cry in the midst of red-colored mist, and found a child wrapped in the fragrant moss. She wished to take it up, but was held back by magic powers. She saw an ohia-tree rising up from the water,—branches, leaves, and flowers,—and iiwi (birds) coming to pick the flowers. The red birds and red flowers were very beautiful. This tree was Hina. The birds began to sing, and quietly the tree sank down into the water and disappeared, the birds flying away to the west.