This much, and more, of human cruelty is acknowledged concerning the savage life of ancient Hawaii. Nevertheless, from the beginning of the earliest acquaintance of white people with the Hawaiian not an instance or hint of cannibalism has been known.
The idea of eating human flesh was thoroughly repugnant. Alexander, in his brief history of the Hawaiian people, says, “Cannibalism was regarded with horror and detestation.” Isaac Davis, one of the first white men to make his home in the islands, declared that the Hawaiians had never been cannibals since the islands were inhabited.
To the Hawaiian, “Chief Man-eater” was the unique and horrid embodiment of an insane appetite. He was the “Fe-fi-fo-fum” giant of the [[193]]Hawaiian nursery. The very thought of his worse than brutal feast made the Hawaiian blood run cold.
One of the legends of Ke-alii-ai Kanaka (The-chief-who-eats-men) tells of the sudden appearance on the island of Kauai, in the indefinite past, of a stranger chief from a foreign land, with a small band of followers. The king of Kauai made them welcome. Feasts and games were enjoyed, then came the discovery that secret feasts of a horrible nature were eaten by the strangers. They were driven from the island. They crossed the channel to Oahu. They knew their reputation would soon follow them, so they went inland to the lofty range of the Waianae Mountains. Here they established their home, cultivated food and captured human victims, until finally driven out. Then they launched their boats and sailed away toward Kahiki, a foreign land.
Ai-Kanaka (Man-eater) was the name given to a bay on the island of Molokai, now known as the leper island. Here dwelt the priest Kawelo, who, by the aid of the great shark-god Kauhuhu, brought upon his enemies a storm which swept them into the sea, where they were eaten by the subjects and companions of the shark-god.
A legend, or, rather, a genealogy, placed a “Chief Man-eater” on the island of Hawaii, but no hints are given of man-eating feasts, or of [[194]]journeys to other islands, and the name may simply refer to a fierce disposition. The Oahu chief, Ke-alii-ai Kanaka, lived some time about the middle of the eighteenth century, as nearly as can be estimated. Up to the middle of the nineteenth century the accounts of Chief Man-eater’s deeds and the accurate knowledge of his place of residence were quite fresh in the minds of old Hawaiians.
It is still a problem to be decided whether Chief Man-eater was a foreigner or a Hawaiian. The difficulty that makes his foreign birth a problem is the accepted date of the close of all intercourse with far-away island groups, such as Samoa and Fiji—at least three hundred years earlier than the century assigned to Ke-alii-ai Kanaka.
It would seem best to accept the legend that the degenerate chief was a desperado and an outcast from the high chief family of Waialua, on the northwest coast of Oahu.
Ke-alii-ai Kanaka was a powerful man. He is described as a champion boxer and wrestler. In some way he learned to love the taste of human flesh. When his awful appetite became known he was driven from his home. As he passed through the village the women who had been his playmates and companions fled from him. His former friends, the young warriors, called [[195]]out “Man-eater! Man-eater!” and openly despised him. In bitter anger he called the few servants who would follow him, and fled to the royal Waianae Mountains. Driven from his kindred and friends, he buried himself and his brutal appetite in the mountain forests.
It is possible that soon after this he visited the island Kauai, and there passed himself off as a chief from a foreign land. But “his hand was against every man” and therefore “every man’s hand was against him.” Finally he made his permanent home among the Waianae Mountains, in the range that borders Waialua.