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Folklore in Hawaii in modern times is a mixture of various aspects of Hawaiian mythology and various urban legends that have been passed on regarding various places in the Hawaiian islands. The following is a partial list of some of these legends.
According to Hawaiian legend, night marchers (huaka‘i pō in Hawaiian) are ghosts of ancient warriors. They supposedly roam large sections of the island chain, and can be seen by groups of torches. They can usually be found in areas that were once large battlefields (the Nuʻuanu Pali on the island of Oahu is a good example.) Legend has it that if you look a night marcher straight in the eye, you will be forced to walk among them for eternity, but if you have a relative taken by them, you will be spared. Hawaiians say that in the presence of night marchers, one should lie down on their stomach, face down to avoid eye contact, stay quiet, breathe shallowly, and don't move. Some say that they may nudge you to provoke a reaction so they can take you. Moanalua Gardens is one of the many places the Night Marchers are said to roam.
Local folklore on the island of Oahu says that one should never carry pork over the Pali Highway connecting Honolulu and Windward Oahu. The stories vary, but the classic legend is that if one carries pork of any kind over the old Pali road (not the modern pali highway) by automobile, the automobile would stop at a certain point on the way and not restart until the pork is removed from the vehicle.
This legend has its roots in ancient Hawaiian mythology. According to legend, the Hawaiian volcano goddess Pele and the demigod Kamapua‘a (a half-man-half-pig) had a turbulent relationship, and the two agreed not to visit each other. If one takes pork over the Pali, the legend goes, one is symbolically taking a piece of Kamapua‘a from one side to the other, and it is said that Pele would stop that from happening.
Alternately, the legend is attributed to a magic dog, which was killed and cooked and put in an 'umeke to be carried over the pali and given as a gift to the mother/wife of the perpetrator. Women did not eat pork in ancient Hawaii, but were allowed to eat dog. The dog's owner followed and called to the dog, which came alive, answered from within the 'umeke, causing the carrier to drop his pole and flee. The dog then returns to its master. A dog as food was offensive to the American missionaries, and under their influence, the dog meat in the story became pork. The Pele/Kamapua'a stories were adapted to make the story fit, the old lady in the white holoku is also Pele, but that too was corrupted from other tales.
The legend of Ke-alii-ai Kanaka comes from the middle-to-late 18th century and tells of a Man named Kokoa, who went on to become a cannibal chief who plagued two islands. In his youth, he was a renowned fighter with a brutal appetite for human flesh. His story begins and ends on Oahu. In it unknown how he came to love the taste of humans to an obsessive degree, but he was shunned from his home shortly after it was discovered by his community. He led a small group of followers up into the Waianae mountains, where they promptly vanished. Some times later, Kokoa and his band posed as a group of settlers who came to land on Kauai's shores, seeming to be from an unknown place. The King of Kauai at the time received them and even noticed multiple differences between them and what he thought Hawaiian people to be. Notably, their darker-than-usual skin complexion, odd ways of speaking and complete lack of a set of uniform laws between them. Most glaringly, their starkly contrasting religious practices. Kokoa, renaming himself Ka-Lo, integrated smoothly into the Kauai community at first. In their public ceremonies, they would feast and play as their neighbors would. In their secret ceremonies, they would cook and eat victims and sometimes children, disguising the meat as pork. The higher-ranking members of their group, namely Ka-Lo and his daughter, were festooned with plentiful tattoos and shell jewelry. The chief himself was covered head-to-toe in tattoos of the natural world. He had his daughter wed a local chief, though this does not end well for both his people and the Kauai village nearest to his area. His daughter, unknowing of them, breaks a Kapu law and is slain. Enraged by this turn of events, Ka-lo and his followers revealed their cannibalistic nature in a night of devilry. They captured people they could find and held a feast of them. Shortly after this event, they fled back to Oahu, choosing to secret themselves away into the gulch of Waianae to a plateau called "Halemanu." (House of the Hand). This isolated location could only be reached on-foot by a single pathway, and it is from that pathway they would hunt anyone who walked it. This continued for some time, until the brother of a man named Hoahanau was kidnapped and dragged into the forest. Hoahanau was a strapping man himself, yet when he saw Ai-Kanaka's monstrous disposition, he fled the area. He would spend the next several months honing his body and reflexes with endless training and matches against any and all fighters his words could reach. When the time came for his rematch, he coated himself in oil and approached the pathway, calling out his foe's real name. Ai-kanaka, then Ka-Lo, first Kokoa, lurked out from his home and boastfully accepted the challenge unarmed. As their match ensued, he found he could not grasp the younger man's body for any grabs, nor could he match him blow-for-blow. Thrown to the ground again and again, he sprung up to flee into his home to fetch a weapon, only to be caught, knocked off balance and thrown over the edge of his plateau home into the barbed bramble of trees below. [1] [2]
The story of the green lady is that of a woman who would visit the gulch of Wahiawa, which also contains the Wahiawa Botanical Garden, with her children. [3] One day while visiting one of her children became lost and was never found. The story goes that she still wanders the gulch looking for her child, or children, and will take any child that she comes across in the gulch. There have been several reports of seeing a green woman covered in moss or mold wandering the gulch. Others say that the green woman closely resembles that of a Japanese mythological creature called the kappa. This creature is said to resemble a turtle-like humanoid that steals children to feast upon. The last known sighting was said to have happened in the mid to late 1980s. In modern times, children and teenagers dare each other to run across the bridge that runs over the gulch at night. Most speculators say that this story was made up to keep children from wandering into the gulch by themselves. [4]
Kamehameha I, also known as Kamehameha the Great, was the conqueror and first ruler of the Kingdom of Hawaii. The state of Hawaii gave a statue of him to the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, D.C., as one of two statues it is entitled to install there.
In Hawaiian religion, Hiʻiaka is a daughter of Haumea and Kāne.
Menehune are a mythological race of dwarf people in Hawaiian tradition who are said to live in the deep forests and hidden valleys of the Hawaiian Islands, hidden and far away from human settlements.
In Hawaiian mythology, the Kupua are a group of supernatural entities which might be considered gods or spirits.
In Hawaiian religion, Pele is the goddess of volcanoes and fire and the creator of the Hawaiian Islands. Often referred to as "Madame Pele" or "Tūtū Pele" as a sign of respect, she is a well-known deity within Hawaiian mythology and is notable for her contemporary presence and cultural influence as an enduring figure from ancient Hawaii. Epithets of the goddess include Pele-honua-mea and Ka wahine ʻai honua.
Native Hawaiians are the indigenous Polynesian people of the Hawaiian Islands.
Nuʻuanu Pali is a section of the windward cliff of the Koʻolau mountain located at the head of Nuʻuanu Valley on the island of Oʻahu. It has a panoramic view of the windward (northeast) coast of Oʻahu. The Pali Highway connecting Kailua/Kāneʻohe with downtown Honolulu runs through the Nuʻuanu Pali Tunnels bored into the cliffside.
Sacred Falls State Park is a closed state park located in Hauʻula on the North Shore of the Hawaiian island of Oʻahu. It has been closed since the rockfall that occurred on Mother's Day in 1999. Although people caught entering the park are subject to hefty fines, hikers continue to trespass into the park. The park encompasses Kaluanui gulch and the waterfalls at its end. It is a wahi pana in the district (moku) of Koʻolauloa, with much associated Hawaiian lore:
Abraham Fornander was a Swedish-born emigrant who became an important journalist, judge, and ethnologist in Hawaii.
Kaniakapūpū, known formerly as Luakaha, is the ruins of the former summer palace of King Kamehameha III and Queen Kalama on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. Built in the 1840s, and situated in the cool uplands of the Nuʻuanu Valley, it served as the king and queen's summer retreat after the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii moved from Lahaina to Honolulu in 1845. It was famous for being the site of a grand luau attended by an estimated ten thousand guests during the 1847 Hawaiian Sovereignty Restoration Day celebration. The palace had fallen into ruins by 1874; no records exist about its condition in the intervening years. Rediscovered in the 1950s, the site was cleared and efforts were made to stabilize the ruins from further damage by the elements and invasive plant growth. The site remains officially off-limits to the public and trespassers are subjected to citations, although the site is not regularly monitored.
Kameʻeiamoku was a Hawaiian high chief and the Counselor of State to King Kamehameha I. He was called Kamehameha's uncle, but he was really the cousin of Kamehameha's mother, Kekuiapoiwa II.
Hawaiian religion refers to the indigenous religious beliefs and practices of native Hawaiians, also known as the kapu system. Hawaiian religion is based largely on the tapu religion common in Polynesia and likely originated among the Tahitians and other Pacific islanders who landed in Hawaiʻi between 500 and 1300 AD. It is polytheistic and animistic, with a belief in many deities and spirits, including the belief that spirits are found in non-human beings and objects such as other animals, the waves, and the sky. It was only during the reign of Kamehameha I that a ruler from Hawaii island attempted to impose a singular "Hawaiian" religion on all the Hawaiian islands that was not Christianity.
William Hyde Rice was a businessman and politician who served in the Kingdom of Hawaii, during the Kingdom's Overthrow, and in the following Republic of Hawaii and Territory of Hawaii governments. He collected and published legends of Hawaiian mythology.
Kānekapōlei was a Native Hawaiian aliʻi wahine (queen) and wife of Kalaniʻōpuʻu, aliʻi nui of the Island of Hawaii and aunt of Kamehameha I, who were all present at Captain James Cook's death. She called attention to the kidnapping of her husband by Cook and his men, attracting his royal attendants to the beach, answering her calls for help.
Keleanohoanaʻapiʻapi, short name Kelea, was an ancient Hawaiian noblewoman who is mentioned in ancient legends, and her genealogy is given in chants. She was a Princess of Maui, one of the Hawaiian Islands. She was a High Chiefess, but not of the highest known rank.
Mulielealiʻi, also known as Miʻi-i-ele-aliʻi, was an ancient Hawaiian High Chief who lived on the island of Oahu, and is mentioned in ancient chants and writings by Abraham Fornander. His title is Aliʻi Nui.
Emma Kailikapuolono Metcalf Beckley Nakuina was an early Hawaiian female judge, curator and cultural writer. Descended from an American sugar planter and a Hawaiian high chiefess, she was educated in Hawaii and California. She served as curator of the Hawaiian National Museum from 1882 to 1887 and as Commissioner of Private Ways and Water Rights from 1892 to 1907. In her role as a government commissioner, she is often regarded as Hawaii's first female judge. During the early 1900s, she became a supporter of the women's suffrage movement in the Territory of Hawaii. Nakuina was also a prolific writer on the topic of Hawaiian culture and folklore and her many literary works include Hawaii, Its People, Their Legends (1904).
Pius F. Koakanu was a Hawaiian high chief (aliʻi) from the island of Kauai who served as a politician during the Kingdom of Hawaii and the Kahu or Keeper of the Royal Mausoleum of Hawaii at Mauna ʻAla.
Keawepoepoe was the son and keiki aliʻi of aliʻi nui Lonoikahaupu and aliʻi nui wahine Kalanikauleleiaiwi who became father of the royal twins, Kamanawa and Kameʻeiamoku. He is a descendant of Kamehamehanui-ai'luau, ruler of Maui.