Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes (mythology) Collected and translated from the Hawaiian — Themes and Context

back the boat to her brother, the shark-god. It is said that after a time he brought all the brothers and sisters to Hawaii.

Pele was welcomed and entertained. Soon she went over to Kauai, the large, beautiful garden island of the Hawaiian group. There is a story of her appearance as a dream maiden before the king of Kauai, whose name was Lohiau, whom she married, but with whom she could not stay until she had found a place where she could build a permanent home for herself and all who belonged to her.

She had a magic digging tool, Pa-oa. When she struck this down into the earth it made a fire-pit. It was with this Pa-oa that she was to build a home for herself and Lohiau. She dug along the lowlands of Kauai, but water drowned the fires she kindled, so she went from island to island but could only dig along the beach near the sea. All her fire-pits were so near the water that they burst out in great explosions of steam and sand, and quickly died, until at last she found Kilauea on the large island of Hawaii. There she built a mighty enduring palace of fire, but her dream marriage was at an end. The little sister Hiiaka, after many adventures, married Lohiau and lived on Kauai.

Another story says that Pele was the daughter of Kane-hoa-lani and Hina. The oldest and most authoritative legends say that Kane-hoa-lani was her brother and that Hina was the creator of a flood or great tidal wave which drove Pele from place to place over the ocean. This story says that Pele had a husband, Wahioloa, who ran away from her with a sister named Pele-kumu-ka-lani, and that Pele searched the islands of the great ocean as she followed them, but never found them. At last Pele came to Hawaii and escaped the flood by finding a home in Kilauea. In this story she was said to have a son Menehune and a daughter Laka. There is very little foundation for this legend. Wahioloa was a chief, well known in the legends, of a famous family of New Zealand and other South Sea islands. Laka was his son, who cut down trees by day which were set up again at night by the fairies. The Menehunes were the fairy folk of Hawaii. The story of Pele’s search for a husband has been widely accepted by foreigners but not by the early Hawaiian writers.

The most authoritative story of the coming of Pele to Hawaii was published in the Hoku-o-ka-Pakipika (Star of the Pacific), in the story of Aukele-nui-aiku, in 1861, and in another Hawaiian paper, Ke Kuokoa, in 1864, and again in 1865. Again and again the legends give Ku-waha-ilo as the father and Haumea as the mother of the Pele family. Hina is sometimes said to be Ku-waha-ilo’s sister in these legends. She quarrelled with him because he devoured all the people. The Hawaiians as a nation, even in their traditions, have never been cannibals, although their legends give many individual instances of cannibalism. The Pele stories say that “Ku-waha-ilo was a cannibal,” and “Haumea was a pali [precipice or a prominent part of the earth].”

The Hawaiians, it is safe to say, had no idea of reading nature-thoughts into these expressions, thus making them “nature-myths.” They probably did not understand that Ku-waha-ilo might mean destructive earth forces, and Haumea might mean the earth itself from whom Pele, the goddess of fire, and Na-maka-o-ka-hai, the goddess of the sea, were born. It is, however, interesting to note that this is the fact in the legends, and that it was in a conflict between the two sisters that Na-maka-o-ka-hai drove Pele to the Hawaiian Islands.