The Hawaiian Romance of Laieikawai | Page 6

the Polynesian chiefs on earth. This physical world is again the
prototype for the activities of the gods, its multitudinous manifestations
representing the forms and forces employed by the myriad gods in
making known their presence on earth. They are not these forms
themselves, but have them at their disposal, to use as transformation

bodies in their appearances on earth, or they may transfer them to their
offspring on earth. This is due to the fact that the gods people earth, and
from them man is descended. Chiefs rank, in fact, according to their
claim to direct descent from the ancient gods.[4]
Just how this came about is not altogether uniformly explained. In the
Polynesian creation story[5] three things are significant--a monistic
idea of a god existing before creation;[6] a progressive order of creation
out of the limitless and chaotic from lower to higher forms, actuated by
desire, which is represented by the duality of sex generation in a long
line of ancestry through specific pairs of forms from the inanimate
world--rocks and earth, plants of land and sea forms--to the
animate--fish, insects, reptiles, and birds;[7] and the special analysis of
the soul of man into "breath," which constitutes life; "feeling," located
in the heart; "desire" in the intestines; and "thought" out of which
springs doubt--the whole constituting akamai or "knowledge." In
Hawaii the creation story lays emphasis upon progressive sex
generation of natural forms.
Individual islands of a group are popularly described as rocks dropped
down out of heaven or fished up from below sea as resting places for
the gods;[8] or they are named as offspring of the divine ancestors of
the group.[9] The idea seems to be that they are a part of the divine
fabric, connected in kind with the original source of the race.

Footnotes to Section II, 2: Polynesian Cosmogony
[Footnote 1: In the Polynesian picture of the universe the wall of
heaven is conceived as shutting down about each group, so that boats
traveling from one group to another "break through" this barrier wall.
The Kukulu o Kahiki in Hawaii seems to represent some such confine.
Emerson says (in Malo, 30): "Kukulu was a wall or vertical erection
such as was supposed to stand at the limits of the horizon and support
the dome of heaven." Points of the compass were named accordingly
Kukulu hikina, Kukulu komohana, Kukulu hema, Kukulu akau--east,
west, south, north. The horizon was called Kukulu-o-ka-honua--"the

compass-of-the-earth." The planes inclosed by such confines, on the
other hand, are named Kahiki. The circle of the sky which bends
upward from the horizon is called Kahiki-ku or "vertical." That through
which, the eye travels in reaching the horizon, Kahiki-moe, or
"horizontal."]
[Footnote 2: The Rarotongan world of spirits is an underworld. (See
Gill's Myths and Songs.) The Hawaiians believed in a subterranean
world of the dead divided into two regions, in the upper of which
Wakea reigned; in the lower, Milu. Those who had not been
sufficiently religious "must lie under the spreading Kou trees of Milu's
world, drink its waters and eat lizards and butterflies for food."
Traditional points from which the soul took its leap into this
underworld are to be found at the northern point of Hawaii, the west
end of Maui, the south and the northwest points of Oahu, and, most
famous of all, at the mouth of the great Waipio Valley on Hawaii.
Compare Thomson's account from Fiji of the "pathway of the shade." p.
119.]
[Footnote 3: White, I, chart; Gill, Myths and Songs, pp. 3, 4; Ellis, III,
168-170.]
[Footnote 4: Gill says of the Hervey Islanders (p. 17 of notes): "The
state is conceived of as a long house standing east and west, chiefs
from the north and south sides of the island representing left and right;
under chiefs the rafters; individuals the leaves of the thatch. These are
the counterpart of the actual house (of the gods) in the spirit world."
Compare Stair, p. 210.]
[Footnote 5: Bastian, Samoanische Schöpfungs-Sage; Ellis, I, 321;
White, vol. I; Turner, Samoa, 3; Gill, Myths and Songs, pp. 1-20;
Moerenhout I, 419 et seq.; Liliuokalani, translation of the Hawaiian
"Song of Creation"; Dixon, Oceanic Mythology.]
[Footnote 6: Moerenhout translates (I, 419): "He was, Taaroa (Kanaloa)
was his name. He dwelt in immensity. Earth was not. Taaroa, called,
but nothing responded to him, and, existing alone, he changed himself
into the universe. The pivots (axes or orbits), this is Taaroa; the rocks,

this is he. Taaroa is the sand, so is he named. Taaroa is the day.
Taaroa is the center. Taaroa is the germ. Taaroa is the base. Taaroa is
the invincible, who created the universe, the sacred universe, the shell
for Taaroa, the life, life of the universe."]
[Footnote 7: Moerenhout, I, 423: "Taaroa slept with the woman