The Hawaiian Romance of Laieikawai | Page 8

he is turned into stone, many rock formations about the
islands being thus explained and consequently worshiped as dwelling
places of gods. Otherwise he is deified in the heavens, or goes to dwell
in the underworld with the gods, from whence he may still direct and
inspire his descendants on earth if they worship him, or even at times
appear to them again on earth in some objective form.[4]

Footnotes to Section II, 3: The Demigod as Hero
[Footnote 1: Mariner, II, 103; Turner, Nineteen Tears in Polynesia, pp.
238-242; Ibid., Samoa, pp. 23-77; Ellis, I, 334; Gracia, pp. 41-44;
Krämer (Samoa Inseln, p. 22) and Stair (p. 211) distinguished akua as
the original gods, aiku as their descendants, the demonic beings who
appear in animal forms and act as helpers to man; and kupua as deified
human beings.]
[Footnote 2: When a Polynesian invokes a god he prays to the spirit of
some dead ancestor who acts as his supernatural helper. A spirit is
much stronger than a human being--hence the custom of covering the
grave with a great heap of stone or modern masonry to keep down the
ghost. Its strength may be increased through prayer and sacrifice, called
"feeding" the god. See Fornander's stories of Pumaia, and Nihoalaki. In
Fison's story of Mantandua the mother has died of exhaustion in
rescuing her child. As he grows up her spirit acts as his supernatural
helper, and appears to him in dreams to direct his course. He
accordingly achieves prodigies through her aid. In Kuapakaa the boy
manages the winds through his grandmother's bones, which he keeps in
a calabash. In Pamano, the supernatural helper appears in bird shape.

The Fornander stories of Kamapua'a, the pig god, and of Pikoiakaalala,
who belongs to the rat family, illustrate the kupua in animal shape.
Malo, pp. 113-115. Compare Mariner, II, 87, 100; Ellis, I, 281.]
[Footnote 3: Bird-bodied gods of low grade in the theogony of the
heavens act as messengers for the higher gods. In Stair (p. 214) Tuli,
the plover, is the bird messenger of Tagaloa. The commonest
messenger birds named in Hawaiian stories are the plover, wandering
tattler, and turnstone, all migratory from about April to August, and
hence naturally fastened upon by the imagination as suitable
messengers to lands beyond common ken. Gill (Myths and Songs, p. 35)
says that formerly the gods spoke through small land birds, as in the
story of Laieikawai's visit to Kauakahialii.]
[Footnote 4: With the stories quoted from Fornander may be compared
such wonder tales as are to be found in Krämer, pp. 108, 116, 121,
413-419; Fison, pp. 32, 49, 99; Grey, p. 59; Turner, Samoa, p. 209;
White I, 82, etc.]

4. THE EARTHLY PARADISE; DIVINITY IN MAN AND NATURE
For according to the old myth, Sky and Earth were nearer of access in
the days when the first gods brought forth their children--the winds, the
root plants, trees, and the inhabitants of the sea, but the younger gods
rent them apart to give room to walk upright;[1] so gods and men
walked together in the early myths, but in the later traditions, called
historical, the heavens do actually get pushed farther away from man
and the gods retreat thither. The fabulous demigods depart one by one
from Hawaii; first the great gods--Kane, Ku, Lono, and Kanaloa; then
the demigods, save Pele of the volcano. The supernatural race of the
dragons and other beast gods who came from "the shining heavens" to
people Hawaii, the gods and goddesses who governed the appearances
in the heavens, and the myriad race of divine helpers who dwelt in the
tiniest forms of the forest and did in a night the task of months of labor,
all those god men who shaped the islands and named their peaks and
valleys, rocks, and crevices as they trampled hollows with a spring and

thrust their spears through mountains, were superseded by a humaner
race of heroes who ruled the islands by subtlety and skill, and instead
of climbing the heavens after the fiery drink of the gods or searching
the underworld for ancestral hearth fires, voyaged to other groups of
islands for courtship or barter. Then even the long voyages ceased and
chiefs made adventure out of canoe trips about their own group, never
save by night out of sight of land. They set about the care of their
property from rival chiefs. Thus constantly in jeopardy from each other,
sharpening, too, their observation of what lay directly about them and
of the rational way to get on in life, they accepted the limits of a man's
power and prayed to the gods, who were their great ancestors, for gifts
beyond their reach.[2]
And during this transfer of attention from heaven to earth the objective