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Eons ago, there was born the
Demigod Maui. His father was the holder of the heavens and his mother
was the guardian of the path to the Netherworld. Maui was the only one
of the children who possessed the powers of magic and miracles.
Maui was the smallest of the family. He had the quickest of mind
and had an extremely rascally nature about him. Maui would take any
advantage of both his friends and the gods in his quest to fulfill his
schemes.
It is said that Maui was not a god fisherman. His brothers were
much more skilled. They would often laugh at him for his poor success.
In revenge, Maui used his cunning to fill his boat with catch at his
brothers expense. Maui would position his boat so that when one of his
brothers began to pull in a fish, he would distract them so that he
could pull his line across theirs stealing their fish.
Maui's brothers could only marvel at their younger brother.
However they soon caught on and refused to take him fishing with them.
Maui's fortune turned against him. His mother then sent him to his
father to obtain a magic hook.
"Go to your father. There you
will recive the hook called Manaiakalani, the hook fastened to the
heavens. When the hook catches land, it will raise the old seas
together."
Maui returned with his hook. He joined his brothers in another
fishing expedition. They jeered him and threw him out of the boat. When
they returned, they were empty handed. Maui berated them. He stated that
if they had allowed him to join them, they would have had better
success. The brothers decided to allow him to join them in their canoe
for another chance.
They paddled far into the deep ocean and threw their lines
overboard. To their dismay, they only caught sharks. The brothers
ridiculed Maui asking "Where are the fish you promnised?"
Maui then rose and threw his magical hook into the ocean.Chanting
a spell of power, he commanded the hook to catch the Great Fish.
At once the sea began to move. Great waves rose around the canoe.
Maui commanded his brothers to paddle with all their might and to not
look back. For two days, Maui held taut the magic line and hook while
his brothers kept paddling furiously. Suddenly from below the depths
arose the tops of great mountains in a series of peaks that broke the
surface of the ocean. Maui reminded his brothers to keep paddling
mightly. Maui pulled mightly against the line and forced the peaks even
farther out of the water.
One of his brothers then broke the command and gazed back in awe
at the sight of the rising land. He stopped paddling and quickly the
magic line began to slacken in Maui's hands. Before he could call out to
his brothers, the line snapped and the magic hook was lost forever
beneath the sea.
Maui chastised his brothers for their failure to paddle as he had
commanded. "I had endeavoured to raise a great continent but because of
your weakness I have only these islands to show for all my efforts."
And this is how the Islands of
Hawai'i came to be... |
Once in Old Hawaii, in the days when anything was possible,
Maui, the most powerful God, had a beautiful daughter. Maui loved her
very much and as he watched her grow up, he vowed that only the most
worthy King in all the islands would marry her.
But without her father knowing, the beautiful maiden fell in
love with Puuokamoa, a Merman God. She knew that her father wouldn't
approve, so they kept their romance secret. Every day the beautiful
maiden sneaked off to meet her love and every night she returned home,
radiant. One day, a townsperson saw the two of them together and ran
back and told Maui of his daughter's secret lover.
Maui was furious. He flew into a rage and his screams of anger
were heard by Madame Pele, the volcano Goddess. She flew in her
supernatural way to where Maui was and suddenly appeared in front of
him.
"What is so horribly wrong to put you in such an uproar?"
Madame Pele asked.
"My beautiful daughter has fallen in love with a God and I
disapprove. When I see him, I am going to have him condemned to a fiery
death", Maui said.
"Who is this God?", Pele asked.
"His name is Puuokamoa".
Madame Pele frowned at the mention of his name. "Oh no,
Puuokamoa is my friend. Spare him, Maui. I beg you. Do not have him
killed".
But Maui would not listen. Madame Pele was still pleading with
him when his beautiful daughter returned. She heard her father's death
sentence on her lover and burst into tears.
"Oh Father", she sobbed, "I cannot live without the sight of
Puuokamoa".
The Father's heart softened at the sight of his daughter and
thinking that she would be unhappy for the rest of her life if she could
not see the man she loved. Finally, after much thought, Maui put his
arms around his daughter and lifted up her beautiful face. Tears soaked
her unhappy eyes.
"Daughter dear, I cannot bear to see you unhappy", Maui said
tenderly. "But I cannot allow this romance to continue. You cannot marry
this Merman God".
His daughter waited to hear what her powerful father had
decided. Madame Pele stood quietly, waiting to hear the fate of her
friend.
"I will not reduce him to ashes", Maui said.
"Oh, father dear", the daughter cried out, hugging him.
"I will turn him into stone. Then you may gaze upon him, but
your romance will be pau (over)".
And that is how the mountain, known as the Needle, at Iao
Valley came to be. It is the Merman God turned to stone for all to gaze
upon. |
A long time ago, children liked to swim and surf at a bay at
the northern end of Haleakala. In order to reach the bay, they had to
pass the house of Nanaue, a strange man who always wore a mysterious
cloak on his shoulders, lived by himself and had a sinister expression
on his face.
Sometimes he called out to the children walking by, "Where are
you going?" Frightened, they would answer, "Swimming" and he would
predict that they would find a body floating in the bay with it's head
cut off or its legs cut off or its arms cut off. Every time he made a
prediction, a body would be found just as he had said, with its head or
arms or legs cut off.
People began to wonder how Nanaue knew that someone would die
while swimming and that part of his body would be cut off. The more they
thought about it, the more frightened they became. Finally a group of
villagers were determined to find out the mystery. They went to his
house, but he wasn't there.
A man was sitting by a bench repairing his fishnet. "Who are
you looking for?", he asked, "Nanaue?"
"Yes", they replied, "Do you know where he is?"
The man pointed into the lava tube. It was dark and opened out
to the ocean, but no one was there. They waited in the dark. Soon they
saw a large wave bringing a figure up into the tube. It had a humpback
shape, and as it got close, they saw that it was Nanaue. Protuding from
his back, without the cape he always wore, was the jaws of a shark.
Now they knew his secret. Nanaue was a shark man. On land, he
was a man, but as soon as he was in the water, he became a shark. It was
Nanaue who had been attacking people as they swam and that's how he knew
who was dead. As soon as he climbed up into the lava tube, the men
grabbed him and carried him to the edge of the bay where they dug an Imu,
a fire pit, to burn him up. Nanaue wriggled like a fish and slipped
away, running towards the ocean. The men dashed after him to get him
before he reached the water and turned into a shark. Just at the edge of
the sea, one man caught his leg and pulled him back. They hit him with
their clubs until he was dead and threw his body into the Imu to burn
up. As his ashes were still glowing, a breeze sprang up and carried them
over the bay where they were scattered over the water.
Not long after, a new sort of sea-moss was noticed on the water
floor, silvery and different than any other kind. One man picked it and
fed it to his pig and his pig died. It is said that this silvery limu is
the ashes of Nanaue that had fallen into the sea and to this day this
silvery limu is considered poisonous and never eaten by those who find
it in the ocean by the bay. |
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A long time ago on the Island of Oahu, lived a powerful king
whose son was named Kama Pua'a. This child was difficult, to say the
least. He was always chasing away his father's livestock and tearing up
the royal taro patches. His father swore that if he ever caught him, he
would kill him. To save himself, Kama Pua'a fled Oahu and moved to Maui
and married Madame Pele, the fiery goddess. They were in love and soon
had a son.
A sad event occurred; the son died. Madame Pele, as fiery as
she was, went into a rage and started chasing Kama Pua'a. To escape, he
started running down the slopes of Haleakala, towards the sea. When he
did this, he turned into a giant hog. With Madame Pele gaining, Kama
Pua'a called to his grandmother on Oahu, "Grandma, Grandma,what should I
do?"
His grandmother answered his call, "Leap into the ocean and you
shall save yourself." When he got to the bottom at Pa'uwela, he leaped
into the ocean and changed into a fish. This ended his emotional
experience with Madame Pele. Thus Pa'uwela, which means "calming of
emotions", was named. The fish that Kama Pua'a turned into was a
Humuhumunukunukuapua'a; a fish with a pig snout. And today,that fish is
the Hawaiian state fish.
This is the same fish that "goes swimming by", in that catchy
"Little Grass Shack" song. |
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