Hawaii Legends: Introduction from The Legends and Myths of Hawaii
By King Kalakaua, 1888
Habits and Customs
 Tools
 Food
 Clothing
 Dwellings
 War and Weapons
 Games and Athletics
 Music and Dance
 Mourning and Burials
 Calendar
 Counting
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Habits and Customs
Tools
All implements of war and industry known to the early Hawaiians were made either of
wood or stone, or bone, s the islands are destitute of metals; but with these rude helps
they laid up hewn-stone walls, felled trees, made canoes and barges, manufactured cloths
and cordage, fashioned weapon, constructed dwellings and temples, roads and fish-ponds,
and tilled the soil. They had axes, adzes and hammers of stone, spades of wood, knives of
flint and ivory, needles of thorn and bone, and spears and daggers of hardened wood.
They wove mats for sails and other purposes, and from the inner bark of the paper
mulberry tree beat out a fine, thin cloth called kappa, which they ornamented with colors
and figures.
Habits and Customs
Food
Their food was the flesh of swine, dogs and fowls; fish, and almost everything from the
sea; taro, sweet potatoes and yams, and fruits, berries and edible sea-weed of various
kinds. Poi, the favorite food of all classes, was a slightly fermented paste made of cooked
and pounded taro, a large bulbous root, in taste resembling an Indian turnip. They made a
stupefying beverage by chewing awa root, and from the sweet root of the ti plant
fermented an intoxicating drink. The soft parts of the sugar-cane were eaten, but, with the
exception of the manufacture of a beer called uiuia, no other use seems to have been
made of it. Their food, wrapped in ti leaves, was usually cooked in heated and covered
pits in the earth. Their household vessels were shells, gourd calabashes of various shapes
and sizes, and platters and other containers made of wood.
Habits and Customs
Clothing
The dress of the ancient Hawaiian was scant, simple and cool. The principal, and
generally the only, garment of the male was the maro, a narrow cloth fastened around the
loins. To this was sometimes added, among the masses, a kihei, or cloth thrown loosely
over the shoulders. The females wore a pau, or skirt of invariably five thicknesses of
kapa*, fastened around the waist and extending to the knees. When the weather was cool,
a short mantle was sometimes added. Ordinarily the heads if both sexes were without
coverings, and in rare instances they wore kamaas, or sandals of ti or pandanus leaves.
(*Kapa is a cloth made by pounding the inner bark of the mulberry until it is soft and
supple. Also known as tapa.)
With the maro, which was common to the males of all ranks, the king on state occasions
wore the royal maro, a mantle reaching to the ankles, and made of the yellow feathers of
a little seabird called the mamo. When it is mentioned that but a single yellow feather is
found under each wing of the mamo, and that tens of thousands, perhaps, entered into the
fabrication of a single mantle, some idea of the value of such a garment may be gathered.
A few of these royal cloaks are still in existence, one of which was worn by King
Kalakaua during the ceremonies of his coronation. Pure yellow was the royal color. The
shorter capes or mantles of the chiefs were of yellow feathers mixed with red. The color
of the priests and gods was red.
The ornaments of the nobility consisted of head-dresses of feathers, palaoas, or charms
of bone suspended from the neck, and necklaces and bracelets of shells, teeth, and other
materials. Many of them were tattooed on the face, thighs and breast, but the practice was
not universal. Flowers were in general use as ornaments, and at feasts, festivals and other
gatherings garlands of fragrant leaves and blossoms crowned the heads and encircled the
necks of all. This is among the beautiful customs still retained by the Hawaiians.
Habits and Customs
Dwellings
The dwellings of the masses were constructed of upright posts planted in the ground, with
cross beams and rafters and roofs and sides of woven twigs and branches thatched with
leaves. The houses of the nobility were larger, stronger and more pretentious, and were
frequently surrounded by broad verandahs. It was a custom to locate dwellings so that the
main entrance would face the east, the home of Kane. The opposite entrance looked
toward Kahiki*, the land from which Wakea came.
(*Kahiki would also be called Tahiti)
The homes of well-conditioned Hawaiians consisted of no less than six separate
dwellings or apartments: 1st, the heiau, or idol-house; 2nd, the mua, or eating-house of the
males, which females were not allowed to enter; 3rd. the hale-noa, or house of the
women, which men could not enter; 4th, the hale-aina, or eating house of the wife; 5th, the
kua, or wife’s working-house; an 6th, the hale-pea, or retiring house or nursery of the
wife. The poorer classes followed these regulations so far as their means would admit,
but screens usually took the place of separate dwellings or definite apartments.
Habits and Customs
War and Weapons
When war was declared or invasion threatened, messengers called lunapais, were
dispatched by the king to his subject chiefs, who promptly responded in warriors, canoes,
or whatever else was demanded. A regular line-of-battle consisted of a center and right
and left wings, and marked military genius was sometimes displayed in the handling of
armies. Sea-battles, where hundreds, sometimes thousands, of war-canoes met in hostile
shock, were common, and usually resulted in great loss of life. Truce and terms of peace
were ordinarily respected, but few prisoners were spared except for sacrifice.
The weapons of the islanders were spears about twenty feet in length, javelins, war-clubs,
stone axes, rude halberds, knives, daggers and slings. The slings were made either of
cocoa fibre or human hair. The stones were sometimes a pound or more in weight, and
were delivered with great force and accuracy. The spears were sometimes thrown, while
the javelins were reserved for close encounter. Shields were unknown. Hostile missiles
were either dodged, caught in the hands, or dexterously warded. The chiefs frequently
wore feathered helmets in battle, but the person was without protection.
Habits and Customs
Games and Athletics
The athletic sports and games of the people were numerous. The muscular pastimes
consisted in part of contest in running, jumping, boxing, wrestling, swimming, diving,
canoe-racing and surf-riding. Rolling round stone disks and throwing darts along a
prepared channel was a favorite sport; but the most exciting was the holua contest, in
which two or more might engage. On long, light and narrow sledges the contestants,
lying prone, dashed down long and steep declivities, the victory being with the one who
first reached the bottom. The goddess Pele enjoyed the game, and frequently engaged in
it. But she was a dangerous contestant. On being beaten by Kahavari, a chief of Puna, she
drove him from the district with a stream of lava. Sham battles and spear and stone
throwing were also popular exercises.
Among the in-door games were konane, kilu, puhenehene, punipiki and hiua. Konanae
resembled the English game of draughts. Punenehene consisted of adroit hiding by one of
the players of a small object under several mats in the midst of the party of contestants,
and the designation of its place concealment by the others. Kilu was a game somewhat
similar, accompanied by singing. Punipiki was something like the game of ‘fox and
geese,’ and hiua was played on a board with four squares. These were the most ancient of
Hawaiian household games.
Habits and Customs
Music and Dance
The musical instruments of the islanders were few and simple. They consisted of pahus,
or drums, of various sizes; the ohe, a bamboo flute; the hokio, a rude clarionet; a nasal
flagolet, and a reed instrument played by the aid of the voice. To these were added, on
special occasions, castanets and dry gourds containing pebbles, which were used to mark
the time of chants and other music. They had many varieties of dances, or hulas, all of
which were more or less graceful, and a few of which were coarse. Bands of hula
dancers, male and female, were among the retainers of the mois and prominent chiefs,
and their services were required on every festive occasion.
Habits and Customs
Mourning and Burials
The masses buried their dead or deposited bodies in caves, but the bones of the kings
were otherwise disposed of. There were royal burial-places, one at Honaunau, on the
island of Hawaii, and another, called Iao, on Maui – and the tombs of many of the ancient
mois and ruling chiefs were in one or the other of those sacred spots; but they probably
contained but a few royal bones. In the fear that the bones of the mois and distinguished
chiefs might fall into the hands of their enemies and be used for fish-hooks, arrow-points
for shooting mice, and other debasing purposes, they were usually destroyed or hidden.
Some were weighted and thrown into the sea, and others, after the flesh had been
removed from them and burned, were secreted in mountain caves. The hearts of the kings
of the island of Hawaii were frequently thrown into the crater of Kilauea as an offering to
People. The bones of the first Kamehameha were so well secreted in some cave in Kona
that they have not yet been found, and the bones of Kualili, a celebrated Oahuan king of
the seventeenth century, were reduced to powder, mingled with poi, and at the funeral
feast fed to a hundred unsuspecting chiefs.
Habits and Customs
Calendar
The ancient Hawaiians divided the year into twelve months of thirty days each. The days
of the month were names, not numbered. As this gave but three hundred and sixty days to
their year, they added and gave to their god Lono in feasting and festivity the number of
days required to complete the sidereal year, which was regulated by the rising of the
Pleiades. The new year began with the winter solstice. They also reckoned by lunar
months in the regulation of their monthly feats. The year was divided into two seasons –
the rainy and the dry – and the day tine three general parts, morning, noon and night. The
first, middle and after parts of the night were also designated.
They had names for the five principal planets, which they called the ‘wandering stars’
and for a number of heavenly groups and constellation. It was this knowledge of the
heavens that enabled them to navigate the ocean in their frail canoes.
Habits and Customs
Counting
In counting, the Hawaiians reckoned by fours and their multiples. Their highest expressed
number was four hundred thousand. More than that was indefinite.