Читать книгу The Legends and Myths of Hawaii: The fables and folk-lore of a strange people - King of Hawaii David Kalakaua - Страница 17

Table of Contents

The sudden disappearance of Hina created a profound excitement among the people of that part of the coast of Hilo from which she had been abducted. The women who had been permitted to escape ran screaming to the house of Hakalanileo with their tale of woe, and soon for miles around the country was in arms. When questioned, all they could tell was that a canoe filled with armed men suddenly dashed through the surf, and their mistress was seized and borne out to sea. This was all they knew.

Canoes were suddenly equipped and sent in pursuit, but they returned before morning with the report that nothing had been seen of the abductors. Messengers were despatched to the coast settlements of Hamakua, Hilo and Puna, but they brought no intelligence of the missing woman. Uli was consulted, but her divinations failed, for the reason, as she informed the unhappy husband, that the powers that had warned her against the marriage of her daughter and foreshadowed the result could not be prevailed upon to impart any information that would interfere with the fulfilment of the prophecy. Uli, therefore, sat down in gloom to await the developments of time, and Hakalanileo started on a systematic search through the group for his lost wife.

After visiting every district and almost every village on Hawaii, he proceeded with a small party of attendants to Maui, and thence to Molokai, Oahu, Kauai and Niihau, and back to Lanai and Kahoolawe; but no trace of Hina could be discovered. He was well received by the various chiefs, and assistance was freely offered and sometimes accepted; but all search was in vain, and he returned disheartened to Hawaii after an absence of more than two years.

But his first search was not his last. During the fifteen years that followed he made frequent voyages to the different islands on the same errand, and always with the same result. He offered sacrifices in the temples, made pledges to the gods, and consulted every kaula of note of whom he had knowledge; but his offerings and promises failed to secure the assistance of the unseen powers, and the kilos and astrologers could gather nothing of importance to him from their observations.

Meantime Kana and Niheu, the sons of Hina, grew to manhood and prepared to continue the search for their mother, which Hakalanileo had at last abandoned as hopeless. Again and again had their grandmother told them the story of the abduction of Hina, and as often had they vowed to devote their lives to a solution of the mystery of her fate. It was vouchsafed to Uli to see that her daughter lived, but beyond that her charms and incantations were fruitless. But when the beards of her grandsons began to grow she felt that the time was approaching when Hina’s hiding-place would be discovered, and she inspired them to become proficient in the use of arms and the arts of war. And to their assistance she brought the instruction of supernatural powers.

Niheu became endowed not only with great personal strength and courage, but with unerring instincts of strategy and all the accomplishments of a successful military leader. To Kana were given powers of a different nature. He could contract his body to the compass of an insect, and expand or extend it almost indefinitely; but he was permitted to do neither except in cases of imminent personal peril, as the faculty was rarely imparted to mortals, and in this instance was accorded by Kanaloa without the knowledge of the powers to which that deity was subject.

Finally, after a season of long and patient inquiry, it was developed to Uli that her daughter was secreted in the fortress of Haupu and could be recovered only by force, as she had long been the wife of Kaupeepee and would not be surrendered peacefully. Hakalanileo regarded the development with distrust; for while at Kalaupapa, on the island of Molokai, less than three years before, word was brought to him from Kaupeepee, offering to open the fortress of Haupu to his inspection. Hence, when his sons set about raising a large force to attack that stronghold, he gave them every assistance in his power, but declined to accompany the expedition.

Before noting with greater detail the warlike preparations of Hina’s sons, let us refer briefly to the changes which the years leading them to manhood had brought to others connected with the events of this legend. Hina had been a not unhappy captive at Haupu for nearly seventeen years, during which Kaupeepee had continued his desultory assaults upon the usurping chiefs of the neighboring islands. His name had become known throughout the entire group, and several combined attacks upon Haupu had been repulsed—the last by land, led by a distinguished Maui chief, with a slaughter so great that the adjoining gulches were choked with the slain. The venerable Kamauaua had passed away, leaving the government of Molokai to his son, Keoloewa, who had married Nuakea, daughter of the powerful chief, Keaunui, of Oahu, and sister of Lakona, of the strain of Maweke. Moi, another of Nuakea’s brothers, had joined Kaupeepee at Haupu, and became not only his steadfast friend and adviser, but his kaula, or prophet, as well.

Paumakua had died at a very old age, and was buried at Iao, leaving his titles, meles and possessions to his son, Haho; but the change did not seem to affect the holdings of Hakalanileo in Hilo, although it brought to his sons some support in their subsequent war with Kaupeepee. Haho was a haughty but warlike chief, and refused to recognize the titles of many of the native nobles; and, to permanently degrade them, he founded the Aha-alii, or college of chiefs, which embraced the blue-blooded of the entire group, and remained in vogue as late as the beginning of the present century. To be recognized by this college of heraldry, it was necessary for every chief to name his descent from an ancestor of unquestioned nobility; and when his rank was thus formally established, no circumstance of war or peace could deprive him of it. There were gradations of rank and tabu within the Aha-alii, and all received the respect to which their rank entitled them, without regard to their worldly condition. No chief could claim a higher grade than the source from which he sprang; nor could he achieve it, although through marriage with a chiefess of higher rank he might advance his children to the grade of the mother. The Aha-alii had a language which was not understood by the common people, and which was changed whenever it became known to the makaainana, and it was their right on all occasions to wear the insignia of their rank, the feather wreath (lei-hulu), the feather cape (aha-ula), and the ivory clasp (palaoa); and their canoes might be painted red and bear a pennon. The royal color was yellow.

Although Kaupeepee was of the undoubted blood of Nanaula, and would not have been denied admission to the Aha-alii, he treated with contempt the institution of nobility founded by Haho, declaring that the blood of the founder himself was ennobled only through the thefts of his low-born grandfather. This was doubtless correct; but Kaupeepee’s hatred of the southern invaders would not allow him to be just, even to their ancestors.

Such was the condition of affairs when the sons of Hina began to prepare for their expedition against Haupu. They sent emissaries to Oahu and Maui, and were promised substantial co-operation by the leading chiefs of those islands, the most of whom had suffered from the raids of the scourge of Molokai. They collected a mighty fleet of canoes and a force of six thousand warriors. As many more were promised from Oahu and Maui, which, were Keoloewa’s permission obtained, would be landed at Molokai to operate in conjunction with the army from Hawaii.

As an attack on Haupu from the sea side was not considered practicable, even with the overwhelming force that was being organized against it, messengers were despatched to Molokai to prevail upon Keoloewa to permit a portion of the united armies to land on the south side of the island and assault the fortress from the mountain. His sympathies were with his brother, and he hesitated; but when he learned of the formidable force organizing for the reduction of Haupu, he appreciated that he was unable to successfully oppose the movement, and, with the assurance that his subjects would be neither disturbed nor despoiled of their property during the conflict, and that the invading armies would be withdrawn from the island at the end of the campaign against Haupu, he consented to the landing. Had he known the real motive of the assault he would have advised his brother to surrender his fair prisoner and save both from possible ruin; but, conceiving that Kaupeepee’s depredations had become unendurable, and that the chiefs of the great islands had at length united to crush him, for his own safety he felt compelled to leave him to his fate.

This resolution accorded with the advice of Kaupeepee. Many days before his faithful kaula had told him of the approaching invasion, of the combination of chiefs against him, and the doubtful result of the struggle; and before the messengers reached his brother he had gone to and advised him to offer no opposition to the landing of his enemies on the island. “Opposition would be useless,” argued Kaupeepee, “for my enemies are coming in great force. I have slain them and blasted their lands, and single-handed will meet the consequences. Do not embroil yourself with me, but save to our blood the possessions of our fathers.”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Keoloewa; “but why not abandon Haupu and save yourself, if you are not able to hold it?”

“Never!” exclaimed Kaupeepee. “For more than twenty years its walls have stood between me and my enemies, and I will not desert them now. I have a thousand brave men who will triumph or die with me. Should Haupu be taken, go and count the corpses around its walls, and you will not blush to see how a son of Kamauaua died!”

“So let the will of the gods be done!” replied the brother. “But we may not meet again.”

“True,” returned Kaupeepee, with a strange smile—“true, my good brother, for my sepulchre at Haupu needs ornamenting before the mourners come.”

“In my name take anything required for your defence,” said Keoloewa, still holding the hand of his brother, as if reluctant to part with him; “my heart, if not my arm, will be with you!”

“We shall be well prepared,” were the words of Kaupeepee at parting; and before he reached the top of the pali on his return to Haupu, the messengers from Hawaii landed at Kalaupapa.

With this concession from Keoloewa the arrangements for the campaign were speedily made. The main body of the united forces was to concentrate at Kaunakakai, on the north side of the island, and move under the supreme leadership of Niheu, while a large detachment, embracing the best seamen of the several quotas, was to blockade the sea-entrances to Haupu, destroy the canoes of the fortress to prevent escape or succor, and co-operate generally with the land forces. This dangerous service was entrusted to the command of Kana.

At the appointed time the Hawaiian army set sail for Molokai in a fleet of over twelve hundred canoes, many of them double, and carrying a large supply of provisions. The assistance of the gods had been invoked with many sacrifices, and the omens had been favorable. In one of the large double canoes was Uli. Her form was bent with age, and her hair, white as foam, covered her shoulders like a mantle. In youth she was noted for her stateliness and beauty; but age and care had destroyed all traces of her early comeliness, and her wrinkled face, and black eyes glistening through the rifts of her long, white hair, gave her the appearance of one who dealt with things to be feared. She was surrounded with charms and images, and before her, on a stone-bordered hearth of earth, burned a continual fire, into which she at intervals threw gums and oily mixtures, emitting clouds of incense. Her canoe followed that of the sons of Hina, with their priest and war-god, and red pennon at the masthead; and as the fleet swept out into the ocean, with thousands of oars in the waves and thousands of spears in the air, Uli rose to her feet and began a wild war-chant, which was taken up by the following hosts and borne far over the waters.

The day following a number of expeditions left various openings on the coasts of Oahu and Maui—none of them approaching the Hawaiian army in strength, but together adding an aggregate of nine hundred canoes of all sizes and about four thousand warriors to the invading force. All of them reached the landing at Kaunakakai on the day appointed for their arrival, and Niheu found himself in command of ten thousand warriors and over two thousand canoes. No such number of spears was ever before seen massed on Molokai; but the people had been assured that they would not be injured either in person or property so long as they remained peaceful, and the terms of the agreement with Keoloewa were faithfully observed. Among the invaders the people found many friends and relatives, for intercourse between the islands at that time was free and frequent; and although their sympathies were with Kaupeepee, they soon came to regard the projected capture of Haupu as a great game of konane, played by agreement between two champions, during which the spectators were to remain silent and make no suggestions.

The tents of the chiefs, around which were encamped their respective followers, extended along the shore for more than two miles, while the beach for a greater distance was fringed with canoes, many of the larger painted red and bearing gaudy pennons of stout kapa. As plundering had been forbidden, provisions of dried fish, potatoes, cocoanuts, taro, and live pigs and fowls had been brought in considerable quantities in extra canoes; but as the duration of the campaign could only be surmised, rolls of kapa and matting, shell wreaths, ivory, feather capes, calabashes, mechanical tools, ornaments, and extra arms were also brought, to be fairly exchanged from time to time for such supplies as might be wanted.