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CELEBRATE
HULA
Pele: A visitor who stayed The legend behind the goddess island of Hawaii and found a permanent home there. Oral traditions say that another fire god had preceded Pele and was living at Kilauea. Aila‘au, the forest eater, was “the god with the insatiable appetite, the continual eater of trees, whose path through forests was covered with black smoke fragrant with burning wood, and sometimes burdened with the smell of human flesh charred into cinders in the lava flow,” wrote William Westervelt in 1923. The legends said he lived for a long time in an ancient part of Kilauea called Kilauea Iki, and was living in the great crater at the summit when Pele arrived at the seashore of Keahialaka in the district of Puna. The goddess wished to see Aila‘au and find a resting place at the end of her journey, Westervelt wrote. Courtesy estate of Herb Kawainui Kane “She came up, but Aila‘au was not in his house. Guided by her elder brother, Kamohoali’i in the form of a great shark, Pele voyaged with brothers and sisters in a great canoe from the ancient homeland. Pele carried her See PELE Page 33 little sister Hi’iaka, to whom many dances are dedicated, in the shape of an egg.
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Hawaii Tribune-Herald
I
t may come as a surprise to many that Pele, perhaps the most famous Hawaiian deity, is not Hawaiian. The oral tradition calls her a stranger, a foreigner from the land of Kahiki, who became established in Puna with her strange and mythical family. Many versions of Pele’s migration legend have persisted long enough to be recorded. None should be seen as the authoritative version. The late scholar Martha Beckwith notes that “the Pele myth is believed to have developed in Hawaii, where it is closely associated with aumakua worship of the deities of the volcano, with the development of the hula dance and with innumerable stories in which odd rock or cone formations are ascribed to contests between Pele and her rivals, human or divine.” The following legends are adapted from Beckwith’s “Hawaiian Mythology.” In one version, Pele is one of a family of seven sons and six daughters born to Haumea and her husband, Moemoe, in some unspecified land. She longed to travel and, in tucking her little sister born in the shape of an egg under her arm, sought her brother Kamohoalii, the shark god. Kamohoalii gave Pele the canoe of her brother Pu‘ahiuhiu, with Keaulawe and Keauka as paddlers, and promised to follow with other members of the family. She traveled first to Polapola (Bora Bora), then
to Kuaihelani (Midway Atoll), Mokumanamana (Necker Island), and then Ni‘ihau, home of the chiefess Ka‘o‘ahi, where she was handsomely entertained. While on Kauai, she appeared in the midst of a hula festival in the form of a beautiful young woman. Falling in love with the chief Lohiau, she determined to take him as a husband, but continued traveling. She moved southeast, from island to island, trying to dig a home in which she could receive her lover. Finally, she came to Hawaii Island and was successful in digging deep without striking water. In another version, Pele was born on Kuaihelani, the daughter of Kanehoalani and Haumea. She stuck so close to Lonomakua, the fire god, as to cause a conflagration and her older sister Namakaokaha‘i, a sea goddess, drove her away. She took passage on the canoe Honua-i-a-kea with her little sister Hi‘iaka carried in her armpit. Along with her brothers, she arrived at the Hawaiian archipelago’s northwestern shoals. There her brother Kanemilohai was left on one islet and Kaneapua on another, but Pele took pity on this younger brother and picked him up again. Pele moved from island to island, pursued by her older sister, until the two sisters encountered each other at Kahikinui on the island of Maui. There, in a final battle, Pele’s body was torn apart and the fragments were heaped up to form the hill called Ka-Iwi-o-Pele (Literally, “the bones of Pele.”) Pele’s spirit took flight to the
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By PETER SUR Tribune-Herald staff writer