Hina, the Helen of Hawaii

A Story of Hawaiian Chivalry in the Twelfth Century.

I.

The story of the Iliad is a dramatic record of the love and hate, wrong and revenge, courage and custom, passion and superstition, of mythical Greece, and embraces in a single brilliant recital events which the historic bards of other lands, lacking the genius of Homer, have sent down the centuries in fragments. Human nature has been substantially the same in all ages, differing only in the ardor of its passions and appetites, as affected by the zone of its habitat and its peculiar physical surroundings. Hence almost every nation, barbarous and civilized, has had its Helen and its Troy, its Paris and its Agamemnon, its Hector and its demi-gods; and Hawaii is not an exception. The wrath of no dusky Achilles is made the thesis of the story of the Hawaiian abduction, but in other respects the Greek and Polynesian legends closely resemble each other in their general outlines.

The story of Hina, the Hawaiian Helen, and Kaupeepee, the Paris of the legend, takes us back to the twelfth century, near the close of the second and final era of migration from Tahiti, Samoa, and perhaps other islands of Polynesia--a period which added very considerably to the population of the group, and gave to it many new chiefs, a number of new customs, and a few new gods. That the tale may be better understood by the reader who may not be conversant with the legendary history of the Hawaiian Islands, it will be necessary to refer briefly to the political and social condition of the group at that time.

Notwithstanding the many sharply drawn and wonderfully-preserved historic legends of the Hawaiians, the early settlement of the little archipelago is shrouded in mystery. The best testimony, however, warrants the assumption that the islands were first discovered and occupied by a people who had drifted from southern Asia to the islands of the Pacific in the first or second century of the Christian era, and, by migratory stages from the Fijis to Samoa and thence to Tahiti, had reached the Hawaiian group in about A.D. 550. The first discovery was doubtless the result of accident; but those who made it were able to find their way back to the place from which they started--either Tahiti or Samoa--and in due time return with augmented numbers, bearing with them to their new home pigs, fowls, dogs, and the seeds of such fruits and vegetables as they had found to be wanting there.

The little colony grew and prospered, and for nearly five hundred years had no communication with, or knowledge of, the world beyond. At the end of that time their geographical traditions had grown so faint that they spoke only of Kahiki, a place very far away, from which their ancestors came. First landing on the large island of Hawaii, they had spread over the eight habitable divisions of the group. The people were ruled by district chiefs, in fief to a supreme head on some of the islands, and on others independent, and the lines dividing the masses from the nobility were less strictly drawn than during the centuries succeeding. Wars were frequent between neighboring chiefs, and popular increase was slow; but the tabus of the chiefs and priests were not oppressive, and the people claimed and exercised a degree of personal independence unknown to them after the eleventh century.

D. 1025, or perhaps a little earlier, the people of the group were suddenly aroused from their long dream of six centuries by the arrival of a large party of adventurers from Tahiti. Their chief was Nanamaoa. Their language resembled that of the Hawaiians, and their customs and religions were not greatly at variance. They were therefore received with kindness, and in a few years their influence began to be felt throughout the group. They landed at Kohala, Hawaii, and Nanamaoa soon succeeded in establishing himself there as an influential chief. His sons secured possessions on Maui and Oahu, and on the latter island one of them--Nanakaoko--instituted the sacred place called Kukaniloko, in the district of Ewa, where it was the desire of future chiefs that their sons should be born. , as late as 1797, sought to remove his queen thither before the birth of Liholiho, but the illness of the royal mother prevented.

This became the sacred birth-place of princes, as Iao, in Wailuku valley, on the island of Maui, became their tabu spot of interment.

It was at Kukaniloko that Kapawa, the son of Nanakaoko, was born. His principal seat of power was probably on Hawaii, although he retained possessions on Maui and Oahu.

It was during his life that the celebrated chief and priest Paao made his appearance in the group. He came from one of the southern islands with a small party, bringing with him new gods and new modes of worship, and to him the subsequent high-priests of Hawaii traced their sacerdotal line, even down to Hevaheva, who in 1819 was the first to apply the torch to the temples in which his ancestors had so long worshipped. Paao was a statesman and warrior as well as a priest, but he preferred spiritual to temporal authority; and when Kapawa died and was buried at Iao, leaving his possessions without a competent ruler and his subjects in a state bordering upon anarchy, Paao did not assume the chieftaincy, as he manifestly might have done, but despatched messengers--if, indeed, he did not go himself--to the land of his birth, to invite to Hawaii a chief capable of restoring order.

Such a leader was found in Pilikaekae, of Samoa, who migrated to Hawaii with a goodly number of retainers, and was promptly established in the vacant sovereignty, while Paao continued in the position of high-priest. Pili extended his authority over the six districts of Hawaii; but beyond Kohala and the northern part of the island the recognition of his sovereignty was merely nominal, and internal wars and revolts were frequent.

The next arrivals of note from the southern islands were the two Paumakua families, one of which settled in Oahu and Kauai and the other in Hawaii and Maui. Whether, as averred by conflicting traditions, they arrived contemporaneously or two or three generations apart, is a question in nowise pertinent to our story. The legend is connected with the Hawaii branch alone, and the order of their coming need not, therefore, be here discussed.

The Paumakua family, which became so influential in Hawaii and Maui, arrived during the early part of the reign of Pili, in about A.D. 1090. A large party accompanied the family, and they brought with them their gods, priests, astrologers and prophets. They first landed and secured possessions in Maui; but the sons and other relatives of Paumakua were brave and ambitious, and soon by conquest and marriage secured an almost sovereign footing both in Maui and Hawaii.

One of the nephews of Paumakua, Hakalanileo, who was the son of Kuheailani, as an entering wedge to further acquisitions became in some manner possessed of a strip of land along the coast in the district of Hilo, Hawaii. It was a large estate, and the owner availed himself of every opportunity to extend its boundaries and increase the number of his dependents. His wife was the beautiful Hina of Hawaiian song and daughter of the seeress Uli, who had migrated from Tahiti with some one of the several expeditions of that period--possibly with the Paumakua family, although tradition does not so state.

At that time Kamauaua, a powerful chief of the ancient native line of Nanaula, held sway over the island of Molokai. He proudly traced back his ancestry to the first migration in the sixth century, and regarded with aversion and well-founded alarm the new migratory tide which for years past had been casting upon the shores of the islands a flood of alien adventurers, whose warlike and aggressive chiefs were steadily possessing themselves of the fairest portions of the group. He had sought to form a league of native chiefs against these dangerous encroachments; but the wily invaders, with new gods to awe the masses and new customs and new traditions to charm the native nobility, had, through intermarriage and strategy rather than force, become the virtual rulers of Hawaii, Maui, Oahu, and Kauai, and he had abandoned all hope of seeing them supplanted.

Molokai alone remained exclusively under native control, and its resolute old chief had from their infancy instilled into his sons a hatred of the southern spoilers and a resolution to resist their aggressions to the bitter end.

The eldest of the sons of Kamauaua was Kaupeepee. He was a warlike youth, well skilled in arms and mighty in strength and courage, and so profound was his detestation of the alien chiefs that he resolved to devote his life to such warfare as he might be able to make upon them and their subjects. With this view he relinquished his right of succession to his first brother, Keoloewa, and, gathering around him a band of warriors partaking of his desperation and courage, established a stronghold on the promontory of Haupu, on the north side of the island, between Pelekunu and Waikolo.

At that point, and for some miles on each side of it, the mountains hug the ocean so closely as to leave nothing between them and the surf-beaten shores but a succession of steep, narrow and rugged promontories jutting out into the sea, and separated from each other by gorge-like and gloomy little valleys gashing the hills and, like dragons, for ever swallowing and ejecting the waves that venture too near their rocky jaws.

One of the most rugged of these promontories was Haupu. It was a natural fortress, precipitously fronting the sea with a height of five hundred feet or more, and flanked on the right and left by almost perpendicular declivities rising from narrow gulches choked with vegetation and sweetening the sea with rivulets of fresh water dashing down from the mountains seamed by their sources. It was connected with the range of mountains back of it by a narrow and rising ridge, which at a point something less than a mile inland, where opposite branches of the two flanking gulches approached each other closely, was contracted to a neck of not more than fifty paces in width. The summit of the point abutting the ocean was a comparatively level plateau, or rather series of three connecting terraces, embracing in all an area of nearly a hundred acres.

Surrounded on three sides by almost perpendicular walls, and accessible on the fourth only by a narrow and easily-defended ridge extending to the mountains, little engineering skill was required to render the place well-nigh impregnable.

Setting himself earnestly to the task, Kaupeepee soon transformed the promontory of Haupu into one of the strongest fortresses in all the group. He surrounded the plateau with massive stone walls overlooking the declivities, and across the narrow neck leading to the mountains raised a rocky barrier ten feet in thickness and twenty feet in height, around which aggression from without was rendered impracticable by the excavation of precipices leading to, and in vertical line with, the ends of the wall. Instead of a gate, a subterranean passage-way led under the wall, the inside entrance being covered in times of danger with a huge flat stone resting on rollers.

Although the passage was rough and in unfavorable weather attended with danger, canoes could enter the mouths of both gulches and be hauled up beyond the reach of the waves, and beyond the reach of enemies as well; for above the entrances, and completely commanding them, frowned the broad battlements of Haupu, from which might be hurled hundreds of tons of rocks and other destructive missiles. With ingenuity and great labor narrow foot-paths were cut leading from the middle terrace to both gulches, some distance above their openings, and affording a means of entering and leaving the fortress by water. These paths connected with the terrace through narrow passage-ways under the walls, and a single arm could defend them against a host.

Within the walls buildings were erected capable of accommodating in an emergency two or three thousand warriors, and on the lower terrace, occupied by Kaupeepee and his household, including his confidential friends and captains, a small heiau overlooked the sea, with a priest and two or three assistants in charge. Mountain-paths led from the fortress to Kalaupapa and other productive parts of the island; and as fish could be taken in abundance, and Kaupeepee and many of his followers controlled taro and other lands in the valleys beyond, it was seldom that the stronghold was short of food, even when foraging expeditions to the neighboring islands failed.

The services of the courageous alone were accepted by Kaupeepee, and it was a wild and daring warfare that the little band waged for years against the alien chiefs and their subjects. They could put afloat a hundred war-canoes, and their operations, although usually confined to Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii, sometimes in a spirit of bravado extended to Kauai. Leaving their retreat, they hovered near the coast selected for pillage until after dark, and then landed and mercilessly used the torch and spear. This part of their work was quickly done, when they filled their canoes with the choicest plunder they could find or of which they were most in need, and before daylight made sail for Haupu. Women were sometimes the booty coveted by the buccaneers, and during their raids many a screaming beauty was seized and borne to their stronghold on Molokai, where in most instances she was so kindly treated that she soon lost all desire to be liberated.

Occasionally they were followed, if the winds were unfavorable to their retreat, by hastily-equipped fleets of canoes. If they allowed themselves to be overtaken it was for the amusement of driving back their pursuers; but as a rule they escaped without pursuit or punishment, leaving their victims in ignorance alike of the source and motive of the assault.

A prominent chief of Oahu, whose territory had been ravaged by Kaupeepee, traced the retiring fleet of the plunderers to the coast of Molokai, when it suddenly disappeared. He landed and paid his respects to the venerable Kamauaua, then at Kalaupapa, and craved his assistance in discovering and punishing the spoilers, who must have found shelter somewhere on the island. The old chief smiled grimly as he replied: "It is not necessary to search for your enemies. You will find them at Haupu, near the ocean. They are probably waiting for you. They do not disturb me or my people. If they have wronged you, land and punish them. You have my permission."