Hawaiian Mythology · 23 of 55

Legend of the Origin of the Slave Class

After Wakea deserts Papa for Ho‘ohokukalani, Papa lives with Wakea’s kauwa Haakauilana and their son is Kekeu. From his wife Lumilani comes Noa. Noa lives with a second Papa and has Pueo-nui-weluwelu, who lives with Noni and has Maka-noni and another child. From this line spring the true kauwa and if any member of another class has a child by a kauwa, that child belongs to the kauwa class. 19

Today, with the breaking down of class barriers, members of the slave class are indistinguishable from the ruling classes, but formerly the kauwa were carefully segregated on lands of their own, forbidden to mix with others, especially by intermarriage, and, when no criminal or captive was at hand for sacrifice to the gods, were drawn upon for such offerings. The term kauwa might, however, be used to show respect to a superior, as we say “your obedient servant,” or to show affection, as of an older relative to a younger. 20

It is likely that the Wakea-Papa marriage is meant to represent, either in these two themselves or in their parents, the highest marriage relationship of a marriage pair, that of brother and sister in a high-chief family, called moe pio (sleeping in an arch), whose offspring took rank above either parent, that of a god (akua). 21 So in archaic Japan, brother-and-sister marriage was the common practice until broken up by Chinese influence. 22 Ka-hanai-a-ke-akua, the boy brought up in Waolani on Oahu by the gods Kane and Kanaloa, is represented in Westervelt’s romance of Ke-ao-melemele, perhaps patterned upon the Wakea-Papa episode, as married to his younger sister, whom he deserts for Pele’s rival, Poliahu.

As in that romance and in the legends of Papa’s prototype

Haumea, the scene of the Wakea-Papa adventures is laid on Oahu. Wakea is born at Waolani on Oahu and he finds Papa in Ewa district on Oahu, and there on Oahu the daughter Ho‘ohoku is born. Kamakau states that “the children of Wakea, up to the time of the disappearance of Haumea, lived between Halawa and Waikiki and for the most part in the uplands and valleys.” The land called Lalo-waia (and hence the name of Wakea’s son Waia) was a fertile land. Wakea (or perhaps his descendants) returned and lived there up to the time of Kamehameha. Some of his descendants emigrated to Kahiki and some peopled the other islands of the group. 23 The story then resolves itself into that of a chief of god-like rank, attached to the Kane and Kanaloa family of gods in Waolani, who weds a daughter of a closely related Ewa family living in the land, and unites the priestly office with that of ruling chief. The chief later neglects his wife’s family, who eventually disappear from the land, and unites his interests with some other ruling line. The pattern occurs too commonly in Hawaiian romance to give it special significance in this connection.

Two chants in which the island births of Papa are made the theme for an enumeration of the islands of the group are so similar as to be certainly drawn from a common source. Both date from the time of Kamehameha and are hence not very early. Of the composers, Pakui is called the kahuna of the heiau of Manawai on Molokai 24 and Kaleikuahulu is described as a native of Kainalu on Molokai, son of the ruling chief Kumukoa and grandson of Keawe, whom Kamehameha appointed to teach to some of the chiefs his knowledge of genealogies. 25