Hawaiian Mythology · 42 of 55

Legend of Pikoiakaalala

(a) Fornander version. Pikoi-a-ka-alala is born at Wailua, Kauai, into a kupua family who have the power of taking human or rat form. His father is Alala (Crow), and his mother Koukou, his two sisters are Iole (Rat) and Opeapea (Bat). When his koieie (koieiei) board wins over the others the boys are jealous and push it into the rapids. He jumps in after it and is borne down the Wailua river out to sea and cast up on the beach at Kou on Oahu, where he is found by a man named Kauakahi and carried to the home of his sisters, who have married influential men on Oahu. He recites his family names, is recognized, and the husbands sent for to prepare a feast of welcome. While the food is preparing he joins a rat-shooting contest and is taken as champion by the chiefess Kekakapuomaluihi against the famous rat shooter Mainele, the champion of her husband Kaula-mawaho, ruling chief of the island. Mainele shoots ten rats with one arrow, but Pikoi puts up a prayer to his rat family and strings ten rats and a bat by the whiskers upon one arrow. After a betting contest in which Pikoi wins by riddling upon the word iole (rat), the newcomer is acclaimed victor and Mainele retires in disgrace. On his return to his sisters he eats up most of the food and the people say to each other, “He eats like a god!”

Keawe-nui-a-Umi sends for the expert shooter Mainele to get rid of some elepaio birds who prevent his canoe builders from felling trees for their craft; every tree that the men attempt to fell, the birds declare rotten. Pikoi gets his friend Kauakahi to convey him with the party to Hawaii hidden in a basket, under pretence of carrying with him his god, and when Mainele fails to get the birds Pikoi takes successful aim by watching their reflection in a basin of water. Thus he becomes a wealthy man.

(b) Westervelt version. Pikoi has six rat sisters named after the bow used for rat shooting (kikoo); he himself and his sister Ka-ui-o-Manoa (The beauty of Manoa) who marries Pawa‘a, chief of Manoa valley on Oahu, have human form. The rat sisters teach him chants and he is furnished with a bow and arrows by means of which he wins over all competitors on Kauai except the dog-man Pupualenalena, whose skill is equal with his own. He accompanies his father to visit his sister, who lives with her husband at Kahaloa; they have also a place called Kahoiwai farther up Manoa valley. On the way he shoots and kills the great squid kupua Kahahe‘e who pursues the canoe off Kaena. On the plain below Makiki valley the champion shooter of the chiefess Kaha-maluihi is losing to Mainele, the champion of her husband Kakuhihewa. Pikoi breaks up her bow and arrows, obtains his own from his father, and, employing his family prayer chant to invoke supernatural aid, he spies out rats invisible in the foliage save for their whiskers and strings them upon his single arrow by forties to the ecstatic cheers of the onlookers. For five years he hides until he is a grown man and his rat sisters have gnawed his hair short and colored his face, so that when he appears as a handsome man with a somewhat ragged haircut he is not recognized. The chiefess compromises him by riding in on the same wave with him and he is about to be killed by the chief’s men when the former shooting champion is recognized and tested in a riddling match with Mainele in which he is acclaimed victor. His brother-in-law knocks dead forty of the men who have insulted him; his own “wise arrow” seeks out those who flee; and he becomes known as the “fire shooter” (Ka-pana-kahu-ahi), and dwells up Manoa valley in a great grass house given him by the chief. 41

Cock-fighting was a favorite sport of Hawaiian chiefs as of Tahitian, 42 but without the use of artificial spurs such as are reported for the Dyaks of Borneo. High stakes were laid upon the game. A fine passage in the famous chant of Haui-ka-lani commemorating Kamehameha’s first victory over Kiwalao on Hawaii compares the battle between the chiefs to a cock-fight:

Hawaii is a cock-pit, on the ground the well-fed cocks fight. . . . He (the chief) is a well-fed cock . . . Warmed in the fire-house until the stiffened feathers rattle, p. 428 Of varied colors like many-colored paddles, like piles of kauila timbers; The feathers rise and fall when the cock spurs. The cock spurs north and then spurs south Till one great blow of the spur Hits the head, he flees severely wounded. The chief bites like a dog, Scratches the ground like a fowl, The fowl scratches, the soft dust flies upward. . . . 43