252 Fontauder Collection of Hawaiian Folk-lore. 



Lohiau, Malaehaakoa offered up a prayer or chant," than which few Hawaiian meles 

 bear stronger evidences of a comparatively genuine antiquity: and yet this mele, prayer 

 or chant, makes special reference to Niheu-kalohe and to Nuakea — an anachronism 

 showing fairly that the mele as well as the legend originated after the time of Maweke's 

 grandchildren. 



I would not be understood as asserting that there were neither chiefs nor ])eople 

 on the island of this group before this period of migrations. The meles and legends are 

 full to the contrary. This very family of Kamauaua and its kindred on Molokai; 

 those of Pueonui and Kealiiloa on Kauai ; those of Hikapoloa on Hawaii and Kaikipaa- 

 nanea and Puna on Kauai, and others, whose names and whose pedigrees ha\'e never been 

 transferred or connected with the lives of Haloa, attest the presence, and previous 

 occupation of the islands by both chiefs and people. But these chiefs were gradually 

 displaced, and disappeared before the new element, the Tahitian influx, with its new 

 gods, its new tabus, and its greater vigour and moral and intellectual ])ower. Whatever 

 the causes that brought these latter ones here, yet, to judge from the case of Pili and 

 Paao, they were not low-born adventurers, but men of mark in their own country, alii 

 kaf'ii, with whom alliances were sought, to whom the vacant chief-seats and the ahuiila 

 naturally fell in the lapse of time, and who kept bards to sing their own names and those 

 of their ancestors, and heralds to proclaim their unbroken descent from Wakea and 



from Haloa. 



The strongest proof, however, as 1 think, of the absence of Hawaiian genealo- 

 gies and of the utter darkness which enveloped Hawaiian history proper before that 

 period, is to be found — as I have already stated — in the fact that all the jirominent 

 Hawaiian chief-families connect with the line of Wakea through Ulu or Nanaulu about 

 this time, and that, in order to establish that connection, they counted through females 

 as well as through males, and dropped the latter whenever they did not lead up to the 

 main trunk of Wakea or someone of that Tahitian element which made its appearance 

 about the eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenth centuries of our era, and who are invariably 

 called "na kupuna alii" — founders of dynasties. — on this or that island. 



That the people of this group, whether chiefs or commoners, previous to this 

 period, were of Polynesian — or as they themselves call it — Tahitian origin, there is 

 no e-ood eround for doubting, and everv reason to believe. But the time of their arrival 

 and settlement, the mode of their arrival, their point of departure, and their political, 

 religious and social condition, will probably always remain insoluble problems. That 

 they arrived here long ages before these later Tahitians, — before their kapu-system, 

 heiau-building, religious ceremonial, etc., had developed into that complex, fanciful and 

 stern rule of life, which it had already become when we first are made ac(|uainted with 

 them, — I think may generally be conceded. From the traditions and meles of these 

 Tahiti-Hawaiians T gather that they found the previous inhabitants of this group living 

 in a primitive manner, without any political organization beyond the patriarchal, and 

 without ka])us — at least of any stringent nature — and without heiaus;'" and, with a 



"This meic was probably composed about the time of "That is, heiaus of the rudest construction and most 



Kamalalawalu. King of Maui, seven generations before simple service, 



the birth of Kamehameha I. 



