Traditional Hazuaiian Stories. 253 



feeling- of pride in their superior powers and attainments, although they acknowledged 

 Hawaii as a "Kama na Tahiti" (a child of Kahiki), yet they looked upon it as a natural 

 appanage of themselves, to be taken possession of and reconstructed by them and their 

 posterity. They established political supremacy and the kapus, they built heiaus, intro- 

 duced circumcision, the palm, the oJic and the luda. Tattooing commenced with them. 

 The division of the people into aliis, kahunas, makaainanas and Kauwa-makawela, if 

 not original with them, received a distinctness and permanency from them that hard- 

 ened almost into castes. In short, whatever the condition in which they found the 

 country, they moulded, reorganized and arranged everything on their own pattern and, 

 while they with most elaborate care have left us numerous mementoes of their own 

 time and work, they have left us nearly none of the predecessors. 



While the Hawaiian cosmogonies abundantly betray their Tahitian origin, they 

 also develop some interesting facts which will throw some light on the subject of the 

 Tahitians' (I mean in the Hawaiian sense of the word) settling here at the period to 

 which I have referred. Thus, though the traditions and meles differ as to the actual origin 

 of these islands, some stating them to have been born of Papa and Wakea — a kind of 

 mythical setting back their creation to the oldest known i)eriod of time, and others assum- 

 ing them to be fished up from the sea by Kapuhauanui, a fisherman from Kapaahu in Ta- 

 hiti, and others again that they sprung forth from the night, vet several concur in repre- 

 senting them as forming only a group in a chain of groups of islands extending from Nu- 

 umealani on one side to Holani, Nuuhiwa and Polapola on the other ; and the Mele of Ka- 

 mahualelc, the kahuna of Moikeha, who accompanied him from Kahiki, distinctly states 

 that long before his time Nuuhiwa and Polapola were severed from this chain. Thus 

 the existence and bearings of these islands were known to the Tahitians before their 

 last settlement here; and they knew of the existence of other islands contiguous to this 

 group, or intermediate between this and the eastern and central Polynesian groups, of 

 which neither the names nor the location can now be traced. Another circumstance 

 connected with these lost islands is, that wdiile the meles and traditions referring to 

 times and persons anterior to the last Tahitian settlement liere are full of notices of 

 Nuuniea-lani and Holani and Kuaihelani, as within easy reach of, and having had fre- 

 quent intercourse with this group, yet none of the meles and traditions that I possess 

 makes any mention of them as existing at the time of, or subsequent to, that last Tahitian 

 emigration. Thus the INIele of Kamahualele and the traditions of Moikeha, Olopana, 

 Kila, and Laamaikahiki, make no mention of them as having been visited by these 

 worthies or seen by them in their \'oyages to and from Tahiti. The traditions of Hema, 

 Paumakua and Kahai also ignore them as existing at that time. The tradition of Paao 

 does not refer to them in his voyage with Pili from Tahiti ( Moaulanuiakea) to Hawaii. 



In comparing the New Zealand legends as published by Sir George Grey, I find 

 that the New Zealanders count fifteen generations from the time of their ancestors 

 leaving the land of Hawaiki, in the Samoan or Navigator's group and settling in New 

 Zealand, which was called by them "Aotearoa." Fifteen generations or four hundred 

 and fifty years bring the approximate period of that settlement to about 1400 our era, 

 or from two hundred and fifty to three hundred years later than the last Tahitian settle- 

 ment in this group, the Hawaiian. In the legends, however, which they carried with 



Memoirs B. P. B. Museum, Vol. VI. — 17. 



