Shark Devils— and Gods 139 



Solomons were regarded as incarnations of dead ancestors. These were 

 good sharks, which would help their relatives. Alien sharks, who ven- 

 tured into the islands on evil missions, were thought to be malevolent. 

 But fishermen could supposedly drive these evil sharks away by brandish- 

 ing before them small wooden statues representing the native sharks. 



Vietnamese fishermen still refer to the Whale shark as Ca Ong, or 

 "Sir Fish." Small altars imploring Ca Ong's protection can be seen on 

 sand dunes along the central and southern Vietnamese coast. 



Woven into the rich tapestry of Hawaiian legends are many tales 

 of sharks— tales still told by venerable kanakas, repeating the words 

 heard from the lips of their fathers' fathers, who lived when myths 

 shrouded the islands, as the mists still shroud the Hawaiian dawn. 



/ loill tell yoUj the storyteller will begin, oj Kamo-hoa-Ui, the king of 

 all the sharks . . . 



Kamo-hoa-lii, so the old, old tale goes, fell in love with a maiden, 

 Kalei, whom he saw swimming in the sea. Kamo-hoa-lii transformed 

 himself into a man, married Kalei, and fathered a child. Ka?fW-hoa-lii 

 then returned to the sea as a shark. The child, Nanaue, looked like any 

 other child— except that on his back he bore the mark of his shark-father, 

 the mouth of a shark. Although Kamo-hoa-lii had warned that the child 

 must never be fed the flesh of an animal, the taboo was broken, and 

 Nanaue thus learned the magic of making himself into a shark. As a 

 shark, he devoured many islanders. Finally, he was caught and his body- 

 in the form of a great shark— was taken to a hill in Kain-alu. 



"And even today," the old storytellers say, "the hill they took Nanaue 

 to is called Puumano, the Shark Hill . . . The people took bamboos 

 from the sacred grove of Kain-alu and made sharp knives from the bam- 

 boo splits, and thev cut pieces from the body of the shark-man. But the 

 gods were angry, and they took the sharpness from the bamboos in the 

 sacred grove, and to this day the bamboos of Kain-alu are not strong and 

 they cannot cut." 



When the Navy made a major sea base at Pearl Harbor, the dredging 

 operations destroyed the remnants of an ancient shark pen. There, un- 

 known ages before, Hawaiian kings had hurled living men to the royal 

 sharks, and gladiatorial contests had been staged between starved sharks 

 and native gladiators. 



In his invaluable study of South Sea islanders, missionary William 

 Ellis told of shark worship he had witnessed in the Society Islands in the 

 early nineteenth century. He said that the natives deified the Great Blue 

 shark (Prionace glaiica), though they killed and ate other species. "Rather 

 than destroy the Great Blue sharks," the missionary said, "they would 

 endeavor to propitiate their favor by prayers and ofi'erings. Temples 

 were erected in which priests officiated, and ofi^erings were presented 



