232 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLO'GY fBULL. 38 



had put the width of many islands and ocean channels between him- 

 self and her. 



In seeking an explanation of this myth of Pele, the yolcano god 

 and Kama-pua'a, who, on occasion, was a sea-monster, there is no 

 necessity to hark back to the old polemics of Asia. "VA^iy not account 

 for this remarkable myth as the statement in terms of passion fa- 

 miliar to all Hawaiians of those impressive natural phenomena that 

 were daily going on before them? The spectacle of the smoking 

 mountain pouring out its fiery streams, overwhelming river and for- 

 est, halting not until the}^ had invaded the ocean ; the awful turmoil 

 as fire and water came in contact; the quick reprisal as the angry 

 waves overswept the land ; then the subsiding and retreat of the 

 ocean to its own limits and the restoration of peace and calm, the 

 fiery mount still unmoved, an apparent victory for the volcanic 

 forces. Was it not this spectacular tournament of the elements that 

 the Hawaiian sought to embody and idealize in his myth of Pele and 

 Kama-pua'a ? " 



The likeness to be found between the amphibious Kama-pua'a and 

 the hog appeals picturesquely to one's imagination in many ways. 

 The very grossness of the hog enables him becomingly to fill the role 

 of the Beast as a foil to Pele, the Beauty. The hog's rooting snout, 

 that ravages the cultivated fields ; his panicky retreat when suddenly 

 disturbed ; his valiant charge and stout resistance if cornered ; his 

 lowered snout in charge or retreat; his curling tail — how gi-aphic- 

 ally all these features appeal to the imagination in support of the 

 comparison which likens him to a tidal wave. 



" " The Hawaiian tradition of PeJe, the dread goddess of the volcanic fires," says Mr. 

 Fornander, " analogous to the Samoan Fe'e, is probably a local adaptation in aftertimes 

 of an elder myth, half forgotten and much distorted. The contest related In the legend 

 between Pele and Kamaima'a. the eight-eyed monster demigod, indicates, however, a 

 confused knowledge of some ancient strife between religious sects, of which the former 

 represented the worshipers of fire and the latter those with whom water was the princi- 

 pal element worthy of adoration." (Abraham Fornander, The Polynesian Uace, pp. 51, 5'J, 

 Trubner & Co., London.) 



