KUNGL. SV. VET. AKADEMIENS HANDLINGAR. BAND 57. N:0 4. 143 



In the time of Kealiiokaloa, king of Hawaii and son of Umi, arrived a vessel at Hawaii . Konaliloha 

 was the name of the vessel, and Kukanaloa was the name of the foreigner (white man) who commanded, 

 or to whom belonged the vessel. His sister was also with him on the vessel. 



As they were sailing along, approaching the land, the vessel struck at the Pali of Keei, and was 

 broken to pieces by the surf, and the foreigner Kukanaloa and his sister swam ashore and were sa ved, 

 but the greater part of the crew perished perhaps; that is not well ascertained. 



And when they arrived ashore, they prostrated themselves on the beach, uncertain perhaps on 

 account of their being strangers, and of the different kind of people whom they saw there, and being 

 very fearful perhaps. A long time they remained prostrated on the shore, and hence the place was 

 called Kulou, and is so called to this day. 



And when evening came the people of the place took them to their house and entertained them, 

 asking them if they were acquainted with the food set before them, to which they rephed that they 

 were; and afterwards, when breadfruit, ohia, and bananas were shown to them, they expressed a great 

 desire to have them, pointing to the mountain as the place where to get them. The strangers cohabited 

 with the Hawaiians and had children, and they became ancestors of some of the Hawaiian people, 

 and also of some chiefs. 



According to Fornander, this story was current in several of the islands, and^the 

 landing of the strangers was localized in various places: the version here quoted, however, 

 which places the event on the west coast of the island of Hawaii, is regarded by hirn as 

 the original one. Though his allegation that the tradition existed before the time of Cook 

 cannot be proved, yet there is no reason to brand it as a modern invention, or to contend 

 definitely that it has no foundation in some real event. On the other hand, it seems to 

 me by no means certain that the shipwrecked strangers were Enropeans. It is true that 

 they are called in the Hawaiian text haole — white people — ; but there is nothing to 

 assure us that this word was not inserted in the original story, or that its meaning did not 

 imdergo some change during the time when the acquaintance of the natives with white 

 men can be historically proved. 1 



Several attempts have been made to determine the time when the event here related 

 happened. Fornander, on the basis of the native genealogies, calculated that king Kea- 

 liiokaloa, during whose time the strangers are said to have arrived at Hawaii, reigned 

 between the years 1521 and 1530, 2 and in accordance with this he assumed that the stranded 

 ship belonged to Alvaro de Saavedra's squadron, a supposition which I have tried above 

 (p. 25) to show to be untenable. J. J. Jarves, with the support of a similar calc vila tion, 

 arrived at the year 1620. 3 Other calculations have been made; but the very different 

 results seem to me to confirm the pronouncement that the genealogies as historical testi- 

 mony and aid for fixing of historical data are almost worthless. 4 



These traditions, which I have given in the words of their first reporters, have since 

 often been cited and combined in different ways: they have even been made the subject 



1 According to Lorrin Andrews (A Dictionary of the Hawaiian Language, Honolulu 1865) Ha-o-lc 

 means "a person with a white skin; hence a foreigner; but Hawaiians say haole eleele for a negro". 



2 Fornander reckons thirty years on an average for each generation. His results were accepted by W. 

 D. Alexander, The Relations between the Hawaiian Islands and Spanish America in early times (Papers of 

 the Hawaiian Hist. Soc. No. 1, 1892). 



3 History of the Hawaiian Islands. 3d ed. Honolulu 1847, p. 55. 



4 Waitz, Anthropologie der Nafitrnilker, Th. Y: 2, Lpz. 1870, p. 213. 



