Guardians of the Fishpond:

A very large ray (lupe) seen in the pond. Photo by Hi‘ilei Kawelo.

Fishponds and other watery places are known in Hawaiian tradition to be inhabited by spirits called mo‘o. The presence and importance of mo‘o in the He‘eia area is so enormous that it is covered extensively in the Footprints chapter. Here, we focus on other guardians of the fish pond.

“There are a couple of guardians of the outside of the fishpond,” Hi‘ilei explains. “Lupe Kia‘inui is one of those, and it goes back to the time of Makanui. During the time that Makanui was living at Ke‘alohi, the caretaker of the fishpond was having difficulties with poaching. People were coming to the fishpond and stealing fish in the middle of the night. And so the caretaker of the pond needed help, and so he called out to that little island you see out there which is called Kekepa, that little offshore islet called out to Lupe Kia‘inui.

Another large ray by the pond. Photo by Hi‘ilei Kawelo.

“Lupe in Hawai‘i means stingray. It also means kite, so you can understand the shape of the kite corresponds to the shape of the lupe. Lupe Kia‘inui responded to the request of the caretaker at that time, and decided that the way that Lupe Kia‘inui would assist with his entourage of lupe would be that the lupe would swim, patrol the fishpond from within the pond and from outside of the fishpond. They would basically just swim back and forth along the fishpond wall.

“And anytime the lupe would encounter someone that had ill intentions or wanted to poach and steal or cause trouble, then the lupe would whip its tail out of the water, strangle that afore-mentioned kanaka by the neck, and drag them into the water out to a reef that’s located in that general direction. The reef’s name is Ko‘amanō. Ko‘a is reef or coral, and manō is shark. It’s the big round reef right off of the fishpond wall, that’s it. That one.

“So they worked in concert with the sharks that live there at Ko‘amanō, taking the body of that afore-mentioned bad person out to the reef and letting the body go. And it’s believed that there’s a shark cave located underneath the reef and the sharks would come ravage the body. There would be no remains whatsoever. But there are stories that talk about occasionally bones washing ashore. And that’s Lupe Kia‘inu anyway.

“One year we had two big stingrays in the pond that were as wide as that boat, and when we drove up side by side, we’re like, if that’s not Lupe Kia‘inui in there then I don’t know who that is because it was more than five feet wide. We see stingrays all the time. There’s probably sting rays in the pond today but we often see stingrays. We see a lot of spotted eagle rays.

Hi‘ilei displays a barracuda caught in the pond. Photo courtest of Hi‘ilei Kawelo.

“One thing fish ponds have always been known for are its kīa‘i, guardians—they have supernatural guardians,” Keahi adds. “There are stories of He‘eia having the five-foot kaku, the barracuda in here. We talk a lot about trying to eradicate predators so that we can give our fish a better chance to live, but there's also that idea of keeping the population very healthy and very strong and by hānai—adopting and allowing one large fish to really just dominate the pond.

“In a very good way he’ll help keep the population healthy by picking off the weaker ones. If diseases come, if fish are sick, if they start getting bacteria growing on them, it is beneficial that there is a predator in here that will start picking off those ones that don’t have a better chance, so that hopefully they don’t start to spread those bacteria that can grow on them or other diseases.

"So most fishponds have had a pet, a fish that they wanted to be in there and he ate what he had to. In no way is he going to wipe out the forty thousand pounds of fish in the area. He might eat one hundred pounds or so.”

Pacific Worlds > He‘eia, O‘ahu > Native Place > Fishpond