Hi‘iaka and Mokoli‘i:

Mokoli‘i, the small island shaped like a chinese hat, sites below the ridge of Kualoa.

“Hi‘iaka is the younger cousin of Pele,” Ian explains, “so now we’ve got three: the oldest which is the wave goddess, the middle which is Pele the volcano goddess, and the youngest which is Hi‘iaka, who is the goddess of the verdant forests and all of life. And she goes up to Kaua‘i to get Lōhi‘au, the high-born chief who Pele fell in love with when she passes through Kaua‘i.

“Hi‘iaka is like the Frommer’s Guide to Hawai‘i in the 1400s. She tells us all the environmental and cultural information you would need to pass through. You would want to know the kind of food, the kinds of fish in the sea, you would want to know the name of the ranking family so that you could honor them, the names of the peaks of the mountains and of the streams, and of any important sites and of the surfing sites. And she tells us all this. It’s phenomenal. But of course, there’s the O‘ahu version, which is pretty straightforward we think, and then much more like ‘Oh she gets to Hakipu‘u and she looks offshore and she sees the first-born child of the land, Mokoli‘i, the guardian of this place.’

Mokoli‘i, or "Chinaman's Hat."

“In the Big Island versions, there’s much more of a great battle that goes on with all the mo‘o, and there’s a connotation to this I can’t get into, but it’s a battle for rank. Mokoli‘i, in their version, stops her, says ‘You shall not pass.’ And so a great battle wages. They say it wasn’t waged with spears and rocks and things like that, but rather it was waged all around the mountain peaks. That means ‘Oh yeah, I’m related to that mountain peak.’ ‘Oh yeah, I’m related to that high ancestor.’ ‘Oh yeah, I’m related to that.’

"And just like a poker game, you’re never going to pull your ace straight from the beginning right? And so you climb the ranks. And at some point, the mo‘o can only get so high because Hi‘iaka and their family came from the Tahitian Akua Lineage, which had broken through the ranks of all of Hawai‘i’s genealogies.

“And so even though they were visitors on the landscape, they could relate themselves to the high peak there of Kualoa, which is Kānehoalani, our 'friend in the heavens.' And by doing that, she smote down all the mo‘o—and that’s the term that’s used: ‘smote down.’ I really think that’s means that from a kapu standpoint, then you must fall, go prostrate. In the stories, she killed Mokoli‘i; during the great battle he lost his tail—like every good gecko would—so she took the tail and threw it out onto the sea. And there it is now, Chinaman’s Hat, Mokoli‘i.”

Pacific Worlds > He‘eia, O‘ahu > Footprints > Mā‘eli‘eli & Mo‘o