The Hawaiian Romance of Laieikawai | Page 7

and Songs, p. 48.]
[Footnote 9: In Fornander's collection of origin chants the Hawaiian group is described as the offspring of the ancestors Wakea and Papa, or Hina.]

3. THE DEMIGOD AS HERO
As natural forms multiplied, so multiplied the gods who wedded and gave them birth. Thus the half-gods were born, the kupua or demigods as distinguished from akua or spirits who are pure divinities.[1] The nature of the Polynesian kupua is well described in the romance of Laieikawai, in Chapter XXIX, when the sisters of Aiwohikupua try to relieve their mistress's fright about marrying a divine one from the heavens. "He is no god--Aole ia he Akua--" they say, "he is a man like us, yet in his nature and appearance godlike. And he was the first-born of us; he was greatly beloved by our parents; to him was given superhuman power--ka mana--which we have not.... Only his taboo rank remains, Therefore fear not; when he comes you will see that he is only a man like us." It is such a character, born of godlike ancestors and inheriting through the favor of this god, or some member of his family group, godlike power or mana, generally in some particular form, who appears as the typical hero of early Hawaiian romance. His rank as a god is gained by competitive tests with a rival kupua/ or with the ancestor from whom he demands recognition and endowment. He has the power of transformation into the shape of some specific animal, object, or physical phenomenon which serves as the "sign" or "body" in which the god presents himself to man, and hence he controls all objects of this class. Not only the heavenly bodies, clouds, storms, and the appearances in the heavens, but perfumes and notes of birds serve to announce his divinity, and special kinds of birds, or fish, or reptiles, or of animals like the rat, pig, or dog, are recognized as peculiarly likely to be the habitation of a god. This is the form in which aumakua, or guardian spirits of a family, appear to watch over the safety of the household they protect.[2]
Besides this power of transformation the kupua has other supernatural gifts, as the power of flight,[3] of contraction and expansion at will, of seeing what is going on at a distance, and of bringing the dead to life. As a man on earth he is often miraculously born or miraculously preserved at birth, which event is heralded by portents in the heavens. He is often brought up by some supernatural guardian, grows with marvelous rapidity, has an enormous appetite--a proof of godlike strain, because only the chief in Polynesian economic life has the resources freely to indulge his animal appetite--and phenomenal beauty or prodigious skill, strength, or subtlety in meeting every competitor. His adventures follow the general type of mythical hero tales. Often he journeys to the heavens to seek some gift of his ancestors, the ingenious fancy keeping always before it an objective picture of this heavenly superstructure--bearing him thither upon a cloud or bird, on the path of a cobweb, a trailing vine, or a rainbow, or swung thither on the tip of a bamboo stalk. Arrived in the region of air, by means of tokens or by name chants, he proves his ancestry and often substantiates his claim in tests of power, ability thus sharing with blood the determining of family values. If his deeds are among men, they are of a marvelous nature. Often his godlike nature is displayed by apparent sloth and indolence on his part, his followers performing miraculous feats while he remains inactive; hence he is reproached for idleness by the unwitting. Sometimes he acts as a transformer, changing the form of mountains and valleys with a step or stroke; sometimes as a culture hero bringing gifts to mankind and teaching them the arts learned from the gods, or supplying food by making great hauls of fish by means of a miraculous hook, or planting rich crops; sometimes he is an avenger, pitting his strength against a rival demigod who has done injury to a relative or patron of his own, or even by tricks outwitting the mischievous akua. Finally, he remains on earth only when, by transgressing some kupua custom or in contest with a superior kupua, he is turned into stone, many rock formations about the islands being thus explained and consequently worshiped as dwelling places of gods. Otherwise he is deified in the heavens, or goes to dwell in the underworld with the gods, from whence he may still direct and inspire his descendants on earth if they worship him, or even at times appear to them again on earth in some objective form.[4]

Footnotes to Section II, 3: The Demigod as Hero
[Footnote 1: Mariner, II, 103; Turner,