Once There Was Fire: A Novel of Old Hawaii

by Stephen Shender

  The mouth-watering aroma of roasted pig floated on a light breeze from the luau, where more than a dozen imus had only just been uncovered. Yams, sweet potatoes, and greens steamed in calabashes laid out on mats. There were wooden bowls overflowing with several varieties of poi. There was sugar cane and breadfruit, roasted fowl and crispy dolphin and shark meat. As I sat next to my father with the men, licking poi from my fingers and wiping meat juice from my chin, I never spared a glance for my mother and the other women at their own feast. And it never struck me as anything but right and proper that they were denied the pork, shark, and dolphin on which we dined so liberally.

  The feasting continued well into the night. I fell asleep long before it was over, nodding off between my father and my older brother to the pulsing drumming and hula chants. I now look back on this day as one of the happiest of my young life.

  Kamehameha was not done with fighting after his victory over Kalanikūpule, for he had not yet fulfilled his destiny, as foretold by his conquest of the Naha Stone so many years earlier and prophesied as his reward for building the Pu‘ukoholā Heiau. He had not conquered all of our islands. Kaua‘i, where Kaumuali‘i still ruled, was yet beyond his reach.

  Soon after his victory at Nu‘uanu Valley, Kameha had set out from Wai‘anae on O‘ahu’s west coast to subdue Kaua‘i. But a sudden storm ravaged and scattered much of his fleet while it was still between the two islands, in the Ka‘ie‘iewaho Channel. Kamehameha returned to O‘ahu, where he remained for the better part of the year, preparing for another invasion attempt.

  Before Kameha could mount another attack on Kaua‘i, a rebellion against his rule erupted in the Hilo District on Hawai‘i, and he was forced to return to the Big Island to suppress it. Having put down this rebellion, and slaying and sacrificing the young chieftain who had led it, Kamehameha returned to Kailua, his base for the next half-dozen years.

  These were peaceful and bountiful years for the people of Hawai‘i, Maui, Moloka‘i, and O‘ahu. During this time, Kamehameha was preoccupied with arranging for governance of his now far-flung possessions, promoting his subjects’ industry, building and consecrating new heiaus, and, as always, controlling our islands’ trade with haole merchant ships.

  In the time of Kamehameha and his ancestors, it was customary for the seat of government to migrate with the mō‘ī. This arrangement was sufficient when our people’s kings ruled no more than one island at a time, or at most two. One island could be ruled directly and the other by proxy through a trusted relative. After his conquest of O‘ahu, Kahekili managed the affairs of Maui and O‘ahu in this way, naming Kalanikūpule as his regent for Maui and nearby Moloka‘i and Lanai while he remained in Honolulu, and then as regent for O‘ahu after he returned to Maui.

  Now challenged to maintain control of five islands, Kamehameha turned for help to his most trusted chieftains and closest allies. Kameha installed Ke‘eaumoku as kuhina, or governor, of Maui. He appointed Kame‘iamoku to oversee Moloka‘i. To Kamanawa went Lanai. Kameha made Keaweaheulu governor of O‘ahu, and he entrusted the governance of Hawai’i to ‘Olohana. He granted the chiefs and ‘Olohana extensive landholdings on these islands, to distribute among their retainers as they saw fit.

  Kamehameha made one other appointment of great consequence. At Ke‘eaumoku’s recommendation, he appointed Ka‘ahumanu’s and Kahekili Ke‘eaumoku’s cousin, Kalanimoku, his pu‘uku nui—treasurer. Kalanimoku was to advise Kamehameha regarding all future land distributions among the chiefs and commoners, and on the distribution of gifts, produce, hogs, and fish. Anyone who sought a land grant or any other sort of favor from Kameha had to speak to Kalanimoku first. My uncle would not entertain their requests if Kalanimoku declined to forward them. In most cases, when Kalanimoku passed such requests on to Kameha, he would approve them. Kamehameha also made Kalanimoku commander and principal administrator of his army, superintendent of all his tax collectors, and delegated life-and-death decisions pertaining to the most severe violations of the kapus to him. Thanks to Kameha’s confidence in him, Kalanimoku thus gathered much power to himself in the ensuing years.

  My father asked Kamehameha why he had delegated so much authority to Kalanimoku. “Firstly, he is my most trusted ally’s nephew,” my uncle replied. “Secondly, it pleases Ka‘ahumanu. And most importantly, Keli‘i, because I know I can trust him.”

  Kamehameha reserved to himself the promulgation of laws, regulation of trade with the haoles, and decisions concerning war and peace. In these matters, he was assisted by a council of advisers, which included ‘Olohana and ‘Aikake.

  He decreed it a crime to murder, thieve, or rob. These laws applied to ali‘i and maka‘āinana alike. Kameha thus extended his “law of the splintered paddle” to all the islands now under his rule. In the words of the common people, Kamehameha had made it safe “for old men, women, and children to sleep unmolested by the wayside.” Kameha also outlawed the practice of praying people to death even as he maintained the traditional kapus. Despite these admirable reforms, my uncle did not do away with ritual human sacrifices to the gods.

  It was during these years that the haoles first discovered the value of ‘iliahi—sandalwood. They became very desirous of this wood to trade with the people of China, who were avid for it—for their incense, medicine, and carvings. When he learned how much haoles prized sandalwood, Kamehameha reserved the islands’ entire sandalwood trade for himself. He would only accept muskets, cannons, and munitions in exchange for sandal-wood, and the haole merchants were happy to comply.

  Even as Kamehameha bartered sandalwood for haole weaponry, he was careful to conserve this valuable trading commodity. “No one may cut down ‘iliahi trees, save with my permission,” he said. “Anyone who violates this kapu will be punished with death.” Kamehameha also ordered new trees planted to replace those that were harvested.

  He regulated fishing in a similar manner, encouraging it during part of the year and forbidding it during the rest. In this way, he sought to preserve our islands’ fishing for his people. Kamehameha loved to fish, and every day when he wasn’t otherwise occupied, he worked alongside the maka‘āinana folk, preparing fishing gear and bringing the day’s catch ashore. At day’s end, he would summon his treasurer Kalanimoku to apportion the catch—first for the gods, then for Kamehameha, his wives and children, his house-hold and his chieftains, and then minor nobility. The first day the fishing kapu was removed, Kamehameha would share his portion of the catch with the common people. The second day’s catch was reserved for landholders. Thereafter, all were permitted to fish and catch as much as they might for themselves for the next six months. During this time, people would dry and salt a portion of their catch for consumption when it was once more kapu to fish.

  Kamehameha took a keen interest in all domestic activities: canoe building; fabrication of traditional weapons; crafting of household implements such as bowls, spittoons, and hand basins; kapa cloth manufacture and dyeing; cultivation of taro, sweet potatoes, yams, and bananas; and hog and poultry raising. He appointed kāhuna to oversee each of these pursuits and when time permitted, he even named individual craftsmen.

  No aspect of our people’s domestic industry escaped his attention, and no aspect was overlooked by his tax collectors. At Kamehameha’s direction, Kalanimoku appointed tax gatherers for every district of Hawai‘i, Maui, Moloka‘i, Lanai, and O‘ahu. Tribute was collected once a year, during the Makahiki time, as of old, but with a difference. “Kamehameha’s tax gatherers are not kāhuna,” my father once noted. “They do not travel from ahupua‘a to ahupua‘a collecting taxes for the god Lono as the kāhuna once did.” Instead, on the appointed day, the district chiefs and their retainers came to a designated village to pay the tax. The goods thus gathered went first of all to Kamehameha.

  Each ahupua‘a was taxed proportionally, according to its size. Kalanimoku watched the tax collectors closely to ensure that Kameha received a tenth of everything his people produced. It was kapu to shortchange
the mō‘ī, and few tried. Kamehameha would distribute these goods to his household and his principal chieftains, whom he kept close to him at all times.

  Kamehameha restored the old heiaus of our people’s gods and built new ones. These were many and widely dispersed throughout the islands: temples dedicated to Lono; temples dedicated to Kanaloa, god of the sea; temples dedicated to Pele, the god of the volcano; and to Papa, the deity of women. Kameha restored or constructed heiaus dedicated to many more gods and goddesses, for as I have said, our people saw gods in everything around them and worshiped them as needed. Kameha was most attentive to the maintenance of the temples of his war god, Kūkā‘ilimoku, and was adamant that no new temple should eclipse in size the great Pu‘ukoholā Heiau at Kawaihae.

  Kamehameha restored or built so many temples that many more priests were required to serve them, so he appointed many new kāhuna. In this way, and by example of his own piety, Kameha maintained our people’s religious traditions.

  Kamehameha was especially anxious to encourage his subjects’ devotion to our generations-old religion and laws in the face of the haoles’ increasing presence among them. Our benign climate, and, to their minds, our easy way of life, attracted foreigners in ever-greater numbers. Kamehameha welcomed them because he found them useful.

  But as much as he valued the haoles’ skills and services, Kamehameha worried about their influence among our people. “They do not worship our gods,” he told my father. “They do not prostrate themselves before our chieftains. They do not understand our laws. I am loath to apply our kapus to them, but I am concerned about the example this sets for ali‘i and maka‘āinana alike.” Requiring their services, Kameha could not isolate the haoles from our people, and especially not from our women. Thus he was at pains to ensure that people never mistook the haoles’ license for their own. To this end, he charged Kalanimoku with strictly enforcing the kapus.

  Amid his immersion in trade, law-giving, religion, and the daily affairs of his people, Kamehameha found time for his wives, now numbering five, among them his own niece, Keopuolani. About eighteen at this time, she was yet a virgin—which was then almost unheard of for women of her age.

  As I have said, Keopuolani had the burning kapu and could not walk about in daylight. Thus, she spent her days sequestered in her own hale. She could receive visitors there, of course, but only other women, for Kamehameha had forbidden other men from visiting her, on pain of death. He was determined to get a nī‘aupi‘o son from her and the child’s parentage must be beyond question.

  Keopuolani’s belly began to swell with child within a few months of Kamehameha’s return to Kailua. Her first son, the sacred nī‘aupi‘o chief, Liholiho, was born in 1796. Ka‘ahumanu presided at the delivery. The very day my cousin was born, Kamehameha gave him in hanai to Ka‘ahumanu, as he had promised.

  Kailua-Kona, 1802

  “Nāmākēha!” Kekuaokalani shouted at me. “Look out!” Throwing myself to the ground, I narrowly avoided a spear thrown by an older boy. “You must do better than that, little brother,” Kekua reproved me as I scrambled to my feet again, still clutching my own short spear. I said nothing. I was too embarrassed. I had begged to join Kekuaokalani in this day’s mock battle. I was eleven years old and I would be the youngest competitor. “The other boys are bigger, stronger, and quicker than you,” Kekua had cautioned me. “You are not yet ready to compete with them.”

  Nevertheless, I had insisted on joining in that day. By day’s end, my arms and torso were badly bruised from the glancing blows of our opponents’ spears and my hands and knees were bleeding from cuts and scrapes I had suffered from the many times I had fallen on rocks. Despite these physical humiliations, I refused to quit the field and I never complained, so determined was I not to shame my brother in front of his friends.

  At sixteen, Kekuaokalani had become one of the Big Island’s most skilled and fearless competitors in mock battles. My father told Kekua that he reminded him of Kamehameha when he was the same age. “Father says I will be as fierce a fighter as our uncle,” my brother proudly told me later.

  Many of Kekuaokalani’s comrades were equally determined to win glory in battle. They had all come of age during the years of peace since the Battle of Nu‘uanu Valley, so none had yet experienced real combat and they were eagerly anticipating the invasion of Kaua‘i.

  Iwas not destined to become a warrior. Not long after my poor performance in the mock battle, my father took me aside. “Nāmākēha, your uncle, Kameha, wishes you to become foster brother to your cousin, Liholiho. You will devote yourself to him.” I was taken aback by this news; it would mean spending my days with a little boy barely weaned from the breast, at a time when I yearned to prove myself a warrior, even if only in mock fights.

  “But Father, I am too old to play with keiki,” I protested. “I want to be a warrior like Kekua.”

  “Not everyone needs be a warrior, Nāmākēha. Many men serve in other capacities,” my father replied. “Kamehameha has chosen you above all others to be hale aikāne to the nī‘aupi‘o ali‘i, Liholiho.” As Liholiho’s hale aikāne, I would be his closest friend. Said my father, “Our mō‘ī has done you a great honor.”

  Couched in this manner, I could not raise further objections to this decision, even though I knew that he and my Uncle Kameha had come to it because they thought me ill-suited for combat. I felt ashamed, and doubly so because I knew they were right. Swallowing my pride, I said, “It is a great honor, father. Thank you. I promise I will be a good friend to Liholiho and justify Uncle Kamehameha’s trust in me.”

  Liholiho clung to the teat well after other little boys of his age were weaned. It was not his mother’s. Removed from Keopuolani at birth, Liholiho never fed at her breast. Barren and unable to nurse Liholiho herself, Ka‘ahumanu arranged for another ali‘i woman who had recently birthed her own child to suckle the infant prince. “This one will care for him so that you can minister to your mō‘ī,” Ka‘ahumanu said, as she took Liholiho from Keopuolani and handed him over to his wet nurse. Thirteen years younger than Ka‘ahumanu, and as submissive as Ka‘ahumanu was domineering, Keopuolani did not protest.

  By Liholiho’s fourth year, Kamehameha grew impatient for his son to leave the women’s compound and take his place in the men’s house. “It is time to send Liholiho to us,” he told Ka‘ahumanu. “He must learn how to be a man and a chief.”

  “Liholiho is not yet strong enough, Lord,” Ka‘ahumanu said. “He should stay with his wet nurse and me a while longer.”

  “But he eats solid food, does he not? And isn’t it true that he eats well?” Kamehameha asked.

  “Yes, Lord, that is true, but even so he still requires a wahine’s milk.”

  Reluctant to press Ka‘ahumanu further in a domain that he presumed she understood better than he, Kamehameha let the matter rest. He was philosophical about it. “After all, I did not even wear a malo until I was six,” he said to my father. Thus it was that Liholiho remained in the women’s house and in Ka‘ahumanu’s care until he was five years old.

  While Liholiho continued to nurse for much of this time, he otherwise ate well and he was not weak. Ka‘ahumanu, however, fed him all of his solid food, and she continued to feed him poi from her own fingers long after he was capable of scooping it from the bowl himself.

  Ka‘ahumanu discouraged Liholiho from playing with other little boys in the women’s house. “You are nī‘aupi‘o ali‘i,” she told him. “You are higher born than those other boys and you must not demean yourself by playing with them.” Liholiho obeyed her, as he did in all things then.

  Kamehameha removed Liholiho from the women’s house at the beginning of his son’s sixth year. “It is time for him to join the men and the older boys,” he told Ka‘ahumanu. “It is past time.”

  Ka‘ahumanu understood that this time, Kamehameha would brook no opposition. “Yes, Lord, you are right,” she said meekly. “It is time.”

  My father conducted Liholiho to the mua
, the men’s eating house, where Kamehameha and an assemblage of his chiefs and their sons were waiting for him. Kameha was reclining on a mat. The chiefs and boys sat cross-legged in a large circle around him.

  “Here is the keiki who today becomes a kāne,” said my father as he guided Liholiho to Kamehameha.

  Sitting up, Kamehameha pulled the little boy to him and sat him on his chest, an acknowledgment that the child’s kapu was stronger than his own. “Welcome to the house of men, my heavenly son,” he said. I could not help noticing that Liholiho flinched as my uncle took hold of him. My brother also saw and covered his mouth to stifle a snicker. If Kameha noticed this, he gave no indication. It was on this occasion that Kamehameha first publicly recognized Liholiho as his heir.

  A large pig had been slaughtered and baked in the imu that day. Kamehameha offered a portion of the meat, still hot and dripping with fat, in sacrifice to Lono—to induce the god to look favorably upon Liholiho. Kamehameha and his chieftains dined on the rest in the mua’s courtyard.

  Liholiho had feasted before, but never on pork. His eyes widened as he tasted it for the first time. “What is this, Father?” he asked.

  “It is pua‘a,” Kamehameha replied.

  “I have seen many pua‘a, but I have never eaten one,” said Liholiho.

  “That is because when you were only a keiki you lived with women, and pig meat is kapu for them. Now that you are with us in the men’s eating house, you may eat pig, coconut, roasted banana, niuhi shark, and porpoise.”

  “All these foods are forbidden to women? Why?” Liholiho asked.

  “Because the god Kāne has reserved them for men,” said Kameha.

  “Are all these foods kapu even for Ka‘ahumanu?”