SPIRITS AND GODS WERE AS REAL TO the old Hawaiians as the actual world. Nothing of importance was done without consulting occult, unseen beings. Some of these are aumakua, a class of ancestral guardians who inhabit the bodies of certain animals.
The three most favored aumakua were the shark, lizard and owl. The family that adopted one particular creature as its aumakua would not eat or harm it as it was considered a protective guardian. The shark was a fearful guardian to whom the dead were sometimes fed to appease its spirit. Once a woman was grasped at the ankle by a shark that was her family guardian. She cried out its name and it let her go with an apology for its mistake. Shark guardians aided their patron family by driving fish into nets and warding off evil.
Lizards in the form of geckoes were also very effective guardians. Animal guardians were friendly to the family that adopted them and unfriendly to family enemies.
The flight of the owl or pueo was watched for an omen of good or evil. To this day some Hawaiians remember their family guardian and treat it with respect.
8 Dogs that did not bark
LONG AGO THE DOG AND THE PIG WERE BROUGHT FROM tropical Polynesia as food, and the rat came as an undesirable stowaway. The only land mammal at that time in Hawaii was a native bat, too small to eat. It is said the Hawaiian dog did not bark. Named 'ilio, it lived on a diet of fish, coconut, scraps and poi-hence the name “poi dog” now given to any dog of doubtful ancestry. This old dog is pictured in rock art as a long, low-slung animal with a back curling tail. When the haole or foreign dog was introduced, the Hawaiian dog became extinct as a separate species because of inbreeding and changed food habits.
The Hawaiian dog probably made whining or singing sounds like the “barkless” dogs of New Guinea to be seen in the Honolulu Zoo. At tabu times their snouts were tied to silence them. They were food, rarely companions, while their flesh was preferred to pork. The Reverend William Ellis in Hawaii in the 1820’s saw 200 dogs baked for a single feast. Skin, hair, bone and teeth had other uses. Bone made excellent fishhooks and teeth were used in dancers’ anklets. Even the kahuna could be paid in dogs for black magic, medicine or canoe building.
Spirit dogs are known in Hawaii. It is said they haunt Nu’uanu Valley; their figures are cut in the rocks near the Royal Mausoleum.
9 The humuhumunukunukuapua’a and other fish
THERE IS A POPULAR SONG DATING BACK TO THE HAPPY pre-World War II days of Hawaii which uses a Hawaiian word that few visitors can pronounce or remember. The song goes: “I want to go back to my little grass shack in Ke-ala-ke-kua Hawaii where the humuhumunukunukuapua’a go swimming by...”
Simply speaking, humuhumunukunukuapua’a is a small fish made famous by its name, which literally means the fish of a family of fishes called “humuhumu” which has a snout like a pig. The humuhumunukunukuapua’a is no more than a very humble member of Hawaii’s numerous species of inshore fish.
The fish fauna of the Hawaiian Islands derived largely from the tropical Philippine and Indonesian waters. They were carried on warm currents to the coasts of Hawaii over millions of years. New species of fish continue to arrive, some coming along as followers of slow-moving barges whose bottoms are trailing seaweed, as stray travellers on currents or by human introduction.
The fish population of Hawaii, so vital to the sustenance of the ancient Hawaiians, has suffered much from modern urbanization, particularly around Oahu. Artificial reefs of old automobiles are restoring fish life by providing shelter from predators, but the fight against over-fishing and pollution must go on if the fish are to return to their former abundance.
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