and Waioli
Waioli Stream begins as a waterfall from Namolokama Mountain, some four miles south of Hanalei Bay. When swollen by recent rains, this waterfall is a spectacular sight from many points along Kauai’s north-east shore.
In his charming book Kauai Tales, a retelling of traditional Kauai stories, Frederick B. Wichman applies the name “Namolokama” to the waterfall. Characters in the stories liken the cascading long hair of a young woman to Namolokama Falls—for example, Na-iwi’s daughter’s hair in the story of Na-keiki-o-na-iwi.
Here’s a story that’s about Waioli Stream and Namolokama, but it has a more serious purpose, according to Mr. Wichman, and illustrates an important way in which oral traditions convey information down the generations. Can you guess that purpose as I try to paraphrase the story?
It’s about the search of a young man for the woman he loves but whom he has never seen. He has heard her from a great distance as she sang to him, calling to him to seek her along Waioli. Starting perhaps from Tahiti, he sails into Hanalei Bay and begins his search where Waioli Stream meets the sea. At several different places along Waioli, he meets women whose appearance and demeanor illustrate that place’s characteristics. For example, at Maha-moku, near the mouth of Waioli’s valley, the story says the stream forms a pond over which a hau tree hangs, its fallen yellow blossoms drifting on the glassy water as they turn a deep red-yellow. The woman there wears a lei of hau flowers. She is resting as the stream rests at Maha-moku after its long journey down mountain and valley.
Each time the young man thinks perhaps he has found the hidden singer, then realizes the woman is not she, and continues to search along Waioli. As he leaves, each woman gives him a sheet of kapa, the bark cloth of Polynesia, of a different color, a color characteristic of that place, for his wife-to-be. For example, the tapa of Maha-moku is the red-yellow of the drifting hau blossoms.
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