Vol. 07 No. 1 Pacific Studies

PACIFIC STUDIES a journal devoted to the study of the Pacific-- its islands and adjacent countries FALL 1983 Anthropology Archaeology Art History Ethnomusicology Folklore Geography History Sociolinguistics Literary Criticism Political Science Sociology Published by INSTITUTE FOR POLYNESIAN STUDIES (Brigham Young University--Hawaii Campus) Funded by the Polynesian Cultural Center EDITORIAL BOARD Roger Green University of Auckland Reneé Heyum University of Hawaii Rubellite Johnson University of Hawaii Adrienne Kaeppler Smithsonian Institution Robert Kiste University of Hawaii Robert Langdon Australian National University Ioane LeMamea Pacific Islanders’ Educational Research Center, N.Z. Stephen Levine Victoria University Katharine Luomala University of Hawaii Barrie Macdonald Massey University Cluny Macpherson University of Auckland Leonard Mason University of Hawaii Norman Meller University of Hawaii Richard M. Moyle University of Auckland Cohn Newbury Oxford University Douglas Oliver University of Hawaii Margaret Orbell Canterbury University Nancy Pollock Victoria University Karl Rensch Australian National University Bradd Shore Emory University Yosihiko Sinoto Bishop Museum William Tagupa Office of Hawaiian Affairs Francisco Orrego Vicuña Universidad De Chile Tuaopepe Felix Wendt University of the South Pacific Edward Wolfers Macquarie University PACIFIC STUDIES Editor GLORIA L. CRONIN Associate Editor Book Review Editor ANITA S. HENRY DALE B. ROBERTSON Editorial Policy Pacific Studies is published twice yearly by the Institute for Polynesian Studies, Brigham Young University--Hawaii Campus, Laie, Hawaii, 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the writers alone. Subscription rate is US $10.00. Accounts payable to the Institute for Poly- nesian Studies should be sent to the editor. Articles submitted to the editor should be the original typewritten copy, double spaced, following a recognized, scholarly style. Books for review should also be sent to the editor. The Institute for Polynesian Studies, Brigham Young University--Hawaii Campus, is an organization funded by the Polynesian Cultural Center. The Institute assists the Center in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, and publication. The Institute cooperates with other scholarly and research institutions in achieving their objectives. It publishes monographs, produces films, un- derwrites research, and sponsors conferences on the Pacific islands. Fur- ther information on the activities of the Institute may be obtained by writing to its Director, Jerry K. Loveland, at the address above. © 1982 Brigham Young University--Hawaii Campus. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America. ISSN 0275-3596 Vol. VII Fall 1983 Number 1 CONTENTS Articles Phantom Night Marchers in the Hawaiian Islands KATHARINE LUOMALA . 1 Nukuhiva in 1819. From the Unpublished Journal of a Swedish Traveler BRITA ÅKERRÉN . 34 Fish Names of Wallis Island (Uvea) KARL H. RENSCH . 59 Editor’s Forum Cultures in Collision: Hawai’i and England, 1778 HAUNANI-KAY TRASK . .. 91 Book Review Forum Bradd Shore, Sala’ilua: A Samoan Mystery. THELMA S. BAKER JAMES R. BINDON JACOB WAINRIGHT LOVE . 118 Response: BRADD SHORE . 145 Reviews James Clifford, Person and Myth: Maurice Leenhardt in the Melanesian World (DOROTHY AYERS COUNTS) . 157 Rod Ewins, Fijian Artefacts: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Collection (MARIE J. ADAMS) . 160 Richard Feinberg, Anuta: Social Structure of a Polynesian Island (VALERIO VALERI) . 162 Steven Feld, Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression (RICHARD M. MOYLE) . 165. Pauline King, Editor, The Diaries of David Lawrence Gregg: An American Diplomat in Hawaii, 1853-1858 (CHAR MILLER) . 169 Harry Morton, The Whale’s Wake (CAROLINE RALSTON) . .. 172 Nicolas Peterson, Editor, Aboriginal Land Rights: A Handbook (MICHAEL C. HOWARD) . 174 Patricia Polansky, New Russian Books in the Pacific . .175 William L. Rodman and Dorothy Ayers Counts, Editors, Middlemen and Brokers in Oceania (STEPHEN LEVINE) . 182 Elizabeth Tatar, Nineteenth Century Hawaiian Chant (RUBELLITE KAWENA JOHNSON) . 184 Stephen A. Wurm and Shiro Hattori, Language Atlas of the Pacific Area, Part I: New Guinea Area, Oceania, Australia (MAx E. STANTON) . 188 Books Received and Book Notices . 192 PACIFIC STUDIES Vol. VII, No. 1 Fall 1983 PHANTOM NIGHT MARCHERS IN THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS by Katharine Luomala My paper focuses on the phantom night marchers of the Hawaiian Is- lands as reported on the five main islands--Hawai‘i, O‘ahu, Maui, Mo- loka‘i, and Kaua‘i. For the last ninety years or so published and unpublished accounts have surfaced of people encountering the marching apparitions of chiefs, chiefesses, dead relatives, gods, goddesses, and their retinues on roads they had once ceremonially traveled to attend to cus- tomary affairs inextricably combining secular and sacred elements. Ha- waiians call the phantom parade either huaka‘i po (huaka‘i, procession; po, night) or, less often, ‘oi‘o (derivation unknown). The diverse content of the narratives and beliefs, which circulate prin- cipally by oral transmission, suggests that many originated independently during the last century. They evolved in a cultural matrix that encom- passed information passed on orally or from publications about non- phantom--and even some spectral--Hawaiian daytime and nighttime processions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries following Captain Cook’s arrival in 1778. In the next century, foreigners writing about the traditional and the transitional culture had to depend on themselves for organizing processions of their own followers, supplemented by Hawaiians, to conduct their business. Later, Hawaiians who had learned to write described processions in which they had participated or had heard about from elders. In the marches were living human beings, some of whom were led by a man or woman of such high rank as to be consid- ered divine, and by men carrying images of gods of both sexes. Hawaiians believed that marchers might include gods, goddesses, family guardian gods, and spirits of dead kinfolk who assumed either material or spectral forms visible to human onlookers. Source material about phantom marchers of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries consists of my unpublished collection of over twenty 2 Phantom Night Marches in the Hawaiian Islands narratives and statements of belief and about a half-dozen published refer- ences.1 The unpublished material has items from the 1930s but most date from between 1950 and 1970. The first published reference to an ‘oi‘o that I know of was in 1883. It stated that a phantom army led by King Kamehameha’s spirit had been seen on Hawai‘i. Another early account tells of a phantom army led by the spirit of the king’s nephew and foster son Ka-niho-nui, on Maui, that had left many dead persons in its track.2 The fullest published description, largely generalized, was written in 1930 by Mary Kawena Pukui whose information came from her Hawaiian relatives and friends in her native district of Ka‘u, Hawai‘i, and the neighbor- ing districts of Puna and Kona.3 A few years later, Antoinette Withington published over a dozen narratives obtained mostly on O‘ahu from Ha- waiian and Caucasian residents of Honolulu and nearby communities.4 Additional published accounts in newspapers, if located, might be useful to determine any effect on the frequency and content of experiences later reported. By and large, however, there is little published on the night- marching apparitions. The four categories of sources are: (1) narratives by persons who have encountered the marching spirits, (2) those about a relative’s or a friend’s experience, (3) those about someone unknown to the storyteller, and (4) impersonal descriptions of the belief. The information about daytime and nighttime processions in Ha- waiian culture of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries comes from Hawaiian scholars writing in Hawaiian, sometimes for publication in nineteenth-century Hawaiian-language newspapers and periodicals. Part of this material has now been translated into English and published. Among these writers are David Malo, S. M. Kamakau, Kepelino Keauoka- lani, and especially John Papa I‘i, who was born in 1800 and died in 1870. Martha F. Fleming has usefully assembled many early nineteenth- century descriptions by Englishmen and Americans about processions conducted for diverse purposes by both Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian dig- nitaries and commoners.5 In the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the processions held during coronations, funerals, and other events relating to members (or former members) of the royal family, contained elements of still earlier processions. By the end of the nineteenth century the monarchy established by Kamehameha had fallen, and the United States annexed the islands. Processions are a study in themselves, but my concern in this paper is merely to suggest the nature of those familiar to early Hawaiian writers because they form the background for the phantom marchers of later Phantom Night Marches in the Hawaiian Islands 3 years. In connection with the earlier processions, I shall mention occa- sional elements of the later ones to illustrate the continuity of customs and beliefs. First, however, I shall quote a story told in 1970 by a Hawaiian fish- erman of Pepe‘ekeo, Hawai‘i, about the time he and his companion heard the phantom night marchers and saw their torches.6 The limpet picker related his story this way: One night when I was fishing for ulua [crevally, Carangidae] Mahu-kona side, I was sitting listening to the waves crash on the rocks. I was with Keoki. We started talking story after sliding fresh puhi [eels] down the line. It was about ten o’clock. Suddenly I heard the sound of a conch shell blowing in the distance. Keoki heard it too. I thought it was the wind. Then a little while later we heard it again. This time it was a little louder. It was spooky because we didn’t see anything, Then we heard it again. We looked to- ward Ka-wai-hae side and then we saw it.

Load more