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Names & Creature Profile

Moʻo names a range of beings in Hawaiian accounts, rather than one individual with a single biography. Pukui and Elbert’s Hawaiian Dictionary gives several reptilian meanings alongside water spirit. The word also has other senses, including succession and a genealogical line. Those dictionary senses clarify language; the story of a particular moʻo must still establish its identity, actions and relationships. [5]

Kakea in Nakuina’s The Punahou Spring is a water god responsible for sources in Mānoa and Makiki, and a maternal ancestor of two children. Kiki-pua in Emerson’s Pele and Hiiaka is a dangerous presence on a precipitous Molokaʻi route. One consents to help a young relative; the other offers an apparent way forward that is meant to destroy its users. A reptilian designation alone would tell the reader very little about either encounter. [1][2]

Homeland & Tradition

Nakuina’s telling follows the children across named parts of Oʻahu. Their mother has died, their father is away, and their stepmother’s mistreatment drives them from Kaʻala toward other refuges. They reach the head of Mānoa Valley, a cave near Kūkaʻōʻō and finally the hills behind Punahou. Each move begins as an attempt to become safe. The eventual spring answers a need that persists even after they have escaped the person pursuing them. [1]

Hui o Koʻolaupoko’s public Kawainui history, reproduced from Hoʻonaʻauao no Kawai Nui, presents Hauwahine as a guardian whose presence supports food and welfare. She and her companion can remove the fish if a chief’s land agent oppresses the people or neglects their needs. The pond’s productivity thus belongs within a relationship that includes the people’s treatment, rather than an unconditional supply of resources. [6]

Historical Record

The Punahou Spring appears under Mrs. E. M. Nakuina’s name in Thomas G. Thrum’s 1907 Hawaiian Folk Tales. The anthology identifies its contributors instead of presenting every chapter as Thrum’s own telling. Its publication preserves an attributed English account with a complete family history and a later explanation of the spring’s guardians’ departure. The publication date does not fix the age of every element in that account. [1]

Emerson’s 1915 Pele and Hiiaka explains in its preface that the material came partly from Hawaiian newspaper serials, partly from interviews and partly from contributions requested from Hawaiians. He also says that he gave it literary shape. His Kiki-pua episode belongs to that authored English presentation. Its hostile descriptions and its emphasis on Hiʻiaka’s campaign against moʻo should not stand in for every Hawaiian speaker’s understanding of every guardian. [2]

Appearance & Signs

Kiki-pua’s most consequential form is not her usual woman’s appearance. At a break in the cliff path, a thin plank seems to offer a crossing above the sea. Wahine-omaʻo begins to step onto it. Hiʻiaka stops her, and the apparent bridge disappears. It was Kiki-pua’s tongue. The bodily detail becomes frightening through its practical disguise: a traveler in difficulty sees exactly the structure she needs. [2]

The de Silvas’ comparison of Hawaiian newspaper versions describes a different problem of recognition at Kawainui. In Hoʻoulumāhiehie’s 1906 telling, Wahineʻōmaʻo admires two women; Hiʻiaka identifies them as Hauwahine and her moʻo companion. Their human appearance produces disagreement between the travelers before the encounter moves on. The description belongs to that named version. [3]

Nakuina gives Kakea his role and relationship without supplying an elaborate portrait of his body. His unseen assistance helps open the underground route and excavate a bathing pond. A full encounter does not always require scales, size and color. Here the water’s arrival reveals his effective presence more clearly than an invented view of his anatomy could. [1]

Nature & Powers

Kakea’s assistance is specific. The boy has already met him and knows him as a relative. When asked to help create a watercourse, Kakea also promises a share of the neighboring Wailele spring so that the supply will last. The boy dives beneath the pond called Kanawai and travels through the passage that opens to Punahou. Rushing water breaks through the ground and makes a basin; the boy then banks and walls it. [1]

The work continues after the first emergence of water. With Kakea’s invisible help, the boy makes a larger pond where his sister can swim, then establishes kalo patches. Water changes what the children can do and where others can live. The moʻo’s power does not erase the boy’s labor. Their combined activity turns a hiding place with an unmet need into a place capable of supporting a community. [1]

Kiki-pua’s changing form serves an opposed purpose. Emerson describes her ability to take different shapes and conceal a destructive intention. The tongue crossing is a calculated offer of apparent safety. Hiʻiaka answers it with another extraordinary crossing: she stretches her own magical pāʻū across the gap, and both travelers pass securely. The episode places deceptive assistance and effective assistance side by side. [2]

Tales & Encounters

Before Punahou’s water appears, the children repeatedly lose what they have managed to secure. Their stepmother denies them necessities, finds their hiding places and drives them onward. At Kūkaʻōʻō they grow sweet potatoes, only to have her take the ripe crop when she discovers them again. At their next refuge, the sister complains that she cannot bathe because there is no water. Her brother wants to remain where they are safer, so he seeks Kakea’s help instead of abandoning the refuge. The request grows out of the accumulated cost of flight. [1]

The new spring enables a different future. His sister wakes to a pond where dry ground had been earlier that day. People are attracted by the water and the fertile land and settle around the twins; further kalo patches make a thriving place. The family’s return brings a tragic reckoning: on learning how his children were treated, their father kills Hawea and then himself. Nakuina includes that violence in the account rather than offering an uncomplicated reunion after the children become secure. [1]

The twins later return to Kaʻala and visit the places associated with their travels. Punahou remains under their special care until, in the telling’s later history, foreigners take the land and spring, cease honoring them and defile the water. The twins withdraw to the head of Mānoa Valley. Their passing presence over the old home becomes sorrowful, and the account ends with bare ground that no longer offers their former food. The consequence is a changed relationship with the place, not merely the completion of a useful water feature. [1]

Kiki-pua’s encounter also has an ending beyond the revelation of her tongue. After Hiʻiaka provides a safe crossing, Kiki-pua flees into cavernous rocks. Hiʻiaka pursues, catches and kills her. Emerson presents the result as another stage in the removal of hostile moʻo from the route. His narrative does not leave the creature waiting beneath the same false bridge for the next traveler. The trap is exposed, the travelers cross and the opponent is defeated.

Landscape & Associations

The underground passage in Nakuina’s account links an existing pond, a neighboring spring and a newly watered refuge. Its emergence produces a basin, while the surplus leaves through a narrow outlet. These details make the arrival of water spatially memorable. The story traces where the supply comes from and where it goes before describing the settlement that gathers around it. [1]

Emerson’s cliff path reverses that promise of connection. A gap interrupts the route, and the apparent plank seems to join its edges. Because a false crossing could be fatal, recognition must come before the next step. The same physical problem then receives a different solution through Hiʻiaka’s pāʻū. The setting creates the creature’s opportunity and determines what the heroine must overcome. [2]

Variants & Kindred Beings

The de Silvas follow the Kawainui encounter through three newspaper versions. Their account of Hoʻoulumāhiehie supplies a complete sequence: Wahineʻōmaʻo disputes Hiʻiaka’s identification; Hiʻiaka chants; the women vanish into the water; the companion acknowledges what she saw; Hiʻiaka explains the guardians’ residences, and the travelers continue. That outcome is recognition and departure, rather than the killing that concludes Emerson’s Kiki-pua episode. [3]

Names prevent the comparison from flattening into one temperament. Kakea consents to a relative’s request, while Kiki-pua disguises a lethal obstacle. The reader can compare their effects on movement without making them interchangeable. One opens a route through water and helps make residence possible; the other turns a necessary crossing into a trap and is removed from the path. [1][2]

Meaning & Belief

The relationship with Kakea precedes the boy’s request. Help comes through ancestry and familiarity, then remains joined to practical work. The spring story also refuses to make possession of a place sufficient for its care. Its later owners have the land and water, yet the twins’ departure signals the loss of a relationship the telling considers necessary. The productive beginning and the sorrowful ending belong to the same account. [1]

Hiʻilei Kawelo’s public Pacific Worlds account connects moʻo guardianship with respect for water and responsibility for places that sustain life. Her explanation is a named contemporary voice from Heʻeia. It gives guardianship an active meaning within the care of a working fishpond, rather than leaving the being as a decorative memory attached to an abandoned landscape. [4]

Later Retellings & Reception

Pacific Worlds preserves Rocky Kaluhiwa and Mahealani Cypher’s telling of an encounter associated with Meheanu. Kaluhiwa’s husband warns a companion against spearing a huge eel. The companion attacks anyway; the eel throws him from the boat and bends the spear, and the others pull him back. Their account identifies the eel with the fishpond’s guardian. The ignored warning and the companion’s recovery give the remembered encounter its consequences. [4]

A community account can also preserve distinctions in what people know. Kawelo describes guardianship through water and its care, while a family encounter supplies a particular warning and outcome. These voices are situated around Heʻeia; they do not need to become a complete anatomy or a single rule for every moʻo. Their different emphases give the named guardian a continuing human context. [4]

The de Silvas return their comparison to teaching beside Kawainui: telling and chanting the story helps listeners recognize a pond and cultivated land beneath an altered surface. Their essay joins the remembered guardians to present care of the place. [3]

Evidence & Open Questions

The selected sources preserve attributed tellings and interpretations. Nakuina’s spring account, Emerson’s shaped English epic and the de Silvas’ newspaper comparison have different forms and purposes. None should be treated as a simple census of supernatural animals. What can be compared precisely is the action each account gives its named being and the consequence that follows for the people and places involved. [1][2]

Kakea’s help is remembered in water arriving where a sister had found only dry ground. Kiki-pua’s danger is remembered in a tongue mistaken for a bridge. The first story then follows water into cultivation, settlement and eventual estrangement; the second follows recognition into a safe crossing and pursuit. The place does more than display an extraordinary being. It carries the result of the relationship formed there. [1][2]

Sources & Manuscript Notes

Begin with Nakuina’s complete The Punahou Spring, chapter XII of Hawaiian Folk Tales, pp.133–138, and Emerson’s complete chapter XVIII, pp.82–86. For Hawaiian newspaper versions of Hauwahine’s encounter, see the de Silvas’ comparison, especially its Hoʻoulumāhiehie section. Pacific Worlds publishes named Heʻeia speakers, while Pukui and Elbert clarify the word’s range. Hui o Koʻolaupoko hosts the Kawainui history used here. [1][2][3][4][5][6]

The Punahou Spring, in Hawaiian Folk Tales ↗
Mrs. E. M. Nakuina; anthology compiler Thomas G. Thrum · A. C. McClurg & Co., 1907; Project Gutenberg transcription of public-domain edition
Complete chapter XII, pp.133–138; fresh full chapter also read at https://scienceviews.com/islands/hawaiianfolktales12.html
Full public-domain story freshly read, including persecution, maternal ancestral relationship to Kakea, spring passage, cultivation, father’s violent death, subsequent guardianship and withdrawal. Ritual details not reproduced as directions; harmful actions remain attributed story events.
Checked 2026-10-11
Pele and Hiiaka: A Myth from Hawaii ↗
Nathaniel B. Emerson · Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 1915; Project Gutenberg
Preface; complete chapter XVIII, pp.82–86
Fresh complete selected chapter and preface read. Woman disguise, tongue false plank, Hiʻiaka restraining companion, pāʻū crossing, flight, pursuit and death checked. Author’s hostile/generalized language not adopted as universal Hawaiian doctrine; no claim whole epic read.

The artist’s reading of the legend

Illuminated folios

These artworks interpret the stories and landscapes explored here. They are imaginative illustrations, rather than historical records or evidence of an encounter.

An unnamed long green-blue lizard-like form rests partly beneath a freshwater pond among basalt, ferns and mountain slopes, inside a dark basalt, silver-fern and lunar frame. — Original interpretive illustration informed by the lizard and water-being senses of moʻo in Pukui and Elbert’s Hawaiian Dictionary and public descriptions of freshwater guardians.

Return to the manuscript collection ↑