We have MANY different ethnic groups living in Hawaii and most are highly superstitious and believe in the spirits of their ancestors who walked the lands of our islands. The history of Hawaii tells of our great warriors in battle and their traveling along the paths along the ridges of mountains and valleys between them to get to the ocean. They are called the "Night Marchers"; the ghosts of ancient Hawaiian high ranking warriors.. They can be "seen and heard" marching along carrying torches to light their way and beating drums along places where there were battlefields as well.
The most famous of these "marching" paths of the Nightmarcher's is along the Pali where Kamehameha fought the last battle. So, we then are told that we don't carry pork over the Pali Highway (King Kamehameha lead his warriors over the Pali in 1795 and also Pele had a turbulent relationship with the demigod Kamapua‘ -a half-man-half-pig- and the two agreed not to visit each other. If you take pork over the Pali, you are taking a piece of Kamapua‘a from one side to the other, and Pele would stop that from happening. Your car stops, breaks down.
So...who's Pele? Oh! Pele (peh-leh) is the Goddess of fire, volcanoes, lightening and dance. Her presence is on the Big Island of Hawaii and her home believed to be the summit of the caldera of Kilauea in the fire pit of Halemaumau Crater. Just know, that Pele curses those that take a piece of lava rock away from their sitting places and there are tourists that have literally sent back the rocks because of misfortune.
The Menehune, are "little people" that stand two feet high and are similar to pixi's or trolls. They roam the deep forests at night, are very strong and master builders especially of irrigation ditches. There are many stories how they came to be in Hawaii. One version is that they were the first settlers in Hawaii that came from the descendants of the Marquesas Islanders and resided here between the years of 0-350 A.D. Supposedly, the "bigger people" from Tahiti came and the Menehune ran off into the caves in mountains and only came out at night for food.
In any case, when my cousin and I would travel to Kauai during summer breaks we would stay with my aunt and uncle on Menehune Road in Waimea. At the end of the road was the Menehune Ditch and I remember my cousin trying to crawl inside. Needless to say, at 10 years old I was very afraid that she was "upsetting something" and ran away. She didn't do that again.
This past May we attended my aunt's funeral on Kauai and we went down to the Menehune Ditch and the Swinging Bridge at the end of Menehune Road. The memories that flooded back from 1968-1969!
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© 2008 Celeste "Sally" Cheeseman's Hawaii Real Estate and Relocation Blog. All rights reserved.
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