The Hawaiian women are always delivered without pain, except in very exceptional cases.  The first time they had occasion to witness, in the persons of the missionaries’ wives, the painful childbirths of the white race, they could not restrain their bursts of laughter, supposing it to be mere custom, and not pain, that could thus draw cries from the wives of the Haole (foreigners).

The ancient Hawaiians cared for their dead.  They wrapped them in kapa with fragrant herbs, such as the flowers of the sugar-cane, which had the property of embalming them.  They buried in their houses, or carried their bodies to grottoes dug in the solid rock.  More frequently they were deposited in natural caves, a kind of catacombs, where the corpses were preserved without putrefaction, drying like mummies.  It was a sacred duty to furnish food to the dead for several weeks.  Sometimes the remains were thrown into the boiling lava of the volcanoes, and this mode of sepulture was regarded as homage paid to the goddess Pele, who fed principally on human flesh.

THE STORY OF UMI; HIS BIRTH AND YOUTH.

Liloa reigned over the island of Hawaii.  In the course of one of his journeys through the province of Hamakua, he met a woman of the people named Akahikameainoa, who pleased him, and whose favors he claimed as supreme chief.

Akahikameainoa was then in her menses, so that the malo of the king was soiled with the discharge.  Liloa said to the woman:  “If you bring into the world a man-child, it shall belong to me; if a girl, it shall be yours.  I leave with you as tokens of my sovereign will my niho palaoa (whale’s tooth), and my lei.  Conceal these things from all eyes; they will one day be a souvenir of our relation, a proof of the paternity of the child who shall be born from our loves.”

That would, indeed, be an unexceptionable testimony, for by the law of kapu a wife could not, under pain of death, approach her husband while in her courses.  The soiled malo and the time of the child’s birth would give certain indications.

Akahikameainoa carefully concealed the royal tokens of her adultery, saying nothing to any one, not even to her husband.  The spot where she hid them is known to this day as Huna na niho, the hiding place of the teeth.

Liloa then held his court at Waipio in all the splendor of the time.  Besides a considerable troop of servants, he had in attendance priests (kahuna), prophets (kaula), nobles, and his only son, Hakau.  The palace was made merry night and day by the licentious motions of the dancers, and by the music of the resounding calabashes.

Nine moons after her meeting with the king, Akahikameainoa gave birth to a man-child, which she called Umi, and brought up under the roof of her husband, who believed himself the father.  The child developed rapidly, became strong, and acquired a royal stature.  In his social games, in the sports of youth, he always bore away the palm.  He was, moreover, a great eater:  Hao wale i ka ai a me ka ia.[13] In a word, Umi was a perfect Kanaka, and a skillful fighter, who made his comrades suffer for it.  At this time he conceived a strong affection for two peasants of the neighborhood, Koi of Kukui-haole and Omakamau, who became his aikane.