From time immemorial it was the custom at Hawaii to eat the flesh of great chiefs after death, then the bones were collected in a bundle, and concealed far out of the way.  Generally it was to a faithful attendant, a devoted kahu, that the honor of eating the flesh of his chief belonged by a sentiment of friendship, no ke aloha.  If they did not always eat the flesh of high chiefs and distinguished personages, they always took away their dead bodies, to bury them in the most secret caves, or in most inaccessible places.  But the same care was not taken with chiefs who had been regarded as wicked during their lives.  The proverb says of this:  Aole e nalo ana na iwi o ke ’lii kolohe; e nalo loa na iwi o ke ’lii maikai—­The bones of a bad chief do not disappear; those of a good chief are veiled from the eyes of all the world.

The high chiefs, before death, made their most trusty attendants swear to conceal their bones so that no one could discover them.  “I do not wish,” said the dying chief, “that my bones should be made into arrows to shoot mice, or into fish-hooks.”  So it is very difficult to find the burial-place of such or such a chief.  Mausoleums have been built in some places, and it is said that here are interred the nobles and kings; but it would seem that there are only empty coffins, or the bodies of common natives substituted for those of the personages in whose honor these monuments have been raised.

THE HISTORY OF KEAWE.

Whatever the historian, David Malo, may say, it is very doubtful whether there were several chiefs of the name of Keawe.  It is probable that there was only one high chief of this name, that he was the son of Umi, and was called Keawe the Great—­Keawe nui a Umi.  David Malo was interested, as the natives know, in swelling the genealogy of the alii, and he wished to flatter both nobility and people by distinguishing Keawe nui, of the race of Umi, from another Keawe.  There are two Keawe, as seven Maui, and nine Hina.  It is not, indeed, so long a period from Umi to the present era, that we can not unveil the truth from the clouds which surround, it.

The people, in general, only speak of one Keawe, who inherited the power of his father Umi.  He was supreme ruler in the island of Hawaii, and is even said to have united, as Kamehameha has since done, all the group under his sceptre.  Kamehameha conquered the islands by force of arms; Keawe had conquered them by his travels and alliances.  While he passed through the islands of Maui, Molokai, and Oahu, he contracted marriages everywhere, as well with the women of the people as with the highest chiefesses.  These unions gave him children who made him beloved of all the high chiefs of that time.  He was regarded at Maui and Oahu as supreme king.  The king of Kauai even went so far as to send messengers to declare to him that he recognized his sovereignty.  Such is the origin of Keawe’s power.