ʻAumakua

A shark turns into the shallows and nobody on the beach reaches for anything. They walk down to the water instead, carrying ʻawa and a bundle of young kalo leaves, and they greet it by name. Somewhere on its flank is a marking they have known since childhood, the same shape as the cloth a grandparent was wrapped in. In Hawaiʻi that is not a brave act or a foolish one. It is a family obligation being met on time.

The word is ʻaumakua, plural ʻaumākua, and Pukui and Elbert take it as ʻau, group, joined to makua, parent: the ancestral collective, a whole parent generation gathered into one standing word. These are family and personal gods, the dead of a particular line made divine and kept in relationship. An old chant fixes their position in a single line, nā akua i ka pō, nā ʻaumākua i ke ao. Gods of the night, ʻaumākua of the day. Kāne and Kū and Lono and Kanaloa hold the vast public end of Hawaiian religion. The ʻaumākua hold the near end, and they know your name.

A traditional saying gives them two natures at once, ʻano lani, ʻano honua, a heavenly nature and an earthly one. That is the whole mechanism in four words. An ʻaumakua keeps a foot in Pō, the great darkness where the gods and the ancestors are, and wears a body on loan from the daylight world. The bodies run by family and by island: sharks on every island but Kauaʻi, owls at Mānoa on Oʻahu and in Kaʻū and Puna on Hawaiʻi, hawks on Hawaiʻi, and past those the ʻelepaio and the ʻiwi, mudhens, octopuses, eels, mice, rats, dogs, caterpillars, rocks, cowries, clouds and plants. One pueo is a family’s ʻaumakua. Not every pueo.

They were made, and the making was a procedure. Kamakau describes the offering of a corpse to become a shark in full detail, down to the fees owed the officiating kahuna and the food owed the shark god itself. There was a ceremony at the offering, an appearance by the ʻaumākua already in service to receive the new one, then a slow transformation, until the kahuna could bring the family down to the water and point out the markings on one particular shark that answered to the cloth their dead had been wrapped in. Older than that practice, probably, was the dedication of a body to become an owl, or a moʻo, or a flame in Pele’s service. Bones alone could carry it. When the chief Kualiʻi had Pumaia killed over a withheld pig and threw his bones into a pit, Pumaia’s spirit told his wife where to find them, and she and her daughter hid in a cave at the top of the Nuʻuanu pali and worshipped the bones until he was stronger dead than he had been alive. Kualiʻi got no peace until he had built three houses, one for the widow, one for her possessions, and one for the bones.

The owls are the oldest of these protectors and the best recorded in action. Ka pueo kani kaua, says the chant, the owl who sings of war. A beaten commander watched which way an owl flew and marched his men to the place where it came down, under the wings of the owl. A warrior of Kamehameha’s, running in the press of a battle, was a stride from going over a cliff when an owl came up into his face; he got his spear into the ground and stopped. Napaepae of Lahaina, capsized in the Pailolo channel, swam all night and was going under when an owl beat its wings across his face and turned his head toward land. On Oʻahu a man called Kapoi robbed an owl’s nest, felt sorry for the parent crying over it, and gave the eggs back. He took the owl for his god and built it a heiau; the chief Kakuhihewa read that as rebellion and ordered him killed; and at the moment of execution the sky over Waikīkī went dark with owls. The place is still called Kūkaeunahio-ka-pueo, for the sound of owls rising in a mass.

The moʻo ranked next after the sharks, and Kamakau was impatient with anyone who pictured a gecko. The real ones lay in the inland fishponds at two to five fathoms of length, twelve to thirty feet of black body, most often visible when fires were lit on altars close to their water. Give one ʻawa and it would roll side to side like a canoe keel. Kihawahine, a chiefess of Maui dedicated at death to become a moʻo, finished as a goddess in her own right with heiau on two islands, and Kamehameha carried her image through his conquest. The named ancestral sharks ran to comparable scale. Kū-hai-moana was reckoned thirty fathoms long with a mouth the size of a grass house, out in the deep water off Kaula. Kāne-i-kokala did nothing but collect the shipwrecked and put them ashore, and the people of Kahiki-nui would not eat his sacred kokala fish, or touch food that had touched them, or cross the smoke of an oven where they were cooking.

The clearest account of what all this was for ran in the Hawaiian language newspaper Ka Nupepa Kuokoa in June 1906, describing a crossing made in 1842. Eight people left Niʻihau for Kauaʻi by canoe and went over around noon in a sea they could not right the hull against. Lilimaikalani and Hinaaholo, the parents, floated by the wreck and prayed, and an owl came out of nowhere and hung above them. That is our road, the father said, and they swam after it. Through the night the pueo would drop, beat its wings against his forehead, and climb again. They came ashore at Nuʻalolo on the Nāpali coast at first light. The children had roped themselves together so the sea could not separate them, and hung there until Kaopuaikamakaokekai said he had heard the family once had a shark ʻaumakua and it would cost nothing to find out. The others refused, being afraid of being eaten, then stopped being more afraid of the shark than of drowning, and agreed. He prayed twice. The ocean lifted and dropped, the water went warm, a tail fin brushed him, and the manō came up in front of them. They held the fins for twenty-seven hours and were set down at Kalalau, the last two carried on to Hanalei. Nobody was lost.

What an ʻaumakua can do follows from what it is, which is a relative with better access. They come in dreams, hōʻike a ka pō, revelation in the night. They speak outright. They arrive as signs, and a rainbow burning mostly red is ke kau mai nei ka mākole, the red-eyed one resting overhead, which for some families is simply the ancestor looking in. They give warning of trouble on its way as readily as they answer a call for help. A shark ʻaumakua drove fish into the net and put a capsized fisherman back on his hull, and was fed every day for it. None of this was thought of as magic. It was a household carrying on past the point of death.

The limits are where the system grows teeth. It runs on exchange, and the living side of the exchange is work: hoʻomana and hānai, to worship and to feed. The offerings, kaumaha ʻai, were pigs, chickens, dogs, fish, young kalo leaves, and above all ʻawa. Against that, the family may not eat or harm the creature its ʻaumakua wears, and the prohibition travels by resemblance as well as by species, so a family with an eel leaves caterpillars and sea cucumbers alone for sharing the shape. Break it and the correction comes from inside the family. Petty theft could be answered with a hand swollen and aching until the thing was put back. Eating the ʻaumakua’s own form was worse, and the accounts have people violently ill or dead soon after. Greed, jealousy and dishonesty were enough on their own. Kamakau tells of a family descended from a shark, one of whose members, having broken the shark god’s kapu, was laid in the sea beside the fin for days at a stretch and brought back to shore alive and weakened; he could get no corroboration from the family, all of them dead by his time, but he had seen the place, and his parents’ and grandparents’ generation told him hundreds of people had watched it happen. For every version of the offence there is one prescription: hoʻokahi nō lāʻau lapaʻau, ʻo ka mihi, there is only one medicine, and it is to repent.

Beckwith, writing in 1940, said there was scarcely a Hawaiian family of the old type that could not name an ʻaumakua known to the whole community. The naming is where an outsider runs out of road. Some families speak of theirs freely, others hold it inside the line, and pressing the question is mahaʻoi, rude. Which means the record of ʻaumākua that sits in books is the portion that was offered rather than the whole of it, and the rest of it is still in use.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an ʻaumakua?

An ʻaumakua is a Hawaiian family or personal god: an ancestor who has died, been deified, and returned in a borrowed body to watch over that particular family line. Pukui and Elbert read the name as ʻau, group, plus makua, parent. ʻAumākua are distinct from the great public gods such as Kāne and Pele, and an old chant separates them directly, nā akua i ka pō, nā ʻaumākua i ke ao, gods of the night and ʻaumākua of the day.

What forms does an ʻaumakua take?

ʻAumākua appear as sharks on every island except Kauaʻi, as owls at Mānoa on Oʻahu and in Kaʻū and Puna on Hawaiʻi, and as hawks on Hawaiʻi, along with the ʻelepaio and ʻiwi birds, mudhens, octopuses, eels, mice, rats, dogs, caterpillars, rocks, cowries, clouds and plants. The form belongs to the family, not to the species. One particular pueo is a given family’s ʻaumakua, and families often knew their shark by a scar or marking on its flank.

How do ʻaumākua communicate with their families?

ʻAumākua speak through dreams, called hōʻike a ka pō or revelation in the night, through direct speech, and through signs in the natural world. A rainbow burning mostly red is ke kau mai nei ka mākole, the red-eyed one resting overhead, taken by some families as the ancestor looking in. They warn of misfortune coming as readily as they answer a request for help.

What happens if someone harms their family’s ʻaumakua?

Harming or eating the creature an ʻaumakua inhabits breaks kapu, and the accounts describe people becoming violently ill or dying soon afterward. The prohibition extends by resemblance rather than species alone, so a family whose ʻaumakua is an eel also leaves caterpillars and sea cucumbers alone. Lesser offences drew lesser corrections, including a hand left swollen and painful until stolen property was returned, and the single remedy for all of it was hoʻokahi nō lāʻau lapaʻau, ʻo ka mihi, to repent.

How was an ʻaumakua created?

An ʻaumakua was made by dedicating a corpse to a god in a ceremony run by a kahuna, with set fees for the priest and food owed to the receiving god. Kamakau describes the shark version in detail, ending with the kahuna pointing out to the family the markings on one particular shark that matched the cloth their dead had been wrapped in. Bodies were also dedicated to become owls, moʻo, or flames in Pele’s service, and preserved bones could be worshipped to the same end.

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Moʻo, Nanaue, Kupua, Nightmarchers, Lua-o-Milu, Kāne, Kū, Lono, Kanaloa, Pele, Hiʻiaka, Kamapuaʻa, Aitu, Taniwha