Lono

The first sign is always the same. A bank of cloud gathers over the sea in the wrong season, low and heavy and moving against the trade winds, and the older farmers stop what they are doing to watch it climb. Rain is coming, and with the rain the god. In the old Hawaiian reckoning the wet months belonged to Lono, whose head, the priests said, stayed hidden in the dark cloud above, and whose voice was the thunder rolling down off the mountains. He did not walk the earth in a body anyone could point to. He arrived as weather.

That is the difficulty with picturing him. He has no settled face. Where other gods stand as carved figures with fixed features, Lono lives in his kinolau, the natural bodies a god can slip into: the piled rain clouds, the gourd swelling on its vine, the sweet potato fattening underground, the pig rooting in the wet earth. His signs, chanted in prayer, are thunder and lightning and earthquake, the rainbow, wind and whirlwind, the red mountain streams stained with washed earth and rushing to the sea. When the Hawaiians wanted something they could hold and carry, they did not make an idol of the god himself. They built the akua loa, the Long-god, a wooden mast ten or fifteen feet tall with joints carved along its length and a small bird figure at the crown. Across its upper end ran a crossbar hung with feather wreaths, a woven imitation of the kaupu seabird’s skeleton, and two long banners of white bark cloth that trailed almost to the ground. Coming along the coast road from a distance, it looked less like a statue than a sail.

Where Lono came from is not entirely settled. He belongs among the four great gods, standing with Kū, Kāne, and Kanaloa, and some traditions place all four before the making of the world. Yet the priests remembered Lono as a later arrival to the temple orders, a god brought in from Maui and given his own line of priests, worshipped in a way that set him apart. Kū demanded human sacrifice and ruled the seasons of war. Lono asked for redfish and black coconut, awa root and the growing plant, and no man died on his altars. He was the god you prayed to for rain and full storehouses, for a sick child to recover, for the year to be kind.

In every household that kept the old worship there was a gourd for Lono, wrapped in wickerwork and hung by cords from a notched stick, with food and fish and a little awa sealed inside. Morning and evening the man of the house took it down, set it at the door, faced outward, and prayed for the chief, the commoners, and his own family before eating what was inside and sucking the awa from the handle. It was a small, domestic thing, this daily conversation with the weather.

Once a year the small worship became a national one. For four months across the rainy season, from about October to February, the god came down and the islands changed their rhythm. War stopped. The everyday tapu were lifted, the heavy work set aside, and the Makahiki opened with fires on the beach and a ceremonial bathing in the sea, everyone scrubbed clean in the cold water and dressed in fresh cloth. Then the Long-god went out. Carried on the shoulders of priests, it travelled clockwise around the island with the land always to its right, stopping at each district to collect the year’s offerings: pigs and dried fish, bark cloth, feathers, taro and sweet potato heaped before it. A smaller image, the Little-god, went the other way through the uplands. At each chief’s ground the bearers were fed, a fresh girdle of tapa was tied about the god, an ivory ornament clasped onto it, and the people called out to Lono while the priest pointed to the clouds from Kahiki that meant the god had heard them. Games filled the days. Boxing, wrestling, sledding, spear-dodging, and the hula danced for the one great god who permitted it. If a district’s gift was judged too small the god simply stayed the night, and the overseer who had let his land grow thin might lose it.

Underneath the harvest festival runs a darker story, the reason the games began. Lono, the chant says, once took a mortal wife, Kaikilani, descending to her on a rainbow and living with her at Kealakekua on the Kona coast, where they passed their days surfing and playing konane on the black rock. One afternoon a man called down to her from the cliff above, a lover’s message folded into ordinary words. Lono heard it. Believing her unfaithful, he struck her down in a single blow of jealous rage, and only as she lay dying did she swear she had never betrayed him. The grief broke something in him. He carried her body to the temple and wailed over it, then went through the island like a madman, challenging every man he met to box him, fighting his way from district to district with his love turned to fury. The Makahiki games are said to be the funeral he never stopped holding. When he could not bear the place any longer, he built a canoe unlike any other, loaded nothing aboard but himself, and sailed away, promising to come back one day, not by canoe but on a floating island shaded with trees and crowded with pigs and fowl.

That promise had a long afterlife. When Captain Cook’s ships anchored in Kealakekua Bay during the Makahiki of 1779, their tall masts and pale sails crossing the water where the Long-god’s banners had lately passed, at least some of the Hawaiians appear to have folded the strange arrival into the story of the returning god, and Cook was received with honours owed to Lono. Whether the people truly took him for the god, or something more careful was going on, has been argued over ever since, and the real answer is probably lost. How it ended is not in doubt. Cook left, was forced back by a broken mast a week later, out of season now, and was killed in the shallows of the same bay.

Lono’s power is the power of increase. He brings the rain that decides whether a farming people eats, quickens the crops, fattens the pig and the gourd, and holds the peace that lets a harvest come in. But his gifts run on a calendar. His season is bounded, four months and no more, and at its close the Hawaiians took the wickerwork frame that stood for him, set it adrift, and sent the god back to Kahiki until the clouds should bring him round again. He is a god of peace in a world that also needed a god of war, and his authority ends where Kū’s begins. His deepest weakness lies elsewhere, in the tale of the wife he killed on a false suspicion, a god undone by his own jealousy rather than by any enemy. The rains he commands are certain. His judgement, the story admits, was not.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Lono in Hawaiian mythology?

Lono is one of the four great gods of Hawaiian religion, alongside Kū, Kāne, and Kanaloa. He is the god of agriculture, rain, fertility, music, and peace, and he is honored each year in the Makahiki festival. Unlike Kū, Lono was worshipped without human sacrifice.

What is Lono the god of?

Lono governs agriculture, rainfall, fertility, and peace. Hawaiians prayed to him for rain, abundant harvests, and protection from famine, and his presence was read in weather signs such as dark clouds, thunder, lightning, rainbows, and storms. His natural bodies, or kinolau, include the rain clouds, the gourd, the sweet potato, and the pig.

What is the Makahiki festival?

The Makahiki is the ancient Hawaiian new-year season held in Lono’s honor, lasting about four lunar months from roughly October to February during the rainy season. War and heavy labor were forbidden, and the time was given over to games, feasting, hula, and the collection of offerings. A tall image of Lono called the akua loa, or Long-god, was carried clockwise around each island to gather the year’s tribute.

What does Lono look like?

Lono has no single fixed physical form; instead he appears through his kinolau, the clouds, gourd, sweet potato, and pig. His material representation is the akua loa, a carved wooden pole ten to fifteen feet tall with a small bird figure at the top and a crossbar hung with feather wreaths and long white bark-cloth streamers. Some old chants describe him as the god whose head is hidden in the dark clouds above.

Why was Captain Cook connected to Lono?

Captain James Cook arrived at Kealakekua Bay in 1779 during the Makahiki season, and some Hawaiians seem to have linked his tall-masted ships and the timing of his coming to the tradition that Lono would one day return. He was received with the honors owed to the god. He later left, was forced back by a damaged mast outside the festival season, and was killed in the same bay.

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