Poliʻahu

Above thirteen thousand feet the air on Mauna Kea turns thin and bitter, and the red cinder underfoot cracks with frost. Two hours downhill the surf comes in warm and the breadfruit ripens. The mountain holds both, and the woman who holds the top of it wears white.

There were four of them in the old tellings, four maidens of the white mantle, all of them beautiful, all of them quick-witted, all of them enemies of Pele. They ruled the cold mountains north of Kīlauea. Lilinoe was the fine mist and the goddess of dead fires. Waiau kept the small glittering lake set in a cinder cone near the summit, forty feet deep at its deepest, enough water to bathe a goddess in. Kahoupokane worked kapa on Hualālai, and the thunder that rolls off that mountain is the sound of her beating the cloth. Poliʻahu is the one whose stories survived. The others have gone thin in the record, and the people who wrote them down in the last century said so plainly rather than inventing the missing parts.

The accounts do not agree on where she came from. Some make her a daughter of Wākea, the sky father. Emma Ahuʻena Taylor, a Hawaiian historian who published her family’s version in 1931, said instead that Kāne reared her, restricted her to Mauna Kea, and cut a silver pool for her at the summit so she could swim unseen. He set a moʻo at the water as guard, Moʻoinanea, a lizard deity able to take human shape, and gave her a nurse called Lihau, the chilling rain, who never left her side for a moment. Whether she is akua or kupua is also unsettled. Some sources rank her among the gods outright; others call her one of the four kupua of the mountain, beings with supernatural power who stop short of divine status. She has been worshipped as both.

Picture her on an ordinary afternoon at the summit, before anything happens: Waiau bathing her in the cold lake and filling her drinking gourd with sweet water, Lilinoe dressing her hair until it lifts and drifts, the mist and the hail keeping station on the ridgeline like servants who are also weather.

The most-told story starts with sport. Poliʻahu and her companions had come down the mountain to a grassy slope above Hāmākua to ride holua, the long narrow sleds that Hawaiians raced down oiled tracks at frightening speed. A stranger appeared among them, a woman of astonishing beauty who said she had come from the far south of the island and asked to join. Lilinoe lent her a sled. The stranger raced like flying fire and still lost, and Poliʻahu was judged fastest.

Then the ground began to warm under their feet. The stranger hurled the borrowed sled into the earth hard enough to split it, and smoke came up through the cracks, and Poliʻahu understood who her guest was. Her companions ran. Pele called the fire out of the caverns beneath Mauna Kea and drove it up the slope, and the snow mantle caught and started to burn. Poliʻahu dragged the burning cloth away, carried it higher, got her strength back, and threw it out over the whole mountain. Clouds came grey and heavy at her call. The snow went down and down the flanks until it reached the lava itself, and the lava stopped, hardened, and choked the vents it had come out of. The fire that was already running was narrowed and forced downhill so fast it leapt off the land into the sea. The rough black shelf of Laupāhoehoe and the sea arch at Onomea are what that quarrel left behind.

There is a stranger episode on Kauaʻi, woven into the tale of Lāʻieikawai. A high chief named ʻAiwohikupua, sailing past the Hāmākua cliffs, saw a beautiful woman sitting on the rocks above the surf with a white cloak folded beside her. They betrothed themselves by exchanging cloaks. He came back with a fleet of canoes and musicians, wearing her white mantle and a red feather helmet, and the three snow mountains stood robed almost to the shoreline to receive him. The maidens came down and the Kauaʻi men felt their blood go cold, and then the maidens threw off the white and called for sunshine, and the snow ran back up to the summits. The marriage did not last. A chiefess of Maui arrived with a prior claim, and Poliʻahu left him. When the chiefess tried to take her place, an unbearable cold closed around her at the altar, and when she fled to the fire for relief the sun mantle wrapped her instead and she cried out at the heat. Then Poliʻahu and her sisters put a cold wave over the whole wedding party, stood in front of them glittering, breathed on them once more, and went home.

Taylor’s telling gives her a happier match. Kū-ka-hau-ʻula, the pink-tinted snow god, came to the mountain every morning with the rising sun and every evening with the setting sun, trying to reach the pool. Lilinoe, Lihau and Kīpuʻupuʻu the hail drove him off each time until the guardian moʻo judged that he meant it. The pink light that lies on the snow at dawn and dusk is the two of them, still at it.

Her power is straightforward and enormous. She makes snow, frost, freezing cloud and killing cold, and she can put out a volcano with a blanket. She can also reverse herself completely, shed the white and clothe herself in sunshine, which is why the same goddess who freezes an island’s lava is credited with the meltwater that feeds its streams. Her limits are just as clear. Kāne bound her to Mauna Kea, and her authority thins as it descends toward the sea. Her mantle is a physical thing that fire can seize and burn. In the first shock of the attack she ran, and only rallied higher up. And for all the earthquakes, the war is a draw. Pele has come out of Mauna Loa again and again and been turned back every time, and Poliʻahu has never once driven the fire out of the south. The island is split between them, and the Hawaiians who tell it say the arrangement is permanent. When snow lies on Mauna Kea and Halemaʻumaʻu is glowing at the same hour, both women are home.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Poliʻahu?

Poliʻahu is the Hawaiian goddess of snow, who lives on the summit of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaiʻi. She is the best known of four sister deities of the white mantle, alongside Lilinoe, Waiau and Kahoupokane. Some sources rank her among the akua, or gods, while others call her a kupua, a being of supernatural power below full divine rank.

Why are Poliʻahu and Pele enemies?

They embody opposed forces, snow and volcanic fire, and they contest the same island. Their most famous clash began at a holua sled race above Hāmākua, where Pele arrived in disguise, lost to Poliʻahu, and retaliated by driving fire up through Mauna Kea. Poliʻahu smothered the eruption with her snow mantle, and the lava that survived was forced into the sea.

What powers does Poliʻahu have?

She commands snow, frost, hail and freezing cloud, and her white kapa mantle can chill flowing lava until it hardens and blocks its own vents. She can also set the white mantle aside and wear a garment of sunshine, melting the snow back to the summit. Her authority is strongest at the peak and weakens as it descends toward the coast.

Who is Poliʻahu’s husband?

In an account published by the Hawaiian historian Emma Ahuʻena Taylor in 1931, Poliʻahu is joined to Kū-ka-hau-ʻula, the pink-tinted snow god, who courted her at dawn and dusk until the guardian moʻo at Lake Waiau allowed him near her. An earlier tale marries her briefly to the Kauaʻi chief ʻAiwohikupua, but she abandons him after discovering he had promised himself to a chiefess of Maui.

Where does Poliʻahu live?

Poliʻahu lives on the snowy summit of Mauna Kea, near Lake Waiau, the small deep lake set in a cinder cone that her sister Waiau keeps. Snow on the summit is taken as a sign that she is at home, in the same way that activity at Halemaʻumaʻu signals Pele.

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Pele, Hiʻiaka, Kamapuaʻa, Kāne, Kū, Lono, Kanaloa, Māui, Moʻo, Kupua, Menehune, Cailleach, Marzanna, Yuki-onna