A keiki offers a hoʻokupu to an ancient moʻo. Moʻo are shape-shifting water spirits/deities that usually take the form of giant lizards or serpents. This original artwork is part of a series “E Hoʻomanaʻo i nā Moʻo” by Solomon Enos.
By Marie Alohalani Brown
Tradition holds that when you come across a body of fresh water in a secluded area and everything is eerily still, you should not linger for you have stumbled across the home of a moʻo akua.
When the plants are yellowed and the water covered with a greenish-yellow froth, the moʻo is at home. Leave quickly, lest the moʻo make itself known to you, to your detriment. It might eat (ʻai) you or take you as a lover (ai) – either way, you are doomed because it will consume you completely.
Moʻo akua embody the life-giving and death-dealing characteristics of freshwater, the element with which they are associated.
The belief in reptilian deities is not unique to Hawaiʻi. Reptiles are a global phenomenon – snakes, crocodiles, alligators, and lizards are found in most parts of the world. Revered or reviled, across place and time they have held, and continue to hold, a prominent place in the religions or cultures of many peoples. Whether land or water dwellers, or a bit of both, they have slithered, glided, crawled, and climbed their way through the human imagination and into many belief systems.
Collectively, supernatural reptiles may be entirely reptilian, humanoid, or composite creatures; may possess multiple forms; or may have been human before their reptilian transfiguration or born as a reptile from a human mother. Whether major or minor divinities, demigods, or monsters, supernatural reptiles have held diverse cultural-religious roles.
During an earlier period in Hawaiian history, moʻo akua held different roles and filled a variety of functions in overlapping sectors – familial, societal, economic, political – but religion was the foundation upon which these roles and functions were established, as it was the belief in moʻo akua that engendered them.
Although moʻo are fearsome deities, our ancestors honored them as ʻaumākua, fishpond guardians, guardians of freshwater sources and, in certain cases, akua associated with war and politics. The following snippets of moʻo moʻolelo are just a little taste to whet your appetite for things moʻo.
A Ritual to Summon Kihawahine
When Lonoapiʻilani succeeded his father Piʻilani as supreme ruler of Maui, he took every opportunity to humiliate his younger brother, Kihapiʻilani. Eventually, Kihapiʻilani wanted to take revenge. He sought help from the kahuna who cared for their family akua, Kihawahine. The kahuna predicted that the powerful Kihawahine would be how Kihapiʻilani would get revenge on his brother.
A few days later, Lonoapiʻilani visited the kahuna to ask why his fishermen always gave the first catch to Kihawahine and not to him, their ruler. He asked the kahuna to summon Kihawahine.
The kahuna agreed and explained that a house with an imu must be built on the islet Mokuʻula, where Kihawahine lived in an underwater cave. The house and the imu must be built in a single day and decorated to please Kihawahine.
At dawn, the people gathered wood for the house, pili grass for the roof, kapa quilts dyed in yellow and in green, and pigs and dogs for offerings. Then the people dug the imu, killed the animals, and covered the imu. Instead of using ti leaves to cover the imu, they used finely woven mats of makaloa sedge and lengths of yellow and green kapa. The stones to hold down the mats and kapa needed to be much larger than usual. It took five men to carry each stone. When the imu setup was finished, the floors were covered with fine mats and the walls covered with lengths of green and yellow kapa.
That afternoon, the kahuna called the brothers for the ritual.
Lonoapiʻilani asked why Kihapiʻilani was there. The kahuna explained that both brothers needed to be present for the ritual. The kahuna warned them not to show fear when they saw their akua. Whoever showed fear and ran away would become destitute. Whoever remained would rule Maui. Lonoapiʻilani scoffed and told the kahuna to get on with the ritual.
The kahuna began to pray. After the kahuna performed two prayers, he told the brothers, “I will begin to pray again. Then, you should look carefully up at the house rafters to see a white thing like a spider’s egg hanging in the middle and when it descends like a spider web until it is above the center of the imu, it will vanish. When you have seen the strange thing, this is your akua, and you must tell me after I am finished praying.”
Because this prayer required it, the brothers kept perfectly still and silent until the prayer ended. They carefully observed the rafters. They saw a little spider web appear, growing and unfolding like a rainbow until it was centered above the imu. There, it dropped atop the imu and then disappeared. As the kahuna prayed, his voice slowly lessened in volume to just a whisper and then he stopped whispering, just moving his lips as his eyes bulged from the strain of his efforts, which continued until he finished the prayer.
During this prayer, the moʻo had begun to eat the imu’s contents. As she ate, the kapa covering the imu rose and shifted, and her movements displaced the heavy stones. The kapa and mats flew up, and seemed to move like a hula dancer, but the moʻo was not yet visible.
Once the kahuna finished the prayer, the brothers told him what they had seen. The kahuna said, “Now you will see your akua. If you feel fear, you should say so now so that it will not be obvious.”
When the brothers heard the kahuna’s words, they were indeed filled with fear, but they quickly conquered it. Lonoapiʻilani snapped, “Whatever indeed is there to flee from, we have come to see the akua.”
The kahuna pulled back the imu’s kapa covers to reveal the moʻo. Its skin was like that of an ʻūhā eel but much darker and incredibly shiny. The moʻo turned its eyes toward them, revealing its terrifying nature.
Horrified, Lonoapiʻilani fled the house and swam with all his might in the waters of Mokuhinia until he reached the shore, where he quickly ran to his house – never to return again to Mokuʻula.
Meanwhile, Kihapiʻilani had remained seated and, with great fortitude, suppressed his fear of the moʻo as she revealed all of her forms to him.
As the moʻo climbed on and around Kihapiʻilani, the kahuna reminded him, “Be steadfast against the fear so that vengeance may be had, for yours is an akua of power, which is why the aliʻi before you honored and cared for her, and this akua, Kihawahine, is a royal akua, a ruling akua, which you should take note of, so tolerate your fear.”
After Kihawahine’s extraordinary displays, she disappeared under one of the kapa covering the walls. Kihapiʻilani heard water splash, and shortly thereafter, Kihawahine walked through the door in her human form. She was a beautiful young woman who wore a lei ʻāpiki on her head. This lei is made from ʻilima flowers and takes its name from the belief that these flowers attract mischievous spirits.
After Kihapiʻilani faced Kihawahine without fear, he supplanted his brother as ruler of Maui and rose to greatness while Lonoapiʻilani, destitute, faded into oblivion.
This moʻolelo, where I found this ritual to summon Kihawahine, also explained why the mullet and yellow chicken are considered her kino lau. The head of Kihawahine’s moʻo form resembles the head of a mullet. A chicken’s hip bone, when turned sideways, also resembles the head of her moʻo form. Kihawahine is said to be fond of yellow.
Kāmehaʻikana, Nāwahineikawai, and Lanihuli
In two versions of a moʻolelo about Kamaakamahiʻai, Kāmehaʻikana (Haumea) has a moʻo form and lives in her cave, Kaualehu, in ʻIolekaʻa cliff in Heʻeia, Oʻahu.
She adopts Kamaakamahiʻai’s daughter, Kahelekūlani. When Kahelekūlani dies, Kāmehaʻikana turns her into a moʻo who then takes the name Nāwahine- ikawai and goes to live in Kauaʻi. In a continuation of this moʻolelo, which follows Kahelekūlani’s son, Keakaokū, we learn that one of Keakaokū’s ancestors is the moʻo Lanihuli, who lives in a cave in Nuʻuanu Pali.
Lanihuli has several kino lau: a gigantic lizard, a web-spinning spider, a hairless dog, a caterpillar, and an owl.
In his moʻo form, the scales above his right eye are red and those above his left are black. When placed on someone else’s eye, the red scales allow to see what is far away; the black ones allow to see what is near.
In his human form, Lanihuli is described as dark-skinned with long gray hair and a gray beard. He wears a white malo and a feathered cloak, and carries a wooden club in his right hand and a coconut fan in his left.
Luhiā
A man named Luhiā lived just below where Henry Cobb Adams is now living [in Kāneʻohe, Oʻahu]. Seaward of his makeshift hut, he farmed sweet potatoes, and upland of it and below, he farmed taro along with everyone who also lived in those places down to Kalokoloa.
There was a large, very flat stone in the front of a house of some men. There were other stones standing there nearby when I left, but after 1908, I never saw them again; perhaps they were broken to bits, perhaps not? I never saw them again!
Every morning that Luhiā saw houses that had lit a cooking fire for lāwalu, he would go to that house and spy as the people prepared them, which they would return later to eat. However, while the people of those homes looked on with regret, he would release the cooked lāwalu if they contained goby fish. Furthermore, to get revenge, he would go straight to that flat rock, step on it, and say, “Through the handle of the food bundle is life, oh younger siblings.”
As soon as Luhiā would call out, the goby-fish lāwalu would open, and everyone jumped in shock and surprise when they saw with their own eyes the hundreds and hundreds of moʻo-kā-lāʻau (black lizards) jumping out from inside the various cooked bundles through the handles (where they were knotted) and fled from atop the flat rock where Luhiā stood.
When this Luhiā turned around, the people realized that he was not a real man, but a moʻo. His cave is about 15 or 20 yards seaward of the Kauwa Bridge.
In a different moʻolelo, Luhiā is described as a warrior. When he fights in his human form, he uses his moʻo eyeballs as stones for his slingshot.
The Moʻo of Kekuawailele
There was once an old woman who lived close to the stream of the hill Kekuawailele. Her home was a cave in the middle of the hill. People often saw her sitting on a long stone in the stream.
When people came down who lived at Kamanaiki, which is a ravine where the pools of Waiʻāpuka are located, and passed that luahine (old woman), she would ask them if they were going down to the sea, and they would answer her.
If they were going fishing, she would wait until they had left, then go into her cave, which had a second entrance, one that overlooked the sea south of Auau. There, she would pluck out her eyeballs and send them to fish for her, and then sit there, blind until they returned.
When the people who had gone fishing returned, to their great surprise, they would find her at her usual spot, scaling fish. Other strange things this old woman did included changing herself into a moʻo, and there were many bodies into which she would transform.
What was outstanding was that she did not trouble anyone, because where she lived was the path the people of ʻEwa took to go up, and also where the bones of the aliʻi of Kamanaiki Valley, who had been tyrants, were interred.
An Encounter with a Moʻo of Pāhala
In 1895, Daniel Kekau and Aola, who spent the night near a gulch upland of Pāhala in Kaʻū, Hawaiʻi, were woken up by a voice saying, “Eia la ke moe nei” (Here they are, sleeping).
It was a moʻo, between 5- and 6-feet long. As it moved to grab Aola, the men attempted to reason with it by claiming kinship: “E, he mau pulapula maua nau, nolaila, e ola maua” (Oh, we are your descendants, therefore, spare our lives). After that, the moʻo left them alone.
An Encounter with a Moʻo of Lower Puna
In 1901, a white man who was touring the “uninhabited southern section of the district of Puna” on Hawaiʻi Island with a Hawaiian guide claimed to have seen a moʻo one night while camping “in the mouth of a large cave” near the ocean.
By the light of the moon, the man could clearly see this moʻo, which was not even 50 feet away.
It was between 5 and 6 feet long. Frightened, he grabbed his gun to shoot it, but his guide stopped him. The guide explained that, although he had never seen one, this creature was clearly a moʻo, and it might be Kihanuilūlūmoku.
The guide then chanted to the moʻo as the two men slowly backed away to leave the area.
Alanapo
Alanapo and her brother Naulu-o-Weli lived upland of Keʻei on Hawaiʻi Island.
Alanapo slept in a stream in her moʻo form. Alanapo and Naulu-o-Weli were famed for their fighting skills and for harassing the people of Keʻei.
When Ka-Miki and his rat kupua brother, Ma-Kaʻiole, saw Alanapo for the first time, she was in her human form. Ka-Miki challenged Naulu-o-Weli to a fight. Ma-Kaʻiole acted as Ka-Miki’s second and Alanapo acted as Naulu-o-Weli’s second.
While the two men were fighting, Ma-Kaʻiole saw Alanapo’s legs as she was about to enter the fight. The thick folds of her pāʻū hid a moʻo body!
After the fight, Alanapo and Naulu-o-Weli promised Ka-Miki and Ma-Kaʻiole to no longer harm the people of Keʻei. Alanapo asked that people respect her kapu – to follow proper protocol when gathering the greenery and lehua flowers around her home.
Author’s Note
The stories I shared and their sources can be found in my book Ka Poʻe Moʻo Akua: Hawaiian Reptilian Water Deities (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2020). This book is the product of more than a decade dedicated to researching moʻo akua – a journey I began in 2007 as a graduate student pursuing an MA in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (awarded in 2010).
For research on nā mea Hawaiʻi, I rely primarily on Hawaiian-language archives. I do the bulk of my research in Hawaiian language newspapers (1834–1948), which I access through the Papakilo Database. In Papakilo alone, there were 8,000 results for “moo,” and while not every result pertained to moʻo akua, between Papakilo and other Hawaiian-language archives, I was able to recover information on nearly 300 moʻo akua.
The other Hawaiian-language archives I accessed include Mary Kawena Pukui’s recorded interviews with kūpuna from around the islands and tapes of Larry Kimura’s conversations with kūpuna in the radio show Ka Leo Hawaiʻi. In terms of gender, there are 137 female moʻo, 53 male moʻo, 93 moʻo whose gender was not specified, and five moʻo whose gender is either female or male depending on the account.
The most important lesson I learned from my research about moʻo akua is that indepth, meticulous research on a Hawaiian akua or class of akua is paramount if we want to understand the depth and breadth of our ancestors’ ways of knowing and being.
