Palapala, Volume 3 (2024)

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Nā Kūʻauhau a me nā Moʻokūʻauhau Kuʻuna: Hawaiian Genealogists and Traditional Hawaiian Genealogies
(2024) Langlas, Charles M.
This article begins by discussing the traditionally-taught Hawaiian kūʻauhau (genealogists) who are known from the early nineteenth century, and the surviving genealogy books written by three of them: Davida Malo, Pelakila Kamokuiki, and Kaʻōʻō. Those genealogy books have been little studied by contemporary scholars, but they are quite important sources. The aliʻi genealogies they recorded are first compared with each other and with the genealogy found in the celebrated mele Kumulipo. Subsequently, three later kūʻauhau are discussed who were not taught traditionally but who collected and published aliʻi genealogy later in the nineteenth century—S. M. Kamakau, S. N. Haleʻole, and Abraham Fornander. Several differences are noted in the work of the various kūʻauhau, for the most part, differences between that of the earlier group and that of the later group, including these: (1) the genealogy recorded by Malo and Kamokuiki of the earlier group goes back many generations further than the genealogies published by the later group, as does the mele Kumulipo; and (2) Kamakau and Fornander of the later group combined traditional Hawaiian genealogy with biblical tradition to create a syncretic genealogy, positing the earliest ancestor as a man created by the gods Kāne, Kū, and Lono, while none of the earlier group did so.