Hiʻiaka's journey

At a Glance

• Central figures: Hi’iaka-i-ka-poli-o-Pele, youngest and most beloved sister of the volcano goddess Pele; Lohi’au, a chief of Kaua’i and Pele’s lover; Hopoe, Hi’iaka’s dearest friend, a woman of Puna who danced on the shore.
• Setting: The Hawaiian island chain, from the forests of Puna on Hawai’i to the cliffs of Kaua’i; the Hi’iaka cycle is preserved in extensive mele (chant) and stands as one of the longest sustained narratives in Hawaiian oral tradition.
• The turn: Pele sends Hi’iaka to fetch Lohi’au from Kaua’i, granting her supernatural power for the journey but imposing a single condition - Hi’iaka must not embrace him.
• The outcome: Hi’iaka retrieves Lohi’au from death itself, but Pele, consumed by jealousy, destroys Hopoe and sends fire against Hi’iaka; Hi’iaka, in grief and fury, embraces Lohi’au openly on the cliffs of Kilauea in defiance of her sister.
• The legacy: The lehua blossom of the ‘ohi’a tree remains sacred to Hi’iaka, and the landscapes she passed through - groves, coastlines, ridges across every major island - carry the names and mele she composed during the journey.

Pele had traveled in spirit to the shore of Ha’ena on Kaua’i, drawn by the sound of drums and nose-flutes across the water. She found Lohi’au there, a chief who was dancing, and she wanted him. For three nights her spirit stayed with him. When she returned to her body in the fire-pit of Kilauea, she called for a messenger.

She asked her older sisters first. Each one refused. The journey to Kaua’i was long - across open channels, through forests thick with hostile spirits, over ridges where mo’o (lizard guardians) held the passes. No one wanted to go. Then Pele turned to Hi’iaka, the youngest, the one she had carried as an egg in her armpit during the long canoe voyage from Kahiki.

Hi’iaka agreed. But she asked for something in return: that Pele protect her lehua groves in Puna and protect her friend Hopoe while she was gone. Pele promised. She gave Hi’iaka a skirt of supernatural power and the authority to fight any spirit that blocked her path. She set a term - forty days.

The Forests of Puna

Hi’iaka did not travel alone. She took Wahine’oma’o as her companion, a woman steady enough to walk through what was coming. They left Kilauea and descended into the forests of Puna, where the ‘ohi’a lehua grew so thick the canopy shut out the sky.

Almost immediately, they met mo’o. These were not small lizards. They were enormous supernatural guardians, some stretching the length of rivers, some coiled in pools that blocked the trail. Hi’iaka fought them. She chanted - her voice was the weapon Pele had given her, the mana that gathered in the words of a mele and struck like a thrown stone. She killed the mo’o Pana’ewa in the forest that still bears his name. She broke through tangles of vines and spirits that tried to hold her. Each battle cost time.

She composed chants as she walked. Not war chants only - she sang about what she saw. A particular cliff face. The way mist sat in a valley. A stand of hala trees leaning in the wind off the coast. These mele became the names of places. The landscape of Hawai’i carries her poetry the way a body carries scars.

The Channels Between Islands

They crossed from Hawai’i to Maui, from Maui to Moloka’i, from Moloka’i to O’ahu. Each channel was open ocean, and the crossing was not simple passage. Spirits inhabited the deep water. On O’ahu, Hi’iaka encountered more mo’o, including the great lizard-woman Mokoli’i, whose body became the small island off Kualoa that fishermen still use as a landmark. Hi’iaka killed her or drove her into stone - the traditions vary on the method, not on the outcome.

On every island Hi’iaka helped people she met along the way. She healed the sick. She cleared paths of malicious spirits. She did this not because Pele told her to but because she saw what needed doing and she could do it. The journey was taking far longer than forty days.

The Cliffs of Ha’ena

When Hi’iaka finally reached Kaua’i and climbed to Ha’ena, she found Lohi’au dead. He had hanged himself - or died of grief, or been killed by sorcery; the versions differ. His body hung from a cliff, and his spirit had departed into the regions of the dead.

Hi’iaka chanted his spirit back. This was the hardest thing she had done, harder than any mo’o. She called Lohi’au’s spirit from the place it had gone, drew it through the layers of the afterworld, and pressed it back into his body. He opened his eyes. He breathed. He stood.

She had been given one rule: do not touch him. Do not embrace him. He belongs to Pele.

Hi’iaka kept the rule. She took Lohi’au and Wahine’oma’o and began the long walk back.

Pele’s Fire

But Pele had not kept her promise. Weeks before - perhaps when the forty days expired, perhaps simply because her patience burned as hot as her lava - Pele had looked toward Puna and seen that Hi’iaka was not back. She assumed betrayal. She sent fire down into the lehua groves. The trees burned. She sent fire to the shore where Hopoe danced.

Hopoe was encased in lava. Some say she was turned to stone, a rock that still stands on the coast of Puna and sways in the waves. The dancing woman, frozen.

Hi’iaka felt it. She knew. Crossing the channel back toward Hawai’i, she saw the smoke over Puna and understood what her sister had done. The groves were black. Hopoe was gone.

The Embrace on the Crater’s Edge

Hi’iaka brought Lohi’au to the rim of Kilauea. She could see the fire-pit below, Pele’s home, the place where she herself had been raised. She could smell the sulfur and the scorched lehua wood carried on the updraft.

She turned to Lohi’au, the man she had not touched across hundreds of miles and weeks of walking, and she put her arms around him. She embraced him in full view of the crater, knowing Pele could see.

Pele saw. Fire erupted. Lava poured toward them. Lohi’au was caught in it - killed again, his body consumed. Hi’iaka, wrapped in the power Pele herself had given her, survived the flames. She stood on the burning rock and did not move.

The other gods intervened. Kane and Kanaloa, or in some tellings the family of siblings themselves, brokered a fragile peace. Lohi’au was restored to life a second time. Whether he ended his days with Pele or with Hi’iaka or with neither depends on who is telling the story and which island they come from.

What does not change: the lehua groves grew back. They always grow back on new lava. And Hi’iaka’s chants - the hundreds of mele she composed naming every ridge, every cove, every stand of trees between Kilauea and Ha’ena - those remain. The land remembers the walk even when the people who live on it have never heard the full cycle sung from beginning to end.