The _Laieikawai_ is a Hawaiian romance which recounts the wooing of a
native chiefess of high rank and her final deification among the gods.
The story was handed down orally from ancient times in the form of a
_kaao_, a narrative rehearsed in prose interspersed with song, in which
form old tales are still recited by Hawaiian story-tellers.[1] It was
put into writing by a native Hawaiian, Haleole by name, who hoped thus
to awaken in his countrymen an interest in genuine native story-telling
based upon the folklore of their race and preserving its ancient
customs--already fast disappearing since Cook's rediscovery of the group
in 1778 opened the way to foreign influence--and by this means to
inspire in them old ideals of racial glory. Haleole was born about the
time of the death of Kaméhaméha I, a year or two before the arrival of
the first American missionaries and the establishment of the Protestant
mission in Hawaii. In 1834 he entered the mission school at Lahainaluna,
Maui, where his interest in the ancient history of his people was
stimulated and trained under the teaching of Lorrin Andrews, compiler of
the Hawaiian dictionary, published in 1865, and Sheldon Dibble, under
whose direction David Malo prepared his collection of "Hawaiian
Antiquities," and whose History of the Sandwich Islands (1843) is an
authentic source for the early history of the mission. Such early
Hawaiian writers as Malo, Kamakau, and John Ii were among Haleole's
fellow students. After leaving school he became first a teacher, then an
editor. In the early sixties he brought out the _Laieikawai_, first as
a serial in the Hawaiian newspaper, the _Kuokoa_, then, in 1863, in book
form.[2] Later, in 1885, two part-Hawaiian editors, Bolster and Meheula,
revised and reprinted the story, this time in pamphlet form, together
with several other romances culled from Hawaiian journals, as the
initial volumes of a series of Hawaiian reprints, a venture which ended
in financial failure.[3] The romance of _Laieikawai_ therefore remains
the sole piece of Hawaiian, imaginative writing to reach book form. Not