The Hawaiian Romance of Laieikawai

sto awaken in his countrymen an interest in genuine native story-tellingbased upon the folklore of their race and preserving its ancientcustoms--already fast disappearing since Cook's rediscovery of the groupin 1778 opened the way to foreign influence--and by this means toinspire in them old ideals of racial glory. Haleole was born about thetime of the death of Kamehameha I, a year or two before the arrival ofthe first American missionaries and the establishment of the Protestantmission in Hawaii. In 1834 he entered the mission school at Lahainaluna,Maui, where his interest in the ancient history of his people wasstimulated and trained under the teaching of Lorrin Andrews, compiler ofthe Hawaiian dictionary, published in 1865, and Sheldon Dibble, underwhose direction David Malo prepared his collection of "HawaiianAntiquities," and whose History of the Sandwich Islands (1843) is anauthentic source for the early history of the mission. Such earlyHawaiian writers as Malo, Kamakau, and John Ii were among Haleole'sfellow students. After leaving school he became first a teacher, then aneditor. In the early sixties he brought out the _Laieikawai_, first asa serial in the Hawaiian newspaper, the _Kuokoa_, then, in 1863, in bookform.[2] Later, in 1885, two part-Hawaiian editors, Bolster and Meheula,revised and reprinted the story, this time in pamphlet form, togetherwith several other romances culled from Hawaiian journals, as theinitial volumes of a series of Hawaiian reprints, a venture which endedin financial failure.[3] The romance of _Laieikawai_ therefore remainsthe sole piece of Hawaiian, imaginative writing to reach book form. Notonly this, but it represents the single composition of a Polynesian mindworking upon the material of an old legend and eager to create a genuinenational literature. As such it claims a kind of classic interest.