Kamapua'a- Polynesian DemigodDemigod · Hybrid"Pig Child"

Birth of the Pig Child

In the Hawaiian-language epic He Moolelo no Kamapuaa, Kamapuaʻa was born with the features of a pig. His family saw a monster. His grandmother saw something else. She hid the child and raised him in secret while his relatives debated killing him. He grew fast, and his strength outpaced his size. By the time anyone could have stopped him, he was too powerful to be stopped.

His pig nature was not a single form but many. He could be a small piglet, a massive boar, or a handsome man with no trace of the animal about him. The shifts came at will.

Kamapuaʻa and Pele

Kamapuaʻa approached Pele at her volcanic home with crude advances. She rejected him with insults and fire. He called down rain, fog, and ocean to quench her flames. Their battle shook the island: lava met water, steam rose in columns, the ground cracked and hissed. Neither could destroy the other.

Beckwith records that they became lovers after Pele acknowledged Kamapuaʻa as her equal in power. They divided the island of Hawaiʻi between them: Pele took the dry volcanic Kona and Kaʻū sides, Kamapuaʻa took the wet forested Hilo and Hāmākua sides. The division holds in the landscape itself. One half of the island burns dry under lava fields. The other half is green and drenched with rain.

The Shapeshifter

Kamapuaʻa's escapes were as famous as his fights. Cornered by enemies, he became grass beneath their feet. Pursued to the coast, he slipped into the reef as the humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa, the triggerfish whose name still carries his. Beckwith and Fornander both record that no adversary who caught him ever held him for long. His body refused to stay one thing.