Pau, kaula wahine of Hawai'i

In the Kihapiilani Chant, Hawaiian oral history tells about the prominent kaula wahine (female prophet) Pao. She was consulted by chief Kihapiilani of Maui, whose elder brother had forced him into exile. He left disguised as a commoner, and met a man who guessed his noble status. He helpfully suggested that Kihapiilani go to a certain house where his sister Pao was, and that she would be able to guide him on how to best proceed. Before he could set out on the long voyage to Hawaii, he had to first get his wife’s permission to leave:

As soon as he was allowed to go [!] Kihapiilani started for Waikapu where the prophetess [ke kaula wahine] by the name of Pao was living.

Before his arrival, Pao had already predicted to her entourage that a chief was coming to petition her for assistance. And she pointed out the man who would help him. [Fornander, 238-44]

Kaula wahine translates as prophet-woman, priestess, seeress. But I’ve found it difficult to locate more information on the female kaula. Fornander, like so many other early recorders of the traditions, used the European masculine default, which makes it impossible to tell when he is talking about "priests," whether he is talking about all men, or not. In one place he does mention male and female. Thus the barrier of male-default language functions to conceal the presence of powerful women.

In searching for the kaula wahine, and finding very little in libraries or online, it occurred to me that there might be another angle to research. Southern Pacific languages use taula because of a regular sound shift in which Tahitian T becomes Hawaiian K. A whole range of traditions in the southern islands attribute spiritual powers and priestly authority to the taula (also taura, taua).

A web search for taula wahine did pay off by turning up a valuable article, “Oral literature of Polynesia,” in a book with a most unlikely title for such a subject: ) Below is some of the information I was able to gleaned there (see the Sources section below for a more in-depth discussion, including the areoi of Tahiti and the hoki of the Marquesas Islands.).

The Marquesans had “three classes of priestly and mantic persons—the atua, the taua (kaula), and the tuhuna (tohunga) [kahuna in Hawaii].” In the late 1700s, Crook wrote that the atua were regarded as divine persons. “These atua… were few in number, not more than one or two on an island at most, and they lived in great seclusion.” [Chadwicks, 448] (“Divinity” or “numinous person” are ways that atua could be translated.)

“Evidence of human atua in Hawaii [or rather, akua] appears to relate exclusively, or at least principally, to women.” But now the authors counterpose to that statement an implication that the entire prophetic class was male: “There was, however, a class of men known as kaula (‘seers’)” who went into states of divine inspiration, in which a deity warned them of important future events. “Their utterances during their periods of ecstasy were known as wanana, the word by which the Hawaiian translators of the Bible translate our word prophecy, but which appears to have reference any ‘inspired’ utterance of a sustained and formal character.” [Chadwicks, 446]

Having declared the kaula “a class of men” as distinguished from the mostly female group of living akua, on the next page they contradict themselves: “The kaula might be either a man or woman, if we may judge from the evidence of the sagas. A legend of Kalunuiohua, a chief of the royal line of Hawaii about three generations after the Migration Period, associates a prophetess or kaula called Waahia with his expeditions, or with the negotiations for his release out of captivity.” They add that the Hawaiian kaula are included among the kahunas but are more powerful, “owing to their prophetic gifts.” [Chadwicks, 447]

The authors also express skepticism about the existence of priestesses in the Pacific Island: “In general our authorities do not distinguish between the priestess, or temple official, and the female seer. We have not found any satisfactory ground for supposing that any women of the former class have existed in Polynesia in historical times, except possibly in Samoa. On the other hand, women claiming possession by a divine spirit are by no means rare.”

But the authors footnote their claim of no real evidence for priestesses in Pacifica by admitting that a “number of instances” exists in the written record: “but we are inclined to suspect that these have reference in reality to women of prophetic class, or to rare instances in which women’s names have become attached to the priestly class, owing to some other circumstance, such as the descent of a priestly line from a female, or because a woman has become for some other reason the repository of the lore of the priests.”

This rather labored explanation shows no awareness of Hawaiian traditions assigning ceremonies of the female akua to priestesses and of the male to priests, as knowledgeable Hawaiians have told me, and as David Malo recorded in Hawaiian Antiquities (1951: 81). On the preceding page the authors had already mentioned, with the same unwarranted skepticism, that “A number of notices of priestesses have been recorded in the Tahiti Group, and in the Marquesas and elsewhere.” [452] All this after having already given dramatic accounts of the priestesses of Pele, who were regarded as “divine beings, the living and permanent incarnations of the goddess.” [Chadwicks, 445] (See below for more on them.)

Here’s another reference to taula wahine: “In general the distinction between the priest and the prophet that we have noted for the northern and eastern Pacific seems to underlie the systems in Samoa and Tonga also. In Samoa there were at least four classes of priestly and mantic persons who were known as taula-aitu. Here also the god was supposed at times to enter into the taula, and here also female taula are not unknown. Indeed, according to Stair, certain aitu, or gods, are said to have been served by women priests…” And then once again the authors go on to minimize that fact.

In Tonga, they tell us, the priesthood was numerous and powerful. “According to West they were divided into two classes, the taula, ‘or priests inspired by the gods,” and the feao, who offered the sacrifices, and maintained the temples in good order and repair. According to Mariner, the priests are hardly ever drawn from the chiefs, but more often from the landed class, or even the peasants; but this observation seems to have particular reference to the taula class. Such people are said to have differed in no respect in regard to their status or way of life from other people, but to have been more taciturn and given to reflection, and more observant of what was going on.” [Chadwicks, 453-54]

Sometimes Tongans who were not taula were connected with ancestral spirits or deities. They refer to a young prince who “was sometimes inspired by the tutelary spirit of his family, but was not on this account regarded as a ‘priest’.” There were people “who were frequently inspired by a particular god. Such sporadic divine visitations are here most commonly attributed to females.” [emphasis added, Chadwicks, 454]

The Maori waka or kauwaka “seem to correspond in all respects to the kaulas, acting as the medium of the god, whose oracle they received in trance or dream, and also acting sometimes as the guardian of his [sic] sanctuary. They also acted as a medium of communication between the living and the dead. The mantic gift was often hereditary, and shared alike by women and men. [emphasis added] Gudgeon refers to a great tohunga of the early European period who could boast a long line of mantic ancestors on both sides. His mother was a renowned ‘sorceress,’ and his wife even more famous, being descended from a tribe of ‘spirits’.” [Chadwicks, 454]

The authors write that the akua “are represented in Hawaii by certain women who lived in the craters of Mount Kilauea and neighboring volcanoes. Early missionaries speak of these women as the priestesses of the volcano goddess Pele…” [Chadwicks, 444-45] Their accounts are loaded with patriarchal European bias, and offensive for that reason, but also important for the information in them about the akua wahine.

The missionary Ellis recounted an 1825 meeting of Oani the priestess of Pele with a group of early missionaries. She declared to them, “Pele is my deity,” and sang and danced her story before them, “pronounced in a rapid and vociferous manner accompanied by ‘extravagant gestures’.” [Chadwicks, 445] This description betrays the missionaries’ assumptions and judgments that rendered them incapable of understanding what the priestess was about, as she entered into an inspired state.

“Toward the close she appeared to the missionaries to lose all command of herself. Nevertheless, she was able immediately afterwards to carry on a logical and balanced argument in discussion with them.” The ministers revered the biblical prophets, the ecstasies of David or of the Pentecost Christians, but they could not recognize a similar attainment in a Hawaiian priestess, any more than they were able to understand her attempts to reason with them about the value of her culture. They fixated on her declaration that she was Pele, which she reaffirmed when Ellis questioned her, and could not see anything further. [Chadwicks, 445]

The same missionary also described “an official visit of a different priestess of a priestess of Pele, arrayed in her prophetic robes, having the edges of her garments burnt with fire, and holding a short staff or spear in her hand, preceded by her daughter, who was also a candidate for the office of priestess. On this occasion the priestess claimed that ‘in a trance or vision she had been with Pele’ who had charged her to lodge certain complaints against the foreigners who had violated her sanctuary.” [Chadwicks, 445]

C.S. Stewart, another of these missionaries, described an encounter with a different priestess leading a procession across the land. I am going to quote from him in spite of his disrespectful account of the Hawaiian priestess, while taking note of his discounting of her spiritual ecstasy according to a well-worn European pattern of viewing such states as madness, delusion, and even demonic possession. Still, reading across and through his prejudices, we can catch sight of the spiritual potency of this priestess, and her defiance:

I unexpectedly met her in an evening walk, followed by a considerable company…. She was dressed in a fantastic manner, with disheveled hair—her eyes flashing in a half-frenzy, from the degree of excitement to which she had wrought herself—and appeared altogether like a maniac: such as I supposed her in reality to be, til undeceived by the exclamations of the crowd, ‘it is a goddess—it is a goddess!’ As if to intimidate, she approached me with a fierce and daring look; and waving before her a small flag of tapa, appended to a light staff, supported the claim by the declaration, ‘I am a goddess—a goddess indeed’. [Chadwicks, 445-46. Kapa, rather than tapa, is the Hawaiian name for bark-cloth.]

The last chief priestess of Pele visited this same Stewart after her conversion to Christianity (still accompanied by her retinue). His account coughed up a short description of her ceremonial leadership: “At the time of the sacrifice the priestess had been accustomed to descend into the depths of the volcano, and approaching the place most accessible and most active with fire, she had cast the gifts into the flames, with the exclamation: ‘Here, Pele, is food for you.’ Her father was the hereditary kahu, or steward, as she was the priestess of Pele. His duty was to provide the materials for the general sacrifices [her food and raiment] – and to have all things in readiness for the offerings at the appointed seasons.” [Chadwicks, 446]

The authors claim that the oral traditions offer “no clear instances” of female temple officials, “though instances are not lacking of women gifted with second sight, and described as ‘prophetesses’ [here probably translating kaula wahine] and ‘sorceresses.’ An early Hawaiian saga refers to a renowned seeress of this class called Kukelepolani as having been employed by Kila in Tahiti to help him find his brother La’a-ma-i-kahiki. We are also told in the same saga that Olopana had been wont to consult her.” [Chadwicks, 453]

Again the writers seem not to be aware that women dealt with female akua and men with the male akua. So these outsider sources very definitely have their limitations, and it is not uncommon to see them contradicting their own claims about women.

Sources:
Max Dashu. “Taula and Kaula Wahine, prophetesses of the Pacific.” Veleda blog, 2014. http://www.sourcememory.net/veleda/?p=718

Abraham Fornander. Hawaiian Antiquities and Folk-Lore. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1917

Hector Munro Chadwick, ‪Nora Kershaw Chadwick, ‪Kershaw H Chadwick. The Growth of Literature: ‪The ancient literature of Europe. London and NY: ‪Cambridge University Press, 1940 [1968]

David Malo, Hawaiian Antiquities (Moolelo Hawai’i). Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1951

Other prophetesses:

Dahia al-Kahina, Amazigh prophetess, Aurès mountains, Tunisia

Essie Parrish, yomta and Bole Maru Dreamer, Kashaya Pomo, Stewarts Point, California

Muhumusa, exiled Rwandan queen, oracle of Nyabingi in Uganda

Teresa Urrea , la Santa de Cabora, healer and revolutionary seeress, Sonora, Mexico, El Paso, Texas, and Clinton, Arizona.

Mauricia la Bruja, prophetess of the Old Ways, Venezuela

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