Gone To The Sandwich Islands part 2

Tracking my Macy forebears was easy. But the clues relating to my native ancestry were all in another language, my mother’s language, the one she used when she and her nurse Alice Kaleikau had lunch together at our home in Hilo. It was miko if the poi was a bit on the sour side, and ho’opailua if the poi had lumps.

Waikamalo, for example, was our nineteenth century family compound on the Hamakua coast at Ninole. My mother knew little about her Hawaiian family, and the name did not appear in Place Names of Hawaii, the comprehensive dictionary of Hawaiian place names. Then one day, I saw Waikaumalo in Place Names, and realized we had misspelled it, even if the translation made little sense: “Placing loincloth water”. A deep stream perhaps, one that will result in wet clothes while crossing? Perhaps.

The first clues were found in a government award of seventy eight acres at Kamae’e on the island of Hawaii to my mother’s native ancestors, Manuhoa and Kanehoalani. The land was located somewhere on the windward side of the 14,000 foot shield volcano called Mauna Kea. But where? What did it mean? No one knew. There was nothing in Place Names, and it was not until my mother died and an old newspaper interview surfaced that I found out where it was located. In 1967, the Hilo Tribune-Herald ran a feature article on my grandmother’s aunt, Caroline Austin Macy Patten, on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday. It was she who placed Kamae’e above Hakalau, and who said that she had visited her great-grandfather, Kanehoalani, who had lived there in native grass houses; one for cooking, the other for sleeping. Sadly, she was not asked to provide any translations. Manuhoa did not require assistance; it meant “friend of birds”; and Hakalau, also a bird-related term, meant “many perches”, but what about Kamae’e? Was it Ka-mae’e, or Kama-e’e? Completely different outcomes depending on the emphasis. The problem was that my first efforts at translation were often erroneous. That happens with Hawaiian words, especially if the context is absent, as it was in this instance. Then my son found a translation in an old Hawaiian dictionary. It was based on the Ka-mae’e presumption. It referred to people who were very kind and very able. Flattering, but was it accurate? More context would be needed.

Mahulualani was the next clue; the name of my maternal great grandmother. For a long time I pronounced it mahu-lua-lani. Wrong, of course, but I didn’t know that until my sister sent me a 1926 memoir written by one of the Austins of Onomea Plantation, who translated the name of his Hawaiian nanny, for whom my great grandmother was named, as Ma-hulu-a-lani, or “bright heavenly feather”. Thank you, Franklin Austin. Another clue now deciphered. The steamer stop on the dangerous windward coast at Kamae’e was called Pohakumanu. That was easy; it meant “bird rock”. The bird references were accumulating.

Because the bird references kept appearing, I felt comfortable placing the context for the translation of Kamae’e in the realm of avifauna. As result, the translation involves two root words: Kama (to bind, tie or wrap), and e’e (the yellow underwing feathers of the o’o, a Hawaiian forest bird now extinct). Simply stated, it means feather work. Were my native ancestors bird collectors?