Kamakau means "the afraid." His name came to him as a child
- Date of account
- Published 1915
- Source
- Legends of Gods and Ghosts (Hawaiian Mythology) Collected and Translated from the Hawaiian
- Reference
- Legends of Gods and Ghosts (Hawaiian Mythology) Collected and Translated from the Hawaiian · selected passage 44
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-25
Record summary
Kamakau means "the afraid." His name came to him as a child
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyKamakau means "the afraid." His name came to him as a child. He was a shrinking, sensitive, imaginative little fellow. He was surrounded by influences which turned his imagination into the paths of most unwholesome superstition. But beyond the beliefs of most of his fellows, in his own nature he was keenly appreciative of mysterious things. There was a spirit voice in every wind rustling the tops of the trees. Spirit faces appeared in unnumbered caricatures of human outline whenever he lay on the grass and watched the sunlight sift between the leaves. Everything he looked upon or heard assumed some curious form of life. The clouds were most mysterious of all, for they so frequently piled up mass upon mass of grandeur, in such luxurious magnificence and such prodigal display of color, that his power of thought lost itself in his almost daily dream of some time-wandering in the shadow valleys of the precipitous mountains of heaven. Here he saw also strangely symmetrical forms of man and bird and fish.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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