John Keola Lake: To be Hawaiian is   to believe there is a life force in all things,  called mana.

Stones have mana, people have mana.

There's mana on the winds.

Words breathe with  mana, spoken words, and words that are chanted.

For the Western idea of history, myth, and legend,  there is a single Hawaiian word, moʻolelo.

In the   moʻolelo of the Hawaiian people, mana cannot be  made by mere humans, neither can it be destroyed.

(John Keola Lake chanting in Hawaiian) Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator:  By most accounts, it was sometime  after World War II that the Native   Hawaiian culture reached a new low ebb.

American statehood was approaching.

History books typically began  with the arrival of Westerners,   and life before Western contact was portrayed as  simple and static.

The native Hawaiian language   was almost never spoken, and little of the  cultural tradition was trusted to be authentic.

Leo Akana/Narrator:  It was often written that we who are Hawaiians,  kanaka maoli, had originated in the mists of time,   and as an identifiable people seemed to be  disappearing, auwē, as if enshrouded by mist.

John Keola Lake: The ancient stories   which tell of the first settlers are genealogies,   which were held in memory as chants of father,  mother, and child.

Makua kāne, makuahine, a me ke   keiki.

(chanting) John Keola Lake: Kaiauluamea and Kaulanakehau beget Wākea.

Wākea, sky father, a god.

He joins with Earth  Mother to create offspring of flesh and blood.

Ruby Johnson: The human person probably existed first,   the real person, and then in the whole process of  transfiguration and they’re becoming ʻaumakua and   then they achieve the status of gods, then they  enter into the mainstream of mythological thought.

We were taught these things at home, and it’s  part of your religious upbringing in Hawaiian.

(Speaking Hawaiian from old recording) Leo Akana/Narrator:  During the 1950s, voice recordings of Hawaiians  were made in remote places which had remained   relatively untouched by the process of change.

The interviewer was Mary Kawena Pukui who spoke   flawless Hawaiian from her childhood days.

There was no Hawaiian dictionary in print.

Such written guides to the culture as existed  were few in number: David Malo, author of a book   titled Hawaiian Antiquities, deceased in 1853,  Abraham Fornander, author of An Account of the   Polynesian Race, deceased in 1887.

And so to this  increasingly obscure subject of Hawaiian life,   Mrs. Pukui brought a staggering grasp  of traditional Hawaiian knowledge.

In collaboration with Samuel Elbert, she produced  her Hawaiian-English dictionary.

In collaboration   with scholars of the Bishop Museum, she produced  accounts of Hawaiian family life.

Fishing,   farming, proverbs, and place names.

In the  course of her arduous work, she turned to the   archive of the 19th century Hawaiian language  newspapers and began to reveal in English the   writings of native historians of days gone by.

Her greatest find was Samuel M. Kamakau, whose   talent lay in revealing Hawaiian civilization  as consisting of real people and as epic story.

Mary Kawena Pukui: Told Kahekili that Kamehameha was nuinui aliʻi,   meaning that he had a great army,  and that Kahekili was ʻuʻuku aliʻi.

Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator: From the re-publication of Kamakau's   work in 1961, his writing infused the native  Hawaiian subject with a whole new vitality.

Mary Kawena Pukui: was a great chief and that,   and that Kamehameha descended from nothing.

Humph.

John Keola Lake: The historian,   Samuel Kamakau, warned against our becoming he  lāhui kanelelua o ka moʻolelo, a race without   a history.

We must preserve our story.

In Kamakau's words, (speaking Hawaiian) Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator:  Down the hallway at Bishop Museum, a scientist  named Kenneth Emory was likewise looking for   new ways of revealing the Hawaiian past.

He  had shared the dominant view that the story   resided in the stone features left from Hawaiian  times, but then he began to dig in the subsurface.

Patrick Kirch: When he began   his excavation program in 1950, it was as a  field school actually in the summer to train   UH students how to dig, and he actually finds a  lot of material culture artifacts unexpectedly   in this site.

But more importantly, Willard Libby  at Chicago had just invented radiocarbon dating,   the technique of radiocarbon dating, and had put  out a call around the world for samples to test   the method.

So there's now an independent means of  establishing age chronology.

And all of a sudden,   Hawaiʻi started to have a past that was  not static or changeless, but there was   a huge amount of change and you could  reopen questions about Hawaiian origins,   migrations, migration routes on the basis of  archeologically excavated dated materials.

Herb Kane:  The movement that some have called the Hawaiian  cultural renaissance was something that started   very quietly, and by many people, each in his own  way, but each having the same feeling of urgency,   observing that things were slipping away and  unless someone reached out and grasped them,   everything would be lost.

So people with different  interests, scholars or craftsmen, artists,   dancers would go for those things that they were  most interested in.

My interest was in the canoe.

Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator: A scientific hypothesis of   migration by drift voyage had been  thoroughly popularized throughout   the western world.

Writers downplayed the idea  of purposeful voyaging and even dismissed it.

The canoe, which Herb Kane designed, became  famous as Hōkūleʻa.

In retrospect, this vessel   has had not only a cultural impact throughout  the Pacific, but a scholarly impact as well.

Herb Kane: At the time that   we began the Hōkūleʻa project, there was  the scientific debate going on worldwide   between those who felt that the Polynesians had  the capability of doing what their legends said   they did in the way of exploration and settlement  and those who are skeptical.

We have many legends   that talk about two-way voyaging.

And in an  era that lasts for several hundred years,   these have been proved again and again  repeatedly.

So the skeptics have been silenced.

Leo Akana/Narrator: When our first voyaging   ancestors arrived is a subject of ongoing debate.

There are Hawaiian scholars who think in terms of   one hundred generations, which would date the  first settlement to around the Western calendar   year one A.D. For a time, archaeologists  dated the first settlement similarly, but   a recent major revision of radiocarbon science has  moved the arrival date to around one thousand A.D. Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator:  The acceleration of land development in Hawaiʻi  during the 1960s led to the passage of a law which   requires the archeological study of land before  its use can be changed.

Year after year, this   law generated raw data.

Then the state historic  preservation office began feeding the data into   a computer.

Together, the dates show a remarkable  pattern in which the focus of settlement activity   on Oʻahu is almost entirely in the coastal lowland  during the migration and early settlement period.

Tom Dye: There would be few enough people   that everybody could live at the prime areas on  the coast that have their gardens close to hand,   they'd fish, they'd farm, and they'd  interact with their neighbors down the coast.

Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator: The largest cluster of early   radiocarbon dates is on Oʻahu.

These  dates would have pleased Kamakau,   because he wrote, “Oʻahu was the  place where the first man was made.” Leo Akana/Narrator: There the ancient ancestors lived,   and from there they spread out over the whole  group of islands, from Hawaiʻi to Kauaʻi."

Patrick Kirch: So if you were a   Polynesian voyager coming from the Marquesas or  Tahiti and you found these islands unoccupied,   my guess is you would choose either Oʻahu  or Kauaʻi.

Those are the islands that would   provide the best land for a settlement,  freshwater, best fishing, and so on.

Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator:  On Oʻahu's Windward side is a great natural bay,  Kāneʻohe.

Old stories often speak of Kāneʻohe Bay   for good reason.

It provided settlers a wide reef  for marine protein and a broad plain for farming.

Rain falls abundantly from the cooling updraft of  warm, moist air, which blows in from the ocean.

At the northern tip of the bay is Kualoa.

It was  a landing place for the early settlers, which is   why it has become a ceremonial landing place for  the reenactment of voyages today.

The voyager,   Kahaʻi, transported a breadfruit tree across  thousands of ocean miles and planted it at Kualoa.

Kualoa became a place of refuge.

Here, chiefs  forgave transgression and spared lives.

In death,   their bones were hidden here so that their mana  their inherent power, would not be disturbed.

(Changing in Hawaiian) Harry Miles Muheir/Narrator:  Both archeological data and Hawaiian oral  tradition suggest that during this early period,   the establishment of small but thriving  settlements was occurring simultaneously   throughout the islands.

The structure of this  early society was based on an extended family   or ‘ohana system with chiefs who had close  relationships with the settlement communities.

In this era of colonization, the survival  skills of the fishermen and the farmer are   all important.

New generations are born and grow  to adulthood, more dwellings come up.

Households   turn into compounds and compounds into villages.

On the island of Hawaiʻi, the birth of children   was celebrated over time by the carving of  simple petroglyphs.

The hole in the center of the   petroglyph represents the first-born.

Concentric  circles mark succeeding births in the family.

Leo Akana/Narrator: Estimates of the Hawaiian eventual population,   a low of a quarter of a million, a high of  eight hundred thousand or even one million   are likewise in dispute.

But on the pattern  of population growth, there is more agreement.

Tom Dye: When it was growing most quickly,   it was the kind of situation where a grandson's  experience of his society would've been very,   very different from his grandfather's.

You have to have bigger, more fields,   larger agricultural areas so that you start  to have to walk farther and farther from home   to get to your garden.

At a certain point,  it stops being convenient or desirable to   walk that far and you have to begin to think  about not living on the coast anymore, but   moving back into the inland areas and setting up  a house there closer to your agricultural fields.

Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator: Activity inland and upland,   as reflected in carbon dates, becomes much  more pronounced and actually increases at   a more rapid pace than activity along  the coast.

In this expansion period,   the emphasis of religion settled onto the  tabu or the godlike nature of the chiefs,   and the distance between chief and commoner  widened.

An ancient birthing stone, Kukaniloko,   was the most desirable place for a chief of  great rank to be born, a place filled with mana.

Construction of the first large temples, tell a  story of the massing of people, stockpiling of   food to feed them, and chiefly power to rule them.

Successive ruling chiefs rebuilt and rededicated   temples.

The Kāneaki Heiau of Leeward Oʻahu is  the fourth version of a temple on this site.

In its earlier form, it was dedicated  to the god of agriculture, and then to   the god of war.

These large temples occurred  wherever significant numbers of people lived   and eventually were to be found up and down  the mountain ridges and along the coasts.

Their extensive presence in is testimony to  the spread of people throughout the islands.

Intricate water systems were built to  irrigate agricultural terraces.

These   gravity flow systems ran from upland to midland  to near shore, to the ocean.

Communities were   formed from ridgeline to ridgeline and from  the mountains to the sea—the Hawaiian Ahupuaʻa.

Leo Akana/Narrator: In the evolution of   this intricate settlement, the native farmer  developed no fewer than 300 varieties of kalo.

Hawaiians had a varied and healthy diet,  not only of poi from kalo but breadfruit,   coconut, banana, pigs and chicken.

Great walled fishponds were built along  the sea coast.

Kamakau remarked that a   large pond required the labor of more than  10,000 men.

When these coastal structures   were inventoried in the 20th century, there  were 62 on the island of Molokaʻi alone.

Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator:  By the end of the expansion period,  all the islands seemed to have been   extensively occupied.

The population had spread  out across the landscape, around the coastlines,   and up the valleys.

Ahupuaʻa were joined together  to form districts, and it was the district chiefs   who came to dominate the next major period of  change, a period marked by increasing conflict.

John Keola Lake: A priest from Tahiti named Paʻao brought in   the idea of the all powerful chief who ruled from  above.

And within a few generations, the island   of Hawaiʻi produced a leader who personified that  idea.

He was called Kalaunuiohua, and he organized   all the district chiefs into a war party.

As they were ready to sail, he encountered   a strange gray-haired woman and asked her  to prophesy what lies ahead.

She gave a   simple answer, (speaking in Hawaiian).

Good in the beginning, bad in the end.

Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator: From his base on the island of Hawaiʻi,   Kalaunuiohua invaded the islands  of Maui, Molokaʻi, and then Oʻahu.

He was captured on the shores of Kauaʻi, but  he had briefly demonstrated the power of the   fast moving invader who strikes from the sea.

The district chiefdoms continued on as the   building blocks of political power, but a higher  level of chiefly organization was in the making.

The location of the district lines was encoded  in chants, and young Hawaiian scholars mapped   this information early in the 19th century.

The  districts were partly a function of geography.

On the island of Kauaʻi, the heart  of one district was the Wailua River,   where a series of seven temples announced  the importance of the place, its gods,   its chiefs and priests.

On the south end of  Kauaʻi, a second district was formed around   the Waimea River.

In times of war, the Waimea  district and its allies typically were pitted   against the Wailua district and its allies.

When  the island was united, the court of the Kauaʻi   kingdom held forth in the cooler north during the  summer, in the more protected south during winter.

When each island is considered in this  way, that is in light of how its original   settlement developed, the differences  among islands become much more apparent.

George Kanahele: What we need to do   is to see each place with its own peculiar,  settled historical factors and not homogenize   all of the islands and label it Hawaiian  history.

I think there is an Oʻahu history.

Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator: Kualoa divides the windward   districts of Oʻahu upper and lower, but  it is not geography alone which determines   boundaries.

A total of six districts were formed  on Oʻahu, which united and divided over and over,   but the trend was toward unification.

Late in the expansion period,   a council of chiefs met on Oʻahu.

They held the first recorded election,   elevating a chief from the dry Ewa district  to rule over most of the island.

His name was   Maʻilikukahi.

Maʻilikukahi moved the seat of  government to Waikīkī, a place which, again,   was known for its abundant water, broad plain,  and surrounding reef, which was rich in fish.

In the story of the unification of Maui,  the island is so visibly made up of distinct   geographic parts.

A great mountain in the east,  a second mountain range in the west.

Initially,   there were two separate settlements in East Maui,  two in West Maui.

Then the districts of West Maui   united and the districts of East Maui united.

Again, a chief came out of the dry Leeward side,   Piʻilani, and his goal was unification.

A trail was built, which went around the   entire island, Piʻilani Highway.

A great  temple was built called Ka Hale Piʻilani.

Michael Kolb:  PiʻiIani hale is gargantuan in size,  because unlike other heiau where a   ridge is contoured or manipulated  to look like a human-made platform,   Piʻilani hale is actually a ravine that's  filled in which constitutes large quantities   of rock.

In rough estimates, it  would've taken a thousand people   a good year to build, probably four times larger  than any other heiau in terms of sheer volume.

Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator: The domain of Piʻilani incorporated   the small surrounding islands, forming the  first interisland kingdom.

Na hono a Piʻilani.

The bays of Piʻilani.

The unification of the  island of Hawaiʻi occurred shortly thereafter.

Leo Akana/Narrator: A line of rulers arose   from the Waipiʻo Valley, then the royal center  of the most kalo-rich district on the island.

A   high-born chief, Liloa, made love with a beautiful  commoner woman he encountered in the countryside.

Liloa gave her a royal pendant, which a young man  returned to Liloa in his old age as confirmation   of their royal blood relationship.

This son  was Umi, and through him, the six districts,   the moku, of the island of Hawaiʻi were, for  the first time, united into a single kingdom.

Now each of the four major islands was  unified, four nations in the making,   four complex, highly developed  chiefdoms, each with a supreme chief,   district, or moku, chiefs, and konohiki  chiefs who directly oversaw the land.

The antagonism among these four chiefdoms ran  deep, but so did the connections among them.

Patrick Kirch: There's a pattern   of competition between chiefly lines on  different islands, outright warfare and   aggressive conflict.

There's also a pattern of  intermarriage and integrating lines, but both of   them have a goal of large territorial units.

Both are political aspirations, if you will.

Leo Akana/Narrator:  The genealogies of their chiefs were intertwined.

They traced their ancestors to Sky Father, Wākea,   and Earth Mother, Papa.

They were  united by marriages and offspring.

They shared gods and religious practices.

They shared culture, performance, and art.

Ruby Johnson: Actually, they were all one because   they were all from the same trunk of the tree.

As  you see, these branches go out the same, the trunk   still comes from the same source.

So it's this  crisscross, this intimacy rivalry that you see.

Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator: Oʻahu abandoned its peaceful ways.

It annexed Kauaʻi and Molokaʻi as well, so that  Oʻahu became an interisland kingdom.

As a result,   Maui was threatened on both sides.

Again and  again, the chiefs of the island of Hawaiʻi   mounted raids on Maui and their armies took over  the fertile Hana district of Maui for generations.

The major island chiefdoms were competing  furiously, but geography was such that it did not   readily produce an all-powerful victor.

Then, out  of the north, a totally unfamiliar sight appeared.

The British explorer, James Cook, was surely not  the Hawaiians' first contact with the outside   world, but Cook's marine chronometer, the “trusty  clock,” as he called it, enabled him to precisely   calculate longitude, which was his distance  from the clock which ticked in Greenwich,   England.

And from this, he could accurately  chart a position for those who would follow him.

It was 1778, Cook landed at the bay  formed by the Waimea River on Kauaʻi.

The islands are volcanic.

They contain no metal.

All that cook saw had been wrought from wood, and   stone, and fiber.

Kamakau wrote that the men sent  out in canoes saw how much iron there was along   the side of the ship and on the rails, and they  said excitedly to each other, "Oh, how much dagger   material there is here."

Cook went ashore.

He  gave the people of Kauaʻi nails and iron pieces.

They gave him 70 to 80 pigs, fowl, bananas,  and taro.

On the second day, a crowd, excitedly   seeking to engage in further trade, encircled a  water gathering party led by a Mr. Williamson.

John Keola Lake: I quote from the diary of the British: “It did   not appear to Mr. Williamson that the natives had  any desire to kill or even hurt any of his party,   but rather seemed excited by curiosity.

They pressed so thick upon him that he   was obliged to fire by which one man was killed.” Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator: Well-provisioned, Cook sailed   away north, but returned to the island group  in less than a year in early 1779.

This time,   he sailed into the northern side of the kingdoms  of Maui and Hawaiʻi, and almost immediately he   encountered the great island figures of the  time.

First, he met Kahekili, the king of Maui,   known for his cunning, his fierceness, for the  black tattoo, which covered one half of his body.

Herb Kane: The ship's cat   fell off the Discovery and the Hawaiians picked  it up and returned it to the British, no doubt,   somewhat alarmed at what they had picked up  because they had never seen a cat before.

Harry Miles Muheir/Narrator: Cook then met the chief of   the Hawaiʻi Kingdom, Kalaniopuʻu.

He  too was a fighter, a seaborne raider,   and in his entourage was a young war chief named  Kamehameha.

Kamehameha was six and one-half feet   tall and was renowned for his bravery in fighting  the armies of Maui.

Now, he boarded Cook's ship,   studied it, and stayed the night.

He was aware  of the red-mouthed gun, which had taken the   life of the man on Kauaʻi.

But this was his  first direct exposure to Western technology.

Cook spent six weeks circling the island of  Hawaiʻi, then he sailed into an astonishing   gathering in progress at Kealakekua Bay,  the annual Makahiki celebration.

It was   the time for paying tribute to the  chiefs, a time when all war ceased.

John Keola Lake:  Cook's diary suggests how many people there were  and how well they were doing.

He described canoes   arriving from all parts.

So there were no fewer  than a thousand about the two ships.

Most of them   crowded with people and well laden with hogs and  other productions of the islands.

All the shore   was covered with spectators.

Many hundreds were  swimming around the ships like shoals of fish.

Herb Kane: The scene of the   arrival of Cook at Kealakekua Bay was probably  the most exciting event of all of Cook's travels.

What he encountered was a people, a society  in full flower.

A healthy, affluent society.

Harry Miles Muheir/Narrator: Cook's lieutenant described the   taro fields as plantations divided by regular  ditches.

It appeared hardly possible for the   country to be cultivated to greater advantage  or to yield a larger supply of food.

As to the   quality of workmanship, the British wrote,  "In everything manufactured by these people,   there appears to be an uncommon degree of  neatness and ingenuity, a superiority of taste."

And as to that question of the quality of human  relationships, one of the British diaries said,   "We did not hesitate to trust ourselves amongst  them at all times and in all situations."

The extensive accounts of the Cook voyage  formed a window into the state of Hawaiian   development.

The population was robust and  athletic.

The people gave every indication   of enjoying themselves immensely.

They wore the  most beautiful, refined bark cloth in the Pacific.

Their chiefs were adorned with feathered  capes, which the Hawaiians greatly valued,   and their visitors coveted.

The Makahiki  or festival season, which Cook observed,   reflected this abundance, which allowed everyone  to stop their normal labors for weeks on end.

Their dwellings were handsomely built and well  suited to the environment.

They possessed an   inventory of thousands of canoes, many of them  large double hulled canoes joined by platforms.

John Keola Lake: We had created a world unto ourselves.

Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator: Cook stayed for over a month.

Finally, set sail,   then broke a mast, which forced him to return.

But  the Makahiki season was over.

Relationships were   fraying.

A long boat was stolen from his ship.

As he had done elsewhere on his voyages,   Cook decided to take a hostage.

He attempted  to take Kalaniopuʻu, the highest chief.

Cook   was threatened with a piece of metal mounted  on a pole, he fired, expecting to frighten the   Hawaiians away.

But to his surprise, the Hawaiians  stood their ground in the face of the red-mouthed   guns.

Cook fell.

The British killed and burned  in retaliation until an uneasy and sad truce   was struck.

And the Hawaiians and British  parted ways knowing they would meet again.

(Chanting in Hawaiian) Leo Akana/Narrator:  The havoc resulting from Western contact had been  set in motion.

The trading, stockpiling of guns,   and worst of all, the spread of disease.

But outward events followed the scenario   which had been so long in the making, unifying  all of the islands, ka pae ‘āina o Hawaiʻi.

John Keola Lake:  Most school book history begins with the  Warrior King Kamehameha unifying all the   islands as if by a wave of the hand.

Even the  English meaning of his name, the lonely one,   is widely remembered.

He does stand by himself as  a historic figure.

But the stage was set for him   by others, by Kahekili of Maui, whose name  means thunder, and Kalaniopuʻu of Hawaiʻi,   the mount of heaven.

Kahekili and Kalaniopuʻu had  grown old fighting one another.

Two years after   Cook, Kalaniopuʻu died.

And Kahekili, despite  his own advanced age, made his most daring moves.

Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator: Kamakau said that Kahekili   “lay sleepless with covetous longing”  for the taro-rich lands of Oʻahu.

George Kanahele: Oʻahu was kind of isolationist,   it was sort of content with its own wealth and  peace, that it really didn’t bother others.

So when Kahekili came it was obviously  an expansionist policy on his part.

Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator: Kahekili made Oʻahu weak,   and then he invaded.

And he took over  Molokaʻi and Kauaʻi as well.

By 1783,   Kahekili ruled from the cliffs at Polihale  on Kauaʻi to the far shores of Hana on Maui.

George Kanahele: Kahekili was this   sort of single-minded conqueror.

And I sometimes  think it was only an accident of history that   he failed to be the first one to unify all  the islands, or maybe an act of destiny.

Leo Akana/Narrator: As the fortunes of the   Maui kingdom rose, the giant Hawaiʻi island again  became divided.

A son of the deceased Kalaniopuʻu,   Kiwalaʻo, took his bones to the city  of refuge, the Puʻuhonua o Honaunau.

The chiefs of Hawaiʻi island gathered, and  tensions set in over re-dividing the land   among them.

Kamehameha was not the heir to the  kingdom, but he was keeper of the war god, Ku,   and he became a rallying point for those chiefs  who felt they were treated unfairly.

Fighting   broke out.

Kiwalaʻo, wearing his brilliant  feather cloak, was killed in battle.

Thereafter,   Kamehameha ruled the northern part of the  island of Hawaiʻi, and Kahekili ruled an empire.

John Keola Lake: The next British explorer   to arrive was George Vancouver.

He tried  to persuade the chiefs to live peacefully   and encouraged them to be good trading partners.

But he made the mistake of saying in Kahekili's   presence that Kamehameha was a great chief.

Kahekili was old by then, but he responded   readily, "Kamehameha has come up from nothing.

(speaking in Hawaiian).

I am the great chief."

Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator: There was a feud between a trader   and a relative of Kamehameha, which resulted in a  ship, the Fair American, falling into Kamehameha's   hands.

With the ship came an arsenal of cannon,  muskets, and powder, and two men who knew how   to use them, John Young and Isaac Davis.

One cannon was even given a name, Lopaka.

Kamehameha who, as a young chief, had so  readily boarded Cook's ship was by now the   most eager employer of Western technology, as  well as being a great warrior in the traditional   sense.

He had been a part of Kalaniopuʻu's many  failed raids on Maui's back country.

But now,   he struck directly at the military and  political center of Maui, at Wailuku.

John Keola Lake: Kamakau said, "Had they fought   face-to-face and hand-to-hand, as the custom  was, they would've been equally matched.

But   on the orders of Kamehameha, John Young brought up  the cannon called Lopaka," and in Kamakau's words,   "It was a great slaughter.

Iao Stream ran red  with blood and the valley of steep cliffs where   the bones of ancient chiefs were hidden,  now belonged to the island of Hawaiʻi."

Leo Akana/Narrator: Kamehameha sent a   message to Kahekili, who was then living on Oʻahu.

Ruby Johnson: He says, "Kahekili,   I have to meet you on the  battlefield."

Kahekili says,   "Oh, you wait until the black kapa covers me,"  meaning, "Wait until I die, then you can come."

Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator: Kahekili, at the age of 87,   died peacefully on Oʻahu, in Waikīkī, the  great prize of his conquests.

But between   the Maui and Hawaiʻi kingdoms, there was no peace.

Kamehameha's enemies stirred on his home island,   Hawaiʻi, forcing his return.

Tradition took  over.

Kamehameha consulted a prophet.

How might   he become the ruler of all the islands?

"Build  a great house for your god," the prophet said.

"No one," Kamakau wrote, "Not even a tabu chief  was excused from the work of carrying stone."

Kamehameha himself labored with the rest.

In  the telling and retelling of the moʻolelo,   this is a moment which continues to be regarded  as a turning point in history, a crucial event   in the development of Hawaiʻi as a nation.

The effect on Kamehamehaʻs fortunes was startling,   the effect on his adversaries devastating.

Oʻahu and Kauaʻi attacked and Kamehameha   turned back their forces at sea in what would  be called the Battle of the Red-Mouth Guns.

Leo Akana/Narrator: The prophesy played   out.

The remaining son of Kalaniopuʻu, Keoua,  surrendered to the superior power of Kamehameha   and was killed and sacrificed at Puʻukoholā,  the temple of the war god, Ku.

Hawaiʻi island,   was again one kingdom.

It was armed, it had a  fleet, it had enormous kalo fields to supply it.

Kamehameha organized an army of 16,000 men to  invade Oʻahu.

They were opposed by a lesser army,   about 9,000, led by the son of Kahekili.

There  was bloody fighting above Honolulu.

From there,   the battle moved upland through new  Nuʻuanu Valley, and then to the great   cliff.

Many thousands died.

Kamehameha's  own casualties were enormous.

But when he   had carried the day, he showed mercy  and intervened to stop the bloodshed.

George Kanahele: It must have been   devastating because of the number of people  who were involved on his side and on the Oʻahu   side.

Tens of thousands of soldiers.

And  when one talks about that kind of number,   one really has to multiply that because the wives  took part in the fighting, families took part.

So, large numbers of people were involved in the  fighting and in the dying, and in the maiming and   the injuring and so forth.

I mean we’ll never  know what the cost of that conflict was.

But,   it must have been devastating.

And yet,  you know, he was celebrated for that.

(Chanting in Hawaiian) Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator:  The last great battle was over.

According to his genealogy,   the new king traced his ancestry back through  99 generations.

The name of his home island   became the name by which the new kingdom  was known to the world.

Hawaiʻi.

Homeland.

In the old tradition, Kamehameha  came to be perceived as god-like,   and he used that power to transform the  islands into a peaceful, dynastic nation state.

John Keola Lake: His law of the splintered paddle,   Māmalahoe Kānāwai, provided that all could  travel in safety.

If anyone was hungry,   they are to be fed.

It was his way of  proclaiming the rights of people to security   and freedom.

It was the end of uncertainty  among condemning chiefs.

The end of war.

Ruby Johnson: If you look at   Kamehameha as a conqueror, all you see are people  dying in one conquest and another conquest,   and all this fighting.

But if you look at the  times in which he lived and the decisions he made,   he is dealing with this other people coming.

Actually, what he's saying is, "We got to stop   fighting, folks, because we have to deal with  this.

We can't lose one another in the shuffle."

John Keola Lake: Kamehameha continued to pressure   Kauaʻi by peaceful means.

And finally, the king  of Kauaʻi, Kaumualii, decided he could no longer   evade the invitations to appear on Oʻahu.

He met  Kamehameha onboard ship in Honolulu Harbor.

"What   is it to be?"

he asked.

"Face up, or face down?"

Was he to live?

Kamehameha demanded neither life   nor land, but allegiance.

Kaumualii declared  his loyalty and all the kingdoms became one.

Leo Akana/Narrator: Kamehameha installed his allies as   governors of the previously competing kingdoms,  and then he withdrew to his ancestral island,   Hawaiʻi.

Kamehameha maintained the  kapu.

He worshiped the ancient gods,   and he was forever the Warrior King, the  embodiment of the ancient system thrust   suddenly into the Western era.

While he sat  for his famous portrait by the artist, Choris,   he inquired about the latest doings on Kauaʻi.

What was he to make of the fact that an agent   of Russia had formed an alliance with Kaumualii?

What of the Russian fort, which sat by Kaumualii's   house just above where Cook had first landed?

Kamehameha sent the Russians on their way,   and from a distance, he directed the  construction of his own fort at Honolulu.

It was designed not only to protect the kingdom's  most active harbor, but also its sovereignty.

Leo Akana/Narrator: The Hawaiians not only established themselves as   a nation, but were recognized throughout the earth  as a member of the family of nations.

This, during   a century when Pacific islands were routinely  being overwhelmed by European colonialism.

Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator:  The hot, dry Honolulu took on real importance.

The  reason was its natural harbor, which accommodated   the deeper draft of the Westerners' ships.

Propelled by the Pacific fur trade, the sandalwood   trade, and finally, by whaling, the nation  states of Britain, France, and America descended,   paying their respects, cajoling, but all the time  maneuvering for position in the North Pacific.

Leo Akana/Narrator: In the early contacts between Hawaiians and   the western powers, foreign aggressors were held  in check by the hundreds of thousands of Hawaiian   warriors, their training, and their armaments.

But  epidemic by epidemic, diseases to which Hawaiians   in their isolation had no immunity, ravaged  the people and then the power of the nation.

The population fell by half, then half again,  eventually to one-tenth of its original size.

Harry Miles Muheim/Narrator: The kingdom of Hawaiʻi was taken over by British   soldiers in 1843 for five months, and French  soldiers sacked the fort in 1849.

But despite   such pressures, the Hawaiian nation endured for  nearly 100 years.

In the course of this time,   the fort was sundered to build commercial piers.

In 1893, the Hawaiian nation was sundered,   not by European colonialists, but by  the expansion of that new young country,   the United States of America, into the Pacific.

New wars came of unimagined magnitude and horror,   and it seemed as if the great story of the  Hawaiians had been forgotten.

But the culture   of the Hawaiians persisted with tenacity and  spirit.

And as it turns out, the Hawaiians not   only have survived as an identifiable people, but  so has the idea of the sovereign Hawaiian nation.

(Chanting in Hawaiian) Singing: We the warriors, born to live,   on what the land and sea can give, defend our  birthright to be free, give our children liberty.

(Chanting in Hawaiian)