Archive - May 19, 2024

• • • Nighttime. 1748. Hawai‘i Island (the Big Island). North Kohala. A child is born in a grass house. Outside, a raging storm muffles his first cries. Soldiers hunt for him amid the gale. Their king has ordered his death because a priest has prophesied that the infant will become a “slayer of chiefs.” But he is spirited away to a remote valley before the soldiers can find him. He will become Hawaii’s greatest warrior. When strange, pale visitors come from beyond the horizon, and other Hawaiians mistake their leader for one of their gods — returned to them in fulfillment of a prophecy — he’ll recognize these newcomers are men. He’ll use their guns and steel to defeat a succession of rivals for rule of the Big Island, and then the rest of the island chain, ending centuries of fratricidal warfare, and founding the Kingdom of Hawaii. Today, Hawaiians remember . . .