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Bestiary of Cryptids & Legendary CreaturesMenehune are skilled people and ancestral helpers in varied Hawaiian accounts, remembered for extraordinary collective work, family relationships and named places.
Laka cuts down a tree for his canoe. Next day it has vanished. He cuts another, and the same thing happens again. In the account collected by Thomas G. Thrum, he finally hides beneath a felled trunk and hears a company gathering to raise it. The people undoing his work know how to finish it. [1]
Read the manuscriptMenehune are skilled people and ancestral helpers in Hawaiian moʻolelo—stories, accounts and traditions. They build, carry and provision great works, sometimes for people connected to them by descent. The account attributed to Moke Manu in Thomas G. Thrum’s 1907 collection makes that relationship decisive: descendants and others connected with the people can see them, while outsiders may hear only their voices. Their help belongs to a society with its own authority and obligations. [1]
Moke Manu’s account allows a task one night. At dawn the workers stop, and they do not undertake the same job a second time. Their strength depends on coordinated effort, but even a great company works within a limit. In the Pi and Laka stories, preparations and provisions accompany the work: stone must be gathered or a shed built, and food waits for the people who finish the task. [1]
These accounts connect different islands through particular tasks. Pi wants water for the flats of Waimea on Kauaʻi. Laka needs to leave Maui to search for his father on Hawaiʻi. On Oʻahu, Kekupua seeks a canoe for his chief’s wife to visit Tahiti. Forest timber, river water and a passage to the sea matter because someone has a use for them. [1]
Mānoa Heritage Center places Menehune traditions in upper Mānoa and neighbouring Nuʻuanu valleys. Kūkaʻōʻō, a heiau or temple, is attributed to them. The centre preserves valley resident Maka Woolsey’s 1930s recollection of a wall extending from it for miles. Its origin accounts vary: some bring the people from a floating island; others describe arrivals with named leaders. The place history preserves these as alternatives. [4]
In Thrum’s Laka account, the boy’s father Wahieloa leaves Maui to find a toy for him and is killed after reaching Hawaiʻi. Laka grows up under his grandmother Hinahowana’s care. When he asks about his father’s long absence, his mother sends him to her. She tells him that Wahieloa went to Hawaiʻi and is believed dead. Laka needs a canoe to search for him. His grandmother tells him to find a tree whose leaves resemble the moon on the nights called Hilo or Hoaka. [1]
Laka finds a tree and spends the day cutting until it falls. He goes home, but next day the fallen timber is gone. He cuts another, and the same thing happens for several days. His grandmother directs him again to the crescent-shaped leaf. This time Laka digs a trench on the side where the tree will fall. Once it lies over the hole, he hides beneath it and waits for whoever keeps restoring his work. [1]
He hears discussion about raising the tree, followed by a chant summoning a multitude of gods of the woods, mountains and knolls. A hum rises, and the place fills with people trying to lift the trunk. It will not move. Laka springs from his hiding place and seizes Mokuhalii and Kapaaikee, threatening to kill them. Mokuhalii answers with a practical consequence: without them, nobody will make the canoe or take it to the beach. If spared, they will perform the work, provided Laka builds a sufficiently large shed and prepares enough food. [1]
Laka agrees and releases them. He builds the shed on the level ground of Puhikau, then returns to the forest and finds the canoe complete. The workers say it will arrive that night. The first hum announces its lifting; they carry it in their hands instead of dragging it. A second hum accompanies its arrival at Haloamekiei, at Pueo. At the third, the vessel is carefully set down in the shed. Taro, shrimp and freshwater fish wait for the company. At dawn the workers return home, leaving Laka with the vessel his effort alone could not provide.
In Moke Manu’s description the people are small, active and united in service. Kekupua sees ordinary human forms on a diminished scale. Yet a face is often less conspicuous than a voice: the company’s hum announces its approach before a waiting listener can see the workers or their burden. Thrum’s accounts give the sound distinct stages, from lifting a canoe to setting it down. [1]
Folklorist Martha Warren Beckwith’s 1940 Hawaiian Mythology also presents Menehune through genealogies. She distinguishes them, described as human, from the forest-dwelling Nawao. The large-bodied people in that passage are the Nawao; their description cannot simply be transferred to Menehune. Nor does the designation human provide an exact height. Beckwith’s assembled genealogies and migration accounts give the name a wider history than the small workers of the canoe stories. [2]
The temple-building stories make the supply of stone as important as the chosen site. In Thrum’s account of Mookini Heiau near Honoipu, local stones are unsuitable, so the builders use those from Pololu Valley, some twelve miles away. Workers stand in a line across the distance and pass stones from hand to hand. The temple is complete at cockcrow. The long chain of people gives the night’s achievement a visible method. [1]
At Pepeekeo the residents have already gathered stones under their chief’s direction. They return next morning to continue building and find the heiau finished. The Waikolu account on Molokaʻi offers the opposite difficulty: a temple stands on a ledge in a sheer cliff, with inaccessible rock rising behind it. Its stones appear to have come from the shore. The story’s wonder lies in getting them there. Thrum records the building as one Hawaiians attributed to Menehune because they could not explain the access. [1]
At Kūkaʻōʻō, Mānoa Heritage Center records two accounts of expulsion. In one, a company of owls drives the Menehune from the valley. In another, the chief Kūaliʻi attacks and rededicates the heiau. The centre suggests that this story gave the estate and home their name, Kūaliʻi. These different struggles give the same place more than one remembered change of authority. [4]
Claire Kuʻuleilani Hughes’s 2012 Laka retelling gives the preparation its own domestic detail. He prays before cutting and seeks guidance afterward, frames a shore-side shed and roofs it with coconut leaves, then prepares poi and shrimp. Once the canoe arrives, he hears finishing tools before the workers eat. His neighbours join him in admiring it next morning. These details distinguish her telling from Thrum’s named stages along the route. [5]
Even Thrum’s collection puts different kinds of assistance together. The workers answer Pi’s command, bargain with Laka after he captures two of them, and become accessible to Kekupua through his chief’s descent. Prepared stone can become a channel; timber can become a vessel. None of those relationships requires the people who receive help to be skilled in the same way as their helpers. [1]
Laka’s grandmother supplies knowledge that repeated effort has failed to replace. He can bring a tree down but cannot keep it down, shape the vessel or carry it to the beach. His threat against the two specialists would destroy his best chance of obtaining what he wants. Their answer turns a contest into an agreement: he must build and feed, and they will make and transport. The meal waiting in the shed is part of the work’s completion. [1]
Hughes recalls the lesson she learned as a child: work undertaken together makes enormous tasks manageable, and generosity may bring assistance. In her account, that teaching comes with the labour of preparing the welcome—building the shed, cooking taro and catching shrimp. The host has responsibilities even when the most extraordinary part of the job belongs to someone else. [5]
Thrum’s Hawaiian Folk Tales appeared in 1907, collecting material previously printed in the Hawaiian Annual alongside other contributions. His Menehune chapter names Moke Manu for its opening account, then gives Pi, Laka and Kekupua separately headed stories. The book says its translators sought a close rendering of Hawaiian sources. Its English wording and arrangement are nevertheless the work of a compiler; the distinct accounts retain different settings, speakers and outcomes. [1]
Archaeologist Tom Dye’s 1989 history of Hawaiian archaeology traces a different use of the name. Anthropologists E. S. Craighill Handy and Peter Buck explained social divisions through the arrival of separate populations. Handy connected Menehune with Tahitian manahune; Buck proposed a different migration route. Kenneth Emory’s archaeological work challenged speculative histories of cultural replacement. In Dye’s account, similarities of names entered much larger arguments about where Hawaiian society came from. [3]
Thrum labels Hawaiʻi the original home of brownies and compares the Menehune with Swift’s Lilliputians. His introduction sorts Hawaiian responses into respectful belief and the dismissal he assigns to people he considers better educated. These are the compiler’s judgments. The stories he goes on to print name Hawaiian places, family connections, chiefs, foods and trades. Their particular social world is more detailed than the imported category with which he introduces them. [1]
Dye concludes that two culturally distinct migrations are insufficient to explain Hawaiian social organisation. He calls for traditional history to be studied alongside archaeology, linguistics and ethnography. This preserves a role for accounts tied to places and families while requiring material claims to be investigated. A shared name alone cannot identify the builders of a particular wall. [3]
Thrum’s work stories also distinguish a made object from a fulfilled intention. Pi’s channel brings water, and Laka has a vessel ready for his search. Kakae’s wife still cannot begin her voyage. The canoe remembered in the ditch is a completed piece of craft left short of the sea: the workers have gone home, while the wish that called them remains unanswered. [1]
The principal work stories follow Thrum’s separate accounts. Hughes’s Laka retelling, Beckwith’s genealogical discussion, Mānoa Heritage Center’s place history and Dye’s archaeological argument are identified where their different perspectives enter. [1][5][2][4][3]
Thomas G. Thrum, compiler and translator; Moke Manu, named account · A. C. McClurg / Project Gutenberg · 1907
ChapterX107–117; Moke Manu’s Account109–110; Pi’s Watercourse110–111; Laka’s Adventure111–114; Kekupua’s Canoe114–116; As Heiau Builders116–117; Preface and Note
Moke Manu is credited for the opening account. The separately headed work stories follow Thrum’s English compilation.
Checked 2026-10-11
Martha Warren Beckwith · Yale University Press / Internet Sacred Text Archive · 1940
ChapterXXIII, fresh321–331; especially322,324 and separate named variants327–330
Genealogical distinctions follow Beckwith’s synthesis of the named traditions she cites.
Checked 2026-10-11
Tom Dye · Bishop Museum Press · 1989
Occasional Papers29, article3–22; selected3–6,10–11,20–22; conclusion20
Artwork
Select a folio to enlarge it. Its caption describes the account, landscape or artistic choices behind the image.
Manuscript checked 2026-10-13. Artistic interpretations © Scott Schubr / Luminary Oddities.
Return to the Bestiary ↑Pi’s separate watercourse account begins with a chosen dam site across the Waimea River and a route toward Kīkī-a-Ola. He summons the people near Puukapele and divides the preparation between gathering and cutting stones. On the selected night, each approaching worker carries a stone. The stones fit their places, the channel passes around the bend, and before dawn the dam turns river water toward the Waimea flats. Pi distributes shrimp in sufficient quantity for everyone. Satisfied, the company returns uphill with a hum described as startling birds across the sea on Oʻahu. A second commission fails. Pi asks for a fishpond wall at a bend of the Huleia River. Work begins toward midnight, but the two ends have not met by dawn. The workers leave it open and do not return. [1]
Kekupua’s story begins with a different search. His chief, Kakae, sends him to find timber for a canoe: Kakae’s wife wants to seek her brother, believed to be in Tahiti. Kekupua searches Oʻahu with men but finds no suitable koa tree. At Waolani they sleep in a cave, hear unseen voices at night and wake to a mound of stones resembling a temple. Kakae recognizes the makers because he is their descendant. He tells Kekupua where and when to wait. Two men will hold ropes at the canoe’s head; the director moves from side to side. Specialists behind them control the guiding ropes. Kekupua must give these men the route to the sea. [1]
Following those instructions, Kekupua hears the hum and sees the diminutive people. He directs them along the farther side of the Puunui stream. The canoe reaches Kaalaa near Waikahalulu, but daylight arrives before the journey to the sea is finished. The workers leave it in a ditch and return to Waolani. The canoe is remembered there for generations under Kekupua’s name. The story closes by stating that Kakae’s wife did not obtain what she desired, even with Menehune help. [1]
Checked 2026-10-11
Mānoa Heritage Center editorial collective · Mānoa Heritage Center
People / Menehune; complete essay, Kūkaʻōʻō/Woolsey opening and final two expulsion accounts
Checked 2026-10-11
Claire Kuʻuleilani Hughes · Office of Hawaiian Affairs / Ka Wai Ola · 2012-07
Ka Wai Ola, July2012, printed16; Lessons from the Menehune, complete column
Checked 2026-10-11