Kamehameha Schools Press
Two centuries ago, when Hawaiian prophets were still honored for their insights, Kapihe was one of the most gifted. A kahuna or priest in the court of Kamehameha I and a descendant of the famed Napua line, he had prophesied the downfall of the kapu, the ancient religious system and the 1819 Battle of Kuamo?o which decided the course of modern Hawaiian history. One of Kapihe's last great prophecies may have been the one recorded in the Journal of the missionary William Ellis. Although Ellis branded him a "false prophet," he still thought enough of his calling to preserve for posterity the following prophecy: "Kapihe... informed Tamehameha that when he should die, Kuahiro would take his spirit to the sky, and accompany it to the earth again, when his body would be reanimated and youthful; that he would have his wives, and resume his government in Hawai?i; and that, at the same time, the existing generation would see and know their parents and ancestors, and all the people who had died would be restored to life."1 What did Kapihe mean? Was he referring to the literal resurrection of Kamehameha and his future return to earth, as some have suggested? If so, this meant that he had digested Christian eschatological dogma and grafted it on to his own traditional beliefs. While this kind of intellectual synthesis is not beyond the realm of possibility, it forms the basis of only one interpretation. There is another view, perhaps more credible because it is more compatible with Kapihe's Hawaiian antecedents. That view is that Kapihe was referring not to any bodily resurrection of Kamehameha along with the maka?ainana, much too egalitarian a notion for Hawaiians of the time. Rather, he was referring to Kamehameha's symbolic return in the "reanimated" form of Hawkapu regulating gambling, drinking, dancing, and the Sabbath with such severity that many Hawaiians felt oppressed, if not disillusioned. The non-missionary foreign residents were appalled and threatened retribution of
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