Kamapuaʻa is a demigod who could take the shape of a man or a hog. He came to Hawaiʻi Island, climbed to the rim of Kīlauea, and stood on ground that belonged to Pele to get her attention. It did not go smoothly.
The legend of Pele and Kamapuaʻa
Kamapuaʻa was born on Oʻahu to Hina and Kahikiula. His mother found him wrapped in bark cloth in the shape of a hog, and his grandmother raised him. He grew up defiant, went island to island fighting, gambling and surfing, and in time sailed for Hawaiʻi.
He climbed up to Kīlauea. At the crater he stood on a flat point called Akaniakōlea, which was kapu ground, Pele’s own. Looking down he could see her younger sisters stringing flowers into lei, and he chanted to be noticed.
Pele was inside Halemaʻumaʻu, asleep, wrapped tight in a sleeping mat. Her eyes lit a little and she looked up at him, because she already knew who he was. Kamapuaʻa’s gods told him to wake her, and he chanted again.
Then a fight. She sent fire at him, and he got away from it. In the older telling, after all that, the two of them marry.
Why one side is wet and the other dry
Pele is fire and Kamapuaʻa is rain and water, and the story is usually told as the reason this island has two sides. The windward side, Hilo and Hāmākua and Kohala, is green and gets the rain. The leeward side, Kaʻū and Kona, is dry and gets the sun. You cross the line in an afternoon’s drive.
You have met Kamapuaʻa somewhere else too. Travelling to find his parents he went as a fish, the humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa, and came ashore in human form at Kīpū on Molokaʻi. There is a Hawaiian saying about it: Kama became human at Kīpū.
Pele’s own story, how she came to Kīlauea from Kahiki, is on her page. The rest of the stories we have written up sit on the mythology hub.
The oldest written version is G. W. Kahiolo’s, which ran in the Hawaiian-language newspaper Ka Hae Hawaii in fourteen weekly parts between 26 June and 25 September 1861; we read it in the Hale Kuamoʻo edition from UH Hilo, free online at Ulukau. The National Park Service tells the birth and the chant at the crater.