Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Go well, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Frying and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So, um,
Speaker 1: I went on vacation and I found out about a thing,
Speaker 1: and then I came back and I don't want vacation
Speaker 1: to be over. So we're gonna talk about that. This
Speaker 1: happens to both of us from time to time. Even
Speaker 1: if I go on vacation and I think, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna take a breather and not not think about
Speaker 1: work related things. Oh yeah, I'll be walking around and
Speaker 1: find some fascinating thing that then becomes an episode of
Speaker 1: the podcast. Yeah, that is exactly what happened. I was
Speaker 1: so sworn because there's been a lot of stuff going on.
Speaker 1: I've been very busy and very stressed, and I was
Speaker 1: so sworn that I was not going to deal with
Speaker 1: work stuff for the week that we were away, and
Speaker 1: then about three days and I was like, oh day,
Speaker 1: I'm totally doing it. So, uh, my beloved and I
Speaker 1: recently went to Hawaii. Yeah, it's one of my favorite
Speaker 1: places on Earth. I'm very attached to it. I cry
Speaker 1: when I leave um and the resort that we were
Speaker 1: at had a lot of Mannahuna theming, because you're a
Speaker 1: Disney's Alanie, they have a whole thing about it. And
Speaker 1: there are these little figures that are everywhere in playful poses,
Speaker 1: and they're kind of hidden in plants and in corners.
Speaker 1: And we had been talking to one of the staff
Speaker 1: about other things, and my husband asked about it, and
Speaker 1: that gentlemen described the manahuna as Hawaii's leprechns. And then
Speaker 1: one of his colleagues it was nearby, was like, that
Speaker 1: is way too simple, Like that's not really right. You're
Speaker 1: telling these people something that they're gonna not understand later.
Speaker 1: So then I was like, okay, break down. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then I wanted to go do a bunch of reading
Speaker 1: about it. So here's the thing. This becomes one of
Speaker 1: those history pieces that is very tricky to examine for
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons. For one, the minhune will tell
Speaker 1: you exactly what they are, and I shouldn't have used
Speaker 1: the word exactly because there is no exact but they're
Speaker 1: part of an oral history, and of course that in
Speaker 1: and of itself is sort of a place where it's
Speaker 1: easy for facts to get a little shifty, and then
Speaker 1: once it starts to appear in books and other media
Speaker 1: that's written by outsiders, this whole thing is often sensationalized
Speaker 1: or misinterpreted. UM. For example, of their episodes of shows
Speaker 1: like Finding Bigfoot, the talk about the Minnuhune and I'm
Speaker 1: not throwing any shade of that show if you love it,
Speaker 1: but that is definitely more geared towards enticing viewers with
Speaker 1: tantalizing miss stories that are framed as possibly real uh
Speaker 1: more than maybe sort of really delving into like anthropological
Speaker 1: reasons for for mythology and whatnot. And there was actually
Speaker 1: another show and I'm forgetting the name of it that
Speaker 1: I found on the History Channel that kind of had
Speaker 1: the same even impetus point as me, where it's like
Speaker 1: we're at Disney sound LANDI and then these things and
Speaker 1: we're gonna search it out. But even so it wasn't
Speaker 1: uh and which seemed lovely, but again it gets into
Speaker 1: this weird interpretation thing where you want to get viewers in,
Speaker 1: and so you may be like, there their cuts to
Speaker 1: commercial clearly where all cliffhangers about these little people were real,
Speaker 1: So we don't want to do that. The other problem
Speaker 1: is that this story has also been used as part
Speaker 1: of tourism branding. It's even Minnahune have even appeared on
Speaker 1: like product branding, and it's part of this sort of
Speaker 1: casual storytelling that gets told. If you go to any
Speaker 1: like Hawaii uh tourism site, they probably have something about it,
Speaker 1: and so it gets kind of put in this um
Speaker 1: narrative that's about being really fun, but that sort of
Speaker 1: steps it farther and farther away from any sort of
Speaker 1: historical record that we actually have. So I thought it
Speaker 1: would be fun to actually really delve into this sort
Speaker 1: of legend and myth area and talk about why it
Speaker 1: continues to be a thing, how it has shifted, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So that's what we're doing to a you guys get
Speaker 1: to come on Holly's extended I can't bear to be
Speaker 1: back in Reality Vacation episodes. So first we'll talk about
Speaker 1: the legend of the Minna June. It's estimated that the
Speaker 1: Hawaiian Islands were first occupied by humans somewhere between three
Speaker 1: hundred and eight hundred cees. So these earliest inhabitants arrived
Speaker 1: in canoes, having traveled from the Marquess Islands, which is
Speaker 1: about twenty three hundred miles south of the Hawaiian Islands.
Speaker 1: So also they're in the Pacific Ocean for a sense
Speaker 1: of distance right as a modern day flight that would
Speaker 1: still take hours and hours and hours, and that is
Speaker 1: with the benefit of UH modern technology and guidance systems.
Speaker 1: So this journey by canoe from the Marqueses Islands, presumably
Speaker 1: navigating via the stars, would have been no joke whatsoever.
Speaker 1: And those early settlers landed on Hawaii's Big Island and
Speaker 1: then using the plants and other resources that they brought
Speaker 1: with them, they set up in agrarian culture. A second
Speaker 1: wave of Polynesian people's is believed to have arrived in
Speaker 1: the Hawaiian Islands around eleven hundred and this wave was
Speaker 1: from Tahiti, and sometimes it's described as an invasion there.
Speaker 1: Their arrival is characterized as one in which the newcomers
Speaker 1: conquered the inhabitants who were descended from that earlier group
Speaker 1: from the Marquess Islands. Yes, sometimes uh it sounds like
Speaker 1: there was some aggression, and other times it's just described
Speaker 1: as uh that previous group was basically terrified of these
Speaker 1: newcomers and kind of ran but According to the legend,
Speaker 1: the tiny people known as the Minnahune were on Hawaii
Speaker 1: before either of the mar Causes or the Tahitian Islanders.
Speaker 1: And we're going to talk about how these three groups
Speaker 1: actually all tied together in this myth a little bit
Speaker 1: later in the show. So, these tiny folks who described
Speaker 1: as being two or three feet tall, very approximately a meter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'll see a range in there too. Some will say
Speaker 1: as small as six inches even, but most of the
Speaker 1: averages are between two and three feet. Yeah, And they're
Speaker 1: said to have lived on the Hawaiian Islands before any
Speaker 1: humans arrived there. Sometimes they're described as an ongoing hidden
Speaker 1: forest culture that still exists today, with sightings still being
Speaker 1: reported from time to time. And there are a number
Speaker 1: of different stories about how the Manahuna may have arrived
Speaker 1: in the islands. Many of them involved some kind of
Speaker 1: nature linked polytheistic spiritual stories that are common in the
Speaker 1: Hawaiian religion. While the minnahan are sometimes described as a
Speaker 1: sort of Hawaiian analog to creatures like lepre cons as
Speaker 1: I mentioned in the intro, or elves, fairies, or gnomes,
Speaker 1: there is a really significant distinction, and it's that Manahuna
Speaker 1: are not generally described as having any sort of magical powers.
Speaker 1: They are just small people who live in the forest
Speaker 1: and have an incredible work ethic, and the manahuna are
Speaker 1: described as skilled craftspeople. According to Led, they build at
Speaker 1: night and if anyone were to see them at work,
Speaker 1: the work would be abandoned. So this really reminds me
Speaker 1: for an analog that is maybe not so far off base,
Speaker 1: the story of the shoemaker and the elves very similar.
Speaker 1: While the most extreme versions of this late night work
Speaker 1: myths say that the many Hune would build entire structures overnight,
Speaker 1: other versions merely suggest that they just worked at night,
Speaker 1: but there could be successive nights of labor on a
Speaker 1: given project. Yeah, it kind of depends who, uh you know. Obviously.
Speaker 1: Some of the older, more deeply mythological ones suggests that
Speaker 1: they had like one night complete huge things, uh that
Speaker 1: strange credulity um, and they have been credited with building
Speaker 1: everything from temples to canoes. But we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about four specific sites that are attributed to them. Uh.
Speaker 1: Two will kind of talk about very briefly, the third
Speaker 1: a little bit longer, and than the fourth will get
Speaker 1: into more detail, but at the end of those four
Speaker 1: you will see why those are the ones we chose.
Speaker 1: The first is Neck Island. On Necker Island, which is
Speaker 1: a small northwestern island in Hawaii, there are thirty three
Speaker 1: shrines that are made of stone, and they're often called
Speaker 1: artifacts of the Minnehune. According to legend, Necker Island was
Speaker 1: the last refuge of the Minnehune as they fled other
Speaker 1: Polynesian peoples who had moved to the islands. Necker Island
Speaker 1: was added to the National Register of Historic Places and
Speaker 1: on the Big Island, uh Cahaluu Bay is famed as
Speaker 1: a surfing center, but it has its own connection to
Speaker 1: the Minnehune. There is a breakwater in the bay called
Speaker 1: the Kappaka Menehune. I have probably pronounced that wrong, even
Speaker 1: though I had people from Hawaii pronounced it for me
Speaker 1: while I was uh And this is a long line
Speaker 1: of stonework rock formations that may have at one point
Speaker 1: extended to completely close off the bay, and according to legend,
Speaker 1: the Manahune wanted to make the bay into one big
Speaker 1: fish pond, but a high priest, wanting preserve the great
Speaker 1: surfing there in the bay, tricked the Mannahune into halting
Speaker 1: their work by having a rooster crow in the night,
Speaker 1: and so, according to this story, the Mannahune, having heard
Speaker 1: the rooster, believed that the morning had arrived, and so
Speaker 1: they left their labor, never to return to it. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, the area around the bay was added
Speaker 1: to the National Register of Historic Places. Also, the third
Speaker 1: spot is the ale Coco fish Pond, and that's about
Speaker 1: a half mile inland from uh Nowhelie Wheely Harbor on
Speaker 1: the southeast coast to the island of Kawaii. And this
Speaker 1: pond represents early fish farming. It is made up of
Speaker 1: a dirt wall with a stone face that cuts off
Speaker 1: our river bend and creates a fish pond. It's really
Speaker 1: quite clever, uh. And the wall extends about five ft
Speaker 1: uh you know, a little less than two meters above
Speaker 1: the water, and it's four ft so like one point
Speaker 1: three meters wide. It's believed that this pond is more
Speaker 1: than a thousand years old, and that stone faced wall,
Speaker 1: according to legend, was built by the many Hune. It's
Speaker 1: the oldest fish pond on the island of Kauai and
Speaker 1: it's described in its National Register application as quote, the
Speaker 1: best example of an inland fish pond in the entire state.
Speaker 1: So that document, by the way, also mentions the many
Speaker 1: hune Is its builders. And this lush, vegetation friendly ali
Speaker 1: Coco fish pond, which is also known as the Manahunai
Speaker 1: fish pond, was added to the National Register of Historic
Speaker 1: Places in ninety three. We're going to talk about a
Speaker 1: structure that sometimes used as evidence of Manahune construction. But
Speaker 1: before we get to that, we are going to pause
Speaker 1: and have a quick word from one of our sponsors. So,
Speaker 1: also on the island of Kawaii is perhaps the most
Speaker 1: famous of the manahune Is attributed works, and that is
Speaker 1: the kiki Aola Ditch in Weemeya. And this irrigation ditch
Speaker 1: sits at the meeting point of two rivers, the Wameya
Speaker 1: and the Makaile, and it's about seven thousand feet inland.
Speaker 1: This ditch was built again according to an application for
Speaker 1: it to be made a National Historic Site in ur
Speaker 1: as a means of irrigating tarot crops. Taro root is
Speaker 1: used as one of the mainstays of Hawaiian food. Poi
Speaker 1: is made from beating the root into a paste after
Speaker 1: it's been baked. If you have never had poi, it's fascinating.
Speaker 1: I love it, not everybody does. It's one of those
Speaker 1: things you can add a lot of other stuff too.
Speaker 1: We went on a really fun um sailing canoe while
Speaker 1: we were there, and we ended up in a whole
Speaker 1: big discussion with the crew about poi and how they
Speaker 1: each eat it, which was hilarious because some of them
Speaker 1: grossed each other out with their choices. Um And according
Speaker 1: to legend, this project, the kikia Ola Ditch was built
Speaker 1: by the Mane June under a directive from King Olah
Speaker 1: of Waimea, and his name is the Ola and kiki Ola.
Speaker 1: And while it is called a ditch that is maybe
Speaker 1: conjuring not the correct images, it is actually an interesting
Speaker 1: feat of engineering. So not only did this causeway transport
Speaker 1: water at a level above that of the river, but
Speaker 1: it also turns a corner at a cliff's edge in
Speaker 1: the process. And this construction uses a jointed stone dry
Speaker 1: masonry technique that isn't like anything else in the area.
Speaker 1: The stones used for it are cut with squared off
Speaker 1: smooth edges and they fit together really tightly without using
Speaker 1: any mortar. The legend is that the men a Hune
Speaker 1: lined up side by side over a seven mile stretch
Speaker 1: to hand each of the stones down the line, sort
Speaker 1: of like a bucket brigade from the quarry site to
Speaker 1: the construction location of the actual ditch, and all likelihood
Speaker 1: whoever built the ditch to use stone that was closer
Speaker 1: to the actual area. Yeah, this is one of those
Speaker 1: things that there was like a survey that was published
Speaker 1: in the early part of the twentieth century that was like,
Speaker 1: the closest match to this stone is seven miles away.
Speaker 1: But even in that same document it's like, well there's
Speaker 1: also some that's closer, but I guess it was maybe
Speaker 1: not as good as of a match. Um. But the
Speaker 1: ditch was first referenced in writing in sevent and it
Speaker 1: is mentioned in the diary of Captain George Vancouver, who
Speaker 1: traveled through the way Maya Valley that year, and based
Speaker 1: on his writing, he and his team were really quite
Speaker 1: impressed with this structure. They wrote, quote, as we proceeded,
Speaker 1: our attention was arrested by an object that greatly excited
Speaker 1: our admiration, and at once put an end to all
Speaker 1: conjecture on the means to which the natives resorted for
Speaker 1: the watering of their plantations. A lofty perpendicular cliff now
Speaker 1: presented itself, which, by rising immediately from the river, would
Speaker 1: effectively have stopped our further progress into the country, had
Speaker 1: it not been for an exceedingly well constructed wall of
Speaker 1: stones and clay, about twenty four ft high, raised from
Speaker 1: the bottom by the side of the cliff, which not
Speaker 1: only served as a pass into the country, but also
Speaker 1: as an aqueduct to convey the water brought thither by
Speaker 1: great labor from a considerable distance the place where the
Speaker 1: river descends from the mountains, affording the planters an abundant
Speaker 1: stream for the purpose to which it is so advantageously applied.
Speaker 1: This wall did not less credit to the mind of
Speaker 1: the projector than to the skill of the builder. Terminated
Speaker 1: the extent of our walk from whence we returned through
Speaker 1: the plantations, whose highly improved state impressed us with a
Speaker 1: very favorable opinion of the industry and ingenuity of the inhabitants.
Speaker 1: By the late eighteen hundreds, the nickname many who name
Speaker 1: Ditch was being used in reference to this structure, and
Speaker 1: as a random aside. In a book about historical Irrigation
Speaker 1: that was written in nineteen thirty three. Holly found an
Speaker 1: off hand mentioned of a theory that our Russian military
Speaker 1: detachment in a fort near the mouth of the river
Speaker 1: built the ditch in eighteen seventeen. The same book points
Speaker 1: out that since Vancouver's description predates that by a couple
Speaker 1: of decades, this theory doesn't hold water. I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: apologizing for the punt tons, and yet there it is.
Speaker 1: That was my fault. Yeah, it's interesting. I had not
Speaker 1: seen that Russian military detachment theory anywhere else, and it
Speaker 1: just kind of popped up in this really sort of
Speaker 1: obscure book about Hawaiian irrigation history. I was like, what what.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find anything else on it. So Uh. One
Speaker 1: account of this ditch's creation, written by Westerner William Hyde
Speaker 1: Rice in his book Hawaiian Legends, Uh says, quote olah
Speaker 1: the king obtained the promise of the Manahune that they
Speaker 1: would build a water lead at Why Maya. If all
Speaker 1: the people stayed in their houses, the dogs muzzled and
Speaker 1: the chickens shut in calabashes, so that there would be
Speaker 1: no sound on the appointed night. This was done, and
Speaker 1: the Manahune completed the water course before daybreak. Only a
Speaker 1: hundred feet or about thirty point five meters of the
Speaker 1: seven thousand foot length of this ditch shows this ancient
Speaker 1: stone work. There's another hundred feet of burmed ditch that
Speaker 1: is also believed to be from the original work on
Speaker 1: the structure, but it doesn't have that stone work. A
Speaker 1: road was built along the ditch in nineteen twenty and
Speaker 1: during that time a lot of modifications were made, really
Speaker 1: without regard to historical preservation. Additionally, there are pieces of
Speaker 1: stone work that we're taken by residents and construction workers
Speaker 1: who were working on that road to use them for
Speaker 1: other uses, so significant pieces of the original ditch have
Speaker 1: been lost. The ditch does still function as a form
Speaker 1: of irrigation though, and as we mentioned a moment ago,
Speaker 1: an application was filed in four for this ditch to
Speaker 1: be added to the National Register of Historic Locations, and
Speaker 1: that application was approved. So that keeps coming up, and
Speaker 1: if you're counting, that makes four sites on the National
Speaker 1: Register that are attributed either in part or in total
Speaker 1: to the work of the Minahune. So this is really impressive.
Speaker 1: We don't generally see a lot of applications for official
Speaker 1: historical designations that credit uh an element of mythology for
Speaker 1: their creation, Like that's not a thing that comes up
Speaker 1: over and over. Um. But there are a couple of
Speaker 1: explanations that have been offered to explain this whole myth
Speaker 1: from the perspective of what really happened. And UM, I
Speaker 1: will say, before we get into these explanations, they're not
Speaker 1: ultra satisfying, So just brace UM. So. One theory that
Speaker 1: lends the Menouni myth a little bit of real world validation, though,
Speaker 1: is that it may have been bolstered by encounters with
Speaker 1: Japanese travelers to Hawaii. In a two thousand nine article
Speaker 1: written for Smithsonian by oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer and journalist Eric Sigliano,
Speaker 1: the pair describe how currents of the Pacific have been
Speaker 1: landing Japanese mariners at unintended locations for thousands of years,
Speaker 1: and the course of the article they write quote the
Speaker 1: Japanese presence in Hawaii may go back much further Hawaii
Speaker 1: and legend recounts that the first Polynesian settlers they're encountered
Speaker 1: diminutive mine June, little people, marvelous craftsmen who still dwell
Speaker 1: in deep forests and secret valleys. At the time, the
Speaker 1: Japanese were more than a foot shorter than the average
Speaker 1: Polynesians and adept at many strange technologies, from firing pottery
Speaker 1: and spinning silk to forging metal that might indeed have
Speaker 1: seemed like marvels. So it's possible that this myth may
Speaker 1: have been bolstered by at least sightings of these lost
Speaker 1: Japanese mariners who were maybe camping or trying to make
Speaker 1: their way, But that still seems like a really unlikely
Speaker 1: source for this whole idea. That seems like a little
Speaker 1: bit of a stretch. In a moment, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about an intriguing recent discovery that's often related as
Speaker 1: part of the evidence for the Many June, but we're
Speaker 1: going to take another quick sponsor break before we get
Speaker 1: to that. A recent addition to efforts to corroborate stories
Speaker 1: of the Minna June is Homo flora Sciences. This is
Speaker 1: also sometimes called the Hobbit. This is a recently discovered
Speaker 1: early human skeletal remains were discovered on the island of
Speaker 1: Flora's in Indonesia in two thousand three, and that discovery
Speaker 1: was made public in two thousand four. So this species
Speaker 1: was tiny, about three and a half feet tall, just
Speaker 1: a little over a meter. They had small brains about
Speaker 1: the size of an orange, large teeth, and large feet,
Speaker 1: which is how they got this hobbit nickname. Fossil evidence
Speaker 1: indicates that they used stone tools and they hunted, and
Speaker 1: tools found at the site have been dated back as
Speaker 1: far as a hundred and ninety thousand years ago. They
Speaker 1: might have used fire for cooking based on charred stegged
Speaker 1: on bones that were found in the cave and the
Speaker 1: female skeleton that was found in two thousand three by
Speaker 1: a team that was actually they're trying to track Homo
Speaker 1: sapiens migration from Asia to Australia was named LB one.
Speaker 1: That's after leong Bua Cave where it was found, and
Speaker 1: that skeleton was dated to about eighty thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: And since the discovery of LB one as part of
Speaker 1: that bigger thing, it wasn't like these happened way later.
Speaker 1: They were all kind of in a in a big
Speaker 1: discovery arc uh. Remains of another twelve separate individuals have
Speaker 1: also been recovered, with dating ranging from one thousand to
Speaker 1: sixty thousand years of age. For the various specimens, but
Speaker 1: the only place that Homo floresciences has been found is
Speaker 1: in that one cave, so we don't know if this
Speaker 1: was a species that evolved in isolation, or if they
Speaker 1: traveled elsewhere or anything. And this was again in Indonesia, naturally,
Speaker 1: though this has raised ideas that Homo floresciences might be
Speaker 1: linked to the manahuna in some way. Because this discovery
Speaker 1: is still quite new, there is a lot of debate
Speaker 1: about to find about its meaning in the Earth's timeline. Initially,
Speaker 1: it was believed that these people were wiped out by
Speaker 1: a volcanic eruption about twelve thousand years ago. More recently,
Speaker 1: it's been suggested that it was really modern humans traveling
Speaker 1: through Indonesia as far back as fifty thousand years ago
Speaker 1: that led to their extinction. And there are we should say,
Speaker 1: scientists that believe that classifying this discovery as a new
Speaker 1: species is in fact wrong, and that this is a
Speaker 1: case of modern human society that had a mutation or
Speaker 1: a disorder in the small isolated gene pool that they
Speaker 1: had just living on this one island. There is also
Speaker 1: on that same island of species of pygmy elephant that
Speaker 1: similarly had uh, you know, a an adaptation or a
Speaker 1: mutation depending on how you want to look at it,
Speaker 1: from being isolated. So they kind of used that as
Speaker 1: evidence of like, hey, this was probably also happening with
Speaker 1: these humans here. So there are lots of stories and
Speaker 1: myths that are connected to the Minnehune, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them are really compelling. These explanations of Japanese travelers
Speaker 1: and homofluoresciensis offer some you know, pretty interesting ideas connected
Speaker 1: to the story. Yeah, there are interesting ways to rationalize it,
Speaker 1: but the problem that keeps coming up is that there
Speaker 1: is literally no hard evidence of an actual two to
Speaker 1: three foot tall race of forest people on the Hawaiian Islands.
Speaker 1: The evidence has often used as proof of the existence
Speaker 1: of the Menna June in that form is real and
Speaker 1: that it exists, so like that pond and that ditch
Speaker 1: that are named after them, those are real structures, but
Speaker 1: there hasn't ever been any evidence or finds that show
Speaker 1: actual short forest dwelling humans on the Hawaiian Islands. One
Speaker 1: possibility that I think is really interesting is that these
Speaker 1: stories actually predate human arrival from the Hawaiian Islands and
Speaker 1: they traveled along with Hawaii's early settlers as part of
Speaker 1: their own cultural history. So they are like a belief
Speaker 1: that goes so far back that it came to Hawaii
Speaker 1: with its first human inhabitants. Yeah, and there's also a
Speaker 1: theory that that first wave of Marqueses Island settlers built
Speaker 1: those various structs that have been attributed to the Manahune,
Speaker 1: and that when the second wave of settlers from Tahiti
Speaker 1: arrived on the island several hundred years later, they found
Speaker 1: that stonework ditch, the stone wall, etcetera. And they developed
Speaker 1: the myth of the Manahune over time to explain the
Speaker 1: existence of them. One of the other aspects to unraveling
Speaker 1: this myth is linguistic. There were three clearly delineated classes
Speaker 1: in both Hawaiian and Tahitian early history. Tahiti's lowest class
Speaker 1: was called Manahune. Since that Tahitian wave of settlers, it's
Speaker 1: usually described as taking over the lands of the original
Speaker 1: group who first came to Hawaii. It's also possible that
Speaker 1: there's this multi layered aspect to the blurring of the
Speaker 1: Manahune story. It's likely that they considered the people they
Speaker 1: conquered to be manahune or the lowest status, so it's
Speaker 1: not too far of a jump to consider that over
Speaker 1: the years and over all the retellings, especially as in
Speaker 1: an oral history context, this meaning of lower transformed uh
Speaker 1: and to referring to their height instead of to their
Speaker 1: social class, leading to the idea that they were physically
Speaker 1: smaller people. But perhaps the most likely and something that
Speaker 1: some historians really put forth as the actual source of
Speaker 1: all of this is the theory that the oral history
Speaker 1: was probably misinterpreted when it was retold by outsiders who
Speaker 1: were wishing to transfer it to the written record. For example,
Speaker 1: in that book we referenced earlier called Hawaiian Legends by
Speaker 1: William Hyde Rice that we referenced um, the Manahuna are
Speaker 1: described in pretty quaint storytelling style terms, and while the
Speaker 1: author is clearly intending to relay a myth, the manner
Speaker 1: in which he writes also makes it seem as though
Speaker 1: he's stating facts. So here's an excerpt. The Manahuna were
Speaker 1: small people, but they were broad and muscular and possessed
Speaker 1: great strength. Contrary to common belief, they were not possessed
Speaker 1: of any supernatural powers. But it was solely the account
Speaker 1: of their tremendous strength and energy, and they're great numbers
Speaker 1: that they were a well to accomplish the wonderful things
Speaker 1: they did. These Pygmy people were both obedient and industrious,
Speaker 1: always obeying their leaders. To further complicate matters, Rice then
Speaker 1: goes on to describe all the places that you can see,
Speaker 1: the paths and trails and other structures of the Manna June,
Speaker 1: and this blend of fact and fiction writing style seems
Speaker 1: to have fed back into the modern version of the myth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it struck me so strongly reading his
Speaker 1: his account that he doesn't delineate between when he is
Speaker 1: telling the story and when he is relaying factual evidence,
Speaker 1: and it gets really blurry. This reminds me of that
Speaker 1: episode we did that was all about ghost ships and
Speaker 1: how there was a fictionalized version of one of those
Speaker 1: ghost ships stories that people interpreted its fact and even
Speaker 1: now like you find the facts, facts and quotation marks
Speaker 1: from that fictional story as the description of how it
Speaker 1: happen bend. Yeah. And it's also worth noting that Rice
Speaker 1: was one of the men who combined business in politics
Speaker 1: and the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, so his retelling
Speaker 1: of these myths was, whether consciously or unconsciously, almost certainly
Speaker 1: colored by his perceptions of the Hawaiian people, as he
Speaker 1: himself was a member of an Anglo family that was
Speaker 1: living on the islands and acquiring a great deal of
Speaker 1: land and power, often at the expense of the native islanders.
Speaker 1: So it does not seem likely that there was a
Speaker 1: literal race of tiny, nocturnal people living in the forests
Speaker 1: of Hawaii building things in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: But there may well have been a group of skilled
Speaker 1: laborers whose work was attributed to a mythical people. I mean,
Speaker 1: someone built all these structures that we talked about earlier
Speaker 1: in the episode. Yeah, to me, it makes the most
Speaker 1: sense that that uh, that Tahitian word manna june has
Speaker 1: shifted over time and caused this confusion between lower class
Speaker 1: and lower height. But again, we'll probably never know. This
Speaker 1: is so far back in history, And I don't want
Speaker 1: to rob anyone of the fun of the stories of
Speaker 1: the mine because it's very very endearing stuff, and it's
Speaker 1: really charming and fun and every I mean mythology is
Speaker 1: like wonderful and powerful and has great meaning. But it
Speaker 1: is some of those things that merits a little bit
Speaker 1: of examination. I think. Do you also have a listener
Speaker 1: mail for us? I do. It's listener mail that kind
Speaker 1: of cracked me up. Uh. This is from our listener, Kristen.
Speaker 1: She writes, Dear Holly and Tracy, I just listened to
Speaker 1: your podcast about Pauline Sabin. You mentioned that Pauline outlived
Speaker 1: multiple husbands and was buried next to her second husband
Speaker 1: and not her third. I had to giggle at your
Speaker 1: discussion over how to choose which husband to be buried
Speaker 1: next to. My great grandmother solved this dilemma in the
Speaker 1: most delightful way. When her first husband died, burial plots
Speaker 1: were purchased for her whole family, which included her and
Speaker 1: their young son. She remarried a few years later and
Speaker 1: eventually outlived that husband and as well already owning burial plots.
Speaker 1: Her second husband was interred at the other end of
Speaker 1: the row of three. So when my grandmother passed, she
Speaker 1: was laid to rest in the plot between the two.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine a more clever solution than to choose both. Uh. Incidentally,
Speaker 1: she says, I live in Nebraska. Her child goes to
Speaker 1: an elementary school that is named after Pauline's grandfather, j
Speaker 1: Sterling Morton. That's a really fun story. It is one
Speaker 1: of those things that I always wonder about. Um, it's
Speaker 1: a discussion that has come up in my family from
Speaker 1: time to time and we kind of giggle about it.
Speaker 1: Then people feel uncomfortable and shut it down. So I'm
Speaker 1: glad to hear how somebody else's family handled it, uh,
Speaker 1: and that there's this cool connection to the story of
Speaker 1: Pauline save in there. So thank you, Kristen. If you
Speaker 1: would like to write to us, you can do so
Speaker 1: at History Podcast at how Stone works dot com. UH.
Speaker 1: You can find this across the spectrum of social media.
Speaker 1: As Missed in History, we are on the web as
Speaker 1: Missed in History dot com. That's our website where you
Speaker 1: can visit all of the archive of every episode of
Speaker 1: the show ever of all time wait before Tracy and
Speaker 1: I were ever here. But if you look at the
Speaker 1: shows that Tracy and I worked on, there will be
Speaker 1: show notes on those ones as well, So you can
Speaker 1: look at our sources. If you want to do a
Speaker 1: little extra reading for yourself, we encourage you come and
Speaker 1: visit us at mist in history dot com for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how staff
Speaker 1: works dot com.