Kanaloa

Kanaloa is one of the four great sovereign deities (nā akua nui) of the traditional Hawaiian pantheon, forming the cosmic tetrad alongside Kāne, Kū and Lono. In the archaic religion of the archipelago, Kanaloa presides over the abyssal depths of the ocean (moana), the ocean currents, the long-distance navigation routes, and the healing of illnesses attributed to sorcery. In the oral narratives he usually appears in close partnership with Kāne: the two gods arrive together from Kahiki, travel along the coasts and mountain ridges of the archipelago inspecting villages, planting food, and opening perennial freshwater springs in steep rocks for the preparation of their ritual ʻawa drink. His most celebrated visible body or animal form (kinolau) is the octopus or squid (heʻe), invoked especially in medical liturgies to draw out evils clinging to the body of the sick. In astronomical and geographic terms, the southern tropic of the sun and the western horizon were marked as the sacred paths of Kanaloa, while the island of Kahoʻolawe, formerly called Kohemālamalama o Kanaloa, was the principal ceremonial centre for teaching Polynesian navigators.

6 min read · Reviewed on September 28, 2026 · How we research

The octopus, the squid, the deep ocean and the canoe

Primary sources

• Malo, David, Hawaiian Antiquities (Moolelo Hawaii). translation: Translated from Hawaiian by Nathaniel Bright Emerson. Honolulu: Hawaiian Gazette Co., 1903. read
• Kamakau, Samuel Manaiakalani, Ka Po'e Kahiko: The People of Old. translation: Translated from Hawaiian by Mary Kawena Pukui; edited by Dorothy B. Barrère. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1964. read
• Emerson, Nathaniel Bright, Unwritten Literature of Hawaii: The Sacred Songs of the Hula. translation: Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office / Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 38, 1909. read
• Fornander, Abraham, An Account of the Polynesian Race: Its Origins and Migrations. translation: London: Trübner & Co., 1878-1880 (Vols. I-II). read

Studies

• Beckwith, Martha Warren, Hawaiian Mythology. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940. open
• Valeri, Valerio, Kingship and Sacrifice: Ritual and Society in Ancient Hawaii. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. open
• Handy, E. S. Craighill; Pukui, Mary Kawena, The Polynesian Family System in Ka-'u, Hawai'i. Wellington: The Polynesian Society, 1958. open
• Kirch, Patrick Vinton, How Chiefs Became Kings: Divine Kingship and the Rise of Archaic States in Ancient Hawaii. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.