Lono

Lono (often invoked as Lono-makua and Lono-i-ka-makahiki) is one of the four great founding deities (nā akua) of the traditional Hawaiian pantheon, sharing the island cosmology with Kāne, Kū and Kanaloa. Personifying the rain clouds that nourish the land, the rumble of fertile thunder, civil peace, abundant agriculture and communal well-being, Lono presided over the seasonal cycle in which institutional violence was suspended in favour of biological renewal. His cult reached its peak in the monumental Makahiki festival, a four-month period (roughly between October and February) that opened the Hawaiian new year under the watch of the Pleiades constellation (Makaliʻi). During this sacred interval, the temples of human sacrifice and war dedicated to Kū were covered and closed, armed hostilities were strictly forbidden by customary law, and the fluttering image of Lono-makua travelled across the islands gathering agricultural offerings and presiding over peaceful sporting contests.

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

The white banner, the rain clouds, the sweet potato and the pig

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, Fornander Collection of Hawaiian Antiquities and Folk-Lore. translation: Memoirs of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Vols. IV-VI. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1916-1920.

Studies

• Beckwith, Martha Warren, Hawaiian Mythology. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940. open
• Sahlins, Marshall, Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981. open
• Valeri, Valerio, Kingship and Sacrifice: Ritual and Society in Ancient Hawaii. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. 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.