Kane

Kane, called Tane in the southern Polynesian islands, is, in the Hawaiian tradition, the god of light, of life, of fresh water and of the forest, and the highest of the four great gods of the Hawaiian pantheon (the others being Ku, Lono and Kanaloa). It is worth noting at the outset that Hawaiian religion is the tradition of the Kanaka Maoli, the Native Hawaiian people, and that although the great gods have cognate forms across the Polynesian islands, Kane answering to Tane elsewhere, the traditions of Hawaii, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Tahiti, Samoa and the other island groups are distinct, each with its own character, and should not be collapsed into a single generic religion.

In the Hawaiian understanding, Kane is above all the god of life and of the fresh water that sustains it: springs and running water are his, and the phrase ka wai a Kane, "the water of Kane," names the life-giving fresh water as his gift, so that to seek the water of Kane is, in Hawaiian poetry and thought, to seek the very source of life. He is associated with the light of the sun, with the forest and its useful growth, and with procreation and the vital force. Hawaiian tradition makes Kane a principal creator: in the accounts of the making of the first human being, it is Kane, often together with the other gods, who shapes the first man from the earth and gives him life. He was worshipped without the human sacrifice associated with the war god Ku, in a gentler cult connected with life, water and growth. Native Hawaiian religion and culture are living, undergoing vigorous renewal today, and Kane remains among the greatest of the Hawaiian gods, the god of light, of the fresh water that is the source of life, and of the living forest.

Alongside his standing as one of the four great gods, Kane appears in a distinct and widely told cycle of Hawaiian chants and stories as the travelling companion of Kanaloa, the god associated with the ocean and with healing, the two frequently depicted journeying together across the islands as a kind of divine pair, in contrast to Kane's more solitary role as supreme creator in other contexts.

In one recurring motif recorded by nineteenth and early twentieth century Hawaiian scholars and collectors of oral tradition, Kane and Kanaloa travel together seeking fresh water, and Kane strikes the ground, a rock, or a stone with his staff or with his bare hand at Kanaloa's request, causing a spring of pure water to burst forth on the spot, an act repeated at various named locations across the islands that are still pointed to in local tradition as springs Kane opened during these travels. This pairing gives concrete, everyday form to Kane's larger association with fresh water and life: rather than only naming him in the abstract as lord of the waters, the Kane-and-Kanaloa spring stories tie specific, still-visited places in the physical landscape of Hawaii directly to an act of the god's own hand, performed for the practical benefit of Kanaloa and, by extension, of the people who would later depend on that same spring. The pairing of a life-and-fresh-water god with an ocean-and-healing god traveling together also reflects a broader Hawaiian and Polynesian tendency to link fresh water and salt water, and creation and healing, as complementary rather than opposed domains, each necessary to the other in sustaining life on the islands.