The Wind Gourd of Laamaomao - Moses Kuaea Nakuina

Moses Kuaea Nakuina (born July 12, 1867, in Waialua, O'ahu) was the first president of the Christian Endeavor Union in Hawai'i (1903), a member of the Territorial House of Representatives (elected from Maui, Moloka'i, and Lana'i in 1904), and editor of the Hawaiian newspaper Ka Hoaloha (1907). His parents were John and Kaimawaho Nakuina, who were married on Maui; he was the grandson of Puakaloheau, the great-grandson of Kekaiakea, and the nephew of Reverend Kuaea of Kaumakapili Church in Honolulu. Nakuina attended Royal School in Honolulu. He went to the boarding school in Malumalu, Kaua'i, when his father became a county judge in Hanalei. When his father was sent to teach in Hilo, Nakuina attended Hilo Boarding School. Later he continued his education at Royal School on O'ahu. After his father's death, Nakuina went to work at the Government Records Office in Honolulu to support himself and his mother. The office was administered by Emma M. Beckley, a part-Hawaiian woman who was a commissioner of water rights, an authority on Hawaiian culture, and the first curator of Hawai'i's National Museum, as well as an author and storyteller. Moses married Emma (the widow of part-Hawaiian Fred K. Beckley) in 1887, the year he began working in the Records Office. In addition to serving in positions of business, government, and the church, Nakuina collected and published Hawaiian folktales and wrote and translated articles on Hawaiian culture. He spent the last years of his life as a minister of Kaumakapili Church, working strenuously with the prohibition campaign in 1910. He died at the age of 44 on August 3, 1911 at his Kaimuki home. In 1915, a bronze tablet in his memory was placed in Kaumakapili Church by the Christian Endeavor Societies. In addition to Moolelo Hawaii o Pakaa a me Ku-a-Pakaa (The Hawaiian Story of Pakaa and Ku-a-Pakaa), Nakuina also published an incomplete story entitled Moolelo Hawaii o Kalapana, ke keiki hoopapa o Puna (The Hawaiian Story of Kalapana, a native-born child of Puna) in 1902. His articles and English translations of Hawaiian articles by other writers appeared in Thrum's Hawaiian Annual and include Stories of Menehunes (1895), Hawaiian Surf Riding (1896), Fish Stories and Superstitions (1901), Ku-ula, the Fish God of Hawai'i (1901), and Aiai, Son of Ku-ula (1902).