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FeedThe Weapon Maker's Art
Wood and cordage, tooth and bone--recreating the ancient instruments of war, a modern weapons maker finds connection to a culture.
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Human molars imbedded in a newa imbued its owner with the vanquished foe's mana.
The artifact gleams with the luster of smoky quartz, as though lit by an inner fire. Its perfectly rounded head is studded with white nuggets that, at first glance, look like bleached coral.
They’re human molars.
“You know how gunslingers put a notch on their gun after they’ve shot someone?” asks Gordon ‘Umialiloalahanauokalakaua Kai as he runs his fingers over the smooth surface of the newa (war club) that he has sculpted from rare kauila wood. “Hawaiian warriors would take a molar from their fallen enemy and inlay it in their newa. They believed the mana [spiritual power] from the slain warrior was transferred to the club, thus giving its owner more mana.”
Although the ten molars embedded in Kai’s newa were donated, human teeth aren’t readily available these days, so he usually substitutes pigs’ molars. “The teeth are extracted after the pigs are cooked in the imu [underground oven] for lu‘au,” he says. “They look exactly like human molars.”
Kai puts the club in my hands, and I slowly turn it, admiring its fine grain, rich hue and meticulous workmanship. It’s hard to believe that, centuries ago, the purpose of this beautiful object, obviously crafted with care, was to maim and kill.
In a battle reenactment, a warrior wields a pahi kaua (sword) made from a swordfish bill.
At fifty-eight, “‘Umi” Kai is a respected Hawaiian cultural practitioner and skilled maker of Hawaiian implements, including na mea kaua (literally things of war, weapons). He wasn’t always so closely connected to his roots. “During the summer between my junior and senior years in high school, I visited my brother, who was stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage,” he recalls. “I wound up attending high school there for one semester. People asked me a lot of questions about Hawai‘i and I couldn’t answer most of them. I returned home, determined to learn.”
Kai traces his fascination with weapons to a leiomano (a shark-toothed slashing tool; literally, “lei of the shark”) that caught his eye in the home of one of his uncles. “It was hanging on a living-room wall, and no one was allowed to touch it,” he says. “When my uncle passed away, it disappeared. I think it was buried with him.”
When he was nineteen, Kai made his first weapon, based on his memory of that leiomano and pictures he had seen in books and magazines at Bishop Museum. With skills limited to what he had learned in shop class at Kaimukï High School, he painstakingly shaped the oblong paddle from a slab of wood from a mango tree he had cut down in his backyard. He drilled holes in the paddle, and used linen cordage to lash twelve tiger-shark teeth to it.
One of Kai's creations--a slashing tool made from kauila wood, cordage, and tiger shark teeth.
“The tiger shark is the most aggressive of the shark species,” Kai explains. “It’s known as the man-eater, so what better mana and kaona [hidden meaning] is there to put into a weapon than that?”
Interest piqued, Kai tried to recreate other mea kaua in the ensuing months. “I’ve kept all my first efforts,” he says. “They remind me of my mistakes, so I won’t make them again.”
Around that time, his mother’s cousin, Kahauanu Lake—a renowned singer, musician, composer and authority on Hawaiian artifacts—offered to be his mentor. Every Saturday morning for six years, he instructed Kai in na mea Hawai‘i (things of Hawai‘i), from hula and history to weaving and warfare.
