Case file · Folklore / legend
Menehune as a 'lost race'
Writers long claimed the Menehune, the small builders of Hawaiian legend credited with the Alekoko fishpond on Kauaʻi, were memories of an earlier people; in 1951 Katharine Luomala's study traced how that idea grew.
1951 CE · 21.95, -159.36 · status: explained
The account
Some 19th-century writers saw the Menehune as pre-Polynesian settlers. Luomala, in 'The Menehune of Polynesia', argued the figure grew from the Tahitian word manahune, meaning commoners, combined with European fairy lore.
The sceptical view
Archaeology shows no pre-Polynesian population in Hawaiʻi; the Menehune are a cherished part of Hawaiian story rather than a lost people.