Lono Returns for the Makahiki Festival

The Pleiades rise on the eastern horizon at sunset and the priests know: Lono is coming.

The god of agriculture, rain, and fertility descends from the heavens each year riding a cross-shaped structure draped with white kapa cloth and feathers — a form that can be rigged like a sail, visible from the shore. He circles the Big Island counterclockwise, which is the direction of the sacred, stopping at each coastal heiau where the priests and chiefs receive him with offerings and tribute. The circuit takes approximately four months.

During those four months, war is forbidden.

This is the heart of the Makahiki: a period of absolute peace and celebration, governed by the logic that the god of growing things cannot operate in a landscape of violence. The ali’i collect tribute. Athletes compete in the sports that are now called the Hawaiian Olympics — surfing, javelin-throwing, canoe racing, boxing. Hula is performed. Food is prepared and distributed. The rains come, or they are prayed for. The taro grows.

Lono and Kū are understood as occupying alternate seasons. When Lono’s four months are up and the ritual circuit of the island is complete, Kū’s season returns: war is permitted again, the heiau of the war god are reactivated, the feathered images come out. The two gods share the year the way the two seasons share the islands.

Lono departs at the end of the Makahiki by sailing off the edge of the world — returning to Kahiki, the mythic homeland across the horizon, from which he will return the following year when the Pleiades rise again. The departure is as ritual as the arrival: the priests see him off, the white kapa sails disappear over the western horizon, and the people begin the work of Kū’s season.

In January 1779, two British ships appeared at the Big Island during the Makahiki. Their commander, Captain James Cook, was returning to a bay where he had stopped before. The priests and chiefs of Kealakekua Bay received him with an elaborate ceremony that subsequent scholars have debated for two centuries: was Cook received as Lono? The evidence is specific enough to be suggestive — the cross-shaped masts and sails, the circumnavigation of the island before arrival, the priests leading him to the Lono heiau and receiving him there — but also contested enough that the debate continues.

What is not contested is what happened next. Cook left the bay as the Makahiki protocol required. Then a storm damaged one of his ships. He returned. The return happened at the wrong time — after Lono had departed, during Kū’s season, when the logic of violence was operational again. An argument over a stolen boat escalated. Cook was killed on the beach at Kealakekua Bay.

Historians continue to argue about the theology of the encounter. What the Hawaiian tradition itself records is simpler and more ancient: Lono comes at the rising of the Pleiades and departs when the white sails disappear over the western horizon. He always departs. He always returns. The calendar is the guarantee.

The next year, when the Pleiades rose again, the priests performed the Makahiki. Lono came. He made the circuit of the island. The taro grew. The rains came. The festival proceeded as it had proceeded for as long as memory holds — because the god’s calendar does not have exceptions, and a dead Englishman does not change the structure of sacred time.