Besides the fairy like Patupaiarehe of New Zealand, and their Uriukehu offspring, in my previous post, I also mentioned the Manahune or Menenhune, an enslaved group of first migrants to reach the Polynesian Islands.
They were the lowest class in Tahiti, where they were known as "Manahune" (Source). They are found in the ancient oral history of the Polynesians, in Rarotonga, they were known as "little people". There, and among the Maori of New Zealand, the word "manahune" means scab, or mark on the body. They don't appear to have had a different skin color (white, or fair, or black).
In 1897, Percy Smith suggested that the name was due to some ritual scarring that left cicatrices, and writes the following (Source):
"...Fornander [see Abraham Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian Race, Its Origin and Migrations and the Ancient History of the Hawaiian People to the Times of Kamehameha. (1878), Volume 1, p. 55] seemed to be of the opinion that this was a racial name applied by the Polynesians to themselves in ancient times and derived from one of their remote ancestors named Kalani Menehune but from Maori and Rarotonga accounts they appear rather to have been an alien race. The vague notions the Polynesians generally have in regard to the Manahune their living in the mountains and forests the wonderful powers of sorcery &c accredited to them seems to point to their having been a race living in the remote past conquered by the Polynesians and probably often enslaved by them.
There seems to be two possible or probable theories to account for the Manahune. Either they were the first migration into the Pacific or they were one of the races the Polynesians came into contact with in Indonesia or further to the west and some of whom they brought with them in their migrations as slaves. In this latter case the stories of their having inhabited Hawaii and Hawaiki are Indonesian events localised in process of time in the Pacific homes of the Polynesians. The latter theory is probably the more consonant with what is known of the Manahune."
Menehune in Hawaii
Percy Smith also noted that they appear in the traditions of the Hawaiian natives and "they appear to have been at one time very numerous and lived in the mountains but were in a state of subjection to the Hawaiians performing for them many works that required great numbers in order to complete the task at once. Like the Patupai arehe of New Zealand these people are said not to like the daylight but worked at night. Many of the heiaus and some of the loko i a or fish ponds of Hawaii are said to have been built by the Menehune."
There is a remaining structure that is attributed to these Menehune, the "Menehune Ditch", registered in the National Register of Historic Places, from where the following information is taken (Source):
The Menehune, or Peekauai Ditch, also known as Kiki-a-'ola, was built by the junction of the Waiamea and Makaweli rivers, on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai. It is 7,000 ft. long (roughly 2.1 km) and runs along the foot of a cliff or pali and the wall of the ditch was built with blocks of stone. See it in Google maps.
"The ditch was built prehistorically to irrigate the taro (Colocasia esculenta) patches in lower Waimea Valley. Legends and chants tell of Ola, King of Waimea, who, through Pi, his kahuna or priest, caused the great water-lead to be built which is still called Kiki-a-'ola. Pi then chose the location and contacted the Menehunes (legendary race of small people reknown for their overnight construction activities) to construct the ditch features in one night
... The earliest written account of the ditch is by Captain George Vancouver in 1792 when he visited Waimea Valley...
The construction of the causeway is unique in the use of dressed and jointed stones. The other examples of cut stone construction are limited to Kukuipahu Heiau (temple) in North Kohala and several out-of-context stones in Kailua-Kona, both on Hawaii Island. However, Kiki-a-'ola is the only example of jointed stonework and offers a unique example of this type of causeway construction. Additionally, there are three types of joints represented, including double joint, square joint, and notched joint. The prehistoric appearance of the ditch wall would have been impressive with a 24 foot high faced wall of dress and jointed stones. Today, the scale of the causeway is only suggested in the exposed upper two to three courses of stonework."
There is an article (Stories of the Menehunes - Hawaii The Original Home of the Brownies (See p.112) with plenty of information about these people and their buildings (which included ancient temples or "heiaus").
In my book, I mention that:
"Dwarfish people are deeply rooted in the ancestors of Polynesians and they are found along the route they followed as they made their way across Austronesia: the duwendes of the Philippines, otu dogkek of Borneo, Orang Pendek of Sumatra, lai ho’a of Flores, To Uta of Sulawesi, Kanika of New Guinea, Leimuba of Nendo, Sengalengale of Vanuatu, and ‘autotoe of Samoa, to name a few.
Among the Polynesians, in Hawaii, there was a similar myth to the chélep regarding the Menehune, who were short people, not more than 90 cm tall (3 ft.), yet stocky and strong. They had dark or red skin and lived in the forests; they could work and shape stone skillfully. They built walls, roads, and canals during the night.
This myth probably reflects the encounter of two cultures when Polynesians from Tahiti reached Hawaii ca.900 AD and confronted the first wave of Polynesians from the Marquesas Islands that had settled the islands around 400 AD.
The Hawaiian legend says that: 'The Tahitians found the islands already inhabited by Menehune, and they pushed the Little People all the way back to Kaua’i, the last large island sitting at the edge of the Hawaiian Island chain. Ultimately, the Dwarves were forced to escape into the high mountains and hidden valleys, and outside the world of man'. (Source) This encounter echoes what happened to the Haush when the Selk’nam reached their territory, and to the Teushen or Chüwach a Künna, who were displaced to marginal land by the Tehuelche."
The “Hobbit” and dwarfish hominins
Minute non-human hominids are not unknown to science. For instance, the so-called “hobbit” (Homo florsiensis), just one meter tall (3.3 ft.), was discovered in 2003 on Flores Island, Indonesia; it was alive just 13,000 years ago, and thus co-existed with modern humans. In 2010, the Callao Cave hominin was discovered in Luzon, Philippines, 2,740 km (1,706 mi) north of Fores. Its 67,000-year-old remains show it was a diminutive hominin, which may have been or not a H. sapiens.
Dwarfish hominids have also been found on the Pacific islands of Palau (7°30’ N, 134°30’ E), 1,750 km (1,100 mi.) southeast of Luzon. Their remains are very recent, less than 2,800 years old, and they are minute: these creatures weighed between 29 and 43 kg (64 - 95 lb.)-.
Could it be possible that Yosi, the pre-human Tachwüll of the Tehuelche natives, and the Fuegian people, the Yagan’s post-Deluge dwarves are all an ancient racial memory of the Hobbit imprinted in the minds of the Patagonian natives and perpetuated in their myths? If so, we would have to explain how beings living nearly halfway across the globe from each other could have come into close contact.
Perhaps the Hobbit traveled from Asia to America, being the first hominid to colonize the New World long before the arrival of modern humans, or they could have evolved independently in America from some prior migration of hominids (i.e., Homo erectus). In either case, the Paleo-Indians would have met the Hobbit in America. H. florsiensis is an ancient Homo lineage and related to our distant ancestors Homo habilis and Homo erectus. The Hobbit managed to survive for a long time since it left Africa around 1.75 Ma. and could have reached the New World.
It predates the discovery of fire and would have used primitive Oldowan stone tools of the “core and flake” variety, in which a stone core was hit with a hammer stone, chipping it to produce flakes and leaving a chopper core. Both flakes and core were used to cut, bash, and scrape.
Remarkably, the islands of Palau and Luzon are only accessible by sea, so if the dwarf population on both islands originated elsewhere, then these pygmies were seafarers. Crossing by sea from Southeast Asia and Melanesia to America would avoid the problem of explaining Hobbit survival along the difficult trek from the tropical insular western Pacific to America through tough polar climes. It would also explain the Polynesian dwarf myths.
Fascinatingly, the Australian Aboriginal people also have legends about wild hairy pigmies that they call Gubba; these are very similar to the Fuegian Yosi in appearance and size, being barely one meter tall (3 ft. 4 in.) In the Australian case, the explanation is simple and quite feasible: Flores Island is only 720 km (447 mi.) from northern Australia, so it is very likely that the Aboriginals could have met Hobbits when they first entered Australia, crossing Sunda 50,000 years ago.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©
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