Alaska and Hawaii another trans-Pacific link

A reader posted a comment after reading about Inca Tupac Yupanqui's voyages in the Pacific, asking " I was wondering if you have noticed that by dropping a few letters from Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands Canada) you get Hawaii. They also have similar artifacts and customs like we had here in Hawaii."

No, I was not aware of any similatrities between the Haida Gwaii and Hawaii. So I set out to learn more about them.

This custom Google map shows the spots and places mentioned in this post.

Searching for a link between Hawaii and the Nothwestern coast of North America I came across a blog post (Connections, by Peter T. Young, Nov. 19, 2023, in ) which discusses the peopling of Hawaii. It included the following text:

"Solomon Lehuanui Kalaniomaiheuila was the son of Peleioholani (uncle to the Kings Kamehameha IV and Kamehameha V) and Piikeakaluaonalani (mother.) For many, Peleioholani was considered an important Hawaiian antiquarian and the final word in Hawaiian genealogy, especially of the chiefs and royal families.
He wrote of the Hawaiian history. One of Peleioholani’s theories notes, “The ancestors of the Hawaiian race came not from the islands the South Pacific – for the immigrants from that direction were late arrivals there – but from the northern direction (welau lani,) that is, from the land of Kalonakikeke, now known as Alaska.”

The post also gave some additional information on the British Columbia natives, of Haida Gwaii "Peter Marsh makes several Canadian connections to Pacific Islands, noting, that archaeological and cultural evidence suggests that there is a strong connection between Coastal Canada and Polynesia. Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) is an archipelago off the coast of British Columbia, Canada."

It lists the similarities between both people, Polynesians and Haida Gwai'i:

• Tahitian and Haida stone pounders, stone bowls from Kauai and Bella Coola Valley
• The war clubs with an angry mouth on the handle of Maori and NW Britich Columbian Coastal natives.
• Tattoos: "Polynesian skit derived from Haida tattooing implements."
• Fish hooks, fish hook pendants, rock art, Tiki-like carvings, totem poles with figures whose toungues are sticking out, like the Maoris. Inlaid shell in figures
• Carvings with similar eyes and mouths in BC and the Marquesas Islands.
• Similar war canoes. Use of hot rocks to steam and shape canoes.
• Use of squash gourds to carry water instead of ceramic bottles.
• Nose rubbing to greet.
• Pit ovens heated with hot stones
• " The use of the glottal stop in speech is similar e.g.; Hawai‘i and Haida Gwai‘i."

I decided to find the sources of both the Alaskan and the Haida Gwai'i refrences.

The Alaskan link

A website called polynesianprehistory.com has the following text:

"The ancestors of the Hawaiian race came not from the islands the South Pacific – for the immigrants from that direction were late arrivals there. – but from the northern direction (welau lani), that is, from the land of Kalonakikeke, now known as Alaska.
The very first man and woman who came from Kalonakikeke to the continent of Ka-Houpo-o-Kane, they were Kalonakikeke (“Mr Alaska”) and his wife Hoomoe-a-pule (“Woman of my dreams”). They were said to both be high chiefs of Kanaka-Hikina (people of the east) and Kanaka-Komohana (people of the west) and were descended from the great great ancestor Huka-ohialaka.
They arrived at Ka Houpo-o-Kane before it was disrupted by a great flood that occurred during the reign of Kahiko-Luamea. This great flood carried away a floating log of wood named Konikonihia. On this log was a precious human cargo and it came to rest on the land of Kalonakikeke (Alaska).
‘Many generations later, Nuu, travelled from Alaska with his wife, Lilinoe, their three sons and their three wives in a canoe called Ka-Waa-Halau-Alii-O-Ka-Moku (the royal canoe of the continent), and it rested apon Mauna Kea (white mountain), on the island of Hawaii. They were the first Hawaiians.
From ‘The Ancient Hawaiian History of Hookumu Ka Lani & Hookumu Ka Honua’, by Solomon L.K. Peleioholani."

This is a direct reference to Solomon Peleiholani and his work. The book can be found online here. The text quoted above is found on page 35, and continues on page 36 with the floating log and deluge. The text was written using a typewriter, and is stamped by the Bishop Museum, uploaded on Jan. 14, 2004 and authored by Solomon Lehuanui Kalaniomaiheuila Peleioholani (1844-1916).

This text implies that the first Hawaiians (Menehune?) came from Alaska. The flood myth is universal, reflecting the submersion of the continental shelves during the period of deglaciation after the last Ice Age, when sea levels rose by over 120 m (400 ft.). Does it refer to the coastal plains by the NW coast of America? Sundaland or Sahul in SE Asia and Australia-New Guinea?

Tlingits, Haida, and Polynesians

The site polynesianprehistory.com has a second link between Polynesia and NW America. It says the following:

"The following Tlingit legend confirms that the female mitochondrial DNA found in Polynesian and Tlingit genes, came from across the Western Ocean (North Pacific). The possibility that the 7km/hr Kuroshio Current, a virtual ‘river of the Ocean', which flows from Taiwan to Alaska, played a part in this migration is extremely likely. There is an old story that says how some strange people came from the Western Ocean. Among them were two sisters. They landed on Dall Island in Southeastern Alaska. There the sisters met and married men whose people were coming down the rivers from interior North America. One sister-went with her family to Haida-gwaii or the Queen Charlotte Islands. Her children grew and multiplied into the Haida Nation. The other sister went with her family to Prince of Wales Island. She became the ancestress or Mother of the Tlingit Nation.
From ‘The Proud Chilkat', by Brendan and Lauri Larson."

The Tlingit people (also Tlinquit) are a Native American tribe that speaks a Na-Dené language. They live on the narrow southern strip of Alaska, known as the "Alaskan panhandle".

The Tlingit and Haida people have been living on the coast of NW America for at least 10,000 years. An article published in Science in 2017 clearly stated that " DNA of 10,300-year-old human remains from On Your Knees Cave in Alaska have found that he was closely related to three ancient skeletons found along the coast of British Columbia in Canada. These three ancient people were in turn closely related to the Tsimshian, Tlingit, Nisga'a, and Haida tribes living in the region today. The new finding reveals a direct line of descent to these tribes, and it shows—for the first time from ancient DNA—that at least two different groups of people were living in North America more than 10,000 years ago."

HLA-B*48

It does not mention Polynesian mtDNA in the Tlingits. However, I found a reference linking Tlingits and Polynesian genetics but it involves HLA: (Source). However, the original source of the quote is not given!

"One particular DNA haplotype - the human lymphocyte antigen (HLA)Bw48 is commonly found in Polynesian populations, but occurs only sporadically in Melanesia (Polynesian outliers). The only other known population with an appreciable frequency of HLA-Bw48 is that of the North American Indians or more specifically the Tlingit of Alaska.
"This DNA evidence is supported by cultural and archaeological evidence showing a definite link between Eastern Polynesia and the Tlingit, Kwakuitl and Haida of the islands off Alaska and Canada."

HLA-Bw48 is now known as HLA-B*48. Searching for the HLA B*48 allele (online, Allele Frequencies in World Populations) did not turn up any Tinglits!

HLA B*48 frequencies across the World. Source

It shows that this HLA variant is found in Amerindians, but it does not mention Tinglit people. It does not appear among Polynesians, though it is found in Asia (Armenia, India, Mongolia, Taiwan, and Russia). It does not provide anyd evidence to support the idea of admixture or a shared origin for Tinglit people and Polynesians, or any reference of common mtDNA, or unique HLA variant.

This is ongoing work, so I will follow it up in a future post.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

INDEX for our Trans-Pacific Contact posts: Oceania to America

For those who are interested, this is an index linked to all of our posts about the possible trans-Pacific contact or voyages between Polynesia, Oceania, Melanesia, and America, in both directions, as it also includes American voyates to Polynesia. It will help you navigate the different posts.

Updated: 26 - Dec - 2025

Index

• Tupac Inca Yupanqui's voyage to the Polynesian Islands
• Did the Polynesians or the Amerindians reach Juan Fernández Archipelago?
• The sewn canoe: a link between Amerindians and Polynesians
• Polynesian skulls found in Mocha Island, Patagonia, Chile
• The Marquesans and their Melanesian heritage
• Aboriginal New Zealand Natives (before the Maori)
• The peopling of Polynesia, an article from 1910
• The Manahune of Society Islands & Tahiti - Original Inhabitants
• Society Islands (Tahiti, Moorea) and the fair-dwarfish pre-Polynesians
• The Marianas Islands dwarf: Taotaomo’na
• Menehune, the pre-Polynesian dwarf people
• Who were the first people to reach Polynesia?
• Australia to America... via the Antarctic (Paul Rivet's Theory)
• Oceanians: Okewa in the Americas
• Molina on the "engraved stones": Oceanian (Polynesians) in Patagonia
• Palau Islands "pygmies"
• Austronesians and America: the Transpacific Route
• Polynesian - Amerindian admixture
• Polynesian - Mapuche contact: The chickens
• Neves and Pucciarelli's paper on affinities between Australians and Paleoindians
• Easter Islanders met Amerindians before 1492
• Amerindians navigated to Polynesia before the Polynesians arrived there
• Circling Antarctica and getting into America
• Homo Erectus in America - More (Melanesians)
• Pygmies of Ponape: The Chokalai

The Pacific, Polynesia and Oceania.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Menehune, the pre-Polynesian dwarf people

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").

Mehune ditch. Source

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.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©