Wākea

The Wākea dynasty represents the Aliʻi nui, the high chiefs of Molokaʻi, who like the rulers of the other Hawaiian islands claimed descent from Wākea, the sky father of Hawaiian religion.

With the earth mother Papahānaumoku, Wākea was held to have fathered the islands and the whole aliʻi nobility. The remembered early chiefs included Kamauaua, Keʻoloʻewa and the female rulers Kapau-a-Nuʻakea and Hualani.

Molokaʻi carried little weight in the wars between the islands, and its court mattered chiefly through marriage alliances and the fame of its kahuna priests and sorcery. From the late 1600s it was repeatedly raided by stronger neighbours, and in the later 1700s it was absorbed by the Maui kingdom of Kahekili II before the unification of the islands under Kamehameha I.