Authors: Ben Ruhe
Date Submitted: May 31, 2005
Article Type: Journal

Even among the water sports devotees in Hawaii, it’s little known that the ancient Polynesians used kites for traction—-pulling boats and rafts along coasts and between islands.

Because the Polynesians, including Hawaiians, had a pre-literate society and thus few written records, such use is documented mainly by myth and legend. Anthropologists have long since understood, however, that such oral accounts, even if centuries old, are often very accurate.

Kites, some of them quite large, such as the Maori bird kites found in museums in London and Auckland, are known all across the Polynesian triangle extending from Hawaii in the north to Easter Island in southeast and New Zealand in the far southwest. Made of reeds, fibers, beaten tapa cloth, feathers, and other natural materials, they were precursors of today’s space age polypropylene and carbon fiber creations, but no less efficient for use in ritualistic magic, play, and everyday utilitarian pursuits.

PDF Link: Journal Issue