Episode by episode, the Apple TV+ series has become increasingly imaginative
Copyright © 2025 by Stephen Shender
When I was researching Once There Was Fire, my historical novel about the life of Hawaii’s Kamehameha and his struggle to unify first the Big Island and then the rest of the island chain under his rule, I learned that Hawaiians of Kamehameha’s time and earlier told one another two kinds of stories: kaao and mo‘olelo. Kaao were fanciful stories, told for fun. Mo‘olelo were serious stories Hawaiians—who had no written language—told to transmit their history, genealogies, and religious rituals to successive generations.
The Apple TV+ series “Chief of War” has been lightly tethered to Hawaiian mo‘olelo from the start, when its first two episodes mislocated important historical figures in place and time. But as the series has unfolded, its connection to the Hawaiian people’s mo‘olelo, already tenuous, has become increasingly severed. “Chief of War”—created by Hawaii-born Jason Momoa and Thomas Pa‘a Sibbett—is substituting kaao for mo‘olelo more frequently.
Take, for example, Kamehameha’s “law of the splintered paddle” (māmalohoe), which he proclaims in episode 6 of “Chief of War,” saying he’ll extend it to everyone, including Keōua Kū’ahu‘ula and subsequently to a haole sea captain in episode 7.
According to Hawaiian mo‘olelo, Kamehameha promulgated this law to protect civilians from being assaulted while going about their usual business—farming, fishing, food gathering, or literally just “lying down by the side of the road”—after he paid a humbling price for assaulting some civilians. In “Chief of War” Kamehameha tells his allies he’d slipped away from his council one night and taken a canoe to Puna, where locals who thought he’d come to attack them broke a canoe paddle over his head. That Kamehameha was attacked by commoners who broke a paddle over his head is mo‘olelo. But “Chief of War’s” how, when, and where of it is kaao.
First, the how. The notion that Kamehameha could have paddled a canoe from Kohala to Puna overnight and returned without his council noting it is a kaao requiring an impossible suspension of disbelief for anyone who knows the Big Island’s geography. For example, it takes nearly two hours to travel by car from Puako Bay in South Kohala to Kalapana in the Big Island’s Puna District by way of the Saddle Road, the shortest overland route. By sea it’s an eighty to ninety nautical-mile sail or paddle (source: Windows’ AI-driven Copilot, which I’ve found very useful for spot research). As powerfully built as history’s Kamehameha was, there was no way he could have covered that distance as quickly as “Chief of War” would have it, paddling a Hawaiian outrigger canoe by himself.
Second, the mo‘olelo’s where and when is much more interesting than “Chief of War’s” briefly told kaao would have it. The incident that led to the māmalohoe’s promulgation happened near Laupāhoehoe, north of Hilo on the Hāmakua Coast, on the Big Island’s windward side opposite of leeward-side Kohala. This, after Kamehameha suffered an embarrassing defeat at Hilo in his ongoing struggle to unify the Big Island (he suffered more than one); in this case at the hands of an uncle who ruled the Hilo District. Kamehameha was nursing his wounded ego when he paddled a canoe a relatively short distance down the Hāmakua Coast, in daylight, to attack some peaceful villagers, caught his foot in a lava crevice, and was attacked by the villagers instead.
Kamehameha’s application of the law of the splintered paddle in “Chief of War” is problematic. Kamehameha proclaimed the law to protect peaceful kānaka, civilian commoners. It’s unlikely he would have extended its protection to an ali‘i warrior like his bitter foe Keōa Kū’ahu‘ula. It’s even less likely that Kamehameha would’ve extended the law’s protection to a haole mariner like Simon Metcalfe. He does both in “Chief of War.”
Kamehameha’s application of the law to Metcalfe in “Chief of War” does serve to heighten the tension between Kamehameha and Ka‘iana, who scorns Kamehameha for his reluctance to fight, whether it’s with Keōua or Metcalfe. And goodness knows, the ofttimes-plodding plot of “Chief of War” needs periodic infusions of tension.
Kaao trumps mo‘olelo again in episode 7 of “Chief of War” when American Simon Mefcalfe orders his ship’s cannons loaded with nail-filled cannisters and opens fire on Hawaiian villagers gathered on a beach in Kohala, massacring hundreds of men, women, and children.
Mo‘olelo: Simon Metcalfe really fired his cannons on Hawaiians, killing scores. Kaao: In “Chief of War” Metcalfe’s slaughter of innocents happens on the wrong island and in response to a historically inaccurate provocation.
Briefly, in "Chief of War" Metcalfe’s ship arrives at the Big Island’s Kohala District, where Metcalfe hopes to commence a lucrative trade in sandalwood. Metcalfe’s used a stolen chart to find the Hawaiian Islands, even though Capt. James Cook had charted the islands earlier and every haole mariner and his uncle knows where they are by now.
Englishman John Young—who was left behind on Maui by the Nootka, a ship on which he never sailed, and who did sail on Metcalfe’s Eleanora, until Metcalfe left him behind on the Big Island—mediates between Metcalfe and Kamehameha in Kohala. Ka‘iana warns Kamehameha not to trust the “palefaces” and seeks to somehow force an armed conflict by sneaking onto the Eleanora at night and grabbing Marley, the former Nootka crew member who stole the chart and brought it to Metcalfe. An alarm is raised and a tense, armed standoff ensues until Kamehameha boards the Eleanora, orders Ka‘iana to stand down, and proclaims that his splintered-paddle law applies to a haole like Metcalfe as well as Hawaiians, much to Ka‘iana’s disgust. The following morning, Metcalfe is advised that the locals will supply him with food and water and told he must leave. Angered, Metcalfe sails to a neighboring Kohala bay and slaughters the villagers there. Aside from the massacre, the rest is pure kaao. The mo‘olelo is more interesting.
Metcalfe’s massacre happened at the village of Olowalu on Maui, not at Kohala on the Big Island. Metcalfe was not provoked by Hawaiians’ refusal to trade with him. He was provoked after a day of trading at another village, when Hawaiians stole the Eleanora’s skiff, tied to the ship’s stern, under cover of darkness.
Metcalfe first anchored off Honua‘ula on Maui’s leeward side for trade. After a day of trading successful for Metcalfe and Hawaiians alike, an ali‘i from Olowalu who had come to Honua‘ula to trade paddled out to the ship in the night, cut the skiff’s line to the Eleanora, and towed the skiff back to Olowalu. The Eleanora’s night watchman was asleep in the skiff. When he woke up he began shouting—too late because by then no one on the Eleanora could have heard him. Nevertheless, the ali‘i killed the unfortunate haole to silence him and tossed his body into the sea.
When Metcalfe discovered his skiff and his watchman missing the next morning, he ordered his men to fire the ship’s cannon on Honua‘ula, killing several villagers. He sent people ashore to take prisoners. Two apprehended villagers were taken to the Eleanora for interrogation. They told Metcalfe the thieves were from Olowalu, up the coast towards Lahaina.
Metcalfe sailed to Olowalu, where the area’s high chiefess, who was the thieving ali‘i’s partner, declared a kapu, forbidding Olowalu villagers from approaching the ship because of what had transpired at Honua‘ula. After three days of pressure from the Olowalu ali‘i, who were eager to trade with the Eleanora, and after Metcalfe sent crewmen ashore to convince the Hawaiians as best they could by signing that Metcalfe meant them no harm, the chiefess lifted the kapu.
The Olowalu villagers loaded their canoes with pigs, fruit, yams, and vegetables, and whatever else they had to trade for haole goods, and soon their canoes surrounded the Eleanora. The ship’s crew pelted refuse at Hawaiians in canoes at the ship’s bow and stern to force them to join the other canoes on the Eleanora’s port and starboard sides. The gathered Hawaiians looked up from their canoes, waiting for Metcalfe’s permission to board the ship. When Metcalfe was sure no more canoes were coming out from shore, he ordered the Eleanora’s crew to open fire on the Hawaiians with muskets and port- and starboard-side cannons. At least 100 Hawaiians were killed instantly and scores more were wounded.
The Olowalu ali‘i who stole Metcalfe skiff wanted the boat for its parts. Having no metal ore or metallurgy, the Hawaiians prized any haole object made of any kind of metal, especially iron nails. Nails had been a common trade currency between haole seamen and Hawaiians since Captain Cook’s visit in 1778-79. The ali‘i and his men stole Metcalfe’s skiff to pry out its nails. They most likely chopped up the skiff’s remains for firewood.
Given the old Hawaiians’ fondness for nails, Metcalfe’s cannonading Hawaiians with nail-loaded canisters in “Chief of War” is a scene of grisly, albeit surely unintended, irony. No kaao, that.
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