At the chief's court, warriors vaulted on a long pololū spear. The same skill carried them over streams, ravines, and other barriers during warfare. Elsewhere, players lashed stilts to their legs and wrestled while standing on them. The stilts were cut from the ʻohe tree and the bamboo plant.
Kūpololū
In traditional Hawaiian nomenclature, the game was known by a few closely related names:
Kūpololū: Defined by scholar Mary Kawena Pukui as "vaulting on a long pololū spear".
Lele Lā'au: A term recorded in early dictionaries meaning "to leap or fly with a pole".
Lelele Lā'au: Documented in Stewart Culin’s 1899 athletic registry as "stick-jumping" or vaulting, played simply as an amusement with the aid of a long pole.
Kūpololū, or pole vaulting, was practiced by warriors as an amusement and as a competitive activity at the chief's court. During warfare, the warrior used this skill to vault himself over streams, ravines, and other barriers.
Kukuluāeʻo
Kukuluāeʻo is the traditional sport of stilt-walking. Walking or racing on stilts was a common amusement of men, boys, and girls. The player executed the skill by holding the stilts in front of him and by placing his toes and the ball of his feet on the steps which projected toward him.
Linguistic Meanings: The name itself translates directly to "stilts". Additionally, early dictionaries recorded the Hawaiian term hakakē to describe the act of "standing on stilts" or "standing, as a spider on long legs".
Materials and Setup: The wood of the 'ohe (bamboo) was traditionally used as the most suitable timber for constructing the stilt poles
Kahau: Stilt Wrestling
While walking and racing on stilts were popular recreation styles, a competitive and physical variation of the sport was stilt-wrestling, which was known as kahau. This variation consisted of a wrestling match between two contestants.
Stilt pastimes were widely enjoyed across the Polynesian diaspora. In the Marquesas Islands, stilt-walkers used highly carved foot-rests, frequently fashioned with human figures, that were lashed to carved poles six feet in length. In New Zealand (Aotearoa), stilt-walking was known as pouturu or araporaka. In Tahiti, youths fashioned stilts from natural tree branches where a smaller branch naturally projected to serve as the foot-rest
Makahiki Games
Sources
Andrews, Lorrin. A Dictionary of the Hawaiian Language. Tokyo, Japan: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1974.
Culin, Stewart. Hawaiian Games. American Anthropologist, Vol. 1, No. 2. Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association, 1899
Mitchell, Donald K. Hawaiian Games For Today. Honolulu: The Kamehameha Schools Press, 1975.
Malo, David. Hawaiian Antiquities (Moolelo Hawaii). Translated by N. B. Emerson. Honolulu: Hawaiian Gazette Co., Ltd., 1903
Pukui, Mary K., and S. Elbert. Hawaiian Dictionary: Hawaiian English-English Hawaiian. 1st ed. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1971.