Wahine Piʻo
Hawaiian politician and royal consort

Kahakuhaʻakoi Wahinepiʻo (died 1826) was a Hawaiian chiefess and member of the royal family during the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. Wahinepiʻo means captive women in Hawaiian.
Sometimes she is called Wahineopiʻo, or an extra ʻokina is added, calling her Kahakuhaʻakoʻi.
She was also called Kamoʻonohu.
She was considered Kamehameha I's third favorite wife and served as female Governor of Maui, an act unheard of at the time in the western world, but common in Hawaiian history.
Life
She was born on the island kingdom of Maui. Her father was Kekuamanoha, and her mother was Kamakahukilani, the niece of her father. Through her father she was a granddaughter of Kekaulike, the King or Moʻi of Maui. Her mother was the daughter of Kauhiaimokuakama, the eldest son of Kekaulike, who was denied the right of succession to the throne of Maui due to his mother Kahawalu's inferior rank in contrast to Kekaulike's other wife Kekuiapoiwa I.
Supported by King Peleioholani of Oahu, he fought against his younger half-brother Kamehamehanui Ailuau, who was assisted by the King of the Big Island Alapainui, at the Battle of Keawawa. The battle ended in a stalemate, but Kauhiaimokuakama was captured and drowned by Alapainui's orders.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Wahine Piʻo” as hawaiian politician and royal consort. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as hawaiian politician and royal consort. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7959805. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1826.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wahine Piʻo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.