Nounou

Two versions of the sleep survive in the retelling, and the file keeps both. In the kindlier account, carried by the Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority, a gentle giant named Nunui helped the people of Wailua: his footsteps pressed holes into the ground that farmers planted in, and when the chief needed stone and ʻōhiʻa logs hauled down from the uplands to raise Kukui Heiau, Nunui carried them. The heiau stood on stones only a giant could lift. The people spread a feast in his honor; Nunui ate, lay down to rest in the company of his friends, and has not yet woken.

The other version makes the sleep a trick. The giant — sometimes called Puni — was a nuisance rather than a friend, and villagers (or fishermen, depending on the telling) tucked rocks into his fish and poi. He ate hugely, grew heavy and drowsy, lay down for a nap, and never rose. The outcome is the same either way: the ridge is the giant, mid-rest, waiting out a sentence that has lasted centuries.

What is verifiable is the mountain. The Sleeping Giant Trail — one of three Nounou Mountain trails — climbs under two miles through ironwood, guava, and silk oak to the ridge's high point, the sleeper's forehead, with views down over Wailua and the coast. The legend is filed as documented legend, which is the archive's honest shelf: recorded, retold, and unresolved — a giant who either earned his rest or was fed it.