General | Page 2 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

August 11, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Caste Social Structure

During the period from about AD 1400 to European contact, Hawaiian society underwent a transformation from descent-based (its ancestral Polynesian system) to a state-like society.

The structure that came to characterize Hawaiian society – consisting of a high upper class supported by an underprivileged lower class – was somewhat suggestive of ancient Mediterranean and Asian civilizations, as well as of medieval Europe.

The Hawaiian concept of the universe embodied the interrelationship of the gods, man and nature. The former, although the ultimate controlling influence in this system, granted their direct descendants – the royalty – control over the land, the sea and their resources.

“The condition of the common people was that of subjection to the chiefs, compelled to do their heavy tasks, burdened and oppressed, some even to death. The life of the people was one of patient endurance, of yielding to the chiefs to purchase their favor. The plain man (kanaka) must not complain.” (Malo)

At the time of European contact in 1778, Hawaiian society comprised four levels. People were born into specific social classes; social mobility was not unknown, but it was extremely rare. The Kapu System separated Hawaiian society into four groups of people:

Aliʻi, the ruling class of chiefs and nobles (kings, high chiefs, low chiefs) considered to be of divine origin who ruled specific territories and who held their positions on the basis of family ties and leadership abilities – the chiefs were thought to be descendants of the gods;
Kahuna, the priests (who conducted religious ceremonies at the heiau and elsewhere) and master craftsmen (experts in medicine, religion, technology, natural resource management and similar areas) who ranked near the top of the social scale
Makaʻainana, commoners (the largest group) those who lived on the land – primarily laborers, farmers, fishermen, and the like; they labored not only for themselves and their families, but to support the chiefs; and
Kauwa (or Kauā), social outcasts, “untouchables” — possibly lawbreakers or war captives, who were considered “unclean” or kapu. Their position was hereditary, and they were attached to “masters” in some sort of servitude status. Marriage between higher castes and the kauwa was strictly forbidden.

“As to why in ancient times a certain class of people were ennobled and made into aliis, and another class into subjects (kanaka), why a separation was made between chiefs and commoners, has never been explained.” (Malo)

The aliʻi attained high social rank in several ways: by heredity, by appointment to political office, by marriage or by right of conquest. The first was determined at birth, the others by the outcomes of war and political processes.

“The chiefs were anxious also to preserve the pure blood of their class by arranging marriages between chiefs and chiefesses. …”

The mating to a sister or near relative, which was not permitted to lesser chiefs or the relatives of chiefs, was considered desirable between very high chiefs in order to produce children of divine rank who carried the sacred fire (ahi) tabu.”

“Such a mating was for the purpose of bearing children, but the two need not become man and wife. Thus the chiefs multiplied, thrived, grew, and spread out over the land; but today we are taught that such practices are wrong.” (Kamakau)

“The makaainana were the fixed residents of the land; the chiefs were the ones who moved about from place to place. It was the makaainanas also who did all the work on the land; yet all they produced from the soil belonged to the chiefs; and the power to expel a man from the land and rob him of his possessions lay with the chief.” (Malo)

Power and prestige, and thus class divisions, were defined in terms of mana. Although the gods were the full embodiment of this sacredness, the royalty possessed it to a high degree because of their close genealogical ties to those deities.

The kahuna ratified this relationship by conducting ceremonies of appeasement and dedication on behalf of the chiefs, which also provided ideological security for the commoners who believed the gods were the power behind natural forces.

“If the people were slack in doing the chief’s work they were expelled from their lands, or even put to death. For such reasons as this and because of the oppressive exactions made upon them, the people held the chiefs in great dread and looked upon them as gods.” (Malo)

“Only a small portion of the kings and chiefs ruled with kindness; the large majority simply lorded it over the people. It was from the common people, however, that the chiefs received their food and their apparel for men and women, also their houses and many other things.” (Malo)

Commoners possessed little mana and were therefore prohibited from entering any of the sacred places where aliʻi and gods communicated, such as the heiau in which the upper class honored their gods. Outcasts, with no mana, could interact with commoners but not approach the upper class.

“The commoners were the most numerous class of people in the nation, and were known as the ma-ka-aina-na; another name by which they were called was hu (hu, to swell, multiply, increase like yeast.)” (Malo)

As Handy states: “It is evident that kapu determined and regulated the three castes. For the aliʻi (and kahuna,) the kapu of sanctity was at once a wall of protection and the source of prestige and authority.”

“The same kapu determined for the commoners their social and economic relationship to, and their reverential attitude towards their overlords. As for the kauwa, their segregation and exclusion from the social organism was due to a kapu of defilement.”

This social structure was reinforced by the kapu, the Hawaiian religious, political and social structure that lasted for 500-years. (Lots of information here from an NPS report, as well as others, as noted.) The painting is by Herb Kane – “Council of Chiefs.”

Council_of_Chiefs-(HerbKane)

August 10, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

‘Why did you not teach the nation English?’

“Our ignorance of the language of the people, and their ignorance of ours, was, of course, an impediment in the way of intercourse between the teacher and the pupil, at first very great …”

“… and the absolute destitution of suitable books for the work of teaching the nation, was an embarrassment rarely or never to be found among Asiatic tribes …”

“Desirous to teach them thoroughly, through the best medium then available, we undertook with the English, with zeal, and with some success, in the case of a very limited number.”

“But our object was not to change the language of the nation but to bring to their minds generally, the knowledge of the Christian religion, and induce them to embrace and obey it.”

“The sounds of the English being so different from their own, and so much more difficult of utterance, their ignorance of the meaning of English words, and the impracticability of learning them from English dictionaries …”

“… together with the intricacies of English orthography, presented insurmountable obstacles to the speedy accomplishment of the main object of a Christian Mission, if the nation were to be confined to that medium.”

“What could French Protestant missionaries do in teaching English and American seamen the doctrines and duties of the Gospel, through the medium of the French alone?”

“Clearness, accuracy, and force in religious teaching we deemed so essential to success, that the vernacular tongue, or a language understood by the learner, must needs be employed to be successful; for a miracle is required to give sense and cogency to unknown words and phrases, before they can enlighten the mind or impress the heart in respect to the will of God.”

“The Hawaiians might indeed have been taught to cross themselves, repeat Pater nosters and Ave Marias in Latin, to dip the finger in water, gaze on pictures, bow before images, and buy indulgences with great formality and punctuality …”

“… and still have been as ignorant of the volume of inspired truth as the Aborigines of California and South America, or the youthful Spanish Franciscan monk, now a protestant missionary at Gibraltar …”

“… who, at twenty-five years of age, though studying for the priesthood, had never seen the Bible, and did not know that such a book existed: and they might, moreover, have been still just as idolatrous as their fathers were in the days of Cook, and as ready to visit with poison, fire, or bonds, any who should oppose or ridicule their folly.”

“The plan of teaching the mass of children exclusively, while neither children, adults, nor rulers knew the practicability and utility of learning; and the plan of teaching children exclusively in a language unintelligible to their parents; and the mass of the community around them, would have been chimerical …”

“… and a perseverance in such an attempt would have given over the adult and aged population to incurable ignorance and hopeless degradation, or left them to rush en masse to pagan or papal polytheism, and thus have defeated the education of the children and the education of the nation.”

“To have neglected the rulers, and taught the children of the plebeians a new religion in a language unknown to the nation, would have arrayed prejudice and opposition against us in high places, and thus defeated our cause, or greatly retarded our success.”

“To change the language of a people is a work of time. Even in a conquered province, with the favoring influences of colonization, commercial intercourse and literary institutions, with an impulse from a new government and fashion, such a thing is effected but slowly and imperfectly.”

“With how much less hope of success could a few missionaries, with no help from circumstances like these, attempt it. The progress of a generation or two may so alter the circumstances of the nation as to make the use of the English more feasible and useful.”

“This, then, is our answer to the oft-repeated and not unimportant question, ‘Why did you not teach the nation English, and open to them, at once, the rich stores of learning, science and religion, to be found in that language?’ …”

“… and here we show our warrant for applying ourselves to the acquisition of the Hawaiian language, reducing it to a written form, and preparing books of instruction in it, for the nation, and teaching all classes to use them as speedily as possible.”

“In connexion with this general mode of instruction, we could, and did teach English to a few, and have continued to do so. We early used both English and Hawaiian together.”

“For a time after our arrival, in our common intercourse, in our schools, and in our preaching, we were obliged to employ interpreters, though none except Hopu and Honolii were found to be very trustworthy, in communicating the uncompromising claims and the spirit-searching truths of revealed religion.”

“Kaumualii, Kuakini, Keeaumoku and a few others could speak a little barbarous English, which they had acquired by intercourse with sea-faring men. But English, as spoken by sailors on heathen shores at that time, was the language of Pandemonium …”

“… and the thought of making young men and women better able to comprehend and use that language, while subjected to the influence of frequent intercourse with an ungodly class of profane abusers of our noble English, was appalling.”

“We could not safely do it until we were able to exert a strong counteracting influence.”

“It is worthy of a grateful record that King Kaumualii, though accustomed, like other heathen who stammer English, to use profane language, on being faithfully taught that it was wrong, broke off, and abandoned the vile habit.”

“How chilling to a missionary’s heart, to hear a heathen father curse his own little child in profane English, and to hear his own fellow-countrymen teaching the heathen that awful dialect, by which profane men anathematize one another, and insult their Maker!”

“That the sudden introduction of the Hawaiian nation in its unconverted state, to general English or French literature, would have been safe and salutary, is extremely problematical.”

“To us it has been a matter of pleasing wonder that the rulers and the people were so early and generally, led to seek instruction through books furnished them by our hands, not one of which was designed to encourage image worship, to countenance iniquity, or to be at variance with the strictest rules of morality.”

“It was of the Lord’s mercy.”

“With the elements of reading and writing we were accustomed, from the beginning, to connect the elements of morals and religion, and have been happy to find them mutual aids.”

“The momentous interests of the soul were the commanding reason for learning what God has caused to be written for its salvation, and for regulating its duty to him.”

“The initiation of the rulers and others into the arts of reading and writing, under our own guidance, brought to their minds forcibly, and sometimes by surprise, moral lessons as to their duty and destiny which were of immeasurable importance.”

“The English New Testament was almost our first school book, and happy should we have been, could the Hawaiian Bible have been the next.” …

“During the first year, no suitable system of orthography was fixed upon for writing the language of the country. It was difficult, even, to write out in native, the meaning of words and sentences of English lessons.”

“It was no small labor, not only to teach simply the enunciation of a lesson, but to teach the meaning of a column of words, or a page of sentences constituting their English lesson, which, without such an interpretation, must have been, to such pupils, too forbidding.”

“But this was so far accomplished as to make the school pleasant to most of those who attended, partly by means of the slate, and partly by writing out short lessons on paper, with an imperfect orthography.”

“There was a frankness and earnestness on the part of some, in commencing and prosecuting study, which agreeably surprised us, and greatly encouraged our first efforts.” …

“On the 1st of August, the slate was introduced, and by the 4th, Pulunu wrote on her slate, from a Sabbath School card, the following sentence in English; ‘I cannot see God, but God can see me.’”

“She was delighted with the exercise, and with her success in writing and comprehending it. The rest of the pupils listened with admiration as she read it, and gave the sense in Hawaiian. Here was a demonstration that a slate could speak in a foreign tongue, and convey a grand thought in their own.” (Bingham)

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Hawaiian Alphabet

August 8, 2019 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Hawai‘i State Library

The earliest libraries in Hawaiʻi appear to have been reading rooms provided for ships officers and crews. In Lāhainā, the Seamen’s Chapel and Reading Room was built in 1834 following an appeal by William Richards and Ephriam Spaulding (it was built two years later.)

In Honolulu, the Sandwich Islands Institute, organized in November 1837, fitted up a room at the Seamen’s Bethel in downtown Honolulu as a library and a museum of natural history and Pacific artifacts.

A newspaper article in October 1840 referred to this as a “Public Library, three to four hundred volumes” and also listed a “Reading Room for Seamen,” presumably at a different location.

A decade later, in 1850, residents of Honolulu organized the Atheneum Society, which for a year or two maintained a reading room and library. The Atheneum was succeeded in 1853 by the Honolulu Circulating Library Association.

In 1879, a group of men founded the Honolulu Library and Reading Room Association. In the local newspaper, the Commercial Pacific Advertiser, editor JH Black wrote, “The library is not intended to be run for the benefit of any class, party, nationality, or sect.”

Some of the founders wanted to exclude women from membership, but Alexander Cartwright disagreed, writing to his brother Alfred: “The idea keeps the blessed ladies out and the children. What makes us old geezers think we are the only ones to be spiritually and morally uplifted by a public library in this city?”

It wasn’t long before the committee changed the wording of the constitution to make women eligible for membership.

Early in its history, the organization had established a solid economic foundation, and over time it was able to obtain the moral and financial support of both the Hawaiian government and wealthy citizens.

King Kalākaua, Queen Kapiʻolani, Queen Emma, Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, Regent Lili‘uokalani, Minister of the Interior F. W. Hutchinson and Charles R. Bishop were just a few of its notable and highly influential supporters.

From 1879 to 1912, library service was provided by the Honolulu Library and Reading-Room Association.

In 1909, Governor Frear helped pass the “Act to Provide for the Establishment of the Public Library of Hawaii”. On May 15, 1909 the Honolulu Library and Reading Room and the Library of Hawaiʻi signed an agreement by which the former agreed to turn over all books, furnishings and remaining funds to the latter.

A few months later, the Honolulu Library and Reading Room, Library of Hawaiʻi and the Historical Society jointly signed and submitted a letter to Andrew Carnegie requesting a grant for the construction of the Library of Hawaiʻi.

The request to Carnegie was for funds to build the new Library; Carnegie responded that the sum of $100,000 would be made ready as soon as a site was selected and plans drawn up.

The building’s final location, though, was not immediately settled. Several possible sites were considered. Ultimately, Governor Frear made a lot available on the corner of King and Punchbowl streets.

He picked a site that in 1872 had been purchased by the Government of Prince Lunalilo and transferred its control to the Board of Education.

The site was the location of Hāliʻimaile, the residence of Boki and Liliha and later Victoria Kamāmalu and her father and brothers before they ascended Kamehameha IV and Kamehameha V.

In 1874, the government-supported Pohukaina School for Girls was started. Just up the street was the Royal School for Boys.

In order to accommodate the new Library of Hawaiʻi, after 36-years at King and Punchbowl, Pohukaina School was moved to Kakaʻako; the new school opened in 1913.

Ultimately, the Library of Hawaiʻi was completed at a cost of $127,000, with the local legislative funding providing the difference.

The building opened its doors on February 11, 1913, and Hawaiʻi at last joined those states of America that offered free library services to their communities. The library, now known as the Hawaiʻi State Library, still stands today.

Greco-Romanesque columns in front mark it as a Carnegie library, and within its lobby, a bust of Andrew Carnegie, the man who made it possible is on the grounds.

In 1921, the County Library Law established separate libraries on the islands of Kauaʻi, Maui and Hawaiʻi, under minimal supervision by the Library of Hawaiʻi, which restricted its services to Oʻahu. Even so, the latter quickly outgrew its quarters.

In 1927, the Territorial legislature approved funding to expand and renovate the building. Construction was completed in 1930. Architect CW Dickey tripled its size by adding new wings to create an open-air courtyard in the center.

After statehood in 1959, the Hawaiʻi State Legislature created the Hawaiʻi State Public Library System, the only statewide system in the United States, with the Hawaiʻi State Library building as its flagship branch.

My grandmother worked at the State Library, from 1920 to 1948; she retired after serving as Assistant Head Librarian and Director of the Extension Department. Part of her duties included the expansion of the Library to the Neighbor Islands in 1921. My mother received a degree in Library Science and was archivist at Punahou School.

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Home_of_the_Library_of_Hawaii,_before_1910

Bethel_Church,_Honolulu,_Hawaii

The_Seaman’s_Bethel_Church

Pohukaina School-hhs3049gs-1875

Hawaii_State_Library_from_King_and_Punchbowl

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HawaiiStateLibrary

Lahaina-Master’s Reading Room

August 7, 2019 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Hitachi Tree

Moanalua Gardens is a 24-acre privately-owned public park in Honolulu. The park is the site of Kamehameha V Cottage which used to be the home of Prince Lot Kapuāiwa, who would later become King Kamehameha V.

Moanalua Gardens is also the home of a large monkeypod tree (about 130-years old) that is known in Japan as the Hitachi Tree, one of the most recognizable corporate icons in Japan.

The Hitachi Tree first originated through a TV commercial for Japanese electronics manufacturer Hitachi, Ltd that first aired in Japan in 1973. The Hitachi tree, a large monkeypod tree with a distinctive umbrella-shaped canopy, grows in the middle of a grassy area in the middle of the park.

The tree is registered as an exceptional tree by the City and County of Honolulu and cannot be removed or destroyed without city council approval.

An earlier agreement between the Damon Estate and Hitachi gave Hitachi exclusive worldwide rights to use the tree’s image for promotional purposes in exchange for annual payments.

It was previously reported that Hitachi Ltd, has agreed to pay the owner of the Moanalua Gardens $400,000 a year for 10 years to use the garden’s famous monkeypod tree in its advertising.

The tree symbolizes the “comprehensive drive” and the “wide business range” of the Hitachi Group. It continues today as an image of the Hitachi Group’s working for communities through leveraging of its collective capacities and technologies, and the dedication of the individuals that the Group comprises.

The tree is widely recognized, especially in Japan, and has become an important symbol of the Hitachi Group’s reliability, and earth-friendliness. It also enhances Hitachi’s brand value as a visual representation of its corporate slogan: “Inspire the Next.”

Over the past 40 years, the Hitachi Tree has become a valuable Hitachi Group asset as a familiar and respected image in Hitachi’s expanding messages globally.

It symbolized the Group spirit of bringing its whole strength to a wide variety of business fields in Japan in order to contribute to society. In Hitachi’s view, how better to portray this spirit than with a mighty tree?

Since then, the Hitachi Tree advertisements focused on the domestic market, have continued in various forms, including newspapers and magazines, on public transport, in picture books and through photography competitions on the theme of trees.

As such, the Hitachi Tree plays an important role connecting customers and the Hitachi Group

Monkeypod is native to Central and South America and widely distributed in subtropical areas. The leaf shape is similar to that of fern fronds, and the leaves open at sunrise and close in the afternoon. Flowers bloom twice a year, around May and November.

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The Hitachi Tree

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Hitachi’s_tree

The Hitachi Tree-size

August 5, 2019 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Makauwahi Cave

The Makauwahi Cave (“fear, break through”) is the small portion of the largest limestone cave found in Hawaii.

It lies on the south coast of the island of Kauai, in the Māhāʻulepū Valley close to Māhāʻulepū Beach, and is important for its paleoecological and archaeological values.

It is reached via a sinkhole and has been described as “…maybe the richest fossil site in the Hawaiian Islands, perhaps in the entire Pacific Island region”.

The pale rock ridge that houses the sinkhole started as a field of sand dunes.

Over time, rainwater seeped through the sand, converting it chemically into limestone rock.

Underground water ate away at the lower parts of the limestone, forming an extensive complex of caves, and finally one large section of cave roof collapsed, creating a feature known as a sinkhole.

The feature is as much as 100 yards long from the entrance to the most distant known cave, and as much as 40 yards wide, but it may contain other caverns whose entrances are buried.

Paleoecological and archaeological excavations of the sediment that has filled the pond in the sinkhole put its age at some 10,000 years.

More importantly, the findings show how the first humans that inhabited Kauai affected the pre-human natural environment.

It is one of only a handful of sites in the world that show such impact.

Before the first Polynesian settlers set foot on Kauai, Hawai‘i was a strange Eden, empty of mammals, reptiles, and amphibians, because none had ever made it across the vastness of the Pacific to these remote islands.

The sinkhole contains nearly 10,000-years of sedimentary record; since the discovery of Makauwahi as a fossil site, excavations have found pollen, seeds, invertebrate shells and Polynesian artifacts, as well as thousands of bird and fish bones.

An array of native birds that had evolved in splendid isolation filled every kind of niche.

More than 40 species of extinct native bird fossils have been excavated from Makauwahi, including an odd long-legged owl, which specialized in hunting small forest birds, and a nocturnal duck with shrunken eyes.

Among the bones discovered at Makauwahi were those of one lumbering flightless duck with a heavy bill designed to graze like a tortoise on short, tough grass and vegetation from rocks.

Bones of the endangered Hawaiian hawk and Laysan duck have also been discovered at the sinkhole. Today, these two species survive on single islands distant from Kauai, but the fossil discoveries suggest they were once more widespread throughout Hawaii.

Evidence from a full millennium of human activity chronicles the details of life nearby and its considerable impact on the island environment.

The Makauwahi Cave site provides a rich record of life before and after human arrival, and preserves many artifacts and food remains, including perishable cultural items.

Oral traditions said to extend back as far as the fourteenth century in some cases show good agreement with the archaeological and paleoecological record.

Following European contact, additional environmental impacts, including a drastic increase in erosion and many additional biological invasions, are documented from the site.

Paleoecologist David Burney and his wife Lida Pigott Burney, with help from hundreds of local volunteers, has found 10,000-year-old buried treasure in the Makauwahi Cave and wrote a book on the subject, Back to the Future in the Caves of Kauai, A Scientist’s Adventures in the Dark.

Makauwahi Cave is one of the Points of Interest in the Holo Holo Kōloa Scenic Byway. We assisted Mālama Kōloa and Kōloa Community Association with the preparation of the Corridor Management Plan for the Scenic Byway.

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