Ahupuaa | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

January 22, 2017 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Makaʻāinana

In the generations that followed initial settlement, the Hawaiians developed a sophisticated system of land use and resource management. In the early 1500s, the island (moku-puni) was divided into districts or moku-o-loko.

The large moku-o-loko were further divided into political regions and manageable units of land. Ahupua‘a, another division of land, were usually marked by altars with images or representations of a pig placed upon them, thus the name ahu-pua‘a or pig altar.

The ahupua‘a were also divided into smaller manageable parcels of land—such as the ‘ili, kō‘ele, mahina ‘ai, māla, and kīhāpa – makaʻāinana lived on kuleana.

In these smaller land parcels the makaʻāinana cultivated crops necessary to sustain their families, and supplied the needs of the chiefly communities they were associated with. (Maly)

“The makaʻāinana were the planters and fishers who lived on (ma) the (ka) lands (‘āina;) the final na is a plural substantive.” (Handy) Or, they may be viewed as maka (eye) ‘āina (land) – ‘the eyes of the land.’ Pukui notes the name literally translates to ‘people that attend the land.’

“They were the commoners who were a class distinct and apart from the aliʻi, or class of chiefs, the temple kahuna or priests, koa or warriors, and konohiki or overseers.” (Handy) The rulers were set apart from the general populace, the makaʻāinana, by an elaborate, strictly enforced series of kapu or restrictions. (Mitchell)

“(T)he reason for this division being that men in the pursuit of their own gratification and pleasure wandered off in one direction and another until they were lost sight of and forgotten.” The makaʻāinana are said to have fallen to their common status because they lost their genealogies. (Malo)

The makaʻāinana made up the largest segment of the population. In addition to their work as the planters and the fishermen they were the craftsmen and the soldiers. They were the major source of manpower. (Mitchell)

The ahupua‘a supplied food and materials to the makaʻāinana who tended the land, as well as to the konohiki (overseers,) who administered the ahupua‘a and the aliʻi nui (chief,) who was responsible for several ahupua‘a.

This responsibility to provide for himself and the aliʻi on a long-term basis generally compelled the konohiki toward sustainable management of both human and natural resources. (Garovoy)

The makaʻāinana lived on the lands assigned to them by the chiefs as long as they worked acceptably and paid adequate taxes.
They could be removed from their lands by the konohiki or any chief with authority in the ahupuaʻa. If they were unhappy under a chief they were free to move to another ahupuaʻa. (Mitchell)

As long as sufficient tribute was offered and kapu (restrictions) were observed, the makaʻāinana who lived in a given ahupua‘a had access to most of the resources from mountain slopes to the ocean.

These access rights were almost uniformly tied to residency on a particular land, and earned as a result of taking responsibility for stewardship of the natural environment and supplying the needs of ones’ ali‘i. (Maly)

The makaʻāinana were allotted a plot of ground by their chief. Here they planted, irrigated, nurtured and harvested taro, sweet potatoes and other crops. They raised pigs, dogs and chickens to supplement their diet, and they had the right to fish in the sea or in protected fish ponds.

The makaʻāinana worked for the chief 6 days each month, fought in the chief’s wars, and paid taxes in the form of goods produced. Order and discipline were maintained through a strict code of laws, known as the kapu system. (UH-CLEAR)

The material necessities and the luxuries of the people of old Hawai’i were produced by these skilled workers. The culture materials which we admire in the museums and private collections today as the unique arts and crafts of Hawai’i are from the hands and minds of these “commoners who were not common.” (Mitchell)

Following the Great Māhele, by 1855, the lands in Hawaii had been distributed: the Konohiki were granted 1.5 million acres (Konohiki Lands;) King Kamehameha was granted approximately 1 million acres (Crown Lands;) and the Hawaiian government was granted 1.5 million acres (Government Lands.)

Deeds executed during the Māhele conveying land contained the phrase “ua koe ke kuleana o na kānaka,” or “reserving the rights of all native tenants,” in continuation of the reserved tenancies which characterized the traditional Hawaiian land tenure system.

The Kuleana Act of 1850 authorized the Land Commission to award fee simple titles to all native tenants who lived and worked on parcels of Crown, Government, or Konohiki Lands. Most makaʻāinana never claimed their kuleana.

Of the 29,221 adult males in Hawaii in 1850 eligible to make land claims, only 8,205 makaʻāinana actually received kuleana awards. Their awards account for a combined 28,600 acres of kuleana lands—less than one percent of the Kingdom’s lands. (Garovoy)

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December 1, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Makahiki

There were four months devoted to the observances of the Makahiki, during which time the ordinary religious ceremonies were omitted, the only ones that were observed being those connected with the Makahiki festival. The keepers of the idols, however, kept up their prayers and ceremonies throughout the year. (Malo)

Traditionally, the rising of Makaliʻi (Pleiades) at sunset following the new moon (beginning in late-October or early-November) in noted the change of the season to winter.

The Makahiki is a form of the “first fruits” festivals common to many cultures throughout the world. It is similar in timing and purpose to Thanksgiving, Oktoberfest and other harvest celebrations – it celebrated Lono, god of plenty.

Something similar was observed throughout Polynesia, but it was in pre-contact Hawaiʻi that the Makahiki festival was celebrated during a designated period of time following the harvesting season.

The first period of the Makahiki was the kapu time when the people, although they had stopped working, were not yet allowed to play. Before they could play, the taxes for the King – the pig, the taro, the sweet potatoes, the feathers, the kapa, the mats, all things that were made – had to be brought together and offered on the alters of Lono. (Handy)

Then an image of Lono was carried around the island by the priests. At each of the ahupua‘a, the chief of that district presented the gifts. (Handy)

The Makahiki circuit conducted by the Lono priests carrying the akua loa representation of Lono was marked not only by the collection of tribute within each territorial unit (ahupua‘a), but also by large gatherings of people from each community as the procession of priests and warriors passed through. (Kirch)

Once the ʻAuhau (taxes) and hoʻokupu (offering) were collected, the Makahiki festival, including sports, feasting and dancing, could begin.

While the lands rested and are softened by the rains, in preparation of the new planting season, all wars were prohibited and goodwill prevailed. The chiefs joined with the makaʻāinana in feasting, testing or argumentative skills and athletic competition. (PKO)

At the end of the Makahiki festival, the king went off shore in a canoe. When he came in, a group of men with spears rushed at him (he was protected by his own warriors.) It was believed that unless the king was sacred enough to be superior to death, he no longer was worthy of representing Lono. (Handy)

Various rites of purification and celebration closed the observance of the Makahiki season. During the special holiday the success of the harvest was commemorated with prayers of praise made to the Creator, ancestral guardians, caretakers of the elements and various deities – particularly Lono.

The Kukui tree is considered to be the kinolau, or form, of Kamapuaʻa, the pig god, the lover of fire goddess Pele (perhaps due to light’s affinity with fire) and so a pig’s head carved from kukui wood is placed on the altar to Lono at the annual Makahiki festival.

Kapa was closely linked to Lono. White kapa streamers adorned the akua loa, or ‘long god’ during the Makahiki. The hale o Lono temples were located immediately inside the eastern boundary of each ahupua‘a. They served in the annual tribute collection by the ali‘i during the Makahiki. (Kirch)

Captain Cook sailed past Hāmākua, Hilo, Puna, and Kaʻū and put in at Kealakekua Bay, and on January 17, 1779, he put in at Kaʻawaloa Bay – the sails and masts of the ships of Captain James Cook resembled Lono’s akua loa.

When Captain Cook appeared they declared that his name must be Lono, for Kealakekua was the home of that deity as a man, and it was a belief of the ancients that he had gone to Kahiki and would return. (Kamakau)

“During the Makahiki season … the people of different districts gathered at one place”. (Malo) Kamakau, noted that “a place had been made ready” before the arrival of the Makahiki gods, where sporting matches were performed after the tribute offerings were made. (Kirch)

Hawaiian ethno-historic sources indicate the existence of special gathering places where members of an ahupua‘a community would assemble during the Makahiki period, especially for the offering of tribute to the Lono priests and for various sports, games and other ceremonies associated with this important ritual period. (Kirch) On such has been identified on Kauai.

Lono, the god of agriculture, along with Kāne’s help, insures a life cycle and abundance to all animal husbandry and crops. Kanaloa, the god of the sea, also needs Kāne’s help in order to insure a life cycle for the fish. This is significant as these three components are represented at Kāneiolouma on the South Shore of the island of Kauai.

“The heiau was the principal medium through which all religious activities were manifested, and was therefore the most important representative of religion collectively in ancient Hawai‘i.”

As noted by Henry Kekahuna in his 1959 mapping of the Kāneiolouma complex, the Kāneiolouma heiau at Poʻipū had three main sections (religion, agriculture and aquaculture (fish ponds.))

“On the East side, there is a large sports arena where Hawaiian games such as forearm wrestling, or uma, wrestling, or hakoko, and deadly grappling, or lua, were carried on.” (Kekahuna)

“On the South side, there is a large fishpond where special fish intended only for the ali‘i were raised. The Waiohai spring is the center of this fishpond.”

Extensive walled enclosures, alters, numerous bases for temple images, shrines, taro patches, irrigation ditches, a series of large fishponds, house platforms, extensive cooking areas, and terracing throughout make this complex ideal for rehabilitation.

Within the complex, an intricate system of walls and terraces trace the architecture of an ancient way of life. Near its center, the complex contains what may be the only intact Makahiki sporting arena in the state.

The Kāneiolouma and agricultural site complex is part of a huge complex of agricultural and habitation sites ranging from Kōloa town to the coast of Poʻipū and ranging from the Weliweli area westward to Kukui‘ula Bay and the Kōloa Field System.

Per the Bishop Museum Planetarium, December 1, 2016, marks Makahiki (start of the Hawaiian year.) To mark the start of the Makahiki season: 1) wait for the star cluster of the Pleiades to rise at sunset, which occurs every year on November 17; 2) wait for the new moon that follows this sunset rising of the Pleiades, which occurs in 2016 on November 29 …

3) wait for the first visible crescent moon that follows this new moon. This year, this slender crescent should be visible in the west at dusk on December 1, thus marking the start of the Makahiki season and of the Hawaiian year. (BM)

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Webber drawing of a Makahiki boxing match before Capt. Cook done at Napoopoo in 1779

Makahiki-Cook’s arrival-HerbKane

Akua Loa at Bishop Museum

Kaneiolouma-Poipu,_Kauai

Kaneiolouma-Poipu, Kauai

Kaneiolouma-Henry_Kekahuna-Map

Makahiki-Mural-MauiCollege

Makahiki-Hookupu-MauiCollege

Makahiki-Hookupu_MauiCollege

Makahiki-Celebration-MauiCollege

Makahiki-Celebration_MauiCollege

November 4, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Land Management

The social structure shaped and reinforced land management.

“(I)n the earliest times all the people were alii (chiefs) … it was only after the lapse of several generations that a division was made into commoners and chiefs” (Malo)

Kamakau noted, in early Hawaiʻi “The parents were masters over their own family group … No man was made chief over another.” Essentially, the extended family was the socio, biological, economic and political unit.

Because each ʻohana (family) was served by a parental haku (master, overseer) and each family was self-sufficient and capable of satisfying its own needs, there was no need for a hierarchal structure.

As the population increased and wants and needs increased in variety and complexity (and it became too difficult to satisfy them with finite resources,) the need for chiefly rule became apparent.

As chiefdoms developed, the simple pecking order of titles and status likely evolved into a more complex and stratified structure. The actual number of chiefs was few, but their retainers attached to the courts (advisors, konohiki, priests, warriors, etc) were many.

Most of the makaʻāinana (common people) were farmers, a few were fishermen. Tenants cultivated smaller crops for family consumption, to supply the needs of chiefs and provide tributes. Kapu (restrictions/prohibitions) were observed as a matter of resource and land management, among other things.

The traditional land use in the Hawaiian Islands evolved from shifting cultivation into a stable form of agriculture. Stabilization required a new form of land use and eventually the ahupua‘a form of land management was instituted (what we generally refer to as watersheds, today.)

In addition, this centralization of government allowed for completion and maintenance of large projects, such as irrigation systems, large taro loʻi, large fish ponds, heiau and trails.

Ahupuaʻa served as a means of managing people and taking care of the people who support them, as well as an easy form of collection of tributes by the chiefs. Ultimately, this helped in preserving resources.

The ahupuaʻa boundaries reflected the pattern of land use that had evolved as the most efficient and beneficial to the well-being of the ʻohana, as the population expanded throughout previous centuries.

This pattern of land use and the boundaries were adopted and then instituted by the ruling chiefs and their supervisors to delineate units for the annual collection of the Makahiki Harvest Season offerings to them as the land stewards of Lono, God of Agriculture. (McGregor & MacKenzie)

Dr Marion Kelly noted there were three main technological advances resulting in food production intensification in pre-contact Hawai‘i: (a) walled fishponds, (b) terraced pondfields with their irrigation systems and (c) systematic dry-land field cultivation organized by vegetation zones.

Hawaiians built rock-walled enclosures in near shore waters, to raise fish for their communities and families. It is believed these were first built around the fifteenth century.

The ancient Hawaiian fishpond is a sophisticated land and ocean resource management technique. Utilizing raw materials such as rocks, corals, vines and woods, the Hawaiians created great walls (kuapā) and gates (mākāhā) for these fishponds.

The general term for a fishpond is loko (pond), or more specifically, loko iʻa (fishpond). Loko iʻa were used for the fattening and storing of fish for food and also as a source for kapu (forbidden) fish.

Samuel M. Kamakau points out that “one can see that they were built as government projects by chiefs, for it was a very big task to build one, (and) commoners could not have done it (singly, or without co-ordination.)” Chiefs had the power to command a labor force large enough to transport the tons of rock required and to construct such great walls.

A second technological invention by Hawaiian Polynesians was the development of their extended stone-faced, terraced pondfields (lo‘i) and their accompanying irrigation systems (ʻauwai) for the intensive cultivation of wetland taro (kalo.)

The terraces were irrigated with water brought in ditches from springs and streams high in the valleys, allowing extensive areas of the valleys to be cultivated. The irrigation ditches and pondfields were engineered to allow the cool water to circulate among the taro plants and from terrace to terrace, avoiding stagnation and overheating by the sun, which would rot the taro tubers.

An acre of irrigated pondfields produced as much as five times the amount of taro as an acre of dryland cultivation. Over a period of several years, irrigated pondfields could be as much as 10 or 15 times more productive than unirrigated taro gardens, as dryland gardens need to lie fallow for greater lengths of time than irrigated gardens.

The third form of subsistence intensification involved the systematic cultivation of dryland crops in their appropriate vegetation zones as exemplified by the Field Systems in Kona, Kohala, Kaupō and Kalaupapa (Kaʻū reportedly also has a field system.)

Cultivation of the soil in Kona was characterized by a variety of non-irrigated root and tree crops grown for subsistence, each farmer having gardens in one or more vegetation zones. Each crop was cultivated in the zone in which it grew best.

Reverend William Ellis described the area behind Kailua town in Kona above the breadfruit and mountain apple trees as, “The path now lay through a beautiful part of the country, quite a garden compared with that through which they had passed on first leaving the town.”

“It was generally divided into small fields, about fifteen rods square fenced with low stone walls, built with fragments of lava gathered from the surface of the enclosures. These fields were planted with bananas, sweet potatoes, mountain taro, paper mulberry plants, melons, and sugar-cane, which flourished luxuriantly in every direction.”

The fields were typically oriented parallel to the elevation contours and the walls; sometimes these were made up of a grid of rain-fed plots, defined by low stone field walls built, in part, to shelter sweet potatoes and other crops from the wind.

Since the dryland technique was away from supplemental water sources, this was truly dryland agriculture. There was no evidence to level terraces as in irrigated pondfield systems (taro lo‘i,) and there was no evidence of water control features or channels; so the conclusion was the system was strictly rainfed.

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)

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c. 1826 lithograph, William Ellis C., Big Island. Waipio Valley, Ahupua’a.

August 13, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Konohiki

For generations the small, slowly growing population clustered around shore sites near streams that supplied them with water. Such sites are best for inshore fishing.

In the course of native settlement, as the early Hawaiians spread from fishing sites on the shore to inland areas and fanned out over the plains and hills from original centers of settlement, households with ties of relationship became scattered.

Neighborly interdependence, the sharing of goods and services, naturally resulted in the settling of contiguous lands by a given ʻohana rather than in a scattering over an entire district. In this way there came to be an association of particular ʻohana with various areas.

The heads of the ʻohana groups were called haku or haku ‘āina. He came by his responsibility through seniority and competence. His authority was a matter of common consent rather than formal sanction; he was not appointed, he was not elected. (Handy, Handy & Pukui)

“(I)n the earliest times all the people were aliʻi … it was only after the lapse of several generations that a division was made into commoners and chiefs”. (Malo)

Kamakau states that there were no chiefs in the earliest period of settlement but that they came “several hundred years afterward … when men became numerous.”

As the population increased and wants and needs increased in variety and complexity (and it became too difficult to satisfy them with finite resources;) the need for chiefly rule became apparent.

In ancient Hawai‘i, most of the common people were farmers, a few were fishermen. Tenants cultivated smaller crops for family consumption, to supply the needs of chiefs and provide tributes.

Access to resources was tied to residency and earned as a result of taking responsibility to steward the environment and supply the needs of aliʻi. The social structure reinforced land management.

A typical ahupuaʻa (what we generally refer to as watersheds, today) was a long strip of land, narrow at its mountain summit top and becoming wider as it ran down a valley into the sea to the outer edge of the reef. If there was no reef then the sea boundary would be about one and a half miles from the shore.

Ahupuaʻa served as a means of managing people and taking care of the people who support them, as well as an easy form of collection of tributes by the chiefs.

For hundreds of years since, on the death of all mō‘ī (kings or queens), the new ruler re-divided the land, giving control of it to his or her favorite chiefs.

Each ahupuaʻa in turn was ruled by a lower chief, or aliʻi ʻai. He, in turn, appointed an overseer, or konohiki. (The makaʻāinana (common people) never owned or ruled land.)

Konohiki were appointed to supervise the distribution of land, of planting and harvesting, water rights, the building and maintenance of irrigation ditches and new lo‘i. It was the konohiki who served as tax collectors in the Makahiki festival.

Under the aliʻi system of collecting tribute in the form of produce, these subdivisions of the chiefdom became tax units, each marked at its border with a heap (ahu) of stones, an altar upon which was put a symbol of Lono the god of rain, in the form of the rudely carved head of a hog (pua‘a.)

Within a given ahupua‘a the heads of the respective ʻohana were responsible for seeing that their people met the tax levy prescribed by the konohiki, the ali‘i’s land supervisor.

Under the aliʻi it was competence in meeting the requirements of this levy on produce that determined the rights of the planters to continue to cultivate and dwell on their land.

In addition to his responsibility as an overseer of the lands and their use in the ahupua‘a, the Konohiki was also in charge of along-shore and offshore fishing rights (sometimes referred to as ‘konohiki rights.’)

He enforced the seasonal kapu that protected various kinds of fish during seasons of spawning. He supervised the division and distribution of the catch in communal fishing, when prescribed portions went to the aliʻi and his entourage, to the kahuna, and to the households whose members had participated.

There was a high degree of stability or permanence of tenure despite the general turnover of authority and titles to the land whenever a new aliʻi came into power, owing to the fact that particular ʻohana enjoyed the rights of occupancy and use and faithfully fulfilled their obligations.

In many cases their ancestors had pioneered the area and cultivated it since the earliest era of Hawaiian settlement. Actually it was to the advantage of an aliʻi to maintain the occupancy of diligent cultivators of the land.

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View of southern Oʻahu from ʻEwa in the 1820s

June 12, 2016 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Loyalty to Locality

Using stratigraphic archaeology and refinements in radiocarbon dating, studies suggest it was about 900-1000 AD that “Polynesian explorers first made their remarkable voyage from central Eastern Polynesia Islands, across the doldrums and into the North Pacific, to discover Hawai‘i.” (Kirch)

The motivations of the voyagers varied. Some left to explore the world or to seek adventure. Others departed to find new land or new resources because of growing populations or prolonged droughts and other ecological disasters in their homelands. (PVS)

Early settlement patterns in the Islands put people on the windward sides of the islands, typically along the shoreline. Settlement patterns tended to be dispersed and without major population centers.

Most of the makaʻāinana (common people) were farmers, a few were fishermen. Tenants cultivated smaller crops for family consumption, to supply the needs of chiefs and provide tributes.

Fishermen and their families living around the bays and the beaches, or at isolated localities along the coast where fishing was practicable, led a life that was materially simpler than that of planters who dwelt on the plains.

There was no term for village. The typical homestead or kauhale consisted of the sleeping or common house, the men’s house, women’s eating house, and storehouse, and generally stood in relative isolation in dispersed communities.

The terrain and the subsistence economy naturally created the dispersed community of scattered homesteads. It was only when topography or the physical character of an area required close proximity of homes that villages existed.

Where conglomerations of homesteads existed, they were not communities held together either by bonds of kinship or economic interdependence.

A spring (or springs) was sometimes the reason for a village-like conglomeration of homesteads. “But it is along and in the streams which rush through the bottoms of these narrow gorges that the Hawaiian is most at home.”

“Go into any of these valleys, and you will see a surprising sight : along the whole narrow bottom, and climbing often in terraces the steep hillsides, you will see the little taro patches, skillfully laid so as to catch the water, either directly from the main stream, or from canals taking water out above.” (Nordhoff, 1874)

The true community in which sundry homesteads were integrated by socio-religious and economic ties was the dispersed community of ʻohana. This word signifies relatives by blood, marriage, and adoption.

Some located on upland slopes (ko kula uka,) some on the plains toward the sea (ko kula kai,) and some along the shore (ko kaha kai.) Neighborly interdependence, the sharing of goods and services, naturally resulted in the settling of contiguous lands by a given ʻohana rather than in a scattering over an entire district.

In this way there came to be an association of particular ʻohana with the land units later designated as ahupua‘a. Within a given ahupua‘a the heads of the respective ʻohana were responsible for seeing that their people met the tax levy prescribed by the konohiki, the ali‘i’s land supervisor.

The heads of the ʻohana groups were called haku or haku ‘āina. So far as is known there was no formal procedure involved in the choice of a haku for an ʻohana.

He came by his responsibility through seniority and competence. His authority was a matter of common consent rather than formal sanction; he was not appointed, he was not elected.

Thus the kauhale, the homesites of established ʻohana, were permanent features of the landscape, and the vested interest of any given family was equivalent to a title of ownership, so long as the landsman labored diligently to sustain his claim and was loyal to his aliʻi.

People identify themselves not just with the chiefdom (moku,) but with the ahupua‘a which was their homeland. This was true throughout the Hawaiian Islands.

This loyalty to locality, the identification of persons with family or ʻohana and with the ‘āina that nourished the ʻohana is an attitude that was ingrained. (The information here is from Handy & Handy with Pukui.)

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