Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Wai O Keanalele

“Wai o ke ola! Wai, waiwai nui! Wai, nā mea a pau, ka wai, waiwai no kēlā!”  (Water is life! Water is of great value! Water, the water is that which is of value for all things!) (Joe Rosa; Maly)

Water was so valuable to Hawaiians that they used the word “wai” to indicate wealth. Thus, to signify abundance and prosperity, Hawaiians would say waiwai.

“Kekaha wai ‘ole na Kona” (“waterless Kekaha of the Kona district”) speaks of Kekaha, the portion of North Kona extending north of Kailua Bay from Honokōhau to ʻAnaehoʻomalu.  It is described as “a dry, sun-baked land.”)

Kamakau notes during the 1770s, “Kekaha and the lands of that section” were held by descendants of the Nahulu line, Kameʻeiamoku (living at Kaʻūpūlehu) and Kamanawa (at Kīholo,) the twin half-brothers of Keʻeaumoku, the Hawai‘i island chief.

It is the home of Kamanawa, at Kīholo, and its fresh water resources that we look at today.

Situated within the ahupuaʻa of Puʻuwaʻawaʻa, this area has ancient to relatively recent (1801 Hualālai eruption and the 1859 Pu‘u Anahulu eruption.)

Kīholo (lit. the Fishhook) refers to the legend which describes how in 1859 the goddess Pele, hungry for the ‘awa and mullet, or ʻanae, which grew there in the great fishpond constructed by Kamehameha I, sent down a destructive lava flow, grasping at the fish she desired.  (DLNR)

This place name may have been selected as a word descriptive of the coastline along that part of the island where the east-west coast meets the north-south coast and forms a bend similar to the angle between the point and the shank of a large fishhook.

There is no confirmation for this theory, except for our knowledge that Hawaiian place names have a strong tendency to be descriptive.  (Kelly)

While only a handful of houses are here today, in ancient times, there was a village that with many more that called Kiholo home.

“This village exhibits another monument of the genius of Tamehameha (Kamehameha I.) A small bay, perhaps half a mile across, runs inland for a considerable distance. From one side to the other of this bay, Tamehameha built a strong stone wall, six feet high in some places, and twenty feet wide, by which he had an excellent fish-pond that is not less than two miles in circumference.”

“There were several arches in the wall, which were guarded by strong stakes driven into the ground so far apart as to admit the water of the sea; yet sufficiently close to prevent the fish from escaping. It was well stocked with fish, and water-fowl were seen swimming on its surface.” (Ellis, 1823)

Where it was feasible, sometimes in small embayments, and other times directly on the coastal reefs, Hawaiians built walled ponds (loko kuapā) by building a stone wall, either in a large semicircle – from the land out onto the reef and, circling around, back again to the land—or to connect the headlands of a bay, they enclosed portions of the coastal waters, often covering many acres.

These ponds provided sanctuaries for many types of herbivorous fish. One or more sluice gates (mākāhā) built into the wall of a pond allowed clean, nutritious ocean water and very young fish to enter the pond. This was the type of fishpond that was reported to have been built at Kīholo by early visitors to the area.  (Kelly)

While Ellis credits Kamehameha with building Ka Loko o Kīholo (The Pond of Kīholo,) it is more likely that the fishpond was built in the fifteenth to the early part of the seventh centuries and that Kamehameha later repaired and rebuilt it.  (Kelly)

It was in operation well after that.  “Took the road from Kapalaoa to Kailua on foot. Passed the great fish pond at Kīholo, one of the artificial wonders of Hawaiʻi; an immense work! A prodigious wall run through a portion of the ocean, a channel for the water etc. Half of Hawaii worked on it in the days of Kamehameha.”  (Lorenzo Lyons, August, 8, 1843; Maly)

Fishing and fish from the pond provided much of the food for the villagers.  In addition, due to the limited rainfall and no surface streams, they also planted sweet potatoes, at least seasonally (probably just before the winter rains were expected, whatever soil was available was piled in heaps and nourished with leaves and other vegetable matter.)  (Kelly)

Kīholo and other ponds (ie Pā‘aiea (once where the Kona Airport is situated)) would have supplied food for Kamehameha’s warriors when they sailed off in the great canoe fleet to conquer the chiefs on the Islands of Maui, Moloka‘i and O‘ahu in 1794 and 1795. (Kelly)

“The natives of this district (also produced) large quantities of salt, by evaporating sea water. We saw a number of their pans, in the disposition of which they display great ingenuity. They have generally one large pond near the sea, into which the water flows by a channel cut through the rocks, or is carried thither by the natives in large calabashes.”  (Ellis, 1823)

“After remaining there some time, it is conducted into a number of smaller pans about six or eight inches in depth, which are made with great care, and frequently lined with large evergreen leaves, in order to prevent absorption. Along the narrow banks or partitions between the different pans, we saw a number of large evergreen leaves placed.”

“They were tied up at each end, so as to resemble a shallow dish, and filled with sea water, in which the crystals of salt were abundant. … it has ever been an essential article with the Sandwich Islanders, who eat it very freely with their food, and use large quantities in preserving their fish.”  (Ellis, 1823)

“Salt was one of the necessaries and was a condiment used with fish and meat, also as a relish with fresh food. Salt was manufactured only in certain places. The women brought sea water in calabashes or conducted it in ditches to natural holes, hollows, and shallow ponds (kaheka) on the sea coast, where it soon became strong brine from evaporation. Thence it was transferred to another hollow, or shallow vat, where crystallization into salt was completed.”  (Malo)

The 1850s saw several outbreaks of lava from Mauna Loa: in August 1851; in February 1852 (it came within a few hundred yards of Hilo;) and in August 1855, when it flowed for 16-months.

Then, in 1859, activity shifted to the northwestern side of the mountain. A flow started on January 23rd at an elevation of 10,500 feet; it came down to the sea on the northwest coast in two branches, at a point just north of Kīholo. On January 31st the stream had reached the sea, more than thirty-three miles in a direct line from its source – the first eruption in historic times from a high altitude to accomplish the extraordinary feat.  (Bryan, 1915)

The 1859 flow basically destroyed Kīholo and transformed it from a former residence of chiefs to a sparsely populated fishing village.  In the early 20th century, Kīholo became the port for Puʻuwaʻawaʻa Ranch, some 10 miles inland near Puʻuanahulu. Cattle were shipped from Kīholo to Honolulu until 1958. The construction of Queen Kaʻahumanu Highway in 1975 ended Kīholo’s former isolation.  (Kona Historical Society)

What about the water?

Today, evidence remains of the fresh groundwater flow through subterranean lava tubes and chambers out into the bay.   There is a series of caves in Puʻuwaʻawaʻa that was formed from lava tubes. The ceilings of lava tubes often collapsed in some places and were left intact in others, forming caves with relatively easy access through the collapsed areas.

Such caves were used for shelters by Hawaiians, perhaps during the summer months when they came to gather salt or to fish. The place name Keanalele (the discontinuous cave) is descriptive of caves found just inland of the coast in the ahupua‘a of Pu‘uwa‘awa‘a between Kīholo and Luahinewai.

Some of the caves contain fresh or brackish water, particularly those located toward the makai (seaward) end of the cave series. Caves that contained water were precious to the inhabitants of the area, even if the water in them was slightly brackish.  (Kelly)  One of these is identified as Wai O Keanalele, with three feet of almost fresh water..

On January 25, 2002 the Board of Land and Natural Resources transferred responsibility for State-managed lands within the ahupua‘a of Pu‘uwa‘awa‘a and Pu‘u Anahulu from its Land Division to the Divisions of Forestry and Wildlife (DOFAW) and State Parks.

The portion that was made the responsibility of the Division of State Parks was designated the Kīholo State Park Reserve.  The Kīholo State Park Reserve is comprised of 4,362 acres and includes an 8-mile long wild coastline along the Kona Coast of the Island of Hawai‘i (bounded by Queen Kaʻahumanu Highway on the east, the Pu‘uwa‘awa‘a/Kaʻupulehu district boundary on the south, the shoreline on the west and the Pu‘u Anahulu/ʻAnaehoʻomalu ahupua‘a boundary on the north.)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Paul Neumann

“Mrs. Dominis in a few words stated that she desired to surrender all her claims to the throne, and offered her formal abdication to President Dole in the shape of a document drawn up by Judge AS Hartwell, who was consulted by Mr. Wilson, Mr. Parker and Mr. Neumann about the matter and acted as advising counsel for them”.

“Attorney Neumann then read aloud the formal abdication. Her ex-Majesty also read the document aloud from beginning to end and then signed both the document and the oath of allegiance to the republic, while Notary Stanley affixed his jurat.  Mr. Neumann returned the document to the ex-Queen”.  (The Morning Call, February 7, 1895)

Paul Rudolph Neumann, lawyer, diplomat, and bon vivant (a person having cultivated, refined and sociable tastes especially with respect to food and drink,) was born in Prussia in December 1839.

He came to the United States when he was fifteen, locating in California, where he became a naturalized citizen. He was admitted to the practice of law in 1864 and served in the California legislature as a senator three terms.

Interactions with Neumann were typically enlivened by his bubbling wit; while a competent lawyer, he was known far more widely for his love of fun and his wit and bon vivant. Wherever he went, he left behind a trail of his kindly humor and was as full of frolic as a schoolboy.

While in California, Neumann broke his leg; while it was mending, he broke it again.  It had to be amputated; he “stumped around on a cork substitute, of which he was ever ready to make fun.” He and another amputee, C Mitchell Grant, would joke with an impromptu peg-leg waltz. (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, July 22, 1901)

Neumann married Elise Dinklage of California on June 25, 1870; they had six children: Paul Jr, Edouard, Anita Alejandra, Inez Sophie, Eva and Lillie Leonora.  (Neumann was born of Jewish parents and was reared as a Jew. His wife was not a Jewess and his children were not reared in the Jewish faith.  (The New Era))

As a lawyer, the partner of Harry Eickhoff, he had a good practice and did not hesitate to match wits with any member of the bar. Often he upset a learned argument with a quick sally, and people followed him into court in the expectation of hearing him turn a point and raise a laugh. But beyond his humor he could be logically forceful and had quite a turn of eloquence.

As an after-dinner speaker he was particularly ready, and was often selected to preside as toastmaster when an evening of lively fun was expected. Even when he went into politics he could not keep down his love of a joke, and he lost some votes among people who feared he never would be serious enough for a lawmaker.  (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, July 22, 1901)

In the fall of 1882 he was the Republican candidate for representative in Congress from the San Francisco district; he was denounced by the San Francisco Chronicle as a ‘sugar-coated candidate’ and a tool of the Claus Spreckels interests.  He lost.

In the fall of 1883, Neumann made a short visit to Honolulu. It was reported that he had been offered an appointment as Attorney General but had declined it. A month later, he returned to Honolulu and within a few days was admitted to the Hawaiian bar.  On December 14 he was appointed Attorney General.  (Kuykendall)

In public service, he was Attorney General under King Kalākaua (1883–1886) and Queen Liliʻuokalani (1892,) became a member of the House of Nobles, and later became Liliʻuokalani’s personal attorney until his death.  In 1884 he went to Mexico as special Hawaiian Envoy; later (1896,) he was Envoy Extraordinary of the Republic of Hawaiʻi to Guatemala.

“Paul Neumann … told me stories of the old monarchy and the good old early days.  Neumann was a character, one of the early figures in modern Hawaiian history, and a very patriotic man. Crabbed and crusty to the stranger, he unbent most charmingly to any one he liked. Story followed story …” (Beringer; Overland Monthly, 1909)

When the Hawaiʻi Bar Association was formed, Neumann was unanimously elected as its first President.  (Independent, June 29, 1899)

He was a close friend and poker-playing companion of the King. As Attorney General and legislator, friendly adviser and personal attorney, Neumann gave faithful service to King Kalākaua and Queen Liliʻuokalani.  (Kuykendall)

Neumann was also a great friend and companion of Robert Louis Stevenson; Stevenson was a welcomed and privileged guest at the Neumann’s residence while in Honolulu. (Johnstone)

At the time of the overthrow, Neumann went to Washington as the representative of Queen Liliʻuokalani, to oppose the first treaty of annexation and to secure her restoration.

He successfully kept Hawaiʻi from becoming a Territory of the United States under President Grover Cleveland by carrying a personal letter from the Queen explaining the takeover – Cleveland interceded with Senate Democrats to stop action on the treaty.  (Denson)  That changed in 1898 when McKinley took office.

Neumann also successfully negotiated a pension for the Queen ($20,000 annually during her life) and Princess Kaʻiulani (a lump sum of $150,000.)

Following the conspiracy of 1895, Neumann was counsel for the ex-Queen and for the more prominent of the royalist defendants in the trials for treason before the military court.  (Hawaiian Star, July 2, 1901)

Paul Neumann died July 2, 1901.  His widow, several years later, met with a tragic ending.  “She was known to her many friends as an unusually self-reliant woman.  Of recent years her sorrows have been many.”

“Her husband died, seven year ago. Two years ago one of her sons, an ensign in the United States Navy was killed on board the battleship Missouri in a turret explosion.  Her mother died about a year ago.”

“She never ceased to grieve, say her friends, over the death of her son.” … (She reportedly jumped overboard and drowned while travelling via ship from Mazatlán to San Francisco.)  (San Francisco Call, September 8, 1908)

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by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Royal Hawaiian Band

The “King’s Band” had its beginning in 1836, it continues today; founded by King Kamehameha III, it became a staple of daily life by performing for state occasions, funerals and marching in parades.

The band accompanied reigning monarchs on frequent trips to the neighbor islands and brought their music to remote destinations of the kingdom such as Kalaupapa on the island of Molokai.

In 1848, Band members signed contracts to serve, noting they “agree to serve under the orders of William Merseburgh, the captain appointed by His Majesty … (and) to meet from time to time for the purpose of practicing and improvement in instrumental music.”

“We agree to play for the king and for the other officers of the government whenever called on by our captain for such reasonable compensation as he shall award, not less than one dollar nor more than three dollars per man for any time not to exceed one day.”  (Hawaiian Star, September 22, 1906)

In the 1880s, the Royal Hawaiian Band played concerts twice a week in Queen Emma Square.  “One of our pleasant diversions was to go to and hear Captain Berger’s band play at Emma Square every Saturday afternoon.  … we all went and sat in the carriage just outside the park.  There was usually a crowd there, as it was very popular.”  (Sutherland Journal)

When the Provisional Government under Sanford B Dole in the wake of the Overthrow demanded a loyalty oath of all employees, the musicians of the Royal Hawaiian Band, renamed Government Band, refused to do so, an act of courage celebrated in Ellen Prendergast’s “Mele ‘ai  pohaku” (The Stone Eating Song,) also known as “Kaulana nā pua” (“Famous are the Flowers (Children.”)  (RoyalHawaiianBand)

The bandmembers then organized into the “Pana Lāhui Hawaiʻi”, “The Hawaiian National Band”, which under the leadership of José Liborno went to the United States to drum up support for the Queen and for Hawaiʻi’s continuing independence. (RoyalHawaiianBand)

One notable bandmaster was Heinrich (Henri or Henry) Berger.  He came from Prussia at the request of Kamehameha V, who asked Emperor Wilhelm I to send a conductor.  On June 3, 1872, Berger arrived in Honolulu on board the steamer “Mohongo” and one week later conducted his first public concerts.

It took him just two months to receive this accolade from the “Pacific Commercial Advertiser”: “The Band, under the able direction of Mr. Berger, has resumed the practice initiated two years ago by the band of the Austrian frigate Donau…”

“The neighborhood of Emma Square looked quite lively for an hour or so on Thursday afternoon where lots of people in carriages and on foot had assembled to hear the really fine sounds of the ‘Hawaiian Military Band.’”

“As was remarked by one of the Honolulu delegation in the Assembly when the appropriation for the support of the military was under discussion: ‘The band is by far the best part of the army.’”  (Atlantic Times)

After four years, Berger returned to Germany, had himself released from his duties in the Prussian military and then came back to Hawaiʻi for good. He gave 32,000 concerts, composed 250 Hawaiian songs, some of which are still being sung around the world, and 1,000 other tunes.

He wrote down indigenous hymns that had until then only been passed on orally. And on Sundays, taking turns with his friend, Queen Liliʻuokalani; he played the organ in Kawaiahaʻo Church. Lili’uokalani was a formidable composer in her own right. Her song, “Aloha ‘Oe” (Farewell to Thee), became world-famous. Berger had arranged it for her.

During the Second Wilcox Rebellion of 1895, Berger had to find new, mostly non-Hawaiian musicians.  He was commanded by the now Republic of Hawaiʻi to give concerts in order to soothe the agitated mood of the citizenry.

As the twentieth century rolled around, things began to normalize, at least on the surface. The Band regained its former royal name and would perpetuate cherished traditions close to the hearts not only of many Hawaiians but of a good number of locals and visitors alike. (RoyalHawaiianBand)

The Royal Hawaiian Band was a cornerstone of the monarch and the essence of music of Hawaiʻi’s monarchy and continues the tradition of keeping Hawaiian marches and band arrangements alive by including several of these compositions among its repertoire.  (AssociationOfHawaiianCivicClubs)

During its long history, band leaders included an escaped American slave, a Portuguese, a New Zealander, a Prussian and a German from Weimar.  (SI-edu)

Today, the Royal Hawaiian Band is an agency of the City and County of Honolulu and is the only full-time municipal band in the United States.  The Band is made up of 40 full-time positions and functions as a concert band, a marching band and a glee club ensemble.

The band performs and marches in over 300 concerts and parades each year including: city, state and military functions; schools, community centers, shopping malls, retirement communities, graduations and private events. Weekly public performances are held on Fridays at ʻIolani Palace and Sundays at the Kapiʻolani Park Bandstand.

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Liliʻuokalani Protestant Church

The queen was fond of the congregation – which once numbered in the thousands, according to church records – and donated hymnals, cut-glass chandeliers and a seven-dial, universal-calendar clock. The church was renamed for Liliʻuokalani in 1975.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves, let’s step back.

Over the course of a little over 40-years (1820-1863) (the “Missionary Period”,) about 184-men and women in twelve Companies served in Hawaiʻi to carry out the mission of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in the Hawaiian Islands.

The Prudential Committee of the ABCFM gave the following instructions to these missionaries: “Your mission is a mission of mercy, and your work is to be wholly a labor of love. … Your views are not to be limited to a low, narrow scale, but you are to open your hearts wide, and set your marks high.”

“You are to aim at nothing short of covering these islands with fruitful fields, and pleasant dwellings and schools and churches, and of Christian civilization.”  (The Friend)  Reverend John S Emerson and his new bride Ursula Sophia Newell Emerson were part of the Fifth Company of missionaries.

Emerson was born December 28, 1800 in Chester, New Hampshire; he descended from a branch of the Emerson family emigrating from England and settling in Haverhill, Massachusetts, in 1652. Emerson left home at the age of 15 and started his studies preparing for college, and subsequently graduated from Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1826.

After graduating, like so many of the Alumni of American colleges, he became a teacher before entering upon his theological studies. These were pursued for three years at Andover, where he graduated in 1830.  He anticipated becoming a missionary in India, but, yielded to a special call from the Sandwich Islands.

He married Ursula on October 25, 1831 in the old parsonage of Nelson, among the New Hampshire hills, where her father, Rev. Gad Newell, was the pastor from 1794 to 1859.  They left for the Islands a month after their wedding (November 20, 1831) and spent almost six months on board ship – arriving in the Islands May 17, 1832.

“Very soon after his arrival the ‘general meeting’ of the Mission assigned Mr and Mrs Emerson, to the station of Waialua, on Oʻahu.”  (The Friend, April 1867) Waialua stretched along the coast for 30-miles with a population of 8,000.  They sailed from Honolulu on a small schooner to get there.

On July 24, 1832 they formed the Congregational Church at Waialua, Oahu’s second oldest Hawaiian church.  The first facility (first of four) was a hale pili (thatched house,) dedicated on September 25, 1832 (it was situated at what is today the site of Haleʻiwa Joe’s on the corner of Kamehameha Highway and Haleʻiwa Road.)

“From the commencement of his labors at Waialua, he endeavored to interest his people in the diligent reading and study of the Bible. He had so arranged the reading of the Bible, that his people were accustomed to read the entire Bible through once in about three years.”

“In the daily morning prayer-meeting which has been kept up for many years, at the church, and which he usually attended, he would read and comment on the chapters for the day. We recollect, some months ago to have asked an old Hawaiian, belonging to the Waialua church, how many times he had read the Bible through. His reply was “eiwa” (nine!)”  (The Friend, April 1867)

The government selected a spot for a second church to replace the first one.  An adobe building, about 100-feet by about 50-feet was built around 1840-1841 on what is now the cemetery area of the present church property.

Emerson served the Church until 1842 when he took a position as professor at the Lahainaluna Seminary on Maui, and also served as pastor of the Church at Kāʻanapali.   He published five volumes of elementary works, three of them in the Hawaiian language, and, while at Lahainaluna, was joint author, with Rev. Artemas Bishop, of an “English Hawaiian Dictionary,” based on Webster’s abridgment (Lahainaluna, 1845.)  He later returned to Waialua and served the congregation until 1846.

Service to the people was equally shared by Ursula.  “We are also much impressed by the well-drawn character of Ursula Newell Emerson, whose lovable personality, together with her bountiful, untiring hospitality, is a treasured memory in Hawaiʻi. She nobly rounded out the work of her husband”.  (The Friend, October 1928)

A third church was built of wood in 1890 on the present location and it was this building that Queen Liliʻuokalani worshipped in when she stayed at her beach home along the banks of the Anahulu River.

“Our famous clock was donated to the church by Queen Liliʻuokalani on January 1, 1892. The clock is 32 inches in diameter, with seven functions and hands, one (of) which made one revolution every 16 years!”

“The uniqueness of this one-of-a-kind clock, is that the numerals on the clock dial telling the time were replaced with the letters of L-I-L-I-U-O-K-A-L-A-N-I, the queen’s name.”  (Church Moderator Kuulei Kaio, Star-Bulletin)

The present church building was built after the wooden one was declared unsafe.  In 1960, the fourth (and present) church made of cement was started.  This new building was dedicated on June 11, 1961.  (Later renovations were completed in 1985.)

Theodore Alameda Vierra was the architect for the present church.  He was born on the Big Island in 1902 to an Azorean born Portuguese father and Hawaiian-Scottish mother. He graduated from Kamehameha Schools as president of his class in 1919, graduated from college in San Francisco and later won a scholarship to Harvard University School of Architecture. Vierra was the first native Hawaiian to be admitted to the American Institute of Architecture. (HHF)

The weather vane at the top of the church steeple is in the form of an ʻIwa bird (frigate) in full flight with a fish in its mouth.  Haleʻiwa was the name of the seminary that the Emersons established in the area and the village was eventually named Haleʻiwa (house of the ʻIwa bird.)

ʻIwa is also the name of a slender leafed fern and there are 2 of these leaves at base of the vane.  The religious connotation is brought together with the fish in its mouth.  “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.  The Kingdom of Heaven is like a net that was cast into the sea gathered many kinds.”  (Lots of information here from the Church website.)

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Pāhonu

Honu neʻe pū ka ʻāina
The land moves like the turtle.
(Land passes slowly but inexorably from owner to heir.)
(Pukui)

From its earliest period of occupation, the Waimānalo Bay region was an extensive agricultural area, featuring taro farms that used the traditional Hawaiian loʻi (pondfield) cultivation system.

Taro was grown in the lowlands, irrigated with water from Waimānalo Stream, as well as on terraced sections that were watered by the small streams and springs flowing out of the Koʻolau Range.

These terraced sections extended for nearly 2-miles in a semicircle at the foot of the mountains around the broad base of the Waimānalo valley. By the 1850s, the area’s fertile soil provided not only taro but also breadfruit, mountain apple, kukui and coconut trees, sweet potatoes and sugar cane.  (NPS)

In addition to the agrarian-based economy, several fishing villages dotted the bay’s shoreline. Two of the best-known villages in the area were Kaupō and Kukui. Kaupō was on a small peninsula opposite Mānana Island (Rabbit Island) and just northwest of Makapuʻu Beach Park (where Sea Life Park is located.)

The village may have been depopulated during the early-1800s and probably was repopulated during the early-1850s when a disastrous smallpox epidemic struck Honolulu and Hawaiians settled temporarily in the Waimānalo Bay region to escape its ravages.

The small fishing village of Kukui was further northwest, along the bay in the Kaiona Beach vicinity near Pāhonu Pond (‘Turtle enclosure’) – a prehistoric walled enclosure where it is said that turtles were kept for the use of Hawaiian chieftains.  (NPS)

Before we go there, let’s look at some findings of Dr Marion Kelly where she speaks of 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.

The Hawaiian walled fishpond stands as a technological achievement unmatched elsewhere in island Oceania.  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 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 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.

The fishponds just described refer to aquaculture to grow fish – they were found throughout the Islands; however, at Waimānalo, Oʻahu, the only remaining aquaculture of green sea turtle known to have been carried out by the early-Hawaiians involved a coastal pond named Pāhonu that was used to maintain turtles until they were ready to be eaten.  (NOAA)

The green sea turtle is the principal marine turtle species in the Hawaiian Islands.  Common names used in the Hawaiian Archipelago include honu, green turtle and green sea turtle.  They are herbivorous, feeding primarily on seagrasses and algae. This diet is thought to give them greenish-colored fat, from which they take their name. (NOAA)

In Hawaiʻi, as throughout Polynesia and other islands in the pacific, sea turtles have always been a traditional part of the local culture and have historically been revered as special and sacred beings.  (Luna)

“There was once a chief who was so fond of turtle meat that he ordered a sea wall be built to keep captured turtles from escaping.  Every turtle caught by a fisherman was put into this enclosure.  No one else was allowed to partake of turtle meat under penalty of death.  No one dared to eat turtle as long as the old chief lived.”  (Pukui; Maly)

Kikuchi in his “Hawaiian Aquaculture Systems,” notes that “An early visitor to Waikiki area remarked that the ruling chief of Oʻahu, Kahekili, ‘mentioned also some others where he had a quantity of turtle.’”

“… We walked back to Mr. Castle’s house, where we sat on a long bench outside, facing the sea.  There Aiona told me the story of Pa-honu, an enclosure for turtles that was once located back of Mrs. Wall’s present home.”  (Pukui; Maly)

Pāhonu, the offshore pond (500 feet long, 50 feet wide,) is just south of Kaiona Beach Park fronting the shoreline; a line of stones, submerged at high tide, but visible at low tide, notes its location.  (Pukui)

Kaiona Beach Park, a small four-acre park at the south end of Waimānalo Bay, is a popular camping site that has also been used for many years as a community boat anchorage.

In 1998, residents of Waimānalo built a boat ramp in the south end of the park, the only paved ramp in Waimānalo. They also placed a monument to Hawaiian fishers from their community near the ramp. Kaiona means “attractive sea.  (Clark)

The beachfront residence named Pāhonu inland of the pond was used from 1980 to 1988 as the base of operations for the popular television series, Magnum PI.  A surf site borders a small channel through the reef and is also known as Magnums. (Ulukau) The ‘Magnum’ house has been removed and other houses are it its place.
 
Next to Pāhonu is Kaʻakaupapa (shallows at the right.)  The old saying of this place was, “Papa ke kānaka, papa nā mea a pau”—“Multitudes of people, multitudes of gods, all in multitudes.”  (Aiona, Informant, Sept. 14, 1939; Cultural Surveys)

Nearby is the Shriners Club, a private clubhouse that opened on April 20, 1931. Popularly known as Shriners Beach, it is used for a wide variety of events, including wedding receptions, birthday parties and other social gatherings.  (Clark)

The green turtle is listed as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. In 1978, the Hawaiian population of the green turtle was listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973.  NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) have joint jurisdiction for green sea turtles.

State and Federal laws prohibit harassing, harming, killing, or keeping sea turtles in captivity without a permit allowing these activities for research or educational purposes. Divers should be aware that riding turtles is illegal and puts these animals under stress.

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