General | Page 124 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

Ramage Press replica at Mission Houses

Hawaiian Alphabet

Baibala

Kaahumanu-(HerbKane)

Missionaries_preaching_under_kukui_groves,_1841

November 27, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Lāhainā Canal

Hawai‘i’s whaling era began in 1819 when two New England ships became the first whaling ships to arrive in the Hawaiian Islands. Rich whaling waters were discovered near Japan and soon hundreds of ships headed for the area.

The central location of the Hawaiian Islands between America and Japan brought many whaling ships to the Islands. Whalers needed water and food, and the islands supplied this need from its fertile lands.

The whaling industry was the mainstay of the island economy for about 40 years. For Hawaiian ports, the whaling fleet was the crux of the economy.

More than 100 ships stopped in Hawaiian ports in 1824. Over the next two decades, the Pacific whaling fleet nearly quadrupled in size and in the record year of 1846, 736-whaling ships arrived in Hawai‘i.

While it lacked a natural “harbor,” Lāhainā became one of the Islands’ leading whaling ports. Whalers’ small “chase boats” had to come in from the deep-water offshore anchorage to trade.

While the name Lāhainā means “cruel sun” and the area only averages 13 inches of rain per year, spring-fed, freshwater streams and canals once flowed through it .

Reportedly, during the 1790s, British captain George Vancouver visited this part of Maui and called it “the Venice of the Pacific.”

By the 1840s, Hawaiʻi was the whaling center of the Pacific. Lāhainā became a bustling port with shopkeepers catering to the whalers – saloons, brothels and hotels boomed.

The whalers would transfer their catch to trade ships bound for the continent, allowing them to stay in the Pacific for longer periods without having to take their catch to market.

In the 1840s, the US consular representative recommended digging a canal from one of the freshwater streams that ran through Lāhainā and charging a fee to the whalers who wanted to obtain fresh water.

A few years after the canal was built, the government built a thatched Marketplace with stalls for Hawaiians to sell goods to the sailors.

Merchants quickly took advantage of this marketplace and erected drinking establishments, grog shops and other pastimes of interest nearby. Within a few years, this entire area reportedly became known as “Rotten Row.”

In 1859, an oil well was discovered and developed in Titusville, Pennsylvania; within a few years this new type of oil replaced whale oil for lamps and many other uses – spelling the end of the whaling industry.

At about this same time, the sugar industry in Hawaiʻi was beginning to boom. With the growing importance of sugar (and the thirsty crops’ need for water,) waters were diverted to the service of sugar production.

Eventually, the Lāhainā area was drained of its wetlands. In 1913, the canal was filled in to construct Canal Street and the Market is now King Kamehameha III Elementary school.

Later, eleven-and a-half acres of Lāhaina “swamp land” (near the National Guard Armory,) drainage canals and storm sewers were part of the Lāhaina Reclamation District. (1916-1917) Mokuhinia Pond was filled with coral rubble dredged from Lāhaina Harbor.

By Executive Order of the Territory of Hawaii in 1918, the newly-filled pond was turned over to the County of Maui for use as Maluʻuluʻolele Park.

Lahaina-noting-Wharf-Canal-Wetland-Reg0500-(noting_Canal_and_Mokuula)

Lahaina_Canal-Designated_Public_Dumping_Ground-MauiNews-March_24,_1906

P-11 Lahaina as seen from Lahainaluna-noting_whaling_ships_off-shore

Lahaina_Wharf-Courthouse_Saquare-Canal-Reg2487-1913

Mokuula-Lahaina_Vicinity-Map-(mokuula-com)-(note_canal-at_top)

November 23, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Once, All Were Aliʻi

“(I)n the earliest times all the people were alii … 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.

With such a small (but growing) population based on the family unit, society was not so complicated that it needed chiefs to govern or oversee the general population.

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.

As chiefdoms developed, the simple pecking order of titles and status likely evolved into a more complex and stratified structure.

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.

On the family scale, ponds to supply the family unit were small and manageable by the family. However, as the population grew, more hands were needed for construction and maintenance.

Government could compel the participation of many people to work on these public projects.

The actual number of chiefs was few, but their retainers attached to the courts (advisors, konohiki, priests, warriors, etc) were many.

In addition to the expanded demand to provide food for the courts, commoners were also obliged to make new lines of products for the chiefs – feather cloaks, capes, helmets, images and ornaments.

Likewise, as challenges were made between chiefly realms, warfare and the resultant demand for services in combat increased.

The arrival of Pā‘ao from Tahiti in about the thirteenth century resulted in the establishment (or, at least expanded upon) a religious and political code in old Hawai`i, collectively called the kapu system.

Fornander writes that prior to the period of Pā‘ao “… the kapu (forbidden actions) were few and the ceremonials easy; that human sacrifices were not practiced, and cannibalism unknown; and that government was more of a patriarchal than of a regal nature.”

Pā‘ao’s period are attributed a greater rigidity of the kapu, the introduction of human sacrifices, “the hardening and confirming of the divisions of society, the exaltation of the nobles and the increase of their prerogatives, the separation and immunity of the priestly order, and the systematic setting down, if not actual debasement, of the commoners.” (Stokes)

Likewise, Pā‘ao reportedly initiated a lineage of kings, starting with Pili Ka‘aiea (the 1st “Aliʻi ʻAimoku” for the Big Island – the first ruler (sometimes called the “king”) of the island.)

The descendants of this king ruled the island of Hawai‘i until 1893, while Pā‘ao himself became the high priest of an order which he established and which continued until 1819.

The form of the heiau was changed by Pā‘ao and his successors, and the general population mingled less freely in the ceremonies of sacrifice and other forms of worship. The high-priesthood became more mysterious and exclusive.

This intricate system that supported Hawaiʻi’s social and political organization directed every activity of Hawaiian life, from birth through death, until its abolition by King Kamehameha II (Liholiho) in 1819.

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)

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. (Malo)

The inspiration and much of the information in this summary is from writings by George Kanahele (and others, as noted.)

November 21, 2019 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

ʻIolani Palace Trees

ʻIolani Palace Grounds make up eleven acres of land in the core of downtown Honolulu.

After the arrival of American Protestant missionaries in 1820, high-ranking chiefs began to occupy the area. In 1825, a small mausoleum was built on the grounds to house the remains of King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamāmalu.

In 1845, King Kamehameha III moved his court from Lāhainā and a large home on the site with as many as twenty smaller structures served as Hawai’i’s royal palace.

During the reign of King Kalākaua the grounds were expanded to their present size.

In 1882, the new ʻIolani Palace was built and this served as the state residence of Hawaiʻi’s last ruling monarchs. Wide carriage ways were added to create an oval drive entirely around the Palace.

Previously, an 8-foot tall coral block wall with wooden gates divided the palace grounds from the outside world. The lowering of the perimeter walls to 42-inches in 1889 and the installation of iron fencing and gates in 1891, represented the final alterations to the grounds during the Monarchy era.

There are several notable trees on the grounds. The Indian Banyan tree is the most prominent and evident tree on the mauka side of the Palace grounds. The tree was a gift from Indian Royalty to King Kalākaua. Reportedly, Queen Kapiʻolani planted the tree there.

Cuttings from the tree were planted at each end of Kailua Bay in Kona. Queen Kapiʻolani was said to have planted the tree at Huliheʻe Palace in the late 1800s.

The King Kamehameha Hotel tree was transplanted a few years later after not thriving at the Maguire home on Huʻehuʻe Ranch.

Noticeable throughout the property are Royal Palms. In 1850, the first Royal Palm seeds were brought to Hawaiʻi from the West Indies by Dr. GP Judd.

On the ʻEwa-makai portion of the grounds, there is a Rainbow Shower tree; since 1959 the Rainbow Shower has been the official tree of the City of Honolulu.

On July 24, 1934, Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the first sitting president to visit Hawaiʻi. On his visit to ʻIolani Palace, initial plans were for the president to plant a memorial Kamani tree.

A Kamani sapling was ordered from the nursery; however, mistakenly, the sapling delivered just before the ceremony began turned out to be a Kukui. (The Kukui tree is the Hawaiʻi state tree.)

Roosevelt’s tree is identified by a plaque, placed in 1959, which reads: “President Franklin D. Roosevelt planted this kukui tree July 28, 1934.” It was later considered the “lucky kukui tree” and was credited by some with Roosevelt’s good fortunes in the 1936, 1940 and 1944 elections.

A handful of Monkeypod trees are found on the Palace grounds. In 1847, businessman Peter Brinsmade brought two Monkeypod seeds with him from his passage through Panama on the way here.

One seedling was planted in downtown Honolulu (presumably not on the Palace grounds,) and the other in Kōloa on Kauaʻi. These two trees are thought to be the progenitors of all the Monkeypod trees in the state.

The Huliheʻe Palace has a wardrobe furniture piece commissioned by King Kalākaua on display in one of its bedrooms. It is constructed of koa and trimmed with darker kou.

It is suggested that it may have served as the Kingdom’s entry in the Paris International Exhibition of 1889. The Exhibition catalog described the entry as “1 Koa Wardrobe, made for His Majesty the King from Koa trees grown in ʻIolani Palace Grounds.” (However, some argue that koa is not acclimated to grow in the conditions at the Palace grounds.)

Iolani Palace Grounds - Trees - Explanation - Map

Wardrobe commissioned by King Kalākaua made of koa & trimmed with darker kou-made from Koa grown at Iolani Palace (huliheepalace-net)

November 20, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Kapiʻolani Park Fountain

In 1919, in commemoration of the coronation of Emperor Yoshihito (and a sign of good Japanese-Hawaiian relations,) Japanese in Hawaiʻi offered to construct a modified duplicate of the fountain in Hibiya Park Tokyo in Kapiʻolani Park.

The official presentation of the “Phoenix Fountain” was conducted by Consul General Moroi who announced the fountain was a “testimonial of friendship and equality of the Japanese residing in the Hawaiian Islands.”

One Japanese speaker noted, “We are assembled here to mark a spot of everlasting importance in the annals of the history of the Japanese people of Hawaii.”

Unfortunately, such friendship and trust did not prevail over the years, the victim of racial turmoil generated by World War II.

Reportedly, the Honolulu Advertiser noted on the 1st anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor that the “fountain which stood in Kapiʻolani Park for 25-years as a public symbol of Japanese imperialism may at last be removed.”

Following the racial animosity generated by World War II, in 1943, the Phoenix Fountain was destroyed and turned to scrap. A basic fountain was built.

Later, in the 1960s, the city constructed a fountain in honor of Louise Dillingham, who served many years as a member of the former City Parks Board (reportedly, the Walter and Louise Dillingham Foundation gave the fountain to the city in 1966.)

Her husband Walter Dillingham is known for the huge changes he made to Honolulu’s landscape – which included draining Waikīkī’s wetlands, dredging the Ala Wai Canal and filling in Waikīkī’s wetlands.

Today the fountain at Kapiʻolani Park has become a popular resting spot for joggers and a regular backdrop for photos (it has also served in scenes in prior Hawaii Five-O episodes.)

It’s located across the street from the Elks Club at Poni Moi Street.

The fountain is presently empty and idle, and has been this way for several months now. As for its current status, here’s an update from Nathan Serota, spokesman for the parks department: “Currently we are determining the best course of action to get the Dillingham Fountain operational.”

“Following an assessment of the fountain, city electricians believe the entire electrical system will likely need to be replaced. Simple repairs will not suffice. There is significant damage to the pump room, including within the electric vault. Because of these safety hazards, Hawaiian Electric has removed the two meters servicing the fountain.”

“An initial cost estimate to replace the electrical system is $300,000.” (Star Advertiser)