Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Mānā, Kauai

Mānā is a coastal plain with an ancient sea cliff at its inner edge, which extends from Waimea in the south to Barking Sands in the north on the western shores of Kauai.

This region has been identified as a leina-a-ka-uhane (paths-for-leaping-by-the-spirit). These were almost always on bluffs looking westward over the ocean, from which the spirits of the dead were believed to plunge in order to enter the spiritual realm.

Throughout prehistory, large areas of the Mānā Plain were covered by the great Mānā swamp, allowing the ancients to canoe as far south as Waimea.

Up until the mid-1880s, the great Mānā swamp, east of the plain, covered large areas of the lowlands.  Approximately 1,700-acres of permanent, semi-permanent and seasonal wetlands were present on the Mānā Plain.

It is believed that these wet conditions encouraged the independent invention of aquaculture on Kauai and the construction of stone and earthen ponds for growing staples such as taro, yam and sweet potatoes.

Historically, native Hawaiians constructed four different types of fishponds – freshwater taro ponds, other freshwater ponds, brackish water ponds and seawater ponds.

Aquaculture was employed to supplement their other fishing activities, and permanent fishponds guaranteed a stable food supply for populations in lean times.  Tended ponds provided fish without requiring fishing expertise, and harvesting the pond, unlike fishing at sea, was not weather dependent.

Evidence suggests that Hawaiian fishponds were constructed as early as AD 1000, if not earlier, and continued to be built until the 1820s.

After the arrival of Europeans to the island, aquaculture transitioned to agriculture through the eventual draining of the swamp and the cultivation of sugar cane and rice.

One of the first successful sugar plantations to export from the islands was established at Kōloa in 1835, and by the 1930s, nearly all of the Mānā swamp had been filled to produce this crop.

Up until the mid-1880s, the great Mānā swamp covered large areas of the lowlands.  One of the first European settlers, Valdemar Knudsen, drained a portion of the Mānā swamp by excavating a ditch through to the ocean at Waiele.  The first sugarcane was planted in Kekaha in 1878.

Hans Peter (HP) Faye was a Norwegian immigrant (arriving in 1880) who started a small plantation at Mānā and eventually helped form Kekaha Sugar, incorporated 1898, and became its first manager.

It was his vision that created the Kekaha and Kokeʻe Ditch Systems and the intricate drainage canals that drain the large swamps of Mānā.

To keep the groundwater table below the root zone of the sugar cane, thousands of feet of canals were excavated to drain excess water from the soil.  The water is then pumped into canals such as the Nohili Ditch for release into the ocean.

The drainage system, with two pumps at the Kawaiele and Nohili pumping stations, was constantly running to lower the groundwater table, which made possible for sugarcane cultivation.

Rice was planted in the drained swamplands from the mid-1860s to 1922.  By the 1930s, nearly all of the Mānā swamp had been filled in and planted in sugarcane.

The need to keep the area drained continues today.  These pumping stations must continue running to keep the groundwater table from rising too high, which could result in root rots and hence low crop yields. During storm season, with five inches of rain in one day would result in flooding.

Nearby wetlands form the Kawaiele Sand Mine Sanctuary (a State Waterbird Refuge for Hawaii’s four endangered waterbird species – Hawaiian duck, coot, stilt and moorhen;) this was created during a sand removal program.

When I was at DLNR, we authorized the sale of sand licenses to allow contractors to remove sand for construction projects (golf courses, concrete mix and beach replenishment) within the waterbird sanctuary that, in turn, created a beneficial mixed terrain and expanded the waterbird habitat.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kū‘au

Oral histories and ethnohistoric accounts indicate that while primary activities occurred within the Wailuku area, coastal areas like Pā‘ia and Kū‘au supported smaller-scale agricultural endeavors such as sweet potato cultivation, and were a primary source of a variety of readily available marine resources. (Hart)

The ahupua‘a lands of Hali‘imaile, Pā‘ia, Kū‘au (‘handle’) and Hula‘ia (also spelled Hule‘ia) were made a part of the larger Hāmākua Poko Ahupua’a sometime prior to the land division known as the Great Mahele, in 1848.

In traditional times, Hāmākua Poko Ahupua’a formed a natural and political land division between the six major “Kula” land divisions which extended from the leeward shoreline to the upper reaches of Haleakala to the south, and the traditional region known as Hāmākua Loa, a collection of thirty narrow windward land divisions that include five perennial streams.

(‘Kula’ lands were the farmlands above the shoreline, on the plains or sloping lands; those to seaward being termed ko kula kai and those toward the mountains ko kula uka (uka, inland or upland.) An act of 1884 distinguished dry or kula land from wet or taro land.)

Hāmākua Poko measures four miles in width along the shoreline, and is roughly pie shaped, with both north-south boundaries joining at Pu‘u O Kaka‘e, some 4,800 ft. above mean sea level.  (Cultural Surveys)

The growth of the sugar industry was augmented by imported labor from foreign lands. The various ethnic groups that provided needed labor to fuel a large plantation economy is reflected in the names of the various labor camps surrounding the Pā‘ia area: Hawaiian Camp, Russian Camp, Spanish Camp, Portuguese Camp, Chinese Camp, and Japanese Camp.

A total of thirteen camp communities were formed and situated throughout the sugar lands and towns appeared at Pu‘unēnē and Spreckelsville.

Railroads constructed by the sugar companies facilitated communication between the camps and provided transportation for hauling sugar cane. Remnants of the railroad bed are still evident at the western end of Puna Road in Pā‘ia.

Labor camps were consolidated and relocated over time, with some having developed into modem urban centers such as Kahului and Wailuku.  (Hart)

Remnants of these former camps remain in the form of small, scattered cemeteries that occur along the coastline near Pā‘ia and Kū‘au. Historic period artifacts, including ceramics, bottle glass, metal objects, square nails, marbles, and other objects relating to daily activities in the sugar camps. have been documented in nearby sugar cane fields. (Hart)

On May 31, 1858, H Holdsworth, Richard Armstrong, Amos Cooke, G Robertson, MB Beckwith and FS Lyman (shareholders in Castle & Cooke) met to consider the initiation of a sugar plantation at Haiku on Maui.

Shortly after (November 20, 1858,) the Privy Council authorized the Minister of the Interior to grant a charter of incorporation to them for the Haiku Sugar Company.

At the time, there were only ten sugar companies in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. Five of these sugar companies were on the island of Maui, but only two were in operation. The five were: East Maui Plantation at Kaluanui, Brewer Plantation at Haliimaile, LL Torbert and Captain James Makee’s plantation at ʻUlupalakua, Hāna and Haiku Plantation.

The mill, on the east bank of Maliko Gulch, was completed in 1861; 600-acres of cane the company had under cultivation yielded 260 tons of sugar and 32,015 gallons of molasses. Over the years the company procured new equipment for the mill.

Using the leading edge technology of the time, the Haiku Sugar Mill was, reportedly, the first sugarcane mill in Hawaiʻi that used a steam engine to grind the cane.

Their cane was completely at the mercy of the weather and rainfall; yield fluctuated considerably. For example it went from 970-tons in 1876 to 171-tons in 1877.

(In 1853, the government of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i had set aside much of the ahupua‘a of Hāmākuapoko to the Board of Education. The Board of Education deeded the Hāmākuapoko acreage which was unencumbered by native claims to the Trustees of Oʻahu College (Punahou) in 1860, who then sold the land to the Haiku Sugar Company (Cultural Surveys))

In 1871 Samuel T Alexander became manager of the mill. Alexander and later his partner, Henry Perrine Baldwin, saw the need for a reliable source of water, and started construction of the Hāmākua ditch in 1876.

With the completion of the ditch, the majority of Haiku Plantation’s crops were grown on the west side of Maliko gulch. As a result in 1879 Haiku mill was abandoned and its operations were transferred to Hāmākuapoko where a new factory was erected, which had more convenient access to the new sugar fields.

Other ditches were later added to the system, with five ditches at different levels used to convey the water to the cane fields on the isthmus of Maui. In order of elevation they are Haiku, Lowrie, Old Hāmākua, New Hāmākua, and Kaluanui ditches.

The “Old” Hāmākua Ditch was the forerunner to the East Maui Irrigation System.   This privately financed, constructed and managed irrigation system was one of the largest in the United States. It eventually included 50 miles of tunnels; 24 miles of open ditches, inverted siphons and flumes; and approximately 400 intakes and 8 reservoirs.

Although two missionaries (Richard Armstrong and Amos Cooke) established the Haiku Sugar Company in 1858, its commercial success was due to a second-generation missionary descendant, Henry Perrine Baldwin. In 1877, Baldwin constructed a sugar mill on the west side of Maliko Gulch, named the Hāmākuapoko Mill.

By 1880, the Haiku Sugar Company was milling and bagging raw sugar at Hāmākuapoko for shipment out of Kū‘au Landing. The Kū‘au Landing was abandoned in favor of the newly-completed Kahului Railroad line in 1881, with all regional sugar sent then by rail to the port of Kahului.

Today, Kū‘au is in the vicinity, and mauka of the Kū‘au Store and Mama’s Fish House.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Ala Moana Beach Park and ʻĀina Moana (Magic Island)

In 1899, the coastal road from Honolulu Harbor to Waikīkī, formerly called the “Beach Road,” was renamed “Ala Moana.”

At the beginning of the twentieth-century, this stretch of coast makai of Ala Moana Boulevard was the site of the Honolulu garbage dump, which burned almost continually.  The residue from burned rubbish was used to reclaim neighboring wetlands (which later were more commonly referred to as “swamp lands.”)

In the 1920s, Kewalo Basin was constructed and by the 1930s was the main berthing area for the sampan fleet and also the site of the tuna cannery, fish auction, shipyard, ice plant, fuel dock and other shore-side facilities.

In 1928, a channel was dredged through the coral reef to connect the Ala Wai Boat Harbor and the Kewalo Basin, so boats could travel between the two.  Part of the dredge material helped to reclaim swampland that was filled in with dredged coral.

When the area became a very popular swimming beach, the channel was closed to boat traffic.

The City and County of Honolulu started cleaning up the Ala Moana area in 1931. They used funds provided by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal Project to create a city park in the Ala Moana area.

Back in the early twentieth century, most playgrounds consisted of large areas of pavement used to get children off of the street and had no aesthetic value.

In 1933, Harry Sims Bent was chosen as the park architect for the City and County of Honolulu.  Bent’s design went beyond the modern level and into the realm of art deco, allowing for play, as well as contact with nature.  His works at Ala Moana include the canal bridge, entrance portals, sports pavilion, banyan courtyard and the lawn bowling green.

President Roosevelt participated in the dedication of the new 76-acre “Moana Park” in 1934 (it was later renamed Ala Moana Park in 1947.)  During his visit to the islands, Roosevelt also planted a kukui tree on the grounds of the ʻIolani Palace.

Ala Moana Park was developed on a swamp and the Honolulu garbage dump.

In the mid-1950s, reef rubble was dredged to fill in the old navigation channel (between Kewalo and the Ala Wai); it was topped with sand brought from Keawaʻula Beach (Yokohama Beach) in Waianae.

At the same time, a new swimming channel was dredged parallel to the new beach, extending 400-feet offshore; in addition, the west end of the fronting channel was closed by a landfill project that was part of the Kewalo Basin State Park project.  A large fringing reef remained off-shore protecting the beach area.

Reportedly, in 1955, Henry Kaiser was the first to propose building two artificial islands and six hotels over the fringing reef.  His proposal included inlets for boats, walkways and bridges. He called it Magic Island and offered to pay the $50-million cost.  (Sigall, Star-Advertiser)

In 1958, a 20-page booklet was sent to Congress to encourage them to turn back Ala Moana Reef to the Territory of Hawaiʻi for the construction of a “Magic Island.”  Local businessmen and firms paid half the cost and the Territory paid half through the Economic Planning & Coordination Authority)   (Dillingham interests were among contributors, Henry J. Kaiser interests were not.)   (Honolulu Record, February 13, 1958)

The booklet puts forth the argument that “Tourist development is our most important immediate potential for economic expansion,” and displays pictures of the crowded Waikiki area to show the lack of room for expansion.  Then it directs the reader’s attention to land that can be reclaimed from the sea by utilizing reefs, especially the 300-acre area of Ala Moana Reef.  (Honolulu Record, February 13, 1958)

It was supposed to be part of a new high scale beachfront resort complex with a half-dozen hotels that would have included two islands built on the fringing reef, offshore of the Ala Moana Park.

The Interest of the Dillingham’s in developing off-shore areas is obvious, since Hawaiian Dredging is the only local company large enough to undertake such sizable dredging operations.

The Dillingham interest in the current “Magic Island” project is more obvious because of the immediate increase in value it would bring to Dillingham land mauka of Ala Moana Boulevard.  (Honolulu Record, February 13, 1958)

The Dillinghams figure to do the dredging and construction of Magic Island, itself, of course, and it must be recalled that the original Dillingham idea was to use Ala Moana Park for hotels and apartments and build the reef island for a park.  (Honolulu Record, May 15, 1958)

But now that Magic Island is being proposed as a hotel and apartment site, it doesn’t mean for a moment the first plan has necessarily been abandoned. There is good reason to fear Ala Moana Park may be wiped out entirely so far as the people of Oahu are concerned if they don’t keep alert and guard” against every effort to encroach upon it.  (Honolulu Record, May 15, 1958)

Substantial changes were made from the more extensive original plan for the Ala Moana reef; rather than multiple islands for several resort hotels built on the reef flat off of the Ala Moana Park, in 1964 a 30-acre peninsula, with “inner” and “outer” beaches for protected swimming, was constructed adjoining the Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor and Ala Wai Canal outlet.

The project stopped after the development of “Magic Island,” leaving the State with a man-made peninsula, which they converted into a public park.

In 1972 the State officially renamed Magic Island to ‘Āina Moana (“land [from the] sea”) to recognize that the park is made from dredged coral fill. The peninsula was turned over the city in a land exchange and is formally known as the ‘Āina Moana Section of Ala Moana Beach Park, but many local residents still call it Magic Island.

Between 1955 and 1976 the beach eroded, and in 1976, more sand was brought in from Mokuleʻia on the north coast of Oʻahu.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Mōʻiliʻili Skeletons

This story raised more questions than answers.  It related to a Honolulu Advertiser story published on April 24, 1926.  It asks, “What mysteries will the skeletons of Mōʻiliʻili reveal …?”

In part, it notes theories by historian WD Alexander, who suggests, “it is nearly certain that there were two distinct periods of emigration to these Islands.”

“The first settler must have arrived in the very ancient times, as the discovery of human bones under ancient coral beds and lava flows.  Judge Fornander estimates that these Islands were inhabited as early as 500 BC.”

At Mōʻiliʻili, the paper notes that, “Skeletons that may be thirty centuries old, have just been uncovered from the encompassing layers of brown sand, still in a remarkable sate of preservation, the skulls intact, not a tooth missing.”

“And some of the skeletons are reported by the discoverers to have been found in a standing position. Above the sand is a top soil from a score to 50 feet in depth. Below, in the sand strata, 15 feet below the top soil, the skeletons were found a few days ago.”

We know that during the island’s formative stage, the sea level was more than 25 feet higher than its present level.  This is estimated to have happened during the Sangamon Interglacial Stage (the Pleistocene Epoch). In Hawai‘i, folks refer to this as the Waimanalo High Sea Stand around the island about 120,000 years ago.

This period of sea level elevation is responsible for the deposit of fossil reef limestone (and, thus, some sand) in southern coastal Oʻahu, including up to the region we now know as Mōʻiliʻili.

The weathering and erosion of Oahu’s dormant volcanoes, the Waianae and Koʻolau, paired with the rise and retrieval of the sea level resulted in the formation of “interbedded marine and terrestrial deposits”.

So, sand in Mōʻiliʻili is not unexpected.  But the news report adds a peculiarity … “How does it happen that this sand is different from any other sand found on Oahu, unlike the Waianae sand or the sands from the beaches?”

“How does it happen that this sand  is similar to the standard Ottawa sand, and one of the best known to builders? From this sand bank ton upon ton is being excavated and transported to the city of Honolulu and is being incorporated in some of the great new structures rising all over under the impetus of the new building activity”?

Back to the skeletons … “Those who have seen these skulls are intrigued by the belief that they do not resemble the usual type of Hawaiian skull, in that their contour is practically perfect, suggesting a pure Aryan origin. No marble figure of the Greek has a more perfect head that that found in the Mōʻiliʻili sand strata.”

“Some. Hawaiians, threading back into the ancient and misty past, and clinging to the thought that the Hawaiians came out of the ‘place of the dawn,’ or the rising sun, believe in the possibility of a migration from the western continental hemispheres, possibly Aztec, possibly Inca Origin …”

“… and with this trend of thought presented it is easy to build up an ethnological mosaic that would hark back to the area of the continent of Atlantis, [peopled] by those of the farther east, and after all, clinging still to that trend, the origin could be traced to the shadow of the pyramids.”

“The startling fact was revealed that one has was found whose sightless eye orifices faced, apparently, to the east, toward the rising sun, the ‘Kahiki’ of the Hawaiians, their ‘place of dawn’ …”

“… for even the Hawaiians, in their legends and their ancient chants handed down, generation to generation by the bards, ‘word-of-mouth-narratives’ expressed a theory of having come from ‘out of the dawn – the east.’”

Having said that, the Star Bulletin came out with a following statement from the Bishop museum where they reported, that while “Members of the staff have not examined the skeletons …”

“In the absence of definitive proofs of extreme age, scientists of the Bishop Museum are not inclined to ascribe special importance to the finding of several skeletons at the Mōʻiliʻili quarry”.

“‘As far as the location of the burials is concerned,’ says Dr Herbert E Gregory, director of the Bishop Museum, ‘they do not indicate any great lapse of time.  They are not found at any great depth.’” (SB, April 27, 1926)

No further reporting was found in the old newspapers about the Mōʻiliʻili skeletons; however, it seems questions remain (a burning one for relates to why the burials were in ‘a standing position’).

(A prior post on the Mōʻiliʻili Karst noted the eroded limestone caves under Mōʻiliʻili: https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/moiliili-karst-moiliili-water-cave/)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kohala Field System

Throughout the younger islands of the Hawaiian archipelago, dryland agricultural field systems constituted a significant component of the late prehistoric subsistence economy.
 
The field systems produced large quantities of food to support local farmers and residents, as well as local and district-level chiefly elites.
 
It is generally thought that the dryland agricultural systems had spread to their maximum extent, nearly reaching the edge of productive lands.
 
Kohala supported a large and well-developed field system, covering over 15,000-acres with a dense network of field walls and paved trails.  It is one of the largest archaeological sites in Polynesia.
 
In the Kohala area, Hawaiian farmers found, farmed and intensified production on lands that were poised between being too wet and too dry.
 
The distribution of intensive rain-fed agricultural systems was constrained on its lower end by conditions that were too arid to support intensive agriculture reliably, while at their upper margin many millennia of leaching had depleted soil fertility to a point where intensive rain-fed agriculture was infeasible.
 
In essence, Hawaiians were farming the rock in intensive dryland agricultural systems; their field systems extended to the wettest point that still supplied nutrients via basalt weathering.
 
When the field system is plotted against the rainfall map it falls within the 30-70-in rainfall band.
 
Archaeological evidence of intensive cultivation of sweet potato and other dryland crops is extensive, including walls, terraces, mounds and other features.
 
The fields throughout the Kohala system were oriented parallel to the elevation contours and the walls (and perhaps kō (sugar cane) planted on them) would have functioned as windbreaks from the trade winds which sweep down the slopes of the Kohala mountains.
 
Configured in this way, the walls would also have reduced evapotranspiration and – with heavy mulching – retained essential moisture for the crops.  This alignment of fields also conserved water by retaining and dispersing surface run-off and inhibited wind erosion and soil creep.
 
The main development of the Kohala field system took place AD 1450-1800.  By the late-1600s the lateral expansion of the field system had been reached, and by AD 1800 the system was highly intensified.
 
The process of intensification involved shortened fallow periods, and agricultural plots divided into successively smaller units.
 
The archaeological map of the Kohala field system depicts over 5,400-segments of rock alignments and walls with a total length of nearly 500-miles.
 
The fields begin near the north tip of the island very close to the coast.  The western margin extends southward at an increasing distance from the coast, with the eastern margin at a higher elevation and also an increasing distance from the coast.
 
From north to south the field system is more than 12-miles in length.  At its maximum, it is more than 2.5-miles in width.
 
Scientists speculate that this farming did not just support the local population, but was also used by Kamehameha to feed the thousands of warriors under his command in his conquest of uniting the islands under a single rule in the late-1700s.
 
Based on experimental plantings, if only half of the Kohala Field System was in production in one year, it could be producing between 20,000 to 120,000-tons of sweet potato in one crop.
 
The system was abandoned shortly after European contact in the early- or mid-19th century.
 
The image shows remnants of the Kohala Field System walls in present pastureland.  A special thanks to Peter Vitousek, former Hawai‘i resident and now Professor at Stanford, for background information and images.