Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Hā

As you might suspect, being a former math major – and, for a while, high school math teacher – I start a discussion about Hawaiian numbers and counting by simply saying that numbers matter.

Numbers talk to me, they help me see and explain the world around me … they help me tell stories.

It’s interesting to see that the Hawaiian word Hā – to breath, exhale; essentially, the breath of life – is also the word for four (4.)

Hmmm … you see, numbers do matter.

Four (and decimal multiples of it) shows up in other important Hawaiian things.

There were four Great Gods in Hawaiian tradition, Kāne, Kū, Lono and Kanaloa.   Each has his area of responsibility or “departments” (essentially covering life’s needs.)  (Kanahele)

Kāne heads the areas of procreation, fresh water, forests, certain plants and animals.   Kū oversees war, politics, certain fish and shrubs, and trees.  Lono is in charge of the peace, agriculture, the weather and healing.  Kanaloa’s responsibilities suggest an important role of the oceans, voyaging and fishing.

When Hawaiians prayed, in order to include all aspects of God (not to omit or offend any of the akua,) they added to the prayer the words, “E Hoʻoulu ana I kini o ke akua, ka lehu o ke akau, na mano o ke akua” (Invoke we now the 40,000 gods, the 400,000 gods, the 4,000 gods.) (Beckwith)

Hoʻoulu ana I kini o ke akua (cause the growth to reach the edge or realm of the multitude of the gods,) Ka lehu o ke akau (the 400,000 of the North, or along the direction of the sunʻs course,) na mano o ke akua (within the repeated increase or multiplier from the gods,) seen in the symbol of the sharks as Mano-kalani-po. (Yardley)

There were four Kū days and were called the cluster days – Ku-kahi, Ku-lua, Ku-kolu and Ku-pau (planting potatoes, bananas or melons these days meant the bearing would be good.)  (Fornander)

There were four ends of the earth – Kai Koʻolau, Kai Kona, Kahiki-ku and Kahiki-moe – north, south, east and west. (Fornander)

In Hawaiian, specific numerals involving four are reported for fish (kaʻau is used for counting fish,) kapa (ʻiako in counting tapa,) canoes (ʻiako) and tubers (kanahā in counting rope, cord, bundles of food)   (Beller; Schmitt)

Fornander notes that the Polynesian language gives undoubted evidence that at one time the people who spoke it did not count beyond four, and that its ideas of higher numbers were expressed by multiples of four. They evidently counted one, two, three, four, and that amount called “kāuna” was their tally, when the process was repeated again.  (Fornander)

A unit of four is kāuna, a term that perhaps arose, according to Alexander, “from the custom of counting fish, coconuts, taro etc., by taking a couple in each hand, or by tying them in bundles of four.”

Other speculation for using four as a secondary base assumes that it originates from the main patterns of basket-weaving and in astronomy.  Beyond this pragmatic reason, four was also of extreme significance in a spiritual context.  (Johnson; Beller)

Present day counting is generally based on a decimal system, where ten is the base number.  Ancient Hawaiians used a mixed-base system, comprised of base 4 elements and base 10 elements.

Although words for numbers from one (ʻakahi) to ten (ʻumi) were typically short, larger numbers were often polysyllabic.  Early foreign residents like missionary EW Clark recorded numbers as high as 40,000 (kini), 400,000 (lehu) and even 4,000,000 (nalowale.)  (Schmitt)

“When they had arrived at 40, they returned to one and counted to 40 again,” Clark noted. “The words ʻiako and kaʻau are sometimes used for 40 instead of kanakā.”  (Schmitt)

Four was a formulistic number (adhering or conforming to some recognized formula.)  Pukui uses the term ‘pāhā’ to describe this – meaning, by fours, four at a time, four times; to distribute to four; to divide by four.

Numbers matter.

(The HĀ image is from the Polynesian Cultural Center’s Hā Breath of Life.)

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Frank Lloyd Wright

“The mission of an architect is to help people understand how to make life more beautiful, the world a better one for living in, and to give reason, rhyme, and meaning to life.” (Frank Lloyd Wright, 1957)

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin, on June 8, 1867, the son of William Carey Wright, a preacher and a musician, and Anna Lloyd Jones, a teacher whose large Welsh family had settled the valley area near Spring Green, Wisconsin.

His early childhood was nomadic as his father traveled from one ministry position to another in Rhode Island, Iowa, and Massachusetts, before settling in Madison, Wis., in 1878.

Wright’s parents divorced in 1885, making already challenging financial circumstances even more challenging. To help support the family, 18-year-old Frank Lloyd Wright worked for the dean of the University of Wisconsin’s department of engineering while also studying at the university.

He knew he wanted to be an architect. In 1887, he left Madison for Chicago, where he found work with two different firms before being hired by the prestigious partnership of Adler and Sullivan, working directly under Louis Sullivan for six years.

In 1911, he began construction of Taliesin near Spring Green as his home and refuge.  There he continued his architectural practice and over the next several years received two important public commissions: the first in 1913 for an entertainment center called Midway Gardens in Chicago; the second, in 1916, for the new Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan.

Wright always aspired to provide his client with environments that were not only functional but also “eloquent and humane.” Perhaps uniquely among the great architects, Wright pursued an architecture for everyman rather than every man for one architecture through the careful use of standardization to achieve accessible tailoring options to for his clients.

Over the course of his 70-year career, Wright became one of the most prolific, unorthodox and controversial masters of 20th-century architecture, creating no less than twelve of the Architectural Record’s hundred most important buildings of the century.

Realizing the first truly American architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses, offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels and museums stand as testament to someone whose unwavering belief in his own convictions changed both his profession and his country.

Designing 1,114 architectural works of all types – 532 of which were realized – he created some of the most innovative spaces in the United States. With a career that spanned seven decades before his death in 1959, Wright’s visionary work cemented his place as the American Institute of Architects’ “greatest American architect of all time.” (Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation)

Two of his designs are in Hawai‘i; one, an unbuilt plan done in 1954, originally conceived for the Cornwell Family in Pennsylvania, was constructed in 1995 in Waimea on Hawai‘i Island.

It envisioned to be part of master-planned community that would include many unbuilt Wright designs within a 450 acre plot on Hawai‘i Island.  The “Hawai‘i Collection” development never got off the ground.

The other Hawai‘i Frank Lloyd Wright design was also an unbuilt design for a prior client of Wright’s that he designed in 1949.  This was originally a home called Crownfield; but the couple who commissioned the home never built it.

When Wright was approached in 1952 to design a home for the cliffs of Mexico’s Acapulco Bay, he began with the Crownfield plans, and added a covered terrace and lower level. Unfortunately, the plans were shelved once again.

Again, after further modification in 1957, Crownfield almost became the home of Marilyn Monroe and her husband Arthur Miller.  Monroe and Miller separated the next year and the home was never built.

For several decades the plans for the Crownfield House were archived in Taliesin West, Wright’s former winter camp near Scottsdale, Arizona, which became the headquarters for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

There they remained until, in 1992, owners of the Ted Robinson-designed Waikapu Valley Country Club looked for a Wright design for the golf clubhouse.

The Crownfield House’s various reincarnations were reworked and expanded yet again . The finished building, now called the King Kamehameha Golf Clubhouse, is 74,788 square feet. The concrete and steel building was completed in 1993 and is split into three levels with two-thirds of the structure underground. It is the largest golf clubhouse on Maui.

Many of the interior touches reiterate other famous Wright design triumphs. The focus of the main banquet room is a 32-foot diameter dome with a convex chandelier made of one-and-a-half-inch acrylic tubing that echoes the concave chandelier in the Johnson Wax Building’s executive suite (1944) in Racine, Wisconsin.

The art glass on the front double doors was adapted from the Johnson Wax Building as well. The etched design on the glass of the main stairwell’s koa railing, the foyer’s six-foot-diameter art glass window, and the brass elevator doors can all be traced to Wright’s Avery Coonley House (1907) in Riverside, Illinois.

The ten-foot diameter art glass in the foyer ceiling was translated from a 1957 woven living room carpet at Taliesin West and the skylight above the main stair recalls the curved ransom over the Susan Lawrence Dana House’s entrance (1902) in Springfield, Illinois.

Six years after it was built the country club shut down during an economic downturn. The property was pretty much neglected and abandoned. However, the clubhouse stayed open and was used for special events. In 2004 a buyer bought the place and refurbished it. It was reopened in 2006 as the King Kamehameha Golf Clubhouse.  (Maui 24/7, King Kamehameha Golf Course)

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Built in About an Hour

The Hawaiian Islands were formed as the Pacific Plate moved westward over a geologic hot spot.  Oʻahu is dominated by two large shield volcanoes, Waiʻanae and Koʻolau that range in age from two to four-million years old.

The younger volcanic craters are all less than 500,000 years old. They formed after Oʻahu had moved well off the hot spot and the main shield volcanoes had gone dormant for at least two-million years.

Scientists say Lēʻahi (Diamond Head) (one of these later eruptions) is a tuff cone, formed by hydromagmatic activity.  Tuff is a volcanic rock made up of a mixture of volcanic rock and mineral fragments. Wherever there are explosive volcanic eruptions you can expect to find tuff.  (SOEST)

A hundred years ago, Hawaiʻi missionary Reverend Sereno Bishop noted Diamond Head was made in less than an hour’s time and is “composed not of lava, like the main mountain mass inland, but of this soft brown rock called tuff.” (Bishop, Commercial Advertiser, July 15, 1901)

Others noted, “the duration of eruption of Diamond Head was of the order of five hours. The eruption may have been intermittent with interruptions sufficient to extend the whole period of activity to as much as five days, but probably not more.”    (Wentworth, Bishop Museum, 1926)

“Volcanic eruptions may be distinguished into two classes, the effusive and the explosive. In the former the molten rock is poured out and covers the mountain slopes with great floods.”

“If you look up at the sides of yonder ravines (on the Koʻolau mountains,) which the rainstorms of many hundred thousands of years have worn out of the original dome-shaped mountain, you will see the back edges of the ancient lava streams lying in layers.”

“The tuff cones are entirely different, and are produced by very brief and sudden explosive eruptions.  The tuff was violently shot high aloft into the air in the form of superheated mud. This hot mud cooled and thickened by the expansion of its water and its partial escape as steam before reaching the ground.”

“It hardened and cemented as it fell, though still liquid enough to form in thin layers or laminations as we see it lying around us at the base of the hill. … The tuff-fountain escaping from its confinement, at once expanded and spread out like a vast tree.”

“Here at Diamond Head, which is one mile in diameter, the bulk of the mud spread out half a mile in all directions before ending its fall. Thus a very exact circular ring was piled up of one mile in diameter. There was, however, another influence, that of a violent easterly-wind which deflected the entire fountain westward”.

“The wind also acted with especial force upon the highest part of the fountain, flinging and piling it up on the western side of the crater in a lofty cone. A large part of that cone has been weathered away by the impact of rainstorms upon the soft rock; but it still stands in a peak some 200 feet higher than the main run.”

“The vent or point of issue of the tuff-fountain must have been at the lowest point of the interior, where lies the present pond of water.”  (Bishop, Commercial Advertiser, July 15, 1901)  (The same series of eruptions produced Punchbowl and Koko Head Crater.)

Somewhat more than half of the craters of southeast Oahu are arranged in linear groups, those dominated by the craters Tantalus, Diamond Head, and Koko Crater.  In the Diamond Head group is the main Diamond Head vent, Kaimuki crater and Mauʻumae crater.

(A cinder cone is a volcanic cone built almost entirely of loose volcanic fragments called cinders or pumice that accumulate around and downwind from a vent.)

(Cinders are glassy and contain numerous gas bubbles “frozen” into place as magma exploded into the air and then cooled quickly.)  (USGS)

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by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Georges Phillipe Trousseau

Georges Trousseau was born in Paris on May 1, 1833 to a prominent Parisian family. His father, Armand Trousseau, a distinguished physician and surgeon, was also the author of medical books used throughout the world.  (Greenwell)

He received the usual education of a wealthy Frenchman and entered the ecole de medicine in Paris at the early age of 15.  (Hawaiʻi Holomua, May 5, 1894)

From the days in 1848 and 1852, when he as a student fought in the streets of Paris, he has unswervingly believed in the rights of the people – and early or late was he found ready to serve them as a physician as a friend or simply as a fellow-man.  (Hawaiʻi Holomua, May 5, 1894)

Trousseau married Edna Vaunois, who was also from Paris; they had two children, Armond and Rene in 1856 and 1857.  In 1865, the couple was legally separated (but never divorced.)

He followed his father’s footsteps and graduated from the Paris School of Medicine as a physician in 1858.  He became an army surgeon, seeing service in Algiers early in the fifties. He also served at Solferino and Magenta, Italy.  (Greenwell)

For personal reasons, he left France and went to Australia and New Zealand.  In part, he was at the Australian gold mines, but did not strike it rich; in fact, his estranged wife loaned him money while he was there.  (Greenwell, Hawaiʻi Holomua, May 5, 1894)

He left there and arrived in Hawaiʻi in 1872.  Almost immediately upon his arrival, he was appointed by the Board of Health to serve as Port Physician for Honolulu (there was no salary attached to the office; fees for services were worked out between the Port Physician and the ship/agent the usual charge was $25.)  (Greenwell)

He soon gained great fame as a doctor.  He served on the Board of Health for 20-years, serving as a Board member and as President.   He took an interest in Leprosy and supervised the leper treatment center in Kalihi.

In 1865, the legislature of the Hawaiian Islands had passed “An Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy.” This law called for a place to be set aside for the isolation of those found to have leprosy in order to curb the spread of the disease.  It was not until 1873, however, on Doctor Trousseau’s recommendation, that a vigorous effort was made to segregate lepers.  (Greenwell)

“Trousseau strongly urging that the only method, at all likely to be successful, was the immediate, energetic, and to a certain extent, unsympathetic isolation of all who were afflicted with the disease, and even that would require a generation in all probability to prove successful.”  (Board of Health, March 1, 1873)

He diagnosed Father (now Saint) Damien’s leprosy.  “… In January, 1885 Damien visited Honolulu … (and accidentally) scalded his left foot. Father Leonore, the provincial of the mission, phoned for Dr George Trousseau, whose examination of the priest’s foot and leg proved they were devoid of feeling … this discovery indicated that the peroneal nerve and its branches were dead due to leprosy.”  (Mouritz; Bushnell)

Though not an official title, Trousseau served as royal physician.  He was called on as a consultant by Doctor Ferdinand W Hutchison, Minister of the Interior, during Kamehameha V’s last illness and was at the King’s bedside when he died.

In August 1873, when it was apparent that King Lunalilo was ill, Trousseau accompanied the King and stayed with Lunalilo at Huliheʻe Palace in Kailua- Kona, from mid-November to the middle of January 1874.  After it became apparent that Lunalilo was not going to recover, and the royal party returned to Honolulu where Lunalilo died on February 3.  (Greenwell)

The rulers of Hawaiʻi honored him.   Lunalilo made him a major in his staff and his personal physician. Kalākaua befriended him and appointed him the executor of his will and the administrator of his estate.  (Hawaiʻi Holomua, May 5, 1894)

“(H)e was always ready to promote any now industry that might prove a source of benefit to his adopted country.”  This got him involved in sheep, sugar and ostriches.  (Hawaiʻi Holomua, May 5, 1894)

In 1875, he gave up his Honolulu medical practice and moved to Kona, Hawaiʻi, where he purchased a sheep and cattle ranch at Kanahaha high on the slopes of Mauna Loa.  Wool was baled at Kanahaha and transported by cart to Kainaliu Beach, from where it was shipped. (Greenwell)

A road was constructed which ran from Kanahaha on Mauna Loa, to the beach at Kainaliu (where he also had a home.) (This old cart road is used by jeeps today and is known as the Trousseau Trail.)  Early in 1879, Trousseau sold all of his holdings in Kona to Henry N Greenwell.

After selling the sheep ranch, Trousseau bought out two sugar planters at Kukuihaele on the Hāmākua coast. He became partners in the Pacific Sugar Mill with the Purvis family. Trousseau had an excellent relationship with John Purvis and his son Herbert.  (Greenwell)

The plantation thrived for a time.  However, defects in the furnace caused difficulties.  In 1881, Trousseau suddenly and unexpectedly sold his half in the plantation to his partners.  He moved back to Honolulu and resumed his medical practice.

He tried one last agricultural venture there.  “The doctor started a new industry for these islands a few years ago (1890) by establishing an ostrich farm at Kapiʻolani Park. Many young birds have been bred from the original stock, and some of the feathers have gone into domestic exports. The farm was under the management of Captain John Morriseau (Trousseau’s nephew.)”  (Daily Bulletin, May 5, 1894)

The 1,000-acre farm (purchased from the Lunalilo Estate) was located in the Kapahulu area near the present zoo; Paul Isenberg, who owned a nearby cattle ranch, later purchased the farm (Trousseau Street notes the general location.)

Though Trousseau never divorced, he did have a mistress, Makanoe; Makanoe was also married (to Kaʻaepa.)  (This relationship is referred to as ‘punalua;’ an association in which, typically, two women, often sisters, share one husband, or, as in Makanoeʻs case, two men share the affection of one woman.)  (Greenwell)

Trousseau died May 4, 1894, shortly after Kaʻaepa’s death.  Makanoe buried her husband and Trousseau side by side in a wrought iron fenced plot at Makiki Cemetery on Oʻahu.  Trousseau left all of his estate to Makanoe (she eventually moved to Salt Lake City, Utah.)

Trousseau faithfully supported the Hawaiian Monarchy and stood up for the royalists which caused bitter feelings among many of his associates who backed the annexationists.

In spite of this, his obituary noted, “It is seldom that people of all classes, opposed to each other socially and politically can gather around the bier of a fellow-citizen and unite in saying, ‘we have lost a friend.’”  (Hawaiʻi Holomua, May 5, 1894)

“Dr. Trousseau was a strong nationalist of Hawaiʻi, who believed that none but born or naturalized subjects should have a determining voice in national affairs. The Hawaiian people, who revered and confided in him, will take his death as a sort bereavement.”  (Daily Bulletin, May 5, 1894)  (Lots of information here from Jean Greenwell.)

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Lua

The name conjures up a variety of images – Pukui notes it refers to “two,” “toilet,” “equal” or “hole”/”pit.”

It also refers to a type of dangerous hand-to-hand combat in which the fighters broke bones, dislocated bones at the joints and inflicted severe pain by pressing on nerve centers.

That’s what this discussion is about.

Lua was a hand-to-hand system of combat based on the knowledge of anatomy to strike weak points of the human body. Intended as a self-defense martial art, combatants injured or killed an opponent. (Green)

“Huna na mea huna” (Keep secret what is sacred) – the art was exercised and taught by a few; it was not used or known by the broad community.

Lua incorporates numerous methods for combating an attacker, including hakihaki (bone breaking), hakoko (wresting), kuikui (punching), peku (kicking) and aalolo (nerve pressure.) (Noonan)

The techniques included dislocating the fingers and toes, striking at nerve centers and hitting and kicking muscles in such a way to inflict paralysis; it included the use of weapons. (Green)

Traditionally, only a small group of men were taught lua. The selected warriors practiced lua in secret, under the cover of darkness. They were usually a chief or a royal bodyguard who, during time of war, briefly trained the commoners and then lead them to battle. (OHA)

Reportedly, the secret of Lua was broken in 1917 when Henry Seishiro Okazaki learned Lua from a Hawaiian man on the big Island. Okazaki later converted the Lua he learned and transferred this into his Danzen Ryu System.

Solomon Kaihewalu’s name also comes up in the Lua combat discussion; he reportedly introduced lua into America in 1963.

Another name pops up as someone who was important in keeping the art alive. Around 1974, Charles Kenn passed on his knowledge of the art to a handful of others – they in turn are teaching others.

(Kenn was later recognized by the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaiʻi as a Living Treasure of Hawaiʻi (he was the first to be recognized in the Hongwanji program, 1976.))

Traditional weapons in the lua practitioner’s hands included spears, daggers, clubs, slings, strangling ropes, shark tooth weapons and more.

Captain James Cook wrote about them: “They have a sort of weapon which we had never seen before, and not mentioned by any navigator, as used by the natives of the South Sea”

“It was somewhat like a dagger; in general, about a foot and a half long, sharpened at one or both ends, and secured to the hand by a string. Its use is to stab in close fight; and it seems well adapted to the purpose.”

“Some of these may be called double daggers, having a handle in the middle with which they are better enabled to strike both ways.”

Warriors, throughout history, primarily train to use weapons during battle. Hawaiian warriors utilized weapons (Mea – Kaua) offensively and defensively, in training or during actual battle, including (Reish:)

Ihe (short spear)
Pololu (long spear/javelin)
Pāhoa (wooden spike dagger)
Pāhoa ʻOilua (double bladed weapon)
Lei-o-mano (shark-tooth weapon)
La-au-palau (long war clubs)
Newa (short war club)
Pōhaku (stone hand club)
Pikoi ʻIkoi (tripping weapon)
Maʻa (sling)
Kaʻane (strangulation cord)
Ko’oko’o (cane)

Lua, then, was the general name for a type of hand-to-hand fighting which not only included hakihaki (bone-breaking), but combined ha’a (dance,) hakoko (wrestling,) mokomoko/kuʻi (boxing or punching,) peku (kicking,) aʻalolo (nerve pressure) to cause paralysis and also the use of weapons. (Reish)

However, Hawaiian lua training encompasses far more than the master of blows, strikes, takedowns, holds, dodges and falls. It also included the game konane (similar to checkers), designed to teach strategic thinking.

Additionally, lua involved lomilomi (massage) which was designed to enhance a lua warrior’s performance in training or combat by keeping muscles from binding. (Reish)

Hawaiian combat units of old consisted of groups of small squads, units and divisions. The squads and units were broken down into groups of 10, 20 and 30 warriors. A full division consisted of a total of 40 Koa. Each squad of 10 men were experts in several types of weapons they brought with them into combat. (olohe)

A martial dance found in various styles throughout Polynesia is the haka or haʻa, an old word for hula. Lua incorporated the haka to develop grace, agility and strong leg muscles, necessary for battle.

When dancing, the lua artists would lunge forward and back, dodge from side to side, and then whirl and pivot in unison to simulate combat. Their haka arm motions were actually lua strikes in disguise. (Reish)

By 1790 Kamehameha had acquired guns, light cannon and an armed schooner, in addition to the advice and technical expertise of two European seamen, John Young and Isaac Davis; this changed the nature of combat and helped to lead to Kamehameha’s unification of the Islands.

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