Hawaii | Page 5 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

October 17, 2026 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

The Artist and the Architect

The artist, known as ‘Palani’ among his Hawaiian friends, was named a ‘Living Treasure’ for his paintings and murals showing Hawai‘i’s culture; the architect was identified as “the man who changed the face of the Pacific”. They got together in 1956.

Let’s look back …

The artist, Louis Henri Jean Charlot, descended from “sundry exotic ancestors,” was born in Paris. His father, Henri, was a French businessman; Anna, his mother, an artist and a devout Catholic, was the daughter of Louis Goupil, a native of Mexico City.

Also living in Paris was Jean Charlot’s great-uncle, Eugène Goupil, a collector of Mexican works of art. Jean, who began to draw around age two, grew up surrounded by pre-Hispanic antiquities. (Thompson)

In his teens, Charlot had become one of a Catholic group that called itself Gilde Notre-Dame (“Parisian adolescents (who) used to gather in a crypt”) made up of sculptors, stained glass makers, embroiderers and decorators.

“My life in France was on the whole rational, national, obeying this often heard dictum that a Frenchman is a man who ignores geography. There were though, simultaneously, un-French elements at work. Russian, sephardim, Aztec ancestors, warmed my blood to adventure.” (Charlot; Thompson)

After a Mexican trip, in 1928, Charlot and his mother moved to New York where he rented a small apartment on the top floor of 42 Union Square from the artist Morris Kantor. The apartment was unheated, which probably contributed to the death of his mother from pneumonia in January, 1929.

On a brief trip to Mexico in 1931, Charlot met his future wife, Dorothy Zohmah Day. During a visit to Zohmah in Los Angeles in 1933, Charlot met the printer Lynton R Kistler and produced Picture Book, “a repertory of motifs I had used up to then.” Returning to New York, teaching and lecturing occupied much of Charlot’s time.

In May 1939, Jean Charlot and Zohmah Day were married in San Francisco. “It was a long courtship,” commented Charlot. “Eight years. We were always in different places”.

The years from 1941-44 were spent as artist-in-residence at the University of Georgia, Athens, and instructor in art history at the University of California, Berkeley and artist-in-residence at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. (Thompson)

Then he had a chance to come to Hawaiʻi – and he stayed. An invitation to create a fresco at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, brought Charlot to Honolulu in 1949 where he painted Relation of Man and Nature in Old Hawai’i at Bachman Hall.

He accepted a position as professor of art at the University, and Hawai’i became the Charlot family’s permanent home. Attracted to the culture of the native Hawaiian, just as he had been interested in the folk aspects of the residents of rural France and the indigenous peoples of Mexico, he studied Hawaiian history, customs and religion, and learned the Hawaiian language.

From 1949 to 1979 Charlot created almost six hundred easel paintings, several hundred prints, and thirty-six works of art in public places in fresco, ceramic tile and sculpture. He taught summer sessions at several schools. (Thompson)

The architect, George James ‘Pete’ Wimberly, was born on January 16, 1915 in Ellensburg, Washington. He earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture in 1937 from the University of Washington.

He served as a draftsman/designer in Seattle, Los Angeles and Phoenix, and in 1940 was in a civil service position as “journeyman architect doing naval work at Pearl Harbor.”

“At the end of World War II, there was a great backlog demand for buildings of all sorts. During the four years of war, only essential or defense-oriented projects were allowed.”

“Most of the architects at the time were not hurting because they were all doing defense work, either as private practitioners or as direct employees of the Armed Forces. (W)hen V-J Day was announced, I left the Navy Yard and never went back, except to pick up my pay check.” (Wimberly; WATG)

“I had an agreement with Howard (Loren) Cook (who was working on Tripler Hospital) that I would set up an office and we would split the take, his salary and my fees 50/50.”

“Fortunately, there was a great deal of work out there. Furthermore, I had the fortune to know Gardner Dailey on the mainland. He selected me as the local architect for the remodelling of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. (1946) … With this prestigious commission, we suddenly had credentials and were able to pick up other worthy jobs.” (Wimberly; WATG)

The artist and the architect got together in the design and construction of Charlot’s ‘dream house.’

It was part of the expansion of KahaIa in the 1950s. Before the expansion, Kahala was used mostly for beach homes along the shore, with another row of houses on the mauka side of Kahala Avenue. Bishop Estate opened up the balance of the area for residential and related development.

In recognition of his work in Hawaiian culture, Bishop Estate gave Charlot one of the first choices of the new lots. He picked the end lot of the three on the little appendix to Kahala Avenue, fronting the Wai‘alae Golf Course, the house sits on a flat lot bordered by the golf course on the north and a canal on the west.

The house was completed in 1958 as a true collaboration between Charlot and Wimberly. Charlot’s art and therefore his dream house had to fit its site. Wimberly also emphasized a ‘sense of place’ in his architecture and went on to build many structures that exuded this appropriateness to the lifestyle and climate of Hawai‘i.

Fitting into Hawai‘i’s lifestyle and climate is demonstrated in its open plan (the master bedroom overlooking the living room, only bedrooms and bathrooms are fully walled in,) blurred definition between the interior and exterior (the built-in dining table that connects to the exterior …

… the two story height glazed sections that connect to the lanai area, and the lanai with the same flooring material as the drawing room), incorporation of native arts (mural, petroglyph tiles), use of native materials (hapu’u) and siting by tradewinds. The house is an intensely personal one, yet a characteristic of Charlot’s art is its emphasis on appropriateness. (NPS)

It had a uniquely artistic flair, incorporating the openness and lanais of island homes with the vertical emphasis of traditional French rural ‘architecture and the brick floors and back courtyards of Mexican houses. (NPS)

Here, Charlot conducted most of his work in this house and more particularly in his 2nd floor studio. This was the final period of Charlot’s life, when he reached the peak of his artistic powers and was able to synthesize the esthetics of Europe, Mexico and Pacific Islands, the places he lived and influenced his art. His career spanned these places. Charlot remained active as an artist and a scholar until his death on March 20, 1979.

Wimberly also went on the great things. He invented a style of resort architecture that was creative, exotic and imaginative. His landmark projects helped define Hawai‘i tourism and created a Hawai‘i-based business designing resorts around the world.

Wimberly “established himself as perhaps the most successful resort architect in the world” and that his “Honolulu-based firm of Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo (also known as WATG) designed many of the Pacific Rim’s pace-setting hotels and is the world’s largest ‘niche’ architecture firm, specializing in the $4-trillion-dollar travel industry.” (Honolulu Weekly) Wimberly died December 30, 1995.

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October 16, 2026 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Ka‘iulani

Victoria (named after Queen Victoria) Kaʻiulani Kawekiu I Lunalilo Kalaninuiahilapalapa Cleghorn was born on October 16, 1875, the only child of Princess Miriam Likelike (the sister to King Kalākaua and Queen Liliʻuokalani) and Archibald Scott Cleghorn, a Scottish businessman.

Miriam Kapili Kekāuluohi Likelike was born on January 13, 1851. Unlike her brothers and sister, Princess Likelike’s early years were spent on the Island of Hawaiʻi.

On returning to Honolulu, “Her first course of instruction was at the school of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, and she finished her education at Kawaiahaʻo Seminary.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, February 4, 1887)

Then her musical endeavors began in earnest; encouraged by her siblings she wrote music. With her sister, she led one of the three royal music clubs that held regular friendly competitions to outdo each other in song and poetry.

Like her sister, Princess Likelike sponsored many concerts and musical pageants in and around Honolulu, and played an important role in the development and perpetuation of Hawaiian music by the encouragement and patronage she gave to young musicians and composers. (HMHOF)

On September 22, 1870, Princess Likelike was married to Honolulu businessman Archibald Scott Cleghorn. The wedding was held at Washington Place, the residence of Governor Dominis and Princess Liliʻuokalani.

Cleghorn, born November 15th 1835 in Edinburgh, Scotland, was brought to Hawaii by his parents, Mr and Mrs Thomas Cleghorn by way of New Zealand.

After arriving to Honolulu in 1851, Thomas set up a dry goods store in Chinatown, but within the year, at the age of 54, Thomas suffered a fatal heart attack while on his way home from church. Archibald took over his father’s business and turned it into one of the most successful mercantile chains in the islands. (Kaʻiulani Project)

He first married Elizabeth Pauahi Lapeka and they had three daughters: Rose Kaipuala Cleghorn (married James William Robertson,) Helen Manuʻailehua Cleghorn (married James Boyd) and Annie Pauahi Cleghorn (married James Hay Wodehouse.) (Geer, Fahrni)

Continuing his father’s love of horticulture, Archie also became known as Hawaiʻi’s Father of Parks and served as Oʻahu Parks Commissioner; he was landscaper for ʻIolani Palace.

Archibald is also responsible for the spectacular gardens of the ‘ʻĀinahau estate, where he planted several varieties of plants, shrubs and trees, including Hawaiʻi’s first banyan, which became known as ‘The Kaʻiulani Banyan’. (Fahrni)

In addition he was the lead landscaper for Kapiʻolani Park. Kapiʻolani Park was dedicated on June 11, 1877 and named by King Kalākaua to honor his wife, Queen Kapiʻolani. It was the first public park in the Hawaiian Islands.

Characterized from the beginning as “swamp land in a desert,” Kapiʻolani Park became a park specifically because it wasn’t considered suitable for anything else, and because of its peculiar climate – it’s one of the few places on Oahu where rain almost never falls.

Archibald and Likelike deeded land at Kaʻawaloa to Major James Hay Wodehouse, Her Britannic Majesty’s Commissioner and Consul General for the said Kingdom of the Hawaiian Islands, for a monument in memory of Captain Cook. (Thrum)

Ka‘iulani inherited 10-acres of land in Waikīkī from her godmother, Princess Ruth Keʻelikōlani. Originally called Auaukai, her mother named it ʻĀinahau. The family built a two-story home on the estate.

At first the home was used only as a country estate, but Princess Kaʻiulani’s family loved it so much, it soon became their full-time residence. She spent most of her life there.

At the age of 13, Princess Kaʻiulani sailed to Europe to begin her education abroad; she spent the next eight years studying and traveling in Europe.

At the age of 15, Kaʻiulani was proclaimed Crown Princess of Hawaiʻi by Queen Liliʻuokalani and was a future ruler of Hawaiʻi. (KSBE)

“Princess Kaiulani was a thoughtful young lady, but always frank and candid. She was intensely devoted to the out of doors. It was the same from the time she was a little girl up to a few days before her death.”

“She was a skillful horsewoman. She liked both riding and driving. For driving she had a double rig and a single rig and generally handled the lines herself.”

“As a little girl she was a splendid swimmer and the old natives along the Waikiki beach will willingly tell you how the young alii would always go further out into the breakers than any one else. …”

“The Princess had at Ainahau a tribe of peafowls and everyone of the birds would eat from her hands. She admired them very much, made a study of them.” (PCA, March 13, 1899)

In 1899, Kaʻiulani had gone to Waimea on the Big Island to visit Helen and Eva Parker, daughters of Samuel “Kamuela” Parker (1853–1920,) grandson of John Parker (founder of the Parker Ranch.) (When his grandfather died, in 1868, Samuel (at the age of 15) inherited half the Parker Ranch, with his uncle John Palmer Parker II (1827–1891) inheriting the other half.)

While attending a wedding at the ranch, Princess Kaʻiulani and the girls had gone out riding horseback on Parker Ranch; they encountered a rainstorm. Kaʻiulani became ill; she and her family returned to O‘ahu. Tragically, after a two-month illness, Kaʻiulani died on March 6, 1899 at ʻĀinahau, at age 23.

Ka‘iulani once said, “Well, it has been a strange life, really, and a very romantic one. Still I have been happy. I have seen a great deal and everybody has been most kind to me.” (Independent, November 11, 1897)

October 15, 2026 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Objets d’art

Honolulu’s first neon sign flickered to life on February 19, 1929, with the opening of Gump’s Waikiki an antiques and home furnishing store. (Honolulu) The third oldest structure in Waikiki, Gump’s was one of the first retail shops in Waikiki.

S & G Gump was founded in San Francisco in 1861 as a mirror and frame shop by Solomon Gump and his brother, Gustav. It later sold mouldings, gilded cornices and European artwork to those recently made wealthy from the California Gold Rush.

With the beginning of a new century, the Gump brothers handed over the reins to Solomon’s son, Alfred Livingston Gump. Soon thereafter, the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 forced AL, as he was known, to rebuild and restock the store.

He looked to the Far East for new inspiration, sending buyers to Japan and China to find exotic rugs, porcelain, silks, bronzes and jade. Among the most prized acquisitions, a Ch’ing Dynasty gilded wood Buddha, still gazes serenely over the first floor of Gump’s. It remains the largest of its kind outside of a museum.

By the 1920s, San Francisco was roaring right along with the rest. Gump’s and The City had become intertwined – the store synonymous with San Francisco in its elegance, worldly style and maverick spirit. (Gumps)

Back in the Islands, as tourism began to develop in the 1920s and 30s, people saw commercial possibilities for Waikiki. One of the most endearing was the Honolulu branch of S&G Gump Company of San Francisco.

Asian design elements were beginning to influence architecture in Hawai‘i, and the merging of these motifs and Western forms became visible in the Gump Building, as well as the Alexander & Baldwin Building on Bishop Street in Downtown Honolulu and the Honolulu Museum of Art.

In 1927, Hawai’i architect Hart Wood was commissioned to design this new outpost perfectly located between the Far East and the West.

The store opened in 1929, across the street from the recently completed Royal Hawaiian Hotel, to cater to the affluent traveler and Honolulu elite. It carried an aura of class and provided products from around the world to Hawai’i’s doorstep, presenting tourists and residents with an ornately appointed atmosphere filled with ancient and modern objet d’art. (Oahu Publications)

In Mr. Wood’s work there is a notable lack of the garishness, over-ornamentation and ‘weirdness’ too often loosely associated with Oriental architecture. His roofs curve, it is true, but only slightly; colored tiles are used, but in a restrained manner.

“The insertion of a grill of plaster in a plain stucco wall, the design and size being in walls are of stucco, quite plain, the roofs of tile, the whole effect one of substantial simplicity. The only difference lies in the details of ornamentation, mostly about the doors and windows.”

“One of the more noticeable of these decorative details is found in the designs of iron grill work, leaded windows, balcony railings and like places. Chinese designs are geometrical, mostly coordinated squares keeping with the medium, offers one of the most charming forms of decoration imaginable.”

“The introduction of color by the use of tiles is interesting also, not only in tiling for the roof, but inset in the walls as decoration. Where wood is used, natural teak is preferred, and the pillars are simply slender round columns with a characteristic cross bar treatment at the top.”

“An outstanding example of such a building is the branch shop at Waikiki of the S & G Gump Company of San Francisco. It is of two story, concrete construction of pleasing design.”

“The walls are of white stucco, the gutters, leaders and leader heads are of antique copper verde, and the plaster grills as mentioned before, it proves a particularly effective way to use this form of decoration.”

“Gateway openings in the walls are of quaint and unusual design, one of them being a ‘moon gate’ which is shown in one of the illustrations. The circle motif appears again in one of the slightly curving roof of imperial blue tiles.”

“This brilliant blue is a favorite roof color in China and one that blends well with the blue of the sub-tropical sky. No other colors than this blue, jade and white appeal in the building, except the dark teakwood pillars of the entrance and railings of the several balconies.”

“A white plaster wall incloses three courtyards, and these walls are pierced by windows of the shop. All the windows show the geometrical design in the shape of the panes or in grills. Balcony railings are also geometrical.” (The Architect & Engineer, October 1929)

Back then, it was a two-story white building standing virtually alone on Kalākaua Avenue. It is an example of the architecture of Hawai‘i’s pre-War territorial period, 1898-1941, when the sugar and pineapple industries were operating at full tilt.

A number of distinctive buildings were constructed during those years, adapting features of Asian, Mediterranean or European styles that suited Hawai‘i’s tropical climate, including large openings to catch the trade winds, wide eaves and often a double-pitched hipped roof.

The first commercial perfume successfully made in Hawaiʻi from local island flowers (pikake, pink plumeria and fern lei – each sold in hand-carved wooden bottles) was introduced in January 1935 at the Gump’s store in Waikiki. (Schmitt)

If the Gump family had a vision of the potential for shopping along Kalākaua Avenue, they were decades ahead of their time. Even in the 1950s and early 1960s, Kalākaua Avenue was not a center of high-end retail sales.

February 24, 1951 Gump’s announced it will close its Waikiki store after 25 years of business in Honolulu. The store was closed to settle the estate of AL Gump.

It was not until the 1980s, with the arrival of waves of visitors from Japan, that a significant number of other high-end shops, comparable to Gump’s, sprang up in Waikīkī.

In fact, the Gump building in Waikīkī was converted into a McDonald’s restaurant (in the 1970s or 1980s.) With the boom that began in the late-1980s, it was sold in 1991 to a corporate affiliate of high-end retailer Louis Vuitton Malletier of Paris, refurbished and, in 1992, rededicated to retail. (Kelley)

October 14, 2026 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Loyalty to Locality

Using stratigraphic archaeology and refinements in radiocarbon dating, studies suggest it was between approximately AD 1000 and 1200 that “Polynesian explorers first made their remarkable voyage from central Eastern Polynesia Islands, across the doldrums and into the North Pacific, to discover Hawai‘i.” (Kirch)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 12, 2026 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

About the Time of Columbus

The first Europeans to arrive in North America were likely the Norse, traveling west from Greenland, where Erik the Red had founded a settlement around the year 985. In 1001 his son Leif is thought to have explored the northeast coast of what is now Canada and spent at least one winter there.

While Norse sagas suggest that Viking sailors explored the Atlantic coast of North America down as far as the Bahamas, such claims remain unproven. Later, the ruins of some Norse houses dating from that era were discovered at L’Anse-aux-Meadows in northern Newfoundland, thus supporting at least some of the claims the Norse sagas make.

About that same time in the Islands, using stratigraphic archaeology and refinements in radiocarbon dating, studies suggest it was between approximately AD 1000 and 1200 that “Polynesian explorers first made their remarkable voyage from central Eastern Polynesia Islands, across the doldrums and into the North Pacific, to discover Hawai‘i.” (Kirch)

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.

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.

Fast forward to Europe … Christopher Columbus left Spain in August, 1492, sailed directly westward, and in October came upon an outlying island of the West Indies. Although Columbus saw some of the other islands, he never touched the continent of North America.

Columbus (who was looking for a new route to India, China, Japan, and the ‘Spice Islands’ of Indonesia to bring back cargoes of silk and spices (ginger turmeric, and cinnamon)) never saw the mainland United States, but the first explorations of the continental United States were launched from the Spanish possessions that he helped establish.

At about the same time of Christopher Columbus crossing the Atlantic to America exciting stuff was happening here in the Hawaiian Islands.

The political governance and land management system by Aliʻi-ai-moku, was expanding and developing after two centuries since its inception, and there was a wake of progress taking place on our shores.

It was a natural progression, which began with three brothers as the first Aliʻi-ai-moku in the 12th century; Kumuhonua on Oʻahu, Olopana on Hawaiʻi, and Moikeha on Kauai, as grandsons of Maweke. (Yardley)

When they arrived from Tahiti with their new system, their first cousins were already serving as High Chiefs – “Laakona, High Chief of Ewa; Nuakea, Queen Consort of Molokai; Moi, kaula (prophet) of Molokai; and Hinakaimauliawa, High Chiefess of Koolau.” (Beckwith, Yardley)

Then, in the time of Columbus, the new Aliʻi-ai-moku were: Māʻilikūkahi on Oʻahu, Piʻilani on Maui, ʻUmi-a-Līloa on Hawaiʻi and Kukona on Kauai.

Several monumental actions were taking place in Hawaiʻi with a new form of land description, major infrastructure, an adaptive form of agriculture, and peaceful, chivalrous governance.

Māʻilikūkahi is noted for clearly marking and reorganizing land division palena (boundaries) on O‘ahu. Defined palena brought greater productivity to the lands; lessened conflict and was a means of settling disputes of future aliʻi who would be in control of the bounded lands; protected the commoners from the chiefs; and brought (for the most part) peace and prosperity.

According to oral tradition, Piʻilani unified the entire island of Maui, bringing together under one rule the formerly-competing eastern (Hāna) and western (Wailuku) multi-district kingdoms of the Island. Chief Piʻilani (“stairway to heaven”) unified West Maui and ruled in peace and prosperity. His territory included Nā Hono a Pi‘ilani, the six West Maui bays, a place he frequented.

Piʻilani’s prosperity was exemplified by a boom in agriculture and construction of heiau, fishponds, trails and irrigation systems. Famed for his energy and intelligence, Piʻilani constructed the West Maui phase of the noted Alaloa, or long trail (also known as the King’s Highway.)

On the Island of Hawaiʻi, ʻUmi-a-Līloa (ʻUmi) from Waipiʻo, son of Līloa, also started to divide the lands following this similar mauka-makai orientation.

ʻUmi also started a significant new form of agriculture in Kona; archaeologists call the unique method of farming in this area the “Kona Field System.” (These are long, narrow fields that ran along the contours, along the slopes of Mauna Loa and Hualālai; farmers then planted different crops, according to the respective rainfall gradients.)

The Kona Field System was described as “the most monumental work of the ancient Hawaiians.” The challenge of farming in Kona is to produce a flourishing agricultural economy in an area subject to frequent droughts, with no lakes or streams for irrigation.

Kukona (7th aliʻi ʻaimoku (high chief or king) of Kauai), whose name in Hawaiʻi became a symbol of the very highest ideals of chivalry in battle, was born in Kōloa and fought his defining battle at Po’ipū. His year of birth is estimated at around 1405.

Back on the Island of Hawai‘i there was eruption going on … the longest recorded eruption at Kilauea, arguably, was the ʻAilāʻau eruption and lava flow in the 15th century, which may be memorialized in the Pele-Hiʻiaka chant. It was the largest in Hawaiʻi in more than 1,000-years.

The flow was named after ʻAilāʻau – ʻAi means the “one who eats or devours.” Lāʻau means “tree” or a “forest.” ʻAilāʻau was, therefore, the forest eating (destroying) fire-god. Time and again he laid the districts of South Hawaii desolate by the lava he poured out from his fire-pits. (He was the fire god before Pele arrived at Hawaiʻi Island.)

The ʻAilāʻau eruption took place from a vent area just east of Kilauea Iki. The eruption built a broad shield. The eastern part of Kilauea Iki Crater slices through part of the shield, and red cinder and lava flows near the center of the shield can be seen on the northeastern wall of the crater.

The eruption probably lasted about 60 years. Such a long eruption naturally produced a large volume of lava, estimated to be about 5.2 cubic kilometers (1.25 cubic miles) after accounting for the bubbles in the lava. The rate of eruption is about the same as that for other long-lasting eruptions at Kilauea.

This large volume of lava covered a huge area, about 166 square miles (over 106,000-acres) – larger than the Island of Lānai. From the summit of the ʻAilāʻau shield, pāhoehoe lava flowed 25-miles northeastward, making it all the way to the coast.

Lava covered all, or most, of what are now Mauna Loa Estates, Royal Hawaiian Estates, Hawaiian Orchid Island Estates, Fern Forest Vacation Estates, Eden Rock Estates, Crescent Acres, Hawaiian Acres, Orchid Land Estates, ʻAinaloa, Hawaiian Paradise Park and Hawaiian Beaches. (USGS)

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