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December 30, 2017 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hale Mua

Fishing, the making of fishing gear and canoes, the care and housing of canoes and fishing gear, fighting, and the making of weapons were essentially men’s activities (although there are accounts of famous women warriors).

Every aspect of taro economy and culture was man’s work; the making and tending of fields and irrigated terraces and irrigation ditches, planting, cultivating and harvesting taro, steaming it in the ground oven, peeling it, and pounding the steamed corms to make poi for the womenfolk, as well as for men and boys.

The erection of every kind of house and shed was man’s work. For most family rituals the male head of the family functioned as family priest, just as in the greater rituals of community and state the professional priests were men. (Handy & Pukui)

Kauhale means homestead, and when there were a number of kauhale close together the same term was used. The old Hawaiians had no conception of village or town as a corporate social entity; there was no term for village.

The kauhale were scattered near streams in valley bottoms; each family kauhale was right beside its lo’i. A spring (or springs) was sometimes the reason for a village-like conglomeration of homesteads – again, families focused on the water source.

Traditional hale (‘house’, ‘building’) were constructed of native woods lashed together with cordage most often made from olonā. Pili grass was a preferred thatching that added a pleasant odor to a new hale. Lauhala (pandanus leaves) or ti leaf bundles called peʻa were other covering materials used.

Unlike our housing today, the single ‘hale’ was not necessarily the ‘home.’ The traditional Hawaiian home was the kauhale (Lit., plural house;) this was a group of structures forming the living compound – homestead – with each building serving a specific purpose.

The main structure within the kauhale household complex was the common house, or hale noa, in which all the family members slept at night. It was the largest building within a family compound and the most weatherproof. (Loubser)

Other structures included hale mua (men’s meeting/eating house,) hale ʻāina (women’s eating house,) hale peʻa (menstruation house) and other needed structures (those for canoe makers, others used to house fishing gear, etc.)

The terrain and the subsistence lifestyle and economy created the dispersed community of scattered homesteads. Typically, a Hawaiian family’s homestead stood in relative isolation.

‘At the age of 3 or 4, (a high ranking male child) was placed in the mua and his eating made kapu (or taboo) …’ Non-elite male children were also consecrated in hale mua after birth. (Dixon)

Archaeological investigations conducted on hale mua have identified evidence of presumed male food consumption (bones from pig and some large pelagic fish, species taboo to women) and male domestic activities (stone tool making).

The daily implementation of the kapu in non-elite Hawaiian family life was presumably more complex, as were gender specific activities such as tool making. (Dixon) Near it was the imu or oven in which the men cooked their food.

The mua or menʻs eating house was a sacred place from which women were excluded. It was the place where the men and older boys ate their meals and where the head of the family offered the daily offerings of ʻawa to the family ʻaumakua. Here men and family gods ate together; women, were not allowed to enter here.

The daily offering was never omitted and if the head of the family was unable to perform his duty, he appointed some one to do it. The prayers were for the welfare of the ruling chief and for the family itself.

When a serious problem arose, such as a new venture to be attempted or sickness in the family, the head of the family slept in the Mua, where the family gods would give him directions as to what to do.

Thus the Mua served both as a place for the men to eat and a meeting place with the family gods. At one end of the mua was an altar (kuahu) dedicated to the family ʻaumakua whose effigies stood there.

Here the head of the household prayed and performed necessary rites sometimes without, sometimes with the aid of a kahuna pule, when came the time for the rites of the life cycle such as birth, cutting the foreskin, sickness and death. (Handy & Pukui)

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Filed Under: Hawaiian Traditions Tagged With: Hawaii, Kauhale, Hale Mua, Hale Aina, Hale, Hale Noa, Hale Pea

June 12, 2016 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Loyalty to Locality

Using stratigraphic archaeology and refinements in radiocarbon dating, studies suggest it was about 900-1000 AD 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)

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. Small bays generally had a cluster of houses where the families of fishermen lived.

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.)

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Pre-contact Footprint-Hawaii Island-GoogleEarth-OHA-TNC

Filed Under: Ali'i / Chiefs / Governance, Hawaiian Traditions Tagged With: Ahupuaa, Loyalty to Locality, Hawaii, Ohana, Kauhale

July 21, 2014 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kauhale

ʻĀina is compounded from the verb “ʻai” (to eat,) referring specifically to vegetable foods, with the substantive suffix “na,” which makes it a noun. The word ʻāina (land,) then, means “that which feeds.”

In old Hawaiʻi’s subsistence society, the family farming scale was far different from commercial-purpose agriculture.  In ancient time, when families farmed for themselves, they adapted; products were produced based on need.  The families were disbursed around the Islands, as well as across regions on each island.

Traditional hale (‘house’, ‘building’) were constructed of native woods lashed together with cordage most often made from olonā.  Pili grass was a preferred thatching that added a pleasant odor to a new hale. Lauhala (pandanus leaves) or ti leaf bundles called peʻa were other covering materials used.

Unlike our housing today, the single ‘hale’ was not necessarily the ‘home.’ The traditional Hawaiian home was the kauhale (Lit., plural house;) this was a group of structures forming the living compound – homestead – with each building serving a specific purpose.

The main structure within the kauhale household complex was the common house, or hale noa, in which all the family members slept at night. It was the largest building within a family compound and the most weatherproof.  (Loubser)

Other structures included hale mua (men’s meeting/eating house,) hale ʻāina (women’s eating house,) hale peʻa (menstruation house) and other needed structures (those for canoe makers, others used to house fishing gear, etc.)

The terrain and the subsistence lifestyle and economy created the dispersed community of scattered homesteads.  Typically a Hawaiian family’s homestead stood in relative isolation.

Where homesteads were assembled near each other, they were not communities held together either by bonds of kinship or economic interdependence.

“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.”

“Nearby or among these small holdings stand the grass houses of the proprietors, and you may see them and their wives, their clothing tucked up, standing over their knees in water, planting or cultivating their crop.”  (Nordhoff, 1875)

Fishermen and their families living around the bays and 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.

Placement and occasional collection of kauhale was more of a functional pattern.

Kauhale means homestead, and when there were a number of kauhale close together the same term was used.  The old Hawaiians had no conception of village or town as a corporate social entity; there was no term for village.

The kauhale were scattered near streams in valley bottoms; each family kauhale was right beside its lo’i.  A spring (or springs) was sometimes the reason for a village-like conglomeration of homesteads – again, families focused on the water source.

Small bays and beaches generally had a cluster of houses where the families of fishermen lived – it was primarily because of the proximity to access to the ocean.

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.

The Hawaiian concept of family, ‘ʻohana, is derived from the word ʻohā (fig., offspring, youngsters,) the axillary shoots of kalo that sprout from the main corm, the makua (parent.)  Huli, cut from the tops of mauka, and ‘ohā are then used for replanting to regenerate the cycle of kalo production.

The true ‘community’ in which homesteads were integrated by socio-religious and economic ties was the dispersed community of the family (ʻohana,) relatives by blood, marriage and adoption.

Neighborly interdependence, the sharing of goods and services, resulted in the settling of contiguous lands by a given ʻohana within an ahupuaʻa (rather than in a scattering over an entire district.)

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.

While conquest and war resulted in periodic changes in leadership, there was a relative stability and permanence for the families and their kauhale.  As a practical matter it was to the benefit of the chiefs to keep the farmers and fishers on the land they knew and cultivated.

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 chief.  (Lots of information here from Handy and Pukui.)

The image shows a drawing of a kauhale – homestead.  In addition, I have added other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

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Filed Under: Hawaiian Traditions Tagged With: Hawaii, Hale Pili, Ohana, Kauhale

Images of Old Hawaiʻi

People, places, and events in Hawaiʻi’s past come alive through text and media in “Images of Old Hawaiʻi.” These posts are informal historic summaries presented for personal, non-commercial, and educational purposes.

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