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November 25, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Salting Pigs for the Sea-Store

A ship’s stores are the supplies and equipment required for the operation and upkeep of a ship. (Merriam-Webster) Sea-stores are supplies needed while you are out in the ocean sailing.

Part of the stores are food items.  Fresh meat doesn’t last long; folks started salting meat to extend their useful life.

“Salt is effective as a preservative because it reduces the water activity of foods. The water activity of a food is the amount of unbound water available for microbial growth and chemical reactions.” (National Library of Medicine)

“Native Hawaiians used sea salt, pa‘akai (“to solidify the sea”), to season and preserve food, for religious and ceremonial purposes, and as medicine. Preserving food like i‘a (fish) and he‘e (octopus) was essential not just for storage on land, but also to provide nourishment during ocean voyages.” (UH, Sea Earth Atmosphere)

Salt “has ever been an essential article with the Sandwich Islanders, who eat it very freely with their food, and use much in preserving their fish.”  (Ellis, 1826)

During Cook’s visits to the Islands, King’s journal noted “the great quantity of salt they eat with their flesh and fish. … almost every native of these islands carried about with him, either in his calibash, or wrapped up in a piece of cloth, and tied about his waist, a small piece of raw pork, highly salted, which they considered as a great delicacy, and used now and then to taste of.”

“Their fish they salt, and preserve in gourd-shells; not, as we at first imagined, for the purpose of providing against any temporary scarcity, but from the preference they give to salted meats.”  (King, 1779)

“The surplus … they dispose of to vessels touching at the islands, or export to the Russian settlements on the north-west coast of America, where it is in great demand for curing fish, &c.” (Ellis, 1826)

“The salting of hogs for sea-store was also a constant [by the Hawaiians], and one of the principal objects of Captain Cook’s attention.”

“As the success we met with in this experiment, during our present voyage, was much more complete than it had been in any former attempt of the same kind, it may not be improper to give an account of the detail of the operation.”

“It has generally been thought impracticable to cure the flesh of animals by salting, in tropical climates; the progress of putrefaction being so rapid, as not to allow time for the salt to take (as they express it) before the meat gets a taint, which prevents the effect of the pickle.”

“We do not find that experiments relative to this subject have been made by the navigators of any nation before Captain Cook.”

“In his first trials, which were made in 1774, during his second voyage to the Pacific Ocean, the success he met with, though very imperfect, was yet sufficient to convince him of the error of the received opinion.”

“As the voyage, in which he was now engaged, was likely to be protracted a year beyond the time for which the ships had been victualled, he was under the necessity of providing, by some such means, for the subsistence of the crews, or of relinquishing the further prosecution of his discoveries.”

“He therefore lost no opportunity of renewing his attempts, and the event answered his most sanguine expectations.”

“The hogs, which we made use of for this purpose, were of various sizes, weighing from four to twelve stone. [a stone is 14 pounds].”

“The time of slaughtering was always in the afternoon; and as soon as the hair was scalded off, and the entrails removed, the hog was divided into pieces of four or eight pounds each, and the bones of the legs and chine taken out; and, in the larger sort, the ribs also.”

“Every piece then being carefully wiped and examined, and the veins cleared of the coagulated blood, they were handed to the salters, whilst the flesh remained still warm.”

“After they had been well rubbed with salt, they were placed in a heap, on a stage raised in the open air, covered with planks, and pressed with the heaviest weights we could lay on them.”

“In this situation they remained till the next evening, when they were again well wiped and examined, and the suspicious parts taken away.”

“They were then put into a tub of strong pickle, where they were always looked over once or twice a day, and if any piece had not taken the salt, which was readily discovered by the smell of the pickle, they were immediately taken out, re-examined, and the sound pieces put to fresh pickle. This, however, after the precautions before used, seldom happened.”

“After six days, they were taken out, examined for the last time, and being again slightly pressed, they were packed in barrels, with a thin layer of salt between them.”

“I brought home with me some barrels of this pork, which was pickled at Owhyhee in January 1779, and was tasted by several persons in England, about Christmas 1780, and found perfectly sound and wholesome.” (Cook’s Journal)

© 2024 Ho‘okuleana LLC

Filed Under: Hawaiian Traditions, Sailing, Shipping & Shipwrecks, Economy Tagged With: Puaa, Pig, Hawaii, Salt

November 16, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Feeding Pigs

“Hogs (pua‘a) were everywhere in Polynesia a part of native subsistence economy, except in New Zealand and Easter Island.”

“It is certain that they were brought into Polynesia from Melanesia, Indonesia, or Southeast Asia, where they have had, and have, an important place in native life, except where Hinduism, Buddhism, or Mohammedanism established dietary proscriptions. (Handy, Handy & Pukui)

“The transportation of the Polynesian domesticated plants, and of livestock for breeding, was a complicated operation.”

“There had to be food and water for an indefinite voyage, for livestock as well as for the men, women, and children. Cooked taro in some form would have been part of the provender stocked for any long voyage, but only migrants expecting to pioneer new lands would stock their canoe with crowns and sprouts of taro.”

“Cooked or dried sweet potatoes might have been carried, but not vine cuttings. Breadfruit paste, cooked and packaged, would be stocked as provender, but not the sprouting root cuttings, wrapped with a ball of earth, which were necessary for planting.” (Handy, Handy & Pukui)

“That the first Polynesians came in a canoe stocked with all the plants, hogs, dogs, and chickens (male and female) needed for permanent colonization is extremely unlikely. Even on a planned voyage it would have been well nigh impossible to bring all the plants and animals desired.”

“The discoverers may even have been surprised at finding no wild taro and sweet potato, no coconut trees by the shore, for they were doubtless accustomed to seeing these as basic to the landscape where they came from, since the larger islands of central Polynesia had long been inhabited before Hawaii was first settled”.  (Handy, Handy & Pukui)

“Pigs are not native to Hawai‘i. The first pigs were brought to the Hawaiian Islands by Polynesians …  Skeletal remains of pigs and recorded traditional knowledge sources indicate that pua‘a (the Polynesian pig) was a much smaller animal than the feral pigs of today. (Maly, Pang & Burrows)

“[F]eral pigs ranging through Hawaii’s upland forests today bear little physical or cultural resemblance to the smaller, domesticated pigs brought to the islands by voyaging Polynesians. It remains a popular misconception that pigs are native to Hawaiian forests and that pig hunting was a common practice in ancient Hawai‘i.” (Maly, Pang & Burrows)

“The hogs, dogs, and fowls, which were the only tame or domestic animals that we found here, were all of the same kind that we met with at the South Pacific islands.” (Cook’s Journal)

“Pua‘a were an integrated part of Hawaiian households, and the common presence of pa pua‘a (pig pens) reflects the controlled, physically compartmentalized nature of pig management in traditional Hawai‘i.”

“Notwithstanding, small populations of loosely controlled and free-roaming animals existed in ancient times. Traditional and historic evidence indicates that these animals remained largely domesticated, living mainly on the periphery of kauhale and extending into lowland forests.”

“They continued to rely largely on the food and shelter provided by the kauhale. This is because in pre-contact times, native Hawaiian forests were devoid of large alien fruits such as mangos and guava, and major protein sources, such as non-native earthworms, that would eventually support the large feral populations of pigs today.”

“Without such fodder, these early roaming populations would have been chiefly dependent on people for their survival.” (Maly, Pang & Burrows)

“Farmers raised hogs in domestication. Generally they were allowed to run about the kauhale (homestead) and gardens while they were young pigs, but when they were sizable and ready for fattening they were penned inside enclosures of heaped-up stones.”

“It is said that sometimes women suckled tiny pigs. Pigs and hogs were fed on scraps and peelings of taro, potato, yam, banana, and breadfruit, and on wild morning-glory roots and vines.”  (Handy, Handy & Pukui)

“Of animal food, they can be in no want; as they have abundance of hogs, which run, without restraint, about the houses”. (Cook’s Journal)

“Chickens and dogs lived near dwellings, the latter feeding on poi, breadfruit, and sweet potatoes. Pigs ranged more widely, rooting for food, but also living off sweet potato vine cuttings, taro leaves, sugarcane, and garbage.” (NPS)

“Mahina ‘ai, a contraction of mahi ana i ka ‘ai (cultivation of food), is not a land-division term, but merely designated land under cultivation, specifically taro, for ‘ai in this sense appears to refer particularly to taro, ‘the food,’ or staple. Apparently Mahina ‘ai also referred to dry-taro cultivation as well as wet.”

“The sweet-potato vines and foliage make excellent hog feed and have always been used for this purpose by the Hawaiians. Certain rapid-growing varieties are planted … especially for this purpose, and the foliage is regularly cut about once a month. The potatoes themselves are also fed to the hogs for fattening.”

“Some hogs were confined to stone pens. Some potato patches, or communities, were walled with stones, in areas where lava chunks were to be found scattered about.”

“But generally a potato patch was accessible to ranging domesticated hogs if they were hungry enough to root for raw potatoes; or to the wild boars and sows that roamed at large, especially at night.”

“The wild hogs in the uplands ate kukui nuts and mountain apples, seeds of various sorts, and parts of various ferns, and they grubbed for roots. Wild hogs also helped themselves from the sweet-potato plots”.

“A sow was a pua‘a wahine’; a boar, pua‘a ke‘a, or if the tusks were long, pua‘a puko‘a; a young pig was termed pua‘a ohi.”  (Handy, Handy & Pukui)

© 2024 Ho‘okuleana LLC

Filed Under: Hawaiian Traditions Tagged With: Hawaii, Puaa, Pig

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