Hole Waimea i ka ihe a ka makani
Hao mai nā‘ale a ke Kīpu‘upu‘u
He lā‘au kala‘ihi ‘ia na ke anu
I ‘ō‘ō i ka nahele o Mahiki
Kū aku i ka pahu
Kū a ka ‘awa‘awa
Hanane‘e ke kīkala o kō Hilo kini
Ho‘i lu‘ulu‘u i ke one o Hanakahi
Kū aku la ‘oe i ka Malanai
A ke Kīpu‘upu‘u
Holu ka maka o ka ‘ōhāwai a Uli
Niniau ‘eha ka pua o ke koai‘e
Ua ‘eha i ka nahele o Waikā
Waimea strips the spears of the wind
Waves tossed in violence by the Kīpu‘upu‘u rains
Trees brittle in the cold
Are made into spears in Mahiki forest
Hit by the thrusts
Hit by the cold
The hips of Hilo’s throngs sag
Weary, they return to the sands of Hanakahi
Pelted and bruised by
The Kīpu‘upu‘u rains
The petals of Uli sway
The flower of koai‘e droops
Stung by frost, the herbage of Waikā
This is a mele inoa (name chant) for Kamehameha I, that was inherited by his son, Liholiho. This is a tale of the Kîpuʻupuʻu, a band of runners whose name is taken from the cold wind of Maunakea that blows at Waimea on the big island of Hawaiʻi.
They were trained in spear fighting and went to the woods of Mahiki, a woodland in Waimea haunted by demons and spooks, and Waikā to strip the bark of saplings to make spears. Hole means to handle roughly, strip or caress passionately.
In the forest they sang of love, not of work or war. Hanakahi is the district on the Hamakua side of Hilo, named for a chief whose name means profound peace.
Malanai is the name of gentle wind. Pua o Koaiʻe is the blossom of the Koaiʻe tree that grows in the wild, a euphemism for delicate parts. Parts of this old chant, full of double entendre or kaona, was set to music by John Spencer and entitled Waikā. (Hualapa)
Waimea (which literally means reddish water, as it was thought to be tinted as it was drained through the hāpu‘u tree fern forests or through the red soil) has been poetically characterized as being “like a spear rubbed by the wind, as the cold spray is blown by the kipu‘upu‘u rain…” (Cultural Surveys)
Many elders familiar with the area attribute the red tint not to the red soil, but to the natural color added as the water seeps through the hāpu‘u forest on the slopes of the Kohala Mountains.
The fern plants there are a natural source of red dye, and so they say the reddish tint comes from that vegetation. Perhaps the red tint comes from both the soil and the hāpu‘u. (Cultural Surveys)
The population of Waimea became the most significant in density, scattered among fields adjacent to streams that provided year-round water for consumption, cleaning and irrigation. The availability of dependable irrigation systems gave Waimea a unique advantage whereby both dryland and irrigated kalo (taro) could be grown. (Bergin)
The early Waimea inhabitants resided typically within a pā hale (fenced house lot) with a sleeping house and adjacent protected cooking facility. The pā pōhaku (stone wall) surrounded the pā hale, and likely included within was a kīhāpai (garden).
The farming plot (‘apana) of the householder was located elsewhere within the agricultural zone of the respective ahupua’a. These prehistoric farmed areas have become known as the Waimea Field System. (Bergin)
Dry taro used to be planted along the lower slopes of the Kohala Mountains on the Waimea side, up the gulches and in the lower forest zones. Dry taro was planted also along the slopes toward Honoka’a, and is said to have been grown on the plains south and west of Kamuela. (Handy)
Archibald Menzies, noted in 1793, “A little higher up, however, than I had time to penetrate, I saw in the verge of the woods several fine plantations, and my guides took great pains to inform me that the inland country was very fertile and numerously inhabited.”
“Indeed, I could readily believe the truth of these assertions, from the number of people I met loaded with the produce of their plantations and bringing it down to the water side to market”. (Menzies)
Kamehameha started marketing sandalwood, a multitude of people from Waimea had been ordered to harvest sandalwood trees from the Kohala Mountains. It was arduous labor that required the men to carry these huge harvested trees to the coastline for shipping. (Cultural Surveys)
“(W)e were roused by vast multitudes of people passing through the district from Waimea with sandal wood, which had been cut in the adjacent mountains for Karaimoku, by the people of Waimea, and which the people of Kohala, as far as the north point, had been ordered to bring down to his storehouse on the beach, for the purpose of its being shipped to Oahu.”
“There were between two and three thousand men, carrying each from one to six pieces of sandal wood, according to their size and weight.”
“It was generally tied on their backs by bands made of ti leaves, passed over the shoulders and under the arms, and fastened across their breast. When they had deposited the wood at the storehouse, they departed to their respective homes.” (Ellis)
Other activities had altered the landscape. Captain George Vancouver brought gifts of cattle, goats, and sheep for Kamehameha. A kapu (prohibition) was instituted and the animals multiplied across Waimea and the rest of the lands of north Hawai‘i Island.
Many walls and enclosures had to be built to protect the people’s cultivated crops from destruction from the animals. In 1803, the horse was also introduced to the island. (Bergin)
With the lifting of the kapu in 1830, Kamehameha appointed the first authorized cattle hunter, John Palmer Parker. Three years later, Parker married Keli‘i Kipikane Kaolohaka, a great-granddaughter of Kamehameha. The hunting of animals, and especially the salting and corning of beef and the procurement of hides and tallow, became a booming industry. (Bergin)
The salted beef, hide, and tallow export industry grew to become a major component of commerce. Forty to fifty-nine whaling ships annually called at Kawaihae in the mid-1850s.
They provisioned taking aboard 1,500 barrels of salt beef, 5,000 barrels of sweet potatoes, 1,200 bullock hides, and 35,000 pounds of tallow on an average. Between Waimea and Kawaihae, South Kohala became the center of the cattle industry. (Bergin)
In 1832, the first of numerous Mexican cowboys arrived on Hawai‘i Island to lend their experience and skills in handling cattle. While the vaqueros were busy teaching their cowboy skills to Hawaiians in the 1800s, Parker became a leader in the industry.
In 1847, he established the Parker Ranch, an enterprise which would later become one of the greatest ranches under the American flag. (Bergin)
Overlapping with the arrivals of foreign sailors, whalers, and cowboys to the islands was the equally significant arrival of Christian missionaries. One of the most famous early missionaries was Lorenzo Lyons, who arrived in the islands in 1832. He established a Mission Station in Waimea.
The Territory, officially through the US Board of Geographic Names, in 1914, agreed to name the community “Waimea” (and further noted it as a “village.”) Later, in 1954, they revised the name to simply Waimea (and dropped the village reference.)
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