The Hawai'i That Was: What Happened to the Stones of Pololu? A Look at Pu'ukohala Heiau

There's a different feel to the north country of the Big Island of Hawai'i. Gone are the sere and blasted basalt flows of recent volcanic eruptions. The older soils of Kohala instead support a luxurious growth of grass that supports a thriving cattle industry. It's lonely country too. There aren't the larger towns like Hilo or Kailua-Kona, just a number of small fishing villages and former sugar cane company towns. The beautiful Pololu Valley, which we explored in the last post, is on the eastern shoreline. It's hard to picture that some of the most momentous events in the history of Hawai'i took place here just over two hundred years ago.

We were high on the flank of Kohala volcano looking at a vast expanse of the Big Island. In the upper center of the picture above, one can just make out the small harbor village of Kawaihae (the white spot on the shoreline is the breakwater). Next to the harbor is an immense pile of rocks forming a terrace that looks out on the Pacific Ocean (check out the zoomed view in the picture below).

We were looking at the Pu'ukohala Heiau, a massive structure built at the behest of King Kamehameha I in 1790. The construction of the heiau precipitated a series of events that led to the unification of the Hawaiian Islands under a single ruler just as contact was being made with European cultures. It produced a kingdom that would last for several generations before foreign corporations would destroy the sovereignty of the nascent country. 

Kamehamea was born about 1758 in the Kohala region. He was born to a relatively moderate position in the heirarchy of Hawaiian royalty, but the legends about his birth suggest he was destined for greater things. Because the prophecies threatened other royal figures, he was hidden away during the first years of his life. He emerged as a powerful young warrior who was present when Captain Cook arrived (and was later killed) on the islands. As a nephew to the king of the Big Island, he was not in line to take the throne. When King Kalani'opu'u passed, he gave the kingship to his son Kiwala'o, but gave custody of the war god Kuka'ilimoku (Ku) to Kamehameha.

The years following the death of King Kalani'opu'u in 1782 were chaotic, with different chiefs fighting for ownership of the Big Island, with invasions, some successful and some not, of the other islands in the chain. A prophet from Kaua'i told Kamehameha that he needed to honor the war god Ku by building a massive heiau. In 1790, the work began. Thousands of Kamehameha's men formed a human chain that stretched for more than 20 miles across the north end of the island to the Pololu Valley, where vast numbers of rounded river stones were available. Hand to hand the boulders were carried to Whale Hill at Kawaihae. The heiau was completed a year later, and Kamehameha's chief rival on the Big Island, Keoua, was invited to the dedication. Keoua almost surely knew that it was his fate to be sacrificed on the altar, and that is what happened. The fighting continued for a number of years, but by 1810, when Kaua'i submitted to Kamehameha's rule (by agreement rather than battle) the islands had been united. Kamehameha lived in Kailua-Kona until 1819, and his descendants ruled the nation until 1893 when corporate forces took control. Hawai'i became a U.S. territory in 1898.

The heiau is quiet today, and is preserved as the Pu'ukohala National Historic Site. There are several heiaus at the park, including the Mailekini heiau, which predates Kamehameha's reign. It was adapted into a fort during the campaigns to unite the islands. There is also a heiau buried in the sands of the harbor, and a "leaning" stone. A paved trail visits the sites, but the heiaus are still used for ceremonies, and casual visitors are not allowed to walk on them.

Mailekini heiau, with Pu'ukohala heiau in the distance up the hill

The northwest coastline of the Big Island of Hawai'i is rich in archaeological treasures. We headed up the coast to see what life was like for the non-royal inhabitants of the island. More on that next time!

This is what happened to the stones of Pololu. Source: National Park Service

The Hawai'i That Was: Why Should We Care?

Lapakahi State Park on the Big Island is the remains of an ancient fishing village that was occupied for hundreds of years. Not a single plant in the picture is native to Hawai'i.

In a lot of ways, a post like this is how one might wrap up a series. The problem is that I can't say exactly where we will be or what we will have discovered by the time I've determined that this blog series is completed! I can certainly talk about why I had the idea, and maybe I'll find some guidance as we move forward in this exploration.

I can say that Hawai'i is very special to me. California is far and away the most interesting place in the world, what with the Sierra Nevada, the coasts, the deserts and all the other fascinating landscapes, but Hawai'i to me is an incredible place that I am privileged to visit only on special occasions. There are so many mysteries on the islands that I haven't had the time to explore. But there is something more. There is a sense of wildness about the place that I don't feel often in my many travels.

The Ha'upu Range. Kaua'i can certainly look foreboding from some directions.

I think it has to do the isolation and remoteness of the place. The Hawaiian Islands were among the last, if not the last significant landmasses to be colonized by human beings in the world. It's been only a few dozen generations that it was the last wild place on the planet,  It has been significantly altered by human activity, but there are still remnants of that primeval world that still exist today. You will never find it in a high-rise hotel at Waikiki, but the pieces are there if you know where to look.

An 'Apapane, one of the few native Hawaiian birds that is not in imminent danger of extinction.

At the same time there is a newness about the Hawaiian Islands. Not a single piece of land in the eight major islands is older than 6 million years. Essentially all of the Big Island is less than a million years old. There is a lava flow near my home in California. It erupted 9-10 million years ago, and while it has been altered by erosion, it still looks relatively "recent". And yet in the time since that lava flow in California, eight major islands grew, reached great heights, and then eroded. Literally thousands of species of plants and animals evolved in that short period of time. Many existed for a time, and then went extinct, sometimes by the hand of humans, and sometimes not.

Pu'uhonua o Honaunau, the place of refuge. If you violated kapu, you had a chance at life if you could make it here.

There are really two Hawaiian Islands that were: the islands before the Polynesians, and the islands of the Polynesians. They were then changed forever in 1778 when Captain Cook "discovered" the islands and their people. The changes in the intervening 238 years have been mostly catastrophic, both for the natural landscape and for the Native Hawaiians. It's only been in the last few decades that people have tried to recover pieces of the past before they were completely gone.

'Ahu'ena Heiau, the last "palace" of King Kamehameha in 1819. It's now surrounded by the bustling city of Kona, with luaus next door two nights a week!

We learn from history. We are often far too ignorant of our dependence on the land and resources, and forget that they can be abused and wasted. All human societies alter the landscapes that they occupy to increase their chances for survival, and some are more successful than others. The Polynesians who discovered the islands brought with them plants and animals they knew would insure their future, and for more than a thousand years they lived within the limits of the land. That is no longer the case today. Meeting the needs of 1.4 million people on the islands requires a huge amount of energy. Can you imagine the chaos if the ship and plane traffic were disrupted for any length of time?

So Hawai'i is beautiful. But it is also a living laboratory that has much to tell us about geology, ecology, evolution, and anthropology. And that is why we were there for much of the last two weeks, students of geology and archaeology, learning what we could in the short time that we had. The story of our journey begins in the next post.

Monday's Minor Mystery Solved Pretty Quickly: Poles with no Shadows in Hawai'i

You can't mystify scientists of the Earth with questions of latitude. I had numerous answers pretty darn quick about why this stop sign reveals my location. The sign pole is casting no shadow! The only way that can happen is if the sun is directly overhead, and that can only happen if one is within 23 degrees of the equator, and only at noon. I have never thought to seek such a picture on my previous trips to Hawai'i, but I lucked out and thought of it while we were eating lunch at a nice little cafe in Kapa'au on the north end of the Big Island.

Kapa'au was once in the heart of sugar cane country, but the plantations folded in the 1970s, and the town should have, but refused to die. It has a nice selection of art galleries, and is the location of a very famous statue of King Kamehameha. Most people see the second version of this statue in Honolulu (and in the opening credits of "Hawaii 5-0"), but fewer people know that the original statue was lost at sea in the 1878 (it was cast in Paris, and lost off the Falkland Islands). Someone salvaged the original statue, and it eventually ended up here, actually only a few miles from Kamehameha's birthplace.

Kamehameha is fondly remembered as the first king to unify the Hawaiian Islands in the late 1700s, but when one reads the stories, it was a savage time, and it certainly was not a good idea to oppose him. He did bring about stability, and the last decades of his life were peaceful, despite the arrival of Europeans. Huge changes followed his death, and not necessarily good ones for native Hawaiians.

The region is quiet these days, with some incredible scenery. At the end of the road a few miles beyond Kapa'au, there is the Pololu Valley and coast. These are the highest sea cliffs on the Big Island, caused when a flank of the Kohala volcano 12 miles wide collapsed into the sea several tens of thousands of years ago. The ensuing tsunami would have been catastrophic, although no humans were on the island at the time. A steep, but beautiful trail leads through the rainforest to the Pololu Valley and beach.