Kua‘āina Kahiko
Life and Land in Ancient Kahikinui, Maui
In early Hawai‘i, kua‘āina were the hinterlands inhabited by nā kua‘āina, or country folk. Often these were dry, less desirable areas where much skill and hard work were required to wrest a living from the lava landscapes. The ancient district of Kahikinui in southeast Maui is such a kua‘āina and remains one of the largest tracts of undeveloped land in the islands. Named after Tahiti Nui in the Polynesian homeland, its thousands of pristine acres house a treasure trove of archaeological ruins—witnesses to the generations of Hawaiians who made this land their home before it was abandoned in the late nineteenth century.
Kua‘āina Kahiko follows kama‘āina archaeologist Patrick Vinton Kirch on a seventeen-year-long research odyssey to rediscover the ancient patterns of life and land in Kahikinui. Through painstaking archaeological survey and detailed excavations, Kirch and his students uncovered thousands of previously undocumented ruins of houses, trails, agricultural fields, shrines, and temples. Kirch describes how, beginning in the early fifteenth century, Native Hawaiians began to permanently inhabit the rocky lands along the vast southern slope of Haleakalā. Eventually these planters transformed Kahikinui into what has been called the greatest continuous zone of dryland planting in the Hawaiian Islands. He relates other fascinating aspects of life in ancient Kahikinui, such as the capture and use of winter rains to create small wet-farming zones, and decodes the complex system of heiau, showing how the orientations of different temple sites provide clues to the gods to whom they were dedicated.
Kirch examines the sweeping changes that transformed Kahikinui after European contact, including how some maka'āinana families fell victim to unscrupulous land agents. But also woven throughout the book is the saga of Ka ‘Ohana o Kahikinui, a grass-roots group of Native Hawaiians who successfully struggled to regain access to these Hawaiian lands. Rich with anecdotes of Kirch’s personal experiences over years of field research, Kua'āina Kahiko takes the reader into the little-known world of the ancient kua‘āina.
Patrick V. Kirch transports readers to the remote district of Kahikinui on Maui, the second-largest of the Hawaiian Islands, to tell the story of life in the island’s backcountry (kua‘āina) in antiquity (kahiko). [The book] is intended to open up to the public what he has previously published in the scholarly literature and to paint a picture of what it was like to do archaeology on Maui; by these measures it is a definitive success. . . . While not intended as a book about ethics, this is nonetheless the story of an academic archaeologist’s efforts to be, in Hawaiian terms, pono (righteous, proper), at a time when to be an archaeologist in some circles was to be a social pariah. . . . Lastly, it should be said that not only are all the archaeological interpretations here backed up by copious bibliographic information, but also that this is an authentic account of the landscape and its people.
The book is perfectly balanced between science and culture, and they work together to magically bring the ancient Kahikinui community to life. One of the great strengths of Kua‘āina Kahiko is its accessible, almost conversational style, while at the same time the presenting a great deal of scholarly content and little-known facts about Hawaiian archaeology. . . . The sheer volume of research undertaken and presented in this volume is extremely impressive. To survey vast expanses of rough terrain and map thousands of sites with a plane table and alidade is a feat in itself, not to mention the extensive excavations and subsequent laboratory work and data analyses that were conducted. To have completed this amount of work is an accomplishment that cannot be underestimated and the resulting publications have made a huge contribution to our field.
The strengths of the book lie in its exceptional writing, the evidence supplied to support hypotheses and conclusions, and the interesting topics of discussion. Kirch offers good explanations for Hawaiian words and the Hawaiian language glossary is easy to find and use at the end of the book. . . . Kirch delightfully conveys a sense of what it is like to be an archaeologist working in the Hawaiian Islands. He portrays the daily tasks and difficulties often encountered by archaeologists, especially in hot and arid leeward areas such as Kahikinui. Readers learn about the many conceptual tools archaeologists use to interpret what they find on and below the ground and analyze inside specialist laboratories.
Like his recent work, A shark going inland is my chief (2012), [Kua‘āina Kahiko] is intended to open up to the public what he has previously published in the scholarly literature and to paint a picture of what it was like to do archaeology on Maui; by these measures it is a definitive success. . . . While not intended as a book about ethics, this is nonetheless the story of an academic archaeologist’s efforts to be, in Hawaiian terms, pono (righteous, proper), at a time when to be an archaeologist in some circles was to be a social pariah. For undergraduate students, this is a lesson in archaeological ethics in practice that should be read alongside the literature on clashes over archaeology in Hawai‘i, as well as the growing role of community-driven archaeology.'
One of the great strengths of Kua‘āina Kahiko is its accessible, almost conversational style, while at the same time presenting a great deal of scholarly content and little-known facts about Hawaiian archaeology. The reader shares in the excitement as Kirch enthusiastically described his discovery of a pānānā, or notched wall used for navigational purposes, a site type never before documented in the archaeological literature. . . . The quality of the storytelling served to virtually transport me from my stuffy office to Kirch’s world of adventure and discovery. To a fellow archaeologist of Hawai‘i, the sheer volume of research undertaken and presented in this volume is extremely impressive.
Kirch’s special relationship with the kama‘āina, or residents of the land, as well as his anecdotal prose, should make his book appeal to a general readership while still being instructive to specialists in Hawaiian archaeology, history, and the natural sciences. . . . The strengths of the book lie in its exceptional writing, the evidence supplied to support hypotheses and conclusions, and the interesting topics of discussion. . . . Kirch delightfully conveys a sense of what it is like to be an archaeologist working in the Hawaiian Islands. . . . This book presents the professional journey of one of Hawaiian archaeology’s most renowned scholars. Full of scientific information and cultural investigation, the large data sets are neither overwhelming nor too technical for the general reader. Anecdotes sprinkled throughout the book lighten the mood whenever the science becomes too serious. From cover to cover, the information here should be useful for all archaeologists working in Hawai‘i and anyone interested in archaeology or Hawaiiana in general.
Prologue
In the Land of La‘amaikahiki
I have a great fondness for ‘Ulupalakua, that sleepy settlement of darkgreen paniolo houses nestled among eucalyptus groves astride the southeastern rift of Haleakalā. I celebrated my sixteenth birthday there in the summer of 1966, in Captain Makee’s old ranch house, while helping a Bishop Museum team map ancient house sites on the windy slopes of Kahikinui. Makee was a nineteenth-century Scots captain who found refuge from the sea on ‘Ulupalakua’s fertile slopes, overlooking Kaho‘olawe and her tiny sister island, Molokini. ‘Ulupalakua has always been a place of rest. In ancient times weary travelers coming from Hāna on the far side of East Maui stopped here for the night, as did those arriving from the sheltered landing down at Mākena Bay. ‘Ulupalakua translates “breadfruit ripened on the back.” The story is told of the traveler from Hāna who had walked for days on foot, following ancient stone-lined trails through Kīpahulu, Kaupō, and Kahikinui, to finally arrive at this place and discover that his load of breadfruit picked in Hāna had ripened literally on his back.
‘Ulupalakua is the gateway to a kua‘āina that hugs the vast southern flank of Haleakalā, whose majestic summit looms 3,055 meters above the ocean. Kua‘āina, “back of the land,” is what Hawaiians call the backcountry. Even in ancient times, kua‘āina were underdeveloped relative to the more populated areas. These were the marginal, less fertile lands, lacking in lush taro patches and productive fishponds. However, the word kua‘āina refers not just to these backcountry lands, but equally to the people who lived on them. Nā kua‘āina were the inhabitants of the backcountry, the backwoods folks. These people were largely maka‘āinana, commoners, although certainly some chiefs (ali‘i) and priests (kāhuna) lived among them, to govern the people and attend to their religious needs. Nā kua‘āina were at times looked down upon by the chiefs and people who lived in the royal centers and favored lands, who saw the former as “rustic” or unschooled in social etiquette. Yet nā kua‘āina possessed remarkable knowledge and skills, for they and their ancestors had learned how to make a living in the leeward drylands.
Nā kua‘āina made a living by dryland farming of sweet potato and taro. In the twentieth century, the kua‘āina regions became refuges for those clinging to the old traditions, to a simpler way of life. Native Hawaiian scholar Davianna Pōmaika‘i McGregor, who has worked with the people who still inhabit these regions, calls them “cultural kīpuka.” A kīpuka is a patch of older terrain surrounded by more recent lava flows; her metaphor is very apt. Even today, oldtimers on Maui refer to this part of the island as “Backside.”
The kua‘āina of southeastern Maui, of Kahikinui and Kaupō, is among the last great spaces of Hawai‘i to have resisted the onslaught of “development” that overtook the islands over the past century. The last survivors of the original Native Hawaiian population of Kahikinui abandoned their lands at the end of the nineteenth century, no longer able to fend off the encroaching herds of cattle that trampled their sweet potato fields. The stone walls of their house sites, the platforms of their ancient temples, are long overgrown with exotic lantana and pānini cactus. In Kaupō district, to the east of Kahikinui, a few families remained, mostly earning a living as paniolo, cowboys. But even cattle ranching was marginal in this ‘āina malo‘o, this arid land. The late-nineteenth- and earlytwentieth-century economic booms of sugarcane and pineapple plantations bypassed Kahikinui and Kaupō entirely. When the tourism industry began to sweep through Hawai‘i after statehood in 1959, resort developers shunned this backcountry. There are no white sand beaches, like those at Ka‘anapali or Kīhei, to draw the throngs of tourists from Los Angeles and Tokyo. While those areas of Maui sprouted high-rise hotels, golf courses, and time-share condominiums, Kahikinui and Kaupō remained unchanged, a true kua‘āina land.
The kua‘āina, or backside, of southeastern Maui begins as one leaves ‘Ulupalakua. Beyond this little community the highway narrows to a two-lane track, winding around the cinder cone of Pu‘u Māhoe. As you turn eastward and leave behind the verdant pastures of ‘Ulupalakua, the wind hits you squarely in the face. Reddish-brown and black ‘a‘ā lava flows are offset by the dark green of tough native ‘a‘ali‘i and ‘ākia shrubs. Jagged lava extends to the horizon. You pass through Kanaio, the most easterly ahupua‘a of Honua‘ula district. Ahead lies the land of Kahikinui, “Great Tahiti,” named in the distant past by Polynesian voyagers from the ancestral homeland of Tahiti.
Maui—the greatest of all Polynesian demigods—gave his name to the second largest of the Hawaiian Islands. Maui is renowned across much of the Polynesian world for his supernatural feats. He raised the islands from the bottomless deep with his magic fishhook. But his heroic deeds did not end there. Maui stole the secret of making fire from the ‘alae mud hens, so that humans could cook their food. On the island that was named for him, Maui climbed to the In the Land of La‘amaikahiki 3 summit of the looming mountain, Haleakalā (House of the Sun), to snare the solar disc with his net, slowing its passage through the sky. Maui’s grandmother Hina now had enough time in the day to dry her strips of bark cloth.
We will never know what particular view of the Hawaiian Islands greeted the intrepid crew of Polynesian seafaring explorers who, in their weatherbeaten double-hulled canoe, first arrived from one of the archipelagoes of southern Polynesia. It could have been the towering peaks of snowcapped Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa on Hawai‘i that first caught the navigator’s sharp eye, bringing great relief after a month or more at sea. Or it may have been the crest of Haleakalā, rising above the clouds that so often shroud the rain forests clinging to her mid-elevations. Certainly, one of those early voyaging expeditions spied the slopes of Maui from the spray-splashed deck, noting the unmistakable resemblance between this island with its twin volcanic mountains (Haleakalā and the West Maui peak of Pu‘u Kukui) and the great island of Tahiti. Indeed, it is probable that these voyagers either came from, or had visited, Tahiti, the largest island in central-eastern Polynesia. Like Maui, Tahiti is comprised of twin volcanoes. The much larger Tahiti Nui (“Great Tahiti”) rises to 2,241 meters in Mount Orohena, while the smaller Tahiti Iti (“Little Tahiti”) tops off at 1,306 meters above the ocean. Comparing maps of Tahiti and Maui side by side, one is struck by the overall resemblance in shape between these two islands, although the relative positions of the larger and smaller volcanoes are reversed from west to east (see map 1).
Kahikinui—perhaps we should spell it Kahiki Nui to make the point more clearly—is a direct transferral of the Polynesian place name Tahiti Nui, the ancient Polynesian t sound having been replaced by k in the written language set down by the Protestant missionaries in the 1820s. When they first glimpsed the profile of Maui after many long days at sea, approaching from the south, the Polynesian crew must have proclaimed the higher and more massive volcano to be “Tahiti Nui,” Great Tahiti. Polynesians often bestowed the names of islands already famed in ancestral traditions upon newly discovered islands. It was thus that the big island of Hawai‘i took the name of the ancient homeland, Hawaiki, and that the southeastern flank of Haleakalā became Kahikinui.
Despite this evocative link between Tahiti and Maui, there is surprisingly little in the Hawaiian traditions, the mo‘olelo, about the ancient land of Kahikinui. Kahikinui was always a kua‘āina, of little interest to the chiefs or their genealogists and bards who passed on the mo‘olelo from generation to generation. Nonetheless, a few references to Kahikinui can be gleaned from the traditions. One comes from the writings of Samuel Mānaiakalani Kamakau, the nineteenth-century scholar whose corpus is among the most important of the Hawaiian sages’. In “The Coming of the Gods,” Kamakau relates the following:
According to the mo‘olelo of Kāne and Kanaloa [two of the great gods of ancient Hawai‘i], they were perhaps the first who kept gods (‘o laua paha na kahu akua mua) to come to Hawai‘i nei, and because of their mana they were called gods. Kaho‘olawe was first named Kanaloa for his having first come there by way of Ke-ala-i-kahiki [the road to Tahiti]. From Kaho‘olawe the two went to Kahikinui, Maui, where they opened up the fishpond of Kanaloa at Lua-la‘i-lua, and from there the water of Kou at Kaupō.
This fragment of traditional lore suggests that at least one of the first voyages from Kahiki arrived off Maui from the south, by way of Kaho‘olawe. Perhaps that landfall took place on the coast at Luala‘ilua, where there stands a remarkable monument from the period of long-distance voyaging, the pānānā at Hanamauloa (which I describe in chapter 7). Kahikinui also figures in the saga of La‘amaikahiki, son of the famous voyaging chief Mo‘ikeha, who sailed to Tahiti and back around the fourteenth century A.D. When he was an old man, Mo‘ikeha sent another son, Kila, to Tahiti to fetch La‘amaikahiki, whom he had left there as an infant. After spending some time with his father on Kaua‘i Island, La‘amaikahiki sailed to O‘ahu and then to Maui. In the pages of Fornander’s Collection of Hawaiian Antiquities, published in 1916 by the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, we find the mo‘olelo of Mo‘ikeha, and the following passage:
Laamaikahiki lived in Kauai for a time, when he moved over to Kahikinui in Maui. This place was named in honor of Laamaikahiki. As the place was too windy, Laamaikahiki left it and sailed for the west coast of the island of Kahoolawe, where he lived until he finally left for Tahiti. It is said that because Laamaikahiki lived on Kahoolawe, and set sail from that island, was the reason why the ocean to the west of Kahoolawe is called “the road to Tahiti.”
Anyone who has been pummeled by the incessant winds sweeping across the lava flows of Kahikinui will immediately smile at the words “the place was too windy”! La‘amaikahiki did not remain, returning to Tahiti, but his name will be forever linked to Kahikinui, Great Tahiti.
But mostly the mo‘olelo are silent regarding Kahikinui. This vast, windswept, mostly vacant land guards her secrets closely. Yet the land has many stories to tell of the once populous maka‘āinana who made their livelihood farming sweet potatoes and dryland taro among the undulating lava slopes: stories of their placing pieces of branch coral on the altars of upland temples, beseeching Lono to deliver the life-giving kona rains, ensuring the continuity of their society over more than four centuries; stories of fishermen who braved the whitecapped waters of the ‘Alenuihāhā Channel to fish for aku and ‘ahi, or to lower their lūhe‘e rigs to hook octopus off the inshore banks; stories, also, of the arrival of the haole, with his new ways, his new religions, and his devastating hordes of cattle. Within a century of European intrusion into Hawaiian waters, Kahikinui would become an abandoned landscape, her stories and traditions all but forgotten.
Some say that the stories of Kahikinui are still carried on the wind. At times, walking the ruined curbstone-lined ala nui trail in Kīpapa, I have imagined that in the wind swirling around me I have caught a brief fragment of a mele. Was it the ‘uhane, the spirits of the place, calling out to me? The Reverend Kawika Ka‘alakea once told me that the ‘uhane “whistle” to you out in the wilds of Kahikinui. “Ignore them,” he said, “and just go about your work.” I have always remembered his advice, knowing that my work was nothing less than trying to recover the history that has been lost to us; lost, yet perhaps still recoverable in the sedimented traces of ruined house foundations, temple platforms, and agricultural terraces. The voices of nā kua‘āina may be faint—mere whistling on the wind—but their works have left indelible marks from one end of Kahikinui to the other (see fig. 1).
In 1848, King Kamehameha III agreed to a division of the lands of his kingdom between the principal high chiefs, the government, and himself. As a part of this Mahele, most of Kahikinui district was given to Prince Lot Kamehameha (later King Kamehameha V). The prince was not thrilled with this arrangement. Soon he arranged for the Privy Council to exchange the barren lava lands of Kahikinui for more desirable parcels elsewhere. Thus Kahikinui came under the control of the fledgling Hawaiian government. A few years later the government leased out the undesirable district to a Portuguese cattle rancher named Manuel Pico (or Paiko). Pico’s herds overran the gardens of nā kua‘āina in the late nineteenth century, making their traditional farming way of life impossible.
In 1921, after Queen Lili‘uokalani was deposed by a rabid mob of proAmerican businessmen and Hawai‘i had been annexed as a territory of the United States, Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalaniana‘ole Pi‘ikoi sought a means to put his Hawaiian people back on the ‘āina, the land, that they so cherished. Kūhiō was the territorial representative to the U.S. Congress; at his urging an act was passed creating the Hawaiian Home Lands. The idea was based on the homesteading concept, which had helped to build the American West. Make lands Figure 1. The vast scale of Kahikinui district, encompassing the southern slope of majestic Haleakalā, is evident in this panorama. 6 Prologue In the Land of La‘amaikahiki 7 available to the Hawaiians, to farm or to ranch, and they would leave the urban ghettos of O‘ahu and return to a more wholesome lifestyle. That was Kūhiō’s dream. Most of Kahikinui, some 89 square kilometers (22,000 acres), became a part of the Hawaiian Home Lands. (Auwahi on the west and Wai‘ōpai on the east, both originally part of Kahikinui moku, were excluded for reasons explained in chapters 15 and 17.)
But Kūhiō’s dream was only partly realized. The new Territorial Department of Hawaiian Home Lands had limited funds. Most of the lands it managed were marginal for agriculture. In order to generate income needed to build houses for indigent Hawaiians and to support its administrative costs, the department leased the lands of Kahikinui for cattle ranching, just as the Hawaiian Kingdom had leased the district to Pico. From 1921 through the late 1980s, Kahikinui was leased to a succession of ranchers. But with water scarce, Kahikinui’s arid lava could support only limited numbers of cattle. By 1990 the lease was up again; it was not clear that anyone was willing to pay even the relatively low lease rent demanded by the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands.
In the late 1980s, other winds were blowing across the islands, winds of political unrest, of Hawaiian sovereignty. For the first time, the state of Hawai‘i had a Native Hawaiian governor, John Waihe‘e. Politically and culturally repressed for generations, Native Hawaiians were finding a new voice, demanding a stronger say in the control of their destiny. On January 17, 1993, the hundredth anniversary of the overthrow of Queen Lili‘uokalani, thousands descended upon ‘Iolani Palace in Honolulu, demanding the recognition of Native Hawaiian rights. Across the state, grassroots political movements sprang up, insisting that ancient rights of access and gathering be respected, that trails long closed be opened, that the entire island of Kaho‘olawe be returned to the Hawaiian people. In this heady political climate, the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands’ call for bids to renew cattle ranching at Kahikinui raised some Hawaiian eyebrows. These were Hawaiian lands, part of Prince Kūhiō’s legacy. Yet they had never seen a single Native Hawaiian homesteader. A few Native Hawaiians on Maui decided it was time to act.
In August 1993, I pulled my rental Jeep up next to Pardee Erdman’s office at ‘Ulupalakua Ranch. My wife, Thérèse, and I were on Maui to document major archaeological sites of the islands. A photographer, Thérèse was taking images of the sites with her Hasselblad camera, while I made notes to be used in writing my text. Our plan was to produce a guidebook to sites that were accessible to the public, while also contributing an overview of ancient Hawaiian history and archaeology. We had already visited several heiau and petroglyph sites on West Maui and were now headed for Hāna. Naturally, I wanted to go there via the kua‘āina of Kahikinui.
In 1966, while I was a student at Honolulu’s Punahou School, I had spent the summer months volunteering with a team of archaeologists from the Bishop Museum. Kenneth Emory, the guru of Hawaiian archaeology, had assigned us the task of mapping ancient house sites and heiau in Kahikinui, which—thanks to its complete lack of development—preserved an entire ancient Hawaiian landscape. Our team leader was Peter Chapman, scion of a haole kama‘āina family. Chapman planned to use the Kahikinui data for his doctoral research at Stanford University. He knew Pardee Erdman, who had acquired ‘Ulupalakua Ranch from the missionary-descended Baldwin family. Erdman graciously provided a rustic paniolo cottage as lodgings for our field team. Each day we drove over the then unpaved dirt road from ‘Ulupalakua out to Kahikinui to map, record, and photograph the seemingly endless ruins.
Now, twenty-six years later, as a professor of archaeology and anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, I was back at ‘Ulupalakua, eager to show Thérèse the lands I had walked over as a teenager so many years before. But first I wanted to stop and see Erdman. Pard, as he is known, glanced up as I knocked at his open office door.
“Pard, it’s Pat Kirch. You may not remember me, but I was with Peter Chapman back in 1966 when we did the archaeological study of Kahikinui.”
“I certainly do remember.” Erdman’s six-foot-plus frame rose from behind his big wooden desk. “What brings you back to ‘Ulupalakua, Pat?” I explained our photography project, telling Erdman that we were headed out to Kahikinui, on our way to Hāna, where we would spend the night.
“Some things have been going on out there in Kahikinui lately,” Erdman said dryly, adding that ‘Ulupalakua Ranch had not held the lease on that land for almost two decades. He had decided not to renew it because ranching there was too marginal.
“What kind of things?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“Well, you’ll see. Some Hawaiians have taken over the old church ruins at St. Ynez. They set up a camp. Hawaiian Homes sent officers to evict them, but they’ve come back again and again. They’re part of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement.”
After passing a few more pleasantries—Erdman has never in my experience been a man of long conversations, although like most ranchers he is frank and generous to a fault—we said good-bye and I got back in our Jeep. “This should be interesting,” I told Thérèse. “I wonder what’s up out there in Kahikinui.”
We bounced along in the rented Wrangler, through the lands of Kanaio, passing the reddish-orange cinder cone of Pu‘u Pīmoe. Rust-colored Kaho‘olawe Island was now in my rearview mirror. Ahead I could see the double cinder cones of Luala‘ilua, a major landmark on this otherwise endless slope of lava flows. The modern boundary of Kahikinui lies just before Luala‘ilua; once we rounded those hills we would be in the heart of the ancient district.
I pulled the Jeep off the road at the pit crater in Luala‘ilua to show Thérèse the little lava rockshelter I had helped excavate in 1966. Memories came flooding back—of digging in the dusty sediment of the cave, finding the outline of a stonelined hearth that had once kept a family of Hawaiians warm in the chill of a Kahikinui evening; memories of sifting the sooty earth up on the lava roof of the cave in the blasting wind, dust clogging my nostrils as I searched for scraps of bone and shellfish that would tell us about the life of those ancient people; memories of finding an exquisitely carved little bone fishhook in my sifting screen.
As we stood on the pāhoehoe lava next to the cave, the relentless wind in our faces, I gazed eastward over the vast landscape. About 2 miles away on a far ridge, I could see some kind of structure. There had been no house or anything on that barren landscape back in 1966. The structure seemed to be situated on the promontory called Pu‘u Ani‘ani. We had mapped that ridge in 1966, discovering the ruins of a little Catholic church called St. Ynez. A Kahikinui man named Simeon Kaoao—having been converted to the Catholic faith by the famous Native Hawaiian catechist Helio Kaiwiloa—built the church, a chapel really, with walls of basalt rocks bound together with coral-lime mortar. The wooden upper structure and roof had long since rotted away, but we had explored the ruined walls in the underbrush, recording them on our map.
Thérèse and I drove the short distance from Luala‘ilua to Pu‘u Ani‘ani and the ruins of St. Ynez. I parked the Jeep next to a newly built fence. To my amazement, the lantana and koa haole that had so thoroughly masked these ruins years before had been cleared away, exposing the walls plastered with lime mortar. Someone had planted shrubs of green kī, a sacred plant in Polynesia, on both sides of the chapel entrance. A sloping plywood roof, supported by wooden posts reinforced with two-by-fours, had been skillfully constructed over the ruin, without compromising the historical integrity of the old church. Protected from the wind and rain by this covering, people could congregate once again within the sheltering walls of St. Ynez. A sign hung from the roof, proclaiming “Ka ‘Ohana o Kahikinui,” the Family of Kahikinui. But what most caught my attention were the twin flagpoles flanking the ruin. The pole on the left flew the flag of the Hawaiian Kingdom. On the right-hand pole the United Nations’ banner fluttered in the wind. Both flags were flying upside down—the universal signal for distress. The message was unmistakable. The Hawaiian people—Ka Lāhui Hawai‘i—were in distress.
Kawaipi‘ilani Paikai was a founding member of Ka ‘Ohana o Kahikinui. Her generous frame was graced with long dark hair flowing over her shoulders and back. A flower-print pā‘ū was gracefully wrapped around her torso, leaving her shoulders bare. To Paikai, the rental Jeep with the haole couple that had just pulled up must have seemed just one more in a succession of curious tourists on their way to Hāna. Not that many tourists came this way, most preferring to stay in the comfort of Ka‘anapali or Wailea. But some rental vehicles passed along each day; a few inquisitive tourists would stop to ask about the flags flying upside down. Paikai was accustomed to giving a short speech, explaining the injustices to the Hawaiian nation over the years, how the Hawaiians were seeking to regain their land, about the new sovereignty movement. She was patiently prepared to give her explanation to this latest pair of haole tourists.
Paikai invited us into the shade offered by the new plywood roof. We listened as she told us about the overthrow of the kingdom, about how the Hawaiian people had suffered so many indignities. She went on to talk about how Prince Kūhiō had established the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, how the lands of Kahikinui were intended to be given over to Hawaiians but instead had been leased for decades to Portuguese and haole cattlemen. I nodded in agreement. Perhaps she thought this pair of haoles to be unusually sympathetic.
Gesturing with her arm to the vast slopes above us, Paikai said, “You know, thousands and thousands of Hawaiians once dwelled on these lands. Their house sites and their heiau covered this countryside.”
“I know,” I replied. “I have a detailed archaeological map that shows about five hundred and fifty of those ancient sites.”
Paikai’s eyes fixed on me. For a few seconds she didn’t say anything. Then she asked, “Who are you?” I was obviously not the typical haole tourist.
I explained that I was a kama‘āina who had been born and raised on O‘ahu; that I was now a professor of archaeology at Berkeley. I told her about that longago summer in 1966, when I had spent months mapping out ancient stone walls, terraces, and platforms right here in Kahikinui, on the very lands that she and Ka ‘Ohana o Kahikinui wanted to claim. I explained how Peter Chapman had never completed his report on the project, how after his death his widow, Betsy, had turned over to me his field notes and maps. For many years, I explained, it had been my intention to finish the work we had begun in 1966. In the back of my mind, a little voice was telling me that time was coming fast.
“We need to have your map,” Paikai told me. “It will help us in our struggle to get the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands to recognize our claims to this ‘āina. They think we are a bunch of uppity kanakas. After we cleared off this old church, they sent the police to kick us out, but we just kept coming back. We don’t want them to lease the ‘āina to the ranchers again. The last guy who had the lease busted up the water pipeline and let his cattle die of thirst. We will take care of the land, mālama ka ‘āina, much better than the ranchers. But the bureaucrats in Honolulu don’t want to give us a chance. They say Hawaiians can’t live on this kua‘āina. Your map can prove that Hawaiians did live on this land, thousands of them.”
The afternoon was wearing on. Thérèse and I still had several hours to go before we would get to Hāna. I told Kawaipi‘ilani Paikai that I would not forget her request to help Ka ‘Ohana o Kahikinui with my map of the ancient sites. The three of us walked together around the pu‘u on which the ruins of St. Ynez sit, built upon the foundations of an even more ancient heiau. Paikai chanted an oli for us. In the distance, a rainbow was forming out of the mist descending from Kaupō Gap, arching out over the point of Ka Lae o ka ‘Ilio, Cape of the Dog (see fig. 2).
Figure 2. Kawaipi‘ilani Paikai and the author in front of the ruin of St. Ynez Church in 1993. The Hawaiian and United Nations flags fly upside down, symbols of distress. (Photo by Thérèse Babineau)
I had a sense that this would not be the last rainbow that I would gaze upon from Pu‘u Ani‘ani. Little did I then realize, however, that I was about to embark on a research adventure that would last more than seventeen years. It is that adventure that I recount in this book, along with the new insights we have gained into ancient Hawaiian life and culture. But this is not just a story about the past, the rediscovery of ancient lifeways in the kua‘āina of southeast Maui. It is also a story of cultural revival, about how a small group of people, passionate about their culture and heritage, won their rights to their Hawaiian lands. To have been witness to that struggle, and to have played even a very minor role in it, has made my research in the kua‘āina of Kahikinui ever so richer.
