PU'UKOHOLA HEIAU NHS • KALOKO-HONOKOHAU NHP • PU'UHONUA O HONAUNAU NHP A Cultural History of Three Traditional Hawaiian Sites on the West Coast of Hawai'i Island

CHAPTER IX:
PU'UHONUA O HONAUNAU NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK (continued)

F. Description of Resources: South Keokea (continued)

     e) Houses and Furnishings

House lots were usually completely enclosed by stone walls. By means of a large stone on either side of the wall, access to the interior of the lot was gained by stepping up and over the low wall; sometimes gates were used. House yards contained both decorative and economic plants. Specific areas, sometimes walled, were designated for garbage collection. Washing took place in the sea or on the house lanai. The presence of several house platforms in the lots today suggest they were occasionally rebuilt. Three types of houses stood on the platforms — the old-style grass house with thatch sides either all the way to the floor or down to a low stone wall that formed the lower portion of the walls; more modern lumber houses with a tin roof, either built on the platform or over a cellar, as at the Ahu site; and a "transitional" house type that had thatch walls and a tin roof over either lumber or log framing.

Evidently the building of traditional grass houses in the village ended in the early 1900s. Some informants stated that by 1900, houses mauka of the trail were of pili, while those makai were of lumber and one was grass with a tin roof. Frame houses had an A-shaped roofline with tin roofs that shed water into a pipe or gutter leading into a cistern, barrel, or other type of water storage facility. The "better" houses had glass windows, no curtains, and wood floors. Others just had pebbled pavement floors covered with grass and mats. Lumber and nails were store-bought. Both the lumber and grass houses contained only one large room with door space (no doors) with no windows or with windows permanently open, shuttered, or glassed. The typical grass house mauka of the trail was about twenty-two feet square with a door at least thirty inches high, thatched with pili over peeled ohi'a log purlins. The one "transition" house mentioned had pili sides and a tin roof and was constructed on a level house platform about three feet high.

Houses had few furnishings other than mats, although some had rough-sawn lumber tables or benches. Kukui nuts or kerosene lanterns supplied light. Valuable possessions were stored in calabashes and hung in a corner near the roofline. Other storage items consisted of carved wooden containers and gourds. Fishing equipment, a valuable subsistence-gathering item, was carefully stored in special containers. Two other essential items were a poi board and stone pounder. The former was stored in the house or just outside in the yard leaning against a wall; the stone was hung in a net in a corner of the house. [237]

     f) Water Supply

Ki'ilae Stream, which passed through Keokea next to the Ki'ilae boundary, only accumulated enough water to run during periods of very heavy, constant rainfall. The well mentioned earlier, wai ku'i o Kekela, south of the village, provided brackish water used in washing and cooking. The well was divided by a stone wall into two sections, one side for drinking, the other for washing and bathing. Later, when a platform was constructed to hold pump machinery, the stone wall was removed. Two sources of fresh water were the cistern at the Ahu house and water carried down from mauka. Mauka water was brought to the beach in five-gallon kerosene tins, fitted two to a side into a pack frame laid over a donkey. The lumber houses with tin roofs usually had a catchment arrangement of barrels that could supplement the mauka supply. The Ahus filled their cistern with water from the roof or water transported from mauka on donkeys. Water in wells and cisterns was raised by means of a rope with pail attached. The first pump used was the one the McCandless Ranch installed at the Kekela well. Water from Honaunau was brought in gourds and calabashes and sometimes glass bottles. [238]

     g) Economy

Fishing, usually from a canoe, provided the main source of livelihood for Ki'ilae villagers. At the top of the Alahaka ramp, as mentioned, was a ku'ula (stone god) for attracting opelu. Wires strung between trees and bushes enabled the drying of nets, which were also spread on the rocks when wet. After fishing, the canoes were brought ashore and stored above high tide lines. At Ki'ilae they were carried nearly to the top of the cliff if the weather appeared very stormy. As mentioned, canoe landings were available in three places — at the north side of Ki'ilae Bay at Alaihi Cove, and on the south side at Halakahi Point and Popa'a Cove. Halakahi Point also had a depression back of the landing in which fish could be piled before drying on the adjacent rocks.

Offshore fishing for opelu was a major source of income; they were sold fresh door to door or dried and sold to stores. Other fish caught were ahi and squid. Some of the older men participated in shore fishing only, one gentlemen fishing Halakahi Point with a koa wood spear with metal point. Bamboo poles and lines were also used, and some diving was done. Other food came from the kula (uplands) and kalo (taro) gardens, to which frequent trips were made to tend the fields and bring products home. These upslope fields above the Government Road received a steady supply of rain and provided sweet potatoes, yams, pumpkins, and squash, as well as sugarcane, papaya, and bananas. Higher up were the dryland taro fields that were harvested, with large quantities of this product brought back in gunny sacks by donkey. Money from selling fresh fish went for the purchase of necessary store articles, such as fishline and hooks, garden tools, cotton fabric, blankets, kerosene lanterns and fuel, lumber, and tin, all transported by donkey. Sometimes dishes were bought, as well as utensils, supplemental food supplies such as rice and flour, and tobacco. The small general stores often had a Chinese or Japanese owner. "Plantation" stores also enjoyed some of the local trade. [239]

Illustration 201. View north of Ki'ilae Village site. NPS photo, 1989.

Illustration 202. Salt pan at Ki'ilae Village. NPS photo, 1989.

     h) Livestock and Other Animals

Most families at Ki'ilae used a donkey to carry goods; they were not used for personal transportation. One informant stated that none were kept at Ki'ilae village, although they were found at Honaunau and Kealia settlements. Another area resident remembered donkeys being kept at the beach tethered along the trail mauka, where food was carried to them. A few families had horses for riding. There are no references to keeping goats for either meat or milk, although ranchers used mules to round up wild goats for their hides, which were sold in Honolulu. There are no references either to keeping cows for milk. Pigs, which evidently ran wild and foraged, were found near the beach and also farther inland. According to one informant, the walls around the houses served to keep out pigs. Only a few chickens were kept. Most families had pet dogs. [240]

     i) Food Preparation

Meals for the Ki'ilae villagers consisted mainly of sea resources, a few vegetables, sometimes meat or fowl, and store-bought items. Fish was eaten fresh or dried. Fresh beef was rare, although fresh and dried goat and dried donkey meat were common. Infrequently pig was eaten, but evidently little fowl was utilized. Food items were eaten either raw, raw but dried or salted, boiled in a pot with water, or cooked directly on the fire, on a hot rock, or on a grill arrangement. Vegetables were cooked in an imu or by roasting in a fire. Also cooked in the imu were taro, squash, bananas, sweet potatoes, and ulu. Papaya and other fruits were eaten fresh. As mentioned, taro was harvested in large quantities to last a family a week. Other vegetables were harvested as needed. Starchy store-bought foods supplemented the taro and ulu poi. Condiments included seaweed, roast kukui nuts, honey from wild hives, and salt, the latter being obtained from salt cups along the beach. Cooking facilities included a simple, open rock fireplace, possibly with a grill; hot stones; the imu; and for more acculturated families, kerosene and wood-burning iron stoves. [241]

     j) Society and Culture

Ki'ilae Village, in the later period, at least, constituted primarily a loosely interrelated group of people who lived in the same area and owed some sort of obligation to the landowner, Lucy Peabody, or her agent, Henriques. It was not actually a social or political unit. Just what the landowner-tenant arrangement involved is unclear. The tenants appear to have had little association with government officials other than schoolteachers (an 1895 map shows a school site in Ki'ilae Village). With a general lack of enforcement of rules and regulations, only the church exerted some influence. The first South Kona Protestant mission station had begun eight miles north of Ki'ilae Village at Ka'awaloa, on the north shore of Kealakekua Bay; it later moved to the south shore at Napo'opo'o. Another station started in 1834 at Kealia, two miles south of Ki'ilae Village, but its isolated lifestyle precluded a resident missionary. The nearest churches were at Puka'ana, near Ho'okena; Ho'okena Catholic Church; Napo'opo'o and Honaunau Protestant churches; and the Mormon church at Kealia. Games and recreational sports were minimal, but included races into the water at Halakahi Point, baseball, marbles, and some playing of the ukulele. Medical aid consisted of home remedies and neighborhood specialists. Mortuary practices included cave and ground burials with the bodies wrapped in mats. The Ahu yard contains a vault burial. In regard to working patterns, most family groups seemed to work independently of others, each member doing his share. Fish hauling might involve larger groups. [242]

     k) Decline of Village

By the first decade of the twentieth century, the population of Ki'ilae Village was definitely in decline. The improved belt road around the island, which provided access to trade centers, effectively isolated the shoreline settlements, causing much of their population to move inland nearer to the road and the kula garden areas. They returned to the shore and their traditional beach lands occasionally, but only to visit or fish. Those who stayed concerned themselves primarily with fishing, farming remaining only a minimal activity, and were more concerned with retaining the old way of life than changing to the new cash economy. One woman born in the village in 1913 remembered that the only residents then were members of her immediate family, seven individuals of three generations. [243] However, although resources still existed in the sea and farming could still take place upland, the Western economic system almost required a money making job. The last family left Ki'ilae Village by the 1930s. The last frame house in the village, built by the Ahu family, and later moved into by the Kahikinas, was dismantled and rebuilt near Honaunau Bay, where it stands today. The grass houses simply disintegrated, leaving only stone platforms and other surface indications of individual house lots and improvements. [244]