KE HOʻI NEI KA POʻE MAI KAHIKI: THE ARRIVAL FROM KAHIKI

In his account of the generations who came to Hawaiʻi from foreign lands, Abraham Fornander, made a special note of several ancestors who arrived in Waihe`e.  He notes, however, the difficulty in placing these arrivals from the distant past in their proper chronological order.  As he writes, the legends include names lost to time, such as Kalananuʻaunuikuamamao, Humu and Kamaunuaniho, all of whom came from Kahiki, or foreign lands.  Fornander notes that these individuals landed at Kahahawai, a location usually described as a surf break in Waiheʻe (by both John Papa Iʻi and Samuel Kamakau), but in this case referring to a location on the land.  Although it`s exact location remains unclear, there are only a few spots where a large canoe arriving from foreign lands could safely pass through the reef onto the sandy beach, while avoiding the rocky coastline. 

While the date of the arrival of the first people on Waiheʻe’s shores remains unclear, several archaeologists who have conducted research there have noted that it must have been soon after the first people arrived from southern Polynesia.  Waiheʻe, especially along the coast, provided everything that the early Hawaiian community could have needed.  The streams (as noted above these include Kalepa and Waiheʻe streams) provided both water, and the means to cultivate the food staples that early group of voyagers brought with them, such as ʻulu, maiʻa, kō, and kalo, among several others, including medicinal plants such as noni (Morinda citrifolia), plants for making strong rope such as niu and hau (Hibiscus tiliaceous), and animals such as puaʻa, ʻilio, moa, and most destructively ʻiole, or rats..  Perhaps as important as the presence of water, the shelter provided by the fringing reef, combined with the channels to access the deep, pelagic waters, including, perhaps, one named Kahahawai, as noted above, made Waiheʻe a very appealing place for settlement.  This reef, also provided marine resources, including fish, octopus and edible shells that provided for a rich, thriving and abundant community, whose resources were clustered close to the location people chose to live.  Simply said, the coastal area of Waiheʻe had everything. 

This recognition was not lost on a group of archaeologists who came to Maui from the Bishop Museum in July and August of 1966, although they allotted only one day to surveying coastal Waiheʻe and Waiehu.  Using information provided by Winslow Walker`s report on Maui`s heiau from the early 1930s, the team surveyed the coastal lands of both ahupuaʻa, focusing most intensely on the shoreline area, which revealed extensive areas of midden (remnants of past refuse, especially in the form of shells, bone and other remnant food items).  As noted above, the productivity of the reef enriched this area, as most of the midden noted in the report originally came from the coastal waters nearby. 

On the 4th of August, the team selected two sites to conduct a test excavation, giving them reference site numbers M21 and M22.  The first site, M21, was located several hundred meters east of the Waiheʻe Dairy site, in what was then described as an Ironwood grove.  It is very likely that this location corresponds to what locals today refer to as “Roundtable.”  Excavation work took lace approximately 30 meters (~90 feet) from the shoreline, at a height of approximately 6 meters (~18 feet) above sea level.  The team dug a trench approximately 180 cm (~5 feet 10 inches) in length, to a depth of 80 cm (~2 feet 7 inches).  The data extracted from this one test pit proved immensely insightful.  Artifacts associated with tool manufacture made up the majority of the lithic (stone) assemblage, while they also recovered a bone `jabbing hook` from the trench.  Other finds included bones of dogs or pigs (and perhaps both), crustacean remnants (most likely lobster) and a species of wana (urchin) known as Centrichinus paucipinum.

While the team did recover marine shells presumably consumed at this site, the abundance of fish bone, which usually makes up the minority component of midden content compared to quantities of marine and freshwater shells, proved most surprising both for its diversity and quantity.  The excavation at site M21 revealed four species of fish in abundant quantities, including two typically caught in deeper waters, including a Percoid (the family including such fish as ʻaweoweo and ʻulua, Snappers and Jacks, respectively), and hapuʻu (Hawaiian Grouper, or Epinepharus quernus).  In addition to these two, the most abundant species represented at this site consisted of the Scarus, or ʻuhu (Parrotfish).  A final species of fish, presumably less abundant than the others, proved unidentifiable. 

Two observations about this early site (whose age became apparent twenty years later when a subsequent group of archaeologists tested some of the material they recovered) are worthy of noting.  The first lies in the fact that these fish came from both shallow, nearshore waters and the deeper, pelagic waters offshore.  The technology and skills at Waiheʻe at this time permitted the population to harvest resources from areas that required a significant amount of skill both in fishing and navigating an often dangerous series of reef channels.  The second observation comes from the relative abundance of marine resources available to the community living in Waiheʻe at this time.  To put it simply, Waiheʻe was, at this time, an ʻāina momona, a land of abundance and richness that provided plentifully to those who lived here. 

After finishing their work at this first site, the team moved down the coast, to the west, and began a test excavation immediately in front of the Waiheʻe Dairy, and approximately 21 m (~69 feet) inland.  The team excavated two test pits and came back with similar results, namely an abundance of fish bones, crustaceans (again, presumably lobster), wana (echinoderms) and numerous marine shells.  The primary difference at this site came from the fact that the main species of fish found in this test pit consisted of Laenihi (Iniistius pavo, a type of Hinalea).  A second test dug a short distance away to the west turned up a rotating fishhook which seems to confirm Waiheʻe’s importance in Maui`s history of early human habitation.  This style of fishhook, derives in its conceptual construction from Southern Polynesia, and the Marquesas Islands in particular.  While the material used to construct this particular fishhook probably came from Hawaiian sources, the conceptual design, what anthropologists sometimes call the `cultural kit` a group of people bring with them as they move from one place to another, derives from Southern Polynesia, and points to the fact that the original people who inhabited Waiheʻe, in all likelihood, had chronologically recent roots in the ancestral homeland of Kahiki (Tahiti proper, but also quite likely the Marquesas Islands as well), and more importantly, Hawaiki.  The next installment will discuss the phases of Hawaiian history after the arrival of the first people to Waiheʻe and Hawaiʻi, mai hawaiki mai a mai kahiki mai, from Hawaiki and Kahiki.  

— Dr. Scott Fisher

Read the previous installations to Ka Moʻolelo o Waiheʻe:

Na Mea ʻĀweʻaweʻa i ka ʻĀina: Faint Traces on the Land Published February 13, 2020

Ka Moʻolelo o Waiheʻe: A Lost Landscape Published August 14, 2019

Ka Moʻolelo o Waiheʻe: Ke Kumu ka Aina Published April 23, 2019