NĀ PAUKŪ O NĀ WĀ KAHIKO: THE PHASES OF HAWAIIAN HISTORY

The ancestral homeland of the Polynesian people, the place they identified as the place they came from, lies far to the south and west of the Hawaiian Islands, in a place known as Hawaiki.  Although it has taken many years of intensive research to discern the exact location of Hawaiki, through a combination of archaeological, ethnographic, and linguistic research, it seems that the location of this nearly-mythical homeland lies among the islands of Samoa, Tonga and Niue.  For reasons that remain somewhat unclear, in the late 8th century or early 9th century CE (Common Era) an exodus out of Hawaiki took place.  Archaeological records indicate that the islands we know now as the Cook Islands, the Society Islands (Tahiti and its surrounding islands) and the Marquesas, followed by an apparent second wave of dispersals (some of which came from the recently colonized islands) to such widely dispersed islands as Rapa Nui (later known as Easter Island), Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Hawaiʻi. 

Although the ancestors of the Hawaiian people came to the islands by way of Tahiti and the Marquesas, much of the evidence suggests this stay was brief.  The ancestral homeland, Hawaiki, remained the location where an early Hawaiian on Maui, and perhaps at Waihe`e, would have claimed as their honua `ewe, the land of the navel string, the place where one`s ancestors were born before her. Two answers were then appropriate to the question of one`s ancestral genealogy ‘mai hea `oe?’ ‘where are you from?’  The first was seemingly generic, ‘mai kahiki mai’ ‘we come from other lands.’  The more specific answer, however, reveals a common tie throughout the Pacific ‘mai Hawaiki mai,’ ‘we come from Hawaiki.’

Around 950 CE indisputable archaeological and palynological (pollen) evidence demonstrates that people had arrived in Hawai`i. This included datable evidence of such things as dog, pig, chicken and rat bones, charcoal in hearths and pollen from coconut found in sediment cores, among other plants known to have originated in deep Oceania and South East Asia, such as maiʻa (banana), kalo (taro) kukui (candlenut) and ʻulu (breadfruit), among about 33 other plants, as noted above.

A midden pile at Waihee, estimated to be from an imu more than 800 years old., contains remnants of meals past.

Some evidence seems to suggest that, while they probably had kalo, the earliest people relied more on banana than other crops, although the evidence for this remains quite thin.  At a fairly early date taro became the favored staple of the people of Hawaiʻi particularly those who lived along the windward coast and valleys where abundant rainfall and nutrient rich soils provided abundant food, and the ocean, as seen above in the Waiheʻe midden, provided a rich array of seafood.  In these earliest days the Hawaiian people could scarcely be distinguished from the people of their ancestral homeland.  For this reason, the fishhook described in the Bishop Museum archaeological report notes a type found in ancestral Polynesia, and most commonly seen in the Marquesas. 

Anthropologists and archaeologists generally describe this earliest phase of Hawaiian history as the ‘colonization phase.’  As its name suggests this time period signifies the arrival of the first humans in Hawaiʻi, and may have included a small population at Waiheʻe.  Other locations with evidence of early human activity dating to the colonization phase include Waimānalo on Oʻahu, Hālawa Valley on Molokaʻi, and a few other scattered locations.  Like Waiheʻe, the common pattern for settlement included abundant water, protection from the power of the ocean, either by a fringing reef or a valley, rich, easily harvestable marine resources and deep, productive soils where food crops could be planted. 

Some of the classic features of traditional Hawaiian society, such as extensive loʻi kalo (irrigated taro patches), loko iʻa (fishponds), ahupuaʻa land divisions, and high ranking chiefs were several centuries in the future.  This stands to reason as the populations in these early centuries, were extremely small, while the head of the family (probably called at that time Kainga, or some cognate of that word) operated as the working unit of society.  In addition to these major differences, however, smaller facets of traditional society had not yet emerged.  For example, the shape of koʻi (stone adze) differed substantially from its later adaptation.  Likewise, the bowling game, ʻulu maika, had not yet been invented.  Archaeology, a form of time travel based on investigation and extrapolation, provides one of the best insights into life in Hawaiʻi in these early days.  When combined with ethnographic research about specific individuals and their stories, students of ka wā kahiko, the ancient days, can piece together a compelling narrative of life in Hawaiʻi in the earliest days of our kupuna. 

The other periods of Hawaiian history, notably the development phase, when Hawaiian culture in its classical expression evolved into its recognizable form; the expansion phase, when a growing population moved into the more arid districts of the island upon the advent in Hawaiʻi of the ʻuala, or sweet potato, from southern Polynesia, and originally from South America; the rise of the powerful chiefs, which led to a period of intense warfare; and finally the Kingdom phase, when, the seven kings and one queen led Hawaiʻi through challenging and often treacherous times. All of these phases (with the obvious exception of the period of expansion) are represented in Waiheʻe. The narrative of subsequent chapters will build upon this framework, although one should understand the fluidity of these phases. There are relatively few sharp breaks in the development of Hawaiian history. Rather, in nearly every instance one phase gradually morphed into the next.

— Scott Fisher, PhD

Read the previous installations to Ka Moʻolelo o Waiheʻe:

Ke Hoʻi Nei Ka Poʻe Mai Kahiki: The Arrival From Kahiki Published September 14, 2020

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