Pana Oahu: Sacred Stones, Sacred Land

Kona

Kona Some of J. Gilbert McAllister’s Hawaiian informants for the Kona District. Makea and grandchildren bottom row; Napahi and Hugo K (?) top row (Maunalua). Opposite: Makea and Napahi (Maunalua). Punahoa (Wai‘alae). kona 5 nly six ahupua‘a (land divisions) formed the pre-Mähele Kona District: Moanalua, Kahauiki , Kalihi, Kapälama, Honolulu, and Waikïkï. The largest ahupua‘a, Waikïkï, stretched approximately from Makiki to Maunalua.74 All of these ahupua ‘a were endowed with a comfortable climate, abundant rain, flowing streams, pools, springs, well-watered lowlands, fine harbors, lagoons, and attractive beaches. Most of the year, favorable trade winds swept into Kona over the Ko‘olau Range at the heads of deep valleys: Moanalua, Kalihi, Nu‘uanu , Mänoa, Pälolo, Wailupe, Niu, and Kuli‘ou‘ou. Several battles in Kona affected the course of Hawaiian history. The seventeenth-century ali‘i nui Küali‘i, who resided in Kailua, traveled over the Pali to assert control over the Kona District by performing a certain rite at Kawaluna Heiau in upper Nu‘uanu. He then defeated the Kona ali‘i in a great battle that was said to have reddened the pili grass of the plain of Keanaokamanö below Kawaluna.75 In the following century, the Maui ali‘i nui Kahekili defeated his hänai (foster) son Kahahana near Kaheiki Heiau in 1783. At that spot, the waters of the nearby stream were said to have been dammed with corpses and the waters to have run red with blood. This battle—and the subsequent defeat of O‘ahu chiefs in a series of battles extending intermittently over a period of time from Niuhelewai in Kapälama to Käwïwï in Wai‘anae—marked the end of the sovereignty of O‘ahu, for it led to the extinction of most of the island’s ancient lines of ali‘i, wiped out by Kahekili in purges to consolidate his rule: “Men, women and children were massacred, until the streams of Makaho and Niuhelewai in Kona and of Kahoa‘ai in ‘Ewa were choked with the bodies of the dead, and their waters became bitter to the taste, as eyewitnesses say, from the brains that turned the water bitter. All the O‘ahu chiefs were killed and the chiefesses tortured.” Kamakau further comments on Kahekili’s vengeance: “On O‘ahu he had even roasted tabu chiefs in the imu. His cruelty to chiefs and people on O‘ahu is notorious.”76 One of the Maui chiefs, Kälaikoa, built a house he called Kauwalua (or Kaualua) at Lapakea in Moanalua. The house was made of the bones of the slain O‘ahu warriors—ali‘i or kähuna—perhaps intended as an insult and warning of the futility of further resistance. The site of the house was remembered and pointed out as late as 1880, long after the structure had disappeared and the bones had been buried.77 The battle of Nu‘uanu in 1795 was the final, decisive event in the transition of Hawai‘i from autonomous island-states to unified kingdom. After a bloody victory over Kalaniküpule (the son of Kahekili), Kamehameha colonized O‘ahu with thousands of chiefs, lesser chiefs, and maka‘äinana from Hawai‘i, settling them around the island to pacify the local population and to reward loyal service. Contrary to traditional practice, he awarded lands in discontiguous segments to prevent rival power bases from forming under strong chiefs. His own farms in the Kona District at Nu‘uanu, Pu‘upueo (directly below Tantalus), Pua‘ali‘ili‘i in Waikïkï (between the the Moana and Royal Hawaiian Hotels), Kapälama , and Keone‘ula (near Kaumakapili Church) became his private residence places.78 Under the traditional pattern of land management, ali‘i ‘ai moku ruled each district under the ruler of the island, the ali‘i nui. Employing a highly efficient managerial system, they gave large areas in valleys and lowlands to their own subchiefs . These in turn, through their konohiki (land managers), supervised the maka‘äinana, who worked the land in extended family communities. This traditional system, weakened in the late eighteenth century by wars and disease, was modified by Kamehameha throughout O‘ahu and on the other islands. Favored chiefs, mostly from Hawai‘i Island, ruled each of O the O‘ahu districts under the governor of the island. Having consolidated his power, Kamehameha turned...