Kahuna chronicles: an archaeologist traces a sacred Hawaiian valley from myth to modern times

Natural History, Oct, 2005 by Joseph Kennedy

The Waimea River flows westward into the Pacific, on the northwest coast of the island of O'ahu. About 900 years ago, according to Hawaiian lore, a chief named Kamapua'a (the breath mark is pronounced as a glottal stop) recognized the rugged valley formed by the river and its tributaries as a special, spiritual place and awarded its oversight to high priests of the Pa'ao lineage. The priests, members of one of the ancient Hawaiian ruling classes, were known as kahuna, and the elite members of this group were known as kahuna nui, or "big kahunas"--a label that (stripped of its respectful meaning) has found its way into colloquial English. Among the religious structures they erected in and around the valley was Pu'u o Mahuka. Situated on a cliff overlooking the valley, it was O'ahu's largest heiau, or temple. The valley was also witness to human sacrifice, the darkest element of the indigenous religion.

For forty generations Waimea Valley and its sacred precincts stood as one of Hawai'i's principal cathedrals. Yet little more than a century after 1778, the year of the first European contact, the native Hawaiians were all but swept from the valley. Much of that pre-contact past now lies buried along with its former residents, whose bones rest in caves on the valley sides. The reconstruction of that past has fallen to historians and archaeologists. As an archaeologist who has reviewed what is already known about the valley, I think its grounds offer tremendous potential for revealing details about past lives.

There are just a few tidbits of ancient lore about the importance of the valley, recorded during the early contact period. One tale about Waimea Valley is set in the bay at the mouth of the river. It seems a man named Kane'aukai transformed himself into a stone the size of a human head and a log the size of a body. Local fishermen pulled his two parts from the sea and reunited them within a shrine, ensuring ever afterward that fish would be locally plentiful. The stone and the log are long gone, but the shrine, made of rocks and recently reconstructed, still stands on the shoreline.

When O'ahu was first visited by Westerners, the kahuna nui in charge of Waimea Valley was Ka'opulupulu. According to several later historical accounts, Ka'opulupulu built temples in the valley in the late 1700s and used some of them for psychic communication with people on the island of Kaua'i. He believed that thoughts were like little gods that flew above the earth as freely as soaring birds. Although archaeology certainly cannot verify such psychic events, preliminary radiocarbon dating of the sites attributed to Ka'opulupulu appears to confirm the time frame.

The first Western ships to anchor off O'ahu, in Waimea Bay, were Discovery and Resolution, commanded by captains Clerke and King, shipmates of the English explorer James Cook. They were on their way to Kaua'i, following Cook's murder on the Big Island of Hawai'i in February 1779. King commented that the setting "was as beautiful as any Island we have seen, and appear'd very well Cultivated and Popular." Clerke wrote in his journal:

On landing I was reciev'd with every token of respect and friendship by a great number of the Natives who were collected upon the occasion; they every one of them prostrated themselves around me which is the first mark of respect at these Isles.

The Englishmen had Hawaiian women on board, brought from the Big Island. At Waimea the women danced a hula, which the sailors found quite lascivious. From the deck of the Discovery, William Ellis, the ship's surgeon's second mate, painted an idyllic watercolor of the valley.

Westerners' next visit to Waimea, thirteen years later, proved to be a far less idyllic encounter. Richard Hergest, a former midshipman on the Resolution, was in command of his own vessel, the supply ship Daedalus. Recalling the warm reception and sweet water he had earlier received, Hergest anchored in the bay on May 7, 1792. In spite of warnings from two Hawaiians on board that "evil people" resided in Waimea Valley and that there were no chiefs present, Hergest set off with the astronomer William Gooch, a sailor named Franklin, and a Portuguese hand named Manuel.

After reaching shore, Franklin and Manuel busied themselves with the water casks while Gooch and Hergest wandered inland. Suddenly, men armed with spears, daggers, and rocks came running down from the valley's left flank. The men were not ordinary villagers, but the wild and fearsome-looking warriors called pahupu. Each man had one side of his body tattooed black from head to toe.

Manuel was killed first, his mangled body left on the beach. Franklin managed to break away and escape in the boat. The last he saw of Hergest and Gooch, they were being mobbed, stoned, and stabbed. Years later a native historian, recounting how the two men met their end, reported that the natives said, "They cry, indeed--they are men perhaps,--we thought them gods, their eyes were so bright."

In 1795 Kamehameha the Great, chief of the Big Island, also brought Maui and O'ahu under his dominion, thereby unifying three of the major Hawaiian islands. As king, with thousands of square miles at his disposal, Kamehameha recognized the importance of Waimea Valley and awarded it to his top spiritual adviser, Hewahewa, the last of the Pa'ao line destined to serve as the kahuna nui.