Kauai History and Easter Island Ahu
The Easter Island statues were not carved by slaves or workers under duress, but by master craftsmen, highly honored for their skills. There are at least 360 ahu on the island, the largest of which are up to 200 feet long and 23 feet high. They are consistently constructed with a raised platform made of fitted stones and rubble, a ramp that is often paved with beach cobbles, and a leveled court in front. Image ahu (ones with statues) had from one to 15 statues standing on each platform. Statues were placed to look over a ceremonial area and village, with their backs to the sea.
The exact number of moai on Rapa Nui is unknown because many lie buried in piles of rubble or beneath the soil at the quarry, but estimates are from 800 to 1,000. Moai are found in nearly all localities around the island, with a greater number in proximity to the main quarry on the south coast. Practically all the statues were carved from this volcanic cone. The crater where they were fashioned is an extraordinary site filled with incomplete statues in all stages of carving. Great hollows in the cliffs mark places from which statues have been removed. More than 230 others were moved to various locations around the island and erected on platforms. Some lie broken and abandoned where they fell during transport, making Easter Island one of the world’s great archaeological sites.
Kauai History and Easter Island
At about the same time of the arrival of the earliest settlers to Kauai around 200-300 AD, Polynesians were voyaging from the Marquesas Islands in an easterly direction and discovering Easter Island. Easter Island is also one of the most remote islands on Earth, with the coast of Chile lying 2,300 miles to the east, Tahiti 2,500 miles to the northwest, and the nearest island is tiny Pitcairn island, 1,400 miles to the west. But, the people of the Pacific were intimately tied to the ocean and they fully embraced it.
Like the voyagers who landed on Kauai, the hardy Polynesians who found Easter Island (Rapa Nui) came prepared to stay. They brought tools and food, and plants and animals to begin a new life. But the island they found was not a typical Polynesian paradise. It was out of the tropics, and did not have rivers or protective reefs, but it had a small forest of large trees, craters which would hold drinking water, obsidian for making tools, as well as easily worked volcanic rock. Obsidian is a rock which is a type of naturally occurring glass produced when volcanic lava cools rapidly and freezes without sufficient time for crystal growth. Many of the ‘black sand’ beaches you see today on Hawaii are examples of obsidian. Obsidian was also used in the construction of large stone statues (moai) which were similar to statues Polynesians made on the Marquesas Islands. The upright stone statues stood on a shrine (ahu) as representatives of sacred chiefs and gods.
Kauai History and Polynesian Migration
The particular genius of the Polynesians was the development of seafaring expertise, navigation skills, and canoe technology that enabled them to voyage back and forth among the islands of the Pacific. From their natural surroundings they assembled koa trees for hulls, coconut husks for lashings, and vegetable fibers for sails. Their motivation for the exploration was probably a universal one: the search for new lands for settlement and new resources for survival. With their expertise in fishing, farming, and Malama’aina (caring for the land) they were able to develop healthy, stable communities on islands with limited resources. These extended families, or ‘ohana, worked the land and sea and stayed on the new island until their canoe was filled with food and fish, and some could return the same way they came. (Imagine turning around and making the ocean voyage back.) The Polynesian migration to Hawaii was one of the most remarkable achievements of humanity: the discovery and settlement of remote, widely scattered islands in an ocean of over 10 million square miles. This migration began at a time when Europeans, with more resources at their disposal, were sailing close to the coastlines of continents. At a time before the Europeans developed navigational instruments that would allow them to venture out into the open ocean. At a time more than a thousand years before Captain Cook was born. At a time when migration involved finding and fixing in their mind the position of islands, sometimes less than a mile in diameter on which the highest landmark was a coconut tree. By the time European explorers entered the Pacific Ocean in the late 1700’s the Island of Kauai had been settled for hundreds of years. And the Hawaiian ‘Ohana was well established.
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Kauai History and Canoe Plants
While dates change with new archaeological discoveries, the general sequence for the settlement of Polynesia is…
Around 300 B.C. or earlier, seafarers from Samoa and Tonga discovered and settled the Marquesas, and Tahiti.
Around 200 A.D. or earlier, voyagers from central or eastern Polynesia discovered and settled Easter Island.
Around 200 A.D. or earlier, voyagers from the Cook Islands, Tahiti, and Marquesas settled Hawaii. (A distance of more than 2000 miles, give or take a few wayward miles in the Doldrums.)
The ethnobotanical evidence reflects this progression of settlement from the Western Pacific islands, through central Polynesia, and then to Hawaii. Experience had taught the Polynesian that very few edible plants grew on previously uninhabited islands, so they brought along a traveling garden. To Hawaii they brought about two dozen varieties of plants. Seeds, slips, cuttings, tubers and young plants were swathed in fresh water-moistened moss, then swaddled in dry ti-leaf, kapa (bark cloth), or skin from the banana tree. Finally, these bundles were put in lauhala (pandanus leaf) casings and hung from the roof of the canoe’s hut. Here they would best be protected from lethal salt water and spray. Some of their canoe plants included…
- Hau – wood for canoe outriggers, bark for cordage and kapa, flowers for medicine.
- Olona – fibers used for cordage.
- Kukui – (candlenut) – wood for canoes, nuts used for lighting and food and lei, roots for black dye.
- ‘Awa – (kava) – roots used as a beverage & ceremonial drink.
- Niu – (coconut) – nuts used for food, drink, and oil, fibers for cordage, leaves for thatch and baskets, wood for spears and house construction.
- Ki – (ti) – leaves for clothing, food wrappers, and thatch, roots baked for food and medicine.
- Noni – (indian mulberry) – used for medicine.
- Kalo – (taro) – roots and leaves a staple food.
- Ko – (sugarcane) – stem used for food and medicine.
- Mai’a – (banana) – fruits used for food, leaves for food preparation.
- Uhi – (yam) – tubers a food staple.
- Ipu – (gourd) – gourds used for containers and musical instruments.
- ‘Uala – (sweet potato) – tubers and leaves used for food.
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Kauai History and Ocean Voyage
For the beginning of the voyage there would have been a number of fresh food items – sweet potatoes, yams, taro, breadfruit, drinking coconuts, bananas, and sugar cane. The Polynesians preserved the rest of the meals needed for a long canoe voyage by drying or fermenting either raw or cooked food. Compact, light, nutritious and almost spoilage free, the voyagers’ diet would have consisted of fish and other marine organisms, bananas, sweet potatoes, yams, breadfruit, taro, pandanus, and other favorites. These were kept in bamboo sections, gourds, or coconut containers. The transportation of plants, as well as pigs, chickens, and dogs on voyaging canoes suggests that they planned to colonize, after discovering whatever it was they were going to discover.
A long voyage was a physical and mental challenge, particularly for the navigator. To navigate miles of open ocean without a compass or chart required an extensive and intimate knowledge of the ocean and sky. Polynesian navigators used the rising and setting points of celestial bodies for directions. At sunrise they would look at the character of the ocean and memorize where the wind was coming from. They would analyze the shape of the waves, and when the sun got too high, they would steer by the waves. When the sun went down they would look at the shape of the waves again. At night they used the stars. They knew about 150 by name, where they came up, where they went down, and they continued listening to what the ocean was telling them. Signs of approaching land included clouds piled up over islands; reflections from white sand or green water of a lagoon; distinctive patterns of ocean swells created around islands; the behavior of sea-life like dolphins; and seabirds such as the manu-o-Ku (fairy tern) and the noio (noddy tern), which go out to sea in the morning to feed on fish and return to land at night to rest. They go about 130 miles out in the morning and come back at night. Their wings flutter when these birds are fishing, but when the sun goes down, they will rise up from the water so it can see, and go straight back to land. The diurnal flights of such birds are the most useful signs since their flights to and from an island gives a fairly specific direction to the wayfinder.
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Kauai History and Ocean Canoe
But first, before the ocean voyage, they had to build the canoe. And before building the canoe, and before going up to the mountain forests to find the right tree, they needed to prepare a pig, a red fish, a black fish, and various other things as offerings to appease the forest deities. When these things were ready they would hope for dreams in their sleep. If they were blessed with good dreams they would go on an expedition up to the mountain forests to find a tree. When they arrived in the woods they sat and waited for the bird which is the guardian spirit of canoe makers to help them select the right tree. For several days they followed the bird from tree to tree, taking note of its actions and behavior, for they knew that if the bird perched on a tree and started pecking at the bark, the wood of that tree was not solid. If it perched and did not peck at a tree, the tree would be inspected and passed over because the trunk was short, or twisted, or too large in diameter, or growing where it could not be felled properly. When the bird finally perched on a beautiful, straight tree, they would dig an imu (underground oven) and start a fire with a chip from the chosen tree to cook the offerings. When all the offerings were cooked, and prayers were offered to the various canoe-building gods, they would eat some of the food, and throw some to the gods. When all these rituals were attended to, the tree was ready to be cut.
It would take one man almost a week to fell a tree. (Are we there yet?)
After felling came cutting off the tree top, hewing, hauling, curing, smoothing, painting, assembling, consecration, and launching, all performed with much attention paid to the numerous canoe gods. There was the god of canoe builders, and the god who steadies the canoe while being carried down steep slopes, and later the god who aides in righting and bailing of capsized canoes. The tool used for cutting was a stone adze, ground until sharp and lashed to a handle. These people knew nothing of metal tools. A strong, flexible cordage was made from twisted rolled coconuts fibers and used to lash canoe parts together to withstand the phenomenal stress of an ocean voyage. Coconut cordages proved quite durable and could not be damaged by the sun or the sea. In anticipation of voyaging long distances, two hulls would be lashed together with crossbeams and a deck added between the hulls to create a double canoe. They also added sails, or mats woven from coconut, pandanus, or hala leaves. Paddling was an auxiliary power used when there was no wind, and to launch or land canoes. The amount of food and water required to sustain energy for paddling what ended up being two thousand miles may have exceeded the carrying capacity of the canoe.
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