PU'UKOHOLA HEIAU NHS • KALOKO-HONOKOHAU NHP • PU'UHONUA O HONAUNAU NHP A Cultural History of Three Traditional Hawaiian Sites on the West Coast of Hawai'i Island

CHAPTER I:
BEFORE THE WRITTEN RECORD (continued)

E. Major Aspects of Traditional Hawaiian Culture

The previous sections have provided the reader with an overview of the origins of the colonizers of the Hawaiian Islands, the type of environment the original inhabitants encountered, and some idea of the major trends in the development of Hawaiian society during specific cultural sequences. Pu'ukohola Heiau National Historic Site and Kaloko-Honokohau and Pu'uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Parks contain a vast number of resources representing the evolution of Hawaiian settlement patterns and house types; fishing and agricultural activities; social, political, religious, economic, and land use systems; and recreational and artistic pursuits. These resources include habitation, recreational, and religious sites; items of material culture, such as tools, utensils, and artwork; roads and trails; and structures associated with agriculture, husbandry, and fishing, including shrines, windbreaks, fences, and animal pens. In order to better understand the contexts within which these remains attain their significance, it is necessary to describe in more detail some of the developments in Hawaiian culture up to the time of European contact.

1. Social Organization

     a) Stratification

During the period from about A.D. 1400 to European contact, Hawaiian society underwent a systematic transformation from its ancestral Polynesian descent-group system to a state-like society. The stratification that came to characterize Hawaiian society — consisting of a highly cultivated upper class with territorial control supported by a substructure of an underprivileged lower class — was somewhat reminiscent of ancient Mediterranean and Asian civilizations as well as of medieval Europe, and indeed has been referred to as feudal in nature.

The ali'i attained high social rank in several ways: by heredity, by appointment to political office, by marriage, or by right of conquest. The first was determined at birth, the others by the outcomes of war and political intrigue. At the time of European contact in 1778, Hawaiian society comprised four levels: the ali'i, the ruling class of chiefs and nobles (kings, high chiefs, low chiefs) considered to be of divine origin; the kahuna, the priests and master craftsmen (experts in medicine, religion, technology, natural resource management, and similar areas), who ranked near the top of the social scale; the maka'ainana, those who lived on the land, the commoners — primarily laborers, cultivators, fishermen, house and canoe builders, bird catchers who collected feathers for capes, cloaks, and helmets, and the like; and the kauwa, social outcasts! "untouchables" — possibly lawbreakers or war captives, who were considered "unclean" or kapu, that is, ritually polluting to aristocrats. Their position was hereditary, and they were attached to "masters" in some sort of servitude status. [35]

     b) Rights and Duties of Each Class

Earlier it was stated that the ali'i are thought to have arrived in the Hawaiian Islands after initial colonization had occurred. According to E.S. Craighill Handy, the origin and cultural heritage of the ali'i, who had earlier invaded and conquered aboriginal populations in central Polynesia, distinguished them from the older Hawaiian population. Historically and socially different, they maintained the purity of their blood and the integrity of their cultural heritage through barriers of kapu that isolated them from the lower echelons. [36] Varying degrees of sanctity existed among the ali'i, the highest kapu belonging to an ali'i born to an ali'i of supreme rank and his full sister. In his/her presence, commoners prostrated themselves. The Hawaiian Islands are the only place in Polynesia where this type of extreme inbreeding was sanctioned, although only among the chiefly class, and the only place where the prostration kapu (kapu moe) was imposed.

Recognized degrees of superior sacredness demanded special deference. All nobles of lesser rank had to observe prescribed forms of obeisance to those of the several sacred ranks and avoid their persons and personal property. Death resulted from failure to observe the proper form of homage. Lesser nobles occupied degrees of rank that were significant in connection with marriage and offspring but not in relation to the entire community. The mass of the people, the maka'ainana, probably descended from the aboriginal Hawaiian population. They performed many duties for their social superiors, producing food, supplying items for clothing and home furnishings, and laboring on community projects such as roads, water courses, taro patches, fortifications, and temples. [37]

A division existed not only between classes but also between the duties of commoner men and women. While men engaged in farming, deep sea fishing, manufacturing tools and weapons, building houses, and conducting religious rituals, women raised the children, helped in some agricultural tasks and in-shore fishing, collected wild foods, and made barkcloth, mats, and baskets.

     c) Role of the Kapu System

The Hawaiian concept of the universe embodied the interrelationship of the gods, man, and nature. The former, although the ultimate controlling influence in this system, granted their direct descendants — the nobility — secular control over the land, the sea, and their resources:

The aristocracy fiefed these resources to commoners, and commoners allowed the pariah to attach themselves to their households in domestic servitude. In return, pariah served commoner directly with his labor; commoner exploited the resources and delivered tribute to the aristocracy; the aristocracy served the gods with lavish religious observances in their honor; the gods communicated their satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, through the forces of nature and by influencing the outcomes of human affairs. [38]

Power and prestige, and thus class divisions, were defined in terms of mana. Although the gods were the full embodiment of this sacredness, the nobility possessed it to a high degree because of their close genealogical ties to those deities. The priests ratified this relationship by conducting ceremonies of propitiation and dedication on behalf of the chiefs, which also provided ideological security for the commoners who believed the gods were the power behind natural forces. Commoners possessed little mana and were therefore prohibited from entering any of the holy places where nobles and gods communicated, such as the heiau in which the aristocrats honored their gods. Pariah, with no mana, could interact with commoners but not approach aristocrats.

Mana was the central concept underlying the elaborate kapu system of Hawai'i, the major social control perpetuating rigid class distinctions and conserving natural resources. [39] As Handy states:

It is evident that kapu determined and regulated the three castes. For the ali'i, the kapu of sanctity was at once a wall of protection and the source of prestige and authority. The same kapu determined for the commoners their social and economic relationship to, and their reverential attitude towards their overlords. As for the kauwa, their segregation and exclusion from the social organism was due to a kapu of defilement. [40]