they could only distinguish a small, unidentifiable brownish speck where I had been excavating. I could hear the responding buzz of excitement and anticipation from the onlookers, but before resuming the process of exposing more of the cranium, I allowed myself a moment to appreciate that I would soon be the first person since his death and burial on this sandy knoll in 1818 to look upon the facial structure of Henry ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia. From the scant part already exposed, I realized that we would recover his intact skeleton, bequeathing his repatriation to his awaiting Hawaiian family. I remember thinking to myself, “Henry will return home.” Also aware that the attending crowd stood clueless as to what had been discovered, I turned my head over my right shoulder, looked up and gave identification to the emerging speck: “He’s here!”
The Hawai‘i ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia longed to see once more rose from the depths of the Pacific Ocean thirty million years ago when vents on the ocean’s floor developed a crack or hot spot through which poured molten lava from the earth’s mantle. For tens of millions of years, subterranean liquid rock slowly seeped and spurted, gradually accumulating layer upon layer, until eventually emerging from the sea. Beginning from the northwest end of the rupture, small islands, beginning with Kure, reached the surface of the ocean. This continuous volcanic process created the five largest islands: Kaua‘i, O‘ahu, Moloka‘i, Maui, and Hawai‘i (The Big Island) to the far southeast. The outgrowth is a series of 122 forming islands along a chain spreading out for almost 2,000 miles.6 That is the western scientific explanation. Contrarily, Native Hawaiian tradition relates that the islands were born like humans, conceived by their parents Papahānaumoku, who gave birth to the archipelago with her partner, Wākea, the sky father.7 Together, they genealogically connect the Hawaiian people to their beautiful islands, perceived as relatives, giving rise to the powerful Hawaiian love of their land (aloha āina).8
These nascent islands with their barren topography would welcome hundreds of species of plants and animals that somehow found their way through wind and water. Lichen and moss grew as factors of wind and rain pulverized the lava into bits of soil. Birds came feeding on fish, depositing their digestive waste containing seeds, which germinated and grew. Insects, blown by jet streams, found the cooled lava their home. Coral and mollusk larvae as well as seaweed surfed the bounding waves from other Pacific islands reaching Hawai‘i and setting their roots along shallow inlets. Storm swept seeds, drifting logs, and branches of wood found their way.9 Within this emergent island ecology, life adapted and developed untouched by human hands until the first Polynesians ventured forth.10
Hawai‘i’s founding Polynesians sailed in large, double-hulled canoes, some seventy to eighty feet in length, lashed together affording a platform that carried sixty or more people, as well as water, household goods, animals including pigs, dogs, and chickens, and vegetables and fruits such as bananas, taro, and coconut.11 Their seafaring crafts were floating communes, probably the swiftest ships in the world 1,000 years ago. So intrepid and warlike were the Polynesians that they have been referred to as the “Vikings of the Pacific.”12 How their flotillas ranged the great expanses of the Pacific Ocean, at least 2,000 miles from the Cook Islands and Tahiti where they had presumably journeyed from, when they had no knowledge of the lands before them, is a wonder of human history. By the time they approached Hawai‘i, they had already inhabited almost 290 far-reaching islands, spatially the widest spread cultural population in the world.13
Whether these valiant voyagers came through single or multiple migrations also remains unknown. Undoubtedly in their voyage(s) they were confronted with massive storms, exposure to wind, rain, along with the harsh effects of salt water and sun. They had to take into account the doldrums, an equatorial regional phenomenon where the trade winds converge and flow upward instead of horizontal, leaving them becalmed in a windless sea, straining their self-propelled rowing energy as well as food and water supplies. Even so they persisted. Faith in their ancestors and gods, along with their vast knowledge of oceanic and island worlds, they travelled great distances without the use of navigational instruments. Rather, they closely observed the sun, nightly stars, patterns of waves, cloud formations, and the behavior of dolphins and birds to direct them to new islands. They had to be fearless and faithful and courageous.
Survival of these intrepid Polynesians depended on all family members, ‘ohana, working closely together, developing strong bonds and dedication to each other. Most likely driven to inhabit new islands by population pressures, limitations to environmental resources, and cultural tension, Polynesians, astride their “village” canoes, eventually attained the northern apex of the Pacific Triangle.14
Upon Polynesian arrival, Hawai‘i contained no carnivorous mammals or snakes; rather, they found flightless birds with no natural predators to defend against. Fish, coral, and underwater plants abounded off shore; onshore, flowers bloomed. But other than the fish in the water and birds in the sky, there was little for humans to digest. The plants and animals they brought with them would have to bear fruit and offspring to secure their long-term survival. Serene as this Eden-like world might appear, it had immense dangers: volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes—all of which could strike unexpectedly and suddenly.
To deal with these calamitous events, the southern Polynesians brought to the northern islands concepts of their many deities, who needed to be appeased through rituals and behavioral taboos maintained by the chiefly ali‘i class, who were supported by a social system based on genealogical rank, to ensure balance and harmony in their unpredictable world. Travelling with them were Kāne, the Creator; Pele, the goddess of fire and volcanoes; Nāmakaokaha‘i, the goddess of the sea; Lono, the benevolent god of fertility; and Kūkā‘ilimoku (Kū), the fierce god of war. The island’s formation was one of fire and water (Pele and Nāmakaokaha‘i), providing cogent dichotomies of form: liquid and solid, seaweed and plants, fish and birds that enhanced their worldview.15 These gods (akua) were spiritual, powerful, and dangerous—considered physical ancestors who partook in the ocean voyages and brought social stability to the newly-founded islands. The akua provided life, but could just as easily cause death. They were both feared and loved by the Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians), hence worthy of worship.16
Deities, as all things animate and inanimate, contained mana, a powerful and vital life force. Mana could be obtained by humans through genealogical descent, through the killing and sacrifice of an enemy, as well as peacefully through personal relationships and altruistic accomplishments.17 So sacred and powerful was mana that laws and restrictions, kapu, had to be instilled to maintain order, or evil and disaster could attach itself to the people. To maintain balance and harmony, the sacred kapu system provided a set of behavioral do’s and don’ts. Akin to the Tahitian tabu, kapu encompassed many prohibitions, such as fishing out of season, walking on a chief’s shadow, and the exclusion of men and women from eating together. If broken, violators could be put to death to protect the whole world; exoneration could only come from a kahuna or the reaching of a pu‘uhonua, a place of refuge.18
Polynesian chiefdoms represented a level of political complexity based on concepts of hereditary inequality19 with the chief representing a formal office within a ranked society including commoners and a servant class. As their populations grew, competition for limited productive farmland and other natural resources lead chiefly families to obtain, usually by force, suitable agricultural territories to which they would hold title. The common people (maka‘āinana) would receive rights to farm the chief’s land, sanctioning the chief’s authority over natural resources, wealth, and regulation of labor. The ali‘i nui (high chiefs) maintained social control by making judgments, resolving disputes, and punishing wrong doers as well as enforcing and creating kapu. While the chief’s word was law with the power of life and death over commoners and servants, these social relationships benefited all the Kanaka Maoli by maintaining harmony and equilibrium within their world.
Since ancient Hawaiian society was an oral rather than a written culture,
