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Geology and History, Natural and Human

First, the earth

According to the theory of plate tectonics, the earth consists of:

A rigid, rocky outer shell, the lithosphere (“rocky zone”)

Beneath the lithosphere, a hot, semifluid layer, the asthenosphere (“weak zone”)

A core that doesn’t play a part in this oversimplified discussion

The lithosphere is broken into plates that move with respect to one another. Hot, fluid material, possibly from the asthenosphere or melted by contact with the asthenosphere, penetrates up through the lithosphere at three kinds of places:

Mid-oceanic ridges, where plates spread apart

Subduction zones, where plates collide and one dives under the other (subducts)

Hot spots, where a plume of molten material appears in the middle of a plate.

Next, the land

It’s believed that the Hawaiian Islands exist where the Pacific Plate, on which they ride, is moving northwest across a hot spot. An undersea volcano is built at the place where the plate is over the hot spot. If the volcano gets big enough, it breaks the ocean’s surface to become an island. Eventually, the plate’s movement carries the island far enough away from the hot spot that volcanism ceases on that island. Erosion, which begins the moment the new island appears above the sea, tears the land down.

Deep valleys surrounded by steep cliffs are typical landforms sculpted by the erosion of Hawaiian volcanoes—here, windward Oahu.

The Hawaiian Islands are successively older toward the northwest and younger toward the southeast. Northwestern islands, like Necker, are hardly more than bits of volcanic rock now. Southeastern islands, including the major Hawaiian Islands, are still significant chunks of land. Kauai and Niihau are the oldest and the farthest northwest of the major islands. Oahu is younger, and Maui is younger yet. The Big Island of Hawaii is the youngest and the farthest southeast of the major islands.

The molten material—lava—characteristic of Hawaiian volcanoes is relatively fluid. The fluidity of the lava allows it to spread widely, and repeated eruptions produce broad-based, rounded volcanoes called shield volcanoes. The volcano expels not only flowing lava but volcanic fragments such as cinder and ash. Alternating layers of these materials build up during periods of volcanic activity.

Erosion has sculpted the exotic landscapes we associate with volcanic tropical islands. Waves pound the volcano’s edges, undercutting them and, where the volcano slopes more steeply, forming cliffs. The cliffs at the extreme west and east ends of Oahu are wave-cut cliffs. These wave-cut cliffs grade into the dramatic, fluted stream-cut cliffs (pali) and lush valleys. Streams take material from higher on the volcano, cutting valleys into its flanks and depositing the material they carry as alluvium. Alluvial deposits cover the floors of the stream-cut valleys. New episodes of volcanism wholly or partly fill in those landscapes, and erosional forces immediately begin sculpting the new surface as well as the remaining older surface.

Oahu is geologically an infant on an Earth more than 4 billion years old. Potassium-argon dating of rocks suggests that lava welled forth to build the Waianae volcano between 3 and 4 million years ago. After three major periods of activity, it finally became quiet about 2.5 million years ago. Since then, erosion has carried away most of it, leaving only a crescent-shaped piece of its east rim standing as the Waianae Range. The Koolau volcano burst forth between 2.6 and 1.8 million years ago, building its shield in a single major period of activity and building up the plateau between the two volcanoes. Now, erosion has worn away most of the volcano’s eastern rim, leaving its long west rim standing as the Koolau Range.

Then, about 1.1 million years ago, a period of secondary, cone-building eruptions began on southeast Oahu. By the time it ended some 31,000 years ago, it had left cones that are some of Oahu’s most famous landmarks: Diamond Head, Koko Head, Koko Crater, and Hanauma Bay, to name a few. Is it all over now? No one can be sure. There is circumstantial evidence that an undersea eruption may have occurred between Oahu and Kauai in 1956. In the meantime, however, erosion prevails on Oahu, changing the landscape constantly.

Life arrives

Living organisms colonize new land rapidly. In Hawaii, plants established themselves once there was a little soil for them. Seeds arrived on the air currents, or floated in on the sea, or hitched a ride on the feathers or in the guts of birds. Insects and spiders also took advantage of the air currents. Birds were certainly among the first visitors. Living things found little competition and quickly adapted to their new home, evolving into an astonishing variety of species many of which occur naturally only on the Hawaiian Islands (“endemic to Hawaii”). The only mammals to arrive were the bat and the seal. Some birds became flightless—a fairly common adaptation on isolated islands with no ground predators.

Cayenne vervain’s blue flowers are a common sight along Hawaiian trails.

Flourishing taro patch (Colocasia esculenta)

People arrive

It’s unlikely that the site of the very first human colony in the Hawaiian Islands will ever be found. Too much time has passed; too many destructive forces have been at work. However, recent archaeological work has established that people had settled in Hawaii by 300–400 A.D., earlier than had previously been thought. Linguistic studies and cultural artifacts recovered from sites of early colonization point to the Marquesas Islands as the colonizers’ home; the Marquesas themselves seem to have been colonized as early as 200 B.C.

The colonizers of Hawaii had to adapt the Marquesan technology to their new home. For example, the Marquesans made distinctive large, one-piece fishhooks from the large, strong pearl shells that abounded in Marquesan waters. There are no such large shells in Hawaiian waters, so the colonists developed two-piece fishhooks made of the weaker materials that were available in Hawaii (such as bone and wood). Over time, a uniquely Hawaiian material culture developed.

At one time, scholars believed that, as related in Hawaii’s oral traditions and genealogies, a later wave of colonizers from Tahiti swept in and conquered the earlier Hawaiians. Research does not support that theory. Instead, research has revealed that before European contact, Hawaiian material culture evolved steadily in patterns that suggest gradual and local, not abrupt and external, influences. The archaeological record hints that there may have been some Hawaiian-Tahitian contact in the 12th century, but its influence was slight.

The Hawaiians profoundly altered the environment of the islands. They had brought with them the plants they had found most useful in the Marquesas Islands: taro, ti, the trees from which they made a bark cloth (tapa or kapa), sugar cane, ginger, gourd plants, yams, bamboo, turmeric, arrowroot, and the breadfruit tree. They also brought the small pigs of Polynesia, dogs, jungle fowl, and, probably as stowaways, rats. They used slash-and-burn techniques to clear the native lowland forests for the crops they had brought. Habitat loss together with competition for food with and predation by the newly introduced animals wrought havoc with the native animals, particularly birds. Many species of birds had already become extinct long before Europeans arrived.

On the eve of the Europeans’ accidental stumbling across Hawaii, the major Hawaiian islands held substantial numbers of people of Polynesian descent. They had no written language, but their oral and musical traditions were ancient and rich. Their social system was highly stratified and very rigid. Commoners, or makaainana, lived in self-sufficient family groups and villages, farming and fishing for most necessities and trading for necessities they could not otherwise obtain. The land was divided among hereditary chiefs of the noble class (alii). Commoners paid part of their crops or catches as taxes to the chief who ruled the land-division they lived on; commoners served their chief as soldiers. Higher chiefs ruled over lower chiefs, receiving from them taxes and also commoners to serve as soldiers. People especially gifted in healing, divination, or important crafts served the populace in those capacities (for example, as priests). There was also a class of untouchables, the kauwa. Most people were at death what they had been at birth.

Strict laws defined what was forbidden, or kapu, and governed the conduct of kauwa toward everyone else, of commoners toward alii, of alii of a lower rank toward alii of higher rank, and of men and women toward each other. Some of the laws seem irrationally harsh. For example, a commoner could be put to death if his shadow fell on an alii.

Chiefs frequently made war on one another. If the chiefs of one island were united under a high chief or a king, often that island would make war on the other islands.

The Hawaiians worshipped many gods and goddesses. The principal ones were the gods Ku, Kane, Kanaloa, and Lono. Ku represented the male aspect of the natural world. Ku was also the god of war, and he demanded human sacrifice. Kane was the god of life, a benevolent god who was regarded as the Creator and the ancestor of all Hawaiians. Kanaloa ruled the dead and the dark aspects of life, and he was often linked with Kane in worship.

Lono was another benevolent god; he ruled clouds, rain, and harvests. The annual winter festival in Lono’s honor, Makahiki, ran from October to February. Makahiki was a time of harvest, celebration, fewer kapu, and sporting events. Images of Lono were carried around each island atop tall poles with crosspieces from which banners of white tapa flew. (Legend said Lono had sailed away from Hawaii long ago and would return in a floating heiau, or temple, decked with poles flying long white banners from their crosspieces.) Chiefs and chiefesses met the image of Lono with ceremonies and gifts, and commoners came forward to pay their taxes.

Systems like that can last for hundreds and even thousands of years in the absence of compelling internal problems or changes and of external forces, as the Hawaiian system did. But change eventually comes.

The Europeans arrive by accident

Christopher Columbus had sailed from Spain to what he thought was the Orient, hoping to find a sea route to replace the long, hazardous land route. But in fact he discovered an obstacle now called North America. With a direct sea route between Europe and the Orient blocked, people sought other sea routes. The southern routes around the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of Africa and Cape Horn at the tip of South America proved to be very long and very treacherous. Still, the trade was lucrative. The European demand for Oriental goods such as spices, Chinese porcelain, and silk was insatiable. By trading their way around the world, a captain, his crew, and the government or the tradesmen that financed them might become very wealthy in just one voyage.

All over Europe, people came to believe that a good, navigable route must exist in northern waters that would allow them to sail west from Europe around the northern end of North America to the Orient. (It doesn’t exist.) Captain James Cook sailed from England on July 12, 1776, to try to find the Northwest Passage from the Pacific side.

In December of 1777, Cook left Tahiti sailing northeast, not expecting to see land again until he reached North America. Instead, he sighted land on January 18, 1778, and reached the southeast shore of Kauai on January 19th. In Hawaii, it was the time of Makahiki, the festival honoring the god Lono. The Hawaiians mistook the masts and sails of Cook’s ships for the poles and tapa banners of the floating heiau on which Lono was to return and received Cook as if he were Lono.

Cook was an intelligent and compassionate man who respected the native societies he found and who tried to deal with their people fairly and decently. He tried to keep crewmen who he knew had venereal diseases from infecting the natives, but he failed. Cook did not stay long in Hawaii. He spent most of 1778 searching for the Northwest Passage; unsuccessful, he returned to Hawaii in early 1779 to make repairs and resupply. It was Makahiki again. All went well at first, but the Hawaiians stole an auxiliary boat from one of his ships. When he tried to retrieve it, there was a brief skirmish, in which Cook and four of his crew were killed.

Cook’s ships survived a second futile search for the Northwest Passage, after which the crew sailed westward for England, stopping in China. There the crew learned the astonishing value of another of the expedition’s great discoveries: the furs of the sea otters and seals of the Pacific Northwest. Trade with the Orient suddenly became even more profitable, and Hawaii was to become not an isolated curiosity but an important point on a major world trade route.

The Hawaiian chief Kamehameha began his conquest of the islands in 1790. Kamehameha actively sought Western allies, weapons, and advice; he conquered all the islands but Kauai and Niihau.

Kamehameha’s wars, Western diseases, and the sandalwood trade decimated the native Hawaiians. Chiefs indebted themselves to foreign merchants for weapons and other goods. New England merchants discovered that Hawaii had abundant sandalwood, for which the Chinese would pay huge prices. Merchants demanded payment from the chiefs in sandalwood; the chiefs ordered the commoners into the mountains to get the precious wood. The heartwood nearest the roots was the best part; the whole tree had to be destroyed to get it. The mountains were stripped of their sandalwood trees. Many of those ordered into the mountains died of exposure and starvation. Communities that had depended on their labor for food also starved.

Kamehameha I died in 1819, leaving the monarchy to his son Liholiho and a regency in Liholiho’s behalf to his favorite wife, Kaahumanu. Liholiho was an amiable, weak-willed alcoholic. Kaahumanu was strong-willed, intelligent, capable, and ambitious. She believed that the old Hawaiian kapu system was obsolete: No gods struck down the Westerners, who daily did things that were kapu for Hawaiians. Six months after Kamehameha I’s death, she persuaded Liholiho to join her in breaking several ancient kapu. The kapu system, having been discredited, crumbled; the old order was dead.

The missionaries arrive

Congregationalist missionaries from New England reached Hawaii in 1820; Liholiho grudgingly gave them a year’s trial. The end of the kapu system had left a religious vacuum into which the missionaries moved remarkably easily. To their credit, they came with a sincere desire to commit their lives to bettering those of the people of Hawaii. Liholiho’s mother converted to Christianity and made it acceptable for other alii to follow her example. Kaahumanu became a convert, too, and set about remodeling Hawaii socially and politically, based on the Ten Commandments.

An ecosystem passes

Cook and those who came after him gave cattle, goats, and large European pigs as gifts to the Hawaiian chiefs, and the animals overran the islands. They ate everything. Rainwater sluiced off the now-bare hillsides without replenishing the aquifers. Areas that had been blessed with an abundance of water suffered drought now. Native plants could not reestablish themselves because the unrestrained animals ate them as soon as they sent up a shoot. People wrongly concluded that native plants were inherently unable to reestablish themselves, and they imported non-native trees like the eucalyptuses and ironwoods that you see so often today.

The native habitat area and diversity shrank still more before the new sugar plantations. Planters drained wetlands for the commercially valuable crop and erected dams, ditches, and sluices to divert the natural water supply into a controllable water supply. What they did was not so very different from what the Polynesians had done when they had cleared the native lowland forests in order to plant their taro, but the scale was far vaster. In one particularly terrible mistake, growers imported the mongoose to prey on the rats that damaged their crops. But the rat forages at night, while the mongoose hunts by day: They seldom met. What the mongooses preyed on instead were the eggs of native ground-nesting birds.

Native beach naupaka (Scaevola sericea, foreground) and hala (Pandanus odoratissima, middle ground) arrived on ocean currents.

Be-still, a yellow-flowered, non-native oleander common in lowland Hawaii, is so-called because it’s poisonous: Eat any part of it, and you’ll be still forever.

Few of Hawaii’s native plants put forth showy flowers or set palatable fruit, so the new settlers imported ornamental and fruiting plants to brighten their gardens and tables. Many shrubs and trees did so well in Hawaii’s favorable climate that they escaped into the wild to become pest plants, crowding out native species and interrupting the food chain.

Birds brought over as pets escaped to compete with native species. More species of native birds have become extinct in Hawaii than anywhere else in the world, and most of the birds you see will be introduced species like the zebra dove and the myna.

It is tragic but true that when you visit Hawaii, you will probably see very few of its native plants and animals. But don’t give up: Your chances of seeing native plants and animals are better on the trail than elsewhere on Oahu!

A culture passes

Literacy replaced the rich Hawaiian oral tradition, and many legends and stories were forgotten before someone thought to write them down. The significance of many place names, apart from their literal meaning, has been lost forever. Zealous missionaries and converts believed that the native traditions were evil, and they nearly succeeded in eradicating all traces of the native culture.

A nation passes

Hawaiians saw that their only hope of surviving as an independent nation in the modern world was to secure the protection and guarantees of freedom of one of the major powers. The Hawaiian monarchs would have preferred the British, but British influence was ultimately inadequate to withstand American influence. American missionaries doled out God’s grace. American entrepreneurs established plantations and businesses. American ships filled the harbors. Economic and cultural domination of Hawaii eventually passed into American hands, particularly after the new land laws of 1850 made it possible for foreigners to own land in Hawaii. The Hawaiian monarchy lasted until 1893, but most of its economic and therefore its political power was gone. Hawaii as an independent nation disappeared soon after.

A race passes

The native Hawaiian people lost much of their importance in the changing, Westernized economy early in the nineteenth century. The burgeoning sugar and pineapple plantations needed laborers, and the Hawaiians were diligent, capable hired hands when they wanted to be. But they did not comprehend the idea of hiring themselves out as day laborers for wages. Planters began to import laborers from other parts of the world: China, Japan, the Philippines, Portugal. Many imported laborers stayed, married, raised families, and went on to establish their own successful businesses. The Hawaiians were soon a minority in their own land.

The numbers of full-blooded Hawaiians declined precipitously throughout the 19th century. Beginning with the tragic introduction of venereal disease by Cook’s men, venereal diseases swept through the native population who, particularly at Makahiki, exchanged partners freely. Venereal disease often leaves its victims sterile, and many who had survived Western diseases, wars, and the sandalwood trade were unable to reproduce. Others married foreigners, so their children were only part Hawaiian. Today most authorities believe that there are no full-blooded Hawaiians left, not even on Niihau, the only island where Hawaiian is still the language of everyday life.

Hawaii becomes American

In the late 19th century, the Hawaiian monarchy seemed to some powerful businessmen and civic leaders of American descent to get in the way of the smooth conduct of business. They thought Hawaii would be better off as an American territory. Queen Liliuokalani did not agree. She wanted to assert Hawaii’s independence and the authority of its monarchs. The business community plotted a coup, deposed Liliuokalani in 1893, formed a new government, and petitioned the United States for territorial status. The United States formally annexed Hawaii in 1898.

Military projects and mass travel brought mainland Americans flooding into Hawaii. Many stayed, and so the majority of people in Hawaii came to see themselves as Americans, though a minority disagreed (some still do). After many years as a territory, Hawaii became the 50th state in 1959.

Things to come

The huge tourist industry is both a blessing and a curse. Massive development pushes the Hawaii-born off the land to make way for hotels and golf courses. Displaced Hawaiians, whatever their ethnic background, find themselves having to survive as waiters, chambermaids, clerks—in essence, as the servants of those who have displaced them. Many also fear that tourism will result in the Hawaiian paradise being paved over and lost forever; others feel that it already has been.

The 100th anniversary of the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy was January 17, 1993. On November 23, 1993, the U.S. belatedly offered a formal apology. Today, a growing movement seeks to return to people of native Hawaiian ancestry some of the lands they lost as well as some degree of autonomy, ranging from that granted Native Americans to full independence for a new Hawaiian nation. The idea is just, but implementing it is controversial. Hawaii’s evolution is far from over.

Life is complicated and not for the timid. It’s an experience that when it’s done, it will take us a while to get over it. We’ll look back on all the good things we surrendered in favor of deadly trash and wish we had returned and reclaimed them.

—From Leaving Home by Garrison Keillor

Bishop Museum

The Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu houses what is considered to be the finest collection of Hawaiiana available for public viewing anywhere. The museum is located at 1525 Bernice St., and it’s open seven days a week from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. Admission may seem a bit steep, but the museum complex offers far more than Hawaiian artifacts: a planetarium, hula exhibits, crafts demonstrations, and a special exhibit that changes from time to time.

Head for the Hawaiian exhibits. The museum’s collection of Hawaiian featherwork (capes, helmets, and the feathered standards called kahili) and of tapa (the native barkcloth, also called kapa) is unmatched and irreplaceable. Hawaii produced the finest featherwork and tapa in all of Polynesia. Particularly interesting is a series of cases comparing the material cultures of the different Polynesian societies: for example, the uses to which various societies had put coconut shells and fibers.

Bernice Pauahi Bishop (1831–1884) was a high chiefess and the last direct descendant of Kamehameha I. She was offered the crown of Hawaii twice and both times declined it. She had been raised in missionary ways and believed her place was in the home with her American-born husband, Bishop, Charles R. Bishop, who had become a citizen of Hawaii. She dedicated herself to helping her fellow Hawaiians adjust to the changes that had overwhelmed their homeland. She saw that her people were falling into political insignificance and dire poverty in the new Hawaii and believed that education would help elevate them to their rightful place. She inherited a great deal of wealth in the form of land, and she used her wealth to found the Kamehameha Schools, which accept as pupils only children who are of Hawaiian or part-Hawaiian ancestry. The Bishop Estate continues to be a powerful force in Hawaii.

Bernice Bishop’s husband founded the Bishop Museum in her memory entirely from his own funds; it is independent of Bishop Estate.