Thomas Cummings - Hawai'i Stories
Lots of stories in books about Hawai`i. About the first settlers who organized into families of kings and queens, priests and subjects – warring with and loving each other. While living well off the bounty on the islands they’d discovered and sea they expertly sailed upon. And of later arrivers: explorers, merchants, missionaries, laborers. Each with their stories of giving to the well being of the islands, and of those who behaved badly. I’ll share anecdotes about them. Then hope you’ll blog to say how you feel.
I love the stories of Hawaii nei and its people, especially of my Hawaiian ancestors. But as well the history of my Haole and Chinese forbearers; and equally, the many folks from other places.
I’m Thomas C. Cummings, Jr., a classroom teacher of Hawaiiana and English and storyteller for 50 years. Although, my education began at birth in 1937 on Maui – nurtured by family, friends and neighbors. All of them marvelous teachers.
Slipping Here & There - What's in a Word
November 4th, 2009He’e, or octopus, is the focus word. Although other meanings emerge, giving glimpses how Hawaiians viewed their world.
To digress. The native Alahe’e tree was chosen anciently to make o`o or digging sticks – and a weapon when farmers joined in battle so ordered by the chiefs. I let kids handle my seven-foot, tight-grained, Alahe`e digging stick so they enjoy a “wow” experience, feeling how tough and heavy that wood is.
Now back to the subject. Why does the name of this tree, Alahe’e, mean “slippery fragrance”? A botany friend explains: “Ala means fragrant and he`e equals octopus. Hence, slippery like an octopus. However, it's the Alahe`e flowers that tell all. Yes, you can stick your nose into and smell the blossoms' sweetness; but, they're b [...]
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Canoe Dig It -- A Work of Genius
November 2nd, 2009Read THE HAWAIIAN CANOE. In it, Abraham Pi`inaia, U of Hawai`i scholar, grandly wrote that Pacific islanders on canoes embarked on the “…last organized, systematic migration settlement trek in the history of mankind to unknown parts of the earth’s surface.” (pg. vii)
That’s genius. Those island folks, including Polynesians, who sailed on double-hull canoes for centuries across the Pacific. Finding and settling on thousands of islands, including the isolated Hawaiian archipelago. Done without modern navigational instruments. “Stone-age natives” who trusted instead the heavenly bodies and the flow of wind and ocean currents to keep on course.
A book by Tommy Holmes who explains how island peoples cleverly made canoes from woods and other plant fibers; with stone- [...]
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Killing Price of Good Drinking Water
October 30th, 20091778. Kaua`i now found, Capt. J. Cook wants fresh, sweet water – to replace the awful, brackish stuff his crew’s been drinking. On river-rich Kaua’i that should’ve been easy to get, you’d think.
Not so. Cook sends officer Williamson after H2O. But when that shore party beaches, it’s mobbed by hundreds of curious, “over eager” Hawaiians. While wishing to help, those natives are touching and grabbing the Brits’ things: oars, muskets, “every thing”. To control the mobbing, Williamson’s man fires a shot, killing a native, who’s carried off by the dispersing crowd. Sorry, it’s not recorded what the after-reaction by Hawaiians was.
Curiously, Williamson, who finally gets his casks of water aboard ship, doesn’t tell Cook of the [...]
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House of Frigate Birds & Surfing
October 28th, 2009The neatest photos are in a book about Hale`iwa, a place first settled by Hawaiians in the 1400s. In 1779, Charles Clerke, an officer aboard Capt. James Cook’s expedition ship wrote that Hale`iwa was “…the most beautiful country as we have seen among these islands…” for its lushness and numerous plantations. Later and for decades, those farm lands became Waialua Sugar Plantation, until shutting down in 1996 – the last such on O`ahu (pgg 6-7).
Let me add: Hale`iwa means the “House of `Iwa [i.e., frigate birds]. Anciently, a place where those majestic sea-fowls, with wing-span longer that six-feet, soared or surfed along that coastline in large numbers. To which the chiefs were compared. The very chiefs who watched for the ideal waves that frequented that coastline so [...]
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Hawaiian Cowboy Pictures
October 26th, 2009Because of its photos, this book about the Hawaiian cowboy is a pleasurable source of information.
The writing in it is terrific too. Learn how Hawaiians reshaped the work of “cowboying” to the rugged terrain of Hawai`i. Also the kaula `ili or lariat, braided in unique styles – learned from the ancients who exclusively used various kinds of cordage to hold together all that they made. And of saddles, made of native woods and redesigned to deal with the rocky slopes of Hawai’i. Add the birth of the new and clever Hawaiian music, accompanied by the slacked-strings of the Spanish-introduced guitar. Then, who would`a thought horses would wear lei around their neck.
Anyway, you get the picture – i.e. the loads of photos that tell the awesome stories of the Paniolo [...]
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Sinful Sickness
October 23rd, 20091778. Now anchored off Kaua’i and trading with Hawaiians, Capt. Cook worried `bout venereal disease being passed to natives. So, he
forbade women aboard his ships and seamen from “meddling” with wahine on shore – particularly those sailors who were infected.
Cook hoped for the best as he had in Tahiti and Tonga (Friendly Isles). But he failed. Intercourse continued and the disease spread
quickly cuz of the “…great eagerness of the Women concurring with the Desires of Men….” Seamen were too clever, including outfitting the women as ship’s crew and secreting them aboard. (pgg. 265-66)
By the way, ma`i `ino (sinful sickness) is Hawaiian for that sexual preoccupation. Would you agree this is a classic example of a man’s praiseworthy accomplishmen [...]
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A Stifling Cough -- The Kapu
October 21st, 2009Hawaiians took the kapu -- those rules of good behavior -- damned seriously. Even foreigners in 1810 Honolulu couldn't do business until King Kamehameha lifted religious restrictions.
During that Kamehameha period, John Papa I`i, as a youngster, was seized by a need to cough -- at the hours that absolute silence was demanded during temple worship.
Opps! I'i coughed three times. It horrified his folks in their house; then it turned to relief when the boy went unheard by priests -- and likely be killed for noise making (pg 24).
To be safe, the household adults quickly dug a hole in the ground, plus filled a basin with water, for the boy to bury his face into and stifle any further coughing. (Later, as a government official, I'i wrote the rest of [...]
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Bald Belly Tale
October 19th, 2009As told anciently, Fire Goddess Pele is furious at Pig-God Kamapua`a for calling her ugly names. Seeking vengeance, the goddess switches to her lava form and chases after Kamapua`a, aiming to burn him to a crisp. The desperate man changes into a pig thinking that with four legs he can run faster than she. Instead, he loses ground. So to save himself, the boar transforms into a giant tree-fern, thinking that the moisture in the trunk would douse Pele’s flames.
No luck! Instead, Kamapua`a’s hair-like wool (pulu) at the bottom of his trunk gets singed. Then, when he returns to his swine form to escape death, the “hair” on his fern trunk, now under his pig belly, is completely scorched by Madame. Since, all pigs have inherited a hairless stomach – that absence to remind m [...]
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1778 Hawaiians Encounter New Technology
October 16th, 2009Sailing the shores of Kaua`i in January, Cook’s company begin serious trading with the natives who struggle to make sense of the Brits’ alien stuff? “…their eyes were continually flying from object to object, the wildness of their looks and actions fully express’d their surprise and astonishment at the several new o[b]jects before them and evinced that they never had been on board of a ship before.”
No matter, Cook’s folks welcome, as starters, the good quality potatoes and pigs, exchanging for “anything aboard,” especially nails and iron. Quickly, the English conclude that Kaua’i is the “land of plenty” at seeing the plantain [banana] plantations and sugar cane and places planted in “roots”; [i.e. kalo, sweet potatoes and/or yams, I’m guessing [...]
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First Hawaiian Settlers from Tahiti Disputed
October 14th, 2009The motherland of Hawaiians is Tahiti – along with the Marquesas. That’s the overwhelming belief of Hawaiians, Tahitians, and Maori - and non-Polynesians. Includes many scholars. Explains why the Hawaiians’ present-day voyaging canoe Hokule`a was grandly welcomed “home” by 10s of thousands of Tahitians when it beached in Pape`ete in 1976.
Hold on, Ross Cordy PhD says. He supposes that Hawaiians came from another home island. That they developed a society independent of Tahiti. That stories Hawaiians tell of them sailing from Tahiti then returning several times is fiction. That they may have come directly from the Cook Islands (Rarotonga). Or, Samoa. Cordy has other overlong explanations to support his Not-From-Tahiti contention in Exalted Sits the Chief – Th [...]
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Leprosy Ravages Hawaiians
October 12th, 2009When you read this, Damien of Kalaupapa will have already been anointed a saint by the Catholic Church.
In one, short paragraph, Isabella Bird – probably the first travel writer to Hawai’i, circa 1873 – talks about that leprosy colony. But, she doesn’t visit there. Instead, from Lahaina, Maui, she writes of the 400 patients [probably over a thousand, instead] already banished there “to endless isolation.” Plus, the 300 to be “weeded out and sent thither.” She continues that this incurable, Chinese Disease [Ma’i Pake in Hawaiian] spread quickly because the natives “…smoked each other’s pipes and wear each other’s clothes”; and in general, they disregard all precautions. [Here, she’s surely talking of the Hawaiians’ selfless habit of daily sittin [...]
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Capt. Cook's Company Craves Fresh Water
October 9th, 20091778. In an earlier blog about Cook’s third voyage of exploration, I said the desire for fresh water was on the captain’s mind upon seeing the high mountains of O`ahu and Kaua`i.
How important was clean, tasty water to his ships’ company? The answer is on Christmas Island, where Cook anchored days earlier before Hawai`i. That island covers 300,000 acres. Yet, “Not a drop of fresh water was any where found though dug for in several places…” That’s it. What a big-time understatement when Cook’s journal records: “…this was an article [water!] we were in want of…”
So, how do you think Cook got fresh water? Did he catch rain water from the gale that showed at Christmas Island? Otherwise, it was “...Brakish water out of our [ships’] wells [...]
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Mysteries in Ancient Baskets
October 7th, 2009In the book cited below, there were in the Ka`ai other mysterious items beside the sacred bones of Hawaiian chiefs. A loin cloth fashioned from a piece of Western sail cloth was also in the 500-year-old baskets. Hmm? And a heavily oxidized metal object – possibly an iron tool; or a dagger, detached from its wooden handle. (pg 45).
Researchers aren’t sure of what kind of metal the dagger is made. Perhaps iron-ore, smelted into a spike. Also, it’s not known how the dagger got in the Ka`ai? “Although some of the Hawaiians Captain Cook met were familiar with iron, probably obtained from flotsam washed ashore (cf. Stokes 1931)…” (pg. 48).
Whatever the answer, metal in 18-th century Hawai`i was rare to the level of being extremely precious to
the natives. [...]
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Obama Calls Grandma Toots
October 5th, 2009President Obama called his grandma Toots. A name taken from Tutu or Kuku, affectionately uttered by Hawaiians and other islanders – even today – to mean grandma, as Barry intended. Or, grandpa. It’s one of the clues that Barak, Jr. had become part of Hawai`i’s cultural ways from living in Hawai`i at an early age, and being raised by grand folks in a Honolulu apartment.
By the way, kuku or tutu isn’t an ancient word of endearment. It’s “apparently a new word as it has not been noted in legends and chants,” says the Hawaiian Dictionary, which I say buy. (M.K. Pukui, S.H. Elbert, U.H. Press, 1986). Hawai’i keeps morphing doesn’t it?
To be correct, the term “kupuna,” to mean grandmother or grandfather, is best used in a formal sense.
There are [...]
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Ancient Fishing Altars - More Than Rock Piles
October 2nd, 2009`Ai`ai, a demi-god, instructed Hawaiians how to erect fishing altars and the way to place offerings or ho`okupu on them. So writes Dennis Kawaharada. In this traditional story are lots of court intrigue, human burnings, starvation, fights with sharks and a giant eel, and such. The book is Storied Landscapes: Hawaiian Literature & Place, Kalamaku Press, 1999.
So, for over 1,000 years, all Hawaiian fishers offered their first catch at the base of the shrines. That “heathenish” practice ended about 150-years ago, after missionaries forbade it. Although, some fishermen still do it at those ancient altars all along the beaches of Hawai`i. Called ku`ula, they are generally stomach-high stacks of weathered volcanic rocks, with a layer of white coral pebbles or ko`a surro [...]
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