Big Island = Big Scary Story

As we approach the Halloween holiday, it may be appropriate to retell a frightening story that happened here on the Big Island; in fact just some twelve miles south of Hilo in the quiet village of Ola’a.

                                                   

Ola’a is in the sacred Ola'a forest, which was once an area restricted to bird-catching families (whose occupation was to collect hulu or feathers for the ruling class) until the abolishment of the kapu system in 1819 and the arrival of the missionaries shortly thereafter. A small church was established in 1835 to serve Hawaiians living in the area. As Hawai'i island developed with small coffee farms and with the establishment of sugar plantations in the 1890's Ola'a saw the arrival of immigrant labor.  Soon the church and community embraced an ethically and culturally diverse plantation community.  Ola'a Church

Ola'a Church

In 1947 in Ola’a children were playing near the local pond when one of them fell in and drowned.  The boy, named Tanaka, was later found by divers sitting on a rock with his eyes and mouth open and body swaying with the currents.  Yet, he was dead and his corpse was retrieved and buried.

Later, people who walked by the pond would often fell something tug at the bottom of their trousers. Rumors spread that the boy’s spirit was trapped beneath the water.  In his book, Obake Files, Ghostly Encounters in Supernatural Hawaii, Glen Grant writes:

“On some evenings the villagers could hear a cry emanate from the pond in the middle of the night. At first most everyone believed that the haunting cry was the wind blowing through the tall sugar cane fields. But a few of the older people said they knew the spirit of the Tanaka boy- cold, wet, and desolate at the bottom of the pond. The soul was crying out for help and deliverance. Trapped in this world by accident, he sought someone’s spirit as a substitute. They would take his place at the bottom of the pond so that he could be free to go to the otherworld.


“Those who were present at the second accident swear that the other boy was pulled into the water against his will. It was the noon hour. He was walking about 50 yards behind his father along the edge of the pond, occasionally picking up a flat stone to skim across the water. When he fell, he screamed out to his father that something was pulling him into the pond. He clawed at the earth, trying to hold on, to fight back. But in what seemed like an instant, the force tugging at his legs pulled him into the watery depths of the pond. By the time the young boy’s body had been located, it was found sitting naturally on a rock on the bottom of the pond. He seemed so natural sitting there- arms placidly at his side, eyes and mouth open, swaying gently to and fro in a light current. Fortunately, the rescuers were able to bring him back to the surface in time to be resuscitated.

“A Shinto priest was brought from Hilo to bless the waters, and the haunting cries finally ceased. Yet, on peculiarly dark nights when the evening skies seem bathed in black ink, those who live closest to the pond say that they sometimes hear the Tanaka boy’s cry. But are the cries melancholy or sinister? And will the Tanaka boy ever find peace?”  Weird Hawaii

Pretty spooky…..I’d say!

Sugar Cane in Hawaii

By the mid 1800s, the Hawaiian kingdom’s economy was not very bright.  Sandalwood, (wesisland.blogspot.com) an important trade item, was almost gone from the forests of Hawaii.  And whalers who wintered in Hawaii and restocked their boats were fewer in number; partially because the need for whale oil had diminished as petroleum became a source of fuel for lamps.

RagTime

The Great Mahele of 1848 allowed for the private ownership of land for Hawaiians and foreigners for the first time. Many American and European businessmen quickly gained control of large tracts of land that led to the development of agriculture and especially the sugar industry in Hawaii.

Sugar was brought to the islands by the early Polynesians who chewed on the plant as a source of energy and food.  In 1778, when Captain Cook happened upon the Hawaii islands, the lands were already abundant with sugar cane.  The first serious sugar plantation was at Koloa, Kauai in 1835 by Ladd and Co.

In September 1835, Ladd & Co., began the first major Hawaiian sugar plantation. Hooper, Brinsdale, and Ladd managed to do something that no one else had previously done in Hawaii. With the help of missionary settlers, they obtained the first major land lease in Hawaiian history.  The lease comprised 980 acres in Koloa, Kauai, which was set aside for sugar cane production. The lease ran 50 years at $300 per year.

Sugar Mill

The missionaries were bent on making farmers of the Hawaiian natives so Ladd & Co. fell nicely into those plans. By employing Hawaiian natives, they would be teaching them the skills missionaries felt were so necessary.  However, perhaps not so surprisingly, native Hawaiians were far from eager to work the fields and the native population had been reduced to 70,000 people by the 1850s, diminished greatly by disease. Ladd history

Sugar meant plantations and mills and the need for workers. Plantation owners turned to workers in devastated areas of the world that were ravaged by wars and famine initially in China, and then Japan, the Philippines and Portugal which explains the rich, varied racial make-up of present-day Hawaii.  http://www.hvcb.org/media/bigisland/

Sugar Cane Production

The Big Island's lava soil and regular rainfall offer ideal conditions for growing sugar cane.  Ah Kina, a Chinese planter, began raising cane at Amauulu above the town of Hilo in 1851.

Among the biggest producers of sugar cane was the Pepeekeo Sugar Company not far from where we now live along the Hamakua Coast. When it was established in 1857, it was named Metcalf Plantation after the owner Theopilus Metcalf.  When Metcalf died in 1874, the new owners of the plantation changed its name to the Pepeekeo Sugar Company.  http://www.hawaiistateinfo.com/pepeekeo.php

In the early 1960’s Hawaii produced a million tons of sugar cane annually.  One of every twelve workers participated in the sugar industry.  And these workers were among the highest paid in the world.

Ocean Vodka

Ultimately cheaper sugar from the Caribbean and other locales doomed Hawaii’s sugar cane industry.  The last plant closed on the Big Island in 1996.  However, the islands still possesses a rich agriculture industry, with large amounts of papaya, vegetables, coffee beans, flowers, and macadamia nuts still being grown and produced.  Hawaii Island is also known as the Orchid Isle due to its large production of tropical orchids. http://pinanius.org/tag/island-of-hawaii

Ancient Hawaiian Fish Ponds

I spent a weekend recently at the Fairmont Orchid at the Mauna Lani Resort, and learned that the Kalahuipua'a Fishponds are the spiritual center of the area.  Predating even the earliest Western contact, the ponds are from the days when the land and sea supported the Hawaiian Ali'i (royalty) -- the original inhabitants of the land.

The first true fishponds were probably built during the latter half of the fifteenth century.  And increasingly thereafter as chiefs could command the labor necessary to transport the tons of rock and coral used in the enclosing walls. These ponds, which yielded several hundred pounds of fish per acre annually, were not only feats of engineering technology, but reflected chiefly power and were a major symbol of the intensification of agricultural and aquacultural production. nps.gov

Auburn University

The Hawaiian people practiced the most advanced fish husbandry among the original peoples of the Pacific.  Fishponds (Hawaiian: loko I’a) were typically shallow areas of a reef flat surrounded by a low lava rock wall built out from the shore.  Several species of edible fish such as mullet thrived in such ponds, and methods were developed to make them easy to catch.  The Hawaiian fishpond was primarily a grazing area in which the fishpond keeper cultivated algae; much in the way a cattle rancher cultivates grass for his cattle.  Ponds were fed with cut grass, mussels, clams, seaweeds, and taro leaves. The porous lava walls let in seawater or sometimes fresh or brackish water but prevented the fish from escaping. servinghistory.com

zazzle.com

The ancient Hawaiians and their vast system of fish ponds are one of the foremost examples of successful fish farming in the world. Royal fishponds and ancient walled fish traps were part of the everyday landscape of old Hawaii.  When Captain James Cook reached Hawaii in 1778, there were approximately 360 fishponds producing almost two million pounds of fish per year. uhh.hawaii

The coastal fishponds and their resources were the exclusive property of the district chief and were not a major economic resource to the general population, who were prohibited by kapu from fishing, collecting seaweed, or polluting the pond. 

Joseph Farber

Commoners, especially women, were seldom in the vicinity of royal fishponds. There was little advantage for commoners to live near a pond for fear of breaking the kapu.  (Kapu means forbidden, though it also carries the meanings of sacred, consecrated, or holy.  In ancient Hawaii, kapu refers to the ancient system of laws and regulations.  An offense that was kapu was often a corporal offense, but also often denoted a threat to spiritual power, or theft of “mana.”  Kapus were strictly enforced. Breaking one, even unintentionally, often meant immediate death.)  Possibly after abandonment of the kapu system in the early nineteenth century did the population concentrate more around these ponds because the resources became available to them. www.nps.gov

By 1985 only seven ponds remained in use. It is estimated that the yields from the Hawaiian fishpond systems operating before the arrival of the Europeans would be on par with most contemporary extensive aquaculture systems; yet the traditional Hawaiian fishponds did not receive fertilization from animal or human wastes of any kind.  http://cmbc.ucsd.edu/Research/student_research/fishponds/

I have no idea how many fish ponds are in use today.  I did see notice of a recent study, supported by the National Science Foundation of a project at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, whose goals were “to improve upon current techniques and management practices for marine aquaculture, through a detailed study of historical techniques that were used successfully throughout the Hawaiian Islands.” http://cmbc.ucsd.edu/Research/student_research/fishponds/

nal.usda.gov

With the world's fish populations dwindling at an alarming rate, interest in aquaculture is on the rise.  From the ancient loko iʻa to the advanced aquaculture research facilities at UH Hilo, Hawaii has a long tradition of innovation in this field.  The reemergence of the use of fish ponds may one day be an important source of ecologically sound and sustainable fish production and an important export business for the people and state of Hawaii.