[Events] [Natural History] [Arts & Culture] [Braddah-Nics] [Local Grinds] [Hawaiiana]

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Our recent Blogs:

• October 31, 2008 - Vacation Money Tips
• October 24, 2008 - Halloween on Maui
• October 17, 2008 - Iao Needle
• October 10, 2008 - Makawao Forest Reserve
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Lanikeha

Located on West Maui's Mt. Kahalawai, the 110 acres of Lanikeha
overlooks the magnificent Pacific Ocean and the mountains of West Maui

Unique opportunity to own spectacular land - Click for more info.

 

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Crafts & Special Productions

Meet Tess and Bud Burrid at Mewe Creations.

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Events

Natural History

'Ie'ie
(Freycinetia arborea)

'Ie'ie, the climbing screw pine is a native woody climber (liana), with spiny strap-like leaves. It is related to the hala or pandanus tree and spreads over the forest floor, often sprawling over rocks. It is frequently found wrapped up around the trees of the taller trees especially 'ohi'a and koa. The yellow, woody 'ie'ie stems, roughly an inch in diameter, are ringed wih the scars of fallen leaves. They produce many short or sometimes long, wiry, clasping aerial roots ('ie) which attach the plant to a host tree. The stems branch every few feet to produce terminal clusters of slender, shiny green leaves. These are pointed at their ends and spiny along their edges and on the lower side of the midrib.

During the flowering phase, two to five bright orange, male and female flowering spikes develop out of the center of the terminal leaf clusters on different plants. The flower spikes are several inches long and nestle within a protective tuft of apricot bracts (modified leaves) which are orange or green with orange bases. According to biologist Otto Degener, the plants are pollinated by rats that eat the fleshy bracts, rubbing up against the pollen-laden flowers and then transferring the pollen to other flowering spikes with flowers of the opposite sex. He says, "The 'ie'ie is the only plant in the Hawaiian Islands and one of the very few in the entire world that uses mammals to effect pollination."

'Ie'ie can be found in most of the lower to medium elevations (1,000 to 4,500 feet) especially where 'ohi'a, koa and kukui trees are found. The vine can form a dense, almost impenetrable thicket. It has been recorded on all the main islands except Ni'ihau and Kaho'olawe. Since it is also found on several other Pacific islands, the plant is classified as indigenous in Hawaii.

'Ie'ie was a sacred plant in old Hawai'i, dedicated to Ku, god of the forest and god of war. As part of the ceremony involved in canoe making, a lei 'ie'ie was placed on the felled koa tree selected for a canoe. Meanwhile, the boughs and blossoms of the 'ie'ie were used to decorate the war temple.

'Ie'ie is also associated with Laka, the goddess of hula, and is one of the plants placed on the kuahu hula (the raised altar kept in a hula school). Flowering branches of the 'ie'ie were placed on the altar to honor the demigoddess Lauka'ie'ie. The vine is supposed to embody the eternal spirit of this beautiful maiden.

In the legend of Pele and Hi'iaka, Pele fashions a lei 'ie'ie while visiting Lana'i.
The fruits were eaten by the early Polynesians as a famine food. The aerial roots and the pounded fibers of the stems were used for constructing houses and outrigger canoes, fish traps, sandals and wicker-like frameworks for feather-studded idols and helmets.

The fibers from the roots were often braided together to make cordage. The plants were gathered in the forest and used as a lashing material to bind together the rafters of their huts and the outriggers to their canoes.

The finest Hawaiian baskets were twined from the roots of the 'ie'ie. To make these baskets, the women would soften the roots in an imu, earth oven, and then usually split them for further pliability. The roots could be twined into a variety of shapes. Decorative patterns could be introduced into the weave by varying the direction of the twining. Once they dried the roots stiffened again. 

Basketwork made from the roots of the 'ie'ie was used as the foundation for the feathered helmets, or mahiole, worn by the chiefs as well as the feathered saced images, or 'aumakua hulu manu. The feathered helmets and sacred images were a uniquely Hawaiian development, according to Dr. Peter H. Buck.
The roots were always split for the intricate construction of the helmets and the images. Otherwise the intricacy of the angles used in the construction of the helmets would have been impossible. Splitting also allowed the craftsperson to create sufficient density for the helmets to serve effectively as protective headgear.

The underlying foundations for the sacred images required even more intricate twining than the helmets. The roots were fashioned into a complete human head with a neck base. The basketwork was then covered with netting made from olona fibers to which feathers were attached as were eyes made from mother of pearl with pupils represented by spheres made from kauila wood. The teeth of dogs were added for additional fierceness. Sometimes human hair was added as well. The horribly gorgeous heads were carried into battle by the priests on poles of kauila wood.

The most historically important sacred image was probably that of Kuka'ilimoku, the war god that belonged to High Chief Kalaniopu'u and later to Kamehameha the Great. King Kamehameha is said to have had this image with him when he died in Kailua, Kona, in 1819, and it was hidden in a Kona cave until 1850, when it passed into missionary hands. It is currently housed by the Bishop Museum.

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Arts & Culture

The Ditch Diggers

A now mostly invisible part of our island heritage is the network of irrigation ditches built by the sugar plantations to transport water for their fields from the island's watershed areas. Private sugar plantations and water companies owned by the plantations built virtually every surface-water collection system on the four main islands.

It came out of a special relationship between the plantation owners and the government of the Kingdom of Hawaii. King Kalakaua's government granted water rights and gave land to the people whose interests required them to invest in developing the means to utilize the resources of the islands. To meet these needs, the sugar plantation owners built the systems of basic infrastructure that benefitted the rest of the people.

The efforts of thousands of laborers were required to push tunnels through mountainsides, build flumes to carry water across valleys and dig ditches to the plains. On the East Maui mountains, many hundreds of men were employed almost continuously for fifty years building the 74 miles of canals and ditches named Hamakua, Haiku, Manuel Luis, Center, Lowrie, Koolau, New Haiku, Kauhikoa and Wailoa. Labor constituted the largest single cost of all the ditches. Every one of them overran their projected budgets.

Finding workers in Hawaii was always a challenge for the sugar plantations. There was a chronic shortage of workers until the end of the Second World War in the 1940s. (By then mechanization, unionization, and other factors reduced the need for such a large labor force.) The labor shortages were magnified during the construction of the great water ditches in the late 1800's and early 1900's. There are reports of labor forces of 500 to 600 or 1,000 men working on each of these projects for a year or more at a time. The ditch-building projects took a lot of workers.

A common perception is that Hawaii's ditches were built by Chinese laborers under such brutal working conditions that many laborers died. This is not accurate. In fact, the majority of the ditch building workforce was Japanese, primarily because the Japanese comprised the vast majority of the general laboring population during the time of the great ditch projects.

Working conditions were tough and often dangerous. The ditch-builders had to climb up mountains, rappel down cliff faces, negotiate treacherous trails, and deal with landslides and water gushing out forcefully in the one place they needed to work, but the workers were valued as skilled labor and very much in demand. They were not brutalized and could choose to move on to other work.

Japan was experiencing rough times in the 1880s. Although its population was indebted and impoverished, the Japanese government forbade its citizens to work overseas in debt peonage situations, where the workers were virtual slaves until their debt was paid off.

In Hawaii, however, the Masters and Servants Act of 1850 banned debt peonage and required that labor be paid in cash. Hawaii at the time was the only place in the world with a cash wage economy.

A treaty between Japan and Hawaii was signed in 1885 allowing Japanese citizens to come to Hawaii as plantation laborers. The Japanese government required that these laborers be paid in silver. (The balance remitted to Japan had to be in gold.)  For nine years, from 1885 to 1894, the Japanese government even kept accounts in order to ensure that all the conditions set out in the contract to ensure that the workers would not be mistreated were met.

Many of the Japanese laborers who came to Hawaii sent money home to get their families out of debt. Over a million dollars in gold yen was transferred back to the prefectures in Japan. This money eliminated family debts (some of which had accrued over many generations).  The money the laborers sent home also helped to establish a substantial middle class.

The Japanese government took an active role in screening the applicants for work on the plantations in Hawaii. Twenty-five hand-picked groups of Japanese laborers came to Hawaii between 1885 and 1894. The competition was fierce. The first group of 961 laborers, for example, was chosen from among 18,000 applicants.

Starting in 1885 and throughout the major ditch building period, Japanese workers made up the majority of the ditch building labor force. Working on the ditches provided advancement opportunities for independent workers, especially those skilled in explosives, mechanics, transportation or supervision. Over the years, these men learned useful skills that were in high demand.

It is apparent that the outer islands had greater difficulty keeping workers away from Honolulu. One ditch-builder complained that as soon as the men were paid, they took off for Oahu and the higher-paying jobs there. Others protested that a rival plantation owner was luring good workers away from their projects.

Despite strong efforts by the sugar factors (the handful of agencies that had gained power over the sugar industry through the control and management of every aspect of sugar production and marketing) to discourage such practices, labor-raiding between plantations occurred fairly frequently. The pool of skilled labor was limited and very good workers were paid premium wages.

Then, in 1894, the Japanese government reverted to its original policy and no longer encouraged emigration of its citizens to Hawaii. In 1906, the mass migration of laborers from Japan was stopped.

Keeping workers provisioned in the remote mountains while they were building the ditches was a challenge. One writer for the Hawaiian Annual, in a story about the building of the Hamakua Ditch in 1878, pointed out, "the providing of food, shelter, tools, etc. was equal to the care of a regiment of soldiers on the march." Not only that, all of the roads and railways had to be built to transport supplies and equipment to the job site so the work could continue. Supplies were carried in by men, mules, train and by boat along the water courses.

Open ditches and flumes built along the contours of mountain slopes were subject to storms, landslides, overgrowth and deterioration. Most of them were replaced by tunnels in later building efforts. When dynamite was invented by Alfred Nobel in 1863, it revolutionized tunnel digging. The earliest tunnels were limited by the tools available - pick, shovel, ax and sledgehammer. Black powder and dynamite made extensive tunneling possible. 

The Koolau Ditch, built in 1904 to 1905, had 7.5 miles of tunnel. The thirty-eight tunnels, all dug out of solid rock, were 8 feet wide and 7 feet high. In length they averaged 1000 feet. The shortest was 200 feet and the longest was 2,710 feet.

Tunnel work was often contracted for by the foot, the rate depending on the conditions. The work was often dangerous, especially when blasting was involved. While accidents were not frequent they were always a threat and they did occur.

Next to tunnel work, cement work was the most important, costly and time consuming part of most ditch projects. The ditch-builders were constantly looking for economical and effective ways to line their ditches. Lining protected against water loss, bank erosion and tunnel collapse.

The most successful lining was four- to six-inch cement, but this was very expensive.  Another effective method used by many plantations was using cut fieldstones set in cement mortar to line the ditches. This was another time-consuming method requiring highly specialized workers. (Some of the most beautiful rockwork on the island is incorporated in the old ditches.) Later, precast concrete slabs were developed and used to allow the water to keep flowing during the construction work.    

Other, less-successful lining experiments involved the traditional native method of tamping down the dirt in the ditches (too much water seepage), using plaster reinforced by chicken wire as a liner (subject to rapid breakdown) and using a cement gun to apply the cement (no perceptible advantage).

Once the ditches were completed, maintenance was performed by "ditchmen" who were either stationed permanently or for extended tours in the forest "line shacks," cabins built along the ditch to house these men. Routine maintenance was frequently interrupted by repairs of freshet and storm damage to the water collection systems.

Pack mules were the backbone of any transportation scheme during the construction phase of many of the ditch systems. They hauled men and materials to and from the site. These animals were more surefooted and stronger than horses and were less likely to get spooked on the narrow and treacherous mountain trails. Once the construction phase was completed, a stable of pack mules was maintained by each of the private water companies for use by their crews of ditchmen.

Eventually all the plantations and irrigation companies eliminated their residential ditchmen positions. By the late 1940's the old system of a standing army of repair people was too costly to maintain and, in fact was no longer necessary. The ditchmen disappeared.  Their mules were replaced by motor vehicles.

Starting in the 1950's the system of ditchmen was replaced by a small work crew that could regularly check the ditch, fence lines and trails, and make necessary repairs. Better transportation, improved communications and electronic gauges and gates as well as the use of herbicides for trail maintenance allowed for a reduction in the sizes of the maintenance crews. A few of the old line shacks remain to provide shelter.

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Hawaiiana

One of Hawaii's greatest ecological treasures is, without question, its native bird life. The following species can be found only in Hawaii, and in some cases, only on a single island in the chain. A great number of these precious creatures have left us forever, due to human influence. The introduction of disease-transmitting mosquitos, rats, mongoose, as well as hunting and habitat destruction are all partly responsible for the loss of these beautiful birds. Here is a little information about some of the species that remain with us today:
‘I‘Iwi (Vestiaria coccinea) - One of the most brilliantly colored native birds, the I'iwi is not as easy to spot as you might think. Despite its bright red and black plumage, this species is shy and keeps to the dense inner foliage of forest plants. When you do catch a glimpse of the I'iwi, it will probably be in the process of feeding from the nectar of such plants as the ohia-lehua or mamane. It can be found on Hawaii, Maui, Kauai, and occasionally on Molokai, Oahu and Lanai.
‘Apapane (Himatione sanguinea) - The Apapane is another of Hawaii's bright red birds, but unlike the I'iwi, its beak is black and significantly shorter. As with the I'iwi, it is particularly fond of feeding off of ohia-lehua. This species is pretty easy to spot, as it enjoys perching on the outer reaches of branches. This is the most common of Hawaii's native birds. There are many on Kauai, Maui and Hawaii, a few on Oahu and uncommonly on Molokai and Lanai.
‘Amakihi (Hemignathus virens wilsoni) - This bright yellow green bird is small, with a short, downward curving bill. These birds are often seen in small flocks, and they feed not only on nectar, but also on insects living in the bark of trees. The Amakihi is the most common of the native green birds in Hawaii. It can be found in profusion on the islands of Hawaii and Maui, and commonly on Molokai. They are no longer found on Lanai.
Maui Creeper or ‘Alauahio (Paroreomyza montana newtoni) - This little creeper is more yellow than green and feeds on insects and grubs that live in the bark of trees. This is a bold and inquisitive bird that, like the Amakihi, can be found in small flocks. This bird was endemic to Maui and Lanai but now is limited to Maui. Strangely enough, these birds are common at elevations of 1000m and over in both native and exotic forest such as Poli Poli and Hosmer's Grove.
Crested Honeycreeper or ‘Ākohekohe (Palmeria dolei) - One of the most distinctly exotic looking birds, the aptly named crested honeycreeper has a tuft of cream-colored plumage on its forehead, directly above the beak. Otherwise its feathers are black, gray, orange, gold and red. Another nectivore, this bird feeds almost exclusively on the ohia-lehua but also can be seen eating the occasional insect. Like the Maui creeper, the Akohekohe was once found only on Maui and Molokai, but now only exists on Maui.
Maui Parrotbill (Pseudonestor xanthophrys)  - The Maui parrotbill uses its powerful bill to tear into the bark of trees to get at the insect larvae that it feeds on. This bird is a mix of olive green and yellow, and can only be found in high elevation ohi'a forests in East Maui. The parrotbill's range is centered in an area of less than 5000 acres. Only 500 are estimated to remain in the wild today.

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Braddah-Nics Lexicon

STANDARD:  He is really acting foolishly.
BRADDAH-NICS:  Some lolo he stay ackin'.

* * * * * * * *

STANDARD:  Oh, dear, what trouble!
BRADDAH-NICS:  Ay, ka pilikia!

* * * * * * * *

STANDARD:  Have you got any poi?
BRADDAH-NICS:  What?  Get poi?




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Local Grinds

Fun Chow Funn

Ingredients:

• 2 bags of chow fun noodles
  
• 1 - 1 1/2 pounds ground pork
  
• 1 packet of bacon
  
• 1 onion
  
• 3 stalks of green onions
  
• 2 carrots
  
• 1 bag of bean sprouts
  
• Oyster sauce
  
• Pepper (for taste)
  
  
  

Procedure:

Slice the onion into bite size pieces
Wash, then peel 2 carrots, then grade the peeled carrots
Dice green onions
Cook bacon then chop it into bite size pieces

Cook chow fun noodles by adding them into boiling water for 2 minutes. Then drain water out from the noodles.

Cook ground pork until all is brown in large pot. Then mix in onions and cook for about 5 minutes on low heat. Mix in carrots and bean sprouts and cook for about 5 more minutes. Add the cooked noodles, then add 1/2 the bottle of oyster sauce. Mix in 4 tablespoons of shoyu. Add pepper to taste. Then add in green onions and cut bacon. Cook for about 5 more minutes, adding more oyster sauce or shoyu for taste if needed. Now it's ready to serve and enjoy!

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