ʻUala

Many cultures in Hawaiʻi have their own names for sweet potato.  Kamote is the Tagalog name, and in Aotearoa (New Zealand) they are widely farmed and are called kumara.

In Hawaiʻi, ʻuala is also called ʻuwala.  The ʻuala is the second in importance to kalo (taro) as a staple starch food in old Hawaiʻi.

He ʻuala ka ʻai hoʻola koke i ka wi.
The sweet potato is the food that ends famine quickly
(ʻŌlelo Noʻeau from Pukui)

It is in the Morning Glory family and grows easy and it grows fast – within 4-5 months of planting (as opposed to nine to eighteen months for taro), ʻuala is cultivated for their enlarged primary roots called "tubers" (the primary food from the ʻuala,) while leaves can also be eaten.

Tubers were also used as bait for fishing; Vines were used to make an under cushion for lauhala mats in houses; and Fermented ʻuala “beer” (ʻuala ʻawaʻawa) brewed, but it is unclear if this is a pre-contact practice.  (Bishop Museum)

ʻUala, sweet potato, was a canoe crop (it was brought to Hawaiʻi by the Polynesians, who brought with them shoots, roots, cuttings and seeds of various plants for food, cordage, medicine, fabric, containers, all of life's vital needs.)

It is known as the 2nd staple for the Hawaiians.  It is said to have been cultivated in Hawaiʻi since about AD 1000.  The tubers are consumed after cooking primarily in an imu.  Other plant parts were used as animal feed. (UH-KCC)

It’s been called a super food - the average sweet potato weighs 6.5 ounces (about 3/4 cup) and contains 180 calories. It supplies 14 percent of your daily carbohydrate requirement (good carbs) and 26 percent of your daily fiber needs. It is an excellent source of vitamins A and C, potassium, calcium and folate.  (Miyasaka)

Purple-fleshed or orange-fleshed varieties are rich in beta carotene and have more anti-oxidants than blueberries.  In addition, all sweet potatoes have a low glycemic index. This index is a measure of how quickly foods are broken down into sugars in the human body and converted to body fat. (Miyasaka)

The sweet potato plant grows in dry places. You can find it in low and high areas up to 5,000 feet in elevation. It can also be found in damp valleys although it doesn’t need a lot of water like taro does.

Farming of ʻuala on a large scale was involved the systematic cultivation of dryland crops in their appropriate vegetation zones as exemplified by the Field Systems in Kona, Kohala, Kaupō and Kalaupapa (Kaʻū reportedly also has a field system.)

Cultivation of the soil “was generally divided into small fields, about fifteen rods square fenced with low stone walls, built with fragments of lava gathered from the surface of the enclosures. These fields were planted with bananas, sweet potatoes, mountain taro, paper mulberry plants, melons, and sugar-cane, which flourished luxuriantly in every direction.”  (Reverend William Ellis)

Farmers found, farmed and intensified production on lands that were between being too wet and too dry.  Archaeological evidence of intensive cultivation of sweet potato and other dryland crops is extensive, including walls, terraces, mounds and other features.

In Kona, the field system was quite large, extending from Kailua to south of Honaunau.  In lower elevations all the way to the shore, informal clearings, mounds and terraces were used to plant sweet potatoes; and on the forest fringe above the walled fields there were clearings, mounds and terraces.  Sweet potatoes grew among the breadfruit.

In Kohala, the fields were oriented parallel to the elevation contours and the walls (and perhaps kō (sugar cane) planted on them) would have functioned as windbreaks from the trade winds which sweep down the slopes of the Kohala mountains.

Configured in this way, the walls would also have reduced evapotranspiration and - with heavy mulching - retained essential moisture for the crops.  This alignment of fields also conserved water by retaining and dispersing surface run-off and inhibited wind erosion and soil creep.

Based on experimental plantings, if only half of the Kohala Field System was in production in one year, it could be producing between 20,000 to 120,000-tons of sweet potato in one crop.

At Kaupō, on the slopes of Haleakalā, the field system is associated in Hawaiian oral traditions with Kekaulike, a famous Maui king (ali‘i nui) who on genealogical estimates is dated to approximately the early eighteenth century.

Kekaulike made Kaupō his residential seat, and assembled his army at Mokulau, preparing for a war of conquest against his rivals on Hawai‘i Island.

Given its use as a Royal Center for Island Ali‘i, there was a definite need for sufficient crop production.  Fortunately, the area has an ideal combination of soils, elevation and rainfall making it also a predictable environment for an intensive dryland field system to feed the people.

Historic records note that this region was identified as “the greatest continuous dry planting area in the Hawaiian islands,” both in ancient times and well into the 1930s.

The field system a closely spaced grid of east-west embankments and small field plots bisected at right angles by longer north-south trending walls; it covered an area of 3,000 to nearly 4,000-acres and could have supported a population of 8,000-10,000 people.

At Kalaupapa peninsula, archaeological and carbon-dating evidence indicate that the initial settlement and presence of people on the Kalaupapa ("the flat plain") peninsula on the Island of Molokaʻi was between 800 and 1200.

There is a grid of rain-fed plots, defined by low stone field walls built, in part, to shelter sweet potatoes and other crops from trade winds, that cover the Kalaupapa Peninsula.  It appears that the field system was a secondary area of settlement and agricultural development, with the wetter valley and sediment soil being the preferred areas.

Instead of enclosed fields associated with the more recent historic era, archaeologists found dense rows of unenclosed alignments and substantial house sites quite unlike the temporary shelters found in other Hawaiian field systems.

At Kōloa, Kauaʻi, another unique feature was found; the early Hawaiians constructed sophisticated irrigation systems tapping off of Waikomo Stream for growing their crops.

Beginning possibly as early as 1450, the Kōloa Field System was planned and built on the shallow lava soils to the east and west of Waikomo Stream.  It is characterized as a network of fields of both irrigated and dryland crops, built mainly upon one stream system.  Waikomo Stream was adapted into an inverted tree model with smaller branches leading off larger branches.

This agricultural system which at its peak covered over 1,000 acres extends from the present Kōloa town to the shoreline and includes a complex of wet and dryland agricultural fields and associated habitation sites.

Commercial sweet potato cultivation in the islands began in 1849. In 1919, sweet potato was considered tenth in value among agricultural crops in Hawai'i when grown as an emergency crop during the war years.  (Lots of information from Vitousek, Kirch, McCoy and Hammatt)

The image shows ʻuala greens and blossoms; in addition, I have added some other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

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© 2013 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Transformation of Waimea, South Kohala, Hawaiʻi

Over the centuries, and even today, Waimea was an attractive draw with ideal climate and soils, and moderate distance from the ocean.

Still holding remnants of a cowboy town, it looked very different in centuries past – with transformation of forest lands, to agricultural fields, to pasture lands.

Now upper pasture land, archaeologists and others suggest the upper slopes of Waimea was a forest made up of ʻōhiʻa, koa, māmane, ʻiliahi (sandalwood) and other trees.  Pili grass and shrubs were also found.

Within these forested uplands, you could find a variety of forest birds, ʻiʻiwi, ʻelepaio, ʻapapane and others.  Fossil remains of a flightless goose have been found in the region.

This is what the earliest settlers to the region probably saw (however, it is likely the first settlers on the island probably first lived in the valleys on the wetter windward side of the island and others later came to Waimea.)

The forests had general characteristics of an open canopy and the appearance of a wooded parkland, particularly when contrasted with the grassy plains to the west and the dense “impenetrable” rainforest to the east.  (McEldowney)

Statements typifying these characteristics, generally made while enroute from the Waimea settlements, through Parker’s ranch house at Mana, and along Mauna Kea’s eastern slope, include: “a scanty forest” (The Polynesian 1840); “those parts of the plain adjoining Hāmākua are better wooded having a parklike appearance” (Sandwich Islands Gazette 1836); “well shaded by clumps of trees” (The Polynesian 1847); and is “thickly wooded with large trees, entirely free from underbrush, and is covered with a greensward, giving it the appearance of a parkland” (The Polynesian 1848.)  (McEldowney)

Reverend Lorenzo Lyons (missionary leader of Waimea’s Imiola Church and songwriter who composed "Hawaiʻi Aloha") frequently described his home as ʻAla ʻŌhiʻa Nei (home of the fragrant ʻōhiʻa lehua.) (Paris)

The population began to increase dramatically around 1100 AD and the west side population doubled every century.  (Kirch)  The population of the islands reached a peak in about 1650 AD, with a total of several hundred thousand.

Waimea’s initial population (probably first settling in the 1100s – 1200s) likely grew into a fairly large community.  Settlement areas expanded into the hillsides and out onto the drier Waimea plains.

As permanent settlements were established and populations grew, to feed the people and increase the amount of arable land, the leeward slopes and valleys were cleared of the native forest and replaced by intensively cultivated field systems.  (Watson)

Field walls (kuaiwi) delineated garden plots (Kihāpai) and helped retain the soil.  Fields were irrigated using canals (ʻauwai) that tapped the Waimea streams.  (Watson)

Once the advantages of living in Waimea were known, the population quickly grew.  Terraced agricultural plots expanded and more of the forest was removed.

The upper slopes of Waimea are said to have supported more than 10,000-people prior to contact.

Post-contact brought further changes – two major modern land-use practices transformed the landscape – first, the harvesting of sandalwood, which was shortly-followed by the management of the cattle herds.

Various references establish the importance of sandalwood, the most famous of early historic export commodities, in the Waimea region, while remarks such as, these “woods frequented by sandalwood cutters” suggest exploitable sandalwood was in the region’s māmane/koa forests. (McEldowney)

William Ellis, in 1831 wrote, “Before daylight on the 22d, we were roused by vast multitudes of people passing through the district from Waimea with sandalwood, which had been cut in the adjacent mountains for Karaimoku (Kalanimōku,) by the people of Waimea, and which the people of Kohala, as far as the north point, had been ordered to bring down to his storehouse on the beach, for the purpose of its being shipped to Oahu.  There were between two and three thousand men, carrying each from one to six pieces of sandalwood, according to their size and weight.”

In 1856, while editor of the Sandwich Islands’ Monthly Magazine, Abraham Fornander wrote an article arguing that large cattle herds had altered or ameliorated the climate of Waimea by destroying a “thick wood” that covered “the whole of the plain” as early as 1825 or 1830 (Sandwich Islands’ Monthly Magazine 1856).  (McEldowney)

All of this forever changed Waimea.  Once the native forests were cleared, the “natural” landscape of Waimea ceased to exist.  (Watson)

Early Hawaiians first altered the landscape by clearing the forest and plotting out agricultural fields; later, introduced species took over.

A notable introduced (and invasive) plant to Waimea is fountain grass; it was introduced on the island of Hawaiʻi as an ornamental plant in the 1920s.  It spread quickly and today, less than a century later, fountain grass is a dominant species along roadsides and in undeveloped areas on the leeward side of the island.  (Watson)

Waimea, we used to call it home – I miss it.

The image shows a map of early vegetation in and around Waimea (McEldowney.)  In addition, I have included other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

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Kalaupapa Field System

Moloka‘i Island can be divided into three ecological regions based on rainfall, exposure to northeast trade winds and landform: (1) the wet, windward valleys of the north shore, (2) the dry, leeward valleys of the south shore, and (3) the arid rocklands of the island’s west end.

The Kalaupapa Peninsula, located at the western end of these valleys, is a unique landform formed by a volcanic rejuvenation centered on the Kauhakō Crater (about 330-thousand years ago,) at the base of the north shore’s cliffs.

Archaeological and carbon-dating evidence indicate that the initial settlement and presence of people on the Kalaupapa ("the flat plain") peninsula on the Island of Molokaʻi was between 800 and 1200.

Next to the peninsula is a distinctly-different, wet ecological zone with sediment soils distributed at the bottoms of the short Waihānau and Wai‘ale‘ia Valleys, the large Waikolu Valley and along the base of the cliffs.

Based on archaeological studies, the northern portion of the peninsula has “two main types of agricultural complexes … alignments with enclosures around them, and alignments without enclosures”.  The density of plots within the later type suggested “possible intensification of an earlier field system”.

Identified as the Kalaupapa Field System, there is a grid of rain-fed plots, defined by low stone field walls built, in part, to shelter sweet potatoes and other crops from trade winds, that cover the Kalaupapa Peninsula.

It appears that the field system was a secondary area of settlement and agricultural development, with the wetter valley and sediment soil being the preferred areas.

Like other windward areas, wind erosion is a problem.  To address this, long, narrow linear plots (defined by low field walls,) are packed densely together in locations exposed to the northeast trade winds.  In addition, plots were in swales between boulder outcrops.

Initial theories suggested the entire field system was primarily the result of a historic boom in the production of potatoes for “gold rush” markets in California.

Recent work by various teams of archaeologists, which included surveys in different ecological zones - specifically, the peninsula and several valleys - revealed a well-preserved archaeological landscape across the region.

Instead of enclosed fields associated with the more recent historic era, archaeologists found dense rows of unenclosed alignments and substantial house sites quite unlike the temporary shelters found in other Hawaiian field systems.

The findings suggest that early agricultural development in the area started well before the "gold rush" exports and was first concentrated in valleys (with permanent streams) and, perhaps more significantly, that most of the Kalaupapa Field System was likely to have been built before European contact.

Although limited cultivation in dryland environments may have begun as early as 1200 and continued through the 13th century, widespread burning across the Kalaupapa Peninsula, which archaeologists suggest signals of the beginning of the Kalaupapa Field System, does not commence until 1450-1550.

It appears that not only is there a correlation between rich, geologically young soils and Hawaiian dryland intensive agricultural systems, but also the creation of these large-scale systems around 1400 appears to have been nearly simultaneous in both windward and leeward districts.

Then, between 1650 and 1795, there were increases in the peninsula population, indicated by house sites, rock shelters, an animal enclosure, a possible shrine and a site interpreted as a men’s house (mua.)

In terms of agriculture, there is good evidence that people continued to actively cultivate the entire area throughout this period.

Following the abandonment of the field system at the end of the 18th century, settlement shifted to small house sites spread along the coast and local roadways.

The introduction of cattle in 1830 caused the construction of large, architecturally-distinct walls to protect fields and yards from roving animals.

In 1849, portions of the fields were reactivated and intensified to supply potatoes and other crops to California’s “gold rush” markets.

The Kingdom of Hawaiʻi instituted in 1865 a near century-long program of segregation and isolation of patients with Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) and patients were banished to the isolated peninsula of Kalaupapa, displacing resident families.

The image is an aerial view of the Kalaupapa peninsula area – the parallel walls are easily evident in the image.  Information and images here are from work and publications from Mark D. McCoy, PhD, Assistant Professor, Anthropology at San Jose State University.  In addition, I have added other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/peter.t.young.hawaii

© 2012 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Kaupō Field System

At the time of initial contact, Hawaiian subsistence economy was dominated by two distinct agricultural ecosystems: (1) irrigated ponds (primarily for taro production) near permanent streams that could feed irrigation canals and (2) extensive tracts of dryland, rain-fed intensive cultivation (focused on the cultivation of sweet potatoes.)

Although irrigated ponds continued after contact, the intensive dryland field systems were abandoned in the early decades of the nineteenth century (probably due to greater labor demands for the dryland systems.)

Until recently, no intensive, dryland rain-fed field systems had been identified on Maui.  However, now, there is clear evidence of such a system at Kaupō.

Before getting into the specifics of the field system, let’s recall what was happening in and around Kaupō in late pre-contact times.

Kaupō is associated in Hawaiian oral traditions with Kekaulike, a famous Maui king (ali‘i nui) who on genealogical estimates is dated to approximately the early eighteenth century.

Kekaulike made Kaupō his residential seat, and assembled his army at Mokulau, preparing for a war of conquest against his rivals on Hawai‘i Island.

After returning from his invasion of Kohala, Kekaulike resided at Kaupō, where he died.  The succession of the Maui kingship demonstrated the importance that Kaupō had in the late pre-contact Maui kingdom.

Kaupō is on the south-eastern flanks of Haleakalā, Maui.

The district is dominated by the “Kaupō Gap,” a breach of the southern wall of Haleakalā Crater with a rejuvenation phase of a massive outpouring of lava flows (and one major mudflow) through the Kaupō Gap and down to the sea, creating a vast accretion fan.  The Hawaiians called this fan Nā Holokū (“The Cloak.”)

It was this great fan of young lavas with high nutrient content, combined with ideal climate conditions that provided the environmental potential for intensive agricultural production in Kaupō.

Given its use as a Royal Center for Island Ali‘i, there was a definite need for sufficient crop production.  Fortunately, the area has an ideal combination of soils, elevation and rainfall making it also a predictable environment for an intensive dryland field system to feed the people.

Historic records note that this region was identified as “the greatest continuous dry planting area in the Hawaiian islands,” both in ancient times and well into the 1930s.  But this old culture was vanishing due to a combination of economic and climatic circumstances.

Oral traditions state that sweet potatoes were cultivated from sea level up to about 2,000 feet elevation and great quantities of dry taro were planted in the lower forest belt from one end of the district to the other.

Using high-resolution color aerial photographs of Kaupō and then confirming their findings on the ground, archaeologists identified grid patterns over significant parts of the landscape, confirming the existence of a major dryland field system, the first to be identified for Maui Island.

The field system a closely spaced grid of east-west embankments and small field plots bisected at right angles by longer north-south trending walls; it covered an area of 3,000 to nearly 4,000-acres and could have supported a population of 8,000-10,000 people.

A range of smaller features such as enclosures, shelters and platforms are found within the field system area indicating the presence of a complex social community integrated within the system.

This was truly dryland agriculture, there was no evidence to level terraces as in irrigated pondfield systems (taro lo‘i,) and there was no evidence of water control features or channels; so the conclusion was the system was strictly rainfed.

The most common feature type consists of stacked or core-filled stone-walled enclosures; many of these are rectangular and may be the foundation walls for thatched houses, but a few larger, irregular enclosures may be animal pens.

On Hawai‘i Island, field system complexes are associated with prominent ceremonial structures (heiau) and royal residential centers, such as Mo‘okini Heiau at the northern tip of Kohala, and the royal centers at Kealakekua and Hōnaunau in Kona.

This strong association between field systems and ceremonial architecture is not surprising, given that these intensively cultivated field complexes provided the underpinning of the elite economy.

Like other areas, two heiau at Kaupō stand out for their massive size and labor invested in their construction, Lo‘alo‘a and Kou.

Lo‘alo‘a Heiau is one of the largest on Maui and indeed in the entire archipelago and is associated in Hawaiian traditions with King Kekaulike, who ruled Maui in the early 1700s.  Kou Heiau, on a lava promontory jutting into the sea is on the western end of the Kaupō field system.

It is believed that Kaupō with its field system at one time played an important role in the emerging Maui population, particularly in the final century prior to European contact, when it became the seat of the paramount Kekaulike.

The enormous capacity of these field systems enabled the rise of a population center; Lo‘alo‘a and Kou heiau on either side of the Kaupō fields illustrate the inseparable links between agriculture and the religious traditions of ancient Hawai‘i.

The image shows the general location and some of the field walls of the Kaupo Field System.  A special thanks to Patrick Kirch for information and images on the Kaupō Field System (P. V. Kirch, J. Holson, and A. Baer, 2009,  Intensive dryland agriculture in Kaupō, Maui, Hawaiian Islands. Asian Perspectives 48:265-290.)

I have added other images and maps of this area in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/peter.t.young.hawaii

© 2012 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Kōloa Field System

               

One of the great achievements of the ancient Hawaiians in this region is evidenced in the agricultural Kōloa Field System on the South Shore of Kaua‘i.

Evidence indicates the Kōloa area was forested to the shore before the arrival of the first Polynesians.  When they started to settle in this area, they cleared the land for agriculture by burning.

Because rainfall is low in this area, the early Hawaiians constructed sophisticated irrigation systems for growing taro and other crops.  Ultimately, the Kōloa Field System of agriculture was established with formal growing areas and irrigation system tapping off of Waikomo Stream.

Its elements include parallel and branching ʻauwai (irrigation ditches,) terraced loʻi (taro growing ponds,) and dryland plots. Later intensification includes aqueducted ʻauwai, irrigated mound fields, and subdivision of lo'i and kula plots.

Beginning possibly as early as 1450, the Kōloa Field System was planned and built on the shallow lava soils to the east and west of Waikomo Stream.

It is characterized as a network of fields of both irrigated and dryland crops, built mainly upon one stream system.  Waikomo Stream was adapted into an inverted tree model with smaller branches leading off larger branches.

The associated dispersed housing and field shelters were located among the fields, particularly at junctions of the irrigation ditches (ʻauwai).

In this way, the whole of the field system was contained within the entire makai (seaward) portion of the ahupuaʻa of Kōloa stretching east and west to the ahupuaʻa boundaries.

The field system, with associated clusters of permanent extended family habitations, was in place by the middle of the 16th century and was certainly expanded and intensified continuously from that time. 

Long ʻauwai were constructed along the tops of topographic high points formed by northeast to southwest oriented Kōloa lava flows.   These ʻauwai extended all the way to the sea.

Habitation sites, including small house platforms, enclosures and L-shaped shelters were built in rocky bluff areas which occupied high points in the landscape and were therefore close to ʻauwai, which typically ran along the side of these bluffs.

From A.D. 1650-1795, the Hawaiian Islands were typified by the development of large communal residences, religious structures and an intensification of agriculture.

The Kōloa Field System is unique in a number of ways; its makeup and design tells us much of the pre-contact world and the ingenuity of the ancients with respect to planning, architecture, agriculture and social system.

A complex of wet and dryland agricultural fields and associated habitation sites occur in the lava tablelands of the makai portion of Kōloa ahupua'a on the south coast of Kaua'i.  Although soil deposits are thin and the land is rocky, plentiful irrigation water was available.

This agricultural system which at its peak covered over 1,000 acres extends from the present Kōloa town to the shoreline and includes a complex of wet and dryland agricultural fields and associated habitation sites.

The Kōloa System, at its apex in the early 19th century (probably due to the opportunity for provisioning of the whaling ships,) represents one of the most intensive cultural landscapes in Hawaiʻi.

Kōloa Field System was in use through 1850 AD.  Remnants of this field system still remain in parts of the region. 

The Koloa Field System is a significant Point of Interest in the Holo Holo Kōloa Scenic Byway.  We are working with the Kōloa community in preparing the Corridor Management Plan for this project; one of our recommendations is to restore a portion of the field system.

A special thanks to Hal Hammatt and Cultural Surveys for information and images used here that is based on their extensive research in this area.  In addition, I have added other images and maps of this region in a folder of like name in the Photos section of my Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/peter.t.young.hawaii

Kohala Field System

Throughout the younger islands of the Hawaiian archipelago, dryland agricultural field systems constituted a significant component of the late prehistoric subsistence economy.

The field systems produced large quantities of food to support local farmers and residents, as well as local and district-level chiefly elites.

It is generally thought that the dryland agricultural systems had spread to their maximum extent, nearly reaching the edge of productive lands.

Kohala supported a large and well-developed field system, covering over 15,000-acres with a dense network of field walls and paved trails.  It is one of the largest archaeological sites in Polynesia.

In the Kohala area, Hawaiian farmers found, farmed and intensified production on lands that were poised between being too wet and too dry.

The distribution of intensive rain-fed agricultural systems was constrained on its lower end by conditions that were too arid to support intensive agriculture reliably, while at their upper margin many millennia of leaching had depleted soil fertility to a point where intensive rain-fed agriculture was infeasible.

In essence, Hawaiians were farming the rock in intensive dryland agricultural systems; their field systems extended to the wettest point that still supplied nutrients via basalt weathering.

When the field system is plotted against the rainfall map it falls within the 30-70-in rainfall band.

Archaeological evidence of intensive cultivation of sweet potato and other dryland crops is extensive, including walls, terraces, mounds and other features.

The fields throughout the Kohala system were oriented parallel to the elevation contours and the walls (and perhaps kō (sugar cane) planted on them) would have functioned as windbreaks from the trade winds which sweep down the slopes of the Kohala mountains.

Configured in this way, the walls would also have reduced evapotranspiration and - with heavy mulching - retained essential moisture for the crops.  This alignment of fields also conserved water by retaining and dispersing surface run-off and inhibited wind erosion and soil creep.

The main development of the Kohala field system took place AD 1450-1800.  By the late-1600s the lateral expansion of the field system had been reached, and by AD 1800 the system was highly intensified.

The process of intensification involved shortened fallow periods, and agricultural plots divided into successively smaller units.

The archaeological map of the Kohala field system depicts over 5,400-segments of rock alignments and walls with a total length of nearly 500-miles.

The fields begin near the north tip of the island very close to the coast.  The western margin extends southward at an increasing distance from the coast, with the eastern margin at a higher elevation and also an increasing distance from the coast.

From north to south the field system is more than 12-miles in length.  At its maximum, it is more than 2.5-miles in width.

Scientists speculate that this farming did not just support the local population, but was also used by Kamehameha to feed the thousands of warriors under his command in his conquest of uniting the islands under a single rule in the late-1700s.

Based on experimental plantings, if only half of the Kohala Field System was in production in one year, it could be producing between 20,000 to 120,000-tons of sweet potato in one crop.

The system was abandoned shortly after European contact in the early- or mid-19th century.

The image shows remnants of the Kohala Field System walls in present pastureland.  A special thanks to Peter Vitousek, former Hawai‘i resident and now Professor at Stanford, for background information and images.  In addition, more images/maps of the Kohala Field System are in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/peter.t.young.hawaii

‘Umi-a- Līloa - Pa o ʻUmi - Kona Field System

Pa o ʻUmi is the small point of land in Kailua Bay between Kamakahonu (King Kamehameha Hotel) and Huliheʻe Palace, near the middle of the Kailua Seawall in Kona on the Big Island.

It marks the location of the Royal Center of the ruler ʻUmi-a-Līloa (ʻUmi) (ca. AD 1490-1525) and where famed King ʻUmi landed when he first came to Kailua by canoe from his ancestral court at Waipiʻo.

On this point of rock, King ʻUmi ordered his attendant to dry his treasured feather cloak (ʻahuʻula) (so this promontory is sometimes referred to as Ka Lae o ʻAhuʻula.)

Over the years of widening Aliʻi Drive and adding on to the seawall, this point has been almost completely covered.

ʻUmi from Waipiʻo, son of Līloa, defeated Kona chief Ehunuikaimalino and united the island of Hawai‘i.  He then moved his Royal Center from Waipi‘o to Kailua.

ʻUmi's residence was near the place called Pa-o-ʻUmi.

At about the time of ʻUmi, a significant new form of agriculture was developed in Kona; he is credited with starting this in Kona.

Today, archaeologists call the unique method of farming in this area the “Kona Field System.”

This intensive agricultural activity changed farming and agricultural production on the western side of Hawai'i Island; the Kona field system was quite large, extending from Kailua to south of Honaunau.

In lower elevations all the way to the shore, informal clearings, mounds and terraces were used to plant sweet potatoes; and on the forest fringe above the walled fields there were clearings, mounds and terraces which were primarily planted in bananas.

In the lower reaches of the tillable land, at elevations about 500-feet to 1,000-feet above sea level, a grove of breadfruit half mile wide and 20 miles long grew.

Sweet potatoes grew among the breadfruit.  Above the breadfruit grove, at elevations where the rainfall reached 60-70 inches or more, were fields of dry land taro.

The field system took up all the tillable land and cropping cycles were frequent.  Agriculture supported the thriving and growing population of Kona.

The Kona Field System (identified as Site: 10-27-6601 and including multiple locations) was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 28, 1977.

When it was nominated to the National Register, the Kona Field System was described as “the most monumental work of the ancient Hawaiians.”

The challenge of farming in Kona is to produce a flourishing agricultural economy in an area subject to frequent droughts, with no lakes or streams for irrigation.

The Kona Field System was planted in long, narrow fields that ran across the contours, along the slopes of Mauna Loa and Hualālai.

As rainfall increases rapidly as you go up the side of Hualālai, the long fields allowed farmers to plant different crops according to the rainfall gradients.

This traditional farming system disappeared by the mid-19th century and now coffee farms cover much of the land that once comprised the Kona Field System (we now call this mauka region the “Coffee Belt.”)

The photo shows Pa o ‘Umi, taken in 1928 from the area of the Kailua Pier - Huliheʻe Palace and Mokuaikaua Church in background.  The little girl sitting on the left is my mother; the woman sitting in the middle (wearing a hat) is my grandmother.

Pa O ‘Umi was included as a Point of Interest in the Royal Footsteps Along The Kona Coast Scenic Byway.  We assisted Kailua Village BID in the preparation of its Corridor Management Plan.  We are honored that the project was awarded the 2011 “Environment / Preservation” award from the American Planning Association - Hawaii Chapter;  “Historic Preservation Commendation” from the Historic Hawaiʻi Foundation and the 2011 “Pualu Award for Culture & Heritage” from the Kona-Kohala Chamber of Commerce.

In addition, I have included some other older images of Pa o ‘Umi, Kailua-Kona Bay and the Kona Field System in a folder of like name in the Photos section of my Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Peter-T-Young/1332665638