Hawaii Volcanoes National Park - Sacred Sites
The first humans to set foot on the Hawaiian Islands were Polynesians who had sailed more than 2,000 miles from their home in the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific -- a miraculous feat, considering that they had neither compass nor maps nor other navigational instruments. Such tools had not been invented by A.D. 400, when the Polynesians pulled their canoes onto Hawaii's black sand beaches and unloaded the chickens, pigs, coconuts, and other plants they had brought to begin their new life. In time more colonists came from the Marquesas, but it is thought that about A.D. 1200 a different group of Polynesisans arrived -- this time, from Tahiti. They quickly became the rulers of the islands, and their customs and culture have dominated the Hawaiian way of life ever since.
Although temples were built on the rim of Kilauea's crater, Pele's territory was considered too sacred for the humdrum activities of daily life. Most villages were established near the sea, where fish were plentiful, and in the lowlands, where the soil made for good farming. Along the seacoast are the ruins of several ancient fishing villages, marked by groves of tall coconut palms, or niu. These trees are not only offered welcome shade to the new settlers but also supplied an incredible number of practical products. Both coconut meat and coconut milk were important foods. The empty shells made excellent storage containers of cups for drinking. Husks were turned into cord; fronds became baskets, mats, and thatching; and trunks ended up as the underpinnings of houses. In all, Hawaiians found more than a hundred different uses for this tree -- firm testimony to the creativity and resourcefulness of these islanders.
Along the coast is the remains of one of Hawaii's most sacred religious shrines, Wahaula Heiau, the Temple of the Red-Mouthed God. Constructed in the late 13th century, this temple was dedicated to the god of war, the bloodthirsty Kukailimoku. For five centuries Hawaiians passed through this hallowed place, paying homage to Kukailimoku and offering sacrifices.
From Wahaulu Heiau, an ancient footpath once led to another holy place. After crossing mile after mile of near-bare pahoehoe, bedecked with an occasional stunted ohia tree or tuft of grass, the trail suddenly enters a very special field where the grandest show of rock art, or petroglyphs, in all of Hawaii is on display. Although these rocks were once just as unadorned as the others around them, generations of Hawaiians believed this particular field -- called Puuloa, after the Hill of Long Life at its center -- to be sacred, and they carved pictures and symbols into the stone. Lacking metal tools, they used hard-edged rocks to chip away and carve into the softer ones. Elementary though this method may have been, it has stood the test of time: the oldest pictures are still visible despite a thousand years of weathering. Simple yet enigmatic, these carvings range in size from a few inches to six or more feet long, and in some places are so crowded that they overlap. Many of the early carvings are plain stick figures, but later ones are more fully developed, depicting a more detailed human form (sometimes in profile), outrigger canoes in full sail, and such creatures as dogs, turtles, and fish. Other petroglyphs are abstract symbols, precisely carved but indecipherable -- their meaning locked in mystery.
Though we may never be able to interpret these drawings, we can still sit where the ancient artists sat, touching the same roughly textured rocks under the same blazing sun, and contemplate the same gentle sea s it dances its way to the horizon. No imagined paradise could be greener or sweeter or more peaceful, which makes it all the more difficult to remember that Hawaii owes its existence -- and its future -- to a volcano that breathes fire and brimstone.