Farming the Land, Fishing the Sea

The ahupua'a was a traditional land division running mauka from the mountains to makai, and the ahupua'a of Lapakahi encompassed more than 2,000 acres along the leeward slopes of the Kohala Mountains, stretching about 4 miles from upland forests to the shoreline. The makai area around Koai'e Cove was initially settled around A.D. 1300, and by A.D. 1500 people had moved upland to the kula zone and were cultivating crops in the extensive Kohala fieldsystem. Staple crops of 'uala and dryland kalo were grown on the slopes in planting areas defined by earthen berms and low rock walls. By the time of Western Contact in the late 1700s, the population of maka'āinana in the ahupua'a of Lapakahi had grown to several hundred. Many families lived around Koai'e Cove, where they built pole frame houses with thatched roofs of pili grass atop stacked rock walls, and the rock wall complex along the coast remains from that settlement. People gathered shellfish and limu from the nearshore waters and fished offshore from canoes using both 'upena and makau. Many 'ohana moved mauka during the rainy winter season, when planting and other agricultural activity peaked, and a network of mauka-makai trails linked fields and shore so resources of the 'āina and kai could be tended and exchanged. Because the leeward coast lacked permanent surface water, with rain falling upslope and quickly soaking into porous volcanic soils, wells were dug near the coast at Lapakahi to reach freshwater lenses above salt water for drinking, gardens, and food preparation. Lowering of the water table in the late 1800s may have been one reason people left Lapakahi around 1920.

Hawi, Hawaii · United States