Pu'uhonua O Honaunau

This was a place of refuge for early people who lived in this area. If you lost a battle, or broke a kapu (law), you could come here, swear allegiance to the victor or do rituals to absolve you of your crimes, and your life (and the lives of your family members) would be spared. This was a big deal until the religious superstitions were abolished as a cultural practice by King Kamehameha II in 1820. He was encouraged by his stepmother, Queen Ka'ahumanu, to break the kapu of men and women eating together in public. They did, he banned the old practices, and that was that (for the most part). The customs weren't working for them, they ditched them. Very tidy, on the whole. Very Eastern, philosophically, in my opinion.

First picture below: Wall art of first landfall, of people possibly from Marquesas, in a double-hulled canoe. Surely, many people died at sea before those first ones who made it. Some people think they may have followed a bird, the golden plover, on its migration, and that may explain how anyone could have found these tiny dots in the huge Pacific Ocean. No matter how it happened, it's pretty amazing.








Single-hull canoe, upside down under this thatch-roofed A-frame structure: (in a separate post of Bill's shots, I'll post the double-hull, my pict of it is no good)


Place of Refuge from a distance (the bay where we snorkeled):


The wall surrounding the refuge (built in the 1500s) is made of uncut lava rocks. No mortar, just piecing together rocks of the right size. The wall is 1,000' long (in a large rectangular shape) and 17' wide in places. Impressive.

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