"Kamehameha Building Pu'ukohala Heiau"
Pu'uhonua o Honaunau National Park in the background.
Collection of the National Park Service

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Kamehameha decided to build a great heiau (temple) at Kawaihae to his war god, Ku-kaili-moku, by which the help of that god might be invoked. A priest-architect shaped an earthen model of it, and the call went out.

Thousands of men passed rocks from hand to hand over great distances. Stoneworkers fitted the rocks without mortar. Kamehameha himself led the work, raising rock platforms and walls. He is depicted as the tall figure facing the reader, attended by a kahili bearer and an guard with a spear, and working in the line of men passing rocks.


News of the temple-building would have been received with dismay by the kings of the other islands, and may have caused them to rush to attack Hawai'i without adequate preparation, hoping to crush Kamehameha before he could complete the temple. If so, the building of Pu'ukohala (hill of the wale), was a masterstroke of psychological warfare.

See also: "Cerimony at Pu'ukohala Heiau"