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Carrying a coil of
braided coconut fiber sennit ('aha), a master builder lashes the end
rafter of a house to its supporting post and the lower roof beam.
Depicted clockwise from the rock wall builder at lower left, a man hands a
shingle of thatch—made of pandanus leaves (lauhala) sewn over a
light rod—to a worker lashing thatch to a rafter. Leaves of sugar cane,
ti and bundles of pili grass were also used for thatching.
Another worker completes the rafter lashings.
The building of walls
and platforms of rocks fitted together and "dry-stacked" without mortar is a
tradition alive and well today. Those who try it for the first time come away
with great respect for the skill involved, not to mention bruised fingers.
Masters of the art seem to know by intuition as well as experience how a
particular rock will lock into place with others. Some may speak softly to a
rock as they turn it in their hands, inspecting its shape, then dropping it
into place. One worker explains, "The rock sort of tells me how it wants to be
set."
Another, when asked what he does with the bad rocks, replied,
"I don't know; I've never seen a bad rock."
A completed house
(hale) is depicted at upper right, neatly trimmed with ferns at the
ridge and gables, and set upon a rockwork platform (kahua or
paepae) paved with pebbles or sand. "T" shaped racks from which storage
gourds were hung stood beside the doorway. Ti plants were customarily
planted near a house—the leaves had many domestic uses. At lower
elevations the kou tree with the orange blossoms (at upper right) was
favored for shade planting around homes.
At the opening of a new
house the piko (umbilical cord, symbolized by a section of thatch left hanging
over the doorway) was cut by the master house builder. Holding a board behind
the piko, he cut it with an adze as he recited the appropriate
invocation to ancestral spirits
Page 71, Ancient Hawaii
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Link to mini-tour of Old Hawaii