Hokule'a to set course for distant islands
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Science Writer
When Hokule'a sails out of Hanalei Bay and turns northwest, it will be the first time perhaps in many centuries that a Polynesian voyaging canoe will cruise the Hawaiian archipelago's most leeward islands.
Hawaiians left agricultural structures on Nihoa, the first island beyond Kaua'i and Ni'ihau, and mainly religious structures on Mokumanamana, the next, along with a robust assemblage of tools, fishhooks, carved stone bowls and more. But archaeologists have not found physical evidence of Polynesians visiting in the atolls beyond.
However, there is ample other evidence early Hawaiians named the distant islands, and native sailors were still visiting them when Capt. James Cook arrived in 1778.
One of Cook's ships came across a double-hulled canoe sailing west of Ni'ihau. Asked where they were headed, the crew told the British they were sailing to a distant island for feathers. Hawaiians told Cook's crew about an island beyond Kaua'i called Modoopappapa (Mokupapapa in today's spelling) where there were birds for feathers and turtles for meat.
Today, it is not clear to which island those voyagers were sailing. "Moku papapa" can mean a "flat" island. It could have been a generic term for any low-reef island, or a specific name for one such island, said historian and retired University of Hawai'i language professor Rubellite Johnson.
Some have suggested it must be French Frigate Shoals, the first such "flat" island beyond Kaua'i and Ni'ihau. The shoals are a vast reef with numerous low sandbar islets.
The reef flats and atolls are distinguished from volcanic "high" islands like the main Hawaiian Islands.
In 1835, an adult Lahainaluna student, Kai'aikawaha, collected a traditional story that included the names of the islands from Ni'ihau to the northwest. They are: Ni'ihau, Ka'ula, Kamokupapapa, Nihoa, Ha'ena, Ha'enaku, Ha'enamoe, Ha'enaala, Ha'ena'e, Ha'enamau-
hoaloalaiahiki, Laloiho, Laloa'e, Lalohele, Lalokona, Laloho'aniani, Kamole, Kapou, Pouhe'eua, Pouhe'elani, Manawainui, Mana-wailani, Manawaihiki, Kuaihelani, and Holaniku.
There is also a tradition of the volcano goddess Pele that suggests Mokupapapa is another name for Kure, the atoll at the northwestern end of the Hawaiian archipelago.
"There are documents and there are stories about them (Hawaiians) going up there," said UH graduate student Kekuaewa Kikiloi.
One point of confusion is that some islands may have had multiple names, just as New York is also Gotham and the Big Apple. Or, the most significant sand islands on atolls may be named rather than the atolls themselves. Some of the sandbars are transient, and both they and some names may have been lost over time.
Kikiloi, who traveled the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands with the 2002 Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program expedition, tried to link names from history to the actual islands. He has some thoughts, but is willing to stake his reputation on only one of them: that the final name in Kai'aikawaha's list, Holaniku, is probably one name for Kure Atoll.
"Holaniku also shows up in a Mo'ikeha chant," which is the story of a great navigator chief who traveled between Hawai'i and Tahiti, he said. The chant describes the Hawaiian Islands as lying in a chain adjoined to Holani.
Researchers say it is inescapable that Hawaiian canoes made cruises up and down the chain, much as the Hokule'a will be doing.
UH anthropologist Ben Finney said he's pretty sure Hawaiians probably visited all those islands, just as they visited virtually every other island in the Pacific, but never established permanent settlements because of the lack of water.
Hawaiian elder Buzzy Agard, who fished the leeward islands extensively in the 1940s and 1950s, said the Hawaiian chain stretches 1,500 miles from Hawai'i island to Kure Atoll, and on multiple voyages from south of the equator it might have been easy to miss a specific island, but hard for Polynesian voyagers to miss an entire archipelago.
"They probably hit both ends of it," Agard said. But he feels many of the smaller islands likely were visited only for short periods, probably to collect resources and return home to the higher islands.
"Many of them were maybe populated only briefly because of lack of water," he said.
Agard found that the uninhabited islands could be a spooky place to be in a small craft.
"Many times I was out there day after day, hour after hour, and you just pound the ocean. I wondered what I was doing there. Anchored, at night, the wind around Adams Bay (on Nihoa), it made funny sounds. You feel real lonely."
Sheila Conant, who heads the UH zoology department, has worked in the northwestern islands, among the house sites and temples of Nihoa and the ducks and finches of Laysan. She said early Hawaiians had both the means and the motive for visiting the islands.
Conant said she has inspected ancient Hawaiian capes and feathered standards, called kahili, and found ones that were made with seabird feathers, notably black and white feathers from red-tailed tropic birds and the blue-green neck and back feathers of the frigate bird. Both birds nest in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and neither nests in the main Hawaiian Islands, so Hawaiians had to have visited there to get them.
Advertiser Science Writer Jan TenBruggencate will serve as a crew member aboard Hokule'a and will send back regular dispatches.
