Several days ago, I went in search of Hawaii - it's past I mean - modern Hawaii wears its history on short Aloha shirt sleeves - I traveled to one of the few active archeological sites on Oahu with a restored heiau (temple). 

Temple always meant to me something imposing in which everyone stood in awe.  The heiau at Waimea Bay, site of a once thriving Hawaiian settlement, was awesome but not in an imposing way, rather in a supposing way.  The stone tiers upon which the temple area is built were restored just enough for a visitor like me to imagine what it must have felt like standing there and, if permitted, walking up the tier steps to meet with the high priest in the maybe 40 x 40 foot temple central area.  There are a few carved tiki's, though 800 years ago the place would likely have bristled with them to warn people of the sacredness of the area - that to enter was to place their life in jeopardy. There is a restored stone altar and behind it a devination platform. To one side a small stick and grass lean-to shelter I could imagine a drummer and chanter sitting in, and across from the altar, a maybe 4 x 12 foot stick and grass house for the high priest, the structure being just large enough for four adults to sit crosslegged on a grass mat within. 



This was a site dedicated to Lono, the god of agriculture, who left the islands centuries past, promising to return on a white island - the same Lono Hawaiians mistook Captain Cook for when they first saw and took his billowing white sails as a sign of Lono.  This small heiau was not luakini-class, that was not one within which humans were routinely offered as a sacrifice.  The awe that the heiau inspired did not come from a dark or violent history, but from it being a place of individual enlightenment and divination. 

My next journey is to visit the Big Island (Hawaii) to visit Pu'uhonua o Honaunau - an ancient place of refuge, a religious sanctuary and site of repurification for personal errors or transgressions against customs, rituals, tabus or gods.  It is said that each island had two and that if a transgressor could but get to it, scale the walls and entreat the high priest inside without being killed, complete forgivenness could be attained.  We have jails, the ancient Hawaiians had swift justice or the places of refuge.  Which is really more civilized I wonder. 

Gary Martine