Regarding Kualoloa and ʻAilāʻau

By Bobby Camara with Dr. Pualani Kanakaʻole Kanahele and Dr. Donald Swanson

Interweaving Native Hawaiian cultural knowledge and understandings with those of various scientific disciplines can be challenging. Viewpoints may seemingly contradict each other, timelines may not coincide, and the lack of common vocabulary may lead to frustrations. Researchers don’t work in tandem, so learnings about culture and science proceeds in fits and starts.

An example of interest to those in the fields of Hawaiian culture and geology is deciphering the mele oli (chants) of Pelehonuamea mā (“Pele of the reddish earth” and others), and their relationships to specific volcanic events and lava flows as documented in the geologic record.

It is said that the works of Native Hawaiian gods, goddesses, deities, etc., were attributed to specific phenomena. Those attributions recall those of Christian saints as well as many others of various religions worldwide.

In Hawaiʻi Nei, many now use the term “elemental” to more broadly refer to those energies in the natural world. According to Dr. Pualani Kanakaʻole Kanahele:

“Nomenclatures were created and composed by our ancestors who researched their environment to understand the natural energies that provided for the continuum of life. The elemental whose kuleana is creation of land in the middle of the ocean sits at a higher status of existence in relationship to regenerative creatures who need that land to exist.

“ʻPele’ is the lava that exits the earth, nothing else. ‘Honua’ is earth or land, and ‘Mea’ are substances for creating land. So Pelehonuamea is ‘lava that creates land.’ There is no emotion attached to Pele; Pele is the [molten] energy that creates land.”

Our understanding that the only kuleana of Pele is to create land comes from careful informed study of ancient mele oli, rather than from reading moʻolelo or kaʻao (stories).

A problem arises when we attempt to place mele oli chronologically in a cultural narrative. Events described in chants are not “time-stamped,” but careful study of them, together with knowledge of place names and clues from scientific evidence of natural phenomema, sometimes allows us to construct correlations between seemingly disparate sources of knowledge.

The chant Kualoloa (see sidebar) was published in 1915 by Nathaniel Bright Emerson in Pele and Hiiaka, A Myth From Hawaii. It is interpreted by Kanahele and others as describing an eruption that began in Keaʻau ma uka. This mele oli describes events having taken place in a broad geographic area, and references familiar place names. Pele (molten lava) destroyed the forests of Panaʻewa between Hilo and Puna, as well as those ma uka in ʻŌlaʻa. The majority of the pele moved northeast through Puna, and entered the ocean between Hāʻena and today’s Hawaiian Beaches subdivision. A smaller flow went south, entered the sea and formed ka lae ʻĀpua. The coastal boundary between the moku of Puna and Kaʻū lies very near the western edge of Kualoloa, west of ʻĀpua.

The “Volcano” USGS topographic map is of ma uka-most Keaʻau. Kaluaiki, the crater in which lies the entrance to Nāhuku, is one of the boundary points of Keaʻau and is also a point between the moku (districts) of Puna and Kaʻū. Kaluaiki is also one of four lua poho (pit craters) in that vicinity, including Kīlauea Iki, all of which are younger than the flow.

Volcanologists surmise that they may have formed with Kaluapele (the caldera) in about 1500 CE, plus/minus 30 years or so. It is believed that the Kualoloa eruption commenced in about 1410 CE and ended in about 1470 CE, and it’s likely that these events are interrelated in ways that are not yet fully understood.

During that eruption, much of Puna was devastated, according to moʻolelo, because Pele was exacting revenge on Hiʻiaka, elemental force of revegetation and growth after lava flows. Hiʻiaka had seduced Lohiauipo, and stolen his affections from Pele. Pele buried her sisterʻs beloved forests, and later, Hiʻiaka attempted to extinguish the fires of Pele by digging into Halemaʻumaʻu so she could reach the water table, or the ocean, and flood the force for creation that is Pele.

It’s tempting to believe that Kualoloa is the basis for the boundaries (more or less) of the moku that today we know as Puna. That is, starting at Kaluaiki, then ma kai along Keaʻau, northeast to Pāpaʻi at the shore about three miles north of Hāʻena, then southeast, to Kumukahi, then along the coast southwest to just west of lae ʻĀpua, then back ma uka to the point of beginning.

A screenshot of the Wolfe and Morris 1996 “Geologic Map of the Island of Hawaiʻi” illustrates (in striped pink) both Kualoloa flow branches, whose origins are at or near the lua poho Kīlauea Iki, and Kaluaiki. The broader northern swath contains a number of kīpuka, and a lava delta was built, creating ka lae Kaloli, the prominent bump-out at the shore. Kaloli is the approximate terminus of a 40-mile-long system of lava tubes that enabled the far and wide distribution of pele during the prolonged eruption.

The much smaller south branch of the Kualoloa flows is now partially buried by the early 1970s Maunaulu flows.

During the 1970s, Robin Terry Holcomb conducted field work and research at Kīlauea, inspired by his curiosities as a staff member at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, and then as a Ph.D. candidate in geology at Stanford University. His dissertation was published in 1981 as “Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii: Chronology and Morphology Of The Surficial Lava Flows.”

In those times, access to Hawaiian language newspapers of the 1800s was extremely limited and few books concerning Native Hawaiian traditions had been published. To his great credit, Holcomb did research and included descriptions of Kīlauea during the 1800s, albeit from mostly malihini perspectives.

One such source was William D. Westervelt’s Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes, published in 1916, which did rely on works by Malo, Kamakau, and Fornander. Holcomb, though, apparently desired clarity, and said in his dissertation:

“Fourth, this account by Westervelt is inconsistent with traditions given elsewhere. Other sources, for example, describe Pele’s arrival in very different ways and make no mention at all of Ai-laau. Until the ancestry of Westervelt’s account can be established and evaluated, it can be given very little credence. This is true also of many other provocative traditions.

“Despite the uncertainties in Westervelt’s account [of the arrival of Pele], I have used it in assigning names to prominent features of Kilauea’s summit. (emphasis added). Thus I have called the late prehistoric vent in Kilauea Iki “Hale o Ai-Laau” (house of Ai-laau) and have termed the sustained prehistoric vent near Uwekahuna Bluff “Lua Pele” (Pele’s pit), these names being consistent with the westward shift in activity that paleomagnetic evidence indicates occurred sometime around A.D. 1600. The timing of this inferred shift, however, is later than some traditions permit, and previous use of “Lua Pele” for other summit features may lead to confusion in the future. Despite these points against such names, I used them as provisional names here because I felt that some names were needed for clarity of presentation, and these were the best currently available.” (emphasis added)

Hawaiian language sources during the last 40 years have rapidly become more available. Despite that, the “ʻAilāʻau” flow name Holcomb conferred, although it was meant to be provisional, has persisted.

According to Kanahele and others, ʻAilāʻau means “consume trees.” That consumption can be via rot, toppling during windstorms, lightning strikes, floods, etc. All those actions have associated elementals, but ʻAilāʻau is not one, because that name cannot be found in nomenclature lists, and is not found in mele oli.

Dr. Don Swanson, emeritus at Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, has, in the last few decades pursued a passion. Deeply curious about the linkages between culture and science, he has worked out chronologies melding the timing of volcanic eruptions with cultural and scientific understandings. According to him:

“A flow field is an accumulation of lava flows erupted from the same vent or cluster of vents with little time between individual flows. A recent example is the flow field created by eruptions between 1983 and 2018 at Puʻuʻōʻō. In the Holcomb case [referencing the ʻAilāʻau flow field], numerous single flows erupted over a 50- to 60-year period in the 15th century.

“I have interpreted that flow field as the one that Pele produced in anger when Hiʻiaka was late in returning from Kauaʻi with Lohiʻau, destroying the Puna Forest. Since that flow field began to form in about 1410-20, on the basis of C-14 ages, then I would suggest that Pele had arrived at Kīlauea by that time, say mid-late 1300s or early 1400s.”

Because we have fresh understandings of the timing of eruptions, of which elemental was responsible according to nomenclature, as well as more detailed knowledge of geographies and traditional place names, we encourage that what Holcomb referred to as the ʻAilāʻau flow field be labeled the Kualoloa flow field in future publications.