It is quite natural that legends, traditions, and superstitions should be woven in and about such a great natural feature as this crater. All prominent places had original Hawaiian names, although some were changed with time and some are now lost. Ka Lua o ka Oo was the residence of Kamohoalii, the brother of Pele and the king of vapor. Between Halalii and Ka Moa o Pele is the rim of a spatter cone, Pa Puaa o Pele, which is 30 feet square with an opening on the northwest side. It protrudes only 10 feet above later volcanic deposits. This was a place of highest kapu (taboo). Merely to disturb a single grain of sand within it will bring fog and rain, possibly death. Emory discloses the local belief that a stone structure, 9 × 5 feet, located 45 feet east of the rim, holds the bones of two men and a woman who had violated this kapu and who had perished in the ensuing fog. His investigation failed to reveal any burial within the structure. In vaguer vein, it was held that a similar fate would be meted to those disturbing a silversword. Were the National Park committed to a policy of nature protection through fear, this belief would be helpful indeed.
THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Captain James Cook discovered Maui on November 26, 1778, as he sailed southwestward from Alaska on his last voyage. His record for the day gives us the first description of Haleakala: “An elevated hill appeared in the country, whose summit rose above the clouds. The land, from this hill, fell in a gradual slope, terminating in a steep, rocky coast; the sea breaking against it in a most dreadful surf.... On the 30th ... another island was seen to the windward, called, by the natives, Owhyhee. That along which we had been for some days, was called Mowee.”[3]
After sailing along the eastern and southern coasts of the island of Hawaii in its two armed ships, Resolution and Discovery, the expedition landed at Kealakekua Bay on January 17, 1779. Captain Cook was worshipped as the incarnation of the god Lono, but he overstayed his welcome, ill-will and violence taking its place. A climax was reached over the theft of a ship’s cutter, which was broken up merely for its nails and ironware. On February 14, Cook tried to seize the aged king Kalaniopuu to hold as a hostage until reparation was made. In the scuffle that ensued, the Great Mariner was killed by an alii, who thrust quite through his back an iron dagger, a chief article of trade of the Expedition. Upon departure toward the northwest, the survivors reached Maalaea Bay on February 24, on which date the journal remarks about Maui: “This side of the island forms the same distant view as the north-east; ... the hilly parts, connected by a low flat isthmus, having, at the first view, the appearance of two separate islands.”
The ill-fated French explorer, Count Jean Francois de Galaup de la Perouse, arrived with his two frigates on May 28, 1786, in the bay southwest of Haleakala that today bears his name. He recorded: “At every instant we had just cause to regret the country we had left behind us; and to add to our mortification, we did not find an anchoring place well sheltered till we came to a dismal coast where torrents of lava had formerly flowed like the cascades which pour forth their water in other parts of the island.”[4] This reference is to the latest flows of Haleakala. See [page 37].
On Vancouver’s first exploring expedition to the islands, Edward Bell made the following entry for March 6, 1792 in the log of the Chatham: “... the south shore ... had by no means a very inviting appearance,—it was remarkably high and seemed extremely barren;—from the top of the Mountains to the waters edge are deep Gullies or ruts form’d I suppose by the water running down,—and there appeared but little wood on this side (except towards the Top) and as little Cultivation, here and there we saw a few Huts and a small Village, several of which appeared half way up.”
On Vancouver’s next visit, Thomas Manby recorded in the journal for March 10, 1793: “... south side of the island which presented a prospect not very grateful to the eye as the land was high and rugged with frequent mounds of Cinders caused by volcanic eruptions.” On March 14, 1793, the botanist A. Menzies, with some of Vancouver’s crew, climbed a valley back of Lahaina and made botanical observations.
When the first missionaries from New England came to Hawaii, Elisha Loomis, a printer, remarked in his journal for March 30, 1820: “As we double the northern extremity of Owhyhee the lofty heights of Maui are on our right.” The spelling, Maui, is evidently a correction made later, as the original spelling appears elsewhere in early missionary usage. Already by 1822, the members of this expedition had adopted the five vowels and seven consonants of the Romance languages used today in reducing the Hawaiian language to writing and printing. Thus, the confusion of earlier English writers was dispelled.
Lorrin Andrews and Jonathan F. Green, ordained missionaries, and Dr. Gerrit P. Judd, physician, were with the third mission from New England. They arrived in Honolulu on March 30, 1828. They visited Rev. William Richards in Lahaina and toured Maui the following summer. Extracts concerning the trip of Dr. and Mrs. Judd were published in 1880 with an introductory note by Albert Francis Judd, a son. In the preface, dated May 1861, Mrs. Judd states that the sketches were “culled and abridged from a mass of papers” without pretense of writing a history. Under the date of July 1828, the narrative relates a Fourth of July excursion and includes: “The mountain on the east division is Haleakala (house of the sun), and is the largest crater in the world, but is not in action.”[5] Unfortunately, the original notes have been lost, and the reference to the mountain by name must have been inserted at a much later date in preparing the manuscript for publication. It would be hard to believe that Mrs. Judd could possibly have started the fiction, “largest crater on earth,” at the early date of 1828. The Judds did not climb the mountain during their visit, and Hawaiians were not in a position to make comparisons among craters of the world.
On August 21, 1828, Richards, Andrews, and Green made the first recorded ascent of Haleakala. They could not have known a name for the mountain, for they refer to it only as “the highest land on Maui” and as “an extinct volcano.” Not until six years later was their account published. The following quotations relate to their trip:[6] “Mr. Richards had for years been particularly desirous of making the tour of this island for the purpose of examining and improving the schools, etc., but having been alone, it has hitherto been impracticable for him to leave his family for a sufficient length of time. During the present season this object has been accomplished.” Mr. Richards had arrived in Hawaii in 1823, and had taken over the mission in Lahaina shortly afterwards at the request of Queen Keopuolani. He had not mentioned the big mountain in previous correspondence and reports.