Plants Used In Canoe
Construction
Prior to the arrival of Westerners in Hawai'i, all tools, implements, and canoes were made from plants or stone sourced from the natural environment, as there was no industrialized manufacturing. Most of the plants used in canoe construction were endemic, meaning they evolved in Hawai'i and are found nowhere else. Although introduced plants—brought to Hawai'i by early Polynesian settlers—were fewer in number, they were equally important in the construction of canoes. With a few exceptions, endemic plants were not cultivated but were harvested from upland native forests. In contrast, introduced plants were cultivated at lower elevations, close to where people lived.
The Canoe Begins In The Forest
The mild temperatures, abundant rain fall and rich soils make the Hawaiian Islands exceptionally inviting for plants and animals. However, being more than 2,000 miles away from any other land mass, required that any form of life making it to these islands had to fly or float over the ocean to get here. Up until the arrival of man, only a small number of colonizers succeeded in establishing a foot hold. Over a period of five million years, these early indigenous plants and animals evolved into a multitude of different endemic species. In this isolated but balanced world, these species developed a very interdependent and interrelated life cycle. Competition was limited and interdependence promoted survival.
In the Hawaiian World View the upland forests were a special place where men did not live permanently. It was a realm where men entered for a defined purpose and entered with a high degree of respect and humility. It was understood that the Forests played a significant role in the water cycle and Water was the essence of life. It was also felt that the Forests possessed a collective consciousness that if offended could retaliate dramatically and immediately or latently and gradually. Either way offending the Forest held severe consequences for the people who lived makai (seward) of it.
Indiginious and Endemic Plants Used In The Construction Of The Hawaiian Canoe
The Endemic trees and plants found in Hawaiʻi provided the Hawaiians with building materials not found in their original homeland. These new building materials allowed the development of new building techniques that contributed to the unique form of the traditional Hawaiian Canoe
By far the most favored tree used in Hawaiian canoe building was the Koa tree. The large size to which these trees attained and their abundance allowed Hawaiians to construct solid hull canoes ranging from 10 to over 100 feet in length.
In 1792, Archibald Menizies, Botanist on Captain Vancouver's ship, described a trip into the Koa forests in the ahupua'a of Kealakekua in South Kona, Hawai'i Island.
"The largest trees that compose the vast forest, I have found a new species of minosa (Koa). I measured two of them near our path, one of which was seventeen feet and the other about eighteen feet in circumference, with straight trunks forty or fifty feet high. As we advanced the wood was more crowded with these trees than lower down where both sides of the path had been thinned of them by the inhabitants".
Introduced Canoe Plants
The early Polynesian settlers brought with them plants and animals that were critical to their survival. These introduced plants and animals along with the clearing of the native forest and wetlands for agriculture, greatly changed the landscape. Archaeological records indicate that many endemic species became extinct soon after the arrival of these first settlers. The descendants of these settlers however realized that they too would have to fit into the cooperative life cycle of these islands if they were to survive. They too would have to become interdependent with the other species that lived on and around these islands. It was through this process of becoming interdependent and inter-related that these settlers became Hawaiian.
