Holehole stone, Mo'okini heiau, Kohala, Hawai'i

[sabbath999]

This is a posting not about my picture, but rather it is about the story of the holehole (pronounced hole-eh hole-eh) stone of the Mo'okini heiau, of a man named Pa'ao, and the tens of thousands of men, women and children who were sacrificed to the Pa'ao's hungry gods upon this rock.

Pa'ao came to Hawai'i from Tahiti in the 11th or the 12th century, and when he arrived he found the islands in a state of chaos. The original Marquesas settlers were already being hunted down and either enslaved or killed by the Tahitians when Pa'ao stepped off his ocean going canoe.

The hawaiian people, like those from Tahiti, were ruled by tribal chiefs... in hawai'i, these folks were called the ali'i. Pa'ao, a Kahuna and holy man, sent a ship back to Tahiti for his friend Pili, and together they brought forth a reign of ruin upon the islands of Hawai'i that was never seen before or since.

They brought the worship of the bloody war god KU to the island... and Ku had but one demand... Human sacrifice, and lot of it.

Pa'ao walked out over the barren lands of north Kohala on the very most northwestern tip of the big island, and stared off over a turbulent and wind swept sea. Here, amongst the stones of a small heiau, he decided he would make the greatest temple to the war god Ku that the world had ever seen.

He ordered that special, round stones be brought to the spot by a large human chain from the Polulu valley 12 miles away. If a stone were dropped, it was left there to keep from breaking the rhythm of the human chain, and to this day there is a long line of stones in a strait line between the valley and the heiau.

Over the next several hundred years, the bodies of tens of thousands of people were placed in the depression you see before you on the holehole stone, where the flesh was stripped from them and the bones saved to make fishhooks and knives.

The Mo'okini heiau is not on tourist maps of Hawai'i, and although it is only a quarter mile from the birthplace of Kamehameha The Great and is protected as a National Historic Site, it is virtually unvisited... for good reason. To reach the heiau, you have to either have a four-wheel-drive vehicle and be very brave or hike in about two and a half miles down a muddy (year round) dirt path. The road leading up from the muddy path to the heiau is closed by a locked gate, and there are no signs or information available there which tell about when it was made or what it was used for.

When you stand there and look out over the holehole stone to the sea, with the wind blowing hard in your face and howling in your ears, a desolate and lifeless feeling settles around your heart as you stand on soil soaked with countless generations of innocent blood.

 

[Chiller]

What an amazing story. Thanks so much for sharing. I am always amazed at how many hidden gems there are on our planet, and the tales that go along with them.