84 The Ancient Hawaiian House. 



{Caesalpinia Xv?//r//<-v/.s7>Mann),kauila {Alphitonia exce/sa Mann) , mamane {Edzvardsia 

 chrysophylla), kamani {C/nysophyl/um inopliylluni) and koa {Acacia koa), although the 

 last was used more for canoes than for house timbers. Ohia lehua {Metrosidcros 

 polyniorp/ia) was used in inferior houses, and lama {Maha sandtaicensis) in houses built 

 for the gods. See the illustration (Fig. 95) of the hale lama below in the account of 

 the modern grass houses. 



So far as I have been able to discover, the ancient Hawaiians had no house- 

 building guilds such as were common among the southern Polynesians and embraced 

 a full system of master builders and apprentices. Doubtless at first each man, with 

 the help of his neighbors, built his own simple house. He went up to the forest and 

 colleded the timber little by little; brought it down with the help of his wife and 

 children and perhaps his friends. When it was all on the ground he had what in 

 New England, not many decades ago, would be called "a raising bee", when all his 

 friends assembled to lend a hand in raising the frame and thatching the house. 

 Doubtless he regaled his helpers with poi and baked pig or dog as did the New Eng- 

 land farmer with cider, pies and doughnuts. If the owner of the house happened not 

 to be a/cii/mri m housebuilding (skilled in the art), he would doubtless call to his aid 

 a kiieiiclialc or man whose knowledge of house carpentry was greater than his own to 

 tell how long and how far apart the sticks should be, and that there was, in later time 

 at least, some definite and well-known rule about all this, is shown in the remarkable 

 similarity of interspaces as well as timber sizes in all of the scores of native houses 

 I have examined all over the group. 



A chief had many kuenehale among his retainers, as he was likely to have 

 artisans of the few sorts known among the Hawaiians, and when he desired to build a 

 house, under their direAion some men went to the forest for trees from which to shape 

 the house timbers, others to collect the long slim sticks needed in great quantity for the 

 alio., others to braid the cord that was to hold the frame together and attach the thatch 

 to the alio, while others collected the pili grass for thatching. 



The timbers were not fashioned in the forest, except so far as to cut a neck at 

 one end to which the rope used in dragging the log down could be made fast. Most 

 of the timbers could, however, be carried on the shoulders of the muscular old 

 Hawaiians. When on the ground they were generally hewn into a uniform surface 

 with the stone adzes, although in poorer houses I have seen posts simply stripped 

 of bark, if this had not been torn off in the dragging over a rough trail. In most of 

 the woods enumerated as preferred for house building it was important to cut awa}' all 

 the sapwood to insure the durability of the posts. The illustration given will show 



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