88 



The Ancient Hawaiian House. 



I believe, the tenants of a chief had free timber from their chief's land which extended 

 from the sea to the mountain top, but I am not entirely sure, for my sources of informa- 

 tion on this point are not quite satisfa6lory. There was no dearth of wood until the 

 white man with his all-consuming fires came upon the land, but the difficulty of trans- 

 portation was sufficient to guard against waste. 



We will anticipate a little and leave the colle(5led material on the ground — though 

 not so long as it would doubtess be left by the builders — and sketch out the skeleton 

 of the building, much as a modern architect would examine his plans, that the reason 

 for the forms and sizes of the various sticks and their names may be clear to the reader. 



The grass house placed in the Bishop Museum and represented in Plates XXVI 

 to XXVIII we have seledled to show the different stages of construdlion,''" but it is 



FIG. 71. DIAGRAMS OF HOUSE FORMS. 



not the oldest and simplest form, which still existed fort}- 3'ears ago in out-of-the-way 

 places, and sometimes among the cluster of houses in a chief's residence. 



Two posts, \.\\Q poll liana ^ a name which I should translate the zvorking posts^ were 

 the earliest portion of au}? grass house, as they would be of any lean-to camp, and the 

 rudest Jialc kania/a or shanty. They supported the two ends of the kanpakn or ridge- 

 pole. The Marcjuesan house had these three elements, and in that ciirious house the 

 rafters reached from the ridge-pole to the wall or the ground, on one side only. In the 

 oldest form of Hawaiian grass house known the rafters extended to the ground from 

 the ridge-pole on either side (see the diagram, A in Fig. 71). At first the rafters were 

 planted in the ground or fastened to stakes. This frame was really a roof, and the 

 house to this point was only roof. However steep the roof, the interior space was 

 smaller in proportion as it rose from the ground : only on the ground level could one 

 enjoy the whole horizontal space the roof covered. This inconvenience led the French 

 architect Mansard to borrow the roof that bears his name, and the Hawaiian builder to 



■"The frame of this house was fouml in a vallej' on the northern siile of Kauai, by the late \V. R. Deverill, and 

 the owners of tlie land, Messrs. Knudsen, kindly gave it to the Mnseuni. It is made of Bastard San<lal-wood, Naio 

 of the natives, and uhinhi, two very hard and durable woods, and in the opinion of Mr. Deverill, a good judge, must 

 have been made a hundred and fifty years ago. At any rate the wood shows plainly the marks of stone adzes, and 

 the complete frame is the oldest 1 know of. The naio is j\/yoponnii sdndwiietise, and the uhiuhi is Caesalpinia 

 kaiiaiensis Mann. 



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