Mahina

If you ever find yourself in Captain Cook, HI (just south of Kona on the Big Island), don’t miss the Mahina Café, and be sure to try the Hawai’ian Plate – a tasting menu of indigenous foods – mostly pork, cooked in various ways that taste really distinct. Mahina means “moon”, as our server explained. Rachel is a native Hawai’ian, who is very well-informed about the state’s history. The indigenous people have a lunar calendar, much like the plains Indians, in which each moon has a name. Together with the stars, especially the Pleiades, the moons guide the agricultural life. (We are now in the Harvest Moon.)

                Rachel explained that pigs came to the islands (along with dogs, taro, and bananas) with the very first settlers, whose origin is unknown – somewhere in Polynesia, around 1500 years ago.

Replica of ancient Polynesian ship

The various dishes in the sampling plate are traditional to the luau, and traditionally cooked underground.

Upper right: shredded pork and beef (laulau), wrapped first in taro leaf and then in ti leaf for underground cooking.

Lower-left, shredded pork. White cube, taro-root flan.

One of them is smoked with the wood of a Hawai’an tree similar to mesquite. It produces prickly thorns, however, and the native joke is that the Europeaans brought it not just to feed the cattle with its beans, but to force the Hawai’ians not to go barefoot!

                I told Rachel about Bishop Whipple and our devotion to Queen Emma. She seemed happy to hear it. She observed that the conquest of Hawai’i followed immediately upon the subjugation of the plains Indians, and the history (deracination, linguistic suppression, deportation, and boarding schools) was similar. She also pointed out that by the end of the 19^th century, there were only about 40,000 Hawai’ians left. Since most of the were eope of some meansa, there are plenty of pretenders, nowadays, to chiefdom (ai’i) and royalty. Most well-known is Prince Quentin Kawananakoa,

Vesture is royal, rather than academic, I think (see below).

Also heir to one of the largest mainlander planters (James Campbell), Prince Kawananakoa was a member of the State Legislature and erstwhile minority leader. He has never been elected to national office, perhaps because he is a Republican, which seems a little odd for a royal pretender!

                Possibly because of this kind of anomaly, a cousin of Kamehameha the Great, five times removed, Prince Noa Kalokuokamile  (Kalokuokamile  III) is supported by some. .