Established as a national historical park in 1961, Puuhonua o Honaunau is Hawaii’s best-preserved and most well-known place of refuge. Located on South Kona’s relatively untouched coastline, this prehistoric site has been restored to present an authentic picture of one aspect of life in ancient Hawaii. Although no city ever existed at Honaunau, the famous sanctuary formerly was called “the city of refuge” after a supposed biblical counterpart.
Puuhonua o Honaunau
(Place of Refuge)
Established as a national historical park in 1961, Puuhonua o Honaunau is Hawaii’s best-preserved and most well-known place of refuge. Located on South Kona’s relatively untouched coastline, this prehistoric site has been restored to present an authentic picture of one aspect of life in ancient Hawaii. Although no city ever existed at Honaunau, the famous sanctuary formerly was called “the city of refuge” after a supposed biblical counterpart.
In ancient Hawaii, the penalty for breaking many laws was death. If a woman ate prohibited foods such as bananas or pork, she was killed. If a man allowed his shadow to fall upon a sacred chief or mistakenly touched a chief’s possessions, he was killed.
In a culture of harsh penalties, a remarkable safety valve existed, the puuhonua, or place of refuge. At these designated places, a person could escape death by coming before the resident kahuna for a ceremony of absolution. Once the ceremony was complete, the offender could safely return to his home, confident the gods were appeased. No one, not even the mightiest king, could harm a person after he or she had reached the puuhonua. In times of war women, children and the infirm flocked to the puuhonua to escape death at the hands of marauding warriors.
A striking feature at Honaunau is the massive stone wall over 1,000 feet long which marked the landward boundary of the puuhonua. Imagine desperate people struggling to get within the safety of the wall to avoid death and punishment at the hands of warriors and priests. The restored royal complex of the mighty chief Keawe at the northern end of the wall features the Hale o Keawe Heiau built about 1650, carved replicas of images of ancient gods and rebuilt thatched structures. One of these thatched houses represents Hale o Keawe, the famous mortuary house which up until 1829 contained the bones of at least 23 high-ranking chiefs.
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote about Honaunau in 1889: “The enclosure of the sanctuary was all paved with lava; scattered blocks encumbered it in places; everywhere tall coco palms jutted from the fissures and drew shadows on the floor; a loud continuous sound of the near sea burdened the ear. These rude monumental ruins, and the thought of that life and death of which they stood memorial, threw me in a muse. There are times and places where the past becomes more vivid than the present, and the memory dominates the ear and eye. I have found it so in the presence of the vestiges of Rome; I found it so again in the city of refuge at Honaunau; and the strange, busy and perilous existence of the old Hawaiian, the grinning idols of the heiau, the priestly murderers and the fleeting victim, rose before and mastered my imagination.”
Copyright 1998 Kona Historical Society. Reprinted by permission.