Much of the current dialog about what to make Lahaina into (or back into) refers to “what was”, or the past.  Especially in Lahaina’s case this is a very complex issue, as Lahaina has gone through a number of transformations just in the last 200 years.  From regional center (Kahekili-1770s); to the economic and political center of the Hawaiian State (Lahainaluna-1820-30’s); to plantation support/services center (Pioneer Mill 1850-1960); to tourism services/entertainment center 1960+); to tourism services residential community (2000+).

We are unique in that the Mahele of 1846-1853 required testimony of all claimants, and that testimony required a number of details including neighbors, land use, how/when the land was acquired, and of course the boundaries.  This was done for the entire Kingdom in just a few years, and for all the flaws it provides a unique historic snapshot of this transitional period in Hawaiian social history.  The only major study I know of to take advantage of the Mahele is the work that Marshall Sahlins and Pat Kirch did in their analysis of the Ahupua’a of Anahulu (The Anthropology of History 1992, 2 volumes).

We are attempting to provide some of this detail with our Google Earth Mahele project, and if you go to the website you will see the current files for Lahaina (West Maui) we have incorporated most of the Foreign Testimony text and embedded it into the locations (as best we can).  A great deal of work still needs to be done in analyzing the testimony, and of course in integrating the Native Testimony, which includes the majority of the Lahaina testimony.  Doing so will bring into focus a detailed picture of land use, social networks, formal and informal patterns of land control-all of which will provide a detailed picture of much of Lahaina when it was still the other social and political center in the Hawaiian Kingdom.

The material is available—all the Mahele testimony has been scanned in and put online by AvaKonohiki and can be downloaded.  We have posted all the completed transcriptions we have done on the website and again they can be downloaded.  It’s up to you to do the analysis and build this picture of Lahaina in 1852, and from that provide a foundation for re-envisioning Lahaina in the 2020s.