Mo'okini Heiau Hale

The hot, dry, thirty minute walk along the North Kohala coast from the Old Coast Guard Station to the Mo'okini Heiau was, as they say here, a chicken-skin (goose bumps) experience.  We'd been warned.  And after my recent experience at Lapakahi, I gave the growing apprehension due respect as we approached our destination.

The Mo'okini Heiau  is a large, forbidding structure somewhere around 1500 years old.  It was used for worship and human sacrifice. I've read estimates that the number of Hawaiians sacrificed here ran into the tens of thousands. As you approach along the jagged shoreline from the trail below, the structure can be seen sitting quite prominently on a large knoll overlooking the channel between the Big Island and Maui. The contrast between the beautiful blue hues of the ocean on the left and the lifeless presence above and ahead is significant. Walking along the dry, red-dirt trail towards the heiau, I had to wonder what it must have felt like knowing that with each step, you were one step closer to a very unpleasant end.

After entering the heiau, along one side,  there are three large stones which were used for stripping flesh from bone.  The stones have names; Pohaku, Holehole, and Kanaka. These stones literally stopped me in my tracks and I had to give them a wide birth to continue on.  Chicken-skin!

In the quietness surrounding the area, you can feel a certain presence of depression and emptiness of spirit. For me, it was disconcerting enough that I couldn't point my camera directly at the heiau.  Instead, with the heiau behind me, I decided to settle for a photograph of an auxiliary hale located along the perimeter of the wall surrounding the heiau.

Walking back to our car, it occurred to me this is a part of Hawaii's history that most visitors probably don't know about or don't give a lot of thought to.  But for me, it's something I'm still processing.