View the recording: The Multilayered History of Kōloa: A Virtual Presentation
The Multilayered History of Kōloa A Virtual Presentation Thursday, November 14, 2024 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. Virtual (via Zoom) Cost: Free, registration required VIEW THE EVENT RECORDING BELOW Click the image at left to view the webinar slide deck. LISTEN Journalist Catherine Cruz interviewed Dr. Hal Hammatt and Erica Kamālamalamaonālani Ishii about Kōloa and the Kōloa Story Map on Hawai‘i Public Radio's The Conversation, November 13, 2024. Question: What is the estimate for the number of people supported by and lived/worked in the Kōloa area at its peak? Dr. Hammatt: The estimated extent of what we know as Kōloa Field System was approximately 2,400 acres extending from Lawa‘i from the west and Weli Weli to the east. Based on this extent and production of the field system there were likely estimated a few thousand during pre-Contact period. Post-Contact documentation including Judd (1932) states they "observed that the population of Kōloa must have been several thousand before European contact." It was also stated the population in the early 1840s were "about two thousand people, including many foreigners" (James Jackson Jarves 1844), however, other sources such as a report by missionaries on Kaua‘i, the inhabitants of the ahupua‘a numbered 2,166 (cited in Palama and Stauder 1973:16; also found in the newspaper, Garden Island, 27 July 1935). However, in this census, the designation of Kōloa was used to refer to the whole area between Wahiawa and Kalapakī. An article in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser of December 21, 1867 estimated that the population in 1838 was about 3,000, though by 1867, it had been reduced to a third of [...]
