Although the Hawaiian islands are surrounded by saltwater, salt was not readily available everywhere in the past. On each island, only select areas had just the right conditions for saltmaking. On Maui, this included Nuu Bay in western Kaupo.
Today, we walk though store aisles filled with cheap, industrially made salt, bemused by the arduous work of our ancestors to collect the mineral. As Mark Kurlansky writes in “Salt: A World History”, “Salt is so common, so easy to obtain, and so inexpensive that we have forgotten that from the beginning of civilization until about 100 years ago, salt was one of the most sought-after commodities in human history.”
Before industrial vacuum evaporators, people obtained salt in a number of ways, including mining rock salt and boiling saltwater. In Hawaii, the method was solar evaporation. Saltwater was collected in shallow ponds, and the sun and wind would dry the water and leave the salt crystals behind.
This combination of ponds, sun, and wind show why Nuu was ideal for saltmaking. East of Nuu are the rainy districts of Hana and Kipahulu. There, the constant clouds slow evaporation, while the rain dilutes the saltwater in the ponds.
In contrast, Nuu generally receives about one-fourth of the rain in Kipahulu and Hana. As for the wind in Kaupo, as the Pacific Commercial Advertiser noted in an article in 1902, “Here the trades blow ‘uninterruptedly, drearily, endlessly.’”
Kupuna memories of saltmaking
The Bishop Museum’s archives contain a number of interviews with kupuna who grew up in Kaupo in the early 1900s. Davianna McGregor, for her 2007 book “Nā Kuaʻāina”, pored over those interviews, which include discussions of saltmaking at Nuu.
As McGregor notes, it was something of an annual tradition for residents from around East Maui to travel to Nuu for salt:
“People from throughout the Hāna district would travel to Nuʻu in the summertime to gather salt. … Families would gather an entire year’s supply during the summer, dry it, and store it in caves.”
At Apole Point on the eastern end of Nuu Bay are kaheka (natural hollows) that collect seawater and create salt without the need for human effort. To supplement the salt formed in kaheka, McGregor writes that residents mimicked this natural process by carving depressions into stones to manually fill with saltwater:
“All the stones with small hollows were put on the edge of the pond, and people would put ocean water in them. The sun would evaporate the water, leaving the salt. They used wooden spoons to scoop out small amounts of salt.”
Another reason Nuu was popular as a saltworks was because of the bountiful fishing grounds. Summer was the spawning time for fish such as akule, manini and aholehole. The community would gather for hukilau–net-throwing parties–to catch fish and salt them to eat throughout the year.
In “Nā Kuaʻāina”, McGregor adds that, according to kupuna Josephine Marciel, “There was a medicine house, right where Kaupō Landing is, in a small hale (house). Lapaʻau, or medicinal plants, are everywhere in the area; they were tied in bundles and kept in the building. This was also the salt house. Great schools of akule frequented the bay, and the salt was used to dry the akule.”
As well as a food seasoning and preservative, salt also had medicinal purposes. Minuet Kawaiʻaeʻa-Ratledge, who grew up in Kaupo in the 1930s, described some of the healing properties of salt in a 2009 interview:
“The remedy for serious lacerations was chewing tobacco and sea salt spread over the wound and bandaged with remnant of a clean old sheet and left unchanged for three or four days. Another source was laukahi leaves that were washed, pounded, mixed with sea salt and wrapped.”
Salt pans at Laepahu Point
Nuu was not the only Kaupo area in known for saltmaking. Around the corner from Nuu at Laepahu Point, the tradewinds blow salt into kaheka to form natural salt pans to this day.
In 1929, archaeologist Winslow Walker explored Laepahu Point and recorded the following in his field notes:
“On the eastern side of this point are many shelter sites with high walls only on the windward sides. Coral and pebbles are strewn over the floors, and small holes were used for hiding salt.”
In this same area in 1884, a Hawaiian named Kanakaokai (“man of the sea”), bought a 0.79-acre parcel along the shoreline. The land grant described the land as “Pohaku & Paakai”, that is, rock and salt.
Inter-island trade
Kaupo salt was prized not just around East Maui, but even on other islands. As described in an 1856 newpaper article, Kaupo salt was traded across the channel on Hawaii Island.
"I ka malama o Iune, la 20, holo kekahi waa i Hawaii i ke kuai paakai; mai ke awa aku o Waiauha ma Kaupo, me ka manao e pae ana i Hawaii ma Kohala, aole nae i pae aku, pau na iako i ka haihai; o ka huli iho la no ia o ka waa ilalo." [On June 20, a canoe set out for Hawaii to sell salt, launching from Waiuha Bay in Kaupo and intending to land at Kohala, Hawaii. However, it did not arrive. The outrigger booms broke and the canoe capsized.]
Red salt
Traditionally, Hawaiians mixed salt with other minerals such as alaea, or red clay, for medicinal and religious purposes. In eastern Kaupo, the rugged cliffs of Manawainui and Nuanualoa valleys were a rich source of alaea.
When Hawaiian scholar Mary Kawena Pukui visited Kaupo in December 1961 to interview locals, she was delighted by the abundance of alaea at Nuanualoa Valley:
“I saw red veins in the hills up here. … Beautiful. If that was lower I’d say stop, stop and put my hand and pull out a bit.”
Salt around Maui
Other areas of Maui were also known for saltmaking, including the ponds at Kanaha and Kealia in the central isthmus and in the Ukumehame region on the west side.
In 1899, an article titled “Ka Lua Gula Ma Kahului” (The Gold Mine at Kahului) described how people at Kanaha were gathering salt into piles that resembled the pyramids of Egypt.
This comparison may seem farfetched, but a picture of the Puuloa Salt Works on Oahu illustrates the resemblance to the Great Pyramids:
The Kanaha article continued by classifying four types of salt:
- Paakai lele wai, oia ka paakai aeae loa elike me ka paakai haole. [Pure salt, fine-grained salt like the foreign salt.]
- Paakai walewale, oia ka paakai maluna loa he walewale no ke hao ae a maloo, lilo ae i paakai. [Pasty salt, wet salt at the top that can be scooped up and dried to make salt.]
- Paakai puupuu, oia ka paakai hiki ke kui me ka pohaku a aeae. [Coarse salt, salt that can be ground smooth with a stone.]
- Paakai lepo, oia ka paakai hui pu me ka lepo. [Dirty salt, salt mixed with earth.]
Kealia Pond, now a bird refuge, was perhaps the most bountiful saltworks on Maui. An article in 1856 described 4,000 tent-like piles of salt. Merchants were urged to come and fill barrels of salt at a cost of $1 each.
Moving on to West Maui, one 1858 article reported on a rarity in Hawaii: A salt cave like the salt mines of Europe. A group of bird hunters followed koae into a cave high in the Ukumehame cliffs and discovered piles of rock salt.
Salt throughout the archipelago
Like Maui, the other Hawaiian islands also featured saltworks, from large-scale facilities (Puuloa and Kewalo on Oahu, Kaunakakai on Molokai) to small, traditional sites (Kaupulehu on Hawaii Island and Hanapepe on Kauai).
In fact, through the mid-1800s, salt was a booming export industry for the islands, fueled by traders criss-crossing the Pacific Ocean, a topic explored in more detail in the history website Images of Old Hawaiʻi.
