Na Ipu o Hawai`i - The Gourds of Hawai`i
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                                                                                          The ipu heke is a gourd drum used by the chanter to accompany hula. Here, members of a halau hula based in Tokyo, Japan, show off ipu heke they made under the instruction of Leilehua Yuen (center) at a week-long  workshop. The class included an introduction to Hawaiian culture and lifestyle. See the classes page for current class and workshop information.

      Hawai'i developed gourd cultivation and use more extensively than any other culture in the Pacific Basin. From simple platters to double chambered drums, the ipu played an important part in the life of early Hawaiians.
      According to the late Dr. Donald Kilolani Mitchell, a widely recognized Hawaiian scholar, the manufacture of gourd bowls and bottles was one of fourteen areas in which Hawai`i craftsmen surpassed their contemporaries in other Pacific cultures. The Polynesian colonists who peopled the Hawaiian Archipelago brought seeds and cuttings of many useful plants. Among them was the gourd - used as food, medicine, and for a variety of useful and artistic items. Bowls, plates, covered containers, drums, medical aparatus, and canoe bailers were some of the uses to which gourds were put. 
      Two varieties of the ipu, or Hawaiian gourd, were cultivated by the Hawaiians of ancient times: the ipu manalo, or sweet gourd for eating; and the ipu 'awa'awa, or bitter gourd for medicine and containers. Through selective breeding the ipu 'awa'awa was developed into many sizes and shapes. The ipu is a true gourd, Lagenaria siceraria.
      Anthropologists continue to debate whether the gourd was carried throughout Polynesia and Asia by humans from South America, or vice versa. There also is the possibility that the gourd floated to Hawai`i on its own. The hard shells are very bouyant and the seeds can remain viable in salt water for a surprisingly long time. And, they will germinate in brackish water.

      In ancient times many customs and rituals surrounded gourd cultivation. By Hawaiian custom, gourds should be planted on the night of Hua, when the moon is shaped like a fruit or egg. The planting should be done by a pot-bellied man. After eating a large meal to stretch his stomach, he should take the seed and carry it as if it already is a huge and heavy gourd. Then, coming to the hole he has dug for the gourd, he should drop the seed suddenly, pulling the hands apart with the palms up and steady. To twist the hands down would cause the gourd to twist and shrivel. The following chant was used at the planting of the large ipu nui variety:

      Once the plant has established itself it will send out vines, seeking height and sunlight. A space-consumptive plant, one single vine can easily cover a twenty foot diameter circle. Within two months, the first vine extends itself, minute buds at each leaf node. This first vine bears the male blossoms. Then the stems which will bear the female blossoms grow. The male flowers will begin blooming first to attract pollinating insects to the area of the vine. About a week later, the female blossoms begin to open. Each of the female blossoms has a tiny fruit at its base. This fruit can only develop if the female blossom is pollinated. In nature, this is done by a moth. The gourd blossoms open just at dusk, the males first, their white petals shimmering in the dim light.
      The moth flits about the gourd patch, carrying its load of pollen from flower to flower.
Hand pollinating can be accomplished by plucking the male flowers at dusk and pulling back the petals to expose their stamens. Gently dusting the stamens across the pistil of the female blossom transfers the pollen. To prevent cross-pollination, carefully pull the female bloom's petal tips together and tie them shut after pollinating. Because the Hawaiians of pre-European contact times developed many specialized shapes which bread true to type, it is highly likely that they used hand pollination.
      The downy young fruits are so fragile that the slightest touch, even from their own leaves, can kill them. For the first several weeks the fruit are covered with fuzz. If this down is touched, shriveling and rot often set in at the point of contact.
      Ipu were considered so precious that rituals such as naming individual fruits for ancestors were often carried out to prevent theft. Shadows of people walking about were not allowed to fall on the flower because the plant was a "kino lau", or body form, of the god of agriculture, Lono. Menstruating women could not touch the vines. So, for all of these reasons the gourds were planted well away from homes.
      To raise a perfect fruit required, and still requires, much individual attention and care. The gourd would be suspended from a frame called a ko`o la`au or haka so that it would grow symmetrical. Stones, sticks, or anything which might bruise, scar, or cause imperfections in shape were removed from the vicinity of the gourd. A po`aha, or ring of grass was built under some types to create a flat bottom so that the gourd would be able to stand upright on its own. In modern times, boards have been used.
      Once the gourd has matured and hardened, the stem which attaches the fruit to the vine begins to wither. The gourd must be harvested only after the stem has completely dried, or it is likely to collapse, crack or rot.

      Generally, gourds were left undecorated, although the koko (carrrying nets) were often highly ornamental. Certain of the more decorative knots, in fact, were kapu (reserved for the use of) to royalty and any commoner caught using them would be executed. When they were decorated, a variety of methods were used depending on the resources and customs of the district. In the Kona district of Hawai'i Island, woodburning techniques apparantly were used to decorate gourds. James King(3) wrote of the gourds he saw, "They have. . . a method of scoring them with a heated instrument, so as to give them the appearance of being painted, in a variety of neat and elegant designs. . ." On O`ahu, gourds were stained in patterns, possibly in a method similar to that used on Kaua`i. The skin was scraped from the shell in the areas which were to be colored. The gourd was then soaked in dye of the desired color. After the color had soaked into the shell, the gourd was removed from the solution and dried. Then the skin was scraped off, leaving a pattern of dyed and natural colors. The gourd then was wrapped in ti leaves and steamed in an imu to set the color.
      The gourd utensils Capt. James Cook saw at Waimea, Kaua'i were, he said, stained "prettily with undulated lines, triangles, and other figures of a black color; instances of which we saw practiced at New Zealand." Cook also noted that the Hawaiians had apparantly developed technology for creating varnishes, "for some of these stained gourd shells are covered with a kind of lacker [sic]. . ." On Ni'ihau, after the designs were carved into the skin, the gourds were said to have been buried in black mud. The native iron compounds in the earth possibly reacted with tannins in the gourd, creating black and dark reddish-brown patterns. The people of Ni'ihau called their geometric designs "pawehe", using the term for both the gourd patterns and the designs woven into their exquisite mats.

Pawehe

      In modern times, the term "pawehe" has expanded from Ni'ihau to include similar designs on gourds and mats from all islands in the Hawaiian chain. The distinguishing features of pawehe, whatever the medium, are: 1) It is an integral part of the object - stained or woven in, not painted on; 2) The designs are geometric in nature.

      Painted gourds are not documented in the earliest writings, but that does not exclude their existance. They certainly were in use at least by the time of Kamakau, as he defines laha as referring specifically to gourds decorated by painting.