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+--- Thread: The Splintered Paddle (/showthread.php?tid=8248)
The Splintered Paddle - Guest - 12-29-2010
All this talk about guns and macho posturing among many Punawebbers got me thinking. I remember well the days when Puna really was the wild West. Your makai subdivisions had hardly been built on and pakalolo was the number one cash crop. Even then the macho rhetoric I hear on this forum was pretty minimal. People were starting to come to Hawaii to get away from that crap.
Anyway, I started thinking about how Puna first got this way. After Kamehameha united the Big Island, he was taking a trip around the Island by boat. He was offshore Puna district and saw two fishermen on the coast. He had the boat brought in and approached the men to talk and see how things were for them. They didn't know who it was approaching and were afraid as he was a very powerful and rather scary-looking man. They started to run off, but Kamehameha got his leg caught between two rocks. Seeing this, the fishermen approached, grabbed and oar and whacked him on the head knocking him out and breaking the paddle. When he came to, Kamehameha was enraged and about to go to war with the Puna alii in revenge. Instead, being the man he was, he thought about it and passed one of the most important laws of his reign, the Law of the Splintered Paddle. Simply stated, it said that all who are unable to defend themselves due to age, infirmity or weakness are under his personal protection. A beautiful response to being attacked.
As I read some on this forum, it seems Puna hasn't changed much over the years.