Mauna Kea Oral History Appendix - Office of Mauna Kea Management

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…Papa, when were you going around building cabins
Built the cabin at Keauhou around the ’50 (1959 or 1960), when we released the nënë.
Was a two hours drive to the area, and four hours round trip, you know. I found the best
time to do the nënë field work, was 3 o’clock till dark, and a little while in the morning.
That’s when the nënë are most active. We had to place the birds in the pen, they were
flightless, and we had to have constant surveillance, it would be disaster if we had twenty
birds killed with the dogs, or something like that. [chuckles] They gave us a lot of money
and everybody was watching us (the project).
You know, it’s amazing these wild dogs and stuff. We’ve got communications even in the
1850s about wild dogs killing…and throughout, dogs were a problem throughout, sheep
you know and stuff. This would come in though and take out the babies too, lambs like
that and stuff. Dogs have been a problem on the mountain for a long time.
With sheep, oh yeah.
Then you think if you got these nënë that are flightless, penned or something you know.
I found three dead nënë on the lava by Ahu-a-‘Umi. And the Humu‘ula sheep, they’d run
the sheep to the fence twenty, thirty sheep, killed one crack. They’d kill ‘em for fun.
Yes.
We had to use poison for the dogs. Twice, I got stalked by dogs, Ahu-a-‘Umi side.
Spooky.
One time I walked from Pu‘u Külua to the 1859 lava, and I camped. I was going to walk
down the flow to Pu‘u Anahulu to check the area for nënë. I was camping in the little
mämane tree, cinder place, right on the edge of the lava. The ‘59 is a pähoehoe flow,
mostly, but parts are ‘ä‘ä. But I lit my sterno, making coffee in the morning. I hear this
tick, tick, tick, sounds like Anapau [the family dog] you know walking on cement. Well, it
was dogs walking on the cinders. I looked up and here are these dogs, two or three
dogs, and they saw me and they stopped, and then they came to me. And I had a dish
towel and I grabbed the dish towel, the little mämane tree only this high.
Three feet or so.
And I didn’t see the goats at the time, but the dogs were barking that time, starting to
bark and they startled some goats that were close to me, and the goats started to run.
The dogs stopped and then they decided to go after the goats, not for me.
Wow!
Not to me. So, I finished my coffee.
[chuckles] All calm
DW: And packed up my stuff and then I was walking down the flow, it was 10 o’clock or 10:30
something like that, and I saw these goats and I didn’t think about the dogs. Just for fun, I
usually try to sneak up on the goats. How many there are, like that, and I got pretty close
to them and the goats were surrounding me. The wind was blowing right, with my
binoculars I was looking at goats and I seen, the goats, and these two little ears sticking
up. Dogs.
KM: Geez.
DW: Then I looked and another dog, I kind of recognized them because the dogs are short
haired, little rounded ears and short muzzle, solid color.
UW: Those Hawaiian dogs.
DW: Yes, these are brown or tan or yellow, mostly solid color.
Mauna Kea– “Ka Piko Kaulana o ka ‘Äina”
Kumu Pono Associates LLC
A Collection of Oral History Interviews (HiMK67-050606) A:355