Olowalu Petroglyphs

There are petroglyphs here on Maui that tell the tale of a long habitation by the Hawaiians. I cannot find a site with much to say about them except that some of the drawings are thought to be more that 300 years old.

Olowalu is also known for a more recent incident.

Olowalu is also known as the site of a bloody massacre, which happened in 1790. The captain of the American ship Eleanora (Capt. Simon Metcalf) became upset because of a stolen boat and opened fire on Hawaiian canoes, killing more than 100 men and wounding more than 200 near the ancient Olowalu landing site. This massacre led Big Island Chief Kame'eiamoku to attack the next Western ship that arrived, which was the Fair American, captained by Metcalf's son. The entire crew was attacked and killed, except for one person, Isaac Davis, who in later years became an advisor to King Kamehameha the Great.

Some of these images remind me of frogs. I don't know that they are supposed to remind me of frogs, but they do. Perhaps they are supposed to be spacemen. They do seem to have a heart though, don't they? Do spacemen have hearts?

These are probably the spacemen. Spacemen have triangles, right? Or maybe they are space women. Or geometry teachers. I know they got triangles.

These petroglyphs are all high on the side of the hill, well out of reach. There used to be a platform to get you closer and there used to be more of these images visible. But a fire, perhap a decade or so ago changed all that. The platform is gone (also because of vandalism) and portions of the rock outcropping have fallen from the heat of the fire. Sadly, this is pretty much all that we could see.