On the parsonage property of the Waimea United Church of Christ, the figure of an arrow about nine inches long, with two barbs each approximately five inches in length, is chiseled into a stone near the edge of the pali
On the parsonage property of the Waimea United Church of Christ, the figure of an arrow about nine inches long, with two barbs each approximately five inches in length, is chiseled into a stone near the edge of the pali overlooking Waimea Valley.
Captain James Cook is believed to have cut it during January 1778 to mark the site of his first landing in the Hawaiian Islands by the mouth of the Waimea River earlier that month.
Although Cook’s journals make no reference to the arrow, a 1928 report made by Kaua‘i Judge Lyle A. Dickey contains circumstantial evidence, principally in the form of a statement written by Francis Gay of Makaweli in August 1926, that indicates the arrow was indeed produced by Cook.
Gay wrote: “I was a resident in the district of Waimea … when the British transit of Venus party came here [in 1874] and selected Kanaana [the parsonage] for their base of operation. They could not find the arrow which they said Captain Cook placed there, so everybody got busy to find it. Many old kama‘ainas knew it was at that place, but one man named Kanakahelela showed the spot, which was covered by a large cactus bush. When the bush was cleared off they found the arrow head plainly cut in the rock. The old man said his father pointed it out to him when he was a boy. The fact that the party was looking for Cook’s arrow and that they knew it was at Kanaana show they they must have had some data to go on.”
Dickey also wrote that Aubrey Robinson, Gay’s cousin, had confirmed Gay’s story, and that Kaua‘i-born Eric A. Knudsen (1872-1957) had heard the story from his father, Valdemar Knudsen, who’d settled on Kaua‘i in 1857.
