The genus Neltuma (formerly Prosopis), commonly referred to as Mesquite or Algarroba, is a leguminous tree that produces nutritious fruit and thrives in arid lands. Its range extends from the greater southwest of North America, south through Mexico and Central America, throughout Andean valleys, blanketing the mountainous coast of South America to southern Chile, occasionally spilling over to the eastern plains. This 2.5 million-year-old ecological corridor was planted and maintained by the lifeways of megafauna. The abundant calories, refuge, and biodiversity of flora and fauna provided by Mesquite forests sustained the transcontinental migration of humans for tens of thousands of years. One Mesquite in particular, the Peruvian Huarango (Neltuma limensis), supported the rise of people who broke through the forest canopy while standing upon the stone pyramids they erected. Revered by local people for millennia, Huarango wood was carved into the likeness of a powerful oracle, Pachacamac, considered one of the most significant deities of pre-Hispanic people of the region. 

Beginning in the 16th century, the Huarango was caught up in a wave of human greed that attempted to transform it into an instrument of colonization. The Conquistadors sought gold and silver in the Andes. Their Jesuit Catholic cohorts required wine to perform religious ceremonies. The Huarango forests were cleared to plant vineyards, providing lumber for trellising grapevines. Their trunks used to press the grapes and their wood to fire the distillation process to make brandy. Whole forests were cut to provide fuel for smelting precious metals into transportable bars as well as to dismantle and subjugate the cultures and religious practices that were intricately tied to the Huarango and its vibrant forest ecosystem. Jesuits and other colonizers in S. America considered this tree an extremely valuable resource and saw its potential for newly colonized lands such as the Sandwich Islands.

At the end of the late 1700s, foreigners increasingly visited the Hawaiian Islands. Whalers using Hawaii as a refueling stop required large quantities of salted beef and firewood. Shipping vessels loaded the newly discovered (by the Englishmen) sandalwood heartwood logs for transport to Canton, China, where they could be traded for local goods that were highly desired back on the coast of New England. Cattle were first introduced in Hawaii around this time. The combination of sandalwood logging, firewood extraction, and cattle formed a triple assault that deforested and devastated the Hawaiian ecosystem.

Circa 1827, King Charles X of France was persuaded by John Reeves to supply ships, equipment, agricultural specialists and priests to pioneer a French Catholic Agricultural Mission in Hawaii with the goal of producing bread and wine for France. Departing from Bordeaux, France, the group voyaged across the Atlantic Ocean and around Cape Horn, making stops in Chile and Peru, before sailing on to Oahu. Father Alexis Bachelot was the priest in charge. He and several others in the group surveyed what was left of the former Jesuit wine-producing haciendas along the coast near Lima, Peru. The Catholic mission to Hawaii was short-lived. However, before leaving, Bachelot was documented as having planted a tree in front of the church from seed provided by the Royal Garden in Paris from Peruvian Huarango trees. That single tree has been rumored to be the original Mesquite tree in Hawaii.

With some help from the Hawaiian Vaquero (cowboy), Kiawe (as the Mesquite/Huarango became known by Hawaiians) was spread across the dry coasts of the main islands to provide firewood and cattle feed. Contrary to popular belief, Kiawe didn’t displace native tree species as a foreign invasive weed. Rather, as a pioneer species, it filled the ecological vacuum left by previous decades of deforestation. While the cattle industry wound down over the last 60 years, the tourism industry has blossomed. The population of Kiawe forests in Hawaii peaked circa 1960 and have been in decline at a rate of almost 2% each year.

Many trees are integral to Hawaiian culture. Some trees in particular stand out as iconic and embody the essence of Hawaiian cultural identity, namely Koa (Acacia koa), Ohia (Metrosideros polymorpha), and Ulu (Artocarpus altilis). Ohia is the most common and widely distributed tree throughout the islands. It is a biogenic tree: a pioneer and accumulation species whose biomass provides the raw materials comprising the foundation of the soil feeding the Hawaiian rainforest. Its blossoms are associated with the goddess Pele. Koa is a nitrogen-fixing legume that emerges through and succeeds Ohia at higher elevations. Its hardwood is used to carve canoes and religious artifacts. Koa creates the fertile conditions required by the endangered ‘iliahi sandalwood (Santalum paniculatum). Ulu (aka Breadfruit) is a fig relative, largely confined to below 2,000’ elevation, which produces large starch-rich fruit that forms a dietary staple throughout Polynesia.

In arid South America, Huarango/Kiawe is a biogenic pioneer species: it generates fecund ecosystems through its deep tap root, nitrogen-fixing root Rhizobium, with the canopy and leaves acting as a fog comb to gather atmospheric moisture and deposit it groundward, and thereby build soil through the accumulation of regularly-shed leaves, flowers, and fruit. Huarango/Kiawe forests support a high biodiversity of flora and fauna. The fruit provides starch and protein that forms the nutritional foundation of the entire ecosystem and supported the rise of early civilizations in South America. To the people of the Pacific coast of South America, Huarango/Kiawe is their Ohia, Koa, and Ulu, all-in-one. Since it was used as a staple to make a manner of ‘bread’, it could be considered the breadfruit of arid Peru.

The present situation of Kiawe in Hawaii is something like this: imagine if someone had brought breadfruit to Peru 230 years ago, and it had thrived all across the Peruvian coast. Nobody there bothered to learn about breadfruit and all of the gifts it provides, rather they started ripping it out and burning it, or throwing it in the trash. How would Hawaiians feel if that was happening to their sacred tree in a foreign land? This is what has been happening with Kiawe in Hawaii for the last 60 years.

Both cultures (collectively Hawaiian and Coastal Peruvian, the people and their respective plants) were negatively impacted by the same consciousness of colonization. Rather than seeing Kiawe in the Hawaiian context solely as a symbol of colonization and what was lost (a view that is arguably an internalized extension of colonization itself), it can be viewed also as an emblem of solidarity between similarly affected people: a totem reminder of the assault on language, culture, identity and place, that has destroyed people and ecosystems around the globe. Now the world is at risk of losing this ancient ally both in Hawaii and Peru. By joining forces with this ancient tree, it is possible to harness the tree’s biogenic life-giving properties in Hawaii (as food and as an aid to reforestation) as well as in Peru (reversing desertification and reinforcing traditional cultural identity). Globally, the tree (and its relatives) has incredible potential to contribute significantly to global food security and to halt the desertification of arid lands.