Fatifati Auala historic village and star mound

The path predates the park. In the Mount Alava country of Tutuila, in the National Park of American Samoa, the Fatifati Auala Trail follows an ancient Samoan route — steep rainforest, sections where fixed ropes assist the climb — that villagers of Fagasa and Vatia built and used as their road to the market and harbor of Pago Pago before government roads existed. Two destinations survive along it: the remnants of a historic village and a sacred star mound.

The mound is a tia seu lupe — literally, an earthen mound to catch pigeons. Samoa's star mounds were stone and earth platforms raised for the chiefly sport of pigeon catching, in which a chief reclined on the tiers and snared wild pigeons lured by decoys and tame birds. They are among the oldest ceremonial structures in Polynesia, cousins in form to the later marae, and the park treats the Auala mound as a sacred site.