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Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians

it started with one man named Johann Suter (later John Sutter) who came to California from Switzerland in 1839 and settled a large tract of land in Sacramento, which he called New Helvetia (New Switzerland). The goal was to bring other settlers to New Helvetia and build an agricultural and trade colony.

Sutter originally didn’t start in California; first, he left his family in Switzerland and travelled extensively through the Eastern US, Oregon and eventually to Hawaii where he met Russian traders who told him about Alto California where land and furs were abundant.

It was in Hawaii that he made the decision to head to California via Alaska. (Noren) After a brief stay in the Islands, in 1839, Sutter had a “crew consisted of the two German carpenters I had brought with me from the Islands, and a number of sailors and mechanics I had picked up at Yerba Buena.”

“I also had eight Kanakas, all experienced seamen, whom King Kamehameha had given me when I left the Sandwich Islands. I had undertaken to pay them ten dollars a month and to send them back to the Islands after three years at my own expense if they wished to leave me.”  (Sutter; Houston)

At the time of Sutter’s arrival in California, the territory had a population of only 1,000-Europeans, in contrast with 30,000-Native Americans. At the time, it was part of Mexico.

When they landed and set up New Helvetia (August 13, 1839,) “I selected the highest ground I could find. The Kanakas first erected two grass houses after the manner of the houses on the Sandwich Islands; the frames were made by white men and covered with grass by the Kanakas.” (Sutter)

Sutter employed Native Americans of the Miwok and Maidu tribes, Kanakas and Europeans at his compound, which he called Sutter’s Fort.

In the following years many Sandwich Islanders followed these few to California. John Sutter brought them there to work at Sutter’s Fort and at Hock Farm.”

“A colony of more than 100-native Hawaiians formed a colony in Sutter County called Verona, the first non-native American settlement in the Central California Valley.”

“These Hawaiians fished for bass, trout, and catfish and sold them at the Fort and in Sacramento. They learned to raise alfalfa and raised hogs and cattle. The Hawaiians rowed their boats, assembled their tents and played their Ukulele and Guitar. When a visiting Hawaiian brought poi, ti leaves, kukui and other items from home the Hawaiians held barbecues and luau and danced hula.” (Willcox)

In his memoirs, Sutter recalled the Hawaiians, “I could not have settled the country without the aid of these Kanakas. They were always faithful and loyal to me.” (Sutter)

From 1839 to 1849, Sutter’s Fort was the economic center of the first permanent European colonial settlement in California’s Central Valley. During that time, the Fort catalyzed patterns of change across California. Then, the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848.

“[B]y the mid-1800s, there were hundreds of Hawaiians in what is now Canada and California. In 1847, Hawaiians made up 10% of San Francisco’s tiny but growing population.”  (Terrell)

“In the aftermath of the gold rush, many Hawaiians stayed in California. And as they settled in California, a number of Hawaiian men married local indigenous women. Which, it turns out, was a common occurrence up and down the West Coast.” (Terrell)

“Both Hawaiians and Indians in the Oregon Territory were explicitly excluded from the dominant society. From the mid-1860s onward, neither they nor their offspring were legally permitted to marry into the dominant society.”  (Barman & Watson)

As a result, Hawaiians were absorbed into local Native American communities through intermarriage. These Hawaiians were less likely to return to the Islands and leave their Native American wives and children behind. (Farnham)

One such is the Shingle Springs Band.  “They were known as the lost tribe of kanakas.  They are not our Indians. They’re not local.” (Marilyn Ferguson; Terrell, Civil Beat)

Then in 1916, an agent with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs traveled to California looking for landless and destitute Indians.

The agent recorded a number of Miwok families living in the Placerville area and called those people the El Dorado Band.

Then he visited the group near Verona — about 50 miles away. According to letters from the time, the group at that point was mostly made up of extended family members. A few Hawaiian men and their wives — local Miwok and Maidu and one white woman.

The spit of land they lived on was small. It nearly disappeared when the river swelled from rain. They lived on fish and marsh birds. Bought meager food supplies from town by delivering fish to markets and individual houses nearby.

The agent dubbed this group of Indians the Sacramento-Verona Band of Homeless Indians and suggested buying land for them.

“They seemed open to banding together,” he wrote. And would be excellent candidates for the federal government’s plan to “colonize and civilize Indians” in California.  (Terrell; Civil Beat)

The Bureau of Indian Affairs relocated one of those communities to what is now the Shingle Springs Rancheria. Tribal members say they owe their survival to their Hawaiian ancestors and believe their relatives on the mainland deserve the same recognition as tribes in the US. (Ho-Chunk)

But the Sacramento-Verona tribe didn’t move to the 160-acre parcel. For decades the land sat fallow and unused.  Then in 1970, the BIA reached out to the descendants of the group dubbed the Sacramento-Verona tribe to see if they wanted to sell the uninhabited land that had been set aside for their families.

They opted to keep the land and came together as a tribe. Built homes on the land. A church. A community center. Negotiated with the state to get highway access to the land. They renamed themselves the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians.

And they started making plans to open a casino. That’s when things got heated.  Not everyone wanted the Shingle Springs Band to open a casino in the area.

The Miwok families that the Bureau dubbed the El Dorado Tribe in 1916 lost their land decades ago. Now, some of their descendants say it’s unfair for the Shingle Springs Band to have taken Miwok as part of its name.  Unjust — and perhaps a misinterpretation of the law — for them to have tribal land in the area.

Most of the members of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians have Hawaiian roots. Tribal ancestors married Native Hawaiians who came to California during the Gold Rush of the mid-1800s and the groups formed Indian-Hawaiian communities around Sacramento.

However complicated their origins, the tribe’s sovereignty has been upheld repeatedly in court.  (Terrell; Civil Beat)

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Tea Act – Boston Tea Party

The practice of tea drinking arrived with colonists from both England and the Netherlands and was already established by the mid-seventeenth century, evidenced by the number of tea wares recorded in household inventories.

When he visited Boston in 1740, Joseph Bennett observed that “the ladies here visit, drink tea and indulge every little piece of gentility to the height of the mode and neglect the affairs of their families with as good grace as the finest ladies in London.”

At another time, Kalm stated: “With the tea was eaten bread and butter or buttered bread toasted over the coals so that the butter penetrated the whole slice of bread. In the afternoon about three o’clock tea was drunk again in the same fashion, except that bread and butter was not served with it.”

This tea-drinking schedule was followed throughout the colonies. In Boston the people “take a great deal of tea in the morning,” have dinner at two o’clock, and “about five o’clock they take more tea, some wine, madeira [and] punch.” (Baron Cromot du Bourg) The Marquis de Chastellux confirms his countryman’s statement about teatime, mentioning that the Americans take “tea and punch in the afternoon.”

During the first half of the 18th century the limited amount of tea available at prohibitively high prices restricted its use to a proportionately small segment of the total population of the colonies.  About mid-century, however, tea was beginning to be drunk by more and more people, as supplies increased and costs decreased.

Tea Act

America was becoming a country of tea drinkers.

However, due to debt due to the costs associated with the French and Indian Wars, Parliament imposed new taxes.  In the 1760s, the British government began to impose a tax on tea, first through the Stamp Act of 1765 and later with the Townshend Acts of 1767.

Dissatisfied colonists took to smuggling tea or drinking herbal infusions. Outraged merchants, shippers, and colonists staged a number of demonstrations.

Then, the Tea Act of 1773 was imposed.

It was an “act to allow a drawback of the duties of customs on the exportation of tea to any of his Majesty’s colonies or plantations in America; to increase the deposit on bohea tea to be sold at the India Company’s sales; and to impower the commissioners of the treasury to grant licenses to the East India Company to export tea duty-free.”  (Tea Act)

The act contained a number of provisions:

  • The East India Company was granted a license to export tea to North America.
  • They were no longer required to sell their tea at the London Tea Market.
  • The duties on tea shipped to North America and other foreign parts were not imposed nor refunded when the tea was exported.
  • Anybody receiving tea from the East India Company was required to pay a deposit upon receipt.

The Tea Act was intended to bail out the struggling East India Company, which was very important for the British economy, and the Tea Act would raise revenue from the 13 colonies.

The Tea Act allowed the East India Company to directly ship tea to the colonies without passing England. This way, duties were reduced and resulted in the cheaper price of English tea in the colonies. The Tea Act received royal assent on May 10, 1773.

By reducing the tax on imported British tea, this act gave British merchants an unfair advantage in selling their tea in America. American colonists condemned the act, and many planned to boycott tea.

Boston Tea Party

The colonists resisted the Tea Act more because it violated the constitutional principle of self-government by consent than because they could not afford the tax, which had existed since the passage of the 1767 Townshend Revenue Act.

As George Washington explained, “What is it we are contending against? Is it against paying the duty of [three pence per pound] on tea because [it is] burdensome? No, it is the right only … that, as Englishmen, we could not be deprived of this essential and valuable part of our constitution.”

In the ports of New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, citizens prevented British tea from being unloaded, threatened tax collectors into resigning, and protested taxation without representation. In Boston, political organizer Samuel Adams oversaw the adoption of resolutions calling on the tea agents to resign, but they refused.

On November 28, 1773, however, the Dartmouth dropped anchor in Boston Harbor loaded with 114 crates of British tea. Its colonial owner, Francis Rotch of Nantucket Island, had a great deal of money invested in the cargo and wanted it unloaded, but Patriot leaders wanted to use the landing of the tea to galvanize the people against the British. They also feared that if the tea were landed and sold at cheaper prices, people would continue buying it and ruin the boycott.

The following day, a crowd of five or six thousand people warned Rotch that landing the tea would be at his “peril,” posted a guard around the ship, and demanded that it return to England.

But Thomas Hutchinson, a staunch Loyalist who now served as royal governor, refused to allow the Dartmouth‘s departure. With twenty days to either unload the cargo and pay taxes or forfeit both the tea and the ship, Rotch found himself in a terrible position.

Over the next week, two more ships laden with tea berthed beside the Dartmouth at Griffin’s Wharf. Many people predicted imminent violence.  As Abigail Adams wrote, “The flame is kindled … Great will be the devastation if not timely quenched or allayed by some more lenient measures.”

On December 14, thousands again demanded that Rotch seek clearance for a return voyage to England, but Hutchinson again refused the request. Three British warships now stood in the harbor ready to enforce his order. Matters were coming to a head.

On December 16, 1773, one day before the deadline for the landing of the tea, more than seven thousand gathered in the Old South Meeting House, Boston’s largest building.

When Samuel Adams announced that nothing more could be done to save their country, dozens of colonists, dressed like Indians as a symbol of American freedom and to disguise their identities from British authorities, entered the assembly with piercing war whoops.

The crowd went into a frenzy, screaming, “The Mohawks are come!”

John Hancock called on his countrymen to do their patriotic duty: “Let every man do what is right in his own eyes.”

Thousands of citizens spilled into the streets and watched as the band of Mohawk impersonators boarded the three ships and dumped into the harbor  342 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company.  The crowd then slowly dispersed into the night while the disguised participants went home with their identities still concealed.

Although some colonists saw the Boston Tea Party as a destructive mob action, most praised the protest.  John Adams rejoiced, “This is the most magnificent Movement of all. There is a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last Effort of the Patriots, that I greatly admire.”

“The People should never rise, without doing something to be remembered – something notable And striking. This Destruction of the Tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important Consequences, and so lasting, that I cant but consider it as an Epocha in History.”  (Adams, National Archives)

Click the following link to a general summary about the Tea Act – Boston Tea Party:

Click to access Tea-Act-Boston-Tea-Party.pdf

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Spice Trade

By many accounts, Britain was a quiet agricultural outpost in the Roman empire. The native inhabitants had a well-established growing system that prioritized crops such as broad beans, barley, oats, and wheat. Needless to say, Britons ate a lot of bread and drank a lot of beer.

Their livestock consisted of the usual range of domesticated animals: cattle, sheep, chicken, and pigs. Foraged foods included mushrooms, wild onions, and herbs such as mustard. Those who lived near the coast enjoyed seaweed, fish, and oysters. Rural life and food looked much the same as it does today, with a key exception — lack of spices.

The Romans brought a wealth of spices from all over their empire. The trade along the Spice Road had been good to them, and they introduced pepper, rosemary, thyme, coriander, mint, and garlic to Britons. Some of these herbs were dried and some were in plant form. Those plants that grew well in the Isles still remain a part of British cuisine.  (Cowen)

Many tall tales developed as to the origins of spices, but by the 13th century, travelers like Marco Polo (1254-1324 CE) and missionaries were beginning to improve Europe’s geographical knowledge of the wider world.

India seemed awash with black pepper. Sri Lanka was rich in cinnamon. Sandalwood came from Timor. China and Japan were getting spices like cloves, nutmeg, and mace from India, South East Asia, and the Maluku Islands or the Moluccas in what is today Indonesia – not for nothing were they nicknamed the Spice Islands.

Then, in 1453 came the fall of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire was conquered by the Ottoman Empire, and so one of the principal land routes for spices into Europe was lost. (Cartwright)

One of the major motivating factors in the European Age of Exploration was the search for direct access to the highly lucrative Eastern spice trade. In the 15th century, spices came to Europe via the Middle East land and sea routes, and spices were in huge demand both for food dishes and for use in medicines.

The problem was how to access this market by sea.

Accordingly, explorers like Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) and Vasco da Gama (c. 1469-1524) were sent to find a maritime route from Europe to Asia.

Columbus (who was looking for a new route to India, China, Japan and the ‘Spice Islands’ of Indonesia to bring back cargoes of silk and spices (ginger turmeric and cinnamon)) never saw the mainland United States, but the first explorations of the continental United States were launched from the Spanish possessions that he helped establish.

To the south, da Gama did round the Cape of Good Hope, sail up the coast of East Africa, and cross the Indian Ocean to reach India.

From 1500 onwards, first Portugal, and then other European powers, attempted to control the spice trade, the ports which marketed spices, and eventually the territories which grew them.  (Cartwright)

On November 28 1520, Ferdinand Magellan entered the “Sea of the South” (which he later named the Pacific) and thereby open up to Spain the possibility of an alternative route between Europe and the spices of the Orient.”  (Lloyd)

Then, almost 50 years after the death of Christopher Columbus, Manila galleons finally fulfilled their dream of sailing west to Asia to benefit from the rich Indian Ocean trade.

“The Spanish Galleons were square rigged ships with high superstructures on their sterns. They were obviously designed for running before the wind or at best sailing on a very ‘broad reach.’”

“Because of their apparently limited ability to ‘beat their way to windward’ (sail against the wind), they had to find trade routes where the prevailing winds and sea currents were favorable.”  (Lloyd)

Starting in 1565, with the Spanish sailor and friar Andrés de Urdaneta, after discovering the Tornaviaje or return route to Mexico through the Pacific Ocean, Spanish galleons sailed the Pacific Ocean between Acapulco in New Spain (now Mexico) and Manila in the Philippine islands.

Once a year, gold and silver were transported west to Manila in exchange spices (pepper, clove and cinnamon), porcelain, ivory, lacquer and elaborate fabrics (silk, velvet, satin), collected from both the Spice Islands (Moluccas, Indonesia) and the Asian Pacific coast, in European markets.

They also carried Chinese handicrafts, Japanese screens, fans, Japanese swords, Persian carpets, Ming dynasties and a myriad of other products. East Asia traded primarily with a silver standard, and the goods were bought mainly with Mexican silver. (Pascual)

The galleons leaving Manila would make their way back to Acapulco in a four-month long journey.  The goods were off-loaded and transported across land to ships on the other Mexican coast at Veracruz, and eventually, sent to European markets and customers eager for these exotic wares.  (GuamPedia)

In 1668 a royal decree required the galleons to stop in Guam in the Mariana Islands on their westward voyage from Acapulco to Manila. This allowed ships to replenish supplies and was the only means for communication between Spain and the Marianas colony.

The Manila Galleon Trade lasted for 250 years and ended in 1815 with Mexico’s war of independence.  More than 40-Spanish galleons were lost during this 250-year period. (Lloyd)

“‘The voyage from the Philippine islands to America may be call’d the longest, and most dreadful of any in the world; as well because of the vast ocean to be cross’d, being almost the one-half of the terraquous globe, with the wind always a-head; as for the terrible tempests that happen there, one upon the back of the other …”

“… and for the desperate diseases that seize people, in seven or eight months living at sea, sometimes near the line, sometimes cold, sometimes temperate, sometimes hot, which is enough to destroy a man of steel, much more flesh and blood, which at sea had but indifferent food.’” (Dr. Gemilli, Popular Science, 1901)

“The Spanish captains normally made their eastbound Pacific crossings between 31o N and 44o N latitude to insure that they would remain in the zone of the westerly winds. They would want to avoid the ‘horse latitudes’ (around 30o  N) and they would certainly want to remain well north of the northeast trade winds that would  drive their square rigged ships back to the Philippines.”

“This northerly route back to Acapulco would normally keep the galleons at least 1,000 miles north of Hawaii and it would not be surprising if little or no contact with the Hawaiian Island occurred during these difficult eastbound crossings of the North Pacific.”

“The westbound route from Acapulco offers an entirely different set of navigational considerations.  Friar Urdaneta’s route involved sailing down to 13° N latitude (or 14° N) and following that parallel all the way to Guam and on to the San Bernardino Strait in the Philippines.”

“Unknown to the Spanish navigators, the very favorable ocean currents mentioned above would position their ships much further along their westbound course than indicated by using their ship’s mechanical ‘log’ to measure their ship’s speed through the water.”  (Lloyd)

Some suggest the Spaniards came to the Hawaiian Islands a couple of centuries before Cook saw them.

“Old Spanish charts and a 1613 AD Dutch globe suggest that explorers from Spain had sighted Hawaiʻi long before Captain Cook.  When Cook arrived in 1778, galleons laden with silver from the mines of Mexico and South America had been passing south of Hawaiʻi for two centuries on annual round trip voyages of 17,000 miles between Acapulco and Manila.”  (Kane)

“It seems to be almost certain that one Juan Gaetano, a Spanish navigator, saw Hawaii in 1555 AD. A group of islands, the largest of which was called La Mesa, was laid down in the old Spanish charts in the same latitude as the Hawaiian Islands, but 10 degrees too far east.”  (Hawaiʻi Department of Foreign Affairs, 1896)

“There are undoubted proof of the discovery of the Hawaiian Islands by the Spaniard, Juan Gaetano. This is the first known record of the islands among the civilized nations. There are evident references to this group in the legends of the Polynesians in other Pacific islands.”  (Westervelt 1923)

La Perouse noted, when he briefly visited the Islands (1786,) “In the charts, at the foot of this archipelago, might be written: ‘Sandwich Islands, surveyed in 1778 by Captain Cook, who named them, anciently discovered by the Spanish navigators.’”  (La Perouse, Fornander)

“By all the documents that have been examined, it is demonstrated that the discovery dates from the year 1555 and that the discoverer was Juan Gaetano or Gaytan. The principal proof is an old manuscript chart, registered in these archives as anonymous, and in which the Sandwich Islands are laid down under that name, but which also contains a note declaring that he called them Islas de Mesa”.  (Spanish Colonial Office letter to the Governor of the Philippines, The Friend May 1927)

“It is true that no document has been found in which Gaytan himself certifies to this fact, but there exist data which collectively form a series of proofs sufficient for believing it to be so. The principal one is an old manuscript chart … in which the Sandwich Islands are laid down under that name…” (The Friend May 1927)

Gaetano passed through the northern part of the Pacific and discovered large islands which he marked upon a chart as ‘Los Majos.’ The great mountains upon these islands did not rise in sharp peaks, but spread out like a high tableland in the clouds, hence he also called the islands “Isles de Mesa,” the Mesa Islands or the Table Lands. One of the islands was named “The Unfortunate.” Three other smaller islands were called “The Monks.”  (Westervelt 1923)

Fortunately, however, the Spanish made no use of this discovery, thus permitting the Hawaiians to escape the sad fate of the natives of the Ladrones and Carolines under Spanish dominion.  (White 1898)

Juan Gaetano may not have been the first Spaniard, here.  Stories suggest an earlier arrival of shipwrecked Spaniards at Keʻei, Kona Moku (district,) Island of Hawaiʻi.

There is fairly complete evidence that a Spanish vessel was driven ashore on the island of Hawai‘i in 1527, it being one of a squadron of three which sailed from the Mexican coast for the East Indies.  (White 1898)

“A well known Hawaiian tradition relates that in the reign of Keliiokaloa, son of Umi, a foreign vessel was wrecked at Keei, South Kona, Hawaii. According to the tradition, only the captain and his sister reached the shore in safety. From their kneeling on the beach and remaining a long time in that posture, the place was called Kulou (to stoop, to bow,) as it is unto this day.”  (Alexander 1892)

“The natives received them kindly and placed food before them. These strangers intermarried with the Hawaiians, and were the progenitors of certain well known families of chiefs, as for instance, that of Kaikioewa, former Governor of Kauai.“  (Alexander 1892)

Jarves expanded on the story, “In the reign of Kealiiokaloa, son of Umi, thirteen generations of kings before Cook’s arrival, which, according to the previous calculation, would bring it near the year 1620, a vessel, called by the natives Konaliloha, arrived at Pale, Keei, on the south side of Kealakeakua bay, Hawaii.”

“Here, by some accident, she was drawn into the surf, and totally wrecked; the captain, Kukanaloa, and a white woman, said to be his sister, were the only persons who reached the land. As soon as they trod upon the beach, either from fear of the inhabitants, or to return thanks for their safety, they prostrated themselves, and remained in that position for a long time.”

“The spot where this took place, is known at the present day, by the appellation of Kulou, to bow down. The shipwrecked strangers were hospitably received, invited to the dwellings of the natives, and food placed before them.”  (Jarves 1843)

One more thing, the first Hawaiian word written is ‘Hamaite’ – it was spoken to Captain Cook at the time he made contact with the Islands and he wrote it in his journal.

It was made in reference to iron.  Some suggest it refers to Hematite (ferric oxide – a mineral form of iron oxide – that is Hematita in Spanish.)  However, others suggest ‘Hamaite’ is actually a Hawaiian expression of He maita’i – good.  (Schutz)

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Naukane

During Captain Cookʻs visit to Hawaiʻi on his third voyage of exploration in 1779, then-Lieutenant King (later Captain) noted, “During the following night, the cutter belonging to the Discovery was stolen …”

“This irritated captain Cook, and he gave orders to stop all the canoes that should attempt to leave the bay, intending to seize and destroy them, if he could not recover the cutter by fair means.”  (Captain King’s Journal)

“The natives now collected in vast numbers along the shore, and began to throng round captain Cook”.  Shortly after, “Captain Cook, the last time he was seen distinctly, was standing at the water’s edge”.

“… he was desirous of preventing any farther bloodshed … whilst he faced the natives, none of them had offered him any violence, but having turned about to give his orders to those in the boats, he was stabbed in the back”.  Cook was killed.    (Captain King’s Journal)

One of the Hawaiians at the scene was Naukane, son of Kamanawa (Kamehameha’s uncle and one of his closest allies – Kamanawa (left) and Kameʻeiamoku, his twin brother (right) were later memorialized on the Hawaiʻi coat of arms.)  (Kittelson)

When Kamehameha moved his Royal Center to Honolulu, his chiefs came with him. Naukane, then in his early twenties, accompanied his father and probably became involved in royal court life.  However, fascinated by the growing number of ships calling in the islands, Naukane looked to the sea. (Kittelson)

His chance came in February 1811, when John Jacob Astor’s ‘Tonquin,’ under the command of Captain Jonathan Thorne, called.  The captain wanted to hire twenty-four of the Islanders, twelve as seamen and the remaining half to establish a post for the Pacific Fur Company on the Columbia River.

This was the first large group of Hawaiians to come to America.  The king appointed Naukane to go with them as a royal observer.  (Duncan)

Because Naukane resembled one of the Americans, he became known as John Coxe and retained the name throughout his long and colorful life in the Pacific Northwest (he also went by John Cox and Edward Coxe, or, simply Coxe.)  (Duncan)

The Tonquin reached the mouth of the Columbia in March; after a few days looking, they selected a site and by the end of May they had completed Fort Astoria.  It was the first American-owned settlement on the Pacific coast of what was to become the United States.

Astor planned the post to grow into a permanent settlement, with plans to develop a large trade ring that included New York, the Pacific Coast, Russian Alaska, Hawaiʻi and China. The furs collected in the northwest and Alaska, would be shipped to China and exchanged for porcelain, silk and other cloth, and spices that would be brought back, via Hawaii to New York.

Other operators had other posts.  In the summer of 1810, Jacques-Raphaël Finlay (Jaco Finley) of the North West Company built Spokane House at the junction of the Spokane and Little Spokane rivers.

Shortly after arriving in the northwest, Coxe started working for Canadian David Thompson of the North West Company.   Coxe later spent the winter of 1811-1812 at Spokane House with Finlay.  On those expeditions, Coxe became the first Hawaiian to visit the inland Northwest.

Coxe accompanied Thompson “across the Rocky Mountains from western Montana and in the long trail to Fort William on Lake Superior. … John Coxe also took the trail east from Fort William but his road led to Quebec, where he created a sensation with his stories of Hawaiʻi and his demonstrations of Polynesian dance steps.”  (Taylor)

By 1813, Fort Astoria and all other assets in the area were sold to the North West Company – they renamed it Fort George.    Coxe continued to work there until August, 1814, when all of the Hawaiians at Fort George were sent back to the Islands.

Comfortable with the service from the Hawaiians, in 1817, North West sent a ship “to bring as many of the Sandwich Islanders to the Columbia river as we could conveniently accommodate.”  (Corney)

(In 1821, the Hudson’s Bay Company combined with the North West Company, and the post name was changed back to Fort Spokane.)

After he returned to Honolulu in 1815, Coxe probably reverted to his native name, Naukane.  He was well received by Kamehameha.

Not only was Naukane the son of one of Kamehameha’s closest advisors, and a member of Liholiho’s entourage, but he had traveled widely. Kamehameha I died in 1819 and Naukane rose in stature when Liholiho ascended the throne.  (Kittelson)

Naukane’s expeditions did not end on the American continent.  Because of his familiarity with western ways (with travels to America, Europe & South America) and his personal ties, when Liholiho departed on November 27, 1823 to England aboard the L’Aigle to discuss the future of his Islands with George IV, Naukane accompanied the King.

The King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamāmalu died of measles in July 1824; apparently Naukane’s travels had built up his immunity, for he was hardly bothered by measles.

King George IV held an audience for the remaining Hawaiians at Windsor Castle on September 11; Coxe was present.  The bodies of Liholiho and his queen were returned to Hawaii aboard the frigate Blonde captained by Lord Byron.

With the King dead, Naukane no longer was bound, and he immediately offered his services to the Hudson’s Bay Company and returned to the Northwest. He was only one of approximately thirty-five Islanders working for the company by 1825.  (Duncan)

The firm’s base of operations had been transferred from Fort Spokane to a new site farther inland, Fort Vancouver. Coxe worked for a few more years; then the company retired him and gave him a plot of land two miles below the fort.  (Kittelson)

Naukane died February 2, 1850.  The vast plain between Fort Vancouver and the Columbia became the Hawaiian’s memorial – Coxe’s Plain … “A couple of miles below the fort (Vancouver) there were luxuriant meadows of great extent.”

“A portion of these bore at that time the name of Coxe’s Plain, a name I think which it still continues to bear. Old Coxe, a native of the Sandwich Islands and a very original character, was the swine-herd and had his residence there among the oaks which dotted the verge of the plain.”  (Anderson; Barry)

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Hualalai

When the American Protestant missionaries arrived in the Islands (1820), they sailed from Kawaihae to Kailua-Kona; Bingham wrote, “As we coasted slowly along southward, we had a grand view of Hualalai, the volcanic mountain that rises some eight or nine thousand feet, near the western side of Hawaii, with its terminal crater, its forests, and apparently recent streams of lava.”

In Kona, the “village of thatched huts, though in a dry and sterile spot, is ornamented with cocoanut and Kou trees, which to the eye form a relief. A few miles inland, trees and plantations are numerous; then, still further back, rises the forest-covered Mauna Hualalai, with its lofty terminal crater, now extinct. . .”

Missionary wife, Lucy Thurston noted, “On the mountain Hualalai, just back of Kailua, is a large crater. It is now extinct. But our old people tell us of the time in their childhood, when they were aroused from their midnight slumbers, to see red hot balls hurled into the air from out the crater on this mountain.”

“Torrents of molten lava flowed from crater to coast, extended the shore farther out into the sea, and encrusted the surface of the earth, besides leaving an abundance of large loose scoriae, tossed about in every direction.”

Hualalai (“obstructing the flow” (Parker Dictionary for a crater on the mountain)) is the third youngest and third-most historically active volcano on the Island of Hawai‘i.

Six different vents erupted lava between the late 1700s and 1801, two of which generated lava flows that poured into the sea on the west coast of the island. The Keāhole Airport is built atop the larger flow.  (USGS)

The 1801 flow covered Pā‘aiea pond; “Pā‘aiea was a great pond almost like the ponds of Wainanalii and Kiholo. In the olden days, when the great ruling chiefs were living, and when these fish ponds were full of the riches of Awa, Anae, and Ahole, along with all sorts of fish which swam within.”

“During that time, Konohiki were stationed, and he was the guard of the pond that watched over the pond and all things, as here we are talking about Pā‘aiea Pond which was destroyed by lava and became pahoehoe lava which remains today”.

“In the correct and trues story of this pond, its boundaries began from Kaelehuluhulu on the north and on the south was at the place called Wawaloli, and the distance from one end to the other was 3 miles or more, and that was the length of this pond …”

“… and today within these boundaries, there are a number of pools [lua wai loko] remaining during this time that the writer is speaking before the readers of the Hoku.”  (Hoku o Hawaii, 2/5/1914)

The lava came and destroyed the great fishpond of Pā‘aiea, dried its water and filled and covered it with black rocks.  However, two places were spared.

There remained only that very small portion of the fishpond, close to Ho‘ona (within the Natural Energy Laboratory property at Keāhole Point.)  Also, the area below the old headquarters at Hu‘ehu‘e Ranch was left untouched, and this open space bears the name of Pahinahina to this day.

It is said that because of this event that the lands of Manuahi came to be called Ka-ulu-pulehu (the roasted breadfruit (‘ū is short for ‘ulu,)) and this has been shortened to Ka‘ūpūlehu.

Though Hualalai is not nearly as active as Mauna Loa or Kilauea, recent geologic mapping of the volcano shows that 80 percent of Hualalai’s surface has been covered by lava flows in the past 5,000 years.  (USGS)

In the past few decades, when most of the resorts, homes and commercial buildings were built on the flanks of Hualalai, earthquake activity beneath the volcano has been low.

In 1929, however, an intense swarm of earthquakes lasting more than a month was most likely caused by magma rising to near the surface. For these reasons, Hualalai is considered a potentially dangerous volcano that is likely to erupt again in the next 100 years.  (USGS)

A Pālama Nui kāua
Wai māpuna kau i ka maka ka ‘ōpua
Hualalai huewai kuahiwi

You and I stand together on the Foundation of Profound Enlightenment
Where the spring water is borne upon the clouds
Mount Hualalai, a mountain water-gourd

(from Nā‘ū Pālama Nui – ”Hualalai, huewai kuahiwi” is a traditional saying honoring Hualalai’s role in sponging the atmosphere of moisture to fill the aquifers.) (Tangarō, UH-HCC)

With respect to groundwater, an interesting conclusion, based on isotopic data for the high level water, shows that most of the groundwater recharge under Hualalai is coming from recharge at significantly higher elevations than the local rainfall in the mid-elevations of Hualalai (at nearly 3,000 year average age of the water in the high level aquifer).

In other words, not much of the “local” rainfall in the vicinity of the high level wells is actually getting into the high level aquifer. (as noted by Don Thomas, research faculty of the Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology at UH and Director of the Center for the Study of Active Volcanoes at the UH‐Hilo campus.)

The only alternative that can explain the isotopic and age data for the high level aquifer, with significant amounts of local recharge entering it, is that substantially larger amounts of much older recharge to the high level aquifers is coming into the Hualalai water system from the adjacent regions in the Saddle and from Mauna Loa.  (Don Thomas)

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