Ali’i / Chiefs / Governance | Page 84

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Lucy Peabody headstone

January 27, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Robert Wilcox Supported Annexation and Statehood

Robert Randall Hoes “reached Honolulu on the USS Pensacola September 20, 1891, and remained there until March 9, 1893.” (Hoes)

As stated by Hoes, “I went there as chaplain of the Pensacola, and, having considerable leisure, apart from my professional duties, I commenced a study of the history of the country, pursuing it as carefully and critically as the books and pamphlets at my command would permit.” (Hoes)

“I was officially attached to the Pensacola while she remained in Hawaiian waters, and performed my duties accordingly; but, having considerable leisure at my disposal …”

“… as already said, I engaged in historical studies, and was instrumental, with Prof. Alexander, JS Emerson, and others, in organizing the Hawaiian Historical Society, and was officially connected with that organization until I left Honolulu.” (Hoes)

“The Queen, subsequently hearing that I was so deeply interested in historical research, applied to Secretary Blaine, through Minister Stevens, for permission for me to remain in Honolulu after the Pensacola left …”

“… to prepare a bibliography of Hawaii, and also to examine and arrange the early archives of the Government, which were in a state of disgraceful confusion. I was subsequently detached and remained in Honolulu until the time stated.” (Hoes)

Hoes was “studying the people for historical purposes … (and) also to learn contemporary opinion.”

In doing so, he interviewed Robert Wilcox, “the man who figured so prominently and conspicuously in the revolution of 1887, and has mingled in politics more or less ever since, and was a member of the last Hawaiian Legislature.” (Hoes)

The following is an interview between Hoes and Robert Wilcox, January 27, 1893, shortly after the overthrow:

”What are your views, Mr. Wilcox, in regard to the present situation in general?” (Hoes)

“Queen Liliuokalani brought these evils upon herself and the country both by her personal corruption, and that of her Government. She surrounded herself with bad advisers, and seemed determined to drive the nation to destruction.” (Wilcox)

“Good people had no influence over her whatever, for she indignantly refused to listen to them. I believe that if we can be annexed to the United States, the rights of all of our citizens, and especially those of the native Hawaiians, will be protected more carefully than they have ever been under the monarchy.” (Wilcox)

“What, in your opinion, is the personal feeling of the native Hawaiian element in this community?” (Hoes)

“My countrymen, with the exception of the most intelligent among them, do not understand much about these things.- They need to be educated. They have so often been told by designing men that the United States was their enemy that they are naturally suspicious.” (Wilcox)

“Politicians who have sought to use the natives simply as so many tools have deceived them. When they understand from the lips of disinterested men and patriots what annexation means, and become acquainted with the benefits that it will bring them, they will be as much in favor of the movement as any of our other classes of citizens.” (Wilcox)

“Does the present Provisional Government command the respect of the native Hawaiians?” (Hoes)

“They are naturally somewhat prejudiced against it, as monarchy is the only form of Government with which they are familiar, but this feeling will quickly wear away as the Hawaiians are led to see that the Government is friendly to them and their interests. They already have confidence in the integrity and patriotism of President Dole.” (Wilcox)

“You advocated annexation to the United States, I believe, several months ago, in your newspaper, ‘The Liberal?’” (Hoes)

“Yes, and I have repeatedly done so in public meetings held in this city.” (Wilcox)

“How long do you think it would be after hoisting the American flag before the natives would be entirely reconciled?” (Hoes)

“Almost immediately.” (Wilcox)

“Are you doing anything to instruct the natives so that they may have correct views in regard to these matters?” (Hoes)

“Yes; but I am compelled to move cautiously, or I shall lose my influence over them. I believe I am doing a good work by constantly conversing with them on the subject.” (Wilcox)

“I have told my countrymen that the monarchy is gone forever, and when they ask me what is the best thing to follow it I tell them annexation, and I firmly believe that in a very short time every Hawaiian will be in favor of that step.” (Wilcox)

“The great thing is to keep them from being influenced by the arguments of designing men who pretend to be their friends, but who are really their enemies – men who will try and use them as tools to accomplish their own corrupt and selfish plans. We have had too much of this and it is high time to call for a halt.” (Wilcox)

“Have you confidence in the integrity and patriotic intentions of the commission that has just been sent to Washington by the Provisional Government?” (Hoes)

“It is made up of good men, and I believe they will endeavor to do what is for the best interests of the country.” (Wilcox)

“The above is correctly reported. RW Wilcox.” (Hoes; Reports of Committees of the Senate of the United States, 1893-1894)

With the establishment of Territorial status in the Islands, Hawaiʻi was eligible to have a non-voting delegate in the US House of Representatives.

Wilcox and others formed the Independent ‘Home Rule’ Party and Wilcox ran as a candidate for the Delegate position (against Republican Samuel Parker and Democrat Prince David Kawānanakoa.) Wilcox won, and served as the first delegate and representative of Hawaiʻi in the US Congress.

Then, “Washington. July 3 (1901). Delegate Wilcox, of Hawaii, announces here that at the very opening of the next session of Congress in December he will introduce a bill granting statehood to the territory of Hawaii. Mr. Wilcox says that he does not fully expect that the bill will become a law next winter, but he predicts early statehood for the territory.”

“‘Of course I realize,’ says Mr. Wilcox, ‘that this proposition will meet with opposition on the ground that we have but recently been incorporated Into a territory and that we should wait, but I shall Introduce the bill just the same and commence working upon it.’”

However, others felt, “The statehood bill that Mr. Wilcox says he is going to bring forward will result In nothing but a discussion of the political conditions In Hawaii. There is no chance whatever that during the term for which Mr. Wilcox has been elected to sit in Congress he can get a statehood bill through for the territory.” (Honolulu Republican, July 17, 1901)

Wiclox ran for re-election, but lost to Republican Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole Piʻikoi (Prince Kūhiō served from 1903 until his death in 1922.)

Wilcox returned to Washington to finish out his term (November 6, 1900 to March 3, 1903,) but was very ill. He came back to Hawaiʻi in 1903, and died October 26, 1903. He is buried in the Catholic cemetery on King Street.

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January 24, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Lanihau

“I started looking for property in Kona in 1921 when I graduated from Yale [University] and I think between then and 1932, why, I must have seen every beach property from Milolii to Kawaihae, no matter how you got to it–by air or by sea or by boat or by donkey or by mule or on foot.”

“And I finally decided on [William] Doc Hill’s place down at Keauhou as being the ideal spot that I wanted to live in but through a long combination of funny circumstances, why, I didn’t get it.”

“I’d inquired about this place from Mr. Childs who was then local head of American Factors. He said, ‘Oh hell, that property’s so tied up with owners you never could clear title.’”

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘you live here’ – and he was a big shot of the community at the time. ‘Tell you what I’ll do. If you can clear the titles, I’ll put up the money and we’ll subdivide the thing into large pieces and go fifty-fifty on it.’ And he said, ‘Well, that’s fair enough. That doesn’t cost me anything.’”

“So I waited seven years and nothing happened. Then I happened to meet an old-timer from up here who’d been in the tax office and knew land problems–who my father helped to keep out of jail–and he was very fond of the Thurstons.”

“So I said, ‘Who owns that property next to Factors?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘that belongs to so-and-so and so-and-so. You want to buy it?’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t know whether I can afford it or not.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the girl right at this moment needs money badly, I know, and I’m quite sure she would sell.’”

“So, this was four in the afternoon and at 9:30 the next morning I got a call and he said, ‘If you’ll have so much money available by eleven o’clock, I can buy her half-interest in thirty-eight acres.’”

“So I said, ‘Well, I don’t know where I’m going to get the money but I’ll have it.’ I did. Five years later, for five times as much, I bought the other half. So that brings us up to about 1938 and going into 1939.”

“An old kahuna who lived down at Kahaluu – I can’t remember his name at the moment but it’ll come to me – through his grandson who worked for [Theo. H.] Davies and Company, said that his grandfather wanted to come see me.”

“His grandfather had known my great-grandfather as a little boy and his great-grandfather was, at that time, in his late nineties and Asa [Thurston] died when he was well along in the eighties, so there is quite a span there. So I said I’d be delighted.”

“So the old man came over and his grandfather … he was ashamed to speak English so he spoke in Hawaiian and I spoke English. I could understand him and he could understand me. So he said, ‘I would like to know what Mr. Thurston’s plans are for the development of this property,’ which was translated duly.”

“And I replied and gave him a general idea of what I was trying to accomplish here. We’d planted quite a few trees at that time.
So the old man sat here for quite a long time and just nodded his head; and then he started in talking Hawaiian very rapidly and he talked for about ten minutes without taking a breath.”

“So the old man thanked me with tears in his eyes and we talked a little bit about his remembering my grandfather. He was a young man at the time. And he died, oh, within two or three months after that down at Kailua.”

“The name of this place is Lanihau. L-A-N-I-H-A-U. There’s Lanihau-nui which is next door and this is Lanihau-iki, meaning little Lanihau, and Lanihau-nui is back of it [and means large or great Lanihau]. That belongs to the Greenwells.”

“The name puzzled me. Lani means heavenly; beauty. Hau–H-A-U–is normally the tree from which they make the Hawaiian outriggers or the amas [float for canoe outrigger] or ‘iako [canoe outrigger]. H-A-0 is iron or steel or very strong.”

“So I submitted this to John Lane, who was then alive, and Mary Pukui, who’s still alive, and Reverend Henry Judd and two others … and asked them what this name meant, because many times Hawaiian meanings were hidden.”

“They asked a great many questions about the place. Was it on a point? Yes. You had a beautiful view up and down the coast? Yes. You had a beautiful view of the ocean? Yes. And the surf? Yes.”

“And out on the point at times it’s enormous; and is there a current that comes past that you can see sometimes? Yes, you can see it coming down the coast, coming around the point. And you have a beautiful view of the sunrise and of the sunset?”

“They finally came up with this hidden meaning which I think is very interesting; Lanihau is the place where the forces of the heavens and of the earth meet and all is quiet and peaceful. The moonlight and the sunshine, the waves, the grand weather, the storms, and so on, which is rather interesting, I think.”

“I would say that you are really in a very blessed spot.”

“I started to work here on the 28th of December of 1939. It was all just lava, nothing else. And this place evolved as a result of exposure and watching the surf and studying and seeing what one could do.”

“I always wanted a harbor for a boat to go fishing and to go swimming. And so, this gradually evolved and then I began to find out things about it.”

“Kamehameha the Great lived right here for some time – seven years – prior to his death. This is where he slept and over there was where he ate and over where the guest house is, is where his servants lived; and over at the far end there, beyond the entrance to the pond – going into the King Kamehameha [Hotel] lot – was the old heiau.”

“So he was self -contained and nobody was allowed on this place in the old days. You had to go around it. It was tabu. … Sacred.”

Back to the old man and his grandfather … “His grandson laughed when the old man ran down and said, ‘Well, my grandfather has said quite a few things. I will try to translate.’”

“In essence, what he said was this, that he will now die happy and he now understands why the good Lord never let anybody buy this over all the years.”

“He said, ‘He was waiting till you could come – till you had the money to come – and till you could develop this place, which certainly is even farther than Kamehameha would have been able to had he chosen to do it, and it will become a place of great beauty.’”

“‘I will now die happy because this property is in the hands of the man the Lord intended it to go to.’” (Lorrin P Thurston; Watumull Oral History)

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January 16, 2019 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Literacy was Sought by the People

“One young man asked (a missionary) for a book yesterday, and (he) inquired of him who his teacher was. He replied, ‘My desire to learn, my ear, to hear, my eye, to see, my hands, to handle, for, from the sole of my foot to the crown of my head I love the palapala.’” (KSBE)

“Not long after the passing of Kamehameha I in 1819, the first Christian missionaries arrived at (Kawaihae), Hawaiʻi on March 30, 1820. (They finally anchored at Kailua-Kona on April 4, 1820.) Their arrival here became the topic of much discussion as Liholiho, known as Kamehameha II, deliberated with his aliʻi council for 13 days on a plan allowing the missionaries to stay.

“Interestingly, the missionaries promised a printing press and to teach palapala, or reading and writing. Because Liholiho had learned the alphabet prior to the missionaries’ arrival, he had a notion of the value of a printing press and literacy for his people.”

“A key point in Liholiho’s plan required the missionaries to first teach the aliʻi to read and write. The missionaries agreed to the King’s terms and instruction began soon after.” (KSBE)

The arrival of the first company of American missionaries in Hawai¬ʻi in 1820 marked the beginning of Hawaiʻi’s phenomenal rise to literacy. The chiefs became proponents for education and edicts were enacted by the King and the council of chiefs to stimulate the people to reading and writing.

“That the sudden introduction of the Hawaiian nation in its unconverted state, to general English or French literature, would have been safe and salutary, is extremely problematical.”

“To us it has been a matter of pleasing wonder that the rulers and the people were so early and generally led to seek instruction through books furnished them by our hands, not one of which was designed to encourage image worship, to countenance iniquity, or to be at variance with the strictest rules of morality. It was of the Lord’s mercy.”

“With the elements of reading and writing we were accustomed, from the beginning, to connect the elements of morals and religion, and have been happy to find them mutual aids”. (Hiram Bingham)

“The initiation of the rulers and others into the arts of reading and writing, under our own guidance, brought to their minds forcibly, and sometimes by surprise, moral lessons as to their duty and destiny which were of immeasurable importance.”

“The English New Testament was almost our first school book, and happy should we have been, could the Hawaiian Bible have been the next.” (Hiram Bingham)

“In connexion with this general mode of instruction, we could, and did teach English to a few, and have continued to do so. We early used both English and Hawaiian together.”

“For a time after our arrival, in our common intercourse, In our schools, and in our preaching, we were obliged to employ interpreters, though none except Hopu and Honolii were found to be very trustworthy, in communicating the uncompromising claims and the spirit-searching truths of revealed religion.” (Hiram Bingham)

As the missionaries learned Hawaiian, they taught their lessons in Hawaiian, rather than English. In part, the mission did not want to create a separate caste and portion of the community as English-speaking Hawaiians. In later years, the instruction, ultimately, was in English.

“By August 30, 1825, only three years after the first printing of the pīʻāpā, 16,000 copies of spelling books, 4,000 copies of a small scripture tract, and 4,000 copies of a catechism had been printed and distributed.”

“On October 8, 1829, it was reported that 120,000 spelling books were printed in Hawaiʻi. These figures suggest that perhaps 90 percent of the Hawaiian population were in possession of a pīʻāpā book!”

“This literacy initiative was continually supported by the aliʻi. Under Liholiho, ships carrying teachers were not charged harbor fees. During a missionary paper shortage, the government stepped in to cover the difference, buying enough paper to print roughly 13,500 books.”

“In fact, while Liholiho was on his ill–fated trip to England, Kaʻahumanu, the kuhina nui (regent), and Kalanimōku reiterated their support by proclaiming that upon the completion of schools, ‘all the people shall learn the palapala.’”

“During this period, there were approximately 182,000 Hawaiians living throughout 1,103 districts in the archipelago. Extraordinarily, by 1831, the kingdom government financed all infrastructure costs for the 1,103 school houses and furnished them with teachers. Our kūpuna sunk their teeth into reading and writing like a tiger sharks and would not let go.” (KSBE)

“This legendary rise in literacy climbed from a near-zero literacy rate in 1820, to between 91 to 95 percent by 1834. That’s only twelve years from the time the first book was printed!” (KSBE)

It was through the cooperation and collaboration between the Ali‘i, people and missionaries that this was able to be accomplished.

Manu Ka‘iama then noted:

“I think I hear what you are saying, and it is an important point to make and to remember is that their mission was very different, that first generation of missionaries. Their mission or their reason to be here, and the assistance that they provided the ali‘i goes without saying. I guess these letters probably pretty much show that.”

“You can see the relationship and you can see how they worked together and that they learned from each other. And, I would assume that is so and I think we are hard on the missionaries because of maybe the next generation of missionaries …”

“We do, many times, kind of just brush over that earlier history, and we shouldn’t make that mistake, because the fact that these letters show a relationship that you think is honorable….” (Manu Ka‘iama)

Jon Yasuda then added,

“I think literacy was … almost like the new technology of the time. And, that was something that was new. … When the missionaries came, there was already contact with the Western world for many years…. But this was the first time that literacy really began to take hold.”

“The missionaries, when they came, they may have been the first group who came with a [united] purpose. They came together as a group and their purpose was to spread the Gospel the teachings of the Bible.”

“But the missionaries who came, came with a united purpose … and literacy was a big part of that. Literacy was important to them because literacy was what was going to get the Hawaiians to understand the word of the Bible …

“… and the written word became very attractive to the people, and there was a great desire to learn the written word. … Hawai‘i became the most literate nation at one time.”

Shifting Paradigm Noted by Kaliko Martin

“The Ali‘i Letters project “changed my perspective on the anti-missionary, anti-Anglo-Saxon rhetorical tradition that scholarship has been produced, contemporary scholarship, and it is not to discredit that scholarship, but just to change a paradigm, to shift the paradigm, and it shifted mine.” (Kaliko Martin, Research Assistant, Awaiaulu)

Puakea Nogelmeier had a similar conclusion. In remarks at a Hawaiian Mission Houses function he noted,

“The missionary effort is more successful in Hawai‘i than probably anywhere in the world, in the impact that it has on the character and the form of a nation. And so, that history is incredible; but history gets so blurry …”

“The missionary success cover decades and decades becomes sort of this huge force where people feel like the missionaries got off the boat barking orders … where they just kind of came in and took over. They got off the boat and said ‘stop dancing,’ ‘put on clothes,’ don’t sleep around.’”

“And it’s so not the case ….”

“The missionaries arrived here, and they’re a really remarkable bunch of people. They are scholars, they have got a dignity that goes with religious enterprise that the Hawaiians recognized immediately. …”

“The Hawaiians had been playing with the rest of the world for forty-years by the time the missionaries came here. The missionaries are not the first to the buffet and most people had messed up the food already.”

“(T)hey end up staying and the impact is immediate. They are the first outside group that doesn’t want to take advantage of you, one way or the other, get ahold of their goods, their food, or your daughter. … But, they couldn’t get literacy. It was intangible, they wanted to learn to read and write”. (Puakea Nogelmeier)