Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hawai‘i Island Cession to Britain

“Tamaahmaah was exceedingly well pleased, and thankful for our exertions; (Vancouver was building him a ship) and it was extremely gratifying to my feelings to reflect, that such valuable opportunities should have offered for bestowing this gratification upon the king, and many essential benefits upon his people …”

“… all of whom were now well convinced, that these superior advantages were only to be obtained by the constant exercise of the same honesty and civility by which these had been secured to them on the present occasion.”

“Very little doubt can be entertained of the exalted pleasure Tamaahmaah would enjoy in the attainment, by honorable means, of so desirable an object as his new schooner…”

“On the evening of Sunday the 23d, agreeably to my promise, I accompanied Tamaahmaah to the morai, and submitted to all the forms, regulations, and restriction of the taboo. … “

“I was not on this, as on the former occasion, purely an idle spectator; but was in some degree one of the actors. Whilst in the morning the principal ceremonies and prayers were performing, I was called upon to give my opinion on several matters that were agitated at one time by the king, and at others by the principal priests.”

“Amongst these was the propriety of their remaining at peace, or making war against the other islands? The session of the island; and if, by that voluntary measure, they would be considered as the of Great Britain?”

“Under this impression, in what manner ought they to conduct themselves towards all strangers, as well those who might visit them from civilized nations, as the inhabitants of the neighbouring islands?”

“With these, and some, other questions of less importance, I was very seriously interrogated; and I made such answers to each as was consistent with my own situation, and, as I considered, were most likely to tend in future to their happiness and tranquillity. …”

“In the forenoon of Tuesday the 25th, the king and queen accompanied by Terry-my-tee, the king’s brother; Crymamahow, half brother to the king, and chief of the district of Amakooa; Kahowmoto, chief of the district of Poona, Tamaahmotoo, chief of the district of Koarra, Trywhookee, half brother of the king, and the most faithful protector and purveyor at the encampment …”

“… all assembled on board the Discovery , for the purpose of formally ceding and surrendering the island of Owhyhee to me for his Britannic Majesty, his heirs and successors; there were present on this occasion besides myself, Mr Puget, and all the officers of the Discovery.”

“Tamaahmaahl opened the business in a speech, which he delivered with great moderation and equal firmness. He explained the reasons that had induced him to offer the island to the protection of Great Britain; and recounted the numerous advantages that himself, the chiefs, and the people, were likely to derive by the surrender they were about to make.”

“He enumerated the several nations that since Captain Cook’s discovery of these islands had occasionally resorted hither, each of which was too powerful for them to resist; and as these visitors had come more frequently to their shores, and their numbers seemed to increase …”

“… he considered that the inhabitants would be liable to more ill treatment, and still greater impositions than they had yet endured, unless they could be protected against such wrongs by some one of the civilized powers with whose people they had become acquainted …”

“… that at present they were completely independent, under no sort of engagement whatever, and were free to make choice of that state which in their opinion was most likely by its attention to their security and interests , to answer the purpose for which the proposed surrender was intended.”

“For his own part he did not hesitate to declare his preference he entertained for the king of Great Britain, to whom he was ready to acknowledge his submission; and demanded to know who had any objection to follow his example. This produced an harangue from each of the five3 chiefs, all of whom had some ideas to offer on this important subject.”

“The warlike spirit and ambitious views of Kahowmotoo had long taught him to indulge the flattering hope, that on fame future day he should be enabled to acquire the sovereignty of Mowee.”

“This prompted him to state in a spirited and manly speech, that on their becoming connected and attached to so powerful a nation, they ought no longer to suffer the indignities which had been offered to their island, Owhyhee, by the people of Mowee …”

“…he also candidly enumerated the offences that Mowee had justly to complain of in return; but as there bore no proportion to her aggressions, he contended that she ought to be chastised, and that when a force for their protection should be obtained from England, the first object of its employment ought to be the conquest of Mowee …”

“… after which the care of its government should be intrusted to some respectable chief, whose interest and inclination could be depended upon a being friendly towards Owhyhee.”

“Kavaheeroo, a chief of very different disposition, content with the station he filled, and the comforts he enjoyed with pleasure to the consequences that were likely to result from the adoption of the measure proposed …”

“… having no doubt of its tending to their future safety and protection, which had now become highly expedient in some way to effect, and of its being the means of producing a general pacification with their relations and friends, as he termed them, on the islands.”

“Tianna, after agreeing with Kahowmotoo, that Mowee ought to be chastised; and with Kavaheeroo, in the necessity of Owhyhee being protected; proposed that some persons, duly authorized for that purpose, should reside on shore by way of guards, and stated that a vessel or two would be requisite to defend them by sea.”

“He very judiciously observed further, that so great a similarity existed between the people of the four nations with whom they were already acquainted, but more particularly so between English and the Americans …”

“… that in the event of their present surrender being accepted, and of a vessel being sent out for their protection, they should be doubtful as to the reality of such persons coming from England …”

“… unless some of the officers then present, or some of those board the vessels with whom they were acquainted, and who they were convinced did belong to King George, should return to Owhyhee with the succours required.”

“This appeared to him a measure of [so much consequence that it could not be dispensed with, for otherwise, any of the distant nations, knowing they had ceded the island to the English government, might send to them ships and men whom they had never before seen …”

“… and who, by asserting they had come from England and belonged to King George, would deceive them into the obedience of a people against whom they should afterwards most probably revolt.”

“These were the prominent features in the several speeches made on the occasion: in every one of which their religion, government, and domestic economy was noticed …”

“… and it was clearly understood, that no interference was to take place in either; that Tamaahmaah, the chiefs and priests, were to continue as usual to officiate with the same authority as before in their respective stations, and that no alteration in those particulars was in any degree thought of or intended.”

“These preliminaries being fully discussed, and thoroughly understood on both sides, the king repeated his former proposition, which was now unanimously approved of, and the whole party declared their consent by saying …”

“… that they were no longer Tanata no Owhyhee, (i.e.) the people of Owhyhee; but Tanata no Britannee, (i.e.) the people of Britain. This was instantly made known to the surrounding crowd in their numerous canoes about the vessels, and the same expressions were cheerfully repeated throughout the attending multitude.”

“Mr. Puget, accompanied by some of the officers, immediately went on shore; there displayed the British colours, and took possession of the island in his Majesty’s name, in conformity to the inclination and desire of Tamaahmaah and his subjects.”

“On this ceremony being finished, a salute was fired from the vessels, after which the following inscription on copper was deposited in a very conspicuous place at the royal residence.”

“‘On the 25th of February, 1794, Tamaahmaah king of Owhyhee, in council with the principal chiefs of the island, assembled on board his Britannie Majesty’s sIoop Discovery in Karakakooa bay, and in the presence of George Vancouver, commander of the said sloop …’”

“‘… Lieutenant Peter Puget, commander of his said Majesty’s armed tender the Chatham; and the other officers of the Discovery; after due consideration, unanimously ceded the said island of Owhyhee to his Britannic Majesty, and acknowledged themselves to the subjects of Great Britain.’” (Vancouver Journal)

According to Kekūanāo’a, Boki stated that Kamehameha stated to Vancouver, “go back and tell King George to watch over me and my whole kingdom.”

“I acknowledge him as my landlord and myself as tenant, (or him as superior and I as inferior.) Should the foreigners of any other nation come to take possession of my lands, then let him help me.” (Kekūanāo‘a in Report of the Foreign Minister, 1855)

While Kamehameha and his chiefs became willing to acknowledge King George as their suzerain, in expectation of his defending them against foreign and outside foes, they expressly reserved to themselves the autonomous government of their island in their own way and according to such laws as they themselves might impose.”

“It is not evident that Vancouver did or could hold out to the Hawaii chiefs anything more than the probability of such protection, the cession, from even his point of view, requiring the acceptance and ratification of the English Government, which it never received. “

“That Kamehameha and his chiefs did not understand the full meaning of the word cession is plain from the reservations which they made.”

“As it was, the so-called cession of the island of Hawaii was no doubt entered into by Vancouver with the very best intentions for the protection and advancement of the Hawaiians …”

“… and by Kamehameha and his chiefs with undisguised expectations of receiving material aid in their wars with Kahehili and Kaeo, and of certain commercial advantages not very well defined.”

“The cession, however, was never accepted or ratified by the English Government, and no steps were taken by emigration or colonisation to make good use of the friendly disposition of the chiefs, and to secure by stronger ties the suzerainty thus loosely acquired.” (Fornander)

© 2022 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Hawaii-Kalama-Hawaii_Island-1838
Hawaii-Kalama-Hawaii_Island-1838

by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Train Robbery

The name, “Kekaha,” can be interpreted to mean “dry land” or an area near the shore that is not favorable for planting. The Kekaha region of Kauai has low annual rainfall and no permanent streams. Despite the low rainfall, early visitors to Oahu in the late 1700s indicate that the Kekaha area was well-populated.

Inhabitants manufactured cloth from wauke (Mulberry), and grew taro and sugarcane in the swampy ground. The perpetual swamplands of the plain apparently were greatly enlarged during periods of heavy winter rains.

A Chinese immigrant, Leong Pah On, began growing rice commercially in the 1860s in the drained swamplands of the area, eventually cultivating 600 acres throughout Mānā, Kekaha, and Waimea for rice production.

Pah On imported laborers from China to work the rice fields, presumably creating a significant Chinese population in the area. Rice cultivation continued until 1922 when the Kekaha Sugar Co. assumed ownership of the lands. (Cultural Surveys)

A railroad was constructed for the Kekaha Sugar Company in 1884, which ran from Waimea to the sugar mill at Kekaha. A visitor in described the main track:

“… They have engineers only – no firemen – no brakemen. No brakes on cars. Roads are dead level. We passed cane fields and grazing pastures all in sight of ocean – as our course was parallel to beach and one mile from it.” (Cultural Surveys)

The Kekaha Sugar Co. saw expansion after 1907 when the construction of the plantation’s major irrigation ditch was completed. Most of the cane was initially transported by flume.

By 1910 the plantation had 15 miles of permanent railroad track transporting cane from collection points to the mill and then transporting bags of sugar to the steamship landing at Waimea. In this timeframe the plantation employed approximately 1,000 people.

This railroad generated a deal of excitement in 1920, when it became site of the first and only train robbery to take place in the Hawaiian Islands.

“At the western most section of the Kekaha Sugar Co. were the fields in the Mānā area, which extended to the current location of the airfield at Barking Sands. The families working on these fields lived at Mānā Camp. Due to the distance of this camp from the main office at Kekaha, a paymaster, Mr. Asser, was sent to the camp each month.

On February 11, 1920, the pay for all of the workers, $11,000, was carried in individual envelopes by the paymaster, who rode on the plantation train. The tale of “The Great Train Robbery” was told by Philip Rice in the February 28, 1968 issue of the Garden Island:

“The locomotive proceeded towards the camp, passing through the high cane. At a place where a sharp curve or poor condition of the track necessitated a reduction in speed to about that at which a man could walk, a person completely clothed in the garb of a cane loader stepped forth from the tall cane. Over his face was a part of an old towel with eye holes cut in it. …”

“He pointed a revolver at Mr. Asser and the locomotive engineer, ordered the locomotive stopped and that they dismount. The two complied, and the holdup man boarded the locomotive, started it, and proceeded toward Mānā Camp, quite a distance beyond and out of sight of the holdup point…”

“When the robbery was discovered, a search was made where the locomotive had been abandoned. A trail of tabi (footwear of heavy blue denim) prints extended makai toward the swamp near the coast at Kekaha.”

“A helpful local fisherman named Kaimiola Hali, who sold his fish to the workers at Mānā camp on their paydays, helped in the search. When the tabi prints led into the peninsula swamp near Hali’s house, he cautioned the men not to go into the swamp since it was too  deep.”

“The sheriff became suspicious of the man when he saw him try to obliterate one of the prints. The sheriff returned to the area and entered the swamp. A few feet from the end of the peninsula, he found a large lard can with several pay envelopes, containing all but $250 of the stolen money.”

“The sheriff then went to Hali’s house and collected evidence and testimony pointing to Hali as the robber, including wet tabis hanging up to dry that exactly matched the tabi prints in the swamp. An exhausting trial was then conducted, and Hali was found guilty…”

“In the trial, it came out that Hali often went to the theater at Mānā, which showed westerns, especially those that depicted outlaws and train robberies. It has been suggested that these films inspired Mr. Hali to commit the crime.” (Rice, TGI)

Judge W.C. Achi Jr. sentenced Kaimiola Hali, on May 20, 1920 to not less than three years, nor more than 20 years, in prison. (Soboleski)

In 1938 a Honolulu Advertiser article stated that Kekaha Sugar Co. was the most valuable single piece of property in the Territory. The railroad system was eliminated in 1947 when trucks were utilized for hauling sugarcane to the mill. (Cultural Surveys)

In 1983 Kekaha Sugar employed about 400 people and produced 54,819 tons of sugar. In 1994 Amfac/JMB consolidated many functions of Kekaha Sugar and Lihue Plantation as a cost-cutting measure. Kekaha Sugar mill closed in 2000. (Lots of information here is from Cultural Surveys.)

© 2022 Ho‘okuleana LLC

by Peter T Young 1 Comment

“Excuse my back”

Conversation at Waikīkī: “I see Ed Sawtelle’s back” “I didn’t know he had been away” “I said that I see Ed Sawtelle’s back’s the best known back in Honolulu. I want to see the face in front of the back for once.”

“Ed Sawtelle doesn’t need to say ‘Excuse my back’ when he sits at the console of the great Robert Morton Organ in the Waikīkī Theater: that tall swaying silhouette under the proscenium lights is his signature.  (Blanding, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, March 27, 1954)

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sawtelle is a graduate of Harvard, where he majored in music, and a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music where he studied under two of the nation’s outstanding authorities, Professor Henry Dunham and Professor Wallace Goodrich.

For some time, Sawtelle was with the Boston Symphony, and for three years was accompanist with the Boston Opera House. He entered the theatrical field in New York, and has been organist and musical director in theaters in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Atlanta, and Boston.

For many years, Sawtelle was associated with the Robert Morton Organ Company demonstrating and installing theatrical organs. In this particular field he was considered one at the greatest authorities in the country.

Sawtelle first came to Hawaiʻi in 1922 as organist at the opening of the Princess Theater. While here he was organist at the Hawaiʻi Theater, and went to Hilo to open the Palace Theater as organist and musical director. He returned to Honolulu to open the new Waikīkī Theater.

Leaving Hawaii in 1929, Sawtelle was featured on the radio in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. A concert tour took him through the major centers of the nation.

Mrs. Sawtelle returned to Honolulu with her husband. She, too, is noted in the field of music, having appeared throughout the country on concert tour as Carmen Prentice, mezzo-soprano.

Not only did Sawtelle supervise the building of the Hammond organ for the Waikīkī Theater, but he brought it to Honolulu with him, and has supervised the installation at the new playhouse.  (Honolulu Advertiser, August 20, 1936)

As organist for the Consolidated Amusement Company since 1922 with only a break of seven years from 1929 to 1936, Ed meant “moods, memories and music” to Honolulu audiences.

During the war years his audiences extended far beyond the limits of the movie palaces to little lonely atolls in the deep Pacific, to hospitals and observation posts in the Islands, and to ships at sea as his Star Dust Serenade went out over the airwaves to reach and sooth the homesick hearts of men and women in the service.   (Blanding, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, March 27, 1954)

Starting in 1937, Sawtelle played the new organ at intermissions and on weekly live radio broadcasts heard throughout the Pacific during World War II. For a time, Sawtelle played two shows a day, seven days a week. He eventually retired in 1955, but a succession of organists carried on the tradition through 1997.

The 1,353-seat Waikīkī Theater opened with great fanfare on August 20, 1936.  “This first-class theatre survived as a single-screen house its entire life.”  (TheatresOfHawaii)   Dickey created an environment as charming and artificial as the image on the screen.  (Charlot)

In 1939, the Waikīkī Theatre was equipped with a Robert Morton theatre organ, which had originally been installed (with a twin console) in the Hawaiʻi Theatre in 1929.  (Peterson)

“No theater in the world has a more picturesque setting than Waikīkī.  Situated on the beach at Waikīkī, it stands on the site where once Hawaiʻi’s royalty played.  The playhouse now becomes a glorious new addition to the beach made famous in song and story.  It is the new center of activity of that district which long been the mecca of travelers from the world over.”  (Honolulu Advertiser; Alder)

“Inside the theater, it felt as if you were in a tropical paradise. A full-colored rainbow arched over the curtains that hid the screen. Along the side walls, there were palm trees that reached from floor to ceiling and lush jungle plants, which appeared absolutely real to my child’s eyes.”

“Then, a distinguished gentleman named Ed Sawtelle would appear and sit down at a large organ console, located just below and in front of the stage, and begin a concert that filled the hall with rolling music that vibrated off the walls.”  (Richard Kelley)

© 2021 Hoʻokuleana LLC

 

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Frank Lloyd Wright

“The mission of an architect is to help people understand how to make life more beautiful, the world a better one for living in, and to give reason, rhyme, and meaning to life.” (Frank Lloyd Wright, 1957)

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin, on June 8, 1867, the son of William Carey Wright, a preacher and a musician, and Anna Lloyd Jones, a teacher whose large Welsh family had settled the valley area near Spring Green, Wisconsin.

His early childhood was nomadic as his father traveled from one ministry position to another in Rhode Island, Iowa, and Massachusetts, before settling in Madison, Wis., in 1878.

Wright’s parents divorced in 1885, making already challenging financial circumstances even more challenging. To help support the family, 18-year-old Frank Lloyd Wright worked for the dean of the University of Wisconsin’s department of engineering while also studying at the university.

He knew he wanted to be an architect. In 1887, he left Madison for Chicago, where he found work with two different firms before being hired by the prestigious partnership of Adler and Sullivan, working directly under Louis Sullivan for six years.

In 1911, he began construction of Taliesin near Spring Green as his home and refuge.  There he continued his architectural practice and over the next several years received two important public commissions: the first in 1913 for an entertainment center called Midway Gardens in Chicago; the second, in 1916, for the new Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan.

Wright always aspired to provide his client with environments that were not only functional but also “eloquent and humane.” Perhaps uniquely among the great architects, Wright pursued an architecture for everyman rather than every man for one architecture through the careful use of standardization to achieve accessible tailoring options to for his clients.

Over the course of his 70-year career, Wright became one of the most prolific, unorthodox and controversial masters of 20th-century architecture, creating no less than twelve of the Architectural Record’s hundred most important buildings of the century.

Realizing the first truly American architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses, offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels and museums stand as testament to someone whose unwavering belief in his own convictions changed both his profession and his country.

Designing 1,114 architectural works of all types – 532 of which were realized – he created some of the most innovative spaces in the United States. With a career that spanned seven decades before his death in 1959, Wright’s visionary work cemented his place as the American Institute of Architects’ “greatest American architect of all time.” (Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation)

Two of his designs are in Hawai‘i; one, an unbuilt plan done in 1954, originally conceived for the Cornwell Family in Pennsylvania, was constructed in 1995 in Waimea on Hawai‘i Island.

It envisioned to be part of master-planned community that would include many unbuilt Wright designs within a 450 acre plot on Hawai‘i Island.  The “Hawai‘i Collection” development never got off the ground.

The other Hawai‘i Frank Lloyd Wright design was also an unbuilt design for a prior client of Wright’s that he designed in 1949.  This was originally a home called Crownfield; but the couple who commissioned the home never built it.

When Wright was approached in 1952 to design a home for the cliffs of Mexico’s Acapulco Bay, he began with the Crownfield plans, and added a covered terrace and lower level. Unfortunately, the plans were shelved once again.

Again, after further modification in 1957, Crownfield almost became the home of Marilyn Monroe and her husband Arthur Miller.  Monroe and Miller separated the next year and the home was never built.

For several decades the plans for the Crownfield House were archived in Taliesin West, Wright’s former winter camp near Scottsdale, Arizona, which became the headquarters for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

There they remained until, in 1992, owners of the Ted Robinson-designed Waikapu Valley Country Club looked for a Wright design for the golf clubhouse.

The Crownfield House’s various reincarnations were reworked and expanded yet again . The finished building, now called the King Kamehameha Golf Clubhouse, is 74,788 square feet. The concrete and steel building was completed in 1993 and is split into three levels with two-thirds of the structure underground. It is the largest golf clubhouse on Maui.

Many of the interior touches reiterate other famous Wright design triumphs. The focus of the main banquet room is a 32-foot diameter dome with a convex chandelier made of one-and-a-half-inch acrylic tubing that echoes the concave chandelier in the Johnson Wax Building’s executive suite (1944) in Racine, Wisconsin.

The art glass on the front double doors was adapted from the Johnson Wax Building as well. The etched design on the glass of the main stairwell’s koa railing, the foyer’s six-foot-diameter art glass window, and the brass elevator doors can all be traced to Wright’s Avery Coonley House (1907) in Riverside, Illinois.

The ten-foot diameter art glass in the foyer ceiling was translated from a 1957 woven living room carpet at Taliesin West and the skylight above the main stair recalls the curved ransom over the Susan Lawrence Dana House’s entrance (1902) in Springfield, Illinois.

Six years after it was built the country club shut down during an economic downturn. The property was pretty much neglected and abandoned. However, the clubhouse stayed open and was used for special events. In 2004 a buyer bought the place and refurbished it. It was reopened in 2006 as the King Kamehameha Golf Clubhouse.  (Maui 24/7, King Kamehameha Golf Course)

© 2022 Hoʻokuleana LLC

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

1848

After a brief stay in the Islands, in 1839, John Augustus Sutter, a Swiss seeking his fortune in America, brought a small group of native Hawaiians with him to California.

They worked for him and eventually intermarried with local native American families. They settled in the area of Vernon, which is now called Verona, where the Feather River flows into the Sacramento River in South Sutter County. (co-sutter-ca-us)

In order to qualify for a land grant, Sutter became a Mexican citizen in 1840; the following year, he received title to about 49,000-acres and named his settlement New Helvetia, or “New Switzerland.” He called his compound Sutter’s Fort.

In his memoirs, Sutter recalled the Hawaiians, using a name then-common to describe Hawaiian workers, “I could not have settled the country without the aid of these Kanakas.”  They built the first settlers’ homes in Sacramento – hale pili (grass shacks) made with California willow and bamboo.

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 and the governor, Juan Bautista Alvarado, granted him permission to settle.

John Sutter ordered a sawmill to be built.  On the morning of January 24, 1848, James Marshall made his customary inspection of the sawmill he was building for Sutter.

During the previous night, Marshall had diverted water through the mill’s tailrace to wash away loose dirt and gravel, and on that fateful day, he noticed some shining flecks of metal left behind by the running water.

He picked them up and showed them to his crew; a young Virginian named Henry William Bigler recorded in his diary: “This day some kind of mettle was found in the tail race that looks like gold first discovered by James Martial, the boss of the Mill.”  (csun)

Word of Marshall’s discovery leaked out and immediately set off a “rush to the mines.” By the spring of 1849, the largest gold rush in American history was under way. At the time of Marshall’s discovery, the state’s non-Indian population numbered about 14,000. By the end of 1849, it had risen to nearly 100,000, and it continued to swell to some 250,000 by 1852.

Gold was both plentiful and – by happy geologic accident- easy to extract, making the gold-bearing gravels of California’s rivers into what has been described as “the finest opportunity that, has ever been offered on any mining frontier.”

A contemporary newspaper put it slightly differently: “The whole country, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and from the sea shore to the base of the Sierra Nevadas, resounds with the cry of ‘gold, GOLD, GOLD!’ while the field is left half planted, the house half built, and everything neglected but the manufacture of shovels and pickaxes.” (California Parks)

“Forty-Niner” has become the collective label for those who participated in the famous California Gold Rush. Quite a few people arrived in 1848, and many came after 1849; however, it was the year 1849 which witnessed the large wave of gold-seekers.  (Hinckley)

Place names like Kanaka Creek in Sierra County and Kanaka Bar in Trinity County tell us of the growing presence of Hawaiians in gold country.  “Hawaiians also migrated to Yolo County, California to participate in the Gold Rush and created their own Kanaka Village.”

In the Islands …

The California Gold Rush drawing Hawaiians to the continent was not its only effect on the Islands; the Hawaiian economy was affected in several ways – good and not-so-good.

Prior to the Gold Rush, supporting the Pacific whaling and trading fleets and trade between the West Coast and Hawaiʻi was the scale of the Hawaiʻi participation.  The scale of that significantly changed with the Gold Rush.

Hawaiʻi was only three to five weeks away, and with the growing population drawn to the gold fields, in addition to provisioning ships, Hawaiʻi farmers were feeding the gold seekers on the continent.

There were some down sides; this also brought a marked increase in the prices of consumer goods, especially food, caused by the great increase in agricultural exports to California, which offered very profitable new markets.  (Rawls)

Likewise, the exodus to the continent created a critical labor shortage in Hawaiʻi, where a sizeable number of sugar plantation workers migrated to the California gold fields. 

The parting of workers from the plantations between 1848 and 1853 was so large, Hawaiʻi sugar producers began to seek Chinese immigrants to fill the gap.  (Rawls)

Great Māhele – 1848

At the time of Captain Cook’s contact with the Hawaiian Islands the land was divided into several independent Kingdoms.  By right of conquest, each King was owner of all the lands within his jurisdiction.

After selecting lands for himself, the King allotted the remaining to the warrior Chiefs who rendered assistance in his conquest.  These warrior Chiefs, after retaining a portion for themselves, reallotted the remaining lands to their followers and supporters.

The distribution of lands was all on a revocable basis.  What the superior gave, he was able to take away at his pleasure.  This ancient tenure was in nature feudal, although the tenants were not serfs tied to the soil – they were allowed to move freely from the land of one Chief to that of another. 

Under King Kamehameha III, the most important event in the reformation of the land system in Hawaii was the separation of the rights of the King, the Chiefs and the Konohiki (land agents.)

The King retained all of his private lands as his individual property; one third of the remaining land was to be for the Hawaiian Government; one third for the Chiefs and Konohiki; and one third to be set aside for the tenants, the actual possessors and cultivators of the soil.

More than 240 of the highest ranking Chiefs and Konohiki in the Kingdom joined Kamehameha III in this task.  The first māhele, or division, of lands was signed on January 27, 1848; the last māhele was signed on March 7, 1848.

Each māhele was in effect a quitclaim agreement between the King and a Chief or Konohiki with reference to the lands in which they both claimed interests.

The lands identified and separated in 1848 as Crown lands, Government lands and Konohiki lands were all “subject to the rights of native tenants” on their respective kuleana.  The Land Commission was authorized to award fee simple titles to native tenants who occupied and improved the land (and proved they actually cultivated those lands for a living.)

The awarding of these completed the māhele of the lands into the Crown lands, Government lands, Konohiki lands and Kuleana lands and brought to an end the ancient system of land tenure in the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Epidemics of 1848 – 1849

The earliest published reference to the epidemics occurred in The Polynesian, the government newspaper, on October 14, 1848: “SICKNESS.—Much sickness prevails here at the present time.”

“The measles and whooping cough have at length made their appearance here. The whooping cough made its appearance a few weeks since, and during the last week several cases of the measles have occurred in town.”

“By an arrival from Hilo, we learn that the measles prevail extensively among the native population of Hilo. Both the measles and whooping cough are comparatively light, and no fears need be entertained if proper care be taken. Among the native population some cases have proved fatal, owing to exposure and improper treatment.”

“The mumps prevailed here some years since, and we understand several cases have lately occurred. Pleurisy and bilious fever prevail to some extent among the native population. Several cases of influenza similar to that which occurred here in 1845 have lately occurred.”

On March 1, 1849, toward the end of the epidemics (which, incidentally, no one has precisely dated), The Friend ran a brief article titled “Decrease of Polynesian Races.”

This article stated, “By the epidemics (whooping cough, measles, and influenza), which have raged among the Hawaiians, during the last 12 months, it is estimated that not less than 10,000 have been swept away or about one-tenth of the population.”

© 2022 Hoʻokuleana LLC