Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Ginseng

Herbs have played a key role in human health with their beneficial effects and their use to treat various types of ailments or diseases has been around since ancient times. In most cultures they were often used in rituals due to their healing properties.

Ginseng is a deciduous (seasonally sheds leaves) perennial herbaceous plant that grows about 18 inches high and grows pretty prolifically in the mountains.

In traditional Chinese medicine, gensing has been used for more than 2000 years and many peoples, considered it a cure for all ailments.

In the 18th century it was also popular in America, especially when the native ginseng was discovered to be used by various Native American tribes. It is estimated that American colonists discovered it in the mid-1700s in New England.

“The history of human interaction with ginseng lurks in the language of the land. Look at a detailed map of almost any portion of the region and ginseng is registered somewhere, often in association with the deeper, moister places …”

“Seng Branch (Fayette County), Sang Camp Creek (Logan County), Ginseng (Wyoming County), Seng Creek (Boone County), Three-Prong Holler (Raleigh).”

“The hollows, deep dendritic fissures created over eons by water cutting through the ancient table land to form tributaries of the Coal River, receive water from lesser depressions that ripple the slopes.”

“These depressions are distinguished in local parlance as “coves” (shallower, amphitheater-shaped depressions), ‘swags’ (steeper depressions, ‘swagged’ on both sides), and ‘drains’ (natural channels through which water flows out of the swag or cove).”

“The prime locations for ginseng are found on the north-facing, ‘wet’ sides of these depressions. ‘Once in a while you’ll find some on the ridges, but not like in the swags there.’” (LOC)

Long before the 1700s, Native American groups such as the Iroquois had consumed American ginseng (garent-oguen) for indications ranging from fatigue and headache to infertility.

After French Jesuit Pierre Jartoux wrote in 1711 about environmental conditions under which ginseng flourished in temperate northeastern China, fellow Jesuit naturalist Joseph-Francois Lafitau, who was based in Canada, became inspired to search for ginseng in climatically similar New France.

After several months’ search in 1716, Lafitau successfully identified ginseng in the wilderness of North America, aided by the expertise of Mohawk women.

The findings he published inspired enterprising French merchants – and eventually their British counterparts in the Thirteen Colonies – to buy American ginseng from Native American harvesters and lucratively export it to Qing China, where it was immensely popular for its therapeutic properties but was overharvested and dwindling in supply. (Journal of Medical Humanities)

“The harvesting of ginseng (as well as other wild plants) flourished within a system of corn-woodland-pastureland farming.  Crucial to this system was recourse to a vast, forested commons rising away from the settled hollows.”

“Because of the abundant supply of tree fodder (wild nuts and fruit), the central Appalachian plateau in the nineteenth century furnished some of the best pastureland in the country.”

“A seasonal round of plying the commons is registered in many of the names for swags and coves: Walnut Hollow, Paw-Paw Hollow, Beech Hollow, Red Root Hollow, Sugar Camp Hollow, and so forth.”  (LOC)

Ginseng was the most important medicinal herb in their pharmacopeia Chinese cosmology framed medicinals from the vantage point of qi: the vital force that comprised and linked all entities, had complementary yin and yang elements, and whose elements’ disruption in humans could manifest as illnesses. (Journal of Medical Humanities)

American and East Asian ginseng are different.

Globalization accelerated the development and dissemination of medicines. The Empress of China’s journey occurred squarely between the late 1700s and early 1800s, when international trade facilitated much knowledge production worldwide.

The Empress of China set sail on February 22, 1784, less than a year after the Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783 (ending the American Revolutionary War), and several years before George Washington took office as America’s first president on April 30, 1789.

The Empress of China carried thirty tons of ginseng.  It was Panax quinquefolius, the American ginseng native to specific temperate regions of North America and known to Chinese as xiyangshen, “west ocean ginseng”. (Journal of Medical Humanities)

Because xiyangshen was imported into China via the hot southern port of Guangzhou, it was assumed by Chinese to thrive in hot climates despite actually originating from temperate eastern North America.

The intimate integration of American ginseng into Chinese pharmacopoeia as xiyangshen supports two major points. First, that a millennia-old Chinese medical tradition assimilated a North American herbal as late as the 1700s testifies to Chinese medicine being dynamic, flexible, and continuously evolving, as opposed to static and rigid.

The herb was not quite as valued in America for its effects on the human body as it was in Qing China.  The American ginseng root, known for its stimulant, therapeutic, and aphrodisiac properties was extremely popular in China.

After trading, the Empress of China arrived in New York Harbor on May 11, 1785 (22 months after her departure.) She carried 800 chests of tea, 20,000 pairs of nankeen trousers and a huge quantity of porcelain.

Newspapers announced her return, and stores up and down the East Coast sold her cargo. That’s where the Americans learned how to make real money in the China trade: the sale of Chinese export goods to Americans.

All told, the voyage earned a 25 percent return on investment. Investors had hoped for more, but they made enough to spawn a new era of commerce with China.

The Empress of China’s organizer gave a complete report of the voyage to John Jay, the U.S. foreign minister. Jay shared his findings with Congress. Members of Congress responded with ‘a peculiar satisfaction in the successful issue of this first effort of the citizens of America to establish a direct trade with China.’

For the next 60 years, the China trade would make New England merchants very, very wealthy.  (New England Historical Society)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Ellery Chun’s Gift to Hawaiʻi

Ellery J Chun was born in Honolulu in 1909. He graduated from Punahou School in 1927, then went on to Yale University where he graduated in 1931 with a degree in Economics.

Returning to Honolulu, he was the owner of a Chinatown dry goods shop at 36 North King Street, that he renamed King-Smith Clothiers (the store was named after its location, near the intersection King and Smith Streets.)

With the great depression underway, he looked for ways to increase business; he got the idea to promote a local-style shirt.  Using leftover kimono material, he patterned a shirt after the plantation workers’ palaka shirt (short sleeved, un-tucked square bottom.)  They had a few dozen made and hung them in the window.

He called them “Aloha Shirts.”

“Since there was no pre-printed Hawaiian fabric around, I took patterned Japanese yukata cloth and had a few dozen short-sleeve, square-bottomed shirts made up for me. I put the shirts in the front window of the store with a sign that said Aloha Shirts.’ They were a novelty item at first, but I could see that they had great potential.”  (Chun, 1987 Interview, Star-Bulletin)

They started small, having a few dozen bright printed Hawaiian patterns with hula dancers, palm trees and pineapples.  His store became a mecca for a wide range of customers.

In 1936, Chun registered the “Aloha Shirt” trademark.
“It turned out well.”

That year, two firms, Branfleet (the original company was founded in 1936 as a partnership between the Frenchman George Brangier and a Californian, Nat Norfleet; later known as Kahala Sportswear) and the Kamehameha Garment Company, began to shift the focus of the garment industry to a larger and more export-oriented market.

Their products, factory-made sportswear, provided the direction and product line that continues to dominate large segments of the industry today.  (Chinen)

A shipping strike in 1936 forced the companies to explore the local island market which brought them renewed success. The years 1936-1939 were big growth years for the garment industry in general and each company typically came out with 15 or more new shirt designs each year.

Paradise of the Pacific published its first photograph of a man wearing an aloha shirt in 1938. Soon thereafter, movie stars took up the fad. By 1940, officials of the Territorial and City and County governments were allowing their employees to wear aloha shirts, at least in warm weather.  (Schmitt)

After World War II, a gradual change in aloha wear took place with the breakdown of rigid dress requirements for business attire. The business tie and jacket certainly were not comfortable in Hawaiʻi’s summer climate. In 1946, the Honolulu Chamber of commerce appropriated $1,000 to study aloha shirts and prepare suitable designs for clothing businessmen could wear. (Art of the Aloha Shirt)

In 1947, the Hawaiʻi Chamber of Commerce organized an annual event called Aloha Week, during which office workers were encouraged to shed their suits and wear Alohas to work. In the 1960s, the chamber invented Aloha Fridays, which led to casual Fridays.  (Washington Post)

By 1950, however, “screen printing” had emerged, led by companies like Alfred Shaheen and Von Hamm Textiles. This procedure permitted the printing of smaller yardages, expressly for local designers. More important, it permitted brighter and more shaded prints which, from 1947 on, received greater national and international exposure through yearly Aloha Week publicity events.  (Chinen)

Up to the middle to late-1950s was considered the Golden Age of aloha shirts.  Rayon with smooth finish and Hawaiian prints became the pinnacle of aloha shirts. Complicated eye popping patterns containing all aspects of Hawaiian culture and artifacts were included on the aloha shirts, often referred to as “chop suey” prints because of the mixture of content in the design.  (Art of the Aloha Shirt)

The modern era of aloha shirts is considered the 1960s and beyond. In 1962 the Hawaiian Fashion guild staged “Operation Liberation”, giving two aloha shirts to each man in the State House and Senate. The Senate passed a resolution urging the regular wearing of aloha attire from Lei Day, May 1st, and throughout the summer months.

Aloha Friday officially began in 1966, and by the end of the 1960s, the wearing of aloha shirts for business dress any day of the week was accepted.   (Art of the Aloha Shirt)

According to Alfred Shaheen, “It (Aloha dress) was really provincial in Hawaiʻi then; the old timers were into formality.  They weren’t far from missionaries; in fact, many were descendants of the missionaries so they were still pretty strict and puritanical about things. …  So it was a new breed, the younger guys who were ready for a new style.”  (Art of the Aloha Shirt)

With aloha dress accepted as every-day wear, Reyn Spooner shirts came on the scene in the early-1960s.  Reyn McCullough liked Pat Dorian’s original “reverse” print shirt and started to market it in his Ala Moana Center store.  It was a more conservative, “traditional” pullover reverse shirt with a button-down-collar and tails to tuck into slacks.  (Tim McCullough)

“Aloha attire is a pan-ethnic expression.  What it does is show varied influences coming to Hawai’i. Clothing shows us that all the ethnicities have an impact on what we wear.”  (Arthur, UH)

Ellery Chun eventually closed his store and became a bank vice president.  He died in 2000; that year, Governor Ben Cayetano proclaimed “The Year of the Aloha Shirt.”  (Lots of information here from Aloha Shirts of Hawaiʻi, The Art of the Aloha Shirt and Chinen.)

Chun’s legacy lives on.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Sisal

“Many species of Agave, to which sisal belongs, are natives of Mexico; some furnish fiber; some yield soap; some pulque, and from others mescal is distilled. The common name of all is ‘maguey.’”

“So seldom are the flowers of the agaves seen in the temperate zone, that they have long been called ‘century plants.’” (CTAHR)

“Sisal hemp, or henequen, is the name given to the cleaned and dried fiber of the cultivated varieties of Agave rigida. This product doubtless owes its name (sisal) to its having been first exported through the port of Sisal, in Yucatan.”

“In 1893, the Hawaiian Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry ordered 20,000 sisal plants from Reasoner Bros., of Oneca, Florida, which were carefully set out on a number of experimental plots.”

“A trial of sisal was made about that time on the worst soils of the Ewa Sugar Plantation. The indications of favorable results led to the formation of the Hawaiian Fiber Co., Ltd.” (For a while, portions of Ewa were known as ‘Sisal, Oahu.’)

“In consequence of the success of this enterprise, and the promising outlook, a large number of plantations have been started in various districts of the Islands.”

“Notable among these are the Knudsen plantation on Kauai, started in 1902 with 300,000 plants. Other smaller plantings have been made on Molokai, in Kona and Olaa on Hawaii, and on the Island of Maui.”

“The growing demand for sisal fiber is the result of the more general use of corn binders in the United States, and the steadily increasing use of grain binders throughout the world, resulting in greater demand for (sisal hemp) binder twine. In 1902 many twine mills were taxed to the utmost to supply the demand.”  (CTAHR)

In Kona there were, apparently two sisal companies. A sisal plantation was planted in Keahuolu in the late-1890s, a mill was constructed nearby; sisal was used to make rope and other fibers.

Operating until 1924, the McWayne sisal tract included about 1,000-acres of sisal fields in Keahuolu and adjoining Kealakehe.  (You can still see sisal plants, remnants of the sisal plantation, as you drive up Palani Road.)

“The McWayne sisal plantation has been developing very quietly for the last four years, and has just begun harvesting its first crop of fiber with a well-constructed plant similar to the one at Ewa, Oahu.”

“The first shipment of fiber has gone forward to the Coast, with every appearance of being as fine an article as that produced at Ewa, which means that it is equal to any thing in the world.”

“The company expects to transport the leaves to the mill by overhead trolley, the posts and cable being on the ground, but it Is not yet in working order. The transportation is now being done by wagons.”

“The company has approximately 1000 acres of growing sisal in an extremely healthy and flourishing condition and has good reason to expect a prosperous future.” (PCA, May 10, 1908)

“(A)s a general rule, [the yield] is 50 pounds from every 1,000 leaves.  From the fifth to the seventh year, the average yield of good plants is 75 pounds per1,000 leaves.”

“With 650 plants to the acre, each yielding 33 leaves containing at the rate of 60 pounds of fiber to the thousand leaves, we would have a total yearly yield of 1,200 pounds, or a little over half a ton per acre.” (CTAHR)

Young Minoru Inaba (later, Kona Representative in the State legislature) notes, “I got the job at the sisal mill after I graduated from the eighth grade.”

“My father used to be the foreman at the sisal mill. So, I got a job there. I used to get up, 3 o’clock in the morning, get on a donkey from Holualoa, go all the way to Keopu, and go down the trail. You see, the sisal mill used to be on Palani Road.”

“It’s little below where the Liliuokalani Housing is. Used to take me three hours to get to the sisal mill every morning. I used to get up 3 o’clock in the morning – well, before 3 o’clock, and leave home at 3 o’clock.  Get to the sisal mill at 6 o’clock, work there the whole day, then come back. So, I used to get home about 7 o’clock at night daily.”

“I had to haul in a wheelbarrow all the thrash that came out of the sisal. And haul it away from the mill, dump it on the ma kai side of the road. You couldn’t loaf on the job. Because if you’d loaf, it’d pile up, accumulates, and you’d have a hard time. So, it had to be continuously working. It was a pretty good-paying job … $2.50 … per day”.

“What they used to do was to thrash the sisal. You take the green leaves, and at the tip there’s always a spine, huh? So, they had to cut the tip off, and then, cut the leaf off – the sisal leaf. And then, they’d put it on a conveyor.”

“That leaf is really thick, you know, and much of it is moisture and thrash in there. So, this machine would thrash that leaf and leave only the fibers.”

“The thrash that used to come out of the leaves is what I used to haul away. After the liquid and thrash was cleaned out, it left only the fibers. This was what they made rope out of sisal.”

“They had to dry this out in the sun. After it was thoroughly dried – the fibers were dried – they’d bring it in, and they’d compress it into bales. They used to ship it to San Francisco. But the cost of bringing out the sisal from the field …. They used to pack it, and those things were heavy.”

“You know, to bring it out in a rocky terrain, they used to bring it out on the donkeys. Load ‘em up on the donkeys and bring ‘em out. This was the costly part of their operation, so finally, they had to give up.”  (Minoru Inaba)

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What Had Long Been Feared

“What has long been feared by some, and considered a certain event by others, has happened. The Chinese quarter of Honolulu has been devastated by a fire, that, gaining headway in the dense aggregation of wooden buildings, was quickly beyond control and sweeping in all directions.” (Daily Bulletin – April 19, 1886)

It started on April 18, 1886.  A few minutes before 1 o’clock the fire started in a Chinese cook house on the corner of Hotel street and Smith’s lane. It started accidentally by the owner of the premises in lighting his fire for cooking.

“Although not a breath of wind stirred … quicker than can be told the fire was leaping from roof to roof, gliding along verandahs, entwining itself about pillars and posts, festooning doors and windows . … In the calm the smoke rose in a vast volume . . . . Both [Smith and Hotel] were soon lanes of fire.”  (Daily Bulletin – April 19, 1886)

After a seven-hour ordeal-about half of it in darkness-the walls of the last building to collapse fell in. It was exactly 11:20 and the place was the makai side of the King Street bridge leading across to the Palama district.

As the embers cooled, tempers flared.

Hawaiians of Chinatown, especially around the ʻEwa side of Maunakea Street, where they had been the greatest losers, were bitter.  They blamed it all on the Chinese.

By midnight a mob of perhaps 3,000 crowded around the King Street bridge and back to the Chinese theater. As Hawaiians itched for a fight, things could get nasty – fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and while skirmishes occurred, a full-on riot was avoided.

Honolulu’s Chinatown, then and now, is the approximate 36-acres on the ʻEwa side of Downtown Honolulu.  It developed into a Chinese dominated place, following the in-migration of Chinese to work on the sugar plantation, starting in 1852.

Between 1852 and 1876, 3,908 Chinese were imported as contract laborers, compared with only 148 Japanese and 223 South Sea Islanders. Around 1882, the Chinese in Hawaii formed nearly 49% of the total plantation working force, and for a time outnumbered Caucasians in the islands.

It had been noted, according to one observer in 1882, for the fact that the great majority of its business establishments “watchmakers’ and jewelers’ shops, shoe-shops, tailor shops, saddle and harness shops, furniture-shops, cabinet shops and bakeries, (were) all run by Chinamen with Chinese workmen.”

By 1884, the Chinese population in Honolulu reached 5,000, and the number of Chinese doing plantation work declined.   As a group they became very important in business in Hawaii, and 75% of them were concentrated in Chinatown where they built their clubhouses, herb shops, restaurants, temples and retail stores.

By 1886, there were 20,000 people living in the area between Nuʻuanu Stream, Nuʻuanu Avenue, Beretania Street and Honolulu Harbor.

Most of the structures were one- and two-story wooden shacks crammed with people, animal and pests. Chinatown had a poor water supply system and no sewage disposal.

Although the fire intensified anti-Chinese feeling, this group had long been under attack. During the 1880s, spurred by what was considered an alarming influx, the Hawaiian government had limited – and for a time halted – their coming.

The year before the fire, massive Japanese immigration started. It had been conceived and encouraged not only to man plantation fields, but also to provide a counterbalance to the Chinese.

The 1886 blaze destroyed eight blocks of Chinatown. While the government soon after established ordinances to widen the narrow streets and limit building construction to stone or brick, nothing was enforced. More ramshackle buildings went up, laying the groundwork for future disaster and disease.

The 1886 fire started at the corner of Hotel and Smith Streets.

They rebuilt.

In 1900, fire struck again.  However, in 1900, the Board of Health intentionally set “sanitary” fires to prevent further spread of the bubonic plague.  Those got out of control.

The 1900 fire caused the destruction of all premises bounded by Kukui Street, River Street, Queen Street (presently Ala Moana Boulevard) and Nuʻuanu Avenue.

Today, the majority of buildings in Chinatown date from 1901 with very few exceptions which escaped the January 20, 1900 fire.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Funeral Flower

Ralph Solecki theorizes that the Neanderthals intentionally buried their dead, as evidenced by having flowers at the burial location in the Shanidar Cave in Kurdistan.

It was at the ‘Shanidar IV’ site, the famous ‘flower burial’, so-called because clumps of pollen grains from adjacent sediments were interpreted as evidence for the intentional placement of flowers with the corpse.

“Analysis of soil samples from the Shanidar IV burial in the Shanidar cave, revealed the same pollens throughout the sequence, with variations in frequency. However, samples 313 and 314 contained, in addition, several pollen clusters of as many as 100 pollen grains, evidence that complete flowers were introduced into the burial cave.” (Science Magazine)

Solecki “has argued that ‘Neither birds, nor animals could have carried flowers in such a manner in the first place, and the second, they could not have deposited them with a burial’.” (This theory is questioned by some – Sommer believes the flowers were brought by rodents.)

“Leroi-Gourhan interprets the pollen evidence as indicating that between May and July, in a year more than 50,000 years ago, the body of Shanidar IV was laid on a bed of woody branches {Ephedra) and flowers. (Sommer, Cambridge Archaeological Journal)

In modern times, flowers originally served a very practical purpose in funerals. They were used for odor control as the body decomposed.

Back before embalming became an integral part of the funeral process and before refrigerated storage was common in funeral homes, bodies decomposed naturally very quickly. Funeral home directors used flowers draped around the casket – which is still traditional today – to mask the smell, which could be quite noxious.

Reportedly, one of the most famous examples of this was the funeral of President Andrew Jackson in 1874. He was not embalmed; so by the day of his funeral, his corpse was in terrible shape. Funeral Director Lazarus C Shepard closed his casket and piled fragrant flowers around and on top of it to mask the odor long enough for the funeral to be completed.

As embalming and other preservation techniques improved, the need for flowers to serve a practical purpose in the funeral process disappeared. However, flowers were seen as an visible expression of sympathy, care, respect and love for the deceased and the deceased’s family. (JacobsFuneralHomes)

One such ‘Funeral Flower’ was the carnation.  The original birthplace of the carnation is on the coast of the Mediterranean. The popularity of the flower goes back many centuries; the Romans were already making wreathes and fresh eau de toilette out of carnations. (Flower Council)

Later, Americans began to like the carnation … “So when (a florist) finds it necessary to his business to introduce a new ‘fashionable flower’ he takes care that it shall be very expensive and that his customers shall believe it to be very rare.”

“Such a flower is the carnation. It first leaped into prominence as a ‘florists’ flower’ nearly thirty years ago and its vogue at the time was greater even than that of the chrysanthemum in its best days.”

“One day everybody was wearing a rosebud, ten or Bon Selene, (the carnation craze succeeded the ‘Boston bud’ craze); the next day everybody was wearing a carnation.”

“And with a great many people it has remained in favor ever since. This is not only because of its beauty of form and color and its spicy fragrance. The carnation seems to have been especially designed by nature for a boutonniere.”

“It sets closely and neatly to the coat lapel, it keeps fresh and unfaded for a long time, it requires no pinning in place, and it never breaks from its stem”. (Democrat and Chronicle, New York, December 4, 1894)

The carnation can be regularly seen in religious paintings, as a symbol of the Virgin Mary and as a symbol for the suffering of Christ. The Latin name for the carnation is Dianthus, derived from Dios (God) and anthos (flower) – divine flower. (Flower Council)

According to legend, the carnation flower appeared after the Crucifixion of Christ. When mother Mary wept at the death of her son, her tears fell to the earth. Carnations sprang forth from each spot where Mary’s tears stained the earth. This legend lends credence to the theory that the carnation earned its name from incarnation.  (FlowerMeaning)

On the continent, the start of the 1900s was also an era of huge funeral flower displays. These were designs such as wreaths, pillows, crosses, lyres, Holy Bibles, armchairs, broken columns, broken wheels, gates … The influenza epidemic during World War I stimulated the demand for flowers, and greenhouse construction increased after the conflict.

American Protestant missionary wives are credited with bringing the first carnations to the Islands in the mid-1800s.  The first variety was a white, scented flower and it soon became the favorite for lei makers. Red carnations were introduced later.  (Bird)  In 1900, gardens in Pauoa supplied lei sellers at the piers with carnations and other lei flowers.

The carnation, one of the most important commercial field-grown floricultural crops in the Islands, has been under cultivation for many about a century. It initially was grown primarily for the lei trade; however, later, interest in cut-flower production increased considerably due to the introduction of Mainland commercial varieties.

The main production areas for lei carnations shifted from Waialae to Maunalani Heights.  These regions are suitable for lei flower production, but not for cut-flower production due to the relatively warm night temperatures. The cut-flower varieties are known to require cool night temperatures for optimum growth and production.

Carnations “used to cover portions of Maunalani Heights”. (Star Bulletin)  There is even a Carnation Place up the hill, there.

The ‘Pink’ is one of these varieties; it has been under continuous cultivation since around 1900. It produces throughout the year relatively small but highly fragrant flowers on short stems.

The major emphasis in the past has been on the production of carnations for lei flowers, and qualities demanded of cut flowers were generally ignored. Consequently, the types grown had small flowers, short stems, and bushy growths.  (CTAHR)

Carnations were also cultivated in the Koko Crater area on O‘ahu especially to meet the demands of the fast growing tourist industry. 

Japanese and Korean farmers leased small parcels of land along Lunalilo Home Road and soon their ‘carnation plantations’ were familiar sights, likewise in Kaimuki and Palolo.

The white carnation lei is usually given to women and the red to the men: white being femininely pure and withdrawn – red representing masculine boldness, strength and power. (Ka Lei, Marie McDonald)  Depending on the style and flower size, 50 to 100 flowers may be used.

Back in the 1950s-1970s, the fat, fragrant carnation lei was popular.  Friends bestowed thick carnation lei at the airport gate, politicians regularly wore them and nightclub entertainers typically had a carnation lei.

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