Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Ka‘anapali Out Station

The American Protestant mission to the Islands had 19 Mission Stations with a mother mission station church (located in a larger population centers); in addition, ‘āpana (out station or branch) churches, each under the missionaries’ mother church.

As an example, by 1846, downtown Honolulu’s Kawaiaha‘o Church had established a series of at least 12 branch churches or ‘āpana, from Kalihi to Waikiki and well up into the valleys …

At Waikiki (sometimes called the Kalawina Church (or Calvinist or Congregational Church) – site was just mauka of the Moana Hotel), Kalihi, ‘A‘ala, Palama, Nuʻuanu, Mānoa (in the vicinity of the Manoa Valley Theatre), Kakaʻako (Puaikalani), Pauoa, Makiki, Pālolo, Kaimuki, and Moʻiliʻili (called Kamo‘ili‘ili, which is now the present site of the Mother Rice Preschool on King Street).

‘Āpana churches and Out Stations were in other areas; in 1841, Ephraim Clark reported, “An out station at Kaanapali has been maintained for 8 or 10 years. Since my residence at Lahainaluna, the principal care of this station has devolved on me. [Ephraim Clark].” (Ephraim Clark, Report of the Out Station at Kaanapali, May 1841)

“Ka‘anapali [also called Pōhaku-Kāʻana-pali and Kāʻanapali-pōhaku – lit. Kāʻana cliff] is the name of an ancient kalana [place name for sections of the island] that was obliterated by the Hawaiian Legislature in 1859 by combining its lands in a new Lahaina district.” [In 1859, Lāhaina and Kā‘anapali were merged to form the current Lahaina district. (Hawaiian Place Names)]

“The [Kā‘anapali] name was preserved by American Factors, Ltd, the developer of the Ka‘anapali resort complex. The outstanding geographical feature in the resort area is Pu’u Keka‘a, “the rumbling hill,” a volcanic cinder and spatter cone. Pu’u Keka‘a is most commonly known to local residents as Black Rock, a reference to the color of the cone.” (Clark)

“A good meeting house has been finished & dedicated during [1837]. It is 78 feet by 30 inside, built of dobies [adobe – mud bricks], with a good ti leaf roof, glass windows, pulpit, &c. The expenses defrayed by the people themselves.” (1837, Annual Report from Lahaina-1832-1847, Dwight Baldwin)

They built “a dobie house for the teacher with a room for the temporary accommodations of the missionary who supplies the pulpit. These have all been built by the people with the exception of the doors & windows of the dwelling house.”  (Ephraim Clark, Report of the Out Station at Kaanapali, May 1841)

“Preaching has been maintained by Mr. Clark at Kaanapali during the year. He has also conducted a Bible class at the same place. A Sab. school has been taught by a graduate from the High School. The usual congregation has been about 500.”

“There has been no special attention to religion during the year. There are 14 chh [church] members at this station connected with the chh at Lahaina. One chh member has been under discipline with manifest [benefit] to himself & others.”

“A good school of children has been kept here by the graduate from the High School. He has also several other schools under his superintendance. His influence has been highly salutary in various ways. He has recently united with the chh at Lahainaluna.”

Kā’anapali was not the only Lahaina out station, “A native member of the chh has gone once each fortnight, during most of the year, on the Sab., to [Olowalu], 6 miles distant, where a congregation has met of about 200, & where a good meeting house of dobies has been finished & dedicated during the past year.”

“A dobie school house has since been built [at Kaanapali], & a dobie house for the teacher with a room for the temporary accommodations of the missionary who supplies the pulpit. These have all been built by the people with the exception of the doors & windows of the dwelling house.” (Ephraim Clark, Report of the Out Station at Kaanapali, May 1841)

“Until [1841] most of the church members residing at Kaanapali have been connected with the church at Lahaina. During the past year, it has been thought best to form a church in this place … There were also obvious advantages in having a church connected with the station.”

“A church was formed consisting of 16 members, 15 from the Lahaina church & 1 from Lahainaluna.” (Ephraim Clark, Report of the Out Station at Kaanapali, May 1841)

“The people have contributed something on the first [M]onday of the month, principally in work, which has been turned towards the support of the teacher, building dwelling houses &c. Children baptised 42. Marriages, since June 1st, 26.”

“Kaanapali embraces 10 or 12 miles of coast & containing 1341 inhabitants by the last census. In this district, there are 6 schools. These have been examined 3 times during the year. At the last examination there were 274 children present. A few were reported as absent.”

“Some impulse has been given to the schools by the new laws, but there is still much room for improvement. A small grant is needed from the Mission in aid of schools.” (Ephraim Clark, Report of the Out Station at Kaanapali, May 1841)

“This out Station is on the North West part of Maui, about 8 miles from Lahaina. It contains about 1500 inhabitants. The district is not well supplied with water except in the rainy season. Kalo, therefore, is not abundant, & the people are generally poor.”

“A church was organized here [in 1841] of 16 members which has since been increased to 88. Preaching, a Bible class & sabbath schools, church meetings &c have been sustained here during the year. Catholics have as yet made no inroads upon the district.”

“There are six schools in this district, the oversight of which has involved considerable time & care. Most of the children attend school. The schools have been examined three times during the year. “ (Ephraim Clark, report of labors at Kaanapali 1842)

“My labors among that people have been confined almost entirely to the sabbath owing to my duties in this Sem’y [Lahainaluna] during the week. I have, however, occasionally visited the different villages, & during this period have conversed several times with about 300 inquires.”

“During the first 10 months of this period, a theological student of this sem’y labored on Saturday in the different settlements & on the Sabbath preached at Honokohau, the last but one of the largest villages in the district.”

“The schools in the district are not flourishing. The cause is in the want of well qualified teachers. The inadequate pay, & even the failure of that for the portions of the year, have contributed to make even the poor teachers more inefficient & delinquent.”

“On the whole the year has been a prosperous one for the church. The attendance on pubic worship has been good, while the cases of discipline have been few.”

“They have rethatched their meeting house, while the church members at Honolulu have built & furnished a thatched house for my accommodations when I go among them & are now getting timbers for a roof to the stone meeting house whose walls have been up for 4 or 5 yrs past.”

“Perhaps the whole district of Kaanapali numbers 1200 people, stretched along the coast 8 miles in length & 2 or 3 in breadth. … We have reason to bless God & take courage.” (Timothy Hunt to Chamberlain, Sep 9, 1847)

“There are six schools in this district, the oversight of which has involved considerable time & care. Most of the children attend school. The schools have been examined three times during the year.”  (Ephraim Clark, report of labors at Kaanapali 1842)

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Prostitution

In the dawn hours of January 18, 1778, on his third expedition, British explorer Captain James Cook on the HMS Resolution and Captain Charles Clerke of the HMS Discovery first sighted what Cook named the Sandwich Islands (that were later named the Hawaiian Islands.)

The next day, “we were in some doubt whether or not the land before us was inhabited; but this doubt was soon cleared up, by seeing some canoes coming off from the shore, toward the ships, I immediately brought-to, to give them time to join us. They had from three to six men each”.

“I tied some brass medals to a rope, and gave them to those in one of the canoes, who, in return, tied some small mackerel to the rope as an equivalent.”

“This was repeated ; and some small nails, or bits of iron, which they valued more than any other article, were given them. For these they exchanged more fish, and a sweet potatoe; a sure sign that they had some notion of bartering; or, at least, of returning one present for another.” (Cook Journal, at time of ‘Contact,’ )

While Cook bartered for provisions, his crew was already familiar with trading iron nails for sex. (Hansen) “Women were also forbidden to be admitted into the ships, except under certain restrictions. But the evil I meant to prevent (venereal disease,) by this regulation, I soon found, had already got amongst them.” (Cook)

Captain Cook, in his log of 1778, noted that native Hawaiian women would swim out to his ships, hoping to engage his crews sexually; thereafter, most randy seamen anticipated arrival at Hawaiian ports-of-call. (Waihona)

Archibald Campbell, an 1809 visitor to Hawai’i, noted the Hawaiians were “very jealous of any improper connexion between natives and their wives; but the case is widely different with respect to their visiters, where connexion of that kind is reckoned the surest proof of friendship, and they are always anxious to strengthen it by that tie.” (Campbell)

Prostitution, as it now would be defined, was nonexistent in pre-Western contact Hawai‘i, because sexual partners were readily available for mutual enjoyment.

After Western contact occurred, the females continued to openly want sex, now with the mana-loaded sailors and traders. The early mediums of exchange were nails or shirts.

These males advocated bartering for sex, and with no religious or social restrictions against prostitution, the natives had no hesitancy about profiting from the newcomers’ desires. (Diamond)

“The seaman, after wandering over the pathless ocean, with only the dark waste of waters in view, might well recognize a paradise in the green hills and shady groves of the islands of the Pacific, and angels in their dusky denizens.”

“It is admitted by all that licentiousness prevails extensively among the people even at present, but to a far less degree than formerly, when promiscuous intercourse was universal.”

“Men were living with several wives, and vice versa. All improvement in this respect is to be ascribed to the labors of Christian missionaries.”

“It was not merely polygamy or excess among a few of the more powerful members of the community, but the ordinary habit among all classes.”

“Chastity, whenever met with, was not a customary part of woman’s life, but only an incident dependent On particular circumstances; in fact, an abnormal condition.” (Sanger)

In the early nineteenth century, makaʻāinana women flocked to the European ships and port towns in large numbers to partake in the lucrative trade in sexual services. This was one of the few ways that makaʻāinana could acquire foreign goods since the aliʻi controlled other forms of trade. (Merry)

Many Hawaiian women boarded the ships coming to port here. They did not think that such associations were wrong … The husbands and parents, not knowing that it would bring trouble, permitted such association for foreign men because of the desire for clothing, mirrors, scissors, knives, iron hoops from which to form fishhooks and nails. (ʻIʻi; Merry)

The first attempt to change the sexual behavior of Hawaiian women was an attack on prostitution with European seamen. This endeavor earned the missionaries the undying hostility of the small but growing mercantile community and the visiting shipping community while failing to eliminate the sex trade. (Merry)

In December, 1827, drafted by Kaʻahumanu and scrutinized for Christian propriety by Hiram Bingham, a set of prohibitions were proscribed (murder, theft, adultery, prostitution, gambling, and the sale of alcoholic spirits.) Folks fought it.

“The leading one of these elements was the combination of lewd and intemperate whites, headed by the British and American consuls, in order to break down the new laws against prostitution and drunkenness.” (Missionary Herald, 1905) Prostitution didn’t stop.

At a time, “Local law enforcement condoned and controlled the activities, under the guise that it was “a public necessity.” “The whole of Iwilei makai of the Oʻahu Prison has been used for the purpose of prostitution for some time past.” (Special Legislative Committee Report, 1905)

These women did not live at Iwilei; they only went there in the evenings, and then returned to their uptown homes at night. Some had homes of their own, others were servants of families; but all went back to town. They were in no sense isolated; Iwilei was not their home; they neither eat nor sleep there. (Special Legislative Committee Report, 1905)

“The High Sheriff of the Territory, through his agents, has ordered all of such women (prostitutes) that are found in different parts of the City, and also in some portions of Iwilei, to move to one particular part as follows: on the makai side of Iwilei rice mill, and on the Ewa side of the Iwilei road.” (Special Legislative Committee Report, 1905)

The Iwilei brothels (or “boogie houses,” as they were also called back then) were later forced to relocate to Hotel Street and a few adjoining parts of Chinatown. By 1916, the Iwilei Stockade was shut down.

Shortly thereafter, there was an unofficial system of regulated prostitution in the Islands, with the also unofficial sanction of the military. Army military police and the Navy shore patrol helped monitor it.

All girls had to live in the houses where they worked; no white girls were allowed on the other side of River Street. The Army, Navy, and civilian police picketed any house violating the rules, and no man could enter it. According to the agreement, the civil police regulated prostitution “with full cooperation by the Army and Navy.” Greer)

“The business of procuring girls to work in the brothels, or “factories”, before the war (WWII,) was usually handled by the same … “procurer.” He handled nothing but the transportation of the girls. … The fee for procuring a girl from the mainland rage(d) from $500 to $1,000 depending on the looks and the capability of the girl.” (O’Hara)

All of the girls have a Territorial tax book and a Territorial license (they were licensed as ‘entertainers,’) which cost each $1 per year. In addition, every month the Vice Squad would collect an unofficial tax of $30 per girl from the brothels.

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Colonialism

Colonization (and the ‘Peopling of the Pacific’) began about 40,000 years ago with movement from Asia; by BC 1250, people were settling in the eastern Pacific. (Kirch) By BC 800, Polynesians settled in Samoa. (PVS)

Using stratigraphic archaeology and refinements in radiocarbon dating, studies suggest it was about 900-1000 AD that “Polynesian explorers first made their remarkable voyage from central Eastern Polynesia Islands, across the doldrums and into the North Pacific, to discover Hawai‘i.” (Kirch)

The motivations of the voyagers varied. Some left to explore the world or to seek adventure. Others departed to find new land or new resources because of growing populations or prolonged droughts and other ecological disasters in their homelands. (PVS)

At some point, Polynesians probably reached the coast of South America, returning with the sweet potato (a plant of undoubted American origins.) By AD 1000, sweet potato was transferred into central Polynesia. (Kirch)

The central Society Islands were colonized between AD 1025 and 1120 and dispersed to New Zealand, Hawaiʻi and Rapa Nui and other locations between AD 1190 and 1290. (PVS)

The Pacific settlement took a thousand years. However, after the 14th-century, the archaeological evidence reveals a dramatic expansion of population and food production in Hawai‘i. Perhaps the resources and energies of the Hawaiian people went into developing their land rather than travel. (Kawaharada; PVS)

Over in the Atlantic, Europeans were sailing close to the coastlines of continents before developing navigational instruments that would allow them to venture onto the open ocean; however, voyagers from Fiji, Tonga and Samoa began to settle islands in an ocean area of over 10-million square miles.

The pioneer in European expansion was Portugal, which, after 1385, was a united kingdom, and, unlike other European countries, was free from internal conflicts. Portugal focused its energies on Africa’s western coast. It was Spain that would stumble upon the New World. (Mintz & McNeil)

In 1492, Columbus was trying to find a new route to the Far East, to India, China, Japan and the Spice Islands. If he could reach these lands, he would be able to bring back rich cargoes of silks and spices.

By the time European explorers entered the Pacific in the 15th-century almost all of the habitable islands had been settled for hundreds of years and oral traditions told of explorations, migrations and travels across this expanse. (Kawaharada)

The 15th and 16th century voyages of discovery brought Europe, Africa and the Americas into direct contact, producing an exchange of foods, animals and diseases that scholars call the “Columbian Exchange.”

For more than a century, Spain and Portugal were the only European powers with New World colonies. After 1600, however, other European countries began to emulate their example.

By the end of the 16th century, a thousand French ships a year were engaged in the fur trade along the St Lawrence River and the interior, where the French constructed forts, missions and trading posts.

England established its first permanent colonies in North America during the 17th century. Between 1660 and 1760, England sought to centralize control over its New World Empire and began to impose a series of imperial laws upon its American colonies. (Mintz & McNeil) (The associated conflict was later resolved through the Revolutionary War and formation of the United States.)

By the time Europeans arrived in Hawai‘i in the 18th-century, voyaging between Hawai‘i and the rest of Polynesia had ceased for more than 400 years, perhaps the last voyager being Pāʻao or Mōʻīkeha in the 14th-century. (Kawaharada)

Although New Zealand was originally settled by Polynesian migrants (the ancestors of Maori) around AD 1250–1300, links with Polynesia were lost until European vessels renewed those connections.

With the expansion of European and North American whaling activities in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the protected anchorages of New Zealand’s Bay of Islands became an important base for the provisioning of Pacific-bound vessels, particularly from America. (Te Ara)

Maori agriculture was transformed by servicing whaling ships. Forests were cleared to make way for cultivation of potatoes, wheat and maize, and Polynesians were recruited aboard American ships bound for the Pacific whaling grounds.

Many of these vessels deliberately left New England short-handed, intending to pick up a full crew in New Zealand, Hawaiʻi or elsewhere amongst the Pacific Islands.

The foundation of the New South Wales penal colony in 1788, and the expansion of European settlement to Hobart Town in Tasmania, and across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand, soon fostered sporadic trade linkages with the Pacific Islands. (Te Ara)

The first European colonies in Oceania were Australia (1788) and New Zealand (1840.) Soon after, the French seized French Polynesia (1842) and New Caledonia (1853.) Britain, at first, resisted pressure to annex scattered South Pacific Islands; however, Fiji was taken in 1874.

Then came the emergence of the Panama Canal and the rush of annexations by Britain, France, Germany and the US between 1884 and 1900. In 1899, Samoa was split between Germany and the US, with Tonga and the Solomon Islands were added to Britain. (Stanley)

Early on, in the Pacific, some thought the US was a colony of Great Britain. Until Thomas ap Catesby Jones’s visit to the Society Islands in 1826, “the inhabitants supposed the United States to be a colony of Great Britain, upon a par with Sydney, New South Wales, &c, &c.”

Jones then went to Hawaiʻi; an astonished Kalanimōku (who was the equivalent to Prime Minister in the Islands) noted “It is so…. Is America and England equal? We never understood so before.”

“We knew that England was our friend and that Capt Charlton was here to protect us, but we did not know that Mr Jones, the Commercial Agent, was the representative of America.” (Jones Report to Navy Department, 1827) During Jones’ visit in 1826, he signed an Articles of Arrangement (the first treaty between the US and Hawaiʻi.)

Later, on June 28, 1880, Kalakaua’s Premier Walter Murray Gibson, introduced a resolution in the legislature noting, “the Hawaiian Kingdom by its geographic position and political status is entitled to claim a Primacy in the family of Polynesian States …”

“The resolution concluded with an action “that a Royal Commissioner be appointed by His Majesty, to be styled a Royal Hawaiian Commissioner to the state and peoples of Polynesia …” (Kuykendall) They proposed a Polynesian Confederacy, with Kalakaua as its ruler.

“Then the idea of a great island confederacy dawned upon and fascinated him (Gibson.) He discerned but little difficulty in the way of organizing such a political union, over which Kalakaua would be the logical emperor, and he (Gibson) the Premier of an almost boundless empire of Polynesian archipelagoes.” (Wheeler) “Kalakaua’s dream of empire” failed.

The Polynesian Triangle is a geographical region of the Pacific Ocean with Hawaiʻi (1), New Zealand (Aotearoa) (2) and Rapa Nui (3) at its corners; at the center is Tahiti (5), with Samoa (4) to the west.

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Unexpected Partners

Lorrin Andrews Thurston was born on July 31, 1858 in Honolulu. His father was Asa Goodale Thurston and Sarah Andrews. On his father’s side he was grandson of Asa and Lucy Thurston of the Pioneer Company of missionaries; on his mother’s side, he was grandson of another early missionary, Lorrin Andrews.

Thurston was fluent in the Hawaiian language and gave himself the nickname Kakina. He attended Oʻahu College (Punahou,) and, later, law school at Columbia University.

He followed his father and became a member of the Hawaiʻi Legislature. In 1887, Thurston authored what became known as the Bayonet Constitution. He became the Minister of Interior.

In 1892, Thurston led the Annexation Club and participated in the revolution and overthrow of the constitutional monarchy (1893.) Thurston headed the commission sent to Washington DC for American annexation. (Smith)

A volcano enthusiast, in his childhood on Maui, he would act as an informal tour guide; Thurston first visited Kīlauea on the Island of Hawaiʻi in 1879 at the age of 21 with Louis von Tempsky. Thurston wrote that “we hired horses in Hilo and rode to the volcano, from about eight o’clock in the morning to five in the afternoon.” (NPS)

Ten years later Thurston’s first mark upon the Volcano landscape appeared. In 1889, using his position as Minister of the Interior, he oversaw the construction of an improved carriage road from Hilo to Volcano.

The road was completed in 1894 allowing four-horse stages to transport visitors from Hilo to Volcano in seven hours. This feat would greatly increase the number of people able to view the volcano at Kīlauea. (NPS)

In 1891, Thurston bought the Volcano House in the Island of Hawaiʻi.

George Lycurgus first left his native Sparta in Greece around 1876, when he was about 17 years old. He served in the Greek Army for 18 months. George sailed from Greece to Liverpool sometime in 1880 and from there docked in New York. Here the young boy, not knowing any English, started out by selling lemons.

The later found himself in San Francisco; however his brother John and a cousin, Peter Kamarinos, were in Hawaiʻi. By the fall of 1889, George was sailing on the ‘Australia’ to Hawaiʻi.

Lycurgus opened the California Wine Company in Honolulu. Another Lycurgus enterprise in Honolulu during those years was the Union Grill. He then got in the hotel business, with the ‘Sans Souci’ in Waikiki. (Maggioros)

“In 1893 Sans Souci was a rambling hostelry, nestled among the coconut and palm trees of Waikiki Beach. The guests occupied small bungalows, thatched-roof affairs about ten by twelve, the bed being the principal article of furniture. It was in one of these bungalows that Stevenson had established himself, propped up with pillows on the bed in his shirt-sleeves.” Scribner’s Magazine, August, 1926.

Lycurgus was a royalist and was implicated with other counter-revolutionists in supplying arms (1895.) He was arrested, thirteen counts of treason were filed against him and he was held at ‘The Reef’ (Oʻahu Prison) for 52-days. (Chapin)

Later, Thurston sold the Volcano House to Lycurgus. (Smith)

Starting in 1906, Thurston, a revolutionist, and Lycurgus, a counter-revolutionist, started to work together to have the volcano area made into Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park.

In January 1912, geologist Thomas Jaggar arrived to investigate the volcano. A building for scientific instruments was built in a small building next to the hotel. Jaggar stayed in Volcano for the next 28 years.

Thurston and Lycurgus were instrumental in getting the volcano recognized as Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. On August 1, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the country’s 13th National Park into existence – Hawaiʻi National Park. At first, the park consisted of only the summits of Kīlauea and Mauna Loa on Hawaiʻi, and Haleakalā on Maui.

Eventually, Kilauea Caldera was added to the park, followed by the forests of Mauna Loa, the Kaʻu Desert, the rain forest of Olaʻa and the Kalapana archaeological area of the Puna/Kaʻu Historic District.

The National Park Service, within the federal Department of Interior, was created on August 25, 1916 by Congress through the National Park Service Organic Act.

In 1916, Thurston, recognizing the long tradition of soldiers and sailors who had visited the area, proposed the establishment of a military camp at Kīlauea. Thurston promoted his idea and was able to raise enough funds through public subscription for the construction of buildings and other improvements. By the fall of 1916, the first group of soldiers arrived at Kīlauea Military Camp (KMC.) (NPS)

Later, in the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built research offices, hiking trails and laid the foundations for much of the infrastructure and roads within the Hawaiʻi Volcanoes and other parks across the country.

On, July 1, 1961, Hawaiʻi National Park’s units were separated and re-designated as Haleakalā National Park and Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park.

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Water Crisis

Neglect of the islands’ forests would be “suicidal,” for “everything fails with the failure of our water supply”. (Lyon; DLNR)

“Not enough rain and not enough water in the streams are great evils”.

“It appears to me to be unnecessary to again go deeply into the theory of the relation between forests and rainfall when all intelligent and observing people admit that the decrease or increase of rainfall goes pari passu (‘hand-in-hand’) with the decrease or increase of the forests.”

“The forest, which not only produces rain, but also retains the rainwater, holding it among its leaves and branches, its undergrowth, its myriads of roots and rootlets and its fallen debris, letting the rainwater trickle down slowly to the water streams and keeping them supplied for a long time”.

“(T)hat forest is not there. Rain pours down, the water rushes in torrents through the streams to the sea and soon after everything is dry again.” (Gjerdrum to HSPA, 1897)

Prior to 1820 all of Honolulu’s domestic drinking water was obtained from natural springs and the small river that runs through Nuʻuanu Valley.

Honolulu with its deep water port, abundant natural resources and friendly people soon became a favorite way station for whalers and traders crossing the Pacific Ocean.

The requirements of supplying these ships caused a waterfront storage tank to be installed at the lower end of Nuʻuanu Street. The water for that tank came from a taro patch on Emma Street.

The demand for drinking water from various springs and the Nuʻuanu Stream spurred the development of a public water supply distribution system that, upon its completion in 1862 provided water to the residents and businesses in downtown Honolulu. (DLNR)

“The water is pure, sweet, cool, clear as crystal, and comes from a spring in the mountains, and is distributed all over the town through leaden pipes.”

“You can find a hydrant spiriting away at the bases of three or four trees in a single yard, sometimes, so plenty and cheap is this excellent water. Only twenty-four dollars a year supplies a whole household with a limitless quantity of it.” (Twain, April 20, 1866

However, there was concern about the diminishing forests … and, with it, a crisis in the availability of water.

By the 1830s, forested lands in the Islands were in decline. The sandalwood trade had reduced sandalwood populations to such an extent that in 1839, Hawaii’s first forestry law restricted the harvest of sandalwood.

Cattle (which had been introduced in the late-1700s) continued to cause widespread destruction of native forests. (Idol) For many years, cattle were allowed an unrestricted range in the forests so that in many sections the forest is either dead or dying. (Griffith)

The almost total destruction of the undergrowth has allowed the soil to bake and harden thus causing the rainfall to run off rapidly with the resultant effect of very low water during the dry season. (Griffith)

“We are in trouble because we have no firewood and no la‘i (ti leaf,) and no timber for houses, it is said in the law that those who are living on the land can secure the things above stated, this is all right for those living on the lands which have forests, but, we who live on lands which have no forests, we are in trouble.”

“The children are eating raw potato because of no firewood, the mouths of the children are swollen from having eaten raw taro. We have been in trouble for three months, the Konohikis with wooded lands here in Kaneohe have absolutely withheld the firewood and la‘i and the timber for houses.” (Letter from Hio et al to House of Representatives, 1851; Hulili, Ulukau)

It reached a maximum by the late-1800s/early-twentieth century owing to burning of the forests to locate the sandalwood trees, demand for firewood, commercial logging operations, conversion to agricultural and pastureland, the effects of grazing and browsing ungulates (including cattle, goats, and pigs) and increased fire frequency. (Woodcock)

The sugar industry, still concerned about water shortages due to forest decline, sought and succeeded in establishing the forest reserve system, which instituted partnerships between public and private landowners to protect forests.

Due to the cooperation between public and private landowners, and another tax break for conservation of forests on private land in 1909, large scale reforestation, fencing and feral ungulate eradication efforts occurred across the islands.

The forests were transformed during this time, as millions of fast-growing nonnative trees were planted throughout the islands to quickly re-establish watersheds denuded by logging and ungulates.

Impending crisis also led to the development of groundwater wells (today’s primary source of drinking water in the Islands.) The McCandless brothers started drilling the first artesian well in the Hawaiian Islands in the rear of the James Campbell Ranch House at Honouliuli, Ewa District, on the flat land close to the sea.

“Mr. Wilder (then-Minister of the Interior under King Kalakaua) helped us in securing contracts for five wells, to be drilled for His Majesty, King Kalakaua: one in the Palace grounds, one at his home in Waikiki, and three others located on his properties in the outside districts.”

Over the next 55-years, McCandless Brothers drilled more than 700 good wells across the Islands. Their wells helped support and water the growing and expansive sugar and pineapple plantations including ʻEwa, Kahuku, Oʻahu, Waialua and other large producers, and also on the Islands of Maui, Hawaiʻi, Kauai and Molokai.

We are fortunate that 100-years ago (April 25, 1903) some forward thinkers had the good sense to set aside Hawai‘i’s forested lands and protected our forest watersheds under the State’s forest reserve system.

While I was at DLNR, we oversaw nearly 1-million acres of mauka watershed. Healthy forests are a goal for all of us in Hawai‘i, it’s as much about fresh water, erosion control, protected reefs and economic opportunities as it is about trees. (I am proud and honored to have served on the Board of Directors of the Hawai‘i Forest Institute.)

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