General | Page 220 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

January 3, 2017 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Timeline Tuesday … 1830s

Today’s ‘Timeline Tuesday’ takes us through the 1830s – death of Ka‘ahumanu, first successful commercial sugar, first English language newspaper and Declaration of Rights. We look at what was happening in Hawai‘i during this time period and what else was happening around the rest of the world.

A Comparative Timeline illustrates the events with images and short phrases. This helps us to get a better context on what was happening in Hawai‘i versus the rest of the world. I prepared these a few years ago for a planning project. (Ultimately, they never got used for the project, but I thought they might be on interest to others.)

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December 31, 2016 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Poisoned

“Scrawls on a hand-drawn map by Brintnall told of the murder of his officer Elihu Mix, who died aboard the Triumph in Honolulu Harbor after allegedly eating a poisoned fish dinner sent to the ship.” (Cook)

Family tradition suggests Mix was not the target – rather, the Triumph’s ship captain, Brintnall was intended to be killed; “Luckily for Brintnall, he was ashore and missed the dinner.” (Cook)

Let’s take a closer look …

“My father traced his descent back to Caleb Mix, one of the founders, or at least earliest settlers, of New Haven. Caleb, the second, born 1687, had a son Thomas, who in 1770 married Mehitable Beecher.”

“They had six children, the eldest being Elisha. He was, I judge, a man of means and a merchant, trader, etc. His eldest son, Elihu, was my grandfather; he married Nancy Atwater, of New Haven.”

“They had three children: Edward H, Elihu L Mix, and Margaret M Mix; Mr Elihu Mix, of Westville, only surviving at this time.”

“My grandfather (Elihu) was engaged in the shipping business at early part of this century and sailed from New Haven in the little ships of those days, circumnavigating the globe.”

“In one of these adventurous voyages, in the seal fishery and China trade interest, in 1808, his ship touched for stores at the Sandwich Islands, and while there he was poisoned by the Queen of the Islands (Kaʻahumanu.)”

“The king (Kamehameha I) wished his young sons to come and it was understood the queen, to defeat their object, caused the baked fish she had sent to the officers to be poisoned. Accidentally the others were absent and Captain Mix only partook of the fatal dish.” (Jonathan Mix of New Haven, 1886-Appendix)

It seems, in January 1808, Kamehameha made arrangements with Captain Caleb Brintnall, Master of the Triumph out of New Haven, to take his 12-year old son and heir apparent, Liholiho, to New England for his education.

A few years earlier, Kaumuali‘i of Kauai had sent his son Humehume to New England for school and Kamehameha wanted his heir to equal to his rival’s in Western education.

However, Kaʻahumanu saw Kamehameha’s plan for the boy as a threat to her influence and political hold. So she sent an outrigger canoe with a mullet dinner out to Brintnall’s ship in Honolulu Harbor – a gift for the Captain and his officers.

In the Hawaiian tradition of ‘apu koheoheo (the poison cup) the fish had been basted with the deadly toxins of the keke (puffer fish.) However, Brintnall and most of his officers were on shore at Honolulu. Mix was the only officer on board who had dinner and then died from the poisoning. (Wehrheim)

This may have changed the course of history in the Islands.

Following this, Brintnall sailed on to Kealakekua, the same place where Captain Cook landed on the Island of Hawaiʻi; across the bay from Hikiʻau Heiau is where Cook was later killed.

Brintnall met ʻŌpūkahaʻia. Both of ʻŌpūkahaʻia’s parents had been slain during the battles on the island. The only surviving member of the family, besides himself, was an infant brother he hoped to save from the fate of his parents, and carried him on his back and fled from the enemy.

But he was pursued, and his little brother, while on his back, was killed by a spear from the enemy. Taken prisoner, because he was not young enough to give them trouble, nor old enough to excite their fears, ʻŌpūkahaʻia was not killed.

He was later turned over to his uncle, Pahua, who took him into his own family and treated him as his child. Pahua was a kahuna at Hikiʻau Heiau in Kealakekua Bay.

ʻŌpūkahaʻia’s uncle, wanting his nephew to follow him as a kahuna, taught ʻŌpūkahaʻia long prayers and trained him to the task of repeating them daily in the temple of the idol. This ceremony he sometimes commenced before sunrise in the morning, and at other times was employed in it during the whole or the greater part of the night.

ʻŌpūkahaʻia was not destined to be a kahuna. He made a life-changing decision – not only which affected his life, but had a profound effect on the future of the Hawaiian Islands.

“I began to think about leaving that country, to go to some other part of the globe. I did not care where I shall go to. I thought to myself that if I should get away, and go to some other country, probably I may find some comfort, more than to live there, without father and mother.” (ʻŌpūkahaʻia)

He boarded Brintnall’s ‘Triumph’ in Kealakekua Bay; also on Board was Hopu. They set sail for New York, stopping first in China (selling seal-skins and loading the ship with Chinese goods.)

Russell Hubbard, a son of Gen. Hubbard of New Haven, Connecticut was also on board. “This Mr. Hubbard was a member of Yale College. He was a friend of Christ. Christ was with him when I saw him, but I knew it not. ‘Happy is the man that put his trust in God!’ Mr. Hubbard was very kind to me on our passage, and taught me the letters in English spelling-book.” (ʻŌpūkahaʻia)

In 1809, they landed at New York and remained there until the Captain sold out all the Chinese goods. Then, they made their way to New England. “In this place I become acquainted with many students belonging to the College.”

“By these pious students I was told more about God than what I had heard before … Many times I wished to hear more about God, but find no body to interpret it to me. I attended many meetings on the sabbath, but find difficulty to understand the minister. I could understand or speak, but very little of the English language. Friend Thomas (Hopu) went to school to one of the students in the College before I thought of going to school.” (ʻŌpūkahaʻia)

ʻŌpūkahaʻia was taken into the family of the Rev. Dr. Dwight, President of Yale College, for a season; where he was treated with kindness, and taught the first principles of Christianity. At length, Mr. Samuel J. Mills, took him under his particular patronage, and sent him to live with his father, the Rev. Mr. Mills of Torringford.

By 1817, a dozen students, six of them Hawaiians, were training at the Foreign Mission School to become missionaries to teach the Christian faith to people around the world.

ʻŌpūkahaʻia improved his English by writing the story of his life in a book called “Memoirs of Henry Obookiah” (the spelling of his name prior to establishment of the formal Hawaiian alphabet, based on its sound.) ʻŌpūkahaʻia died suddenly of typhus fever in 1818. The book about his life was printed and circulated after his death.

ʻŌpūkahaʻia, inspired by many young men with proven sincerity and religious fervor of the missionary movement, had wanted to spread the word of Christianity back home in Hawaiʻi; his book inspired 14-missionaries to volunteer to carry his message to the Sandwich Islands (now known as Hawaiʻi.)

On October 23, 1819, the Pioneer Company of missionaries from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) from the northeast United States, set sail on the Thaddeus for the Sandwich Islands (now known as Hawai‘i.)

There were seven couples sent to convert the Hawaiians to Christianity. These included two Ordained Preachers, Hiram Bingham and his wife Sybil and Asa Thurston and his wife Lucy; two Teachers, Mr. Samuel Whitney and his wife Mercy and Samuel Ruggles and his wife Mary; a Doctor, Thomas Holman and his wife Lucia; a Printer, Elisha Loomis and his wife Maria; a Farmer, Daniel Chamberlain, his wife and five children.

Among the other Hawaiian students at the Foreign Mission School were Thomas Hopu, William Kanui, John Honoliʻi and Prince Humehume (son of Kauai’s Kaumuali‘i.)

After 164-days at sea, on April 4, 1820, the Thaddeus arrived and anchored at Kailua-Kona on the Island of Hawaiʻi. Hawai‘i’s “Plymouth Rock” is about where the Kailua pier is today.

By the time the Pioneer Company arrived, Kamehameha I had died and the centuries-old kapu system had been abolished; through the actions of King Kamehameha II (Liholiho,) with encouragement by former Queens Kaʻahumanu and Keōpūolani (Liholiho’s mother,) the Hawaiian people had already dismantled their heiau and had rejected their religious beliefs.

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Mullet-cooked

December 29, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Wounded Knee

Nearly two centuries before the trouble at Pine Ridge, South Dakota began, the Sioux tribes left their historical homelands at the headwaters of the Mississippi River and moved westward to the great plains of Nebraska and the Dakotas.

One reason for their departure was that their enemies, the Ojibwas, had obtained firearms from the French and thus made life uncomfortable for the Sioux.

Another reason for the move to the great plains was the abundance of buffalo discovered there. In the early 1700s, the Sioux acquired the horse and this gave them great mobility, especially for hunting and war-making activities and their territory extended from Minnesota to the Rocky Mountains, and from the Yellowstone River to the Platte River.

The Sioux were quick to see the value and potential of the hundreds of miles of open range available to them. They were proud and powerful warriors and maintained their mastery over the region. (Alexander Kelley)

In 1868, government policy was implemented that was designed to bring all Plains Indian tribes under direct control of the government in Washington. In April of that year, the Sioux signed a treaty which stated optimistically at its outset, “From this day forth, all wars between the parties of this agreement shall cease forever.”

The treaty required the Sioux to give up a large part of their land in return for a guarantee that the rest of their land (portions of South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming) would be “set apart for their absolute and undisturbed use and occupation.” The government abandoned three forts on the Bozeman Trail, but established Indian agencies and agents. (Alexander Kelley)

In December of 1890, approximately 350 to 375 Sioux men, women, and children under the leadership of Chief Big Foot journeyed from the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation at the invitation of Chief Red Cloud to help make peace between the non-Indians and Indians.

The journey of Chief Big Foot and his band of Minneconjou Sioux occurred during the Ghost Dance Religion period when extreme hostility existed between Sioux Indians and non-Indians residing near the Sioux reservations, and the US Army assumed control of the Sioux reservations.

Chief Big Foot and his band were intercepted on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation at Porcupine Butte, surrendered unconditionally under a white flag of truce, and were escorted to Wounded Knee Creek, on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the US state of South Dakota. (Congress)

However, Sitting Bull, “being in open rebellion against constituted authority, was defying the Government, and encouraging disaffection, made it necessary that he be arrested and removed from the reservation.”

At daybreak, a force of thirty-nine policemen and four volunteers (one of whom was Sitting Bull’s brother-in-law, ‘Gray Eagle’) was dispatched to the Standing Rock Reservation.

Sitting Bull accepted his arrest quietly at first, but then got stubborn and refused to accompany them. The policemen took him out of the house; but, getting outside, they found themselves completely surrounded by Sitting Bull’s followers, all armed and excited. (Eye witness account by McLaughlin, Indian Agent, 1891)

“While the troops were searching for arms among the Indians’ tepees at Wounded Knee, Dec. 29 (1890,) the Indians suddenly attacked them. The soldiers turned on them with machine guns and rifles, almost abandoning tactics in their wrath at the treachery of the savages.” (Daily Bulletin, January 9, 1891)

“The wounded Indians lying on the battle-field fought like fiends. They continued shooting until they were killed or their ammunition was exhausted. There were many single-handed ferocious combats between wounded soldiers and Indians.” (Daily Bulletin, January 9, 1891)

A few minutes later, the plain was covered with the dead and dying. More Indians had been killed there than in any fight for the thirty years preceding. (Alexander Kelley)

“The result was the killing of thirty men and three officers and about 160 Indians. The fight was a hot one and no mercy was shown on either side. It is now reported that the Sioux tribe numbering about 3,000 warriors has left the Agency and gone on the warpath, notwithstanding, a dreadful blizzard is and has been raging for some days past.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, January 9, 1891)

Historians regard the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre as the last armed conflict between Indian warriors and the US Cavalry which brought to a close an era in the history of this country commonly referred to as the Indian wars period characterized by an official government policy of forcibly removing the Indian tribes and bands from the path of westward expansion and settlement through placement on reservations. (Congress)

As a time comparison (and not associated with Wounded Knee,) failing health for some months made it seem advisable that King Kalākaua should seek to regain it by a voyage to the more bracing climate of California, and inspired with this hope, he left his kingdom in November (1890.) The voyage and change of circumstances at first seemed to benefit him. (Privy Council)

“The United States steamer Charleston, with King Kalākaua, of Hawaii, on board, entered the harbor at 11 o’clock this morning. Colonel McFarlane, chamberlain to King Kalākaua, stated that the king visited California for the benefit of his health and eyesight, which is somewhat impaired.”

“The king would probably remain in California five or six weeks, and during that period would visit the southern part of the state, but would not go east. The king is accompanied only by Colonel McFarlane and a few servants.” (Los Angeles Herald, December 5, 1890)

On December 18, the Daily Alta California announced that local favorites from San Francisco and Oakland would be competing in the baseball game, which would be held December 20 at the Haight Street grounds, where the bleachers could seat 14,000 fans.

The king and his party arrived at 2:15 pm. The band played ‘Hawaii Ponoʻi’ and the game began. Despite a triple by Picked Nine right fielder Ebright, the All-Californians won 12-8. The king did not stay for the whole game. He was a sick man suffering from kidney disease. (San Jose Mercury News)

Then, the sad news …

“The announcement yesterday of the death of King Kalākaua fell like a clap of thunder from the skies. Although we all knew that he was not a well man when he left here and that he had in his system a most insidious disease …”

“… yet the reports of the decided improvement in his health from the voyage over and the bracing climate of California deceived us as to his frail hold on life.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, January 30, 1891)

“He passed away at exactly 2:35 pm of Tuesday, January 20, 1891 … Kalākaua I was buried with great state on February 15th, 1891, another guest in that mausoleum which is so fast filling with the mortal remains of Hawaiian royalty. His sister Liliʻuokalani reigns in his stead”. (Gowen)

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Battle_of_Wounded_Knee_Campsite-DenverLibrary

9th_Cav_camp_at_Wounded_Knee_SD

View-of-survivors-of-the-Wounded-Knee-Massacre-surrendering-to-the-U.S.-Army-Jan.-1-1891

Gen Brooks camp at Pine Ridge Agcy S.D.

Sioux camp scene, ca. 1880 (National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution – P22843)

Photograph of the Mass Burial at Wounded Knee, January 1, 1891

Western_Indian_Wars-(WC)-1860-1890

Indians-North_America-Map

Wounded Knee sign

Kalakaua_in_San_Francisco,_1890

Queen_Liliuokalani-1891

December 28, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Basket Ball

“A very interesting game is indulged in during an intermission, which is taken for rest and amusement combined. It is basket ball. A small wire basket is fastened to the wall on either end, about twelve feet from the floor.”

“Sides are chosen and each attempt to land a small rubber ball in the goal of the other team. The tactics involved in football are used with the exception that there is no kicking of the ball or tackling of players.” (Hawaiian Star, December 3, 1896)

“In the winter of 1891, Luther Gulick, the head of the physical education department at the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, persuaded a young instructor named James Naismith to create an indoor game that could be played during the off-season.” (Basketball Hall of Fame)

Gulick’s first intention was to bring outdoor games indoors, namely, soccer and lacrosse. These games proved too physical and cumbersome.

At his wits’ end, Naismith recalled a childhood game, that he had referred to as “Duck on a Rock”, that required players to use finesse and accuracy to become successful. (SONAHR)

Gulick and Naismith developed the game we now call Basketball. The first formal game was played on December 29, 1891.

That day, 18 men at the School for Christian Workers (later the International YMCA Training School, now Springfield College) in Springfield, Massachusetts played a match in the Armory Street court: 9-versus-9, using a soccer ball and two peach baskets. (SONAHR)

“A major force in the early development of the sport, Gulick oversaw Naismith’s creation of the game, led basketball’s move to the national and international level, and in 1895 became the chairman of the Basketball Rules Organization.”

“Among his other achievements, Gulick developed the YMCA triangle symbol (signifying the YMCA’s physical, emotional, and intellectual pursuits that still remain today), served on the Olympic Committee for the London Games in 1908 …”

“… and is credited with forming such notable youth organizations as the Public School Athletic Leagues (PSAL) in New York, the Boy Scouts and the Camp Fire Girls.” (Basketball Hall of Fame)

Luther Halsey Gulick was born on December 4, 1865 at Honolulu, Hawai‘i, the fifth of seven children of Congregationalist missionaries, Luther Halsey Gulick and Louisa Lewis Gulick.

Young Luther spent the first fifteen years of his life abroad in Hawai‘i, Spain, Italy and Japan. Upon return to the US in 1880, he enrolled in the preparatory department of Oberlin College until 1882.

Luther was enrolled in Hanover High School in Hanover, New Hampshire, from 1882 to 1883. In 1884, he returned to Oberlin, where he studied physical education.

However, plagued throughout his life with heart problems and chronic headaches, Gulick had to leave Oberlin due to illness in 1885. He resumed his education the same year, however, when he joined the Sargent School of Physical Training, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The following year, Gulick became a student at the Medical College at the City University of New York where he was awarded the MD in 1889. He married Charlotte Emily Vetter on August 30, 1887. Together they had six children, Louise, Frances, Charlotte, Katharine, Luther, and John Halsey.

Throughout his life and career, Luther Halsey Gulick was greatly interested in physical education and hygiene. He also kept himself intensely busy.

While pursuing his medical degree between 1886 and 1889, he began his career as the physical director of the Jackson, Michigan YMCA in 1886.

In 1887, Gulick became head of the gymnasium department of the Young Men’s Christian Education’s Springfield Training School. It was there, in 1891, that the game of basketball was created. (Winter)

“He was recognized as an authority upon physical training in the public schools and the author of many books on this subject. A series of lectures at the St Louis Exposition in 1904 won him international recognition as an expert in such matters.”

“He was Chairman of the international Committee on Physical Recreation of the War Work Council of the YMCA until he had to give it up on account pf his health.” (NYTimes)

Luther’s sibling Edward Leeds Gulick and his wife Harriet Marie Gulick settled in Vermont and started the “Aloha Camp” there in 1905.

Fifteen years before women were allowed to vote, when floor length skirts and lace up boots were mandatory for playing any sport; when popular conduct books for girls encouraged a “retiring delicacy” …

… and declared that “one of the most valuable things you can learn is how to become a good housewife” – Harriet and Edward Gulick created a world in which every girl could discover her most adventurous self.

Aloha Camp afforded young women the knowledge, skills and freedom to explore wild nature on foot and on horseback, by skiff and by canoe; to kindle campfires in the woods and cook meals in the open air; to pitch tents over rough ground and sleep out of doors under the stars.

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Naismith_and_peach_baskets

Luther_Halsey_Gulick-WC

Basketbal-equipment used in 1892

Naismith with what is believed to be the first US Basketball Team

James Naismith-Canadian physical education instructor who with Luther Gulick invented basketball in 1891

December 27, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Bank of Hawai‘i

On December 27, 1897, Bank of Hawai‘i became the first chartered and incorporated bank to do business in the Republic of Hawai‘i; it is Hawai‘i’s second oldest bank. (BOH)

(Bishop & Co (later known as First Hawaiian Bank) started as a banking partnership under the laws of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i on August 17, 1858. (FHB))

The Bank of Hawai‘i charter was issued by James A King, Minister of the Interior of the Republic of Hawai‘i, and signed by Sanford Ballard Dole, president of the Republic.

Bank of Hawai‘i operated its first office from a two-story wooden building in downtown Honolulu, sharing space with the Hawaiian Safe Deposit & Investment Company, which Jones established in 1893 with his son, Edwin Austin Jones.

Previously, in 1893, Peter Cushman Jones persuaded close friends Joseph Ballard Atherton and Charles Montague Cooke (Atherton and Cooke were brothers-in-law) to join him in organizing a new bank in the Islands. (BOH)

Like any bank, Bank of Hawai‘i could not grow unless the community it served grew, a dependence that was directly related to the growth of Hawai‘i’s pineapple industry.

During the first years of the 20th century, at roughly the same time the territory’s political leaders first pushed for statehood, advances in the efficiency of canning methods fueled the expansion of pineapple production.

Sugar production increased as well, providing the seeds for Bank of Hawai‘i’s growth: waves of new immigrants and new businesses, both attracted by the flourishing pineapple and sugar industries. With it brought waves of immigrants to the Islands.

Between 1900 and 1940, the territory’s population increased substantially, nearly tripling from 154,001 to 422,770. The growth in population represented the growth of the bank’s potential customer base, providing a fertile economic climate that enabled Bank of Hawai‘i to establish itself as the territory’s largest bank.

Competition was strong; when Castle & Cooke found itself in ‘grave financial difficulties’ because of the expenses of Ewa Sugar Plantations, Bishop and Co refused to grant the firm an advance. Then the bank bounced a $54 Castle & Cooke check.

So when the fortunes of Ewa Plantations turned around, Castle & Cooke decided it was time to teach Bishop and Company a lesson.

Castle & Cooke withdrew all of the firm’s funds and walked back through the streets of Honolulu with a wheelbarrow full of gold coins to be deposited in the new Bank of Hawai‘i. Bank of Hawai‘i went on to finance the Alexander Young Hotel, and the Moana Hotel in Waikiki. (SB)

In 1903, Bank of Hawai‘i opened its first branch office in Lihue, Kauai. Later (1922,) it merged with First Bank of Hilo, acquiring branches in Hilo, Honokaʻa, Kohala, Kealakekua and Kāʻu.

That year (1922,) it completed construction of its main office; it’s site was where the old Paki house, ‘Haleakala,’ onetime home of Charles Reed Bishop and Bernice Pauahi Bishop once sttod. Hānai daughter of the Paki’s was Lili‘uokalani, later to be Hawai‘i’s last queen. (SB)

Bank of Hawai‘i milestones included being designated as the official depository for the US Navy, Pacific Theater in 1942 and being the first bank in Hawai‘i to establish a consumer loan department in 1946.

In 1966, Bank of Hawai‘i President Wilson Cannon Jr. added meaning to Aloha Friday when he began allowing employees to wear aloha shirts on the last business day of the week. (PBN)

Bank of Hawai‘i moved into new, modern headquarters in the Financial Plaza of the Pacific in 1968, located in almost the exact same site as Bank of Hawai‘i’s office when it was first founded.

The complex includes three buildings: the six-story Bank of Hawai‘i, the twenty-one-story Pacific Century Tower (originally the Castle and Cooke Tower – on the site where the former Castle & Cooke building once stood (1924-1966)) and the twelve-story American Savings and Loan Association Building. (Hibbard)

Bank of Hawai‘i is the primary subsidiary of Bank of Hawai‘i Corporation, a regional bank holding company. Bank of Hawai‘i Corporation through its subsidiaries provides varied financial services to businesses, consumers and governments in Hawaii, American Samoa and the Pacific Islands.

The company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange as “BOH.” In the community, Bank of Hawaii is also affectionately known as “Bankoh.” (BOH)

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