Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

‘Maitai – maitai no!’

“I never before saw Kaʻahumanu more excited. She seemed scarce able to command her feelings; and before Mr. Southard’s letter was finished, her eyes were filled with tears.”

“‘Maitai – maitai no!’ ‘good – good indeed!’ uttered with the quick tone in which he usually speaks when pleased, was the hasty comment of the king; while the females, with bright faces, re-echoed the approbation, ‘maitai no — maitai no!’” (Stewart)

Such was the reception upon hearing the kind thoughts of US President John Quincy Adams (6th President of the US,) as written by Samuel Lewis Southard, Secretary of the Navy (January 20, 1829.) (It was delivered by Captain William Compton Bolton Finch, commander of the Vincennes.)

The president “has heard, with interest and admiration, of the rapid progress which has been made by your people, in acquiring a knowledge of letters and of the True Religion-the Religion of the Christian’s Bible.”

“These are the best, and the only means, by which the prosperity and happiness of nations can be advanced and continued; and the president, and all men every where, who wish well to yourself and your people, earnestly hope that you will continue to cultivate them, and to protect and encourage those by whom they are brought to you.”

“The president also anxiously hopes that peace, and kindness, and justice, will prevail between your people and those citizens of the United States who visit your islands; and that the regulations of your government will be such as to enforce them upon all.”

“Our citizens who violate your laws, or interfere with your regulations, violate at the same their duty to their own government and country, and merit censure and punishment. We have heard with pain that this has sometimes been the case; and we have sought to know and to punish those who are guilty.”

“The president salutes you with respect, and wishes you peace, happiness, and prosperity.” (Saml L Southard, Secretary of the Navy, January 20, 1829)

Kauikeaouli (King Kamehameha III) asked Finch to convey his own letter addressed to the President (November 23, 1829,) that said:

“Best affection to you, the chief magistrate of America. This is my sentiment for you; I have joy and gratitude towards you on account of your kind regard for me. I now know the excellence of your communicating to me that which is right and true. I approve with admiration the justness and faultlessness of your word.”

“I now believe that your thoughts and ours are alike, both those countries and these countries, and all large countries. We are the children—the little islands far off in this tropical climate.”

“We have recently had an interview with Captain Finch, with joyfulness and with sentiments of kindness and pleasure towards him. I do now hope there will be a perfect agreement between you and us – as to the rights and duties of both of our governments …”

“… that the peace now subsisting between us may be perpetual, that the seat of our prosperity may be broad, and our union of heart in things that are right such, that the highways of the ocean may not diverge, because there is a oneness of sentiment in our hearts, with those distant countries, these islands, and all lands.”

“May our abiding by justice triumphantly prevail, that all who come hither may be correct in deportment, and all who go thither from this country.”

“This is my desire, that you and we may be of the same mind. Such, too, is my hope that we may pursue the same course, that we may nourish, and that true prosperity may rest perpetually on all the nations of the world, in which we dwell.”

“Look ye on us with charity; we have formerly been extremely dark-minded, and ignorant of the usages of enlightened countries. You are the source of intelligence and light. This is the origin of our minds being a little enlightened—the arrival here of the word of God.”

“This is the foundation of a little mental improvement which we have recently made, that we come to know a little of what is right, and of the customs of civilized nations. On this account do we greatly rejoice at the present time.”

“I give you thanks, too, for your bestowing kindly on me the globes and the map of your country, to be a means of mental improvement for me, and also for your other presents to my friends, who rejoice with me in the reception of the favors which you have granted them.”

“Long life to you in this world, and lasting blessedness to you and us in the world to come.” (Signed) Kauikeaouli Tamehameha III. (Stewart)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Roughing It

“Early in 1866, George Barnes invited [Mark Twain] to resign [his] reportership on his paper, the San Francisco Morning Call, and for some months thereafter, [he] was without money or work; then [he] had a pleasant turn of fortune.”

“The proprietors of the Sacramento Union, a great and influential daily journal, sent [Twain] to the Sandwich Islands to write four letters a month at twenty dollars a piece.”

He also wrote books about some of his travels (that included a visit to Hawai‘i) … one such, Roughing It.  Here are some of his first impressions of Honolulu – from that series, as well as his other writing.

“This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science.”

“Still, there is information in the volume; information concerning an interesting episode in the history of the Far West, about which no books have been written by persons who were on the ground in person, and saw the happenings of the time with their own eyes.” …

“On the seventh day out we saw a dim vast bulk standing up out of the wastes of the Pacific and knew that that spectral promontory was Diamond Head”.

“So we were nearing Honolulu, the capital city of the Sandwich Islands – those islands which to me were Paradise; a Paradise which I had been longing all those years to see again.  Not any other thing in the world could have stirred me as the sight of that great rock did.” 

“On a certain bright morning the Islands hove in sight, lying low on the lonely sea, and everybody climbed to the upper deck to look.  After two thousand miles of watery solitude the vision was a welcome one.”

“As we approached, the imposing promontory of Diamond Head rose up out of the ocean its rugged front softened by the hazy distance, and presently the details of the land began to make themselves manifest …”

“… first the line of beach; then the plumed coacoanut trees of the tropics; then cabins of the natives; then the white town of Honolulu, said to contain between twelve and fifteen thousand inhabitants spread over a dead level; with streets from twenty to thirty feet wide, solid and level as a floor, most of them straight as a line and few as crooked as a corkscrew.”

“The further I traveled through the town the better I liked it.”

“Every step revealed a new contrast–disclosed something I was unaccustomed to. In place of the grand mud-colored brown fronts of San Francisco, I saw dwellings built of straw, adobies, and cream-colored pebble-and-shell-conglomerated coral, cut into oblong blocks and laid in cement ….”

“… also a great number of neat white cottages, with green window-shutters; in place of front yards like billiard-tables with iron fences around them, I saw these homes surrounded by ample yards, thickly clad with green grass, and shaded by tall trees, through whose dense foliage the sun could scarcely penetrate …”

“… in place of the customary geranium, calla lily, etc., languishing in dust and general debility, I saw luxurious banks and thickets of flowers, fresh as a meadow after a rain, and glowing with the richest dyes …”

“… in place of the dingy horrors of San Francisco’s pleasure grove, the “Willows,” I saw huge-bodied, wide-spreading forest trees, with strange names and stranger appearance –trees that cast a shadow like a thunder-cloud, and were able to stand alone without being tied to green poles …”

“… in place of gold fish, wiggling around in glass globes, assuming countless shades and degrees of distortion through the magnifying and diminishing qualities of their transparent prison houses, I saw cats …

“… Tom-cats, Mary Ann cats, long-tailed cats, bob-tailed cats, blind cats, one-eyed cats, wall-eyed cats, cross-eyed cats, gray cats, black cats, white cats, yellow cats, striped cats, spotted cats, tame cats, wild cats, singed cats, individual cats, groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, regiments of cats, armies of cats, multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of them sleek, fat, lazy and sound asleep.”

“I looked on a multitude of people, some white, in white coats, vests, pantaloons, even white cloth shoes, made snowy with chalk duly laid on every morning …”

“… but the majority of the people were almost as dark as negroes–women with comely features, fine black eyes, rounded forms, inclining to the voluptuous, clad in a single bright red or white garment that fell free and unconfined from shoulder to heel …”

“… long black hair falling loose, gypsy hats, encircled with wreaths of natural flowers of a brilliant carmine tint; plenty of dark men in various costumes, and some with nothing on but a battered stove-pipe hat tilted on the nose, and a very scant breech-clout; –certain smoke-dried children were clothed in nothing but sunshine –a very neat fitting and picturesque apparel indeed.”  (Twain)

Like they get to a lot of people, the Islands struck a chord with Clemens.

“I was there for four or five months, and returned to find myself about the best known man on the Pacific Coast.” (Twain)  Popular pieces, some credit the series with turning Twain into a journalistic star.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Handy & Handy

Edward Smith Craighill (Craighill) Handy was an “ethnologist and anthropologist, who was an authority on Pacific island people.” (HnlAdv Jan 28, 1981)

Handy was born in Roanoke (VA) on September 22, 1893.  He was a 1915 graduate of Harvard University; he also earned master’s and doctoral degrees in anthropology there.

“He had participated in several expeditions to Pacific islands in the 1920s, including some to the Society Islands. He also had been affiliated with the Bishop Museum in Hawaii in the 1920s and early 1930s. He kept up these interests and contacts until the end of his life.”

“After serving as a visiting professor at Yale in the mid-1930s, Dr. Handy returned to his native Virginia and in 1936 became a farmer near Oakton in Fairfax County.”

“Dr. Handy was sought out by others in the fields of ethnology and anthropology. Margaret Mead, author of ‘Coming of Age in Samoa’ and many other noted books, took instruction in the Marquesan language from Dr. Handy.” (Washington Post)

On September 21, 1819, he married Willowdean Chatterson (Jan 10, 1889 – Nov 5, 1965); she was later an anthropologist, attached to the Bernice P Bishop Museum, specializing in Marquesan and Tahitian culture.  They later divorced.

He then married Elizabeth Green Kalb (the Kalb last name was later dropped) (Oct 30, 1896 – Aug 17, 1973).  She was a graduate of Rice Institute, 1916, and a student at the University of Chicago. She won the Carnegie Prize in Texas state intercollegiate oratory contest in 1915.

In 1918 Elizabeth became active in the woman’s suffrage movement and went to work for the National Woman’s Party (NWP) in Washington, DC. She was among the 8,000 marchers who took part in the US Capitol picket.

She was later arrested during a watchfire demonstration in January of 1919, for which she was sentenced to five days in District Jail. She later became the librarian at NWP headquarters where she was in charge of the literature and library department. (Culwell)

In about 1926, her mother, Benigna Green, came to Honolulu to meet Elizabeth, who had been teaching in China.  They liked Hawai‘i so well that they made their home there.  (SB April 14, 1938)

From 1928 through 1933, Elizabeth was the editor of Pacific Affairs (during its first six years of existence). Pacific Affairs is an interdisciplinary scholarly journal focusing on political, economic, and social issues throughout Asia and the Pacific.

At the time, Pacific Affairs’ headquarters was located in Hawai‘i.  (Pacific Affairs has been located on the campus of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, since 1961.)  (Pacific Affairs)

ES Craighill Handy married Elizabeth on March 22, 1934 in Honolulu.  Elizabeth’s mother Benigna Green had “devoted her life to working for women’s rights and the advancement of women’s achievements.” She died in an automobile accident near Bakersfield, Cal.  Mrs Amy Otis Earhart, mother of the late Amelia Earhart, was also seriously injured.”

Elizabeth’s mother had gone “to the mainland to meet her daughter, Mrs Edward SC Handy … to spur a search among South Sea islands on the possibility that Miss Earhart and Fred J Noonan might have landed on one of them on their ill fated attempt to fly around the world last July.” (SB April 14, 1938)

ES Craighill Handy and Elizabeth Green Handy collaborated on numerous papers and books. Many included the participation of Mary Kawena Pukui.

“During her years at the museum, Mary Kawena Pukui became the “go to” person for anything Hawaiian. Her time and expertise was always in demand. … The academic works of ESC Handy and Martha Beckwith depended largely on the work of Kawena.”

“She was also a primary source for the works of Dorothy Barrěre, Kenneth Emory, Adrienne Kaeppler Alphonse Korn, Margaret Titcomb and many others.”

Kawena’s long association with the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum began when she was asked by Dr. Martha Beckwith for assistance in translating old Hawaiian manuscripts and newspapers around 1923.

Kawena’s skills soon attracted attention from other noted scholars, anthropologists, biologists, etc., who sought her assistance in their own work. She actually worked helping others at the museum for some fourteen years before she was hired as a translator. Museum ethnologist, ES Craighill Handy actually paid her out of his own pocket for her help, which was extensive.

In 1933, Kawena translated manuscripts and added new information from her knowledge, combined with that of her mother, Pa‘ahana, and other Hawaiian friends. The names, Handy and Pūku‘i would appear on notable works in years to come.

“In 1935, Dr. Handy told Pa‘ahana that he and his wife were going on a field trip to Hawai‘i and would like Kawena to go with them.”

“Pa‘ahana gave them her blessing and knowing that her people would not talk to foreigners, she said she would hanai (adopt) them. ‘Now go with your sister to my homeland,’ she said.”

“They were able to gather much information as the word spread about Pa‘ahana’s adopting the Handys, who accompanied Kawena, child of Ka‘ū. Many doors of family and their friends were opened for then.” (Mary Kawena Pukui Preservation Society)

One notable publication from the Handys and Pukui is ‘Native Planters’ (they had many other papers and books). “Originally published in 1972, Native Planters in Old Hawaii is the fruit of a brilliant collaboration between Pacific anthropologist, E. S. Craighill Handy, his wife, Elizabeth Green Handy, and the beloved expert on Hawaiian language and culture, Mary Kawena Pukui.”

“Today, this classic work remains invaluable to scholars and practitioners alike as both a precious ethnographic resource on Hawaiian planting practices and as an in-depth examination of Hawaiians’ relationship to land.”

“The book discusses basic patterns of Hawaiian planting culture, the gods worshipped, class and land divisions, water rights and irrigation techniques, tools, crafts, and general horticultural skills.”

“It includes an examination of how people shaped their cultivation practices to the varied Hawaiian environment, and documents various myths and rituals connected to planting.” (Bishop Museum Press)  Edward Smith Craighill died December 26, 1980.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Katsu Kobayakawa Goto

“Early on the morning of the 29th the body of K. Goto, a Japanese storekeeper, was found hanging to a telephone post not far from the Honokaa court house between that and the Lyceum, with his arms tied behind him and his legs also tied.  He had been dead several hours.”  (Daily Bulletin, October 30, 1889)

Katsu Kobayakawa was the eldest son of Izaemon Kobayakawa.  Katsu (Jun) was born in the Kanagawa Prefecture in 1862.  He worked as a store clerk in Yokohama, where he became fluent in English by associating with Englishmen and Americans.  (Nakano)

He was anxious to go to Hawaiʻi; but being the first born son, he was expected to take over the family business.  Katsu changed his surname to Goto so he could travel Hawaiʻi to make a better living for himself.

In the Islands, Hawai‘i’s economy turned toward sugar in the decades between 1860 and 1880; these twenty years were pivotal in building the plantation system.  By 1883, more than 50-plantations were producing sugar on five islands.

A shortage of laborers to work in the growing (in size and number) sugar plantations became a challenge; the answer was imported labor.  The first to arrive were the Chinese (1852.)

In March 1881, King Kalākaua visited Japan during which he discussed with Emperor Meiji Hawaiʻi’s desire to encourage Japanese nationals to settle in Hawaiʻi; this improved the relationship of the Hawaiian Kingdom with the Japanese government. (Nordyke/Matsumoto)

The first 944-government-sponsored, Kanyaku Imin, Japanese immigrants to Hawaiʻi arrived in Honolulu aboard the SS City of Tokio on February 8, 1885.  Katsu was on that first boatload of Japanese immigrants, included with 676-men, 158-women and 110-children on the first of 26 shiploads of government contract Japanese immigrants between 1885 and 1894.

Katsu fulfilled his 3-year contract commitment, working in the Hāmākua sugarcane fields.  After that, he took over a small, general merchandise store previously run by Bunichiro Onome in Honokaʻa, then the Island’s second largest town.  (Niiya)

He was very successful selling to the Japanese, native Hawaiian and haole population and was soon viewed as leader in the Japanese immigrant community. (Kubota)

On October 28, 1889 Goto was killed.

Four were accused and stood trial: Joseph R Mills, Thomas Steele, William C Blabon and William D Watson.

Steele was Overend’s overseer.  Blabon was teamster for Mills.  Watson was head teamster for Overend and a former employee of Mills.

Deputy Attorney-General Arthur Porter Peterson notes, “The prosecution would show that Goto was not killed while hanging to the telephone pole, but when he was waylaid and dragged from his horse, and was only hung to the post as an act of bravado, within sight and almost within sound of the temple of justice.”  (Daily Bulletin, May 13, 1890)

Some suggest the motive for killing Goto was a fire at the Robert McLain Overend plantation.  Testimony at trial noted, “Mills had told me that Goto had been up to Overend’s camp. Mr. Overend’s cane field was set fire October 19th, a little after 9 o’clock.”

“We had Goto for an interpreter, and he did not act on the square, and a new interpreter was got and he gave matters away. I only heard Mr. Overend say that he would break his damned neck.”  (Hawaiian Gazette, May 20, 1890)

Others note Goto was successful in his store and other store operators were concerned about losing business because of him.  Joseph R Mills operated a store a few yards from Goto’s (Goto was the only Japanese storekeeper in the area.)

The testimony of star witnesses Richmond and Lala, who had both taken part in the incident, yielded the following description of how Goto ultimately died.

“The two of them were summoned separately on the night that Goto was killed. Richmond was summoned by Steele and sent to watch for a Jap who would be leaving the (Japanese) living quarters on horseback”.

“When they got to where Mills and the others were waiting, Mills told him to grab the bridle of the horse that (Goto) would be riding toward them. After Richmond reported that (Goto) was on his way they lay in ambush.”

“Steele and Blabon dragged the man off the horse. … Steele, Blabon, Mills, and Watson carried him to a location away from the road where he was placed face down and his hands and feet bound. … Mills sent Richmond to pick up a rope at the foot of the telephone pole, a rope that, he found, already had a hangman’s knot at one end.”

“When he returned with the rope someone in the group said, ‘My God! He is dead.’ Richmond then bent over and put his hand over the man’s heart but could feel no heartbeat. …”

“The body was then carried over to the telephone pole. Watson threw the rope over the crossbar, Mills put the noose around Goto’s neck, and the body was hauled up and suspended.”  (Kubota)

After deliberating for more than six hours, the jury returned verdicts of manslaughter in the second degree for Steele and Mills, and manslaughter in the third degree for Blabon and Watson.  Judge Albert Francis Judd subsequently sentenced Mills and Steele to nine years imprisonment at hard labor, Blabon to five and Watson to four.

All four were transferred under guard from Hilo jail to Oʻahu Prison immediately after the trial. Steele later escaped and presumably stowed away on a ship bound for Australia; Blabon also escaped and probably stowed away, too.  Mills received a full pardon in 1894.  Watson was the only one to serve out his full sentence.

At the same time of the Goto killing, the Annual Meeting of the Planters’ Labor and Supply Company was being held.  They adopted a resolution against racial prejudice, resolving that they “strongly disapprove of every act and publication intended or calculated to excite any distrust or prejudice in the minds of the native Hawaiians against those of foreign birth or parentage, or to excite feelings of contempt or distrust toward the natives”.  (Daily Bulletin, October 29, 1889)

(Peterson was Attorney-General at the time of the overthrow in 1893. He was arrested and jailed by the Republic of Hawaiʻi in the aftermath of the 1895 Counter-Revolution and then exiled to San Francisco where he died of pneumonia.)

(Peterson had conferred upon him the decoration of the Imperial Order of the Sacred Treasure of Japan for services rendered to the Japanese Government.  (San Francisco Call, March 17, 1895))  (Lots of information here from Kubota.)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Ka Liona Hae O Ka Pakipika

A busy life … Teacher, Noble, Legislator, Newspaper Publisher, Italian Military Trainee, Surveyor, Revolutionist, Royalist, Counter-Revolutionist, Prisoner, Home Rule Candidate, Hawaiʻi’s First Congressional Delegate … he died October 23, 1903, at the age of 48.

He was born February 15, 1855 on the island of Maui. Hapa – his father was a native of Newport, Rhode Island; his mother, a native of Maui, a descendant of royalty.

He first went to school at Wailuku at the age of 8 years. When he was 10 years old his mother died, then his father moved to ranching at Makawao. There was no English school at Makawao until 1869.

That year, the Board of Education established the Haleakalā Boarding School; he was one of the first students at that school.  Upon completion of his studies, he became a teacher at ʻUlupalakua.

In 1880, he was elected to the Islands’ legislature; he represented the citizens of Wailuku and its neighboring Maui community.

Nicknamed Ka Liona Hae O Ka Pakipika, or “The Roaring Lion of the Pacific,” Robert William Wilcox was a revolutionary soldier and politician – he was also referred to as the “Iron Duke of Hawaiʻi.”

King Kalākaua sent Wilcox to Italy to receive military training at the Royal Military of Turin, at the expense of the Hawaiian government.

In 1885, he graduated from the academy and was promoted to sub-lieutenant of the artillery; he then entered in the Italian Royal Application School for Engineer and Artillery Officers.  (Several of the old photos of Wilcox show him in his Italian uniform.)

There, he married the first of his two wives, Signorina di Sobrero, an Italian.

Wilcox stayed in Italy until 1887; he returned to the Islands that year, because of the constitutional changes that had happened at that time (Bayonet Constitution.)

Later, he and his wife moved to San Francisco in 1888 and he worked as a surveyor for the Spring Valley Water Works Co.  Wilcox came back to the Islands in 1889 and his wife returned to Italy.

On July 30, 1889, Wilcox led a rebellion to restore the rights of the monarchy, two years after the Bayonet Constitution of 1887 left King Kalākaua a mere figurehead.

By the evening, he became a prisoner and charged with high treason by the government.  He was tried for treason, but was acquitted by the jury.

In 1890, he was elected to the Legislature in the Islands.

Following the overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani in 1893, the Committee of Safety established the Provisional Government of Hawaiʻi as a temporary government until annexation by the United States.

The Provisional Government convened a constitutional convention and established the Republic of Hawaiʻi on July 4, 1894. The Republic continued to govern the Islands.

From January 6 to January 9, 1895, in a “Counter-Revolution,” patriots of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi and the forces that had overthrown the constitutional Hawaiian monarchy were engaged in a war that consisted of battles on the island of Oʻahu.

It has also been called the Second Wilcox Rebellion of 1895, the Revolution of 1895, the Hawaiian Counter-revolution of 1895, the 1895 Uprising in Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiian Civil War, the 1895 Uprising Against the Provisional Government or the Uprising of 1895.

In their attempt to return Queen Liliʻuokalani to the throne, it was the last major military operation by royalists who opposed the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi.  The goal of the rebellion failed.

Wilcox was court-martialed and sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to thirty-five years.  While in prison in 1895, Pope Leo XIII granted an annulment of their marriage.  The Italian Consul and the Catholic Bishop at Honolulu confirmed this action.

In January, 1896, he was given a conditional pardon and became a free man; later that year, Wilcox married again, this time to Mrs. Theresa Cartwright.  In 1898, President Dole gave him a full pardon.

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

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

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

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

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