Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Dreadnought

The most famous guitars in the world trace their origins to Hawai‘i. (Kealakai Center for Pacific Strings)

The Dreadnought guitar is a larger bodied acoustic guitar that was developed by the Martin Guitar Company in 1916.  Martin invented the Dreadnought shape and it has since become one of the most popular shapes for many guitar manufacturers.

It was named after a British Royal Navy battleship ‘Dreadnought’ launched in 1906 (the first of a new class of large battleships); the vessel was a turning point in naval history, bettering its rivals in terms of armament, speed, size and firepower.  The HMS Dreadnought famously sunk the German SM U-29 submarine in 1915.

Early Martin designs were based on smaller body sizes but, before amplification, as the demand for more volume and projection grew and musical styles and genres evolved, larger bodied guitars were introduced.  (Martin)

(Size matters; the larger the guitar, the more it can project its sound to the admiring audience.)

Over time the Dreadnought has become a signature design for the Martin guitar company and played by countess well-known musicians from Johnny Cash to Eric Clapton to Neil Young to Bob Dylan and many others.  (Bernstein)

It started with Mekia Kealaka‘i.

Kilin Reece contends that a Hawaiian musician should be credited with an active role in the evolution of the modern acoustic guitar – Mekia Kealaka‘i.

“Martin Guitar has been producing ukuleles for over 100 years, and the roots of the iconic Dreadnought guitar started in Hawaii, which may people do not know.” (Amani Duncan, Martin’s Vice President of Brand Marketing in Martin Journal of Acoustic Guitars, 2016)

It goes back to July of 1916, when Hawaiian music was all the rage following its introduction to a large portion of the American public at the Panama Pacific Exposition in Chicago the previous year.

“Following the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition (which, with 18 million visitors, was a major turning point in the popularity of Hawaiian music), one of the most talked about performers from the event’s ‘Hawaiian Pavilion’ took his band on a tour of the United States.”

“Traveling to venues across the United States, Mekia ‘Major’ Kealakai’s Royal Hawaiian Sextette was a smash hit, with crowd thronging to witness the band’s exciting, steel-stringed sound.”

“Finding a guitar loud enough to reach these growing mainland audience soon became a problem for Major.  To solve it, Kealakai reached out to America’s prominent guitar manufacturer to talk about something different – and something bigger.”

“[T]he craftspeople at Martin Guitar devised a steel-string instrument large enough to suit the needs of the Royal Sextette’s sound – and the largest guitar Martin ever produced.”  (Walsh, Martin Journal of Acoustic Guitars, 2020)

“Mekia Kealakai was the first person to ask Martin to make a jumbo steel-string guitar.  He was one of only four people at that point that the Martin Guitar Company made a guitar for, and they called it the Kealakai model.”

“Those templates were used to make the first dreadnought guitar, the most imitated and widely used acoustic guitar in the world.” (Kilin Reece)

“CF Martin & Co. made its Kealakai model in 1916, one year after the exposition. The standard size for a guitar was smaller then, more suited to the parlor than the stage.”

“Kealakai, seeking a stronger projection when he played Hawaiian lap steel, asked for a bigger-bodied instrument.”

“The resulting design was repurposed in an order for Oliver Ditson and Company, which has long been understood, inaccurately, as the originators of the dreadnought guitar.” (Reece: Hanahou article by Nate Chinen)

“Mekia Kealakai is a crucial part of that legacy. Born into poverty, the son of a sergeant major in the Royal Guard (hence the name “Mekia,” which means “major”), he received rigorous musical training in reform school, where he’d been sent for truancy at age 12.”

“His teacher – Henry Berger, then the conductor of the Royal Hawaiian Band – trained him in the European concert tradition. Mekia entered the band in his teens as a trombonist and flutist.”  (Reece, Hanahou)

“[A]t age 15, [he] joined the Royal Hawaiian Band as Berger’s star protege, and within a short time was composing songs with Liliʻuokalani and Kalākaua, eventually leading the Royal Hawaiian Band in a tour across the United States in 1895.” (Reece, Ka Wai Ola)

“During a Mainland tour in 1895, Kealakai caught the ear of the composer and bandleader John Philip Sousa, who wanted to hire him.” (Reece, Hanahou)

“[He] toured the U.S. continent as a member of Ka Bana Lahui; at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo he demonstrated a “triple-tongue” technique so accomplished that John Philip Sousa called him the “greatest flutist” he had “ever heard.” (Kīkā Kila)

“But Kealakai turned him down and remained in Hawaiian string bands for the next ten years, playing up and down the West Coast from Portland to San Francisco before touring America and Europe and with his own act, Major Kealakai’s Royal Hawaiian Sextette.”

“He met his future wife, the noted hula dancer Mele Nawaaheihei, at the 1901 World’s Fair in Buffalo, New York.” (Reece, Hanahou)

He eventually returning home to take over the leadership of the Royal Hawaiian Band, complete with a glee club, largely, as he put it, “to help preserve Hawaiian music.”  (Kīkā Kila)

https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-15049/

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

1850

“When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.” Harriet Tubman

Born into slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in 1822, she was named Araminta by her enslaved parents, Ben and Rit Ross. Nearly killed at the age of 13 by a blow to her head, “Minty” recovered and grew strong and determined to be free.

Changing her name to Harriet upon her marriage to freeman John Tubman in 1844, she escaped five years later when her enslaver died and she was to be sold. One hundred dollars was offered for her capture.

In 1849 Harriet Tubman learned that she and her brothers Ben and Henry were to be sold. Financial difficulties of slave owners frequently precipitated sale of slaves and other property.

The family had been broken before; three of Tubman’s older sisters, Mariah Ritty, Linah, and Soph, were sold to the Deep South and lost forever to the family and to history.

Despite additional dangers resulting from the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Tubman risked her life and ventured back to the community where she was born to rescue family, friends, and others.

The act required the reporting and arrest of anyone suspected of being a runaway slave, eliminated protections for suspected runaways, and provided economic incentives to kidnap people of African descent.

In September of 1850, Harriet was made an official “conductor” of the Underground Railroad. This meant that she knew all the routes to free territory and she had to take an oath of silence so the secret of the Underground Railroad would be kept secret.

Vowing to return to bring her family and friends to freedom, she spent the next ten years making about 13 trips into Maryland to rescue them. She also gave instructions to about 70 more who found their way to freedom independently.

Through the Underground Railroad, Tubman learned the towns and transportation routes characterizing the South—information that made her important to Union military commanders during the Civil War.

As a Union spy and scout, Tubman often transformed herself into an aging woman. She would wander the streets under Confederate control and learn from the enslaved population about Confederate troop placements and supply lines.

Tubman helped many of these individuals find food, shelter, and even jobs in the North. She also became a respected guerrilla operative. As a nurse, Tubman dispensed herbal remedies to black and white soldiers dying from infection and disease.

A lifelong humanitarian and civil rights activist, she formed friendships with abolitionists, politicians, writers and intellectuals. She knew Frederick Douglass and was close to John Brown and William Henry Seward.

She was particularly close with suffragists Lucretia Coffin Mott, Martha Coffin Wright, and Susan B. Anthony. Intellectuals in New England’s progressive circles, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, Bronson Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Franklin B. Sanborn, and Mrs. Horace Mann, befriended her, and her work was heralded beyond the United States.

Tubman showed the same zeal and passion for the campaign to attain women’s suffrage after the American Civil War as she had shown for the abolition of slavery.

Harriet Tubman died in 1913 in Auburn, New York at the home she purchased from Secretary of State William Seward in 1859, where she established the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery.  (NPS)

In the Islands …

In 1848, King Kamehameha III fundamentally changed the land tenure system to a westernized paper title system through the Māhele.  The lands were formally divided among the king and the chiefs, and the fee titles were recorded in the Māhele book.

In 1850, a law was passed allowing these “native tenants” to claim fee simple title to the lands they worked.  Those who claimed their parcel(s) successfully acquired what is known as a kuleana.

Deeds executed during the Māhele conveying land contained the phrase “ua koe ke kuleana o na kānaka,” or “reserving the rights of all native tenants,” in continuation of the reserved tenancies which characterized the traditional Hawaiian land tenure system.  (Garavoy)

Contemporary sources of law, including the Hawai‘i Revised Statutes, the Hawai‘i State Constitution, and case law interpreting these laws protect six distinct rights attached to the kuleana and/or native Hawaiians with ancestral connections to the kuleana.

These rights are:

  • reasonable access to the land-locked kuleana from major thoroughfares;
  • agricultural uses, such as taro cultivation;
  • traditional gathering rights in and around the ahupua‘a;
  • a house lot not larger than 1/4 acre;
  • sufficient water for drinking and irrigation from nearby streams, including traditionally established waterways such as ‘auwai; and
  • fishing rights in the kunalu (the coastal region extending from beach to reef).

The 1850 Kuleana Act also protected the rights of tenants to gain access to the mountains and the sea and to gather certain materials.

The Kuleana Act did not allow the maka‘āinana to exercise other traditional rights, such as the right to grow crops and pasture animals on unoccupied portions of the ahupua’a. The court’s interpretation of the act prevented tenants from making traditional use of commonly cultivated land.  (MacKenzie)

Kawaiaha‘o Church Clock

Kawaiahaʻo Church (Stone Church) generally marked the eastern edge of town; it was constructed between 1836 and 1842.  The “Kauikeaouli clock,” donated by King Kamehameha III in 1850, still tolls the time to this day.

Honolulu Streets Named

It wasn’t until 1850 that streets received official names. On August 30, 1850, the Privy Council first officially named Honolulu’s streets; there were 35‐streets that received official names that day (29 were in Downtown Honolulu, the others nearby.)

At the time, the water’s edge was in the vicinity of what we now call Queen Street.  Back in those days, that road was generally called ‘Makai,’ ‘Water’ or Ali‘i Wahine.’  (Gilman)

Beginning of the Mormon Mission

“The Mormons are said to have commenced their mission in 1850. Their converts are scattered over all the islands.   They number about nine per cent of all those who in the census returns have reported their religious affiliations.  This mission owns a small sugar plantation at Laie, on the island of Oʻahu.”  (The Friend, December 1902)

The Church traces its beginnings to Joseph Smith, Jr.  On April 6, 1830 in Western New York, Smith and five others incorporated The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Fayette, New York.

In the summer of 1850, in California, elder Charles C Rich called together more elders to establish a mission in the Sandwich Islands.  They arrived December 12, 1850.  Later, more came.

Honolulu Fire Department

Alexander “Alick” Cartwright worked as a clerk for a broker and later for a bank, and, weather permitting, played variations of cricket and rounders in the vacant lots of New York City after the bank closed each day.

Rounders, like baseball, is a striking and fielding team game that involves hitting a ball with a bat; players score by running around the four bases on the field (the earliest reference to the game was in 1744.)

Cartwright played a key role in formalizing the first published rules of the game of baseball, including the concept of foul territory, the distance between bases, three-out innings and the elimination of retiring base runners by throwing batted baseballs at them.

The man who really invented baseball spent the last forty-four years of his long life in Hawai‘i and laid out Hawai‘i’s first baseball diamond, now called Cartwright Field, in Makiki.  Cartwright went on to teach people in Hawai‘i how to play the game; and, he did a lot more when he was here.

In Hawaiʻi, he continued the volunteer fire fighting activities he had learned as a member of the Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 12 in New York City – and, he was part of Honolulu’s first Volunteer Fire Brigade.

Shortly thereafter, the Honolulu Fire Department was established on December 27, 1850, by signature of King Kamehameha III, and was the first of its kind in the Hawaiian Islands, and the only Fire Department in the United States established by a ruling monarch. Cartwright was appointed Chief Engineer of the Department and shortly thereafter, he became Fire Chief.

“The ordinance by Kamehameha III, December 27, 1850, establishing the Honolulu Fire Department, required each householder

to keep at least two buckets hanging handy, for fire use exclusively, and further ordered that they be brought to every fire.”

“The bucket part was probably the most effective, as the only other equipment at that time was a hand engine and 150 feet of homemade canvas hose through which, by constant relays on the pump handles, water could be thrown some sixty feet.”  (Thrum)

Aside from his duties at the Honolulu Fire Department, Cartwright also served as advisor to the Queen.  Cartwright was the executor of Queen Emma’s Last Will & Testament, in which she left the bulk of her estate to the Queen’s Hospital when she died in 1885.  Cartwright also served as the executor of the estate of King Kalākaua.

Post Office Established in Honolulu

The first mention of a postal system in Hawaii was an enactment of the Legislature on April 27, 1846, relating to the handling of inter-island mails. It was entitled “An Act to Organize the Executive Departments of the Hawaiian Islands,”

With the US Post Office initiating a regular mail service by steamship between the east coast and California and Oregon, and a subsequent treaty between the US and Hawaii (ratified August 9, 1850) in which an article provided for the safe transmission of the mails between the two countries, the Hawaiian government decided that the 1846 statute governing internal correspondence was insufficient to handle foreign mails.

The Privy Council, therefore, passed a decree on December 20, 1850, and the 1851 Legislature enacted a law that established a Post Office in Honolulu (temporarily in the Polynesian Office). The Council appointed a Postmaster, Henry M. Whitney, and set up rates for renumeration to ships’ captains for carrying the mails.  (DAGS)

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by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Captain Jacob Brown

Captain Jacob Brown was “a follower of the sea from his twentieth year”.

The whalers of New Bedford and the other Eastern Ports fished the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  They were hunting for whale products that were in high demand – whale oil was used for heating, lamps and in industrial machinery; whale bone was used in corsets, skirt hoops, umbrellas and buggy whips.

In the Pacific, rich whaling waters were discovered near Japan and soon hundreds of ships headed for the area.   The central location of the Hawaiian Islands between America and Japan brought many whaling ships to the Islands.

Whalers needed food and the islands supplied this need from its fertile lands.

William Rotch, the owner of several whaling vessels, was reportedly Nantucket’s greatest whaling merchant; he later moved to New Bedford. One of his ships was the Honqua (sometimes spelled Hoqua.)

Crew list records from the New Bedford ships’ registries show that Jacob Brown was First Mate on the Honqua on an Atlantic whale hunt from July 19, 1841 to June 29, 1843.

Then, on a September 1, 1843 to April 13, 1846 hunt into the Pacific, Brown was Captain.  He later captained another Honqua Atlantic whaling ground sail from 1846 to 1849.

It’s not clear if there were intervening sailings, but on a whale hunt in the North Pacific, Brown captained one of “seven sails of this fine fleet of 1851, the Honqua, the New Bedford, the Arabella, the America, the Armata, the Mary Mitchell, and the Henry Thompson, (that were) wrecked there, and left behind as monuments of the dangers which meet these hardy mariners in their adventurous calling.”

“The Honqua, in 1851, was totally wrecked on a sunken rock in that sea (near Cape Oliver (Sea of Ochotsk, Russia – near the Arctic Circle.”))

Brown and his wife Cordelia Hastings Brown were shipwrecked and spent four months in the Siberian snows before being rescued by a whaling ship.

All was not lost,  the rescuing Captain of the whaleship Canton, Captain James Allen Towners, purchased the salvaged  whale oil of the Honqua (1,100 bbls of oil saved, however sold at a heavily discounted price.)

From Siberia, Brown and family were eventually brought to Hawaiʻi, by way of China.

After making a trip to his home in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Captain Brown returned to Hawaiʻi a year later, his family joining him in Honolulu six years later, and remained to take a part in the development of the islands.

He retired from the sea in 1852 to assume a government position in Honolulu which placed him in charge of all government wharves and buoys at the port.

He was also captain of the towing tug “Pele.” The “Pele” was the first steam tug used in Hawaiʻi (screw tug with thirty-horse power,) called into service in 1854.

Its primary use was for towing vessels in and out of the harbor and replaced the use of men or animals to bring ships into the harbor against the prevailing northeast tradewinds.

“Prior to the launching of this vessel primitive power was used to bring the craft through the passage to an anchorage; a rope of great length was used, and it was a never-to-be-forgotten sight to see yokes of oxen, teams of horses and natives tugging at the rope. A time was consumed in making a start, but when once in motion, it was a steady walk-away.”

Richards Street was aligned as a straight path used by groups of men, and later oxen, to pull ships through the narrow channel into the harbor.

In 1856, the Pele was also used to tow barges about the harbor in connection with the Honolulu Harbor dredging operations. Pele served, with short interruptions, as the sole tug for shipping at Honolulu until after 1882.

Brown is later noted as registered owner or partner in several boats in Honolulu: Warwick, Jenny, Haunani, James Makee and CR Bishop.  These were typically used for inter-island movement of people and goods.

One of the partners was Thomas R Foster, an initial organizer of the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company which was later incorporated on February 19, 1883.   (Brown, a friend of Foster’s, was one of the original promoters of the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company.)  That company founded a subsidiary, Inter-Island Airways, that later changed its name to Hawaiian Airlines.

Born in 1815 to Jacob Brown and Ruth Morgan Brown, Captain Jacob Brown died on July 3, 1881 in Boston, Massachusetts, at the age of 66.  He and members of his family are buried at Oʻahu Cemetery.

He was survived by three children, Jacob F Brown (Civil Engineer and Manager of Hawaiian Abstract & Title,) Arthur M Brown (Attorney, High Sheriff in the Territory of Hawaiʻi (1898-1906,)) and Minnie H (Brown) Gilman; his oldest child, Sarah M Brown, born at sea, later died at the age of 22.

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by Peter T Young 5 Comments

Context

Sometimes, it is easy to overlook the context of events that took place in the past. We also sometimes judge them in today’s frame of reference. This stuff happened 200-years ago.

To set a foundation, we are reminded that in 1782 Kamehameha began a war of conquest, and, by 1795, he subdued all other chiefdoms, with the exception of Kauai. King Kamehameha I launched two invasion attempts on Kauai (1796 and 1804;) both failed.

In 1804, King Kamehameha I moved his capital from Lāhainā, Maui to Honolulu, O‘ahu.

In the face of the threat of a further invasion, in 1810, Kaumuali‘i decided to peacefully unite with Kamehameha and ceded Kauai and Ni‘ihau to Kamehameha and the Hawaiian Islands were unified under a single leader.

On May 8, 1819, King Kamehameha I died.

Following the death of Kamehameha I in 1819, his son, Liholiho (King Kamehameha II) declared an end to the kapu system. “An extraordinary event marked the period of Liholiho’s rule, in the breaking down of the ancient tabus, the doing away with the power of the kahunas to declare tabus and to offer sacrifices, and the abolition of the tabu which forbade eating with women (ʻai noa, or free eating.)” (Kamakau)

“The custom of the tabu upon free eating was kept up because in old days it was believed that the ruler who did not proclaim the tabu had not long to rule….”

“The tabu eating was a fixed law for chiefs and commoners, not because they would die by eating tabu things, but in order to keep a distinction between things permissible to all people and those dedicated to the gods”. (Kamakau)

Kekuaokalani, Liholiho’s cousin, opposed the abolition of the kapu system and assumed the responsibility of leading those who opposed its abolition.

Kekuaokalani (who was given Kūkaʻilimoku (the war god) before his death) demanded that Liholiho withdraw his edict on abolition of the kapu system. (If the kapu fell, the war god would lose its potency.) (Daws)

The two powerful cousins engaged at the battle of Kuamoʻo; Liholiho’s forces defeated Kekuaokalani.

In the discussion above, we reference traditional Hawaiian people, places and practices. What we tend to overlook is that these events happened 40-years after ‘Contact’ (1778) and took place with white and other foreigners living among the Hawaiians.

We shouldn’t overlook that Western ways were well underway, with aliʻi leading the changes. Let’s look.

At the time of Cook’s arrival (1778-1779,) the Hawaiian Islands were divided into four kingdoms: (1) the island of Hawaiʻi under the rule of Kalaniʻōpuʻu, who also had possession of the Hāna district of east Maui; (2) Maui (except the Hāna district,) Molokai, Lanai and Kahoʻolawe, ruled by Kahekili; (3) Oʻahu, under the rule of Kahahana; and at (4) Kauai and Niʻihau, Kamakahelei was ruler.

In 1790 (at the same time that George Washington was serving as the first US president,) the island of Hawaiʻi was under multiple rule; Kamehameha (ruler of Kohala, Kona and Hāmākua regions) successfully invaded Maui, Lanai and Molokai.

In fact, western arms and fighting techniques helped put Kamehameha into his leadership role.

Because of their knowledge of European warfare, John Young and Isaac Davis trained Kamehameha and his men in the use of muskets and cannons. In addition, both Young and Davis fought alongside Kamehameha in his many battles.

In addition to arms, Kamehameha also had Western boats, replacing the traditional canoes. The first Western-style vessel built in the Islands was the Beretane (1793.)

Through the aid of Captain George Vancouver’s mechanics, after launching, it was used in the naval combat with Kahekili’s war canoes off the Kohala coast. (Thrum)

Encouraged by the success of this new type of vessel, doubtless others were built between this period and the opening of the present century. One was a schooner called Tamana (named after Kamehameha’s favorite wife, Kaʻahumanu.) (Thrum, 1886)

Several small decked vessels were built. (Case) According to Cleveland’s account, Kamehameha possessed at that time twenty small vessels of from twenty to forty tons burden, some even copper-bottomed. (Alexander)

Trade in Hawaiian sandalwood began as early as the 1790s; by 1805 it had become an important export item. In 1811, an agreement between Boston ship captains and Kamehameha I established a monopoly on sandalwood exports, with Kamehameha receiving 25% of the profits.

As trade and shipping brought Hawaiʻi into contact with a wider world, it also enabled the acquisition of Western goods, including arms and ammunition.

Western clothes were catching on, as well. In 1809, Russian sailors noted that the Hawaiians had been bartering woolen cloth, blue and red thread and canvas in exchange for food stuffs from Kamehameha in exchange. They used the cloth to make malo and pāʻu. (Barratt)

In 1819, when Louis de Freycinet sailed in on the ship Uranie, Mde. Rose de Saulces de Freycinet, the captain’s wife, described Kalanimōkū (a High Chief who functioned similar to a Prime Minister) as “going on board dressed in loin cloth and a European shirt, more dirty than clean.” (Del Piano)

“It was not cloth as much as finished … clothing, however, that the Hawaiians valued. The aliʻi prized dress uniforms. Other Islanders took any sort of clothing. As time passed, Hawaiians built up larger wardrobes and no longer thought themselves well dressed if they were clad in one or two haole garments.”

“The higher a Hawaiian’s rank, the more likely it was that he or she would wear imported haole clothes on ceremonial occasions. Namahana, Kamāmalu and Kaʻahumanu, among other high-born women, had a number of volumimous velvet and satin dresses by the early-1820s.” (Barratt)

Western customs had also caught on.

When the Pioneer Company of Protestant missionaries first arrived at Kawaihae (March 30, 1820,) “Kalanimōkū was the first person of distinction that came. In dress and manner he appeared with the dignity of a man of culture.” Obviously familiar with western customs, the chief gallantly bowed and shook the hands of the ladies. (Del Piano)

In 1820, Hiram Bingham noted, “(Kalanimōkū’s) appearance was much more interesting than we expected. His dress was a neat dimity jacket, black silk vest, mankin pantaloons, white cotton stockings, and shoes, plaid cravat and a neat English hat. He sometimes however wears the native dress.” (Thaddeus Journal, April 1, 1820)

“Kalanimōku was distinguished from almost the whole nation, by being decently clad. His dress, put on for the occasion, consisted of a white dimity roundabout, a black silk vest, yellow Nankeen pants, shoes, and white cotton hose, plaid cravat, and fur hat.” (Hiram Bingham)

“We honored the king, but we loved the cultivated manhood of Kalanimōku. He was the only individual Hawaiian that appeared before us with a full civilized dress.” (Lucy Thurston)

By 1823, Queen Mother Keōpūolani (mother of Kamehameha II and III) began to accept many western ways. She wore western clothes, she introduced western furniture into her house and she took instruction in Christianity.

It’s interesting (at least to me) to consider the context of the actions in 1819 with the abolition of the kapu. When you look at it strictly from the Hawaiian people, places and practices, it’s one thing; however, when you look at what was also going on in the Islands at the same time, it puts a whole new perspective on it.

Captain Cook estimated the population at 400,000 in 1778. When Vancouver, who had been with Cook, returned in 1792, he was shocked at the evidences of depopulation, and when the missionaries arrived in 1820, the population did not exceed 150,000. (The Friend, December 1902)

The image shows Kamehameha I in Western wear in 1817; at the time, he was still enforcing the centuries-old kapu system. (Drawn by Choris)

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'King_Kamehameha_I_in_a_Red_Vest'_c._1820
‘King_Kamehameha_I_in_a_Red_Vest’_c._1820

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Curtis P ʻIaukea

No, not Curtis “Da Bull” ʻIaukea (professional wrestler in the 1960s-70s;) this story is about that guy’s great grandfather, Curtis Piʻehu ʻIaukea, born December 13, 1855, at Waimea, Hawaiʻi.  He is the son of JW and Lahapa (Nalanipo) ʻIaukea.  His father was district magistrate of Hāmākua for many years, and the family was well known on the Big Island.

ʻIaukea was reared in Honolulu under the direction of his uncle, Kaihupaʻa, an old-time retainer of the chiefs and a personal attendant to King Kamehameha III.

He was raised at the former Chief’s Children’s School (the school, started in 1840, had been given up in 1850 and used as the home for retainers of the royal family.)   As Kamehameha III’s retainer, Kaihupaʻa lived there and ʻIaukea was reared to also serve as retainer of royalty.

“The place was known as Halepoepoe, (meaning circular or round house) so-called because of the quadrangle or court forming the central portion of the building.”  (ʻIaukea)

“Of the more vivid and enduring of my boyhood impressions, I recall the days when, as a bare footed urchin of five and six, I used to romp around the Palace Grounds, dancing attendance on royalty in the role of page and valet to His Royal Highness, the Prince of Hawaiʻi – Ka Haku-o-Hawaiʻi (Prince Albert, son of Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma,) as he was more familiarly known amongst royalty and Hawaiians, then, well on in his fourth year and in the full enjoyment of health and happy childhood.” (ʻIaukea)

As a ward of the government, ʻIaukea was educated under Archdeacon Mason of the Anglican Church in Hawaii at ʻIolani College, then directed by the Church of England.

In 1872, upon the death of King Kamehameha V, who had sent Mr. ʻIaukea to Lāhainā to learn sugar operations, he went to Hilo to live with his sister. It was there that King Kalākaua, on royal tour of the islands, saw the young man and commanded him to resume his place at the royal palace.  In 1880 Mr. ʻIaukea was chief secretary of the department of foreign affairs.

“One of the most accomplished of the younger Hawaiians, Colonel Curtis Piʻehu ʻIaukea, was on his way around the world as a special envoy on what may be described as a good will mission, to keep alive or reawaken the pleasant feeling brought into being by King Kalākaua’s journey, and to perform certain special diplomatic errands; he was to go first to the United States and Europe, thence to Egypt, India, and, finally, Japan, where he was expected to arrive at the end of 1883 or the early part of 1884. One of his errands was to investigate in London and India the possibilities for Indian immigration.”  (Kuykendall)

Specific duties entrusted to ʻIaukea were: (1) to represent Hawaiʻi at the coronation of the czar of Russia; (2) to serve as Hawaiʻi’s commissioner to the Great International Fisheries Exhibition in London; (3) to negotiate regarding immigration to Hawaiʻi from British India, the Philippine Islands and Japan; (4) to attend to the exchange of decorations between the king of Hawaiʻi and the rulers of several other countries; (5) to deliver commissions to persons selected by him to serve as Hawaiian consuls in several designated areas.

His mission in Japan resulted in the admission of Japanese laborers to the sugar plantations of Hawaiʻi.  Although a formal treaty was not established, Japanese leadership stated they would not block immigration to Hawaiʻi.  (Japan was facing a major economic recession and discontent among farmers in Japan; Japanese leadership felt giving the workers the option of going to Hawaiʻi might relieve some of the domestic stress.)

ʻIaukea has a long list of service to the Monarchy and later the Republic of Hawaiʻi.  A few of his assignments included, Colonel on the King’s personal staff and Tax Collector, 1878; Collector General of Customs, 1884; King’s private secretary, 1886; Chamberlain and Crown Land Agent and Commissioner, 1886; in charge royal party to Queen Victoria’s jubilee, 1887; to London with Embassy from Republic of Hawaii to Diamond Jubilee Queen Victoria, 1897; accompanied President and Mrs. Dole to Washington, as secretary and attaché, 1898; elected County Sheriff, 1906; elected Territorial Senator, 1912; appointed Secretary, Territory of Hawaii, 1917; and acting Governor, 1919.

As chamberlain, he had the distinction of taking charge of the royal party attending the jubilee of Queen Victoria of England in 1887, the party included Queen Kapiʻolani, Princess Liliʻuokalani, Governor Dominis and others; en route, the party visited President and Mrs. Cleveland at the White House.

Ten years later, ʻIaukea went to London with the embassy from the Republic of Hawaiʻi to the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, and in 1898 he accompanied President and Mrs. Dole to Washington, DC, as secretary and military attaché.

Among the many orders and foreign distinctions that have been conferred upon him are the grand cross and cordon of St. Stanislaus, conferred by the emperor of Russia on the occasion of the coronation in 1883; officer of the French Legion of Honor, conferred by Pres. Grevy of the Republic of France; grand officer’s cross of the crown of Italy; rand cross and ribbon of the Order of Takovo; jubilee and diamond jubilee medals of Queen “Victoria; grand officer of the Order of Rising Sun of Japan; knight commander of the Swedish Order of St. Olaf, and all of the Hawaiian orders and decorations instituted by King Kalākaua during the monarchy.  (Derby)

His service in Hawaiʻi spanned through several monarchs and thereafter served in a number of republic and territorial positions.  Curtis P ʻIaukea died in 1940.

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