Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Crusades

In about 1095, Alexios I Komnenos, the Byzantine emperor, sent to the pope, Urban II, and asked for aid from the west against the Seljuq Turks, who taken nearly all of Asia Minor from him. (Fordham)

At the Council of Clermont (in what’s now southern France), Pope Urban II called for peace among his audience, for them to unite against a common enemy. (Forbes)

“All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested.”

“O what a disgrace if such a despised and base race, which worships demons, should conquer a people which has the faith of omnipotent God and is made glorious with the name of Christ!” (Pope Urban II, Fulcher of Chartres, Fordham)

“Of holy Jerusalem, brethren, we dare not speak, for we are exceedingly afraid and ashamed to speak of it. This very city, in which, as you all know, Christ Himself suffered for us, because our sins demanded it, has been reduced to the pollution of paganism and, I say it to our disgrace, withdrawn from the service of God.” (Pope Urban II, Balderic of Dol, Fordham)

“Let us suppose, for the moment, that Christ was not dead and buried, and had never lived any length of time in Jerusalem. Surely, if all this were lacking, this fact alone ought still to arouse you to go to the aid of the land and city — the fact that ‘Out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem!’” (Pope Urban II, Guibert de Nogent, Fordham)

“And you ought, furthermore, to consider with the utmost deliberation, if by your labors, God working through you, it should occur that the Mother of churches should flourish anew to the worship of Christianity, whether, perchance, He may not wish other regions of the East to be restored to the faith against the approaching time of the Antichrist.”

“For it is clear that Antichrist is to do battle not with the Jews, not with the Gentiles; but, according to the etymology of his name, He will attack Christians. And if Antichrist finds there no Christians (just as at present when scarcely any dwell there), no one will be there to oppose him, or whom he may rightly overcome.” (Pope Urban II, Guibert de Nogent, Fordham)

Pope Urban II called for defense of his fellow Christians who were under threat, and to retake Jerusalem that he said was rightfully theirs. (Forbes)

Thus began the crusades – a holy war.  The aristocracy of 11th-century Europe was indeed prepared to kill, if in service of the ‘right’ cause. And this was the ‘right’ cause for many of them. This warrior culture overlapped already with religion. They fought for family and for themselves, and certain types of warfare (in defense of the defenseless) could even lead to salvation.

In the end, Urban’s preaching tour inspired men to leave home, walk 2,500+ miles to Jerusalem, to kill people they’d never met and hardly heard of before. (Forbes)

The Crusades were waged by Christians against Muslims, Jews and fellow Christians. They were launched in the Middle East, in the Baltic, in Italy, in France and beyond.  (Smithsonian)  Between 1095 and 1291 there were seven major crusades.

Victorious leaders promptly divided up the territory into a small group of principalities that modern European historians have often called the “Crusader states.”

Crusading, or the idea of taking a holy vow to engage in military activity in exchange for spiritual reward, was refined over the next century, redirected to apply to whoever the pope decided might be an enemy of the faith (polytheists and Orthodox Christians in the north, Muslims in Iberia, heretics or rival European Christian powers in France and Italy).

In the Middle East, Jerusalem fell back into Islamic hands with the conquest of the city by the famed sultan Saladin in 1187. The last “Crusader” principality on the eastern Mediterranean coast, based out of the city of Acre, fell to the Mamluk ruler Baibars in 1291. (Smithsonian)

At this same time, stuff was happening in the Pacific, as well.

Using stratigraphic archaeology and refinements in radiocarbon dating, recent studies suggest it was about this same time 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)

“Most important from the perspective of Hawaiian settlement are the colonization dates for the Society Islands and the Marquesas, as these two archipelagoes have long been considered to be the immediate source regions for the first Polynesian voyagers to Hawai‘i. …”

“In sum, the southeastern archipelagoes and islands of Eastern Polynesia have a set of radiocarbon chronologies now converging on the period from AD 900–1000.”  (Kirch)

Research indicates human colonization of Eastern Polynesia took place much faster and more recently than previously thought. Polynesian ancestors settled in Samoa around 800 BC, colonized the central Society Islands between AD 1025 and 1120 and dispersed to New Zealand, Hawaiʻi and Rapa Nui and other locations between AD 1190 and 1290.  (Hunt; PVS)

With improved radiocarbon dating techniques and equipment to more than 1,400-radiocarbon dated materials from 47 islands, the model considers factors such as when a tree died rather than just when the wood was burned and whether seeds were gnawed by rats, which were introduced by humans.  (PVS)

“There is also no question that at least O‘ahu and Kauai islands were already well settled, with local populations established in several localities, by AD 1200.”  (Kirch)

Late and rapid dispersals explain remarkable similarities in artifacts such as fishhooks, adzes and ornaments across the region. The condensed timeframe suggests assumptions about the rates of linguistic evolution and human impact on pristine island ecosystems also need to be revised.  (PVS)

So, as the holy wars of the Crusades were waging into the Middle East, the Polynesians were first arriving and settling in what we refer to as the Hawaiian Islands.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Homeless

An often-repeated statement is, “The missionaries came to do good, and they did very well.”  (Suggesting the missionaries personally profited from their services in the Islands.)  It is simply not true.

A review of the facts shows that the missionaries were forbidden to “engage in any business or transaction whatever for the sake of private gain” and they did not, and could not, own property individually. Many sold what they had before taking the long trip to serve in the Islands.

To supply the mission members, a Common Stock system was initiated, a community-based economic system designed to enable the missionaries to accomplish their goals without having to worry about finding sustenance and shelter.  It was a socialistic, rather than capitalistic, economic structure.

Mission family members were allowed to keep personal gifts from family and friends as private property, but those gifts were subtracted from what they would otherwise be entitled to receive from the Depository.  (Woods)

In essence, except for the gifts of individuals to individuals, virtually no private property was actually held by the individual missionaries.

The missionaries were constantly reminded of Matthew Chapter 6, verse 24: “No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and mammon (money.)”  (Woods)

Hiram and Sybil Bingham were part of the Pioneer Company of missionaries who came to the Islands in 1820. “Life in the Paradise of the Pacific was anything but healthy in the years when Honolulu was a village of grass huts on a dusty plain.”  (Bingham) 

“Sybil was frail to begin with, if one can judge from her likeness in the portrait of the Binghams painted by Samuel FB Morse (of the Morse code and telegraph) before their departure for the Pacific: where an idealized Hiram gazes confidently from the little oval frame, Sybil’s long thin nose and watery blue eyes make her look as if she had a cold.”  (Bingham)

“For twenty years she worked with him and for him and bore his children, but the cost to nature was a wasted body that finally came to seem to Hiram more important than his mission.”

“Hiram anticipated that a few months rest in what they considered the more healthful climate of New England would put her on her feet, and they would return to carry on the great work with which the Mission Board had originally charged them.”  (Bingham)

On August 3, 1840, they sailed back to the continent on the Flora.  “The cabin of the Flora is very small, having three state-rooms, one of which belonging to the captain is the only one whose dimensions were intended, for comfort.”  (Olmstead)

They returned to New England. “Sybil’s health did not improve. … (she went to) Hartford to be nursed by her sister. She had a chronic cough. Whether she or Hiram knew it, she was dying of the prevailing malady, ‘consumption’ (tuberculosis).”  (Bingham)

The Binghams did not go back to a family estate and had not accumulated any money (or any context of wealth) while in the Islands.  (The missionaries were not paid under a salary system until 1848, well after the Binghams left.)

Back on the continent, the Binghams were effectively homeless.

Right after they arrived back at the continent, their son “nine-year old Hiram was shipped off to relatives and then to a succession of schools willing to take a penniless missionary’s son, and from then on his contact with his parents was mostly by letter.”

Sybil and the girls “had come to North Haven … hoping to board with a farmer who might allow them milk, but no farmer wanted to take in boarders, and the family where she has been staying, ‘with four hungry children, the fifth in arms, around a small kitchen table,’ can only afford to buy half a pint of milk a day and ‘one pound of cheese in the month.’”

They relied on “the hospitality of relatives and friends, placing his children in a succession of schools, and carrying on a voluminous correspondence with his children, with friends and supporters”.

“Sybil, committed to their ‘joint endeavor,’ went along while her waning strength lasted [and moved from] Boston, to Brooklyn, to Philadelphia, to upstate New York, to New Haven, to Norwich, to Boston again, then to Hartford to be nursed by her sister.”  (Bingham)

The separation of the family and movement from house to house and school to school lasted for about eight years.

Then, in 1847, “Hiram and Sybil had found a ‘refuge’ in Easthampton (Massachusetts) with ‘kind friends.’”

“This was the time of Mr [Samuel] Williston’s ‘benevolences.’ He may have admired Mr Bingham, but he had more personal feeling for Sybil, with whom he was connected on her mother’s side of the family.”

“He must have realized what it meant for her to have her children forever scattered, living with relatives, off at distant boarding schools as pensioners.”

Hiram Jr, “his parents and his sisters Lizzie and Lydia arrived and for a few months the dream of a family under one roof was realized.”

“With his button factory a success and his fortune growing, [Williston] had recently founded in Easthampton, his home town, the ‘Seminary’ that bore his name, and built himself a handsome mansion next door.”

“He arranged for the admission of the three younger Bingham children, and helped the family find a house nearby to rent. And so, for the last year of her life Sybil had a home, and three of her children with her. … Sybil died in her rocking chair on February 27, 1848 in Easthampton, Massachusetts.”

In 1852, Hiram married Naomi Morse and helped at her Seminary for Young Ladies in New Haven.  Hiram Jr was ordained in New Haven and married Minerva Clarissa (Clara) Brewster; together they sailed from Boston, December 2, 1856, bound, via Cape Horn, not for the Sandwich Islands, only 18,000 miles away, but for the Gilbert Islands in Micronesia, 2,500 miles farther. (Bingham)

In 1867, the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society (HMCS – an organization consisting of the children of the missionaries and adopted supporters) decided to support a girls’ boarding school.

HMCS invited Miss Lydia Bingham (daughter of Reverend Hiram Bingham, leader of the Pioneer Company of missionaries to Hawaiʻi) to return to Honolulu to be a teacher in this family school; she was then principal of the Ohio Female College, at College Hill, Ohio.

In January 1869, her sister, Miss Elizabeth Kaʻahumanu (Lizzie) Bingham, arrived from the continent to be an assistant to her sister. Lizzie was a graduate of Mount Holyoke and, when she was recruited, was a teacher at Rockford Female Seminary.  (Beyer)  Hiram I died later that year.

Later, Lydia and Lizzie’s niece (daughter of Hiram’s first child Sophia Bingham), Clara Lydia Moseley (later Sutherland), joined them at Kawaiaha‘o.

“When Miss Bingham came to Hilo (on October 13, 1873 she married Titus Coan,) the seminary was committed to the charge of her sister (Lizzie), whose earnest labors for seven years in a task that is heavy and exhausting so reduced her strength, that in June, 1880 she was obliged to resign her post.”  (Coan)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

The ‘Big House’ at Riverside Park

Within what is now called Hilo Bay is a small bay referred to as ‘Reed’s Bay.’  It is named after William H Reed. Born in 1814 Belfast, Ireland, Reed was a businessman. He created Reed’s Landing, which he used to moor boats carrying lumber for one of his businesses.  (Hawaiʻi County)

Reed arrived in the Islands in the 1840s and set up a contracting concern specializing in the construction of wharfs, landings, bridges and roads.  Other interests included ranching, trading and retailing.  (Clark)

Across Hilo Bay, on January 1, 1856, Reed leased a 26-acre island – originally known as ‘Koloiki’ (‘little crawling,’) – it was once surrounded by the Wailuku River and Waikapu Stream.

Reed cleared a portion of the site and had a cattle pasture; he then purchased the island for $200 on February 18, 1861, and it became known as Reed’s Island.  (Warshauer)

Reed married Jane Stobie Shipman on July 8, 1868 (she was a widow, previously married to William Cornelius Shipman, a missionary assigned to Waiʻōhinu in the district of Kaʻū.  Shipman died in 1861, leaving Jane with her three children, William Herbert, Oliver Taylor and Margaret Clarissa.)

(Son William Herbert (1854-1943) was an important businessman on the Island of Hawaii; son Oliver Taylor (1857-1942) became a tax assessor and county supervisor, and daughter Margaret Clarissa (1859-1891) married politician Lorrin Thurston who organized the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Jane was born in Scotland. At an early age she came to the US with her parents, lived in Quincy, Illinois, and was educated to be a teacher; and in 1853 was married to Reverend Shipman.  (The Friend, December, 1902)

Following his death, Jane moved to Hilo, with her three children and maintained the family by keeping a boarding school until 1868 (when she was married to Reed.)  (The Friend, December, 1902)

William Reed died on November 11, 1880 with no children of his own; Jane inherited the Reed land holdings.  (In 1881, Reed’s stepson William Herbert Shipman and two partners (Captain J. E. Eldarts and Samuel M Damon) purchased the entire ahupuaʻa of Keaʻau, about 70,000-acres from the King Lunalilo estate.)

“[B]efore Reed’s Island was in demand for residence sites DH Hitchcock grew a crop of pineapples there that was sufficient to supply the demand in Hilo.” (Hawaii Herald, June 29, 1899)

Apparently, upon the death of Reed, the land was under the control of his stepson, WH Shipman, who sold the island to AB Loebenstein.   (Warshauer)

The November 6, 1897 Hilo Daily Tribune reported that “Mr CS Desky has purchased Reed’s Island, in the Wailuku River, and the same will be subdivided and sold.  It is proposed to construct a fine bridge to span the stream, and lay out streets and otherwise make this pretty spot an ideal one for homes.” For a while the development was renamed Riverside Park.

JR Wilson, owner/operator of the Volcano Stables, who operated a daily stage between Hilo and Volcano, “purchased of Bruce Waring & Co the celebrated lot on the Riverside Park, on the point near the bridge”.  (Hilo Daily Tribune, March 11, 1899)

The April 6, 1899 Hawai‘i Herald reported, “The handsome steel bridge over the Wailuku was finished last week.” It goes on to report, “JR Wilson was the first person to drive over the bridge at Riverside Park and the around the Island.  In spite of this Mr Pratt felt that it is necessary to test the bridge by running the steam roller over it.”

On April 20, 1899, the Hawaii Herald reported, “The recent improvements made by Bruce Waring & Co upon the Riverside Park property, commonly called Reed’s Island, makes this by far the most attractive residence property in Hilo.”

“The plans for the Wilson residence are to be placed in the hands of local contractors this week … a representative of this paper was permitted to see the plans drawn by a local architect [KL Kerr] and which Mr Wilson took with him to Honolulu for revision, and they show a residence unique and attractive in every way designed especially for the lot, which commands a view extending over the harbor on the east, and the mountains westward.”

“It promises to be the handsomest residence in town at present, and the interior plans show it to be as commodious and convenient as it is handsome.”  (Hilo Daily Tribune, May 27, 1899)

Wilson’s was the first house to be built in the new subdivision. They moved into the house in mid-April, 1900. (Hawaii Heald)  “The Wilson residence built where it commands a view of all Hilo and the country from the sea to mountain is completed and Mr Wilson and family are enjoying ‘all the comforts of a home.’” (Hawaii Herald, April 19, 1900)

Then, on March 1, 1901, the newspaper reported, “Mr WH Shipman has purchased the Wilson residence at Riverside Park, for $12,000.”  (Hilo Daily Tribune, March 1, 1901)

The newspaper further noted, “Mr Shipman had previously been contemplating the erection of a new home on the site of is present dwelling, at Waiakea, but for various reasons has decided to make a home nearer town.” (Hilo Daily Tribune, March 1, 1901)

The ‘Big House,’ as the early Shipmans called it, stands at the lower end of Reed’s Island, a landlocked area within walking distance of downtown Hilo but cut off by the deep gulches of the Wailuku River and the Waikapu Stream. (Thompson)

Around this time, Wilson was formulating and developing the Ho‘olulu Race Track.  “Hilo is going to have a race track and base ball grounds. … Mr Wilson selected a site at Waiakea … The track will be almost circular in form”. (Hawaii Herald, March 1, 1900)  The baseball field was located inside the race track.  (Hilo Daily Tribune, March 17, 1900) That venture was considered a success.

A possible motivation for selling the home after only 1-year was noted in the newspaper, “JR Wilson has disposed of his interests in the Volcano Stables Co and will retire from the management of the corporation on April 1 next. The change on the part of Me Wilson was made solely on account of his health which has not been good since his return from the Coast.”  (Hawaii Herald, January 17, 1901)

Several April 1901 notices in the paper noted, “During my absence from the islands WS Wise will act for me under full pwer of attorney.” (Dated April 3, 1901) (Hawaii Herald)  In 1902, the paper reported, “JR Wilson formerly of this city, now in Nevada …” (Hilo Tribune, March 7, 1902)

(So, the land that had once been owned by his stepfather and, then, at the stepfather’s death transferred to his mother and WH Shipman sold it in 1897 to Loebenstein and Wilson built a house on the best part of it, returned back to WH Shipman and became his home.  The house is still owned by members of the Shipman family.)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

The Fever

“The first symptoms of the fever is a restless sensation – an excited state of the system – a wild expression of the eye – and a light and elastic tread. These symptoms are followed with a desire to obtain implements for digging and washing …” (Polynesian, July 15, 1848)

There are “fearful ravages of a terrible fever which has nearly depopulated all the seaport towns and caused general rush to the interior. It is not exactly the yellow fever, but a fever for a yellow substance, called gold.”

“An exceedingly rich gold mine has been discovered in the Sacramento Valley, and all class all sexes have deserted their occupation and rushed en masse to the mines to make their fortune.”

“The gold taken from this newly discovered mine is not gold ore, but pure virgin gold. It is procured by the simple process of digging and washing, and is obtained at the rate of from two to four ounces per day by each laborer.”  (Polynesian, June 24, 1848)

The great California gold rush began on January 24, 1848, when James W Marshall discovered a gold nugget in the American River while constructing a sawmill for John Sutter, a Sacramento agriculturalist. News of Marshall’s discovery brought thousands of immigrants to California from elsewhere in the United States and from other countries.

At first, there were only two routes. The first entailed a six-month sea voyage from New York around the tip of South America to San Diego or San Francisco. Rampant seasickness, bug-infested food, boredom, and high expense made this route unattractive for many would-be prospectors.

The second route brought travelers over the Oregon-California Trail in covered wagons—over rugged terrain and hostile territory. This journey also averaged six months’ duration.

By 1850, the length and difficulty of both routes had inspired the construction of the Panama Railway, the world’s first transcontinental railroad. Built across the isthmus of Panama by private American companies to speed travel to California, the railroad helped to shave months off of the long voyage around South America.

In addition to massive emigration from the eastern US, the California gold rush triggered a global emigration of ambitious fortune-seekers from China, Germany, Chile, Mexico, Ireland, Turkey, and France. The number of Chinese gold-seekers was particularly large, though many Chinese did not intend to settle in the United States, which they called “the Gold Mountain.”  (harvard-edu)

It is estimated that not less than two hundred foreigners have left the Sandwich Islands for the gold mines in California.— Others it is rumored will soon follow. At the latest intelligence from the gold region there was no falling off in the amount of gold that rewarded the labors of the miner …”  (the Friend, September 1, 1848)

“The rush, to that part of the world, flows in unabated. One hundred and eight vessels, are reported to have left the Atlantic States, for San Francisco, during the month of December. … The mines continue to yield the usual amount of gold, and no sign of being exhausted. The freshet and overflowings of the numerous streams and rivers, are reported to increase the amount of gold in the ‘diggings.’”  (The Friend, April 1, 1850)

And, they came from Hawaiʻi … hundreds of Hawaiians came to California to work in the mines.  Remaining place names, Kanaka Creek and Kanaka Bar remind us of their early presence in the gold country.

Others from Hawaiʻi, even some of the missionaries, joined in the quest for gold.

“Several other vessels left port some for California, which has become a very interesting quarter, since the reports have reached us of the gold mines.”  (August 1, 1848)  “Comore. Jones has gone to St. Francisco and it is said he will put a stop to the private operations in the gold district, and will claim the district & the gold for the U. S. government.”  (Levi Chamberlain, August 8, 1848)

“There is at present a great excitement here about digging gold in California. … Mr. Douglass and Mr. Lyman of whom you have heard as former assistants in our school are both there, also — Mr. Ricord, the former attorney general. … Men, women, and children are all absorbed in it, the one great thing Gold.”  (Julia Cooke, September 21, 1848)

Reverend Damon of the Seamen’s Bethel Church and publisher of The Friend travelled the area – not as a miner, but an observer of the activities there.

“In travelling through the country I have met scores of seamen with whom I had become acquainted while at Honolulu.  I was cordially welcomed, although in more than a single instance they exclaimed ‘you are the last man that we expected to see at the mines.’ A few words of explanation were however sufficient to set the matter right.”  (Damon, The Friend, December 1, 1848)

Thomas Hopu and William Kanui, who returned to the islands with the Pioneer Company of missionaries in 1820, joined the gold rush.  Damon saw them in Sacramento on his journey through the area.

John Thomas Gulick, son of the Gulick missionary family, joined the rush after seeking his parents’ permission. By June 1849, his prospecting was reasonably successful, but after having his money stolen, he returned to Hawaii a few months later after having recovered his finances through various trading ventures.  (Bennett)

Likewise, the Reverend Lowell Smith, the first minister of Kaumakapili Church, sailed to San Francisco for a rest because of poor health.  He visited the California gold fields.

“Kamae went immediately to speak to the Hawaiians in other places to come so we might be together for the week. I witnessed their work in the gold fields …. They were not able to obtain much on account of the scarcity of water. Some made a dollar a day, others two dollars, and still others, nothing.”  (Smith; Kenn, HHS)

The California Gold Rush drawing Hawaiians to the continent was not its only effect on the Islands; the Hawaiian economy was affected in several ways – good and not-so-good.

Prior to the Gold Rush, supporting the Pacific whaling and trading fleets and trade between the West Coast and Hawaiʻi was the scale of the Hawaiʻi participation.  The scale of that significantly changed with the Gold Rush.

Hawaiʻi was only three to five weeks away, and with the growing population drawn to the gold fields, in addition to provisioning ships, Hawaiʻi farmers were feeding the gold seekers on the continent.

There were some down sides; this also brought a marked increase in the prices of consumer goods, especially food, caused by the great increase in agricultural exports to California, which offered very profitable new markets.  (Rawls)

Likewise, the exodus to the continent created a critical labor shortage in Hawaiʻi, where a sizeable number of sugar plantation workers migrated to the California gold fields.

The parting of workers from the plantations between 1848 and 1853 was so large, Hawaiʻi sugar producers began to seek Chinese immigrants to fill the gap.  (Rawls)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kohala Ditch

Central to Hawaiʻi’s use of water has been agriculture, sugar in particular.

Initially brought to the islands by early Polynesians, the first successful commercial sugar plantation started in 1835.  And, with it, Hawai`i’s environmental, social and economic fabric changed.  Hawaiʻi’s economy turned toward sugar in the decades between 1860 and 1880; these twenty years were pivotal in building the plantation system.

What encouraged the development of plantation centers?  For one, the American settlement of California opened lucrative avenues of trade in the Pacific.  In addition, the Civil War virtually shut down Louisiana sugar production during the 1860s, enabling Hawai’i to compete in a California market that paid elevated prices for sugar.

The Pacific whaling trade collapsed after 1860, pushing Honolulu merchants into the sugar trade.  About the same time, the closing of the Hawaiian mission left the previously supported missionaries in search of new means of income.

The 1876 Treaty of Reciprocity between the United States and the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi eliminated the major trade barrier to Hawai`i’s closest and major market.  Through the treaty, the US received a station at Pearl Harbor and Hawaiʻi’s sugar planters received duty-free entry into US markets for their sugar.

For nearly a century, agriculture was the Island’s leading economic activity. It provided Hawai`i’s major sources of employment, tax revenues, and new capital through exports of raw sugar and other farm products.

Sugarcane requires a lot of water to grow. Pioneer sugar planters solved water shortages by diverting stream water and building irrigation systems that included aqueducts (the first in 1856), artesian wells (the first in 1879), and tunnels and mountain wells (the first in 1898).  These irrigation systems enabled the planters to expand their sugar production.

These irrigation systems were modeled largely after the elaborate and extensive diversion and ditches developed by the ancient Hawaiians.  Unlike the traditional Hawaiian system, which never diverted more than 50% of stream flow, the sugar plantations diverted large quantities of water from perennial streams and moved water from one ahupuaʻa to another.

Boston missionary Reverend Elias Bond sailed with the Ninth Company of Protestant Missionaries, arriving in the Islands in 1841. He was then assigned to Kohala.

As a means to provide employment to the people in the region and support his church and schools, in 1862, Reverend Bond founded Kohala Sugar Company, known as “The Missionary Plantation;” it produced its first sugar crop in 1865.  Bond gave all his dividends and profits beyond his living expenses to the Board of Missions.

Bond included the following in a letter: “So this was the ‘Missionary Plantation’, and the prophecies were many and loud that it would not live five years”. But in the goodness of God we came through.”  (Schweitzer)

From the mid-1800s, the sugar industry developed and commercial centers sprung up around the processing mills, especially in Kapaʻau and Hawi.  The construction of the railroad and the Kohala Ditch acted to encourage the further development of these more centrally-located communities.

Seven sugar mills operated in Kohala: Kohala, Union, Niuliʻi, Hawi, Halawa, Hōʻea and Star.  With the exception of Star, which existed for only a brief period of time, each was the nucleus of a community of plantation managers, supervisors, and laborers.  (In 1937, all of the mills were consolidated into Kohala Sugar Company.)

To water the crop, John Hind first conceived of an irrigation system tapping into the abundant, wild and inaccessible rivers that ribbon the Kohala Mountains.  In 1904, JS Low acquired a license from the Territory of Hawaiʻi to “enter upon, confine, conserve, collect, impound and divert all the running natural surface waters on the Kohala-Hāmākua Watershed;” he assigned the license to the Kohala Ditch Company.

Notable engineers and other professionals became involved in the construction of irrigation ditches that were the forerunners of large irrigation projects in the Western US.  Among the engineers was Michael Maurice O’Shaugnessy; he was both an investor in the Kohala Ditch Company and the Chief Engineer for the aqueduct.  (ASCE)

The Kohala Ditch, built by the Kohala Sugar Company, diverted water from the Honokāne Nui Stream to Hikapoloa, west of Hawi.  600-Japanese laborers worked on its construction; in the process, 17 lost their lives.

The laborers were housed under corrugated iron roofs. The raised floors “nearly always two-feet above the ground and higher if practicable” provided “a place for drying the men’s clothes in wet weather.” Additionally, “a hospital and medical department was also provided for the men, who were assessed 50-cents a month apiece for this object.”  (ASCE)

The Honokāne section of Kohala Ditch was opened on June 11, 1906; waters of Honokāne began flowing to the Kohala, Niuliʻi, Halawa, Hawi and Union mills.  The Awini section was finished in 1907; it started from the Waikoloa stream and traveled over 8-miles, mostly in tunnel, to the Awini weir where the water dropped 900-feet in a manmade waterfall into the Honokāne section.

The ditch carried the water for 23-miles northwest, mostly as tunnel, toward Hawi.  The capacity was originally 70-mgd, later reduced to 50-mgd, when the original flumes were replaced with smaller ones.

The ditch drops about 80-feet in elevation from 1,045-feet at the bottom of the intake at the first large stream (Honokāne) to 956-feet at the terminus in the plantation fields.

Prosperity came to Kohala. At the peak of its production, the Sugar Company had 600-employees; 13,000-acres of land produced 45,000-tons of raw sugar a year.

As with other sugar operations, it didn’t last.  1975 saw the last harvest at Kohala Sugar Company.  The district’s economy struggled.  Almost one-third of the workforce now commutes to South Kohala to work in the hotels and resorts located there.  However, the Ditch remained open for other agricultural needs.

Vulnerability and the risks associated with reliance on the Kohala Ditch were made evident on October 15, 2006, when two earthquakes struck off Kiholo and caused extensive damage to the Kohala Ditch.  In that instant, rockslides and other damage to the ditch stopped the water from flowing through the Ditch.

Two years later, on November 25, 2008, after extensive community involvement and public/private funding ($2-million in federal money, $500,000 from the state, $500,000 from Hawai`i County, $342,000 from Kamehameha Schools and $100,000 from AT&T), water was released back into the Kohala Ditch after repairs to the damage caused by the 2006 quakes.

Agricultural and hydroelectric users continue to benefit from the Ditch; in addition, entrepreneurs saw an opportunity for recreational/visitor industry uses of the ditch with kayak and raft rides through the flumes and tunnels of the Kohala Ditch.

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