Images of Old Hawaiʻi

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British View on ‘commerce of the Sandwich Islands’ (1829)

“During a recent visit to several of the beautiful islands of Polynesia, I recorded all the information that I could collect respecting
them, and my observations thereupon.”

“The following sketches are an attempt to describe what I beheld of the scenery of these islands, together with the manners, customs, manufactures, &c. of the people.”

“Formerly I had read much respecting the South-Sea Islands, and their scenery, productions and inhabitants, as described in the various works that I perused, captivated my imagination.”

“The importance of these islands as respects their capability of producing those articles of commerce which are peculiar to tropical climates, has not sufficiently excited the attention of the mercantile community of Great Britain.”

“As by our commerce we have attained that prosperity which ranks our country so high among European nations, every subject, which is connected with it, ought to be considered of importance …”

“… the commerce of the Sandwich Islands alone, by the industry and perseverance of the enterprising people of the United States of America, is calculated at a million and upwards of dollars annually, and may be considered to be gradually on the increase.”

“This commerce, through our neglect, has for years been enjoyed solely by the American merchants; even now, excepting two or three mercantile speculators, but of trivial importance, who are British subjects …”

“… the trade is exclusively confined to the merchants of the United States, who have laudably permitted no opportunity to escape by which their commerce might be extended, and it is gradually now on the increase over the Polynesian Islands.”

“Not only in a mercantile point of view are the Sandwich Islands of importance; their geographical situation renders them an acquisition when politically considered, more particularly since the South American States have gained their independence.”

“The Americans view those islands with a jealous eye, and dread seeing them in the possession of a foreign power; they are well aware of their importance …”

“… and the visits of their ships of war for the purpose of keeping up a close intercourse with the king and native chiefs has become of late very frequent.”

“The following account of the visit of the American ship of war Vincennes, with the accompanying document sent by the Government of the United States to the King of the Sandwich Islands, sufficiently demonstrates the interest taken by them in these islands.”

“On the 15th Capt. Finch and his officers met the king and chiefs at the palace of Kauikeaouli, where they were gratified with a friendly reception.”

“The commander of the Vincennes then read a communication of his own to the king, and gave him both the original and a translation in the native language.”

“He then read also the communication from the President of the United States to the King of the Sandwich Islands, which he had brought; the same being read also from a translation into the native language, was delivered into the hands of the king.”

“This being finished, Capt. Finch delivered the presents which the President had sent. A pair of globes, terrestrial and celestial, and a map of the United States, to the King.”

“A silver vase to Kaahumanu, with her name and the American arms upon it. Two silver goblets to Nahienaena, with her name and the American arms. A map of the world to Governor Boki; and also a map of the world to Governor Adams.”

“The missionaries at the Sandwich Islands are now solely Americans, and all communication with the government being carried on through them as interpreters, all their acts must naturally tend to benefit that country alone of which they are citizens.”

“Civilization and commerce will gradually advance, if the first undertakings in the latter are not commenced on too extensive and too expensive a system.”

“The value now attached to coco-nut oil, since the late valuable discovery of its capability of being manufactured into candles, will render it an extensive article of commerce, and the tree is abundantly produced over nearly the whole of Polynesia …”

“… varieties of flax, Béche de mer, tortoise shell, &c. are now procured, and, by attention, sugar, cotton, and other tropical produce might be readily cultivated; the sugar manufactured by Mr. Bicknell and my friend Mr. S. P. Henry, at Tahiti, was of a superior kind and of a remarkably fine flavour, and affords an instance of what these islands are capable of producing.”

“A great benefit would be conferred on the navigators of the Southern Pacific, studded as it is with an infinite number of islands, reefs, &c. and the anxiety and danger would be diminished …”

“… if the British Government would send annually a small vessel of war from Sydney, for the purpose of surveying and ascertaining accurately the positions of the various islands, groups of islands and reefs.”

“The number of new discoveries annually made by the English and American whalers are very numerous, but the situations as laid down by them, are seldom to be depended on.”

“A vessel appointed for the purpose of survey should touch at Oahu, Sandwich Islands, and Bay of Islands, New Zealand, those being the principal ports of resort for the whalers and other vessels frequenting this sea …”

“… every information respecting recent discoveries could be readily obtained at those places, and of which, during my visit to the former port in December 1829, there existed a long list, most of which were not to be found in the charts.” (George Bennett, Member Of The Royal College Of Surgeons In London; in the Islands in 1829)

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George_Bennett_1840s
George_Bennett_1840s

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EE Black

He was born Everette Earl Black. His company was called EE Black; folks called him ‘Johnny’.

“My partner that worked in the same stuff with me in the mine – I think we’d been in and had a beer, as I remember, and had come out that here was this good-looking girl and her mother, older woman, standing on the corner.”

“I said, ‘I’ll bet you a buck I can make mother and all.’ So I went up to her and I said, ‘Good evening.’ She had to introduce me to her mother and she called me Johnny Jones and the Johnny stuck.”

Black “was born on a log cabin ten miles from Terre Haute”, Indiana in 1889. His father “was originally a farmer, and then a carpenter, then a railroad car builder – freight cars first and then passenger cars later – for the Pennsylvania Railroad.”

“(W)e were what they called poor honest people. … I started selling papers on the street when I was nine years old, and as I got older I had a paper route and I had a paper route all the way through engineering school till I was twenty-two.” He also sold drawing instruments for Keuffel Instrument Agency.

“I graduated actually in electrical engineering. I was offered a job – I don’t know whether it was Westinghouse or General Electric now – at fourteen cents an hour, ten hours a day, six days a week. I was doing better than that with the rackett I had selling papers and instruments and stuff like that, so I wasn’t interested.”

So I had an uncle in Victor, Colorado on the old (Portland Mining Company) gold mine and I shook him down for a job, so I worked in the gold mine for a year after I graduated and got a little money ahead … I didn’t have the education sufficient to give me a chance to go up … So I left to Salt Lake and got a job at the Garfield Smelter”.

He and George Collins “got seventy- five dollars a month. George Collins married ‘Tillie Neumann from Honolulu here who was related to the Hackfelds who ran the H Hackfeld which is now American Factors, and he had a job on the Waiahole tunnel to develop water for the high cane fields”.

“He wired me that there was a job for $150.00 if I wanted it, because I’d had experience in driving tunnels. So I went back to Victor, Colorado and got my gal (Ruth Aliene Emens) and we came out here and arrived on the old Sonoma on the 10th of June, 1913.”

“Then I got a job with the US Army Engineers in fortification and river and harbor work, and l had to be a civil engineer to get over a hundred dollars, so I passed the civil engineer examination and got raised to $125. 00.”

“I worked there about three years and then I got a job with the City and County as an engineer, mostly project engineer on improvements that they were doing then, and became assistant city engineer at one time.”

“It was during this time that EF Ford had a job of paving Lusitana Street and he had a superintent … that knew less about running a job than he should have and Mr Lord was losing his shirt and he got excited.”

“I said, ‘I can do the engineering work here for the city and county and run your job, too, better that it’s being run now.’ And he looked at me and said, ‘You’re not fooling, huh?’ I said, ‘I’m sure not fooling..”

“So I went to work with the men. l used to work with them, shoveling concrete and that sort of stuff because there was a lot of handwork in those days … it changed from a losing job to a profitable job so he offered me a job working for him as an engineer assistant to him, So I went to work for him for three years.”

Black later left Lord and “got a job with an old contracting company, Hawaiian Contracting Company, and I was in charge of quite a lot of the work on the famous Doheny work tanks and piers and one thing and another down at Pearl Harbor … (I earned) my first five thousand dollar bonus that paid for my house.”

“Then Mr Lord offered me a forty percent interest in the company if I’d come back after some three years and I went back to work with him, and not too long afterwards he wanted to get out, so that he took the money and I took the plant and in 1930 it became EE Black, Limited.”

The company was originally headquartered on O‘ahu, where it maintained its own office building, maintenance/ wood working shops, steel fabricating facilities and heavy equipment storage yard. It is well tooled and financed to serve as general contractor.

In 1958, the Black Group of Companies expanded his Hawai‘i-based operations westward to Guam with the construction of 1,050 concrete single and duplex buildings for the Capehart Military Housing area at Andersen Air Force Base Guam.

In 1962 Robert Black Everett Earl’s son took control of his father’s company and formed EE Black Ltd’s subsidiary on Guam known today as Black Construction Corp.

EE Black became one of Hawai‘i’s largest contractors. “I received a tremendous amount of help from people all over this state, and it makes me feel very humble because I’ve been given credit for things that other people have come pretty near doing themselves.”

In 2008, merger of Tutor-Saliba and Perini Corporation took place which made EE Black, Ltd. a Tutor Perini company. The parent company office is located in Sylmar, California. The company eventually withdrew from Hawai‘i to focus on its operations in Guam.

Over the years, Black has developed diversity and flexibility. The increasing number of new clients as well as repeat clients enhanced its reputation, earning the company’s slogan “On Track with Black”. (EE Black) (The bulk of this information is from an oral history interview with EE ‘Johnny’ Black.)

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EE Black Cranes
EE Black Cranes

by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Plantation Camps

“I want (my children) to remember that the parents, grandparents were part of that company, the sugar company. The parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, you know, down the line, the older generation.”

“I want (my children) to think about the older generation, what they gone through for make you possible, as a young generation coming up, eh? That the sugar made you a family, too.” (John Mendes, former Hāmākua Sugar Company worker; UH Center for Oral History)

A century after Captain James Cook’s arrival in Hawaiʻi, sugar plantations started to dominate the Hawaiian landscape. A shortage of laborers to work in the growing (in size and number) sugar plantations became a challenge. The only answer was imported labor.

Starting in the 1850s, labor shortages were eased by bringing in contract workers from Asia, Europe and North America. There were three big waves of workforce immigration: Chinese 1852; Japanese 1885 and Filipinos 1905.

Several smaller, but substantial, migrations also occurred: Portuguese 1877; Norwegians 1880; Germans 1881; Puerto Ricans 1900; Koreans 1902 and Spanish 1907.

The different languages and unusual names created problems; because of this, sugar plantation owners devised an identification system to keep workers sorted out. Upon each laborer’s arrival, a plantation official gave them a metal tag called a bango.

The bango was made of brass or aluminum and had a number printed on one side. It was usually worn on a chain around their neck. Bangos came in different shapes. The shape you wore was determined by your race. Every plantation used bangos. (Lassalle) “They never call a man by his name. Always by his bango, 7209 or 6508 in that manner.” (Takaki)

Plantation camps, developed to house workers and their families, were once scattered among the cane fields. The plantation camps were segregated by ethnicity as well as by occupational rank. Most had the “Japanese camp,” “the Puerto Rican camp,” “the Filipino camp.” (Merry) “There was one called ‘Alabama Camp.’ “Alabama?” “Yeah; we used to have Negroes working on the plantation.” (Takaki)

Supervisors, called lunas, were generally haole (white,) native Hawaiian or Portuguese until the early twentieth century, or Japanese by midcentury. They lived in special parts of the plantation housing, divided from those of other backgrounds by roads and by rules not to play with the children across the street.

The plantation manager typically lived in the “big house” across the street, and although his children might sneak out to play with the workers, his social life revolved around visits with other haole manager families. (Merry)

After cane railroads came into use, field camps were discontinued almost entirely and everyone lived close to the mill. (MacDonald)

While the emigration of Japanese women during the picture bride era changed the composition of the plantation camps there still remained a large community of single male laborers. In 1910 men outnumbered adult women 2-to-1 in the Territory and in some communities, the sex ratio was even more skewed. (Bill)

The canefields were a social space as well as worksite. With families to care for, women had little free time and fieldwork offered daily contact with other women. The companionship of others is what women most often remember about their field work days. (Bill)

The camps were self-sufficient and resources, hours, and pay were tightly controlled by the plantation management. As their contracts expired, members of these ethnic groups either moved back to their home countries, or moved to “plantation towns” and began mercantile business, boarding houses bars, restaurants, billiard halls, dance halls and movie theaters. (Historic Honokaa Project)

Company towns with schools, churches, businesses, hospitals, and recreational facilities emerged as workers raised families on the plantations. (Bill)

“We bought most of our food and clothing from the plantation stores and, if our families were short of cash, credit would be provided. Some children were born at home, but most of us were born in and treated for our illnesses at the plantation hospital.”

“We were entertained (in a) recreational building provided by the plantation. Our young people, especially the males, enjoyed the ballparks provided – again – by the plantations. … (W)e worshiped in church building provided by plantation management for the large groups who worshiped and conducted religious instruction in the language of their members.” (Nagtalon-Miller)

While the public schools in the rural areas of Hawaii were not under direct control of plantation management, they were looked upon as an extension of the plantation because virtually every child had parents who worked on the plantation.

School principal and teachers were often included in the social milieu of the plantations hierarchy, and school program tended to represent middle-class American values of hard work and upward mobility, which have motivated second generation children from the early 1930s to the present.

Although immigrants did not own their own homes or lots (everything was owned by the plantations, which provided for most of their needs), our families were largely content with this economic support system. In any case, for most people there was no alternative.

Most laborers had little or no schooling. We lived in groups where language and cultural values were shared. While wages were meager, women took in laundry, made and sold ethnic foods, and did sewing to supplement their husbands’ pay, and many people were able to send money regularly to parents, siblings, or wives and children who remained in the Philippines, enabling them to buy property or finance an education. (Nagtalon-Miller)

“The plantation took care of us. The plantation was everybody’s mom over here. They held us. I mean, you had plantation life, and then you get the real world. And we were so sheltered.” (Dardenella Gamayo, Pa‘auhau resident; UH Center for Oral History)

Make no mistake; life on the plantation was hard.

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Beyond the Boundaries

In ancient Hawai‘i, most of the makaʻāinana (‘common people’) were farmers, a few were fishermen. Tenants cultivated smaller crops for family consumption, to supply the needs of chiefs and provide tributes.

Access to resources was tied to residency and earned as a result of taking responsibility to steward the environment and supply the needs of aliʻi. The social structure reinforced land management – the primary land unit was the ahupuaʻa.

Resources not only sustained the occupants, they were also used to pay tributes to the King. Missionary Samuel Ruggles noted in his journal (June 17, 1820:) “The King’s rent has been brought in from all parts of the Island and from Onehow (Niʻihau) a small Island about 15 miles to the westward.”

“It consisted of hogs, dogs, mats, tappers, feathers, pearl fishhooks, calabashes and paddles. This rent is to go to Owhyhee (Hawaiʻi) as a present to the young King.”

“It was interesting to see the natives come, sometimes more than a hundred at a time, with their loads on their backs and lay down their offerings at the feet of their great and good Chief as they call him.” (Ruggles)

A typical ahupuaʻa was a long strip of land, narrow at its mountain summit top and becoming wider as it ran down a valley into the sea to the outer edge of the reef. If there was no reef then the sea boundary would be about one mile from the shore.

Shaped by island geography, ahupuaʻa varied in shape and size (from as little as 100-acres to more than 100,000-acres.) Each ahupuaʻa had its own name and boundary lines. Often the boundary markers were natural features such as a large rock or a line of trees or even the home of a certain bird. A valley ahupuaʻa usually used its ridges and peaks as boundaries.

The traditional land tenure system in ancient Hawaiʻi had at its core the presence of water (however, some ahupuaʻa did not have perennial streams or springs.) Although of many shapes and sizes, the typical ahupuaʻa consisted of three area types: mountain, plain and sea. Ahupuaʻa contained nearly all the resources Hawaiians required for survival.

In ancient Hawaiian times, relatives and friends exchanged products. The upland dwellers brought poi, taro and other foods to the shore to give to kinsmen there. The shore dweller gave fish and other seafood.

The emphasis on economic self-sufficiency in Hawaiian ahupua‘a resonates in our modern world with concerns for environmental and economic sustainability.

But the general perception of ahupua‘a self-sufficiency is quite different from demonstrated large scale movement of basalt and volcanic glass artifacts between island districts and sometimes between islands. (Mills)

Although control over agricultural production was doubtless central to the Hawaiian political economy, to this we can add a significant role of an exchange economy based on the control and distribution of other kinds of goods and resources.

One such resource, which fortunately is well represented in the archaeological record, consists of high-quality, fine-grained volcanic rock. (Kirch)

Many sources of stone within most ahupua‘a could have been used to make adzes (albeit of lesser quality.) It was the structure of ancient Hawaiian culture that led to the development of preferred sources outside of the ahupua‘a being used.

The ahupuaʻa of Kaʻohe in the Hāmākua district of Hawaiʻi Island, and its rich resource of basalt for adze making, helps illustrate this.

Kaʻohe is an irregular ahupua‘a because it only occupies a narrow (and relatively resource-poor) band along the coast where most of the residents would have lived.

But as Kaʻohe ascends the eastern slope of Mauna Kea and emerges above the forest near 6,000-ft in elevation, it expands to occupy the entire summit region.

The uplands of Kaʻohe would have contained few food resources beyond ground-nesting birds. The primary evidence of pre-contact human utilization of Kaʻohe’s vast mountain region is the adze quarry, which would have provided Kaʻohe with a valuable resource to exchange with other ahupua‘a. (Mills)

Likewise, Kahikinui on Maui, shows that, although the district’s residents exploited local stone sources for the majority of their tool production, they nonetheless imported slightly more than one-quarter of their lithic resources from outside of their own political district.

Clearly, even though they were capable of being self-sufficient in stone resources, they chose to import a significant quantity of high-quality volcanic rock, either as raw material or as finished adzes. (Kirch)

Moreover, archeologists have found disproportionately high frequency of fine-grained volcanic rock artifacts (from outside the specific ahupuaʻa) in high-status residence sites or ritual, temple complexes.

This strongly suggests that control over access to and distribution of these stone resources was controlled by aliʻi, who would likely have included the district chief (aliʻi ‘ai moku) and ahupua‘a-level sub-chiefs (aliʻi ‘ai ahupua‘a,) as well as the land managers (konohiki) and priests (kāhuna.) (Kirch)

Some early historical texts also hint at other kinds of exchange with others from other districts, including peddlers who traveled with goods between districts, regular exchange of foodstuffs, woods and fibers between moku, and even ‘fairs’ for barter between different districts. (Mills)

This exchange economy may also have consisted of perishable materials (ie, salt, fiber plants and cordage, lauhala matting, large hardwood logs for canoe hulls, and the red and yellow feathers of certain species of forest birds;) however, none of these preserve in most archaeological contexts. (Kirch)

Of course, following contact, the economic exchange of goods and services expanded – Sandalwood, supporting Whaling, Sugar, Pineapple, Visitor Industry etc. (Lots of information here is from Kirch and Mills.) (The image shows the adze maker in artwork by Herb Kane.)

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Adze_Maker-(HerbKane)