Images of Old Hawaiʻi

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Hawaiians Leaving Home

We consistently hear of folks coming to Hawaiʻi, but often overlook that many were/are out-migrating from Hawaiʻi.

And, the increased scale of migration between Hawaiʻi and California and other parts of the continent may have started with us to them, rather than the reverse.

There is historical evidence suggesting that Hawaiians began moving to the US mainland as early as the late-1700s for economic survival.

As early as 1811, Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) had already hired twelve Hawaiians on three year contracts to work for them in the Pacific Northwest. By 1824, HBC employed thirty-five Hawaiians west of the Rocky Mountains.

The number of Hawaiians working as contract laborers for the Hudson’s Bay Company steadily grew. The large number of Hawaiian workers in the village at Fort Vancouver led to the name “Kanaka Town” in the early 1850s – “Kanaka” is the word for “person” in the Native Hawaiian language.

Historians suggest “that young Hawaiian males left Hawai’i as workers on whaling ships and traveled to China, Europe, Mexico, and the U.S. mainland. In addition, many ventured into the Pacific Northwest territory, worked in the fur trade, and ended up settling in those areas.” (pbs-org)

In 1839, John Sutter brought a small group of native Hawaiians with him when he arrived in California. They worked for him and eventually intermarried with local Maidu families. They settled in the area of Vernon, which is now called Verona, where the Feather River flows into the Sacramento River in South Sutter County. (co-sutter-ca-us)

At the time of Sutter’s arrival in California, the territory had a population of only 1,000 Europeans, in contrast with 30,000 Native Americans. It was at that point a part of Mexico and the governor, Juan Bautista Alvarado, granted him permission to settle.

In order to qualify for a land grant, Sutter became a Mexican citizen on August 29, 1840 after a year in the provincial settlement; the following year, on June 18, he received title to 48,827 acres and named his settlement New Helvetia, or “New Switzerland.”

Sutter employed Native Americans of the Miwok and Maidu tribes, Kanakas and Europeans at his compound, which he called Sutter’s Fort.

In his memoirs, Sutter recalled the Hawaiians, using a name then common to describe Hawaiian workers, “I could not have settled the country without the aid of these Kanakas.” They also built the first settlers’ homes in Sacramento – grass shacks, or hale pili, made with California willow and bamboo.

“In the summer of 1865 some Hawaiian fishermen and their “wahine,” who had sailed the placid Pacific in search of new realms for their nomad spirits, arrived in San Francisco bay only to discover that the cool fogs bred dire distress in lungs …”

“… used to none but the fervid breezes of a tropic sea, so on they kept until, after a day and night of clear weather, they reached Vernon, a busy farming community on the banks of the Feather river.” (The San Francisco Call – March 26, 1911)

“It was here that San Mahalone and his companions built their huts and that today their children and grandchildren are peopling this colony this begun over 40-years ago, preserving their individuality and accumulating properties and competencies on the fertile lands of Sutter county.” (The San Francisco Call – March 26, 1911)

“Hawaiians also migrated to Yolo County, California to participate in the Gold Rush and created their own Kanaka Village. There is evidence that Hawaiians settled across California in the late-1800s and even intermarried with Native Americans.”

“Many scholars speculate that Hawaiians migrated to the mainland in order to gain more economic opportunity and to flee from the dramatic Westernization that was changing the face of Hawai’i.” (pbs-org)

In 1894, at Iosepa in Utah, “the colony of Hawaiians established in Skull Valley, Tooele county comes in with a splendid showing this year. This is all the more satisfactory when the difficulties which the colonists have had to contend with are considered.” (Deseret Evening News – December 22, 1894)

“Last spring a few members of the colony accepted the government invitation to return to the Sandwich Islands. Several of these have written back, expressing the wish that they were here, and declaring an intention to return to the colony as soon as practical.” (Deseret Evening News – December 22, 1894)

The Hawaiians’ legacy can be seen today in the places named with Hawaiian words. Theses include include Kanaka, Owyhee (an old Hawaiian name for Hawaii) and Kamai (named after the Hawaiian Kama Kamai): the Kanaka Glade in Mendocino County, California …

… Kanaka Creek in Sierra County, California; Kanaka Bars in Trinity County, California; Kanaka Flats in Jacksonville, Oregon; Kanaka Gulch, Oregon; Owyhee River in southeastern Oregon; and Kamai Point, British Columbia.

Of course, this summary only highlights some of the early outmigration of Hawaiians from Hawaiʻi. Recent decades has seen a flurry of movement of Hawaiians (and others) from Hawaiʻi to the continent. (Some areas on the continent show over 100% increases decade-by-decade in the number of Hawaiians living there.)

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Fort Vancouver

Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) was a fur trading company that started in Canada in 1670; its first century of operation found HBC firmly focused in a few forts and posts around the shores of James and Hudson Bays, Central Canada.

Within ten years after Captain Cook’s 1778 contact with Hawai‘i, the islands became a favorite port of call in the trade with China. The fur traders and merchant ships crossing the Pacific needed to replenish food supplies and water.

The maritime fur trade focused on acquiring furs of sea otters, seals and other animals from the Pacific Northwest Coast and Alaska. The furs were mostly sold in China in exchange for tea, silks, porcelain and other Chinese goods, which were then sold in Europe and the US.

In 1821, HBC merged with North West Company, its competitor; the resulting enterprise now spanned the continent – all the way to the Pacific Northwest (modern-day Oregon, Washington and British Columbia) and the North (Alaska, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories.)

Fur traders working for the HBC traveled an area of more than 700,000 square miles that stretched from Russian Alaska to Mexican California and from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.

Ships sailed from London around Cape Horn around South America and then to forts and posts along the Pacific Coast via the Hawaiian Islands. Trappers crossing overland faced a journey of 2,000 miles that took three months.

In selecting a new fort and trading post site for the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) on the Columbia River in Oregon, they picked a location about 100-miles from the mouth at an opening in the forest called Jolie Prairie.

The new facility was to serve as the chief supply center for the company’s regional operation.

On March 19, 1825, the HBC opened Fort Vancouver on a bluff above the north bank of the Columbia River where the city of Vancouver, Clark County, is now located (named for British Royal Navy Captain George Vancouver (1757-1798.))

Yes, this is the same George Vancouver how first visited the islands as midshipman with Captain James Cook in 1778 and later led the expedition around the globe (and introduced the first cattle in Hawai‘i with a gift to Kamehameha I – he also discovered the Columbia River.)

Fort Vancouver became part of the expansion and establishment of forts and trading posts along the Pacific Northwest. Then, in 1829, HBC landed its first trading ship in Honolulu.

One of its primary ‘missions’ of that trip was that HBC was looking for a labor pool to help with its operations (they were also there to establish a trade business, as well as test the market for its primary products – lumber and salmon.)

A goal of the trip was to recruit a few seasoned seamen for HBC on the Northwest Coast, including “two good stout active Sandwich Islanders who have been to sea for 1, 2, or 3 years.”

At that time, Hawaiians had already played an important part in establishing the economic institutions of the Pacific Northwest. They provided the food and built the shelters of the fur traders and the early missionaries.

They had worked on many of the merchant ships plying between Hawaii, China, Europe and the Northwest. From the earliest Hawaiians who came as seamen or contract workers, to the ones who worked at Fort Vancouver and elsewhere along the Pacific Coast, they all made an important contribution to the development of the area.

As early as 1811, HBC had already hired twelve Hawaiians on three year contracts to work for them in the Pacific Northwest. By 1824, HBC employed thirty-five Hawaiians west of the Rocky Mountains.

Over the years, HBC’s Fort Vancouver had a unique relationship with the Hawaiian or “Sandwich” Islands, the nineteenth century trade hub of the Pacific.

During peak season, when the fur brigades returned to rest and re-supply, the settlement contained upwards of 600 inhabitants. For many years, the village was the largest settlement between Yerba Buena, (present day San Francisco, California) and New Archangel (Sitka, Alaska).

In the late-1830s Fort Vancouver became the terminus of the Oregon Trail. When American immigrants arrived in the Oregon Country during the 1830s and 1840s, and despite the instructions from the Hudson’s Bay Company that the fort should not help Americans, John McLoughlin, supervisor of the Columbia District, provided them with essential supplies to begin their new settlements.

Not only was the village one of the largest settlements in the West during the fur trade era, it was also unmatched in its diversity. The Hudson’s Bay Company purposefully hired people from different backgrounds, thus providing opportunities in the fur trade business to a variety of people from both the Old World and the New.

Few of the village spoke English, though French, Gaelic, Hawaiian and a variety of Native American languages were often heard. In order to communicate with one another, most villagers learned Chinook Jargon, a mix of Chinook, English and French.

Hawaiians worked as trappers, laborers, millers, sailors, gardeners and cooks; however HBC employed more people at agriculture than any other activity. The daily routine was work from sun up to sun down, with only Sundays off.

In 1840, Kamehameha III, faced with the seeming threat of racial extinction due to depopulation by both emigration and disease, enacted a law that required captains of vessels desiring to hire Hawaiians to obtain the written consent of the island governor and sign a $200 bond to return the Hawaiian back to Hawai‘i within a specified time.

HBC Governor Simpson, on a visit to Hawaii in 1841, reported, “About a thousand males in the very prime of life are estimated annually to leave the islands, some going to California, others to the Columbia, and many on long and dangerous voyages, particularly in whaling vessels …”

“… while a considerable number of them are said to be permanently lost to their country, either dying during their engagements, or settling in other parts of the world.”

In December 1845, the Oregon Government considered an act providing, “that all persons who shall hereafter introduce into the Oregon Territory any Sandwich Islanders … for a term of service shall pay a tax of five dollars for each person introduced.”

By 1849, the Hawaiian population at Fort Vancouver exceeded that of the French Canadians, due to the declining importance of furs and the rising export business of Fort Vancouver’s agricultural production and the consequent larger use of Hawaiian workers.

The number of Hawaiians working as contract laborers for the Company grew steadily. The large number of Hawaiian workers in the village led to the name “Kanaka Town” in the early 1850s – “Kanaka” is the word for “person” in the Native Hawaiian language. (At its peak, the village was home to around 535 men, 254 Indian women and 301 children.)

Several circumstances combined to bring an end to HBC’s activities at Fort Vancouver. The decline of the fur trade, the arrival of numerous American settlers to the newly organized Oregon Territory, the settlement of the boundary dispute with Great Britain which put the area under American sovereignty, all combined to hasten the decision to move the headquarters to Victoria, British Columbia.

In 1859, Hudson’s Bay Company withdrew from Fort Vancouver, the same year the decision was made to close the HBC trading facility in Honolulu.

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Fort_Vancouver-LOC-1850
Fort_Vancouver-LOC-1850
Fort_Vancouver_and_Village-1846
Fort_Vancouver_and_Village-1846
Fort_Vancouver_1825
Fort_Vancouver_1825
Fort_Vancouver_1841
Fort_Vancouver_1841
Fort_Vancouver_1845
Fort_Vancouver_1845
George Gibbs' illustration of Kanaka Village and stockade, 1851
George Gibbs’ illustration of Kanaka Village and stockade, 1851
Fort_Vancouver_1855_Covington_illustration
Fort_Vancouver_1855_Covington_illustration
Fort Vancouver by H. Warre (1848)
Fort Vancouver by H. Warre (1848)
Detail of map of Fort Vancouver-Columbia River,
Detail of map of Fort Vancouver-Columbia River,
Detail of map of Fort Vancouver-Columbia River, Surveyed 1825
Detail of map of Fort Vancouver-Columbia River, Surveyed 1825

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Captain Cole

Fur traders and merchant ships crossing the Pacific needed to replenish food supplies and water. The maritime fur trade focused on acquiring furs of sea otters, seals and other animals from the Pacific Northwest Coast and Alaska.

The furs were mostly sold in China in exchange for tea, silks, porcelain and other Chinese goods, which were then sold in Europe and the United States.

Needing supplies in their journey, the traders soon realized they could economically barter for provisions in Hawai‘i; for instance any type of iron, a common nail, chisel or knife, could fetch far more fresh fruit meat and water than a large sum of money would in other ports.

A triangular trade network emerged linking the Pacific Northwest coast, China and the Hawaiian Islands to Britain and the United States (especially New England).

Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) was a fur trading company that started in Canada in 1670; its first century of operation found HBC firmly focused in a few forts and posts around the shores of James and Hudson Bays, Central Canada.

As early as 1811, HBC had already hired twelve Hawaiians on three year contracts to work for them in the Pacific Northwest. By 1824, HBC employed thirty-five Hawaiians west of the Rocky Mountains.

“(Y)oung Hawaiian males left Hawai’i as workers on whaling ships and traveled to China, Europe, Mexico, and the U.S. mainland. In addition, many ventured into the Pacific Northwest territory, worked in the fur trade, and ended up settling in those areas.” (pbs-org)

Ships sailed from London around Cape Horn around South America and then to forts and posts along the Pacific Coast via the Hawaiian Islands. Trappers crossing overland faced a journey of 2,000 miles that took three months.

On January 21, 1829 the Hudson’s Bay Company schooner ‘Cadboro’ arrived at Honolulu from Fort Vancouver with a small shipment of poles and sawn lumber. Another goal of the trip was to recruit Hawaiians for HBC operations on the Northwest Coast.

One such recruit who later came from the Islands to work with the HBC was ‘Captain Cole’. Cole entered the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company at O‘ahu in 1840.

On the continent, ‘Captain Cole’ was witness to a killing.

“Just after midnight on April 21, 1842, John McLoughlin, Jr – the chief trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort Stikine (situated at what is now Wrangell on the Alaska panhandle), in the northwest corner of the territory that would later become British Columbia – was shot to death by his own men.”

“The men were known to have disliked McLoughlin and some had threatened to kill him, but the company’s governor, Sir George Simpson, relied on their accounts of the incident to conclude that the murder was a matter of self-defense”.

They claimed it was “their only means of stopping the violent rampage of their drunk and abusive leader. Sir George Simpson, the HBC’s Overseas Governor, took the men of Stikine at their word, and the Company closed the book on the matter.” (Komar)

It is estimated that by 1844 between 300 and 400 Hawaiians were in HBC service in the Pacific Northwest, both in vessels and at posts.

Journal entries in early 1848 identify Cole as “Captian Cole,” but in later entries for 1848 and 1849 he is simply referred to as “Cole.” He was posted to Fort Stikine in the Columbia District as a ‘midman,’ middleman, from 1841-1843.

Cole continued in service to the HBC until November 23, 1844, when he returned to Honolulu. He re-enlisted in 1847, serving as a laborer at Fort Victoria (1847-1849) and Fort Rupert (1849-1850), where he died of tuberculosis on March 12, 1850. (Fort Victoria Journal)

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Stikine, Alaska
Stikine, Alaska

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Naukane

During Captain Cookʻs visit to Hawaiʻi on his third voyage of exploration in 1779, then-Lieutenant King (later Captain) noted, “During the following night, the cutter belonging to the Discovery was stolen …”

“This irritated captain Cook, and he gave orders to stop all the canoes that should attempt to leave the bay, intending to seize and destroy them, if he could not recover the cutter by fair means.”  (Captain King’s Journal)

“The natives now collected in vast numbers along the shore, and began to throng round captain Cook”.  Shortly after, “Captain Cook, the last time he was seen distinctly, was standing at the water’s edge”.

“… he was desirous of preventing any farther bloodshed … whilst he faced the natives, none of them had offered him any violence, but having turned about to give his orders to those in the boats, he was stabbed in the back”.  Cook was killed.    (Captain King’s Journal)

One of the Hawaiians at the scene was Naukane, son of Kamanawa (Kamehameha’s uncle and one of his closest allies – Kamanawa (left) and Kameʻeiamoku, his twin brother (right) were later memorialized on the Hawaiʻi coat of arms.)  (Kittelson)

When Kamehameha moved his Royal Center to Honolulu, his chiefs came with him. Naukane, then in his early twenties, accompanied his father and probably became involved in royal court life.  However, fascinated by the growing number of ships calling in the islands, Naukane looked to the sea. (Kittelson)

His chance came in February 1811, when John Jacob Astor’s ‘Tonquin,’ under the command of Captain Jonathan Thorne, called.  The captain wanted to hire twenty-four of the Islanders, twelve as seamen and the remaining half to establish a post for the Pacific Fur Company on the Columbia River.

This was the first large group of Hawaiians to come to America.  The king appointed Naukane to go with them as a royal observer.  (Duncan)

Because Naukane resembled one of the Americans, he became known as John Coxe and retained the name throughout his long and colorful life in the Pacific Northwest (he also went by John Cox and Edward Coxe, or, simply Coxe.)  (Duncan)

The Tonquin reached the mouth of the Columbia in March; after a few days looking, they selected a site and by the end of May they had completed Fort Astoria.  It was the first American-owned settlement on the Pacific coast of what was to become the United States.

Astor planned the post to grow into a permanent settlement, with plans to develop a large trade ring that included New York, the Pacific Coast, Russian Alaska, Hawaiʻi and China. The furs collected in the northwest and Alaska, would be shipped to China and exchanged for porcelain, silk and other cloth, and spices that would be brought back, via Hawaii to New York.

Other operators had other posts.  In the summer of 1810, Jacques-Raphaël Finlay (Jaco Finley) of the North West Company built Spokane House at the junction of the Spokane and Little Spokane rivers.

Shortly after arriving in the northwest, Coxe started working for Canadian David Thompson of the North West Company.   Coxe later spent the winter of 1811-1812 at Spokane House with Finlay.  On those expeditions, Coxe became the first Hawaiian to visit the inland Northwest.

Coxe accompanied Thompson “across the Rocky Mountains from western Montana and in the long trail to Fort William on Lake Superior. … John Coxe also took the trail east from Fort William but his road led to Quebec, where he created a sensation with his stories of Hawaiʻi and his demonstrations of Polynesian dance steps.”  (Taylor)

By 1813, Fort Astoria and all other assets in the area were sold to the North West Company – they renamed it Fort George.    Coxe continued to work there until August, 1814, when all of the Hawaiians at Fort George were sent back to the Islands.

Comfortable with the service from the Hawaiians, in 1817, North West sent a ship “to bring as many of the Sandwich Islanders to the Columbia river as we could conveniently accommodate.”  (Corney)

(In 1821, the Hudson’s Bay Company combined with the North West Company, and the post name was changed back to Fort Spokane.)

After he returned to Honolulu in 1815, Coxe probably reverted to his native name, Naukane.  He was well received by Kamehameha.

Not only was Naukane the son of one of Kamehameha’s closest advisors, and a member of Liholiho’s entourage, but he had traveled widely. Kamehameha I died in 1819 and Naukane rose in stature when Liholiho ascended the throne.  (Kittelson)

Naukane’s expeditions did not end on the American continent.  Because of his familiarity with western ways (with travels to America, Europe & South America) and his personal ties, when Liholiho departed on November 27, 1823 to England aboard the L’Aigle to discuss the future of his Islands with George IV, Naukane accompanied the King.

The King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamāmalu died of measles in July 1824; apparently Naukane’s travels had built up his immunity, for he was hardly bothered by measles.

King George IV held an audience for the remaining Hawaiians at Windsor Castle on September 11; Coxe was present.  The bodies of Liholiho and his queen were returned to Hawaii aboard the frigate Blonde captained by Lord Byron.

With the King dead, Naukane no longer was bound, and he immediately offered his services to the Hudson’s Bay Company and returned to the Northwest. He was only one of approximately thirty-five Islanders working for the company by 1825.  (Duncan)

The firm’s base of operations had been transferred from Fort Spokane to a new site farther inland, Fort Vancouver. Coxe worked for a few more years; then the company retired him and gave him a plot of land two miles below the fort.  (Kittelson)

Naukane died February 2, 1850.  The vast plain between Fort Vancouver and the Columbia became the Hawaiian’s memorial – Coxe’s Plain … “A couple of miles below the fort (Vancouver) there were luxuriant meadows of great extent.”

“A portion of these bore at that time the name of Coxe’s Plain, a name I think which it still continues to bear. Old Coxe, a native of the Sandwich Islands and a very original character, was the swine-herd and had his residence there among the oaks which dotted the verge of the plain.”  (Anderson; Barry)

The image shows Naukane.  In addition, I have added other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

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Hudson’s Bay Company

Within ten years after Captain Cook’s 1778 contact with Hawai‘i, the islands became a favorite port of call in the trade with China.  The fur traders and merchant ships crossing the Pacific needed to replenish food supplies and water.

The maritime fur trade focused on acquiring furs of sea otters, seals and other animals from the Pacific Northwest Coast and Alaska.  The furs were mostly sold in China in exchange for tea, silks, porcelain and other Chinese goods, which were then sold in Europe and the United States.

Needing supplies in their journey, the traders soon realized they could economically barter for provisions in Hawai‘i; for instance any type of iron, a common nail, chisel or knife, could fetch far more fresh fruit meat and water than a large sum of money would in other ports.

A triangular trade network emerged linking the Pacific Northwest coast, China and the Hawaiian Islands to Britain and the United States (especially New England).

After acquiring the “Louisiana Purchase” in 1803, under the directive of President Thomas Jefferson, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the “Corps of Discovery Expedition” (1804–1806), was the first transcontinental expedition to the Pacific coast undertaken by the United States.

Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) was a fur trading company that started in Canada in 1670; its first century of operation found HBC firmly focused in a few forts and posts around the shores of James and Hudson Bays, Central Canada.

Fast forward 150-years and in 1821, HBC merged with North West Company, its competitor; the resulting enterprise now spanned the continent – all the way to the Pacific Northwest (modern-day Oregon, Washington and British Columbia) and the North (Alaska, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories.)

Fur traders working for the HBC traveled an area of more than 700,000 square miles that stretched from Russian Alaska to Mexican California and from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.

Ships sailed from London around Cape Horn around South America and then to forts and posts along the Pacific Coast via the Hawaiian Islands.  Trappers crossing overland faced a journey of 2,000 miles that took three months.

On January 21, 1829 the Hudson’s Bay Company schooner ‘Cadboro’ arrived at Honolulu from Fort Vancouver with a small shipment of poles and sawn lumber.

The Company was attracted to Hawaiʻi not for furs but as a potential market for the products of the Company’s posts in the Pacific Northwest.  That first trip was intended to test the market for HBC’s primary products, salmon and lumber.

(We can credit HBC with starting the lomi lomi salmon tradition in Hawaiʻi – Click here to see that story.)

Another goal of the trip was to recruit Hawaiians for HBC operations on the Northwest Coast.  As early as 1811, HBC had already hired twelve Hawaiians on three year contracts to work for them in the Pacific Northwest.

By 1824, HBC employed thirty-five Hawaiians west of the Rocky Mountains.  It is estimated that by 1844 between 300 and 400 Hawaiians were in HBC service in the Pacific Northwest, both in vessels and at posts.

(Click here to see the story on Hawaiians at Fort Vancouver.)

When the Hudson’s Bay Company entered the Hawaiian market in 1829, Honolulu had already become a significant Pacific port of call and major provisioning station for trans-Pacific travelers.

In addition to the sale of Northwest Coast products, the Company’s Honolulu Agency in the 1840s entered into the merchandising of English manufactured goods.

HBC was always considered a leading Honolulu merchant house, but what really distinguished it was its continuity.  In those days Honolulu business firms other than HBC were either sole proprietorships or partnerships, which were easily formed and as readily dissolved.  HBC was stable and strong and based outside of Hawaiʻi.

The Company’s Honolulu customers were both the whaling fleet and local businesses, and individuals, including the Hawaiian population – all of whom appreciated the high quality of the products the Company offered for sale.

The Company’s role in Honolulu’s merchant shipping forms a considerable chapter in Hawaiian maritime history; shipping was the lifeline of the Agency.  Company cargo, with only a few exceptions, was transported in vessels owned or chartered by the Company.

Each year a Company vessel carrying trade goods and supplies was sent from England around Cape Horn to the Northwest Coast, usually stopping at Honolulu.

The earliest location of the HBC in Honolulu was on the north side of Nuʻuanu Street close to King Street, where it occupied a two-story, shingle-sided building.  In 1846 HBC moved to a new site closer and more convenient to the waterfront at the corner of Fort and Queen Streets (the ‘Beaver Block,’ but that’s another story.)

As the year 1859 started, Pacific whaling entered its decline, the Agency’s competition in the importation of goods increased. Janion Green and Co. (forerunner of Theo H. Davies), Hackfeld and Co. (forerunner of Amfac,) C. Brewer, and Castle and Cooke (the beginnings of the Big Five) were established firms.

The Honolulu market was overstocked with goods, and trade was slow. In 1859, HBC decided to close its Hawaiʻi operations; a couple years later, they were gone.

The image shows an 1853 drawing of the Hudson’s Bay Company building in Honolulu.    In addition, I have included other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

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