Hawaii | Page 491 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

March 28, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Waikamoi

The kahakai (shoreline) and the lowlands were the Wao Kanaka (the realm of people,) where fishing, farming, and activities of daily life took place. Further inland was the Wao Kele (the inland forest region) and above this was the Wao Akua (the realm of the gods.)

In ancient Hawaii, the Wao Akua was accessed only by trained professionals for specific purposes (medicinal practitioners gathered specific plants and bird men caught birds for their vibrant feathers,) after respects were paid and permission was granted.

Even then, however, entry into the Wao Akua (a dense native cloud forest) was seldom. It was recognized that the health of the watershed in the Wao Akua was essential to the health of the Wao Kanaka. (Hana Pono)

Hawaiians did not as a matter of course penetrate the Wao Akua if the trees they needed could be gotten elsewhere, because of the priority of promoting new growth through non-disturbance of seed-producing forest areas.

Hawaiians realized the importance of the food source and the regenerative energy of the forest. Therefore it was necessary to leave some areas or groves of trees as they stood originally, thus the name Wao Akua. (DLNR)

Waikamoi takes its name from a variety of taro named for a variety of fish, the moi. The moi kalo (taro) is a very nice tasty variety good for wetland, flood style irrigation taken to great heights by the Hawaiians system of aqueducts and loʻi kalo.

The naming of Waikamoi indicates that at the lower elevations, the stream fed loʻi kalo, taro patches, of moi taro which was a favorite of the people living in the area. (Hana Pono)

Roaming ungulates (typically cattle and pigs) and non-native habitat-modifying weeds/plants, insects and other invasive species took their toll on the mauka forested resources.

In 1876, the Hawaiian legislature also passed ‘An Act for the Protection and Preservation of Woods and Forests; this was the first step in creating what would later become the forest reserve program.

Then, on April 25, 1903, the legislature created Hawaiʻi’s forest reserve, sparking the largest public-private conservation partnership in the history of the state. Ralph S. Hosmer was Hawaiʻi’s first Superintendent of Forestry. (Hosmer’s Grove in Haleakala National Park adjoins the Waikamoi Preserve.)

In 1983, Waikamoi Preserve on the slopes of Haleakala on Maui became a reality when the Haleakala Ranch granted a conservation easement to The Nature Conservancy (TNC) over 5,230-acres (in 2014, Alexander & Baldwin conveyed a conservation easement over an additional 3,721-adjacent acres, bringing the total to 8,951-acres – the largest private nature preserve in the Islands.)

The preserve protects part of the 100,000-acre East Maui Watershed, which provides 60-billion gallons of clean water annually to Maui’s residents, businesses and agricultural community.

It is a sanctuary for native Hawaiian species, many of them endangered or rare (including several native birds: the rare ‘akohekohe, the scarlet ‘i‘iwi, the crimson ‘apapane, the bright green ‘amakihi, the yellow-green Maui creeper, the pueo (Hawaiian owl,) nene (Hawaiian goose) and the native ‘ua‘u (dark-rumped petrel.))

The preserve also shelters a large variety of native ferns, herbs, shrubs and trees that reflect the biodiversity of Maui; many are rare plants unique to East Maui.

The Nature Conservancy protects the native species that live in Waikamoi by managing this koa and ʻohi‘a forest against threats to this diverse forest ecosystem. Like other Hawai‘i rain forests, invasive species and feral predators threaten Waikamoi’s delicate ecosystem.

Waikamoi Preserve is managed in partnership with the State Department of Land & Natural Resources through the Natural Area Partnership Program. (TNC)

The National Park Service leads hikes through Waikamoi on Mondays and Thursdays; the hike focuses on the unique history, plants and animals of the area. Reservations are accepted up to one week in advance. Call (808) 572-4400. Please call early since there is limited space available.

While I was Director at DLNR, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to walk the boardwalk in the Waikamoi Preserve. The trail led to a deck in the middle of the forest … waaay cool.

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Waikamoi Preserve Boardwalk

Deck at the end of the boardwalk-TNC-DLNR-2003

Waikamoi-TNC

Waikamoi-Maui

Waikamoi_Preserve

Waikamoi-‘amakihi feeds from the tubular flowers of the koli’i-TNC

Waikamoi-A juvenile ‘i’iwi, a native honeycreeper, feeds on the nectar of the blue ‘opelu-TNC

Waikamoi-‘Apapane feed on the nectar of the ‘ohi‘a lehua_TNC

Waikamoi- ‘alauahio, or Maui creeper-TNC

Waikamoi- ‘akohekohe, a bird found only in East Maui-TNC

TNC OGG, East Maui, Waikamoi, Aerial

Boardwalk, Waikamoi Preserve, East Maui

Waikamoi-Sign

Waikamoi_Mgmt_Units-Map

March 25, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Ties to the Santa Fe

While small gravity and mule-powered rails popped up here and there in the eastern United States, it was the coming of the steam locomotive that truly allowed railroads to prosper.

In August 1829, Horatio Allen tested an English-built steamer named the Stourbridge Lion in Pennsylvania; by the time of the Civil War there were more than 60,000 miles of railroad in the country, by the 1870s, the Transcontinental Railroad stretched all the way to California and there were more than 190,000 –miles of rail at the beginning of the 20th century.

During the height of the industry, commonly referred to as the ‘Golden Age’ from the late 19th century through the 1920s there were more than 254,000 miles of railroad in service.

The expanding rail system needed material to tie the rails – then, in 1907, the ‘Santa Fe’ came to the Islands.

“Among the passengers for Hawaii on the Kīnaʻu yesterday were EO Faulkner (head of the tie and lumber department of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad) has come to this Territory to investigate the ʻōhiʻa ties”. (Pacific Commercial Advertising, September 25, 1907)

The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company (distinctively known as the Santa Fe) was founded by Cyrus K Holiday in Kansas in 1859. A line that reached from Kansas to California and from Kansas to the Gulf of Mexico was the vision of Holiday.

The desire to tap into the cotton and cattle markets in Texas combined with the promise of Texas as a market for Kansas wheat led the Santa Fe to seek an entry into markets in Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. (American Rails)

Before he left the Islands, Faulkner “signed a contract with the Hawaiian Mahogany Lumber Company which will mean the exportation of 90,000,000-board feet of ʻōhiʻa to the mainland within the next five years.”

“While the representatives of their lumber company are unwilling to state the exact price obtained for their lumber under the contract, the fact was obtained that it was between $2,500,000 and $3,000,000.” (Hawaiian Gazette, October 11, 1907)

To fulfill the agreement, “The ties will all be handled by the Hilo railroad. The next work to be done will be making a start on the new mill in Puna and we will also build a railroad, connecting with the main line at Pahoa, and running some four miles into the forest eventually.”

“It will run through the ʻōhiʻa forests which skirt the koa, and thus enable us to reach the koa property easily.” (AN Campbell, Henry Waterhouse Co; Pacific Commercial Advertiser, September 25, 1907)

“The development of the Hawaiian lumber industry stands out preeminent, through the signing in October 1907 of a contract between the Hawaiian Mahogany Lumber Company and the Santa Fe Railway System to supply during the next five years …” (Hawaii Department of Agriculture, Annual Report, 1908)

“According to the terms of the contract the local company is to furnish 500,000 ties six by eight inches and eight feet in length, each year for five years, the same to be delivered at such Coast ports as shall be designated by the railroad company.”

“In addition to this they shall deliver each year 500 sets of switch ties, which are heavier than the regular tie and vary in length from 10 to 22 feet.” (Hawaiian Gazette, October 11, 1907)

“Prior to this contract – in June 1907 – one schooner load of 13,000 ʻōhiʻa ties was sent to San Francisco. Several good-sized orders for ʻōhiʻa ties and ʻōhiʻa piling for use in the Territory have also been filled by the Hawaiian Mahogany Lumber Company.” (Hawaii Department of Agriculture, Annual Report, 1908)

Hawaiian Mahogany Lumber Company (also called Pāhoa Lumber Mill) began in 1907 (owned by James B Castle.) By September 1908, the company was operating a lumber mill in Pāhoa.

A narrow gauge railroad was built from Glenwood to the saw-mill in the woods back of the Volcano House, the mill itself has been erected and some of the machinery installed. Trees were felled in the forest, cut into logs and hauled in to the mill yard.

Most of the ties were to be cut in the Puna District on the homestead lots above Olaʻa, on lands of the Puna Plantation that were being cleared for cane, and on other lands in Puna on which rubber will be planted. The ties will be shipped from Hilo by steamers and sailing vessels, the first shipment being sometime in the spring of 1908.

Between 1909 and 1910, Pāhoa Lumber Mill have lumbered something over 1000 acres. In 1911, the Pāhoa Lumber Mill sought more land for logging. However, by 1914, the Division of Forestry notes that the Pahoa Lumber Mill “has barely reached the section set apart as the Puna Forest Reserve…” (Division of Forestry Annual Report, 1914)

In January 5, 1910 Lorrin A Thruston and Frank B. McStocker of the Hawaiian Development Co. Ltd. appeared before Marston Campbell, Commissioner of Public Lands in Honolulu, to secure rights to log a tract of government lands in Puna.

In January 1913, a fire devastated the Pāhoa Lumber Company mill, and that same year the mill changed its name to Hawaiʻi Hardwood Company. According to government records, the Hawaiian Development Company Ltd. was a successor to the Hawaiian Mahogany Lumber Company (Hawaiian Forester and Agriculturalist)

The contract with the Santa Fe Railway System was never fulfilled. The Division of Forestry noted that by 1914, few ‘ʻōhiʻa was being sold for railroad ties after it was realized that the ‘ʻōhiʻa wood ties did not last in the extreme conditions of the southwest.

Likewise, “increasing attention is being paid to finding a market for ʻōhiʻa for uses of higher tirade. Especially is an effort being made to introduce ʻōhiʻa as flooring …”

“… a use to which the firm, close texture of the wood and its handsome color lend themselves admirably. The waste from the ʻōhiʻa mills (slabs, etc.) is sold for firewood, not a little of it being shipped to Honolulu.” (Report of the Board of Commissioners of Agriculture and Forestry, 1911) (Lots of information here is from Uyeoka.)

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Raiload tie mill-Lyman Museum-Uyeoka

Pahoa Lumber Mill-Lyman Museum-Uyeoka

Pahoa Saw Mill-Lyman Museum-Uyeoka

Pahoa Saw Mill-Lyman_Museum-Uyeoka

Pahoa_Saw_Mill-Lyman_Museum-Uyeoka

Railroad through Puna Forest-Lyman Museum-Uyeoka

Railroad tracks through Puna-Lyman Museum-Uyeoka

santa-fe-railway-map

March 24, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Tydings-McDuffie

After its defeat in the Spanish-American War of 1898, Spain ceded its longstanding colony of the Philippines to the United States in the Treaty of Paris.

On February 4, 1899, just two days before the US Senate ratified the treaty, fighting broke out between American forces and Filipino nationalists who sought independence rather than a change in colonial rulers. The ensuing Philippine-American War lasted three years. (State Department)

Even as the fighting went on, the colonial government that the United States established in the Philippines in 1900 under future President William Howard Taft launched a pacification campaign that became known as the “policy of attraction.”

In 1907, the Philippines convened its first elected assembly, and in 1916, the Jones Act promised the nation eventual independence. The archipelago became an autonomous commonwealth in 1935, and the U.S. granted independence in 1946. (State Department)

In Hawaiʻi, shortage of laborers to work in the growing (in size and number) sugar plantations became a challenge. Starting in the 1850s, when the Hawaiian Legislature passed “An Act for the Governance of Masters and Servants,” a section of which provided the legal basis for contract-labor system, labor shortages were eased by bringing in contract workers from Asia, Europe and North America.

Of the large level of plantation worker immigration, the Chinese were the first (1850,) followed by the Japanese (1885.) After the turn of the century, the plantations started bringing in Filipinos. Over the years in successive waves of immigration, the sugar planters brought to Hawaiʻi 46,000-Chinese, 180,000-Japanese, 126,000-Filipinos, as well as Portuguese, Puerto Ricans and other ethnic groups.

For the first 15-Filipino sakadas (probably derived from the Ilocano phrase “sakasakada amin”, meaning, barefoot workers struggling to earn a living) who got off the SS Doric on December 20, 1906, amid stares of curious onlookers, the world before them was one of foreboding.

The 15-pioneers would soon be joined by thousands of their compatriots, thanks to the relentless recruitment of the Hawaiʻi Sugar Planters’ Association (HSPA). (Aquino)

Upon arrival in Hawaiʻi, Filipino contract laborers were assigned to the HSPA-affiliated plantations throughout the territory. Their lives would now come under the dictates of the plantation bosses. They had no choice as to which plantation or island they would be assigned. Men from the same families, the same towns or provinces were often broken up and separated. (Alegado)

Between 1906 and 1930, the HSPA brought in approximately 120,000-Filipinos to Hawaiʻi, dramatically altering the territory’s ethnic demographics. (Aquino)

By the 1920s, Filipinos in Hawaiʻi were still largely male, men outnumbered women by nearly seven to one, and unmarried. They represented, at one point, half of the workers in the sugar industry. Initially the Filipinos tended to be “peasants” of lower education than other groups. (Reinecke)

Comprising only 19-percent of the plantation workforce in 1917, the sakadas jumped to 70-percent by 1930, replacing the Japanese, who had dwindled to 19-percent as the 1930s approached. (Aquino)

On the continent, during the 1920s, there was already uneasiness about the growing number of Filipinos, reviving earlier nativist fears regarding Chinese and Japanese laborers. With the rise in unemployment during the depression and the development of Filipino labor activism in the early 1930s, a new reason for excluding Filipinos was added.

Granting commonwealth status to the Philippines was largely a legal cover for racially excluding Filipinos, who were hit especially hard by the economic downturn of the depression.

Then, on March 24, 1934, President Roosevelt signed the Tydings-McDuffie Act, which provided for a Philippines Commonwealth Government that would be followed by complete independence in ten years. (Schiller Institute)

Tydings-McDuffie Act grew out of widespread opposition, particularly in California, to the rapid influx of Filipino agricultural laborers after annexation of the islands and limited Filipino immigration to only 50 per year. For the tens of thousands already in the country, it meant that they could not become naturalized citizens and were cut off from New Deal work programs.

Due to the restriction put on immigration, a threat was put on the supply of cheap labor forces needed within agricultural sector. To many plantation owners, Filipino laborers were a great group in regards to hard work and good work ethics.

The immigration restriction made it almost impossible for Filipino-Americans already living in the U.S. to petition their loved ones and family members. This accentuates the inability for many of the laborers to develop of connect with their families. In other words, Filipino hopes of family reunification were shattered.

In some respects, Filipinos were in a worse position than the previously excluded Chinese and Japanese, for at least Chinese merchants were allowed to bring wives, and Japanese wives and family members had been exempted from the restrictions of the Gentlemen’s Agreement.

Exemptions to the act did, however, allow Hawaiian employers to import Filipino farm labor when needed (though remigration to the mainland was not permitted) and enabled the US to recruit more than 22,000 Filipinos into the navy (between 1944 and 1973), most of whom were assigned to work in mess halls or as personal servants. (ImmigrationToUS)

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Sugarcane_plantation_workers-400

Millard Tydings

John McDuffie

Sakadas in Hawaii

Sugar_Workers-(SEA)

Harvesting_Sugar

Harvesting pineapples in Hawaii-(NYTimes)-around 1940

Harvesting pineapples in Hawaii-(star-bulletin)-1960s

Sakada-pineapple

Filipino_immigrant_family_in_Hawaii,_c._1906

Lei Day, Filipino Bamboo Pole Dance UH-(vic&becky)-1954

March 23, 2016 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Oklahoma

The Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830, authorizing the president to grant unsettled lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian lands within existing state borders.

This generally involved the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chicasaw and Seminole; the Indians were to give up their lands east of the Mississippi (typically in the southeast) in exchange for lands to the west. (LOC)

After 11-million acres of Choctaw land was acquired, the Choctaw were to be removed from Mississippi. It was determined that the best method of handling the removal was to move about one-third of the Choctaws per year in each of the years 1831, 1832 and 1833.

The first one-third of the Choctaws started to be removed on November 1, 1831. Overall, nearly 15,000 Choctaws made the move to what would be called Indian Territory (later known as Oklahoma.) (Green)

When the first wagons reached Little Rock, in an interview with an Arkansas Gazette reporter, one of the Choctaw Chiefs (thought to be either Thomas Harkins or Nitikechi) was quoted as saying that the removal to that point had been a “trail of tears and death.”

In the Choctaw language, okla means ‘people;’ homma or humma means ‘red.’ ‘Okla Homma’ translates to ‘Red People’ in Choctaw. On November 16, 1907, Oklahoma was admitted as the forty-sixth of the United States.

In 1911 Congress authorized the building of two battleships, the Nevada and the Oklahoma, to be a modern symbol of the power of the United States (These two battleships were to be the first to burn oil as fuel instead of coal.)

Oklahoma (BB-37) was laid down October 26, 1912 by New York Shipbuilding Corp, Camden, NJ. The ship was christened in March 23, 1914 by Lorena Jane Cruce, daughter of Oklahoma’s Governor, Lee Cruce. Ms. Cruce struck the ship with a bottle of champagne while stating, “In the name of the United States, I christen thee ‘Oklahoma.’”

The Navy had earlier convinced Governor Cruce that it was tradition to use champagne in christening ships. (The Governor had not liked the idea of using champagne to launch a ship named for his state)

The USS Oklahoma was commissioned at Philadelphia on May 2, 1916 with Captain Roger Welles commanding; the commissioning statement noted “that the Oklahoma might never become a mere instrument of destruction nor of strife, but a minister of peace and a guardian of rights and interests of mankind, protecting the weak against the strong.”

Attending the commissioning was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D Roosevelt. (As president, Roosevelt would later declare war on Japan in 1941 after the attack at Pearl Harbor.) (Oklahoma Genealogical Society Quarterly)

The Oklahoma, a 27,500-ton Nevada class battleship, needed 2,166 sailors and marines to function properly. She could travel 20,000 miles without refueling. She carried ten 14-inch guns.

The guns on battleships are so big, that they rate them on how large their ammunition is in diameter. A 14-inch gun has shells that are 14 inches in diameter and weigh about 1,400 pounds each. Each of the Oklahoma’s guns could fire almost twelve miles. That’s farther than anyone could see, even with binoculars or a telescope. (OKHistory)

Joining the Atlantic Fleet with Norfolk her home port, Oklahoma trained on the eastern seaboard until sailing 13 August 1918 with sister ship Nevada to join in the task of protecting Allied convoys in European waters.

She then joined the Pacific Fleet for six years highlighted by the cruise of the Battle Fleet to Australia and New Zealand in 1925. She joined the Scouting Fleet in early 1927, Oklahoma was modernized at Philadelphia between September 1927 and July 1929 and conducted exercises in the Caribbean.

In August 1940, the Oklahoma had been in drydock in Puget Sound, Washington after participating in Army/Navy exercises. She was backing down Puget Sound in the fog and hit a tow line of a barge carrying railroad cars which sent railroad cars into the water. A Navy ship had never before collided with a train. (Oklahoma Genealogical Society Quarterly)

She was based at Pearl Harbor December 6, 1940 for patrols and exercises, and was moored in Battleship Row on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked.

Outboard alongside Maryland, Oklahoma took 3 torpedo hits almost immediately after the first Japanese bombs fell. As she began to capsize, 2 more torpedoes struck home, and her men were strafed as they abandoned ship.

Within 20 minutes after the attack began, she had swung over until halted by her masts touching bottom, her starboard side above water, and a part of her keel clear.

The Oklahoma capsized in a position parallel to the shore. Righting and refloating started with the first pull March 8, 1943, the final pull was on May 20, 1943 – it took 74-days to turn the ship over. She was floated by pumping air into air-tight compartments and pumping water out of the hull.

Too old and badly damaged to be worth returning to service, Oklahoma was formally decommissioned in September 1944. She was later sold to the Moore Drydock Co of Oakland, California, for scrapping. On May 17, 1947, while under tow, the Oklahoma sank 540-miles out of Pearl Harbor with no one on board.

In the attack on Pearl Harbor, there were 2,402 US deaths from the attack. 1,177 of those deaths were from the USS Arizona, while 429 of the deaths were from the USS Oklahoma (14 Marines and 415 Sailors.)

Thirty-five crew members were positively identified and buried in the years immediately after the attack. By 1950, all unidentified remains were laid to rest as unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Recently, the Defense Department recovered for identification and return to families the last of 388 sailors and Marines killed on the battleship USS Oklahoma on December 7, 1941, and later buried as “unknowns” in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl. (Lots of information here is from Navy.)

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USS_Oklahoma_BB-37

Oklahoma_BB37_launching-03-23-1914

USS_Oklahoma_(BB-37)_sea_trials_1916

Off the Philadelphia Navy Yard, Pennsylvania, on 21 August 1929, following modernization

Firing her 14 main battery guns during exercises in the early 1920s

USS_Oklahoma_(BB-37)_passing_Alcatraz_in_the_1930s

USS Oklahoma-Navy

Photographed circa 1917, while painted in an experimental camouflage pattern.

Oklahoma-Looking forward from near the ship’s stern, showinng her after 14guns, circa 1918-1919

USS_Oklahoma_on_fire-capsizes

USS_Wisconsin_and_USS_Oklahoma-11-11-1944

March 22, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Waikiki Beach

In the late-18th century, European and American trade and travel into the North American continent’s interior was largely by water. Merchants used canoes to trade with the tribes for the continent’s most valuable natural resource: furs.

Eastern and central North America had many navigable rivers. For western traders, finding a great western river became an obsession for fur traders and scientific and government expeditions.

The first non-Indian to encounter and identify the river was Spaniard Bruno de Heceta. In August, 1775, Heceta mapped what he called Cape of Saint Roc and Leafy Cape, respectively. He attempted to cross the bar under full sail, but was unable to do so.

In 1778, the great British navigator Captain Cook sailed by the river in the night. While he did not find Heceta’s river, his expedition traded for otter furs. Cook was killed in Hawai‘i early the next year, but his ships carried the furs to China where they discovered a lucrative trade market with the Chinese.

The reports of a potentially trade between western North America and China would spur traders from all nations to the West Coast.

In 1788, Britain sailor John Meares also failed to find a river; he give Cape Disappointment its name to commemorate his failed search. (This is what Heceta called Leafy Cape.)

In April, 1792, British naval expedition Captain George Vancouver passed by the river mouth and noted muddy water flowing into the sea. Noting the sand island and waves breaking on the bar, he discounted the entrance as the mouth of a small river as it looked like most of the rivers emptying into the Pacific north of San Francisco.

On the morning of May 11, 1792, American merchant Captain Robert Gray sailed across the bar and into the Columbia River estuary, the first documented non-Indian to do so.

That was the river’s discovery via sea; by land, 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 US.

“Ocian in view! O! the joy.” When Captain William Clark wrote these words in his journal on November 7, 1805, he was not standing at the Pacific Ocean but the Columbia River estuary. It would be another couple of weeks before he and Captain Meriwether Lewis would stand at what they had “been so long anxious to see.” (NPS)

Clark and members of the Corps of Discovery explored the headland in their final push to the Pacific Ocean. “I Set out at Day light and proceeded on a Sandy beech … 2 Miles to the inner extremity of Cape Disapointment …”

“… this Cape is an ellivated circlier point covered with thick timber on the iner Side and open grassey exposur next to the Sea and rises with a Steep assent to the hight of about 150 or 160 feet above the leavel of the water … this cape as also the Shore both on the Bay & Sea coast is a dark brown rock.”

“I crossed the neck of Land low and 1/2 of a mile wide to the main Ocian, at the foot of a high open hill projecting into the ocian, and about one mile in Sicumfrance. I assended this hill which is covered with high corse grass. decended to the N of it and camped. I picked up a flounder on the beech this evening. …” (Clark, November 18, 1806)

The Lewis and Clark Expedition would have an immediate effect on American interest in the Northwest. Fur baron John Jacob Astor was excited by the expedition’s success in recording the lands, resources and peoples.

Astor sought to create a global network of land and sea transportation for fur pelts, goods, information and services between China, Russia, Europe, the American east coast and the mouth of the Columbia River.

In June, 1810, Astor and others signed articles of agreement of the ‘Pacific Fur Company.’ They hoped to best the flourishing Northwest Company (who travelled by land,) which was a most powerful concern, by having a great depot at the mouth of the Columbia, in other words, by using the sea.

One of the vessels selected for the pioneer voyage was the ‘Tonquin,’ under the command of Captain Jonathan Thorn. Before getting to the American Northwest, they supplied at Hawai‘i.

They were unable to secure either water or provisions on the Island of Hawaii; on February 21, 1811, Thorn anchored the Tonquin off Waikiki. Here he met Kamehameha I and paid Spanish dollars for hogs, several goats, two sheep, a quantity of poultry and vegetables.

Needing additional manpower, Canadian partners aboard the Tonquin proposed to enlist thirty or forty native Hawaiians, because they had never seen watermen to equal them, not even among the voyageurs of the Northwest.

“Remarkable for their skill in managing light craft and able to swim and dive like waterfowl,” were the words used in describing the Hawaiians. Thorn objected to a large number; twelve were signed for the company and twelve for the ship. The trade-men were to serve three years, were to be fed and clothed and at the end of the term were to receive $100 in merchandise.

On February 28, 1811, the Tonquin sailed for the Northwest coast, and March 22, 1811, arrived off the mouth of the Columbia, where they encountered heavy seas. Thorn sent out several boats to find the river channel; two of them capsized and eight men died. One of the men was a Hawaiian.

Local history says that the “the neck of Land low and 1/2 of a mile wide to the main Ocian, at the foot of a high open hill” noted by Clark (five years before) was named Waikiki Beach in honor of this unnamed Hawaiian who was buried on the beach (Washington State Parks.)

In 1811, Astor’s Pacific Fur Company established Astoria, the first non-native trading post and settlement at the mouth of the Columbia River.

The Astor expedition to the Columbia-Pacific region would also be responsible for opening up the key overland route for western settlement in years to come.

In 1812 on a journey from Astoria to New York City, Robert Stuart, a partner in the Pacific Fur Company stationed at Fort Astoria, discovered South Pass, a low pass over the Rocky Mountains. This route could be made by wagon from the Missouri and Mississippi valleys and became known as the Oregon Trail. (Lots of information here is from NPS.)

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