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June 13, 2023 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Sutter’s Hawaiians

Early California history is closely linked with Hawaii. (Kenn)

“[I]n December 1838, there arrived in Honolulu one of the most colorful soldiers of fortune to land on Hawaiian shores. This individual was Captain John Sutter, later to make his mark on California history, accompanied by a small party of followers.  The previous October, Sutter and his party had reached Fort Vancouver after an overland trek from Missouri.”

“He was welcomed at Fort Vancouver and treated generously. An excellent raconteur with an active imagination (his title of former Captain in the Swiss Guards serving France was entirely his own invention), a congenial guest, part visionary and part con man, Sutter’s presence enlivened this active but still relatively isolated post.” (Spoehr)

“It was in the latter part of 1838 that Captain John Sutter arrived in Honolulu from Oregon on his way to California where he hoped to make his fortune, and where he realized his ambition until gold was discovered on his land when he lost everything in the turmoil that followed.”

“Sutter was a citizen of the Principality of the Grand Dutchy of Baden, Germany, where he left his wife and four children to seek his fortune in America. After crossing two oceans and a continent, Sutter found himself in Honolulu where he remained for five months, eagerly awaiting passage to California.”

“He made friends with Honolulu merchants and participated in a few business ventures, one of which was to purchase the abandoned ship Clementine moored in the harbor. He served as supercargo, sailing first to Sitka, Alaska, then to Yerba Buena, now San Francisco, where he disembarked with some Sandwich Islanders.”

“There were contracted to serve him for three years at ten dollars each per month …. He was to pay their passage back to Hawaii after that time. The actual number of Hawaiians who accompanied Sutter is not definitely known. Sutter claimed there were ten, eight men and two women, while William Heath Davis numbered eight, four men and four women.” (Kenn)

“Sutter was very poor on names and referred to the Sandwich Islanders merely as ‘Canacas,’ though he observed that had it not been for his Canacas he would not have been able to succeed in his California venture.  They helped to build his fort [near present-day Sacramento] said to be patterned after Kekuanohu (the Honolulu fort)”. (Kenn)

“The task of [Sutter’s] Hawaiian workers was not only to assist with building the fort, but to ensure labor tranquility amongst the hundreds of California natives (including Nisenan, Miwok, and Yokut) who would eventually be laboring at New Helvetia by 1846. Some Americans would compare these Sacramento Valley natives to Pacific Islanders.”  (Farnham)

In his memoirs, Sutter recalled the Hawaiians, “I could not have settled the country without the aid of these Kanakas. They were always faithful and loyal to me.” (Sutter)

From 1839 to 1849, Sutter’s Fort was the economic center of the first permanent European colonial settlement in California’s Central Valley. During that time, the Fort catalyzed patterns of change across California. Then, the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848.

So, what happened to the Sutter Hawaiians and other Hawaiians on the continent?

“[B]y the mid-1800s, there were hundreds of Hawaiians in what is now Canada and California. In 1847, Hawaiians made up 10% of San Francisco’s tiny but growing population.”  (Terrell)

“In the aftermath of the gold rush, many Hawaiians stayed in California. And as they settled in California, a number of Hawaiian men married local indigenous women. Which, it turns out, was a common occurrence up and down the West Coast.: (Terrell)

“Both Hawaiians and Indians in the Oregon Territory were explicitly excluded from the dominant society. From the mid-1860s onward, neither they nor their offspring were legally permitted to marry into the dominant society.”  (Barman & Watson)

As a result, Hawaiians were absorbed into local Native American communities through intermarriage. These Hawaiians were less likely to return to the Islands and leave their Native American wives and children behind. (Farnham)

“Sutter’s Hawaiians were to play an important role in the development of Sacramento, and their descendants, many of whom are living in Sacramento and environs today, have contributed greatly to the economic progress and welfare of the region. They became gold miners, salmon fishermen, snag boat operators, river boatmen, farmers, trappers, levee builders, and entertainers.” (Kenn)

“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.”

“Housed in picturesque huts on the east bank of the Feather river, near the thriving little town of Vernon, and gaining a livelihood

as best they may, and according to the tenets of their native land, caring not for the morrow so long as they may live and enjoy the day…”

“… a hundred or more big brown men and women and numerous tots form a colony where, peace and content rule their world, and where the salubrious climate Is engendering in this languorous race …”

“… an aptitude for labor a foreign element in their home taro-patches and rice field, with the sun shining upon them ten months of the year, and with the brown rush of waters homing myriad finny tribes for their ever ready rods …”

“… these dusky exiles pass their days rowing and fishing and pitching their tents at night in the shaggy thickets that clothe the river reaches, where with their ukuleles and guitars they build harmonies and weave legends into their cloth of dreams.”  (Parkhurst)

“And living up there close to the touch of nature, they have kept all of their race identity. When one of their people visits them bringing pol, ti leaves, kukui and other choice tidbits from home, they have barbecues, chowders and hula-hulas, and all of the delights that comprise a luau or Hawaiian feast.”  (Parkhurst)

© 2023 Ho‘okuleana LLC

Filed Under: Economy, Prominent People Tagged With: John Sutter, Hawaiians, Hawaii

August 30, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

View of Hawaiians in 1828

“Almost all travelers have been pleased to endow with surpassing beauty the women of the different archipelagos of the South Seas. I cannot speak of those in the Marquesas or Society Islands, but if one may judge by the Sandwich Islanders, on whom they have heaped the same praises, I am obliged to say that they are far from living up to this portrait.”

“But I must agree that they possess a natural grace that, without matching the fine and regular features of a white and delicate skin has nevertheless an almost irresistible attraction. Their movements are smooth and supple, their postures enchanting and easy, and their glances, more than anything, are indescribably alluring.”

“The freedom they enjoy means that they are strangers to anxiety or constraint, and this state of tranquility is reflected in all their bodily manners.”

“If they suffer storms of the heart these must be of a passing nature because there is no need for these to persist. Their ways appear to be based on inconstancy; they need never suffer the boredom of an ill-matched union.”

“Amused by the veriest trifles, they wear only smiles on their lips, and their mouths never open to say no. It is surprising that that the stranger, finding such an easy welcome among them, lets himself pain =t them with flattering praise if only to enlarge on and embellish his own conquests.”

“When, several days after our arrival, the young king wished to visit the Heros, we prepared a small collation, and he came on board with the regent and a numerous suite.”

“Kauikeaouli drank with pleasure our best liquors and ate our cakes with eagerness. We noticed that he did not touch the poi that he always has brought along wherever he goes; he preferred our good bread.”

“When he got into his boat to return we saluted him with thirteen guns, a courtesy that he found quite flattering. On the quay his bodyguard awaited: a score of fine young men fitted out simply but uniformly in blue pantaloons, short blue jackets, round hats, guns, bayonets, and ammunition pouches.”

“The king’s house is located in the same compound as that of the regent and is of the same style and size. It has a very high roof supported by low sidings that incline to the inside.”

“This shape imparts to these dwellings of wood and straw more strength than if the sustaining walls were perpendicular. The king has another house built according to the rules of our architecture but he never lives in it, preferring this one of thatch.”

“In fact, this sort of dwelling is better suited to their mode of life. They love to stretch out on mats, letting themselves drop wherever the fancy strikes them, and there they spend the greatest part of the day lying together helter-skelter on their rush carpets. This could not be done in lodgings furnished like ours, where they would need a sofa for each person.”

“The young king sleeps in his thatched great house only in bad weather; when the night is fine he stays in a small hut that has to be entered on hands and knees and that is barely large enough for four people sitting or stretched out.”

“Those of his young court follow his example; each constructs a small hut close to his, all of them together forming a sort of camp around the principal house, which hardly serve for more than to store the furniture.”

“The king and the regent are not the only principal authorities in the archipelago. A wife of the famous Kamehameha I, Queen Kaahumanu, exercises much power in fact if not legally.”

“She has her private court and her own coterie of followers. She lives in the city during the winter but passes the summer in a pretty valley a league to the east of Honolulu.”

“Along with the English consul I went one day to see her at her residence, which consisted of two main houses and a number
of huts.”

“We found her seated on a mat and leaning back on cushions covered in silk. Although she was not much interested in us, she received us in a dignified way. A woman of forty-two, she appeared to have once had much embonpoint, but bad health, caused by her well-known excesses, had brought on premature old age, which left her little hope of a long life.”

“Thus the adherents of the young king were being patient while awaiting the death of Kaahumanu, which they expected soon and believed would deliver him from a feminine yoke.”

French sea captain Auguste Dehaut-Cilly made round-the world travels between 1826 and 1829; all of the above is from his account of the Islands following his trip from California to Hawai‘i, in 1828.

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© 2019 Hoʻokuleana LLC

  • Alphonse_Pellion,_Sandwich Islands-Houses of Kalanimoku, Prime Minister of the King_(c._1819)
  • Alphonse_Pellion,_Îles_Sandwich;_Maisons_de_Kraïmokou,_Premier_Ministre_du_Roi;_Fabrication_des_Étoffes_(c._1819,_detail)

Filed Under: General, Ali'i / Chiefs / Governance, Hawaiian Traditions, Place Names Tagged With: Hawaii, 1828, Hawaiians

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