“During the pre-contact and early contact periods, Kula was primarily an area for farming. Dryland taro patches grew in elevations up to 3,000 feet.”
“Farmers were reliant on growth of sweet potatoes and when crops failed due to caterpillars, blight, frost or sun, people in Makawao and Kula suffered from famine.”
“The arrival of whalers in the 1840s stimulated great demand for Irish and sweet potatoes. Potatoes were taken to Lahaina and sold aboard ships.”
“The California gold rush also resulted in great demand from prospectors for potatoes, other vegetables, sugar, molasses and coffee.”
“Farmers were doing so well that many Hawaiians were going into business for themselves, shipping their goods to San Francisco.” (DHHL)
“The call for [potatoes] is loud and pressing, as some vessels bound for California have taken as many as a thousand barrels each. The price is high, and the probability is that the market can not be supplied this autumn.”
“Kula, however, is full of people. Strangers from Wailuku, Hāmākua and Lahaina are there preparing the ground and planting, so that if the demand from California shall be as urgent next spring as it is now the people will reap a rich harvest.”
“They often repeat the saying of a foreigner, who, after having visited the mines of California, came back to Maui quite satisfied, and said to his neighbors at Waikapu, ‘California is yonder in Kula.’”
“‘There is the gold without the fatigue and sickness of the mining country.’ True, true.” (Polynesian, November 24, 1849)
“The foreigner’s remark caught the fancy of the Hawaiians and they were soon referring to Kula as ‘Kalifonia’ or ‘Nu Kalifonia’ (Nu Kaliponi) and working with great diligence to extract the wealth from the rich pay dirt on the slopes of Haleakala. “
“To encourage the spirit of enterprise which had been thus awakened among the native people, the privy council voted to have the government lands in Kula surveyed and divided into small lots of from one to ten acres and offered for sale to the natives at a price of three dollars per acre.”
“Rev. WP Alexander, one of the teachers at Lahainaluna, was employed to do the surveying and arrange the sales, and he devoted six weeks or more to this work in the spring of 1850. Other districts of the kingdom produced potatoes, but in lesser quantities than Kula.”
“The demand for potatoes continued strong all through 1850 and the first half of 1851. In the former year the exports of Irish potatoes amounted to 51,957 barrels, of sweet potatoes, 9,631 barrels.”
“In 1851 Irish potatoes were exported to the amount of 43,923 barrels, sweet potatoes to the amount of 56,717 barrels. Eighteen fifty-one was a year of disasters in California and of drought and depression in Hawaii.”
“The potato trade was the only branch of industry that presented a cheerful aspect, and by the fall of the year the potato boom was over. Mrs. Judd reports that in August the market was over-stocked, and there were no purchasers or ships to take [Hawaiian produce] to California.”
“Irish potatoes rotted in the ground, and onions and other vegetables scarcely paid the expense of digging. This was very discouraging to the agriculturists, who had expected to realize fortunes speedily by turning over the soil.”
“From this time, except for a slight revival in 1853 due to floods in California, the export trade in Irish potatoes rapidly dwindled away, but sweet potatoes continued to be exported in small quantities for many years longer.”
“A report to the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society in 1854 stated that the Hawaiian potato growers in 1849-1851, in their eagerness to gain all they could from the trade, shipped many inferior potatoes to California, and Hawaiian potatoes thereby got a bad reputation.”
“A more important reason for the decline of the Irish potato trade between Hawaii and California was the fact that the Californians began to raise potatoes themselves and in addition received large quantities from the neighboring Oregon territory.” (Kuykendall)
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