Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii Read online

  Elisha and Maria (Sartwell) Loomis

  Samuel and Mercy (Partridge) Whitney

  Rev. William Ellis (from April 15, 1822)

  Hawaiians Thomas Hopu, John Honolii, William Kanui, Prince George Kaumuali‘i

  Second Mission to Hawai‘i, April 23, 1823

  Rev. Charles S. Stewart

  Rev. William and Clarissa (Lyman) Richards

  Rev. Artemas and Elizabeth (Edwards) Bishop

  Rev. Joseph and Martha (Barnes) Goodrich

  James Ely

  Louisa Everst

  Betsey Stockton

  Hawaiians William Kamoolua, Richard Kalaioulu, Kupelii

  Third Mission to Hawai‘i, March 30, 1828

  Rev. Lorrin Andrews

  Dr. Gerrit P. Judd

  Rev. Jonathan Smith Green and Theodosia Arnold

  Rev. Peter and Fanny (Thomas) Gulick

  Mary Ward

  Hawaiians George Tyler Kielaa, Samuel J. Mills Paloo, John E. Phelps Kalaaauluna

  Fourth Mission to Hawai‘i, June 7, 1831

  Rev. Dwight Baldwin

  Rev. Sheldon Dibble

  Fifth Mission to Hawai‘i, May 17, 1832

  Rev. William P. and Mary Ann (McKinney) Alexander

  Rev. Richard and Clarissa (Chapman) Armstrong

  Dr. Alonzo and Mary Ann (Tenney) Chapin

  Rev. John S. and Ursula (Newell) Emerson

  Rev. Cochran and Rebecca (Smith) Forbes

  Rev. Harvey and Rebecca (Howard) Hitchcock

  Rev. David and Sarah (Joiner) Lyman

  Rev. Lorenzo and Betsy (Curtis) Lyons

  Edmund Horton Rogers

  Rev. Ephraim and Julia (Brooks) Spaulding

  Sixth Mission to Hawai‘i, May 1, 1833

  Rev. John and Caroline (Platt) Diell

  Lemuel Fuller

  Rev. Benjamin Wyman and Mary Elizabeth (Barker) Parker

  Rev. Lowell and Abba (Tenney) Smith

  Seventh Mission to Hawai‘i, June 6, 1835

  Miss Lydia Brown

  Rev. Titus and Fidelia (Church) Coan

  Henry and Ann Maria (Anner) Dimond

  Edwin Oscar and Sarah (Williams) Hall

  Miss Elizabeth Hitchcock (later married Edmund Rogers)

  Eighth Mission to Hawai‘i, April 9, 1837

  Dr. Seth and Parnelly (Pierce) Andrews

  Edward and Caroline (Hubbard) Bailey

  Rev. Isaac and Emily (Curtis) Bliss

  Samuel Northrup and Angeline (Tenney) Castle

  Rev. Daniel Toll and Andelucia (Lee) Conde

  Amos Starr and Juliette (Montague) Cooke

  Rev. Mark and Mary Ann (Brainerd) Ives

  Edward and Lois (Hoyt) Johnson

  Horton Owen and Charlotte (Close) Knapp

  Rev. Thomas and Sophia (Parker) Lafon

  Edwin and Martha (Rowell) Locke

  Charles and Harriet (Halstead) MacDonald

  Bethuel and Louisa (Clark) Munn

  Miss Marcia M. Smith

  Miss Lucia Garratt Smith

  William Sanford and Oral (Hobart) Van Duzee

  Abner and Lucy (Hart) Wilcox

  Ninth Mission to Hawai‘i, May 21, 1841

  Rev. Elias and Ellen (Howell) Bond

  Rev. Daniel and Emily (Ballard) Dole

  Rev. John and Mary (Grant) Paris

  William Harrison and Mary Sophia (Hyde) Rice

  Joseph—Hawaiian translator

  Levi—Hawaiian translator

  Tenth Mission to Hawai‘i, September 24, 1842, and after

  Rev. George and Malvina (Chapin) Rowell

  Dr. James William and Millicent (Knapp) Smith

  Rev. Samuel and Julia (Mills) Damon

  Rev. Asa and Sarah (White) Smith

  Eleventh Mission to Hawai‘i, July 15, 1844

  Rev. Claudius Buchanan Andrews

  Rev. Timothy Dwight and Mary (Hedges) Hunt

  Rev. John Fawcett Pogue

  Rev. Eliphalet and Elizabeth (Baldwin) Whittlesey

  Twelfth Mission to Hawai‘i, February 26, 1848

  Rev. Samuel Gelston Dwight

  Rev. Henry and Maria Louisa (Walsworth) Kinney

  Antecedent: Captain Cook

  On January 18, 1778, Capt. James Cook, RN, strode the quarterdeck of his vessel of exploration, the converted collier HMS Resolution. She was stocky and slow, 460 tons. With a thirty-foot beam across a ninety-three-foot keel, she was a third wide as she was long, like sailing a great rectangular box. But she was overengineered, built to weather an epic voyage and withstand almost any challenge to her construction. Cook had pronounced her the fittest ship for service that he had seen, and if there was one kind of vessel on earth that James Cook knew how to handle, it was a collier—a coal carrier. The legendary Captain Cook had just turned fifty, with penetrating blue eyes set in a taut, angular face. On his last visit home he found himself such a celebrity that his likeness was painted by the great Nathaniel Dance. Unlike most of the serene portraiture of this era, dominated by the paintings of Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds, with their subjects often recumbent in gardens of classical statuary, Cook was shown seated at a table, leaning forward, pointing to a speck on a map, his head cocked to one side and with the glint in his eye of a man possessed.

  Indeed, his life’s story had been one of dissatisfaction and hurry.9 Unhappy on his parents’ farm and unhappy as a grocery clerk when he was apprenticed out at sixteen, he was apprenticed again to coal merchants in Whitby and first went to sea on one of their colliers. While still a teenager, he devoured in his off-duty hours the study of astronomy, navigation, and mathematics, and by twenty-four he attained the rating of mate. He gained his own merchant command at twenty-seven, of another collier working the Baltic Sea, but joined the Royal Navy in June of 1755 once it was apparent that England and France were headed for a fight. As a junior officer in the Seven Years’ War (known in America as the French and Indian War) he took part in numerous sea battles, sat successfully for his master’s examination in 1757, and then in 1759 proved instrumental in winning Canada for Britain: Showing early his skill at cartography, as master of HMS Pembroke he charted the shore of the St. Lawrence River, piloting Gen. James Wolfe and his army to a landing from which they scaled the heights and surprised the French on the Plains of Abraham, leading to the capture of Quebec. This, and then his three years mapping the entire coast of Newfoundland with punctilious accuracy, marked him as an officer of singular determination and ability.

  After the war the Royal Society—in full, the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, with its century of exploration and scientific quest already accomplished—desired to mount an expedition to Tahiti to observe the expected transit of Venus across the sun. After a canvass of the Royal Navy for its best navigator and mapmaker, it was Cook who was promoted to lieutenant and seconded to the Royal Society. In a momentous three-year voyage he delivered his onboard astronomer to Tahiti to have his gaze at Venus, and then sailed west, circumnavigated and mapped the coast of New Zealand and explored the eastern coast of Australia. He returned home in July 1771 with thousands of botanical specimens, journals that were published to wide fascination, and claim to a vast South Seas addition to the British Empire.

  Although the Royal Society did not know much more about Venus than it had before, Cook was lionized for his exploration, promoted to commander, and offered another mighty journey. The ignorance of the West concerning the undiscovered regions was as massive as it was opaque. The most knowledgeable geographers for years had postulated the existence of a great southern continent, a Terra Australis, a mighty landmass that must fill the far-southern Pacific to counterbalance the weight of Asia—otherwise the planet must wobble out of its orbit. In his second voyage Cook’s commission was to discover Terra Australis, and claim it for the empire. From 1772 to 1775 Cook pursued the goal, running a vast search pattern in the open waters of the southern ocean, becoming the first mariner to cross the Antarctic Circle. But in the six thousa
nd miles west-to-east of the southern Pacific, traversed not once but twice, he proved that there was no Terra Australis. When he was back home again, the geographers would not have it, but Cook left them to grapple with the earth’s rotation as best they could: He had been there, and he knew better. Cook was brusquely thanked with the Copley Gold Medal and made a fellow of the Royal Society; then he was retired from active service and given a post at Greenwich Hospital.

  It was a retirement that he did not want, and Cook found a way to fight it. Over the years he had acquired the friendship, and the patronage, of the formidable John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, a man of sobering means and weighty influence, who since the end of Cook’s first voyage had acted as First Lord of the Admiralty. Cook knew him also as a man of vision (his later reputation for incompetence was overwritten by historians), and Sandwich offered him a third commission that would dwarf the others in importance. Almost from the time that Columbus had proved that the world was round, the Holy Grail of navigation had been to discover the Northwest Passage, a sea route that must lie to the north of the New World. It would link Europe and the Orient by a voyage a fraction of the distance required by rounding the tip of Africa and crossing the Indian Ocean. All who had attempted to descry it failed, crossing the Atlantic only to be frustrated by the maze of icy islands in the Canadian arctic. But, no one had tried to find it from the west. The Bering Strait was known, separating Siberia from Alaska, but what lay north and east of there? That breathtaking task was handed to Cook, but no one must know. None of the competitors in the scramble for imperial expansion—the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, and now above all the Russians, for the Bering Strait was their back door—must have any inkling of the reason for Cook’s heading to sea once more.

  It was put out for public consumption that the purpose of this third voyage was to return a native Tahitian named Omai to his home. This first South Sea islander to visit the West had accompanied Cook to England, had been the toast of London, and now gave convenient cover for the third voyage. Cook was promoted again, to captain, commanding the stout Resolution and accompanied by a second ex-collier, half the size of the Resolution, HMS Discovery, Capt. Charles Clerke commanding. Leaving Omai once more with his people on Tahiti, Cook turned north toward Alaska, the Bering Strait, and glory in finally finding the Northwest Passage. Some 2,700 miles later, in the very heart of the vast central Pacific in what was assumed to be open ocean, he raised an island. It was the morning of January 18, 1778. Its tall mountains were obvious, although rendered dark blue by the distance over the water. The winds had been weak, and occasionally Cook found himself becalmed altogether. Throughout the day the island slowly slipped by them to the east, then another island appeared before them. When a lazy wind finally filled their sails it was from the east, making it easier to steer for this second island ahead of them.

  Becalmed again during the night of the nineteenth, the ships drifted a bit to the west, and on the morning of the twentieth they finally approached the south coast of the second island. Cook found no anchorage here, but he could see that it was well populated, the landscape heavily dotted with grass houses and agricultural plots. A few canoes knifed their way out to them, paddled by a handsome swarthy people who closely resembled the Polynesians that Cook had left far behind. They were friendly, but apprehensive. Cook and his officers recognized the language as a variant of what was spoken in Tahiti and the other Society Islands—a different dialect, but communication was possible.

  The natives were too cautious to come aboard, but Cook lowered gifts to them, brass medals and bits of iron. Once the islanders understood the visitors’ friendly intentions, they pitched overboard the stones they had brought to hurl at them had they proven otherwise. Cook had no idea of the impact that the gift of metal would have on these people. In trade, the islanders sent up quantities of fish and sweet potatoes, and then paddled heartily away to spread the news: This alien race of men brought iron to trade.

  To find an anchorage Cook turned west, toward the lee side of the island, and soon a third mass of land appeared on the horizon to the west. As the discoverer, Cook named the archipelago the Sandwich Islands, in honor of his patron, the earl. As the two ships proceeded, more canoes approached them with produce to trade, all for iron. “Such is these People’s avidity for iron,” wrote Captain Clerke of the Discovery, “a moderate sized Nail will supply my Ship’s Company very plentifully with excellent Pork for the Day, and as to the Potatoes and Tarrow, they are attained on still easier Terms.” The natives appeared to have an advanced culture, but no source of metal.

  On the west side of the island Cook put in at a shallow bay from which they could see a village on the shore, perhaps sixty grass houses, and farther inland, a number of curious, flimsy white towers. As more canoes paddled their way out, Cook learned that the island was called Kaua‘i, with a glottal stop separating the final two vowels. The village was called Waimea.

  Here at last the natives came aboard the Resolution, and were awestruck at the experience. Some prayed; some threw themselves prostrate on the deck before the officers. As remembered in Hawaiian traditional lore, two men at the fore, a priest and a chief, tied malo sashes in their left hands; “they went before Kapena Kuke [Captain Cook] bent over, squatted down, and offered prayers … then took the hand of Kapena Kuke and knelt down; then rose up free from any tabu.” Cook presented the priest with a knife, who then named his daughter Kua-pahoa (After this Knife.)10 Once convinced that they were welcome, the islanders inquired into matters of etiquette and proper behavior. In their society men did not swallow their saliva, but spit incessantly, and they asked where they might do so. But again they were almost frenzied at the presence of iron. One man seized a meat cleaver and leapt overboard with the prize, racing for shore with others in his canoe. Lt. John Williamson, who was just lowering the pinnace to find a landing spot, pursued him; his men were under orders not to fire, but when Williamson shot his pistol after him, his men leveled a musket volley. Terrified natives dived overboard and swam, but the cleaver was not recovered.

  As soon as the first English boat slid onto the beach, a native spied the iron boat hook and determined to seize it, and Williamson shot him. The locals carried his body away with no great show of mourning; apparently life was cheap here, and to English eyes the incident was soon forgotten. It occasioned much discussion among the natives, however. The thief may have been a chief named Kapupu‘u (Forbidden Hill). In this culture, chiefs were accustomed to taking what they pleased, and this one ignored the priests’ warnings, took the iron, and was killed. There was sentiment to avenge him, but the fear that this was a visiting god convinced them that hospitality was the safer course.11

  Aboard the Resolution the natives at first showed a disposition to help themselves to anything the visitors had, but once they understood that this was not acceptable, they settled down to trade, eagerly and amicably. “No people,” wrote Cook after convincing them they could not just take what they wanted, “could trade with more honesty than these people.” Within a short time the ships had taken on nine tons of fresh water and a host of provisions, all acquired in exchange for more bits of iron.

  During their days at Waimea, Cook went ashore three times. As a distinguished visitor, he was conducted to the most important sites in the village. The first was one of the white towers that he had seen rising above the forest; Cook estimated its height at fifty feet, but noted others even taller farther away. At its foot was a grass house, with a small altar outside on which food offerings had been left. It was the grave of an ali‘i, a member of the ruling noble class. The second was a burying ground nearby, marked off by skulls set on the ground; this was the cemetery of the kanaka kapu, commoners (kanaka, or more formally the maka‘ainana, people of the land) who had been privileged to be sacrificed to the gods. Kapu, among these people, was the same as tabu among the Tahitians, meaning set apart, holy, forbidden.

  The English assessed an essentially Polynesian cult
ure, with a diet based on taro, bananas, fish, pork and dogs, with clothing of tapa, the inner bark of mulberry or selected other trees, thinned by pounding until it became a coarse but flexible cloth. Cook recognized the culture well. Their weapons, though inventive, were edged with stone or sharks’ teeth. The English also noticed two distinct classes of people. With some exceptions the ali‘i, the chiefs, loomed in size over the low-status kanaka, and exercised unquestioned power.12 Commoners fell on their faces before them. Cook did not meet any of the high chiefs, who were withheld by their retainers until they could learn more about this white foreign race and their vast powers.

  Anxious to continue with his exploration, Cook took the Resolution over to the island visible to the west, called Ni‘ihau. Clerke and the Discovery lingered at Waimea, where at last he met the island’s handsome young king and his wife. The monarch was escorted out to the ship with great ceremony, but his attendants would not allow him to go farther onto the vessel than the gangplank. They “took as much care in getting him in and out of the Canoe,” wrote the amazed Clerke, “as tho’ a drop of Salt Water wou’d have destroyed him.” Clerke patted him on the shoulder in greeting, and the retainers looked on agape: To touch the king meant death; only some higher being would dare such familiarity.

  After briefly probing the coast of Ni‘ihau, Cook desired to top off his stores before venturing into the northern reaches of the Pacific, but wind and sea made it impossible to return to Kaua‘i. Cook therefore sent three boats of armed men—a provisioning party—to ascertain a landing spot on Ni‘ihau. Once they were ashore the surf increased, and it was clear that they would have to spend at least one night there. This displeased him, for Cook knew what would happen. He himself never partook of native women. During his brief visits home he had fathered five sons and a daughter with his wife, Elizabeth, to whom he had been married for fifteen years. Tolerant of his men’s needs, he was also conscious of his role in empire building, with a sincere exertion to limit the spread of sexual diseases from his crew to native populations. But the English quickly learned how aggressive the women of these islands could be. This culture had developed a keen sense of eugenics, and to mate with a superior person was greatly desired. On Kaua‘i, according to Lieutenant Williamson, the women “used all their arts to entice [the sailors] into their Houses & even went so far as to endeavour to draw them in by force.” Cook had only allowed men with no venereal symptoms ashore on Kaua‘i, although he knew that was no guarantee, but now with twenty stranded on Ni‘ihau, infection was sure to be introduced.