Beyond Hawai'i: Native Labor in the Pacific World 9780520967960

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Beyond Hawai‘ i

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Beyond Hawai‘ i native labor in the pacific world

Gregory Rosenthal

university of califor nia pr ess

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2018 by Gregory Rosenthal Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rosenthal, Gregory, 1983– author. Title: Beyond Hawai‘i : native labor in the Pacific world / Gregory Rosenthal. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: lccn 2017056075 (print) | lccn 2018003856 (ebook) | isbn 9780520967960 (epub) | isbn 9780520295063 (cloth : alk. paper) | isbn 9780520295070 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: lcsh: Indigenous labor—History. | Hawaiians—Pacific Area— History. | Hawaii—Emigration and immigration—History—18th century. | Hawaii—Emigration and immigration—History—19th century. Classification: lcc hd8930.7 (ebook) | lcc hd8930.7 .R67 2018 (print) | ddc 331.6/2969009034—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017056075 Manufactured in the United States of America 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Maps vi Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 • Boki’s Predicament 16 Sandalwood and the China Trade 2 • Make’s Dance 48 Migrant Workers and Migratory Animals 3 • Kealoha in the Arctic 82 Whale Blubber and Human Bodies 4

Kailiopio and the Tropicbird 105 Life and Labor on a Guano Island •

5 • Nahoa’s Tears 132 Gold, Dreams, and Diaspora in California 6 • Beckwith’s Pilikia 166 “Kanakas” and “Coolies” on Haiku Plantation Epilogue 203 Legacies of Capitalism and Colonialism Appendix 209 Notes 211 Glossary 267 Bibliography 271 Index 295

Wainwright Cape Hawaii

Point Barrow

Bering Sea Northwest Coast California (see California map) Hawai‘i (see Hawai‘i map) Guangzhou

New England

Baja Mazatlán California San Blas

Howland Island Baker Island Jarvis Island

P A C I F I C O C E A N

map 1. Map of the Pacific World, showing places mentioned in the text. Map by Bill Nelson.

P A C I F I C O C E A N

KAUA‘I NI‘IHAU O‘AHU

Honolulu

MOLOKA‘I Lāhainā LĀNA‘I

Ha‘ikū MAUI

KAHO‘OLAWE

P A C I F I C O C E A N

Hilo HAWAI‘I

map 2. Map of the principal Hawaiian Islands, showing places mentioned in the text. Map by Bill Nelson.

Vernon Coloma Sacramento San Francisco

P A C I F I C O C E A N

Santa Rosa Island

San Diego

map 3. Map of California, showing places mentioned in the text. Map by Bill Nelson.

ack now l e dgm en ts

This book would not have been possible without the assistance of countless friends, colleagues, and mentors. I began the research for this book nearly a decade ago under the mentorship of Christopher Sellers at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Chris taught me to see history through intersecting lenses of environment, labor, class, health, and the human body, all in transnational perspective. Jared Farmer, Iona ManCheong, and Jenny Newell rounded out my dissertation committee. All three are phenomenal scholars (of the U.S., China, and the Pacific, respectively) who guided my research at crucial moments. The entire history faculty at Stony Brook was supportive and inspirational, providing an intellectual home over six years of tremendous growth and change. They also provided financial support through teaching appointments, assistantships, and funds for conference travel and research. Fellow graduate students—particularly Bill Demarest, Raquel Alicia Otheguy, and Carlos Gómez Florentín—also provided a social environs for this ever-commuting comrade, both on the LIRR train and in New York City. Thank you, as well, to Michael Zweig, who hired me to work at the Center for Study of Working Class Life. Since moving to Virginia my colleagues at Roanoke College have been unequivocally supportive and encouraging as I have finished this project. Thank you particularly to current and former chairs Jason Hawke and Whitney Leeson, as well as Dean of the College Richard Smith. The department and the college have provided funds for me to attend conferences and conduct additional research in Hawaiʻi. This book is the product of Roanoke’s supportive research environment. I have also benefited from the tremendous mentorship, comradery, and criticism of colleagues from across the United States and the world. These ix

include, in no particular order, Seth Archer, Larry Kessler, Hiʻilei Julia Hobart, Laurel Turbin Mei-Singh, Ted Melillo, Lissa Wadewitz, Ben Madley, Bathsheba Demuth, Thomas Andrews, David Chang, Greg Cushman, Doug Sackman, David Chappell, Ty Tengan, Josh Reid, Anna Zeide, Marika Plater, Kristin Wintersteen, Frank Zelko, Kieko Matteson, Kara Schlichting, Catherine McNeur, Melanie Keichle, Kendra SmithHoward, and so many others. I am particularly grateful to David Igler and Ryan Tucker Jones, both of whom carefully read and provided extensive feedback on the entire manuscript in its penultimate form. In Hawaiʻi, thank you to the East-West Center; the Hamilton Library at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, particularly librarians Dore Minatodani and Kapena Shim; the Hawaiʻi State Archives; the Bishop Museum; the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society; and the Hawaiian Historical Society. Mahalo nui loa to Manuwai Peters, Pōmai Stone, Puakea Nogelmeier, and Richard Keao NeSmith for their assistance with Hawaiian-language learning, translations, and proofreading. Thank you to Nora, Josh, and Safiya, for friendship. In California, thank you to The Huntington Library; The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley; and the California Historical Society. Thank you to the Berkeley YMCA, and to Lynn and Marjeela, for friendship. In New England, thank you to the Massachusetts Historical Society; the Houghton Library at Harvard University; the Baker Library at Harvard Business School; and Mystic Seaport. Thank you to Steve Trombulak for hiring me as a visiting instructor at Middlebury College. Thank you to Anne and Davida, for friendship. In New York, thank you to the New York Public Library and the NewYork Historical Society. Special thanks to the people’s library—the Brooklyn Public Library—where I wrote this final draft. Thank you to Free UniversityNYC comrades, and to Conor, Michael, Lyra, and Ruby for friendship. Particularly great gratitude goes to Caroline, my brother James, and my parents Robin and Kimmo. In Virginia, big shout out to my queer family, especially Rachel. I have received generous financial support from the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association, The Bancroft Library, The Huntington Library, the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and Roanoke College. x

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At the University of California Press, thank you to my editor Niels Hooper, assistant editor Bradley Depew, project editor Kate Hoffman, and marketing manager Jolene Torr. Thank you also to copyeditor Kathleen MacDougall, cartographer Bill Nelson, and indexer François Trahan. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to work with you all. This book is about migrant workers and global capitalism. It is dedicated to my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. My ancestors came across the Atlantic Ocean on boats. They were diasporic seeds, brave sojourners, working class heroes. This is for them.

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Introduction what does globalization look like? How does capitalism feel? To the sandalwood cutter, it was 133 pounds of wood strapped on his back, stumbling down a steep mountain path on his way to the sea. To the whale worker, it was bruises on his body; it was the songs he sang about whales, warships, and about coming up short. Kealoha felt it trembling under his skin; it was cold and unforgettable. Kailiopio heard it in the millions of birds screaming and cawing above his head. To the gold miner, it was hunger and embarrassment. Nahoa felt it in the warm tears streaming down his face. The plantation worker felt it in his stomach, in the strange foods that he ate. Hawaiian workers experienced globalization and capitalism in their bodies. In the century from the death of Captain James Cook in 1779 to the rise of the sugar plantations in the 1870s, thousands of Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) men left Hawaiʻi to work on ships at sea and in nā ʻāina ʻē (foreign lands). Through labor, these men bridged islands and continents; they wove together a world of economic, demographic, and ecological exchanges; and they wrote about their experiences abroad in Hawaiian-language newspapers that traveled home and back out again across a transoceanic diaspora. Hawaiian men extracted sea otter furs, sandalwood, bird guano, whale oil, cattle hides, gold, and other commodities. The things they made and the stories they told traveled to every corner of the Pacific Ocean, from China in the west to the equatorial Line Islands in the south to Mexico in the east to the Arctic Ocean in the north. This is the story of the rise and fall of the Hawaiian worker in the nineteenth century. It is a story of transoceanic capitalist integration, and the story of how the world’s greatest ocean became a “Hawaiian Pacific World”—the world that Hawaiian labor made. 1

Historians of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific have tended to ignore this narrative: how Hawaiʻi’s integration into a global capitalist economy in the nineteenth century was propelled by the labor of thousands of Native men who left Hawaiʻi in pursuit of wages and opportunity abroad. Historians have long focused on the complex relations among aliʻi (chiefs) and haole (foreigner) elites, consequently sidestepping investigations of the makaʻāinana (commoners), the indigenous workers and their experiences of capitalism.1 Labor historians have written at great length about Hawaiʻi’s immigrant work force, including Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and Filipina/o workers, but less is known about Hawaiʻi’s indigenous workers, including those Native men and women who left Hawaiʻi to pursue work on ships at sea and in foreign lands.2 Pacific World historians have traced the movement of ships, goods, plants, animals, and diseases across the vast ocean, but Native workers are rarely accounted for as agents peopling those diasporas and traveling those circulations.3 This book is a study of the formation of Hawaiʻi’s indigenous working class in an era of early capitalist expansion and globalization. Here, Hawaiian migrant workers take center stage. Through both work and words, Hawaiian labor linked disparate peoples, places, and processes together, making the Pacific into a “world.”

the “kanaka” body Hawaiian workers were known as “kanakas.” The term kanaka (singular) / kānaka (plural) is Hawaiian for “person” or “people.” In the nineteenth century, Europeans and Euro-Americans circumscribed this term’s meaning to more specifically refer to a Native Hawaiian male worker. By the end of the century it was used throughout the Pacific World to refer to all manner of Pacific Islander workers. The “kanaka” represented a racialized, classed, and gendered body, the creation of a Western capitalist imagination that saw the world’s peoples as pools of labor fit for the global economy.4 Eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Hawaiian leaders seem to have occasionally used kanaka as a term designating a male servant to an aliʻi, which perhaps informed how and why outsiders began to use this term.5 Some Hawaiians also seemingly embraced the term kanaka and their application of the term may have informed Euro-American understandings.6 More frequently “kanaka” was used by outsiders as a derogatory label. The idea of the kanaka in the nineteenth century was born of the marriage of a Western capitalist 2

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political economy with indigenous Hawaiian paradigms of class, labor, and personhood.7 Beginning in the 1810s and 1820s, capitalist and Christian values combined to engender a new body discourse in Hawaiʻi. The large size of many aliʻi bodies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was, for many Hawaiians, an indigenous expression of mana (divine power); one’s corporeality marked his or her legitimacy to rule over the people and the land.8 A rival discourse developed under capitalism in which strong, lean, and muscular male bodies were valued as commodities in the global labor marketplace. Foreign employers and missionaries alike saw the body not so much as an expression of spiritual power (mana) but of labor power. An indigenous system of corporeal class politics based on fatness was replaced by a new regime of fitness.9 At least three racial stereotypes defined the kanaka body in the Western mind. To many employers and other foreigners, Hawaiians were an “amphibious” race, “nearly as much at home in the water as on dry land.”10 This meant that Hawaiian workers were seen as particularly fit—that is, suitable or adaptable—for labor in marine and maritime work environments. Th is racial imaginary—certainly influenced by foreigners’ surprise at Native bathing, surfing, and fishing cultures—influenced Hawaiian work experiences all across the Pacific, where workers were frequently charged with labors that involved swimming, diving, and boating.11 Second, Hawaiians were considered innately indolent. Many foreigners blamed this on the climate, thereby racializing tropicality as the combination of listless bodies with an enervating environment.12 This discourse of tropical indolence legitimated Christian missionaries’ efforts to destroy indigenous systems of labor and domestic production; only capitalism could turn so-called lazy kanakas into industrious citizens. Employers likewise reasoned that indolence had to be driven out of the kanaka; left to his own devices, he simply would not work.13 Third, the kanaka body was seen as a diseased body. By mid-century, both aliʻi and influential foreigners were consumed by a discourse predicting apocalyptic population decline. True, Hawaiians were dying at an alarming rate from foreign epidemics, but the racialization and commodification of the kanaka also framed disease as a market liability.14 One of the reasons why the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi eventually turned to importing foreign labor was the government’s belief that the Native kanaka would not survive long enough to sustain the economy and preserve the lāhui (nation).15 All told, the presumed brute strength and “amphibious” dexterity of Hawaiian male I n t roduc t ion

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workers made the kanaka an attractive worker, while his simultaneous penchant for indolence and susceptibility to disease made him a less than ideal partner in global commerce. Yet for the kanaka himself, being a worker in the capitalist economy was not so much about the raced, classed, and gendered limitations of his body, or the inherent strengths or weaknesses of his corporeal nature. To him, work was about survival, and also about working-class power and possibility in a world suddenly turned upside down. Against narratives of indigenous rootedness in ka ʻāina (the land)—narratives that privilege stories of demographic and environmental collapse, victimization, and dispossession—we might follow an approach first charted by Epeli Hauʻofa and since developed by Kealani Cook, David A. Chang, and others, to tell stories of indigenous routedness on the ocean. Rather than facing colonization and in situ victimization, thousands of Hawaiian workers challenged their Native leaders and the state as well as haole employers and imperial usurpers alike by moving their bodies along pathways opened up by globalization. Movement, migration, and mobility were not signs of defeat for the Hawaiian people but rather historical examples of working-class agency in Hawaiʻi and beyond.16 These stories have the power to “re-member” Hawaiian working-class men to nineteenth-century history. Against the debilitating, emasculating discourse of the deformed kanaka body—which Ty P. Kāwika Tengan has shown can be re-membered through indigenous articulations of Native masculinities—and the “dismembered” Hawaiian body politic (ka lāhui)— building on Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwoʻole Osorio’s terms—this book’s narrative of Hawaiian migrant labor is the story of physically capable and cosmopolitan workers who created a transoceanic diaspora spreading out across the world’s greatest ocean, bringing Hawaiʻi into the global economy and forever reshaping Hawaiian history, politics, and culture.17 Yet these men are routinely left out of narratives of the Hawaiian nation and Hawaiian history, and this omission has grave consequences. If that which made the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi a wealthy, cosmopolitan state on the nineteenth-century world stage was not its leaders, but rather its workers, how might this story influence current-day anticolonial strategies against U.S. empire? If labor, not land—people, not plantations—are central to Hawaiian history, how might working people, including diasporic off-Island Hawaiians, take center stage again in the Hawaiian lāhui?18 And what about women? Thousands of Hawaiian male migrant workers were supported at home by mothers, wives, sisters, cousins, and daughters. 4

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Furthermore, hundreds of women worked on ships and abroad as migrant laborers. Some were prostitutes, some were domestic servants, others worked side-by-side with men doing the same labor yet not always receiving the same wages.19 Moreover, many historians have noted the incredible stories of female leaders in nineteenth-century Hawaiʻi who ruled as queens and princesses, prime ministers and regents. Titles shifted over time, but women always took a leadership role in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. European and Euro-American observers often wrote about Hawaiʻi as a nation of women.20 Yet sometimes this discourse was problematic. When foreigners wrote of Hawaiʻi as a seductive land luring colonists in to “have” her, they feminized the nation and the people; colonialism thus became an exercise of exerting one’s white heteronormative masculinity and patriarchy over a nation seen as submissive, feminine, and in need of protection. Attendant with this discourse, as Adria Imada has shown, was the imperial parading of Hawaiian women as representatives of the docile and welcoming (with aloha, of course) colonial subject body. Native scholars Ty P. Kāwika Tengan and Isaiah Helekunihi Walker have also shown how this discourse worked to erase Hawaiian men from narratives about Hawaiʻi. They were seen as superfluous, even dangerous, to the colonial project of making Hawaiʻi into a paradise (as defined by the colonizers). To this day, many Hawaiian working-class men feel sidelined from the dominant colonialist narratives of their nation and their history.21 In this book, Hawaiian men take center stage alongside a rigorous gender analysis that explores how Western discourse emasculated men as “kanakas,” and how Hawaiian men fought back against this talk through their courageous stories of work, migration, and sacrifice upon the ocean and across the world.

a hawaiian pacific world Hawaiian labor made the Pacific into a “world.” They did this by weaving a web of interconnections across the vast ocean—connections that had never before existed. Over the past decade, historians have debated the concept of a Pacific World. Is, or was, the entire ocean ever a coherent, integrated space? Did people in the nineteenth century see themselves as living and laboring in such a world? What forces make for such a world—the movement of labor, capital, and material, or the transmission and sharing of stories, songs, and culture? Some scholars posit that rising empires are the agents that historically I n t roduc t ion

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connected disparate peoples and places together, calling the Pacific at times a Spanish Lake or referring to it, in the age of British and American imperialism, as an Anglophone Pacific World.22 Scholars of Asian migrations and diasporas have countered with the study of the transpacific—the worlds made, imagined, and populated by Asian workers, diasporic literatures, and counterhegemonic claims on imperial oceanic space.23 Both of these approaches, however, wholly dismiss Pacific Islander peoples and indigenous perspectives on the ocean. Some scholars have used environment and ecology to argue for a Pacific World, proposing variously that tectonic plates or tsunamis or the extraction of natural resources have geographically placed the ocean’s many peoples upon a singular stage.24 Economic arguments paint the Pacific World as a “sector” of the global economy, or as a “primal site” of globalization. In this vein, transoceanic maritime trade with China made the Pacific into a world.25 But then there are sectors within the sector; scholars have written of the Eastern Pacific and the Northern Pacific as unique arenas of economic and cultural activity.26 Indigenous scholars, on the other hand, have used Native languages and literatures to propose uniquely non-Western ways of conceptualizing the ocean. Historian Damon Salesa has mapped the “native seas” of pelagic fishing and maritime networks, while Hawaiian scholar B. Pualani Lincoln Maielua has celebrated the “situated knowledge” of a canoe’s-eye view of the world.27 The term Hawaiian Pacific World, as used in this book, is an attempt to build upon the aforementioned approaches while also making three important new contributions: first, this book argues that labor was the glue that held the Pacific Ocean together. Workers, in both body and mind—real people moving through ocean space and thinking about the world beyond Hawaiʻi— were essential agents of transoceanic integration. The Pacific became a “world” to Hawaiians through Native workers’ migrations, their labors abroad, and the stories and songs that they shared back home about their experiences. To argue otherwise—that Western explorers, the movement of ships, climatic or ecological pressures, the spread of disease, or other factors brought the world to Hawaiʻi—is to deny the agency of the thousands of Native men who traveled to distant corners of the ocean and the surrounding continents and carried aspects of the world beyond Hawaiʻi back home with them in their words, in the things they made, and in their altered bodies. Second, the term Hawaiian Pacific World denotes an explicitly national conceptualization of oceanic space, time, and belonging. Pacific World historians have shied away from nationalism. Acknowledging that important 6

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events occur both below and above the level of the nation-state, and worrying, rightly so, of any interpretation that “elides native histories and reifies imperial agendas,” scholars have instead called for transnational or “translocal” approaches to the study of the ocean.28 But such approaches may effectively deny the national claims of indigenous peoples who have long understood their engagement with the world as a crucial aspect of their nation’s story. Furthermore, transnational approaches may give the impression that the ocean is, or was, a neutral space or empty stage upon which diverse peoples have historically come into contact. But, as David Chang has argued, Hawaiians, for example, have long understood the Pacific Ocean as a known realm. They peopled the ocean with their bodies as indigenous explorers, claiming the ocean as a space of Hawaiian storytelling integral to larger narratives of national identity and belonging.29 To say that there was a Hawaiian Pacific World, therefore, is to contend that Hawaiian national history goes beyond the borders of the archipelago, including the supranational spaces lived in, embodied, and transformed by migrant workers and diasporic Islanders. Th is book therefore presents a national history of Hawaiian engagements with global capitalism. The setting? A large swath of the Pacific Ocean and the surrounding continents, what I call the Hawaiian Pacific World. Finally, this conceptualization is grounded in both theories of historical materialism as well as the study of culture. To argue that only material linkages, economic and ecological, made the Pacific a world would deny the importance of Hawaiian workers’ own words, through letters home as well as through stories and songs, in making the world beyond Hawaiʻi legible to other Hawaiians. To argue, oppositely, that only intellectual and cultural understandings of oceanic space and time prove the existence of a larger world is to deny the monumental impact of global capitalism on Hawaiian minds, bodies, and movements. Trade networks, commodity chains, labor migrations, and capital flows, in addition to ocean currents, island ecologies, mineral deposits, and animal habitats all have materially shaped the geography of the world that Hawaiian workers came to know as theirs: a world they lived and labored in and brought home to Hawaiʻi. Specific contours of this Hawaiian Pacific World are explored in the chapters that follow. Hawaiian workers moved their bodies north, south, east, and west. Whale workers brought Hawaiian words with them to Alaska and Russia, then returned to Hawaiʻi with songs about ice and snow as well as a penchant for whale blubber and strong drink. Gold miners in California I n t roduc t ion

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subscribed to Hawaiian-language newspapers, writing letters to editors, then finally receiving their words in print weeks or months later as these newspapers arrived in the mountains of North America. Hawaiian sandalwood cutters came to see the exchange-value of their toil in the fine Chinese cloths and furniture items in a chief ’s home in Honolulu. Through labor, workers set a Pacific World in motion. They were also one of the most literate working classes in the world. They uniquely wrote about their experiences abroad, and read their comrades’ words and stories in Hawaiian-language newspapers that were printed in Honolulu and shipped out across the ocean, wherever ships sailed. As Hawaiian scholar Noenoe K. Silva has shown, this was a diaspora of newsprint as much as a diaspora of people. Th rough the circulation of stories and songs, in print as well as through oral cultures, Hawaiians came to see themselves as part of a transoceanic diaspora.30 Workers’ words are crucial to this transoceanic imagining of diasporic Hawaiian space. Indigenous newspapers and Hawaiian-language geography textbooks, as demonstrated by David Chang, mapped out the ocean as a bounded and known world. To some it was ʻĀinamoana, literally “ocean land.”31 Other people experienced their own Pacific Worlds. There was no one common sense of oceanic space or transoceanic integration shared by all Pacific peoples, indigenous or foreigner. Yet it is also possible to speak of the ocean as an increasingly integral part of the larger processes of globalization. The Hawaiian Pacific World was influenced by forces not just beyond Hawaiʻi, but beyond the Pacific. Capital flowed into Pacific industries from Boston, New York, and London. Specie from Latin America exchanged hands on Hawaiian shores. Consumers in China and the United States touched and tasted Hawaiian-made products. Scholars have traced the emergence of a “world economy” in the early modern era, prior to the period of Hawaiʻi’s integration into that economic system.32 By the nineteenth century, global capitalism had expanded to yet new frontiers, forcing open distant markets and recruiting workers among indigenous societies in Africa, North America, and in Oceania, including Hawaiʻi.33 Globalization did not, and will not, homogenize the world’s peoples into one culture. Rather, contacts and confluences among local and global forces create hybridity as well as “friction.”34 Hawaiians influence the world just as the world influences Hawaiian society. The history of how Native Hawaiians engaged in (and against) the global capitalist economy can tell us something about how globalization was experienced in local, national, and regional contexts, from the 8

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shores of Honolulu outward to the far corners of what was then the Hawaiian Pacific World.

hawaiian capitalism Historians have long studied capitalism as a unique mode of production, the way that capital moves across space, transfigures peoples’ sense of time, and drives workers off the land and into new relations of production. Narratives of primitive accumulation, the globalization of labor flows and markets, and the dispossession and proletarianization of indigenous peoples are commonplace themes in nineteenth-century world history.35 As Hawaiians became “enmeshed in the capitalist net” of the global economy, to use Lilikalā Kameʻeleihiwa’s words, how did indigenous workers and consumers experience this brave new world? What were the unique features of Hawaiian capitalism?36 The dominant narrative of capitalism in Hawaiʻi focuses on changes in ka ʻāina (the land). Westerners colluded with Native leaders to push through land reforms in the 1840s that privatized millions of acres of the former commons, thereby dispossessing the makaʻāinana, the “people of the land.” This land was initially distributed among the aliʻi only, but soon much of it ended up in the hands of foreign owners. By turning the land into a commodity, Hawaiians lost their land and thereby lost their sovereignty.37 Or so the story goes. This narrative is not false, but there is more. While Hawaiʻi’s capitalist class sought to “free” the land—that is, to convert it into private property— they also simultaneously pushed for “free” trade and “free” labor. Western powers such as the United States and Great Britain employed gunboats to coerce states from the Qing Empire in China to the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi to open their ports to foreign commerce. So-called free trade led to the decline of indigenous industries, such as the production of kalo (taro) and kapa (cloth), while consumer debts fostered by increasing global commerce linked both individuals and states to the demands of foreign creditors.38 The dehumanization of the kanaka body, on the other hand, with Christian missionaries seeking to kill the Hawaiian but save the man, and employers’ belief in the nature of Hawaiian men as fit workers, also directed capitalism upon the human body.39 Workers experienced capitalism in intimate, personal ways, from the changing rhythms of working days and seasonal voyages to the changing meanings of once-familiar plants such as sandalwood and sugarcane.40 I n t roduc t ion

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Indeed, capitalism conditioned workers’ environmental experiences in revolutionary ways.41 In addition to seeing native plants such as sandalwood and sugarcane transformed by their own hands into globally circulating commodities, Hawaiian laborers also engaged in new relationships with Pacific Ocean animals.42 Migrant workers’ hunt for wages actually turned them into real live hunters. Yet, animals were not just passive victims; they actively disrupted capitalist production through their movements and actions. In Pacific Ocean industries such as whaling and guano mining, human and animal labor collectively co-made the environment as a “workscape,” a fluid and dialectical interface of human and nonhuman inputs.43 Hawaiian migrants also caused environmental damage through their work. Their impact on local environments threatened floral and faunal habitats, disrupted other Native peoples’ lifeways, and even endangered their own ability to exit the wage economy and live off the land and the sea as a commons. Capitalism in Hawaiʻi disrupted and displaced Native Hawaiian relationships with ka ʻāina, but on the flip side it opened the door for common Hawaiians to develop cosmopolitan environmental experiences. Hawaiian migrants accumulated environmental knowledge and wisdom about the wider world that made them ambassadors for sharing stories and songs about the rare and raw natures that flourished beyond Hawaiʻi.44 But how Hawaiians became migrant wage workers in the first place was a messy process. Hawaiian proletarianization came about only in complex ways.45 As early as the 1810s, some Hawaiians worked for wages while others engaged in corvée labor. Some provided labor to aliʻi as hoʻokupu (tribute) while others labored independently for their own wealth. Some Hawaiians signed contracts aboard foreign ships and even worked overseas for foreign corporations. Hawaiian whale workers often labored for a combined share of total profits as well as a cash advance and sometimes wages for certain work but not for others. These complex entanglements of different modes of production and different relations of production, sometimes in the same places at the same times, marked Hawaiian capitalism as a bottom-up process of increasing engagements with the global economy rather than a top-down process imposed by elites or outsiders upon the people. There was no one moment when Hawaiian commoners became wage workers, and no one factor that propelled them into new forms of labor. In fact, many Hawaiian men sought out these opportunities. Capitalism was certainly embraced by some Hawaiians from the highest chief down to the lowliest worker, while it was also resisted in extraordinarily creative ways, on ships and on plantations all 10

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across the Pacific World. Workers lived capitalism in their bodies, in their diets, in the things that they made and they consumed, and in the stories and songs that they told about a changing world.

on sources and ethics In the 1820s, Christian missionaries from New England brought the printed word to Hawaiʻi. In the 1830s they began to print the Islands’ first Englishand Hawaiian-language newspapers. Mission schools trained Hawaiians in ka palapala, reading and writing. Many Hawaiian workers learned to read and write, and their words not only helped to make a Pacific World in the nineteenth century, but they are also crucial tools for reconstructing Hawaiian history in the twenty-first century. The government-run newspaper Ka Hae Hawaii (1856–1861) was the first paper to regularly feature letters to the editor by Hawaiian authors. The independent newspaper Ka Nupepa Kuokoa (1861–1927) also regularly featured letters to the editor. These Hawaiian-language letters, written for and published in Honolulu newspapers, are one of the few means available for reconstructing the lives of Native Hawaiian migrant workers in the nineteenth century. From California to equatorial guano islands to wherever ships sailed, Hawaiians abroad frequently sent letters home to let family and friends know about their work experiences. These letters to the editor capture nineteenth-century migrant laborers telling their story in their own words, a rare documentary source for any time period or place, much less nearly two centuries ago at the onset of global capitalism’s influence in the Pacific World. These letters are complemented by archival sources that more often portray foreigners’ points of view. Sometimes records such as ships’ logs, work contracts, and government censuses do not record much beyond the existence of a certain number of “kanakas” at any given place at any time. All available sources—from workers’ writings to Hawaiian-language songs to ships’ logs to employers’ diaries and government reports—are used in this book to tell the story of the thousands of Native men who worked in the global capitalist economy. This book includes numerous Hawaiian-to-English translations. The act of translating from one language to another necessarily alters the meanings and messages embodied in words. Especially in the case of Hawaiian-language letters, essays, and songs, any translator is apt to completely miss the kaona I n t roduc t ion

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(the hidden meaning) of the words and what they meant at the time, if not also what they might mean to ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language) speakers today. I am blessed to have had the guidance and encouragement of several gifted teachers in the Hawaiian language. They have patiently read and assisted with these translations. Still, English-language translations do not do justice to Hawaiʻi’s nineteenth-century writers, and I therefore include in the backnotes the original Hawaiian text to accompany each and every English translation. All errors and misrepresentations are entirely my own. I first traveled to Hawaiʻi in 2010 as a doctoral student looking for an interesting topic for my dissertation. I spent three days in Honolulu, visiting ʻIolani Palace and the Bishop Museum, and walking around Honolulu’s streets, my head pulsing with thoughts about sandalwood, China, the ocean, history. What was I looking for? I was determined to find an actual sandalwood tree. I spent four days on Kauaʻi looking for one. I was naïve, but more than that, I was reenacting colonialism. Here I was, a white person from the East Coast of the United States, bumbling my way through a foreign land looking for something that I could “sell” as a research project. I did not find an actual sandalwood tree, but I did find a story that propelled me to write this book. I have always wondered whether this is actually my story to tell, and if I am to tell it, how should it be told? Several years ago, a friend from Hawaiʻi told me about kuleana, a Hawaiian word that means both “privilege” and “responsibility” but cannot be reduced to either translation. She said that I needed to figure out what my kuleana was in regards to this project. She, as well as others, pointed me to the critical work of scholars such as Haunani-Kay Trask, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, and Julie Kaomea, who have all called for the decolonization of research and writing about Hawaiʻi and the Pacific.46 Here goes: I am not Hawaiian. I am not from Hawaiʻi. As a haole from the mainland, I see that my kuleana is the “privilege” to think and write about the Pacific from the outside looking in, to imagine creative and alternative interpretations to dominant discourses; my kuleana is to bring outside concerns, methodologies, and research questions to bear upon local and indigenous stories, to offer new ways of seeing and to give voice to concerns that may or may not resonate with current stakeholders in the archipelago. These are all privileges that come with great responsibilities. My kuleana is also my “responsibility” to understand that outsider historians for centuries have committed discursive violence against Hawaiians, labeling and interpreting their bodies and behaviors and falsely claiming to speak for them on the privileged academic 12

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stage. My kuleana is to respect and pay witness to the historic and contemporary wrongs that have been (and are) committed against Hawaiian people, by academics and by others, including the maintenance and perpetuation of U.S. colonialism and the denial of legitimate Hawaiian claims to self-determination.

the story Chapter 1 begins with the story of the opening of a trans-Pacific triangular trade in the 1780s among the United States, China, and Hawaiʻi. Boki was an aliʻi (ruling chief) and kiaʻāina (governor) of Oʻahu who in the 1820s became obsessed with the sandalwood trade and the riches flowing into Hawaiʻi from the Qing Empire of China. The story of Boki’s predicament— how to ensure enough indigenous sandalwood supply to keep pace with Hawaiian leaders’ increasing consumption of foreign goods and their debts owed American merchants—is our entryway into understanding the emergence of the Pacific World as an integrated segment of the global capitalist economy, and one in which Hawaiian workers took center stage. In the 1840s, Western concepts of free labor and free trade revolutionized the transPacific economy with the imposition of treaty port restrictions on the Qing Empire following the Opium War (1839–1842) and the imposition of a freelabor ideology in Hawaiian land and legal reforms. By 1850, the Māhele— a process of land privatization and redistribution—had dispossessed the majority of Hawaiʻi’s indigenous people, leading many to seek work abroad or on foreign ships. Chapter 2 begins with the story of Make, a Native Hawaiian whale worker on an American ship in 1850. Make was just one of thousands of Hawaiian men who served on foreign whaling vessels in the nineteenth century. As the global whaling industry emerged in the period from 1820 to 1860, transoceanic economic and ecological factors conditioned Hawaiian workers’ experiences of both whales and the ocean. Movement and mobility are key to understanding the “whale worlds” inhabited by both Hawaiian workers and migratory whales. Hawaiian migrant workers were modern-day “whale riders.” Their experiences of ocean space and ocean time were influenced not just by global economic and ecological forces, including the geographical distance of the commodity chain from production to consumption, but by the nature of the ocean itself. Our story continues by following the movement I n t roduc t ion

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of workers from Hawaiʻi to New England and beyond; the movement of whales from feeding grounds to breeding grounds; and the movement of whale parts from sites of production to sites of consumption in the United States. From 1848 to 1876, most Hawaiian whale workers toiled in the icy climes of the Arctic Ocean. Chapter 3 begins with the story of Kealoha, a Hawaiian whale worker who in the 1870s lived among the Inupiat of Alaska’s North Slope for over one year. Bodies—both cetacean and human—are a central category of analysis for understanding Hawaiian experiences of Arctic whaling. In the Arctic Ocean, Hawaiian men interacted not only with ice, wind, cold, and snow, but also became intimate with whale anatomy as well as their own bodies through work. European and Euro-American discourses on the kanaka body held that Hawaiian men were not fit for work in nontropical climates, but Kealoha and thousands of other Native men challenged these racialized ideas, proving their fitness and their manliness in the “cold seas” of the North. Another front of extractive industry in the 1850s and 1860s was guano mining. Kailiopio was one of approximately one thousand Native Hawaiian men who worked on remote equatorial Pacific Islands mining bird guano. Chapter 4 bridges themes in animal studies and the history of the body to explore the guano workscape. The guano island work environment was a hybrid world made and maintained interdependently by both human and avian actors. Millions of nesting seabirds, and their engagements in transoceanic work—connecting distant feeding grounds with local breeding grounds—constituted the nature of Hawaiian migrant workers’ experiences of this remote world. Meanwhile, the California Gold Rush opened up yet another front in the Hawaiian migrant experience. Eighteen-year-old Henry Nahoa wrote a letter home from California’s Sierra Nevada mountains in the 1850s to express his “aloha me ka waimaka [aloha with tears]” to family members in Hawaiʻi. Nahoa was not alone in his tears: at least one thousand Hawaiians migrated to California in the period before, during, and after the Gold Rush. Chapter 5 explores workers’ experiences in Alta California from the 1830s to the 1870s. During this time, men like Nahoa lived and labored under Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. rule. They worked in sea otter hunting, cattle hide skinning, gold mining, and urban and agricultural work, from the coasts to the sierras to cities and farms. Nineteenth-century California was an integral part of the Hawaiian Pacific World. 14

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Native workers returning to Hawaiʻi in the second half of the nineteenth century found an almost unrecognizable economy and environment. Following the Māhele, Euro-American settlers had made Hawaiʻi their home and were intent on reorganizing labor and land to serve global capitalism. Chapter 6 examines the rise of the sugar plantation system in Hawaiʻi, and how Hawaiʻi’s sugar history—so often linked with histories of U.S. empire— was actually part of the same trans-Pacific story of oceanic industrialization through sandalwooding, whaling, guano mining, and gold mining. But the new migrant workers at this time were not Hawaiian kanakas, they were Chinese coolies. George Beckwith’s plantation at Haʻikū, Maui, is used as a case study for exploring the intersections and entanglements of Hawaiian and Chinese labor in this period. By 1880, Chinese and other non-Natives outnumbered Hawaiian workers in the sugar industry, and across the Pacific World the collapse of extractive industries such as whaling, guano mining, and gold mining left Hawaiʻi’s diasporic working class disjointed and disempowered. The end result was the dismemberment of the Hawaiian working class. In the Epilogue to this book, I consider how the story of the rise and fall of Hawaiʻi’s indigenous workers—and the diasporic, migratory nature of their experiences—revolutionizes what we think we know about the place of Hawaiʻi in the Pacific, and the place of the Pacific in the world. I also raise questions about what this story can contribute to twenty-first-century struggles over capitalism and colonialism in Hawaiʻi as well as across our globalizing world.

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on e

Boki’s Predicament sandalwood and the china trade

french captain auguste duhaut-cilly could not believe his eyes. He was standing inside Boki’s home in Honolulu. From the outside it was humble, built “of wood and straw,” and “quite the same as all other houses in the town of Honolulu.” But “the interior,” he continued, “carpeted with mats like the others, differed only in its European furniture, standing in every corner and mixed with the native furniture. Nothing could have been more strange than to see a magnificent porcelain vase of French manufacture paired with a calabash, a work of nature,” or to see “two hanging mirrors with gilded frames meant to display beauties in their most elegant toilette but reflecting instead dark skin half covered with dirty tapa cloth.”1 In other words, Boki’s hale (house) was full of stuff—Native stuff, foreign stuff, simple stuff, exotic stuff. Just one year later, Boki was off on a fantastical adventure. In 1829 he outfitted two ships with nearly five hundred men and set sail from Honolulu to Eromanga, an island in the New Hebrides Islands (today’s Vanuatu), thousands of miles to the south. Boki’s intended goal was to harvest Eromangan sandalwood. Sandalwood paid for all the nice things that Boki had in his home. But Boki never made it back home. Some speculated that his ship was lost at sea; others that he had fled to live out his years in exile.2 Boki faced an awful predicament. He and the other aliʻi (chiefs)—the men and women of Hawaiʻi’s ruling class—had purchased so many goods from foreign ships and foreign merchants that they now owed tremendous debt to American creditors. The U.S. Navy had just recently sailed a gunship into Honolulu Harbor to support American private business, coercing the Hawaiian government to give up their wood. Everybody wanted sandalwood. Throughout the 1820s, Boki and the other aliʻi forced thousands of Hawaiian men to cut wood in 16

the mountains on every Hawaiian Island, and still they were not able to pay off their debts. Only by conquering and colonizing a foreign land, and by taking their wood, he reasoned, could the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi free itself from the grasp of American economic predation and imperialist maneuvering. This was Boki’s predicament. But more broadly, it is also the story of how capitalism came to Hawaiʻi. This narrative involves thousands of actors spanning the globe. It pairs northern Chinese fur consumers with southern Chinese merchants in the great emporium of Guangzhou (Canton). It matches European and Euro-American ships and their crews to the men and women of Hawaiʻi who willingly and often unwillingly fed appetites for exploitation. The narrative also involves thousands of Hawaiian workers, accustomed to an indigenous political economy based on agricultural and household production, who now sailed away on ships at sea, lived and worked abroad in foreign lands, and climbed into the mountains of their own land to cut down trees so that other people could buy mirrors and porcelain vases. This is the story of how Hawaiian land and labor became part of the Pacific World, linked to the global economy through ships, salt, sea otters, and sandalwood, and through the labor of thousands of Hawaiians who by the second half of the nineteenth century had become “free,” a landless proletariat set adrift upon the ocean to find work wherever they could.

ships, salt, and sea otters Some say that Captain Cook discovered Hawaiʻi in 1778. But it was also the other way around. Hawaiians discovered the world. By 1800, Hawaiians had met people and consumed goods from China, North America, Europe, and Latin America, and some had even traveled to these places to see it for themselves. After Hawaiians killed Cook in 1779, his crew continued onward, selling sea otter furs that they had harvested on the northwest coast of North America at the great emporium of Guangzhou (Canton), the main commercial entrepôt of the Qing Empire.3 Within one decade, multiple ships of European and American origin began visiting Hawaiʻi as part of a new transPacific fur-and-tea trade among China, the northwest coast of North America, Hawaiʻi, and points Atlantic.4 These ships called at Hawaiʻi in order to procure “refreshments”: fresh fruits, fresh water, and fresh bodies— women for sexual pleasure and men for manual labor. s a n da lwo od a n d t h e c h i n a t r a de

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Foreigners visiting late eighteenth-century Hawaiʻi encountered a unique land, with a distinctive mode of production. Hawaiians structured relationships of land and labor according to indigenous economic values and longstanding religious and cultural traditions. In eighteenth-century Hawaiʻi there were, broadly speaking, two major socioeconomic classes. Relations of production were divided among makaʻāinana (commoners) and aliʻi (chiefs). The makaʻāinana lived on the common lands of ahupuaʻa, pie-cut-shaped districts, in which commoners had access to the resources of upland forests, lowland valleys (suitable for agriculture), and near-shore fisheries. Hawaiians’ bodily labor was not, however, directed solely toward subsistence, as commoners were also required to periodically give hoʻokupu (tribute) to aliʻi who, on their behalf, maintained proper relations with nā akua (the gods) who, in turn, ensured the fertility of the land. This circular process—what historian Lilikalā Kameʻeleihiwa has called mālama ʻāina (care for the land)—was dependent upon the pono conduct of all parties. Pono, a salient concept in Hawaiian political economy, is often translated as “just” or “proper,” but it also implies a state of balance that can be both ecological as well as bodily. It refers to things being the way they are supposed to be. In summary, the key peoples in Hawaiʻi’s indigenous economy were the two classes, makaʻāinana and aliʻi, and a key moral value was pono, the “right conduct” that governed relations of production between classes as well as relationships among ka ʻohana (the family), ka ʻāina (the land), and ke kino (the body).5 Commoners’ tribute most often took the form of corvée labor. Aliʻi periodically requisitioned labor for building fishponds or heiau (temples) or to serve as foot soldiers in intra-Hawaiian wars. In the nineteenth century, under the rule of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi (until government reforms in the 1840s), makaʻāinana were required to pay a labor tax that built upon this tradition of hoʻokupu. Penal labor was also a feature of early Kingdom rule. Hawaiian commoners were often forced—either as corvée or as convicts—to labor in state-owned industries such as sandalwood harvesting or at the royal salt works at Āliapaʻakai, Oʻahu.6 By the beginning of the nineteenth century, traditional labor practices and class relations were already changing. Two commodities irrevocably changed Hawaiʻi’s place within the global economy. One was found in abundance in Hawaiʻi: salt. The other was only available thousands of miles away: the fur of the sea otter (Enhydra lutris). In many ways, trade in sea otter pelts is what made the Pacific World go round in the late eighteenth century.7 The players in this grand dance were manifold. There was the Qing Empire. They 18

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were at the powerful, strategic epicenter of the fur-and-tea trade. The Qing had what everyone else in the world wanted: tea. In return, there were a few things that they would accept from foreign traders but many that they would not; sea otter furs were a rare desired item. Two other major players, Great Britain and the United States, were compulsively addicted to tea (and to sugar, too, altogether creating a veritable maelstrom of Atlantic and Pacific economic conjunctures: tea, sea otter furs, African slavery, Hawaiian labor— all part of a grand narrative of globalization in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries). To get Chinese tea, British and American merchants extracted ginseng from northeastern American forests, sea otter furs from northwestern American bays and coves, sandalwood from Pacific Islands, and so on.8 The Russian empire was also a player in this grand dance: they sold mammalian furs to the Qing as early as the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century, the Russian empire expanded across the Pacific Ocean into uppermost North America. They extracted sea otter furs from the North Pacific, just as the British and Americans did in the Columbia River region. Russians, Brits, and Americans even variously (and tenuously) worked together at times to get sea otter furs to market.9 All of these world powers—China, Russia, Britain, the United States— were simultaneously dependent on Hawaiʻi. There were no sea otters in Hawaiian waters, but Hawaiʻi had provisions. To get sea otter furs across the great ocean, foreign traders needed a midway rest stop: they needed a place where they could acquire fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh water, and labor. The late eighteenth-century trans-Pacific fur-and-tea trade was intimately dependent on Hawaiian labor and Hawaiian resources. Some Hawaiian migrant workers traveled to the northwest coast of North America to assist with the sea otter hunt, while others simply sought ways to accumulate wealth via the provisioning of biological and mineral resources to passing ships. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, almost every European or Euro-American vessel crossing the ocean between the Americas and China alighted in Hawaiʻi. By one scholar’s reckoning, as many as forty-five ships visited Hawaiʻi in the years between 1786 and 1800.10 Hawaiian workers traveled abroad on some of these ships. For example, while stopped in the Islands in January 1808, John Suter of the ship Pearl reported recruiting six Native men to go with him to the northwest coast of North America to hunt sea otters: “I Ship’d one man, at the Islands, Six of the Natives. I arrived on the Coast the 18th of Feby.” John C. Jones, U.S. consul to the Hawaiian Kingdom, wrote from Honolulu in 1821 that “all s a n da lwo od a n d t h e c h i n a t r a de

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vessels on the [northwest] coast now have got double crews,” referring to the equal recruitment of Hawaiians alongside Yankee seamen aboard sea otter hunting ships. “The Brig Frederick, Capt Stetson sailed from here yesterday, who came to these Islands from the Coast, for the purpose only of getting more men for himself & Capt Clark, he has taken away about twenty” Hawaiian men. These Hawaiian workers in the early decades of the nineteenth century were the first significant wave of labor to expand the reaches of the Hawaiian Pacific World.11 In Hawaiʻi, the indigenous political economy was also transformed as Hawaiians began to produce the Islands’ first export commodity. The significance of salt was directly related to the sea otter fur trade. Salt was absent—at least in easily extractable crystalized form—from the coasts inhabited by sea otters. Geography thus inconvenienced those who would seek to preserve sea otter skins and turn them into dollars and cents, but this haphazard geography was a boon for Hawaiians. Traders alighting in Hawaiʻi found tons of salt for the taking. In the coming decades, Hawaiian aliʻi ordered salt extracted and piled up at Kawaihae on Hawaiʻi Island and at Āliapaʻakai near Honolulu on Oʻahu.12 As a commodity, Hawaiian salt was alienated from the ʻāina and from the Hawaiian labor that extracted it. It was buyable, sellable, exchangeable. Its value was determined, in part, by the cost of its production but also by the ups and downs of Hawaiʻi’s unprecedented relationship to a global capitalist economy. In all these ways, the story of salt prefigures the story of sandalwood. Salt provided eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Hawaiians with some sense of what it might feel like to link their labor and environment to the supplies and demands of a global marketplace. Indeed, demand for Hawaiian salt was dependent on the success of sea otter harvests along North American shores and on the consumption patterns of Chinese fur wearers in northern China. The triangular nature of this trade prefigured the triangular nature of sandalwood production, distribution, and consumption. Salt, also like sandalwood, was a source of economic power for the Hawaiian ruling class. By 1802, John Turnbull, visiting Hawaiʻi, noted that salt was becoming scarce and expensive. “The natives,” having recognized the advantages of this scarcity, “learned to affi x a proper value to the productions of their country.”13 Much of Hawaiʻi’s salt exports came from one site on Oʻahu, a place about four miles west of Honolulu Harbor that the haole called “Salt Lake” and Hawaiians called Āliapaʻakai (literally, “salt encrustation”). In 1824, EuroAmerican missionary Charles Stewart visited the site, describing “a lake or 20

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pond, in which large quantities of salt are continually forming.” The abundant salt crystals sparkling on the lake’s surface seemed like “a frozen pond” to this New Yorker’s eyes. Upon reaching Salt Lake, Stewart was able to reach down and pick up crystals from among the “twigs, grass, and pebbles, over which the water had flowed.” He mused of the minimal labor needed for resource extraction: “From this natural work alone, immense quantities of salt might be exported.”14 But by the 1820s, Hawaiians were not just extracting salt from Āliapaʻakai; they were producing it. “The natives manufacture large quantities from sea water by evaporation,” Stewart wrote. “There are in many places along the shore, a succession of artificial vats of clay for this purpose, into which the salt water is let at high tide, and converted into salt by the power of the sun.” To make so much salt required massive amounts of human labor. Stewart did not report on how many workers produced salt at Āliapaʻakai, but later sources from the 1830s through the mid-nineteenth century describe makaʻāinana labor in the thousands (as many as two thousand workers in one instance) working in and around the lake making crystals for export to passing ships. By 1840, according to Charles Pickering who visited the Islands with the U.S. Exploring Expedition, a scientific endeavor, “Salt is now exported to Chili, to Oregon, Kamtchatka & the Russian settlements, and some to California.” Salt connected Hawaiʻi with every corner of the Pacific World.15 Hawaiʻi’s emergence as a center of trans-Pacific trade in furs and salt was built upon more than just economic and ecological change. Political transformations also facilitated a change in the mode of production and helped to align Hawaiian labor and resources with the global economy. One man, Kamehameha (r. 1795–1819), almost singlehandedly did all of this: unifying the Hawaiian archipelago; promoting international trade; and encouraging increased economic production throughout the Islands. He was able to do this partly due to strong networks with foreign traders as well as through the acquisition of foreign goods, including European ships and arms. In other words, labor and nature from Hawaiʻi not only supported the growth of trans-Pacific capitalism in the late eighteenth century, but trans-Pacific capitalism supported the foundations of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi (c. 1810) and the creation of a modern nation-state in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in the early nineteenth century.16 Kamehameha made the trans-Pacific economy work for him. By generously giving fresh food and water to passing European and Euro-American s a n da lwo od a n d t h e c h i n a t r a de

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ships, he was able to acquire a wealth of foreign goods, including military technologies. Kamehameha, more so than any other Hawaiian, mastered the art of this exchange. He captured European and American ships, and even more importantly, captured haole labor, making two foreigners—John Young of England and Isaac Davis of Wales—his “white aliʻi.” With foreign labor, ships, and guns, and an army of makaʻāinana foot soldiers, Kamehameha solidified monarchical rule over the islands. New relationships forged between Hawaiians and the global marketplace helped Kamehameha accumulate mana (divine power). As mōʻī (monarch) over a nascent empire, Kamehameha claimed the ʻāina and its productions and the labor upon it all as his own. He furthermore placed a royal kapu (“taboo”; restriction) on trade so that he alone held the reins over Hawaiian participation in the global economy. By uniting the islands, Kamehameha not only founded a monarchy, but also a monopoly.17 Of course, various actors on all sides challenged Kamehameha’s monopolization of land and labor. Foreign traders often sought to play island rulers off of one another, albeit largely unsuccessfully. Makaʻāinana also resisted. Sometimes they engaged in illegal trade with foreigners, such as when Isaac Iselin of New York visited Hawaiʻi in 1801 and purchased “116 prime hogs— at $2—piece” from “the King of the Isles” (Kamehameha), but also discreetly purchased pearls from unnamed “Sandwich Islanders” and other goods from American merchants living and working on the beach. Iselin’s exchanges document that not every Hawaiian (or foreigner) obeyed Kamehameha’s kapu on trade.18 Six years later, Iselin returned to Hawaiʻi. “I hope we shall anchor in 25 days from this, and find an ample supply of those excellent refreshments that have been so much extolled by many circumnavigators.” Twenty years after the beginning of the trans-Pacific fur-and-tea trade, by 1807, the world— including Iselin—knew of Hawaiʻi and its “excellent refreshments.” Sailors longed to stop there to dally with Native women. Captains sought to anchor there to refuel provisions of fresh food and water. Ships from Britain, France, the United States, and Russia sought salt there, and Hawaiian salt was put to use curing animal products across the great ocean, from Kamchatka to Alaska to California to Tahiti. Almost everything ended up in the market at Guangzhou. From 1786 to the 1810s, the Hawaiian Islands moved to the rhythms of this new trans-Pacific economy. In the words of historian Nicholas Thomas, Hawaiʻi had become the most important “staging post” in the entire Pacific Ocean. The archipelago’s abundant arable land and 22

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makaʻāinana labor, plus Kamehameha’s centralization of power, resulted in the production of enormous quantities of provisions for visiting ships. Hawaiʻi’s economy was growing. By the 1810s, foreigners had discovered yet another good besides sea otter furs that Chinese merchants in Guangzhou were willing to buy. As it happened, this thing grew abundantly in the forests of the Hawaiian Islands: sandalwood.19

of materiality and mana According to trans-Pacific trader James Hunnewell, Boki was a thief. On December 17, 1817, he noted in his journal that he “had some visits from the natives but no trade Bokee stole a peace [piece of] shirting.” Two days later: “recovered the peace of shirting stolen by Bokee.” Several months later, Hunnewell accused Boki of also supporting thievery among the commoners. “I find the indian that stole our Goods Is liberated and what is more taken into favour by the head chief of the Land (Bokee).” As we have seen, Boki loved stuff, and he tried to pay for it all with sandalwood. Captain Isaiah Lewis of the ship Arab noted such an arrangement in April 1820, writing to a subordinate that he had “Govn Pocka’s [Boki] written promise” that “5892 ½ Piculs” of sandalwood will be “delivered, on or before the 1st day of November next ensuing to you as my agent & the same promise specefies that it shall be of merchantable quality.”20 The trade of sandalwood for clothing, sandalwood for furniture, and sandalwood as credit not only signaled Hawaiʻi’s emergence within global capitalism, but also pointed toward massive transformations in the ways that people thought about stuff. The materiality of sandalwood was highly mutable: it was a tree; it was labor; now it is incense; now it is debt. For many Hawaiians it was tied to the concept of mana (divine power). Objects had mana, and wearing and owning fine things—particularly foreign and exotic items—was an expression of one’s own mana. Within capitalism, however, things also had an exchange-value. One mana-rich object could, strangely, be equal to so many sticks of sandalwood, or equal to so many dollars. Hawaiian mana thus came into conflict with Western concepts of value. Transformations in materiality and mana are one of the early ways that Hawaiians experienced capitalism.21 Hawaiian sandalwood—seven species in all—thrives in a variety of habitats. It grows in differing soil compositions, varying quantities of rainfall, and s a n da lwo od a n d t h e c h i n a t r a de

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at elevations ranging from valley floors to mountainsides. Generally, sandalwood thrives throughout the middle-elevation regions of the Hawaiian Islands and up to a maximum elevation of 2,500 feet above sea level. One of the reasons for the tree’s success in so many habitats is its method of nutrition. As the tree grows it develops what are called haustoria, parasitic siphons that penetrate the roots of other neighboring plants. These haustoria suck out water and nutrients from other plants to feed the sandalwood. When a sandalwood tree reaches fifteen years old, on average, its inner core begins a transformation into what is called heartwood. Following this stage, the sandalwood produces approximately one kilogram of heartwood annually. On average, a tree is ripe with fragrant heartwood by its thirtieth year, but this moment is only marked by those humans who would use it for oil. Untouched, a sandalwood tree will continue to grow as high as eighty feet tall or for one hundred years.22 Before the nineteenth century, Hawaiians utilized sandalwood in a variety of ways. They applied ʻiliahi (sandalwood) powder to treat dandruff and eradicate head lice, and they mixed it with liquids to treat genital diseases. Most importantly, they used it as a perfume. Sandalwood’s fragrance was well known to early Hawaiians and they acknowledged this characteristic by sometimes referring to the wood as lāʻau ʻala, or “fragrant wood.” Used as a perfume, the heartwood of the sandalwood tree was ground into powder or into chips that were applied to kapa cloth. The finest kapa were perfumed by hammering the sandalwood powder or chips into cloth, releasing fragrant oil onto the kapa, or by marinating sandalwood chips in vegetable oil and then applying this aromatic spread to the material. The application of sandalwood oil also served to waterproof the fabric.23 Samuel Manaiakalani Kamakau, perhaps the most famous Hawaiian historian of the nineteenth century, proudly proclaimed of precontact Hawaiians that “my people were fond of honors, fond of fine things, fond of things to be proud of, fond of bedecking themselves, fond of fragrant things, of kapa that were perfumed.”24 But kapa was only one of many items that were perfumed, and sandalwood was only one source of ʻala, or fragrance, in Hawaiian material culture. Other sources include the fruit of the mokihana plant; maile leaves; puaniu (coconut flowers); ʻolapa bark; the flowers and sap of kamani; the leaves of lauaʻe (a fern); ʻawapuhi (wild ginger) root; the leaves and root of kūpaoa (a type of tree, but the Hawaiian word kūpaoa can also refer to any “strong permeating fragrance”). Many of these plants, especially those with fragrant flowers, are still used in making lei (flower necklaces). Fragrances, even today, hold great significance in Hawaiian culture. 24

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Sandalwood has an equally long history in China. The use of incense in China dates back as early as the Zhou Dynasty (1045–256 BCE), while the consumption of sandalwood incense probably originated with the arrival of Indian Buddhism during the first centuries of the Common Era.25 The earliest Chinese sandalwood consumers most likely adopted Indian Buddhist ideas about sandalwood as much as they adopted the foreign wood itself. These ideas may have included the belief that sandalwood smoke had the ability to create a favorable environment, known as a xiangshi, or “incense room,” for the earthly manifestation of the Buddha. Although this particular belief has roots in Indian Buddhism, it was also practiced in China.26 Foreign traveler W. W. Wood, exploring the cities and landscapes of China’s Pearl River Delta in the late 1820s, noticed all around him a sustained interest in incense consumption among the Chinese, despite the modernizations and commercializations of Chinese life and consumer habits during the Qing dynasty. Wood was astounded by the size of the “idolatry” industry that supported incense consumption throughout the Guangzhou area. By rough estimate, Wood suggested that the Pearl River Delta region alone employed 2,000 “makers of gilt paper”; 400 “shrinemakers”; about 10,000 “makers of candles”; and at least 10,000 “makers of jos-stick,” or incense.27 “Part of the market purchases of a Chinese,” Wood remarked of Guangzhou consumers, are “the odiriferous matches, oil, and small sacrificing candles made of wax filled with tallow, and having a wooden wick.” These “odiriferous matches” that Wood noticed in the markets of Guangzhou were incense. Many were likely made of powdered Hawaiian tanxiang (Chinese for “sandalwood”). When Wood documented religious rituals practiced by Chinese consumers, he specifically noted the role of incense in the material cultures of both elites and commoners. In the homes of the wealthiest Chinese, he noted “an ancient copper censer, for burning sandal wood, or odiriferous matches . . . constitute the most frequent decoration of the oratories or small temples, which are placed at the entrances of houses, and in the chambers.” Not just confined to the wealthy few, however, “the superstitions with regard to evil spirits, are very prevalent among all classes,” Wood noted, “and no house or boat is seen at night undefended by small odoriferous matches.” As Wood walked the city streets he found that “every evening are bunches of jos-stick stuck about the doorways [of homes], and the light carefully attended to which burns in the small temple or oratory with which every Chinese house is provided, under the idea that these ceremonies will prevent the ingress of evil spirits.”28 s a n da lwo od a n d t h e c h i n a t r a de

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Wood’s comments point to yet further meanings embodied in the fragrance of incense. While the use of sandalwood, in particular, may have been confined to wealthier classes of Chinese consumers, both elites and even common sampan residents (boat-dwelling people) appear to have used incense in similar ways: to ward off “evil genii” and “evil spirits.” Elites and commoners alike carefully placed incense sticks at doorways and at entrances, barring the entrance of angry or inauspicious supernatural beings into their places of home and rest. Incense sticks were also lit at even the smallest altars, within the home or in the temple or on the sampan. Chinese incense consumption appears to have been unusually egalitarian and incredibly profuse. Whether understood as a medium for recapturing the Buddha or as protection against evil spirits or simply as part of ancestor worship, the act of burning incense had profound meanings in Chinese material culture. This material culture was the driving force behind Chinese incense consumption, and hence sandalwood consumption. Furthermore, Chinese consumers and the religious beliefs and practices that informed their consumption were correspondingly an indirect force behind transformations in the Hawaiian countryside thousands of miles away. The meeting place of Hawaiian sandalwood and Chinese consumers, where Hawaiian ʻiliahi became Chinese tanxiang—where sandalwood shifted hands and meanings—was China’s Pearl River Delta. Here, the landscape itself seemingly memorializes a long history of buying, selling, producing, and consuming aromatics. Traveling north up the delta, sailors saw Xiangshan, or the “fragrant hills,” to their west. To their east they saw an island called Xianggang, or the “fragrant port” (Hong Kong). Deep in the hull of their own ships emanated the odor of tanxiang, “fragrant sandalwood.” These words all utilize the Chinese character xiang, which has two meanings, “fragrance” and “incense.” This dual meaning appropriately signifies the long-term historical interrelationship between consumer demands (for fragrance) and the actual consumption of material resources to satisfy those demands (such as incense) in Chinese history. The Hawaiian wood that regularly arrived in the Pearl River Delta in the early nineteenth century was part of this history of converting exotic aromatic materials into commodities essential to the maintenance of Chinese material culture.29 Chinese incense consumers frequently chose from among a global selection of imported aromatic woods.30 During the early nineteenth century, British East India Company ships and private British vessels brought to Guangzhou sandalwoods from India, Bengal, and elsewhere in South Asia 26

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40,000

American ships Private British ships British East India Company

35,000

Total weight in piculs

30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000

5 –1 18 7 18 –1 18 9 20 –2 18 1 22 –2 18 3 24 –2 18 5 26 –2 18 7 28 – 18 29 30 – 18 31 32 –3 3 16

18

3

–1 14

18

1

–1 12

18

9

–1 10

18

7

–0 08

18

–0

–0 04

18

18

06

5

0

figure 1. Sandalwood Imports at Guangzhou, 1804–1834. Source: Charles Gutzlaff, A Sketch of Chinese History, Ancient and Modern; comprising a Retrospect of the Foreign Intercourse and Trade with China (New York: John P. Haven, 1834), vol. II, appendices II–IV, VI–XI. Compiled by the author.

and Southeast Asia, while American ships transported sandalwood from Fiji, the Marquesas Islands, and Hawaiʻi. By the early 1820s, however, Hawaiian sandalwood was practically the only wood carried by American ships, and at the same time, American trading companies were the leading exporters of sandalwood to China. Chinese incense consumers were therefore increasingly purchasing Hawaiian wood in the 1820s. This all explains Hawaiian sandalwood’s materiality, but what of its mana—its power? If the makaʻāinana experienced sandalwood in the forests, and Chinese consumers experienced it through the consumption of incense, then Hawaiian aliʻi experienced it through its mutability—its ability to become something else: a chair, a vase, a ship. Workers and consumers experienced sandalwood as a material thing, but aliʻi primarily experienced the wood’s exchange-value, its exchangeability for other goods in the global marketplace. When Samuel Hill went to the Pacific aboard the Ophelia in 1815, his employers told him to collect whale teeth along the way, for aliʻi loved s a n da lwo od a n d t h e c h i n a t r a de

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these items. “In Proceeding to Canton you will Visit the Gallapagos Islands for the Purpose of procuring Whale teeth . . . collect all of them you can find to be used in the Collection of Sandalwood.” Whale teeth were necessary for obtaining sandalwood in the Marquesas Islands and in Hawaiʻi. But by the 1810s, trading partners in Hawaiʻi were no longer willing to value their wood as equal to that of a mere whale tooth—a very mana-rich object indeed, but nothing compared to the European and Chinese manufactured goods that later decorated Boki’s home. “He would talk of nothing but a Brig or Schooner in exchange for Sandal wood,” Hill wrote, referring to Kamehameha. And “as this was an Article with which I Could not furnish him it appeared to me useless to talk more on the Subject.”31 Hill, as with other foreign traders in Hawaiʻi, had to put instructions about procuring whale teeth aside in order to figure out exactly what Hawaiian aliʻi were willing to take in exchange for sandalwood. Kamehameha, and after 1819 various other aliʻi, had learned to inflate the value of their sandalwood. They had learned to ask for more wealth from trans-Pacific trading partners. By the late 1810s and early 1820s, foreign merchants in Hawaiʻi were reporting the exchange rates listed in table 1; the final transaction, sandalwood for a ship, was one of Kamehameha’s favorites. The amount of sandalwood was calculated by digging a hole in the ground of equal measurement to the storage capacity (volume) of the ship being sold. This hole, called a lua moku ʻiliahi (sandalwood ship hole) was then filled to capacity with wood. The amount of sandalwood in the hole was exchanged for the ship.32 Hill described one of these exchanges: “Tamahamahah [Kamehameha] has now in his Possesion about 70,000 Dollars in Specie and his mind is now so Strongly bent on the Purchase of a Vessel of Considerable Size, that he refuses to take Dollars in Exchange for Sandal wood.” He described the sale of Astor’s ship, the brig Forester, in 1816. “He bought the Privateer built Brig Forrester of Capt Ebbets while I was at Woahoo [Oʻahu], and agreed to give him as much Sandal wood as can be Stowed in the Vessel in exchange, the wood to be deli. [delivered] in 4 months from the Sale.” The popular sandalwood-for-a-ship trade even continued under Kamehameha’s son, Liholiho (Kamehameha II). Captain Isaiah Lewis of the ship Arab reported such an exchange with an aliʻi of the Island of Oʻahu in December 1819. “I have also disposed of the schooner to the same chief for sandal wood, he fi lling her twice with it.” In this case, one ship was exchanged for two times its volume in sandalwood, an exchange-value that occurred more than once in the 1820s. For example, trader James Hunnewell noted in 1821 “news of the sale of the 28

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table 1 Sandalwood exchange rates in Honolulu, 1810s and 1820s (Note: 1 picul equal to approximately 133 lbs)

Item

Exchange Price

“a large wide coat” 12 hammers 500 cannon balls 10 piculs ammunition 80 swords 600 lime trees “Sold 40 looking-glasses for...” “Sold the remainder of the muslin, 2 pieces, for...” 4 umbrellas 16 kegs of rum, 1 box of tea, and $8,000 worth of guns and ammunition 1 ship

12 piculs sandalwood 1 picul sandalwood 18 piculs sandalwood 35 piculs sandalwood 80 piculs sandalwood 30 piculs sandalwood “4 piculs of wood” “31 piculs wood received” “about three piculs” 850 piculs sandalwood Equal volume in sandalwood

Sources: “Pages from James Hunnewell’s Journal,” entry for April 29, 1818, Folder 1a, Box 13 (Volume 25, 1817–1840), James Hunnewell, Business Papers, 1823–1883, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts; Charles H. Hammatt, Ships, Furs, and Sandalwood: A Yankee Trader in Hawaiʻi, 1823–1825, ed. Sandra Wagner-Wright (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1999), xx; Theodore Morgan, Hawaii: A Century of Economic Change, 1778–1876 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948), 63–64; Edward Beechert, Honolulu: Crossroads of the Pacific (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), 28; Mark Merlin and Dan VanRavenswaay, “The History of Human Impact on the Genus Santalum in Hawaiʻi,” in Proceedings of the Symposium on Sandalwood in the Pacific; April 9–11, 1990; Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, ed. Lawrence Hamilton and C. Eugene Conrad (Berkeley, CA: Pacific Southwest Research Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1990), 52. Compiled by the author.

Becket of Atooi [Kauaʻi] for twice full of sandal wood.” It was clear that foreign ships were mana-rich objects for the aliʻi. Trans-Pacific trader Charles Bullard noted, in 1821, that “if you want to know how Religion stands at the Islands I can tell you—All sects are tolerated but the King worships the Barge.” Sandalwood was the key to unlocking these transformations in power and meaning, what anthropologist Marshall Sahlins has referred to as “cosmologies of capitalism.”33 When Kamehameha died in 1819, the Islands were thrown into chaos as systems of exchange and power built upon monarchical, monopolistic control over land, labor, and trade began to unravel. In the 1810s Kamehameha had accomplished much to make sandalwood Hawaiʻi’s ticket to global riches. He established the first contract with foreigners for a monopoly on the wood’s distribution at Guangzhou. Just four years later, he outfitted the first Hawaiian-owned vessel to sail to Guangzhou with wood, thereby s a n da lwo od a n d t h e c h i n a t r a de

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circumventing American and European middlemen.34 He simultaneously built up Honolulu into a modern trading port, with customs charges, pilotage fees, and a national flag flying over a newly built fortress overlooking the harbor.35 In the 1810s, Kamehameha held monopoly power over Hawaiian labor, nature, and the exercise of international trade. In the wake of his death, suddenly everything changed. The kapu, which governed the traditional religious-political order, was abolished. Without these rules establishing the pono usage of land and labor, a new era of intense sandalwood extraction and makaʻāinana labor exploitation commenced. Kamehameha’s son, Liholiho, took control as mōʻī in 1819, but the aliʻi nui (high chiefs) of each island also assumed control of their own land and the resources thereupon. These aliʻi sought to engage in the same exchanges Kamehameha had participated in: wood for a chair; wood for a vase; wood for a ship. To achieve these ends, each aliʻi was reliant on the makaʻāinana in their own moku (district) to labor in the forests. So, when Boki promised “5892 ½ Piculs” of sandalwood to his American creditors in April 1820, he first had to get hundreds, if not thousands, of Hawaiian workers to go into the mountains and cut it.36

into the mountains “They continue to keep large parties of wood cutters in the mountains,” James Hunnewell remarked from Honolulu in October 1821. The journey from agricultural lowlands to mountain forests was a process that thousands of Hawaiian workers took in the 1820s. Cutting sandalwood was unlike any other job. In some ways, laboring as wood cutters in the mountains followed earlier patterns of Hawaiian labor, particularly corvée labor meant to provide hoʻokupu to the Kingdom or to a specific aliʻi. But in important ways, the sandalwood trade simultaneously gave thousands of Hawaiian workers their first glimpses of a new system of labor under capitalism. Some resisted these work conditions; others even demanded pay for their work, foreshadowing the wage labor that would come to dominate Hawaiʻi’s political economy by mid-century.37 The work of cutting sandalwood always began with a search through the forest. Sometimes workers used their naked eye to search for sandalwood trees. As the wood became scarce in the late 1820s, one desperate method of locating sandalwood was to light fire to the forest. As sandalwood fragrance wafted toward laborers’ noses, they followed the scent. Because the heart30

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wood of the tree was the most valued part, a little scalding of the outer bark was not a major sacrifice.38 Once a sandalwood tree was located, it had to be harvested, which itself required certain knowledge of the physical character of the tree as well as the particular demands of the consumer marketplace. The best indicator of the quality of a tree was its color just below the bark. Thus, “the bark and sap [were] chipped off with small adzes” to reveal the inner color, noted missionary William Ellis. American merchant Charles Bullard’s employer instructed him in 1820 to “be particular and attend to the weight of [the] wood,” but also to its color, which would affect its handling, and consequently its value. “When received in a green state allowance ought to be made for its loss in drying which will be considerable also for the sap which may remain on it & will have to be shaved off before selling at Canton.” Which part of the tree the wood came from also mattered. And while not every part of a sandalwood tree could be sold, most of it was harvested. Even the smallest or thinnest piece of wood—“small sticks not more than an inch thick and a foot and a half long”—could net some profit in the hands of a skillful trader.39 Hawaiian workers gathered into large groups—sometimes thousands at a time—marching into the mountains to hunt for sandalwood. Sometimes whole villages of men abandoned their homes and families on the coasts and in the valleys. The manpower involved in these expeditions is suggested by accounts such as William Ellis’s report from Kawaihae, Hawaiʻi, in 1823, where he saw “between two and three thousand men” descending the mountains of Kohala, “carrying each from one to six pieces of sandal wood, according to their size and weight.” Sometimes massive harvests occurred in the middle of the night, as in 1827 when an anonymous sailor reported seeing in the mountains “a vast number of men assembled” in the darkness “each with a torch made of sandalwood which burns bright and clear.” Sandalwood harvests removed makaʻāinana men from their homes and families for extended periods of time. Interviewing a group of Hawaiian men who said it was their duty to “cut sandal wood for the king,” William Ellis was told in 1823 that “when they went for sandal wood, which was not very often, they were gone three or four days, and sometimes as many weeks.” Away for weeks at a time, these men left “most of the villages destitute of inhabitants, except a few women who had charge of some of the houses.” In one village on the northwest coast of the Kohala region of the island of Hawaiʻi, Ellis reported finding “only three women and two small children [who] remained in the place”; all the other inhabitants had “gone to Waimea s a n da lwo od a n d t h e c h i n a t r a de

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to fetch sandal wood for Karaiomoku [Kalanimōku].” When they went into the mountains to cut wood, Hawaiians also abandoned their kalo (taro) fields at home. Even though aliʻi were supposed to reimburse laborers with fish, poi (cooked taro, thinned with water), and kapa cloth, famines did occur. Afflicting both workers and their families, these periodic famines were a consequence of widespread farm abandonment and aliʻi negligence during periods of peak sandalwood harvesting. As Marshall Sahlins put it, “the people were dying, while the aliʻi were buying.” 40 Such famines were not only a result of the lack of agricultural productivity during periods of peak harvest, but also the result of shifting modes of governance within the ahupuaʻa. During the 1820s, more and more aliʻi nui abandoned their governing districts on neighboring islands and took up residence on Oʻahu in order to be near the vibrant, now-demonopolized trade at Honolulu. The result was that makaʻāinana on Oʻahu were increasingly burdened by providing hoʻokupu to multiple aliʻi (as well as to the mōʻī), while commoners on the other islands were left without aliʻi to honor their local gods. The results of aliʻi consolidation on Oʻahu were in evidence in 1825 when American missionary Charles Stewart was taken to a kapu fishpond on the Island of Hawaiʻi, near Hilo, overflowing with mullet. The pond belonged to an aliʻi, but “no one of rank having lived here lately,” Stewart wrote, “the whole pond is literally alive with the finest of mullet; the surface of the water is almost in a constant ripple from their motions; and hundreds can be taken at any time by a single cast of a small net.” In the absence of aliʻi, these fish— kapu to commoners—were reproducing beyond control. The overflowing pond was a manifestation of a Hawaiian agroecosystem that was now no longer pono. This was a world increasingly out of balance.41 Even in times of famine, laborers were responsible for transporting heavy sandalwood logs from the mountains to the coasts where they were measured, valued, and loaded onto ships. Each laborer was expected to carry as much as 1 picul (approximately 133 pounds) of wood. As Ellis reported in 1823, this incredibly heavy load of wood was “generally tied on their backs by bands made of ti [ki] leaves, passed over the shoulders and under the arms, and fastened across their breast.” Workers carried over one hundred pounds of wood down mountain paths, descending sometimes thousands of feet over many miles, thereby acquiring a nickname that hinted at the enduring pain of their physical labor: kua leho, or “calloused backs.” 42 From the mountains the kua leho carried the wood to the coast where it was stored in either government buildings or in merchant warehouses. 32

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Stephen Reynolds, a resident American merchant in Honolulu and vigorous participant in the sandalwood trade, managed a general store owned by William French in the center of town where Hawaiians, mostly aliʻi, came to buy goods on credit, promising future deliveries of wood. Reynolds, just like makaʻāinana laborers in the forest, had to develop a certain familiarity with the different qualities of ʻiliahi. On any day, “the Natives” might be “bringing a lot of most miserable wood[,] which no doubt had been culled & rejected many times before. . . .” Reynolds had no choice but to reject this wood, as well. Yet, in general, Reynolds appears to have been the least discriminating of American sandalwood traders. His boss, William French, even developed a reputation among Hawaiians for extending generous credit to Hawaiian consumers and for accepting practically any wood brought to him. The Hawaiians dubbed him Hāpuku, or “Grab-all.” 43 Hawaiians were frequently also hired onshore as stevedores, loading cargoes of sandalwood onto and off of foreign ships. Here it was not uncommon for Hawaiian men to receive wages for their work, even as their comrades in the mountains were simultaneously starving amid a more traditional mode of production based on corvée. James Hunnewell reported from the beach on September 4, 1818: “All day employ with a doz natives shiping wood.” The next day he wrote: “all day employed with 11 natives shiped . . . stick wood on board the Enterprize [Enterprise].” Six days later, “commenced weighing & shiping wood on board the Ospray [Osprey] shiped 420 picul wood had a number of natives to work for us.” Hunnewell does not mention how these Hawaiian workers were compensated, but two years later, in a replay of these earlier scenes, Hunnewell was again managing Native stevedores on the shore. He noted that they had “succeeded in geting the Thaddeus [ship] into the Outer Harbour with the Help of four Double Canoes & a number of boats the natives not forgetting to demand pay for the favour.” It is not clear what pay these workers received, but by the late 1820s Native stevedores were regularly receiving about $1/day for their work storing and “shipping” sandalwood onto foreign vessels. Hunnewell noted the following exchanges: July 20, 1827 “paid 13 native [Natives] for storeing wood Dolls [dollars] 16.25”; August 1 & 2, 1827, paid “natives for Storeing Honolulu Wood 4.75 [dollars]”; February 20, 1828, paid “12 natives Labour Shipping Wood 19 [dollars]”; and on February 22 he paid “8 natives” $21.12. Carrying around wood in the mountains did not pay “cash,” but carrying wood on the shore did, and, for many Hawaiians, it was their first taste of wage labor.44 The simultaneous presence of systems of forced labor and wage labor led to the Hawaiian government’s loss of control over the makaʻāinana. Even as s a n da lwo od a n d t h e c h i n a t r a de

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early as 1816, trans-Pacific trader Samuel Hill, in conversation with Kamehameha, noted that the mōʻī seemed unable to control the rebellious makaʻāinana. Kamehameha explained that “his people were now unwilling to work as formerly,” Hill noted, “because they had not been Paid according to their agreement.” In Hill’s eyes, the makaʻāinana needed to be ruled, not paid. They increasingly engaged in theft, he wrote, and they drank alcohol and smoked tobacco excessively. “Tamahamahah [Kamehameha],” Hill mused, “is now grown Old and takes less Interest in the Conduct of his People than formerly.” 45 Into the 1820s, conflict continued over Hawaiian labor. Indeed, the first five years of the 1820s were a time of great transformation in the Kingdom’s political economy and ecology. Hawaiian historian Lilikalā Kameʻeleihiwa has suggested that the 1820s were a turning point in Hawaiian history, when the archipelago became firmly “enmeshed in the capitalist net.” Haole merchants, she argues, “seduced Hawaiian Aliʻi into capitalist cycles of neverending debt.” However, if foreign traders “seduced” the aliʻi into consuming more goods than they could afford, it was also the aliʻi who made promises to the makaʻāinana that they could not keep. In essence, the enduring promise was to help maintain the pono of the land and the wellbeing of the people. This massive exploitation of human labor was not unprecedented in Hawaiian history. Thousands had fought in Kamehameha’s late-eighteenth-century wars, and thousands mined salt at Āliapaʻakai. But the prevalence of famine in the sandalwood era signified a lack of pono in relationships between people and nature in Hawaiʻi. This was the failure of the aliʻi. In response—and due to some prodding both from newly arrived Euro-American Christian missionaries in the 1820s as well as merchant ships willing to pay a wage— common Hawaiians began to see their labor in radically new terms.46 If the first five years of the 1820s were trying, the following five brought the Hawaiian economy to a full-on crisis. The Kingdom’s mounting debts owed to American creditors finally led, in January 1826, to the arrival of a U.S. warship. The USS Dolphin was the first American warship to enter Hawaiian waters. It would not be the last. American resident merchants— men such as Stephen Reynolds—hoped and believed that the Dolphin and its captain, John Percival, would pressure Hawaiian aliʻi into paying their debts to American creditors. But hopes were dashed as Captain Percival instead used his political capital to convince the aliʻi to allow Hawaiian women onboard his ship for sexual exchanges. Percival even allegedly attempted to rape a young Hawaiian girl; when he failed, the girl was forced back to him 34

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by Boki who simply “gave the word and she was sent to him!!!” American merchant Stephen Reynolds noted in disgust that “several [of us] went to his [Percival’s] house, to whom he related his treatment [of this] young girl—too disgraceful to be related.” 47 Boki, however, had his reasons for giving Captain Percival what he wanted. He owed massive debts to American creditors. To Boki’s relief, Percival and the Dolphin left Honolulu without pressing for these payments, but then, in October, another U.S. gunboat, the USS Peacock, arrived in Honolulu Harbor and its captain, Thomas ap Catesby Jones, meant to secure American business interests once and for all. It is not clear what Captain Jones said to the aliʻi behind closed doors over the following months, but by the dawn of 1827, the aliʻi were ready to implement a serious plan for paying back their American creditors. On January 2, 1827, “at ten o’clock, the Chiefs assembled under the grove of Cocoa Nut trees—below the Fort” and announced a mandatory sandalwood tax that would affect every Hawaiian adult (over thirteen years old) in the Kingdom. As Stephen Reynolds recalled in his diary, the sandalwood tax ordered “that every man should go to the mountains and get half a picul of Sandlewood for the government, and half they got over should be their own: the Women to produce tapas [kapa] or mats or a dollar [Spanish dollar], they who choose can pay four dollars as an equivalent for their half picul.” The aliʻi also announced for the first time the severity of their debts, displaying a number that they had undoubtedly negotiated over many nights with the American merchants and the visiting naval captain: they owed the Americans 15,000 piculs (or two million pounds) of sandalwood.48 Following announcement of this tax, thousands of makaʻāinana men got out their axes (or bought new ones in town) and headed for the hills, engaging in a massive harvest of sandalwood from Hawaiʻi to Kauaʻi. Their labor, Boki may have reasoned, was equally exchangeable in value with his “magnificent Porcelain vase,” his “splendid twin beds,” or any of the other foreignmade items that he and other aliʻi had long bought on credit. But makaʻāinana labor was also newly transformed by the 1827 sandalwood law. The law established that any wood harvested beyond the half picul required for taxation was now the property of its independent producers; the makaʻāinana who cut the wood could own the surplus. Within six months, as many as 10,000 piculs of sandalwood were cut. By January 1828, the aliʻi had repaid at least 7,000 of the necessary 15,000 piculs owed the Americans. The difference of 3,000 piculs (piculs cut versus piculs paid) suggests that the makaʻāinana may have independently harvested the remainder. The 1827 sandalwood tax s a n da lwo od a n d t h e c h i n a t r a de

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act had enabled the makaʻāinana to establish their own independent wealth while simultaneously laboring to preserve the wealth of the aliʻi.49 It was a win-win situation, except that within a year it was apparent that the tax had made only a small dent in resolving the Kingdom’s debt crisis. Furthermore, a second problem emerged: sandalwood was fast disappearing. As visiting Dutch Captain Jacobus Boelen remarked in 1828, “it was clear . . . that in a few years’ time sandalwood would be completely exhausted on these islands.” Debt-owing aliʻi, such as Boki, recognized the consequences of this coming environmental calamity. Reynolds noted on numerous occasions that Boki attempted to stop the makaʻāinana from selling their own independently harvested wood to the Americans. Boki must have found his predicament astonishing: he, the kiaʻāina (governor) of Oʻahu, was now personally competing with previously subservient makaʻāinana for access to the last remaining stands of native sandalwood.50 By 1828, the year Duhaut-Cilly visited Boki’s hale in Honolulu, Hawaiian workers had risen to a new position of power in the sandalwood trade. Kamehameha’s kapu on all international trade, lifted just eight years earlier, had lost its efficacy during the reign of his son, Liholiho. By the late 1820s, rival aliʻi were competing against their own makaʻāinana for access to the wealth embodied in Hawaiian forests. And Native workers were beginning to realize their role in the world economy, a world that stretched far beyond the sandalwood mountains.

last tree standing? When the sandalwood is all gone, predicted foreigner James Ames, clerk of the American trans-Pacific trading ship Edward in 1830, “the natives will have soon to go to work as their principle export.” In fact, human labor was already a principal export of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. More to the point, it is not as if the sandalwood harvest was itself free of human labor. Hawaiians in this industry were not exporting themselves, but they were exporting the alienated products of their labor. Sandalwood was the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi’s ticket to the fabled marketplace of Guangzhou. Hawaiian labor and nature together produced the wealth that traveled across the Pacific Ocean from Hawaiʻi to China to the United States and beyond.51 If we want to know what happened to Hawaiʻi’s sandalwood industry in the late 1820s and 1830s, we have to look at changes abroad—changes in 36

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30,000

American imports at Guangzhou Recorded Hawaiian exports

Total weight in piculs

25,000

20,000

15,000

10,000

5,000

3 32

18

–3

–3

2

1 31 18

30

–3

18

18

29

–3

0

9 –2

8

28

18

–2

7 27 18

–2

6 26 18

–2

5 25 18

–2

4 24

–2 18

23

–2 18

22 18

18

21

–2

3

2

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figure 2. Sandalwood Imports vs. Exports, 1821–1833. Sources: Charles Gutzlaff, A Sketch of Chinese History, Ancient and Modern; comprising a Retrospect of the Foreign Intercourse and Trade with China (New York: John P. Haven, 1834), vol. II, appendices II–IV, VI–XI; Christopher Cottrell, “Splinters of Sandalwood, Islands of ʻIliahi: Rethinking Deforestation in Hawaiʻi, 1811–1843” (M.A. thesis, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2002), 109–11, tables 2–5. Cottrell’s data is culled from Stephen Reynolds, Journal of Stephen Reynolds, Volume I, 1823–1829, ed. Pauline King (Honolulu: Ku Paʻa Inc.; Salem, MA: Peabody Museum, 1989). Compiled by the author.

relationships among at least three states, namely the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, the United States, and the Qing Empire of China. Historians have often suggested that Hawaiʻi simply ran out of wood. For them, the collapse of Hawaiʻi’s sandalwood industry was either a case of the Natives’ mismanagement of their own natural resources (“blame the aliʻi”), or a case of economic imperialism whereby U.S. merchants intentionally engendered a debt crisis in order to destabilize the kingdom (“blame the haole”). Yet larger forces were also at work. If we are to understand what happened in Hawaiʻi in the 1820s and 1830s, we should look both to the forests and to the markets.52 s a n da lwo od a n d t h e c h i n a t r a de

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Total sandalwood imports at Guangzhou—the principal market for the world’s sandalwood—reached a zenith in the years 1821–1823. Trader James Hunnewell noted as much in November 1821 when he wrote that “I am aware that the China market will be gluted [glutted] with wood this season but it will be safer there than here without any of our wood there will be 30,000 picul go to the China market from the Islands this season.” This was a period of relatively high sandalwood production in Hawaiʻi, as well. After 1823, Chinese imports of sandalwood dropped significantly and fast. This marked decrease in trade in the years 1825–1827 interestingly coincided with the decision by American gunboats to visit Hawaiʻi and press for debt payments in 1826. American merchants no doubt recognized that the decrease in imports at Guangzhou presented an excellent opportunity to flood the Chinese market with Hawaiian wood. As long as global sandalwood supplies were too low to meet previous levels of Chinese demand, Americans knew that they could receive unusually high prices for the wood—if they could only get it out of Hawaiian forests.53 After a brief rise, sandalwood imports at Guangzhou dropped once again after 1829, suggesting that Hawaiian wood increasingly disappeared from Chinese consumers’ market purchases in the 1830s. It is not enough, however, to simply infer that Chinese sandalwood consumption decreased in the late 1820s and 1830s. The question is: what were Chinese consumers, and perhaps even more influentially, Guangzhou merchants, purchasing instead? For three-quarters of a century since the Canton system was implemented in 1757, foreign states had sought to overcome trade imbalances with the Chinese by offering increasingly exotic goods for exchange: sea otter furs, sea cucumbers, sandalwood. Lord Macartney of England famously traveled to Beijing in 1793 to pressure the Qianlong Emperor to open Chinese ports to British manufactures. All attempts by foreign states, diplomats, and traders to counter the West’s trade imbalance with China, however, were complete failures. In some ways, Europe and the United States were facing their own debt crisis alongside Hawaiʻi’s. While aliʻi were consuming too many goods on credit, so were Europeans and Euro-Americans consuming too much tea. Except, in this case, the Qing did not offer credit; instead they demanded payment up front, the great majority of which was given in the form of specie (Spanish-American silver).54 Finally, a commodity was found that would tip the scales of global power between China and the West. That was opium. Grown in British India as well as in the Ottoman Empire, opium provided Europeans and Euro38

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Americans with a commodity that Chinese consumers could not control their consumption of—because it was addictive. The effects of the opium trade were staggering. Not only did the illegal smuggling of opium into China result in the momentous Sino-British War of 1839–1842 (the Opium War), but, as historian Robert Marks has aptly demonstrated, the opium trade affected economies and ecologies worldwide.55 The opium trade created global waves that hit Hawaiian shores. As seen from a Hawaiian perspective, the opium trade represented a major blow to the Hawaiian elite. Opium likely confused and complicated the Kingdom’s efforts to resolve its debt crisis, for Hawaiʻi did not have another commodity (such as opium) to sell to the Chinese. All they had was sandalwood. With foreign firms turning their attention to the promises of this new (and illicit) drug trade, Hawaiian sandalwood lost some of its luster. In the 1830s the Hawaiian sandalwood trade certainly contracted, but it is far from certain what was the culprit. Likely a combination of a changing forest and a changing world economy led to sandalwood’s declining significance. Reports of complete sandalwood deforestation in Hawaiʻi were almost certainly exaggerated. Despite James Ames’s pessimistic commentary in 1830 that “the sandle wood business is nearly done as they have cut the greater part of the wood from off the Islands,” his ship left Hawaiʻi two weeks later with a full cargo of wood, bound for Guangzhou. Even Christian missionaries were in on the trade, willing to “give a tract to a native for a stick of wood & then sell their wood at $7 & 8 pr cord.” 56 On the cusp of a new decade—the 1830s—Hawaiʻi’s Canton trade was not yet history, but the market that had long supported Hawaiʻi’s early nineteenth-century economic growth was about to implode. Nevertheless, sandalwood harvesting continued through the 1830s under the reign of Kauikeaouli [Kamehameha III] (r. 1825–1854). The wood was, however, of both lesser quantity and quality. Between 1836 and 1839, the Kingdom exported on average over 2,300 piculs of sandalwood per year. No data is available for either the four years before or after this period. The average annual earnings from sales of sandalwood during this period was $16,250 per year (an average rate of $7/picul). There is some evidence, though, that prices had fallen earlier in the decade to an abysmal rate of just $1.50/picul.57 Even as late as the 1860s and 1870s, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi continued to report intermittent sales of sandalwood. In the 1850s, a young George Dole wrote in a school essay about his explorations of the land north of the Wailua River on the windward coast of Kauaʻi where he and his friends discovered s a n da lwo od a n d t h e c h i n a t r a de

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large stands of untouched sandalwood. “[We] came to a plain covered with scattering groves of koa trees,” he wrote, “among which there are a good many sandal-wood trees, towards a foot in diameter.” A few years earlier, in 1849, Charles Bernhard Richard, clerk of the USS Dale in Honolulu Harbor, noted, “sandalwood, suitable for export, is mostly exhausted, though the young wood is abundant.” The market was gone, but the wood was still there.58 Sandalwood never disappeared, but it was overharvested. The Hawaiian aliʻi did not dig their own graves by overexploiting the forests. Instead, it is more accurate to say that the aliʻi were victims of imperial economic treachery carried out on a global scale. Thousands of miles away, British merchants were able to convert 10 percent of the Chinese population to opium addiction in the early nineteenth century. They flaunted Qing laws governing trade. They illegally smuggled tremendous amounts of opium into China. American ships got in on the trade, too, transporting opium from the Ottoman Empire to the Pearl River Delta; as they did, it made less and less sense to also carry furs and sandalwood. It was not just that Hawaiʻi needed to find a new commodity in the 1830s; they needed a new market. Poor Boki did not realize this. The winds were already shifting when he set sail for Eromanga in 1829 in search of wood. More sandalwood was not the answer. Economic treachery was also carried out by Euro-American merchants and officials in Honolulu. Their practices of selling goods to Hawaiian consumers on credit and then demanding repayment of debts with guns drawn were not abnormal. These were, in fact, becoming the everyday practices of global capitalism. Hawaiʻi’s sandalwood trees were just one more type of collateral in a new global system of so-called free trade.

free trade and free labor In 1836, Kauikeaouli, ruler of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, wrote to Christian missionaries in the United States suggesting that they send some people skilled in trades other than just the preaching of gospel. “Send to us additional teachers to those you have already sent, of such character as you employ in your own country in America. Viz. A carpenter A Tailor A Mason A Shoe maker A Wheelright A Paper manufacturer A Type founder Farmers who can teach the cultivation of cotton, silk, and the making of sugar A manufacturer of cloth.” In short, Kauikeaouli sought to bring Hawaiʻi into the global nineteenth-century economy.59 But two aspects of Hawaiʻi’s 40

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indigenous mode of production stood in the way of the young king’s capitalist dreams. One was Hawaiʻi’s system of land tenure; the other was the class system. For Hawaiʻi to engage fully in the world economy, Kauikeaouli’s government would first have to “free” the land and “free” the makaʻāinana. As he embarked upon these revolutions in the 1840s, the Pacific World simultaneously was revolutionized by a new imperial order founded upon the Western concept of free trade. The revolution began in June 1839, in Guangzhou, as Qing imperial commissioner Lin Zexu dumped 21,000 chests of confiscated British opium into the Pearl River Delta. Lin’s actions enraged the British and set off the First Opium War (1839–42). Meanwhile, in 1840, Britain annexed Aotearoa (New Zealand), home of the Māori. Eastward, in the ancestral home of both the Hawaiians and Māori, the French raised their tricolor flag over the island of Tahiti in 1842. That same year, Britain finalized its victory over the Qing, concluding the Opium War with the Treaty of Nanjing. This treaty permitted so-called free trade at Guangzhou as well as four other “treaty ports” along the southeast China coast, ports that until 1842 were officially closed to foreign commerce. The British also received an indemnity payment and were granted control over the island of Xianggang, the “fragrant harbor” of Hong Kong. The British were additionally granted extraterritoriality; this meant that British offenses against Qing law on Chinese soil were not punishable by Chinese courts. Other Western powers, including the United States, rushed in to claim “most favored nation” status alongside the British; that is, they claimed access to the same rights and privileges that the Qing had granted to Britain. The United States codified this status with the Treaty of Wangxia in 1844, the first official treaty between the United States and China. These treaties signaled the end of the Canton trade, including Hawaiʻi’s place within it. Perhaps not surprisingly, the next year the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi’s Euro-American creditors decided to buy back the remainder of Hawaiʻi’s sandalwood-era debt. With just one payment of $14,000, the decades-long Hawaiian debt crisis was over.60 Meanwhile, in Hawaiʻi, Kauikeaouli and his advisors had begun their own political economic revolution. In 1840 they authorized the Kingdom’s first constitution. This document called for the creation of a bicameral legislature with a House of Nobles (comprised of appointed aliʻi nui) and a House of Representatives (to be elected by the Hawaiian people). For the makaʻāinana, the 1840 constitution represented their transformation from subjects into citizens. The traditional class structure, governed by kapu, s a n da lwo od a n d t h e c h i n a t r a de

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which maintained the pono balance between aliʻi and makaʻāinana, was formally dissolved. It had already, between 1819 and 1840, begun to disintegrate. Changes in class relations were a product of many forces, not least of all the growing number of Hawaiian workers who, through wage labor at home, at sea, and abroad, had transformed themselves from makaʻāinana into a modern working class.61 Kauikeaouli’s government recognized that labor conditions and labor relations had changed and were continuing to change across the Pacific World. Historian Sally Engle Merry notes that the Hawaiian parliament passed a series of labor laws in the early 1840s, perhaps to codify a new class structure to replace the aliʻi-makaʻāinana paradigm. A new convict labor law, for example, made clear that penal labor could not be used to benefit the aliʻi, but could only be employed for the sake of Kingdom-wide projects such as building “roads, fences, prisons, and forts.” Convicts were segregated by gender, and women mandated to work in traditionally female labors, such as “beating tapa [kapa], braiding mats and hats, sewing, twisting fish lines, [and] weaving nets.” In 1842 the Kingdom passed new laws against idleness and loitering, including a law that if a man was found “sitting idle,” the tax collector could take him and “set him to work for the Government, and he shall work till night.” The law allowed landlords to turn in idle tenants to the Kingdom, criminalizing laziness and forcing commoners into convict labor. All of these laws defined common Hawaiians as subjects of the state rather than the aliʻi. Nevertheless, the law still recognized differences between upper-class and lower-class Hawaiians. Only aliʻi served in the House of Nobles, for example, while only commoners were criminalized for idleness.62 Revolutions in free trade and free labor converged in February 1843 as a rogue British admiral, Lord George Paulet, sailed into Honolulu Harbor demanding many of the same concessions that Britain had just obtained from the Treaty of Nanjing. Paulet raised grievances against the Hawaiian government regarding British land claims and the treatment of British citizens in the Kingdom. He called for the immediate installation of a British consul at Honolulu and demanded a direct audience with the mōʻī, Kauikeaouli. Six days later, Kauikeaouli arrived from Lāhainā, Maui, but he refused to meet face-to-face with Paulet or hear his demands. Meanwhile, France and the United States made clear their own desires for imperial neutrality in Hawaiʻi; in other words, they sought a “hands off Hawaiʻi” policy for all Western powers. But on February 25, 1843, Paulet seized the port of Honolulu and declared the Hawaiian Islands a British possession. Five 42

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months of international negotiations later, the British metropole later rejected Paulet’s seizure of the islands and restored Hawaiʻi’s sovereignty on July 31. Kauikeaouli proclaimed the day a holiday (today celebrated as Ka La Hoʻihoʻi Ea, Sovereignty Restoration Day) and he spoke these famous words: “Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono” (the sovereignty of the land is perpetuated in righteousness/in pono).63 Paulet had sought free trade protections in Hawaiʻi, just as his country had forced upon the Qing one year earlier in Nanjing, but, at least for now, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi had preserved its sovereignty. This was not true for other Pacific peoples and polities. One by one, British, French, and American empires expanded in the 1840s, gobbling up territory. In 1846, the United States and Britain split the northwest coast of North America into American Oregon Territory and British Columbia. The American and British state presence in both territories expanded rapidly, facilitating the transfer of lands from Native peoples into the hands of Euro-American and EuroCanadian settlers. Meanwhile, in 1846 the United States declared war on Mexico. This was, in many ways, a Pacific war. American naval ships took control of Mexican trans-Pacific trading ports such as San Blas, Mazatlán, and further north, Monterey. When the United States finally won, they took control of Alta California, and soon enough, the sleepy port of Yerba Buena in the northern reaches of California became the great trans-Pacific trading metropolis of San Francisco.64 With the Pacific World from China to New Zealand to Tahiti to Mexico to the northwest coast of North America falling into the hands of foreign empires, Hawaiian leaders sought to secure their Kingdom’s sovereignty by extraordinary means. Historian Stuart Banner has argued that Hawaiians knew they were next on the list to be colonized, and that the only way to secure their land under colonial rule was to secure title to the land as private property. Banner calls this “preparing to be colonized.” He argues that Hawaiians knew that when British and American imperialists moved to colonize indigenous peoples’ lands that they generally took control of everything except privately held property. Common lands, a traditional feature of Hawaiian land tenure in the ahupuaʻa, were not recognized as belonging to anyone in this new Anglophone Pacific World. Hawaiians had to act quickly to claim legal title to their lands before the imperialists arrived to take the land from them.65 Thus, the greatest revolution in all of Hawaiian history began as the government enacted a plan to convert millions of acres of common lands into private property. It was called Ka Māhele (The Division). The makaʻāinana s a n da lwo od a n d t h e c h i n a t r a de

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by and large resisted this revolution. As early as 1845, the first year of the Māhele, scores of petitions arrived from makaʻāinana pleading with Kauikeaouli to stop listening to his foreign advisors and resist these reforms. One petition, from residents on the island of Hawaiʻi, stated in fear that if the Māhele takes place, “we believe we will soon end as homeless people.” Kauikeaouli’s haole advisors believed otherwise. They contended that if common Hawaiians could own their own land as private property, they would no longer be subject to abuse by aliʻi and konohiki (land managers). They could use their own land for profit, including alienating the ʻāina as a commodity to lease and sell on the market. On the other hand, makaʻāinana petitioners believed that the Māhele would simply transfer lands from aliʻi to haole hands. A petition from Lāhainā, Maui, with the signatures of 1,600 residents on it, ended with this ominous prediction of a post-Māhele world: “we shall be the servants of the foreigners.” 66 William Little Lee, a Harvard-educated American appointed as the president of the Kingdom’s Board of Commissioners to Quiet Land Titles, thought that Hawaiʻi’s commoners were just simply ignorant of what the Māhele would do for them. “I cannot say that the great Mass of your Nation are fully prepared to receive so great an Emancipation,” he wrote to Kauikeaouli. “They may spurn this proffered freedom. But I do most sincerely believe, that this great measure, by raising the Hawaiian Nation, from a state of hereditary servitude, to that of a free & independent right in the soil they cultivate, will promote industry and agriculture, check depopulation, and ultimately prove the Salvation of Your People.” 67 That was December 1847. Over the next few months, in early 1848, the Māhele began with land claims awarded to the mōʻī and to 252 individual aliʻi. Among these 253 people, the Board of Commissioners divided the lands of Hawaiʻi into three large categories: the mōʻī’s private lands; the private lands of the aliʻi; and government lands belonging to the Kingdom. In 1848, no lands were awarded to any makaʻāinana. As if to mock Lee’s prediction that the Māhele would “check depopulation, and ultimately prove the Salvation” of Hawaiians, the archipelago was struck with a series of disease epidemics that year, including whooping cough, measles, and influenza. Out of a total population of roughly 85,000, historians now believe that within just one year as many as 10,000 Hawaiians died from these diseases. It seems that Lee’s imagined Māhele could not come fast enough.68 In 1850, common Hawaiians finally got the Māhele they were promised, but not before the Hawaiian legislature passed another revision to the 44

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Kingdom’s labor laws. Enacted in June 1850, “An Act for the Government of Masters and Servants,” also known as the Masters and Servants Act, was intended to provide various mechanisms of control over Hawaiʻi’s newly “freed” working class. No longer makaʻāinana, no longer wedded to the ʻāina (the land), the Hawaiian state realized that just as they had alienated land by converting it into a commodity, so they must also alienate the people’s labor by turning it into a commodity. In old Hawaiʻi, labor and land were wedded in pono, in harmony. Hawaiians worked for their own subsistence but also provided ritual hoʻokupu to the aliʻi to honor the gods and maintain the pono of the land. In new Hawaiʻi, the land was a commodity; it could be bought, traded, leased, sold. Thus, the world was pulled out from under the feet of the makaʻāinana. Now they were a landless people, a proletariat. The state could still control their labor through penal law, but short of criminalizing the entire population, the Kingdom had no other laws governing relations between Hawaiʻi’s new working class (many tens of thousands of people) and its nascent capitalist class (coming to power on the wealth of alienated land). The 1850 Masters and Servants Act codified this new relationship between labor and capital in the Kingdom.69 The Masters and Servants Act provided a legal basis for contract labor. It gave employers and employees permission to negotiate contracts governing the terms of labor. Specifically, it allowed Hawaiian men over twenty years old the right to sign contracts with employers for up to five years of servitude. The law imposed stiff penalties on workers who violated their contracts, including convict labor or automatic extension of their contracts. Hawaiian migrant workers had already engaged in contract labor for decades, but that was on foreign ships and at work sites abroad, not in Hawaiʻi. The 1850 labor law was tied to the land reforms. The state had made a landless people, and now they needed to discipline the people’s labor and mobility.70 In July 1850, the Hawaiian legislature amended the laws governing the Māhele to allow aliʻi to sell their lands directly to foreigners. In the next month, Hawaiʻi’s working class got their day in court when the legislature finally passed the Kuleana Act, a law allowing commoners to claim title to Hawaiian land. Of course, most of the lands in Hawaiʻi had already been awarded to the mōʻī and aliʻi. On top of that, the process for claiming title to the land was complicated. As a result, the majority of Hawaiian commoners failed to receive any land from the Māhele. As Lilikalā Kameʻeleihiwa has shown, of approximately 29,220 males over the age of eighteen in Hawaiʻi in 1850, only 14,195 (less than half) presented claims to s a n da lwo od a n d t h e c h i n a t r a de

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the government. Of these, only 8,421 claims were awarded by the Board of Commissioners. Therefore, just 29 percent of eligible Hawaiian males (and only 9 percent of all Hawaiians, if women and children are included) were awarded title to lands in the archipelago. The other 71–91 percent of Hawaiians, who received no land, were completely dispossessed. Of the 8,421 claims awarded, the total acreage amounted to just 28,658 acres, or 2.7 acres of land per claimant. This represented less than 1 percent of all land in the Kingdom.71 If their status was uncertain in earlier decades, the Māhele without doubt sealed the transition of the makaʻāinana into a proletariat. Over 70 percent of Hawaiian families could no longer practice subsistence agriculture; they had no land. Of those with access to land, their parcels were on average too small for practical use. The Kuleana Act also changed Hawaiian laws governing the commons. In old Hawaiʻi, makaʻāinana lived in ahupuaʻa that stretched from the mountains to the sea. These districts had “ecological coherence” and provided Hawaiians with access to all of the resources necessary for survival. The Māhele destroyed this ahupuaʻa system and forced commoners onto small plots of land (or into port cities or abroad) without access to all they had once held in common. The Kuleana Act sought to remedy this situation by granting commoners the right to collect “firewood, house timber, aho cord, thatch, ti [ki] leaf, drinking water, and running water” from outside the bounds of their own property. The law also granted commoners the right of way over private lands in order to access these resources. In essence, the Kuleana Act made clear that although the ʻāina was alienable and could be bought and sold, not all of the products of the land could be turned into commodities. The law argued for a usufruct commons in which certain products of the land were understood as belonging to all. This was an important concession to Hawaiʻi’s working class, but it could not make up for the sea change that the Māhele had unleashed upon the Hawaiian people.72

rqr When Boki glanced at his reflection in the “hanging mirrors with gilded frames” inside his home in 1828, what did he see? Did he see a leader who would never let foreign businessmen and creditors get the best of him? Or did he see a cosmopolitan consumer, a global trader? When his eyes caught sight 46

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of sandalwood logs piled high above the horizon line in storehouses along the shore, what did he see? Did he see an aromatic tree indigenous to Hawaiian material culture? Or did he see vases, furniture, clothing, and foreign ships, the exchangeability and mutability of all things in the global marketplace? Boki’s predicament provides a useful introduction to Hawaiian capitalism. The process by which Hawaiian people and products became “enmeshed in the capitalist net” was extremely complex. For Hawaiian workers, it was first experienced through sea otters and salt. Hundreds of men went to the northwest coast of North America to hunt marine mammals, while thousands worked at Āliapaʻakai producing salt for foreign export. Over the course of ten to fifteen years, Hawaiian workers also experienced major shifts in sandalwood’s mode of production: independent harvesting overlapped with corvée labor while some workers received wages for stevedoring and shipboard labor in local harbors. Hawaiian workers also experienced the globalization of the economy as foreign empires and free-trade ideology overcame Pacific peoples and revolutionized indigenous land tenure, integrating disparate peoples and places into a U.S. and European-dominated world economy. By 1850, the great majority of Hawaiians were now landless, part of an emerging wage-working proletariat, a Hawaiian working class. One year earlier, the American expatriate judge William Little Lee wrote from Hawaiʻi that “the mighty wave of emigration that is now rolling over the Rocky Mountains [toward California], will soon reach us; and Heaven grant it may not sweep the Hawaiian into the ocean.”73 Lee was prophetic. It would be nearly a half-century before American settlers would formally take control of Hawaiʻi, but waves of change were already sweeping Hawaiian men and women “into the ocean.” The convergences of dispossession and proletarianization at home with the increasing labor needs of maritime extractive industries across the Pacific Ocean—from whaling to marine mammal hunting to guano and gold mining—meant that thousands of Hawaiian men left the Islands in the middle of the nineteenth century to work abroad and at sea as migrant laborers. Their lives and experiences led to increasing entanglements between Hawaiʻi’s culture, economy, and ecology and that of the greater world. Out of this emerged a Hawaiian Pacific World.

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t wo

Make’s Dance migrant workers and migratory animals

six weeks out of new London, Connecticut, on a whaling ship bound for the North Pacific and Arctic Oceans, Captain Sluman L. Gray “kicked and pounded John Bull (a Kanacker)” for two straight hours. The Hawaiian worker was so sore from his beating that he now “cannot turn himself in his berth.” Three months later, in the sea off of Indonesia, Captain Gray attacked the poor man again. He whipped John Bull “with a peice of rope until his body was all covered with ridges. This is the 3 time he has beat this man at the wheel. once laying him up for several days.” The following day, John Bull complained to the ship’s first mate, protesting that he was too weak to work. To which the first mate replied “good enough for you, you d__n nigger.” John Bull was not the only Hawaiian to feel Captain Gray’s wrath aboard the whale ship Hannibal in 1850. Make was another Hawaiian sailor aboard the vessel. On May 28, “The Capt kicked Make (a Kanacker) while at the wheel this afternoon, and broke the bridge of his nose. and the skin of his face in several places. His face and nose bled so as to leave the blood in puddles round the wheel. was so much disfigured that no body would know him.” The captain had beat Make just two days earlier, too. One week later, off of the chilly coast of Kamchatka in the Russian North Pacific, the captain’s wife, “Mrs Grey [Gray] came on deck and said her husband was dying.” The news was premature and untrue, but when Make heard of the captain’s sickness he could not hold back. “Make, the Kanacker, danced. threw up his hat. and jumped and danced on that. & kept saying in broken English. good. good. good.”1 Make’s dance is an apt metaphor, in microcosm, for the experiences of thousands of Hawaiian migrant workers in the nineteenth-century whaling industry. Violence, danger, exploitation, and resistance were part and parcel 48

of this trade. But movement above all else defined the whale worker’s experience. Make jumped, danced, and threw his hat up into the air. His movements mirrored the ways that Hawaiian workers regularly used movement and mobility—signing onto ships, deserting contracts, engaging in mutinies, moving to port cities, and traveling the world’s oceans—as a means of exerting their agency in a global capitalist economy. Workers like Make were not the only ones that moved. Whaling was a grand dance encompassing a vast trans-Pacific arena of space and time. Global economic transformations along the commodity chain from production to consumption linked Hawaiian labor to New England industrialization to Euro-American conspicuous consumption. Ecological changes in the ocean, and the migrations of whales, co-created the maritime world that Hawaiian whalemen experienced. Like the Polynesian myths of people who traveled across the ocean upon the backs of whales, Hawaiian whale workers were modern-day “whale riders,” following cetaceans’ transoceanic migrations across the world’s oceans. As whale riders, Hawaiian migrant workers discovered the coast of Japan, the Russian Far East, Alaska, and the Arctic Ocean, all in pursuit of whales.2 Men like Make also pursued wages. Local and global economic and ecological factors shaped the geography of where whale ships ventured, who was recruited to work on ship, and where those workers ended up. Nineteenthcentury whaling created local “whale worlds” in port cities such as Lāhainā, Maui and New London, Connecticut. Hawaiians moved between these places with great frequency, while spending the majority of their time on the ocean itself, in a liminal space defined not just by the isolation of maritime labor but also by an isolation engendered by racial difference and labor exploitation. Transoceanic migrations reverberated in parallel with a massive exodus of internal migrants from the Hawaiian countryside who flooded into Hawaiʻi’s port cities and in turn flooded onto ships. Hawaiians left Hawaiʻi in record numbers during this period of proletarianization and peak whaling. Make’s death-wish dance was just one movement in a sprawling symphony of migrations and circulations that spiraled out of nineteenth-century Pacific whaling. What follows are six more movements: a commodity-chain dance; a beneath-the-waves dance; a getting-onto-and-off-of-ships dance; a working dance; a globalization dance; and a proletarian dance. Each vignette shows, in various pitches and tempos, how Hawaiian workers experienced whaling through movement, mobility, and motion across space and time. m ig r a n t wor k e r s a n d m ig r at or y a n i m a l s

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worlds of production and consumption In the period from 1820 to 1860, whaling rapidly and drastically expanded the scope of the Hawaiian Pacific World. Geographies of transit—the movement of whales, whale ships, migrant workers, whale oil, whalebone products—drew Hawaiians into relationships with distant peoples, places, and processes. In the age of Pacific whaling, recruitment of Hawaiian labor by foreign employers increased to levels never seen during the era of sandalwood extraction and sea otter hunting. Whale ships came to rely on Hawaiian port cities and their service/supply economies so intensely that visits to these ports not only affected economic and political paradigms but also altered ecological relationships in and around Hawaiʻi. Most significantly, whaling set Hawaiian commoners on the move, from the countryside to the cities and from port cities onto foreign ships. The American whaling industry provided new shape to a fledgling Hawaiian diaspora, sending Hawaiian men to the limits of the Pacific World. All these changes were set in motion in 1820. At that time, thousands of miles west of Hawaiʻi, American whalers discovered a new whale fishery, the Japan whale grounds, a large swath of ocean southeast of the Japanese archipelago. Because Japan was then off-limits to foreign ships (and would be until 1854), American whaling vessels needed a nearby port, or series of ports, to use as a base for provisioning. About forty days’ sail east of Japan, the Hawaiian Islands beckoned. When American whalers discovered sperm whales off of Japan, they thus also discovered Honolulu. Approximately thirty American ships visited the Japan grounds in 1822, increasing to sixty ships in 1823; meanwhile, more and more ships visited Honolulu for fresh food, fresh water, and fresh Hawaiian bodies—men to serve on ships and women for sexual pleasure.3 As new whale grounds opened up, they were like radial spokes emanating from Hawaiʻi’s central place in the middle of the ocean. For example, in 1838, thirty days’ sail to the east of Hawaiʻi, American whalers discovered a new whaling ground near Kodiak Island and the northwest coast of North America. In 1848, New England whaling ships discovered yet another whaling ground, in the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait. Each new whale ground connected back to Hawaiʻi for provisions and labor. Nineteenthcentury geographies of whales and whaling expanded the reach of the Hawaiian Pacific World to the farthest limits of the ocean.4

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Whaling was, in fact, a global industry. From production to consumption, people around the world encountered Pacific whaling in some way. Herman Melville had his narrator Ishmael, in the novel Moby-Dick, exclaim on behalf of Pacific whalemen that “almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn round the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory!” Whale oil indeed illuminated the world, and Pacific-based labor was essential for that oil’s extraction and distribution although few beyond Pacific waters would ever recognize that fact. Hawaiian men did not labor in the American whaling industry because they knew the usefulness of whale oil, as Ishmael did. What they knew, and labored for, was the oil’s exchange-value: the value of a “lay” [Hawaiian: le], a percentage of total profits that each worker would receive at the conclusion of a successful voyage. Whales were wild animals, but when killed they became commodities. In distant ports, in California, in New York, and in Massachusetts, whale oil and other whale products sold in an increasingly globalized marketplace. Stripped of their oceanic and ecological relationships, and alienated from the labor that hunted and hacked and boiled them down, what remained of whales’ bodies in the marketplace were mere semblances of their former selves. The incentive for Hawaiian workers to hunt these whales was simply, then, to see some value returned from the systematic disassembly of these once-mighty creatures. Whales connected the world, but they were experienced radically differently across the commodity chain from production to consumption.5 And so, even upon death, the work of whales’ bodies was not yet done. Sperm oil, the cranial liquid extracted from sperm whales’ heads, was fashioned into bright-burning candles, and whale oil, the product of boiled (“tried”) whale blubber—from any type of whale—flickered in every lamp in every home in great American cities. Whales did not just provide illumination. Whale oil was also smeared onto the iron gears that turned the machinery of the United States’ Industrial Revolution. Indeed, New England’s nineteenthcentury economy was a surf-and-turf industrial system: liquefied whale blubber maintained the smooth operation of machine parts while California cattle skins provided the leather belting that ran along blubber-smeared gears. Extractive industries all across the Pacific World made the United States’ Industrial Revolution possible, providing the necessary resources to complement nature-poor New England’s monopolization of capital and labor.6 Extreme distances between sites of production and sites of consumption in the whaling industry inevitably led to the alienation of whale products as

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commodities from the nature and labor that made them. Only one who had experienced whaling himself, like the young Herman Melville, who sailed on the Acushnet in 1841–1842, could recognize in the flickering illumination of a whale oil lamp the sacrifice of men who risked their lives to slaughter these animals. “For God’s sake,” exclaimed Ishmael, “be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man’s blood was spilled for it.”7 Melville reserved his greatest condemnation, however, for the female consumers of whale products, women who, according to the fashions of the day, actually wore pieces of whale on their bodies. Sperm whales provided Americans with the best oil for illumination, but bowhead and right whales provided something else: baleen. Often called whalebone, baleen covers the whale’s mouth and filters ocean water of delicious whale food—namely the tiny zooplankton that these whales eat in prodigious quantities. But to entrepreneurial Americans, baleen was the plastic of the nineteenth century. It was an essential component in a most unusual array of products: chair springs, buggy whips, fish rods, bustle supports, corset stays—you name it. It was in this last form, in women’s corsets, where baleen took on its most famous role. It must have been hard for Hawaiian male laborers on American ships to imagine they labored so hard just so that American white women could achieve visibly skinny waists and perky breasts. Over time, Hawaiian whalemen certainly would have learned of these fashions, and seen them among haole in Honolulu or during visits to American ports.8 For Melville, the association between manly labor and women’s undergarments was just too much. That wealthy women actually wore the disembodied labor of an underpaid, motley crew of whalemen half a world away was a laughable if not condemnable consequence of American imperialism and capitalism. Melville contrasted these women with his romantic imaginings of Pacific Islander women. He believed that Pacific women were free of the foolish material attachments that plagued overcivilized Americans. Melville wrote of the ʻEnata (the Native people) of the Marquesas Islands, a people that he himself encountered after deserting the whaleship Acushnet in 1842: “There [on Nuku Hiva] you might have seen a throng of young females, not filled with envyings of each other’s charms, nor displaying the ridiculous affectations of gentility, nor yet moving in whale-bone corsets, like so many automatons, but free, inartificially happy, and unconstrained.” Like most of his literary pals in midnineteenth century America, Melville was a romantic. Responding in part to the industrialization that was turning social and ecological relationships topsy52

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turvy in the United States, Melville saw Pacific Islands and Islanders as unspoiled “Edens” and “noble savages,” not yet conquered by the “ridiculous affectations of gentility” that led women to do things as crazy as wear whalebones on their bodies, constrained “like so many automatons,” like the very machines, in fact, that fueled America’s great industrial transformation.9 Native Hawaiian women did not wear whalebone corsets, nor did Hawaiian families illuminate dark nights with whale oil. In fact, whales played a comparatively minor role in Hawaiian history, at least until the nineteenth century. When whalers began visiting Hawaiʻi in the 1820s, many Hawaiians must have thought it strange that men would travel half a world away to find a source of illumination, for Hawaiians had an ample source of their own plant-based illumination at home, courtesy of the kukui, or candlenut, tree. Archibald Campbell described in the early nineteenth century how Hawaiians used kukui nuts for illumination: “When used as candles, they string twenty or thirty up on a slit of bamboo, each of which will burn five or six minutes; but they require constant trimming, and it is necessary to reverse the torch whenever a nut is consumed that the one under it may catch fire.” It may have been a crude apparatus, but kukui lamps provided light, and the prospect of chasing down whales for illumination must have seemed absurd.10 There existed a closer affinity between Hawaiian and American consumption in the realm of fashion. For although Hawaiian women did not traditionally wear whalebone corsets, parts of whales’ bodies did nonetheless hold great value when worn on the body. Aliʻi men and women both sometimes wore lei palaoa, necklaces made of woven human hair attached to a whaletooth pendant. The whale-tooth embodied mana (divine power), and when worn, the object bestowed this power upon its wearer. American and European trans-Pacific traders, in fact, knew that whale’s teeth were valuable and that they should obtain these whale parts to trade to Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders in exchange for items such as sandalwood. Hawaiians and Americans both wanted whale parts to wear on their bodies, but there was a world of difference in the meanings ascribed to these objects and the modes of production necessary to obtain them.11

beneath the waves Between the local and the global—between Honolulu and Boston—lies a vast ocean. Historian Ryan Tucker Jones has eloquently argued that the m ig r a n t wor k e r s a n d m ig r at or y a n i m a l s

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history of the world’s oceans must be told from the bottom up. Literally, we must approach the history of the ocean from the bottom of the sea floor looking upward, understanding how ocean currents, marine flora and fauna, and other agents below the surface shape and alter the human narratives that dance upon the waves. Not only do oceans represent seven-tenths of the world’s surface, but much of what goes on in the history of oceans takes place beneath the waves. To understand the space-time experiences of Hawaiian whale workers riding on the ocean, we must first understand the space-time parameters of what goes on below. I approach these many interfaces between human and nonhuman natures from the perspective of the “workscape,” the idea that the work environment of nineteenth-century whaling was a coconstruction of both human and cetacean labors. Whales, scientists, and Hawaiian workers all experienced the nineteenth-century Pacific in different ways, even as they were all chasing each other (or being chased) in the same spaces at the same times.12 Nineteenth-century Hawaiian whale workers encountered a variety of cetaceans in the Pacific Ocean. They hunted sperm, bowhead, and right whales, and in lesser frequency, humpbacks and grays. Each of these species inhabited different parts of the ocean at different times of the year. For example, sperm whales rarely left the Pacific Ocean’s tropical and temperate waters. Sperm “bulls,” the adult males, sometimes ventured further north (or further south in the southern hemisphere) in small groups on explorations apart from the female cows and their young calves. It remains unclear why the male sperm whales venture off in this way—normally this exodus occurs in the northern and southern summers when ocean temperatures warm—but they return to warmer waters once they are ready to breed. Many nineteenthcentury humans believed that there were specific whale “grounds,” or gathering areas, in the ocean—such as the offshore grounds west of Peru and the Japan grounds—but it is not clear how this concept of grounds came into being. Some sperm whales migrated beyond grounds, or between grounds, complicating the fi xed quality of these places. One way to understand whale grounds is to focus on why whales congregated, or at least appeared to congregate, in these spaces. Sperm whales feed mainly on squid, and squid enjoy deep, cold ocean habitat, thus drawing sperm whales downward into ocean depths in search of prey. For whale hunters to locate the whales, however, it is necessary that they be present at the surface of the ocean. One explanation for why sperm whales congregated near the surface of the ocean, say, at the Japan grounds, was the presence of 54

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numerous underwater seamounts. Steep underwater slopes and shelves tend to cause upwelling, a process whereby deep, cold ocean water is pushed to the surface, along with cold water squids and other marine species that normally inhabit deep ocean waters. But sperm whales often dove deep for their meals, and other whale grounds have been associated with downwelling, the downward movement of ocean waters. That said, after deep dives the sperm whale must come up for air. These explanations also do not explain the significance of other grounds, such as the offshore grounds west of the Galapagos Islands. These are located on top of a surprisingly flat sea floor. And yet this ground sits along the path of the famous Humboldt Current which regularly (except during El Niño years) brings cold Southern Ocean waters north to the equator, providing rich food sources for seabirds and Humboldt penguins. It may be that the Humboldt Current feeds the offshore grounds with squid that, in turn, attract sperm whales.13 The feeding practices of right and bowhead whales, on the other hand, were and are completely different. These baleen whales lack teeth and therefore lack the ability to chomp down on squids and fish. Instead, the baleen in both right and bowhead whales’ mouths functions to fi lter ocean water of its smallest animal species: shrimp, krill, and other crustaceans. In general, baleen whales live on zooplankton, the small drifting animals at the bottom of the food chain that likely comprise the largest percentage of total biomass of all living things on Earth. The hairy bristles within whales’ baleen capture zooplankton for digestion; the whales then discharge the remaining water from their mouths. Baleen whales depend on areas of high zooplankton productivity to survive, and thus baleen hunters of the nineteenth century necessarily had to go where the zooplankton was. Today we know that the Bering Strait region—a major hub of whaling activity in the second half of the nineteenth century—is perhaps Earth’s most productive zooplankton hot spot. No wonder that a whaling boom ensued in the decades following the discovery of this whaling ground in 1848. Corset-wearing upper-class women of the nineteenth-century United States might not have known it, but maintaining their fashionable figure depended on the geography of zooplankton production in the North Pacific and Arctic Oceans. Similarly, Hawaiian migrant workers might not have fully known what forces brought them through the Bering Strait and into the Arctic Ocean, but behind the economic explanations were also ecological ones: without zooplankton there was no baleen, without baleen there were no corsets, and without whalebone products on the market there were no jobs for Hawaiian men.14 m ig r a n t wor k e r s a n d m ig r at or y a n i m a l s

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Whalers interested in exploiting the seas were helped along the way by scientists interested in synthesizing knowledge about the world’s oceans and fi xing cetacean mobilities onto maps. Matthew Fontaine Maury of the U.S. Navy is credited with producing the first modern whale map. His Whale Chart, published in 1851 by the National Observatory for the United States, was easy to read and utilize by ships’ captains. Maury used basic colors to indicate whale species distribution: sperm whale grounds were colored in pink; right whale grounds in blue. Where there existed a mix of the two, Maury applied the color green. He drew these colors within the lines of a grid consisting of five-degree-by-five-degree quadrants (“squares”) breaking down the world’s oceans into mathematical, quantifiable portions. To demonstrate differences in whale density, Maury drew images of tiny whales into most squares. One whale figure denoted the square was satisfactory for fishing; two marked “that square to be much frequented by that species.” In addition, the letters w, v, s, and a were placed in squares to denote the season when fishing was best: winter, spring (vernal), summer, or autumn. Maury’s map represented something of a scavenger hunt for extractive commodities, with pink squares pointing toward sperm oil and blue squares to baleen. To maximize efficiency, a ship’s owner might consult Maury’s chart to determine exactly where a ship should be at any given time in order to extract a particular whale product. This is more of an economical map than an ecological one.15 Another whale chart, produced nearly four decades later, has a different story to tell. A. Howard Clark’s map, published in The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States, a government-sponsored scientific review of American fishery industries in the 1880s, did what Maury’s map failed to do: show change over time in whale demography. Clark’s map demonstrated that whaling grounds were not permanent or fi xed sites for unbridled extractive exploitation, but rather volatile and dynamic loci of whale congregation, altered by countless contingencies such as the pressures of whale hunting and the behaviors of the whales themselves. Unlike Maury’s cheery pink, green, and blue colors, Clark’s map used only two shades: dark and light. Dark areas denote “Present [Whale] Grounds.” Light areas, “Abandoned Grounds.” Clark’s map is more about people than whales. It shows where whalers used to go and where they now go, and thus conveys not simply ecological data about whales, but economical data about changes in the whaling economy.16 In depicting geographies informed by capitalist desires, Maury’s and Clark’s maps demonstrate the limits of human knowledge and understandings of mid-nineteenth-century whale worlds. Whaling may have linked 56

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figure 3. Matthew Fontaine Maury, Whale Chart, 1851. Map reproduction courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library.

figure 4. A. Howard Clark, Map of the World on Mercator’s Projection showing the Extent and Distribution of the Present and Abandoned Whaling Grounds, 1887. Map reproduction courtesy of the Freshwater and Marine Image Bank, University of Washington Libraries.

Hawaiʻi to the larger Pacific World, but Hawaiians at this time only knew whales, and knew the ocean, along these geographies of economic interest and necessity, not the expansive, ecological space that whales knew beneath the waves. That Pacific whale populations were dynamic and responded to the pressures of the whale hunt—that whale grounds themselves were anything but grounded, that they shifted over space and time due to ecological disruptions and transformations—is a story that scientists struggled to grasp, and that workers only came close to understanding when a full season out on the ocean resulted in nothing brought up from beneath the waves.

whale riders Rounding Cape Horn during the Southern Ocean summer, the whale ship Italy of Long Island, New York arrived at its destination of Lāhainā, Maui in April 1855. There, the ship paid a “Permit to ship Natives,” valued at six dollars, so that they could recruit Hawaiian men. They signed up three Hawaiian workers, Kahula, Kewau [Kuna], and Anakala [Anakalla]. Anakala and his comrades hunted whales in the northern Pacific Ocean from May through October. In November the Italy returned the men to Lāhainā.17 Movements such as Anakala’s from Maui to the North Pacific and back again, all within the span of six months, are representative of the varied textures of Hawaiian whale riding. This dance—getting onto and off of foreign vessels, again and again—is representative of thousands of Hawaiian whale workers’ experiences. Both legal and illegal movements—signing contracts, breaking contracts, deserting ship—were common moves. These, in turn, were synchronized to the more macroscopic rhythms of fluctuations in ocean and air temperature, the favorability of the hunt, the seasonality of labor recruitment, and the volatility of global markets, all of which influenced the space-time experiences of Hawaiian whale workers. For the greater part of the nineteenth century the majority of Hawaiian migrant laborers did not migrate to any one place and stay there for very long. Rather, they were incessantly mobile, living on ships at sea. They did not establish long-term residency in places of work and sacrifice. Rather, their work environments were liminal, in-between spaces, yet also representative of integral nodes and pathways within the Hawaiian migrant labor experience. The story of the American whale ship Italy, and its Hawaiian crewmembers, shows how men like Anakala got caught in, and sometimes had to m ig r a n t wor k e r s a n d m ig r at or y a n i m a l s

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fight their way out of, a merry-go-round of recruitment, work, broken contracts, and seasonal disruptions, all of which evidenced new ways of calculating time and measuring space in the capitalist ocean.18 Hawaiʻi was the industry’s “crossroads of the Pacific.” Forty days’ sail to the west were the Japan grounds. Thirty days’ sail to the east was the northwest coast of North America. Straight to the north was the Arctic Circle. Hawaiʻi was the closest port for provisioning whaling ships. When summer turned to autumn in the North Pacific, or when winter turned to spring in the South Pacific, whalers made their way to Hawaiʻi, at the center of the ocean, for tropical refuge. Fall and spring consequently were the most active seasons in Hawaiʻi’s service/supply economies as countless whale ships arrived en masse in search of fresh provisions, downtime ashore, and the recruitment of Hawaiian labor.19 The voyage of the whale ship Adeline demonstrates this seasonality. This vessel from Newburyport, Massachusetts departed New England in November 1833 for a multi-year cruise of the Pacific in search of whales. After spending significant time whaling off the coast of South America, the Adeline made for Hawaiʻi in April 1835 for provisioning, recruitment of sailors, and time onshore for its crew. The ship recruited Hawaiian seamen off of Maui, then left the islands in mid-May to continue whaling. On September 15, 1835, the Adeline was back in Hawaiʻi, anchoring on Maui to discharge whale oil, provision, and recruit more seamen. The Adeline left again to engage in whaling throughout the winter and then in March 1836 returned again to Hawaiʻi. On April 23, 1836, the Adeline’s log records the ship’s departure from Lāhainā: “Bound on Japan for the fifth and last Cruise,” from May through September. Latitude and longitude records document that for the Adeline whaling on the Japan grounds did not mean sailing out to one defined spot and fishing there for months. Rather, the Adeline was constantly on the move, taking a full four months to sail from Lāhainā to just a few hundred miles east of the city of Tokyo—an unnecessarily long time for a voyage that could have been completed in forty days. The Adeline slowly but methodically hunted for whales along the way. After coming within a few hundred miles of Japan, the Adeline abruptly turned back in late August 1836, but still took another three months to return to Hawaiʻi with its cargo, continuing to hunt all the way back to the archipelago. The Adeline finally left the Hawaiian Islands for the last time on December 31, 1836, returning to New England by mid-year in 1837.20 The Adeline’s endless voyages to and from Hawaiʻi evidence the simultaneous centrality and peripherality of these islands to the whaling industry. 60

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While constantly returning to Hawaiʻi for provisions and refreshment throughout its four-year cruise, the Adeline was also constantly leaving Hawaiʻi. If we want to understand the place(s) of Hawaiʻi in Pacific whaling, this is it: central and peripheral, a place visited often, but only fleetingly, yet regularly. It was a touch-and-go relationship with massive consequences for Hawaiian labor. Anakala’s whale ship, the Italy, tells a similar story. Twenty years after the Adeline’s voyages, the Italy visited Hawaiian ports primarily in spring and autumn, demonstrating the same comings, the same goings, and the same accountings of ocean space and time as experienced by the crewmembers of the Adeline.21 Further data from Hawaiian shipping articles kept by the Honolulu Harbormaster demonstrate that while whale workers’ contracts were supposed to be set for twelve months, these contracts were often extended, or even shortened, based on the seasons. Some ships’ captains even rewrote the language of the shipping articles, crossing out stock phrases that guaranteed the date of a worker’s discharge, such as one phrase guaranteeing a worker’s return “take place before the expiration of said term of months” and replacing it with the handwritten phrase “in the fall of 1865.” These shipping articles demonstrate that in the whaling industry seasonality trumped rational time. Labor recruitment and discharge were contingent on the time-disciplines of both nature and capitalism.22 The problem of labor supply in Pacific whaling was complicated by workers’ penchant for desertion. Pacific whaling cruises that began in New England, like the voyages of the Adeline and the Italy, regularly lasted three to four years. It was not uncommon for Yankee seamen who signed up in Boston, Salem, or Cold Spring Harbor to desert ship while anchored at an attractive port in the Pacific. Sailors deserted at Valparaiso, Chile; Callao, Peru; and Mazatlán, Mexico. But it was most common for seamen to jump ship in the Pacific Islands. They were drawn to the romance of the place. Perhaps the most famous case of desertion in Pacific history was when mutineer Fletcher Christian and his comrades, lured by the appeal of “beachcomber” life in Tahiti alongside their newly acquired Polynesian girlfriends, rose up and took the Bounty from Captain Bligh, sending the captain mercilessly adrift upon the ocean. There were many more Fletcher Christians in the nineteenth century. Desertion did not always include mutiny, but it was still illegal.23 American officials worried tremendously over Yankee deserters and their bad influence on Native subjects, including U.S. consul to the Hawaiian Kingdom John C. Jones, who wrote to a Navy official in 1826 m ig r a n t wor k e r s a n d m ig r at or y a n i m a l s

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Honolulu Lahaina Hilo Total

3

2

1

r be

r ec D

em

em

be

er ov N

ct O

em pt Se

ob

be

r

st gu

ly Au

Ju

Ju

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ay M

ril Ap

ch ar M

ua br Fe

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0

Ja

Number of visits per month

4

figure 5. Visits to Hawaiian Ports by the Whaleships Adeline (1834–1837) and Italy (1854–1857). Note the seasonality of Hawaiian experiences of whaling. Sources: Adeline (ship) Logbook, New York Public Library; Italy (ship) Account book, New-York Historical Society. Compiled by the author.

warning that “a large number of the most abandoned of that class of people [deserters] have been constantly collecting and by associating themselves with the natives become familiar with every vice, lost to all sense of right, and ready to assist and aid in acts of Mutiny, Piracy and Murder.” This threat of Euro-American and Native Hawaiian seamen collecting themselves together and conspiring to resist exploitation at the hands of a globalizing whaling industry speaks to the possible formation of a multiracial maritime proletariat. U.S. officials in the Pacific sought to protect private capitalist interests from the threat of this many-headed hydra.24 The logbook of the Italy records how its Yankee seamen deserted at nearly every opportunity, and how Hawaiian workers were recruited to take their place. Anakala and his comrade Kewau were recruited in April 1855, then let go on November 6. Two days later, a whole series of transactions of human labor—some legal, some not—took place. On November 8, two EuroAmerican sailors deserted; Kahula, the last Hawaiian recruit, was discharged; meanwhile, the Italy signed up five new recruits, all Hawaiian, thus replacing 62

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450

Number of seamen recruited per season

400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 1860 winter

1860 summer

1861 winter

1861 summer

1862 winter

1862 summer

1863 winter

1863 summer

1864 winter

1864 summer

figure 6. Recruitment of Hawaiian Seamen by Foreign Employers, 1860–1864. Note the seasonality of Hawaiian experiences of whaling. Source: Volume 4, 1859–1865, Collector General of Customs Seamen’s Records, Record Group 88, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. Compiled by the author.

the five men they had lost. Soon the Italy set sail to the South Pacific with their new recruits, all of whom served for the remainder of the Italy’s voyage. They visited the Cook and Marquesas Islands (where the Italy also recruited three or four Cook Islanders), and returned to Lāhainā in the spring of 1856 to whale the northern reaches of the Pacific Ocean the following summer. The Hawaiian men were discharged in December 1856 at Lāhainā. Meanwhile, that spring, the Italy once again paid a fee “for securing natives” ($16) and a separate fee “For procuring & shipping men” ($12). In March the ship recruited five more Hawaiian men: Peter, Miguel, Moses, and perhaps two more men named Thomas and Cooper. Finally, the Italy returned to Lāhainā one last time in December 1856 to return the Hawaiians Poai, Paona, Kamakamia, and Kaliko. (Unfortunately, Hoe, the fifth Hawaiian recruit from November 1855, died at sea two months into the voyage.) The Italy then shipped to Honolulu to discharge its entire crew and end its voyage. (What happened to the Cook Islander recruits is unclear. Only one man has a record of discharge. How the rest got back to the South Pacific was not the Italy’s concern.)25 m ig r a n t wor k e r s a n d m ig r at or y a n i m a l s

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As the Italy’s voyages continued over the course of the 1850s, the composition of its crew became more ethnically diverse as more and more Polynesian men took the place of New Englanders who deserted or were discharged. This is not to say that New England whaling crews were homogenous to begin with. Far from it. African-American seamen were a staple of American whaling crews in the nineteenth century, especially serving as cooks and stewards. Native Americans were also disproportionately represented on whaling ships. Some of these folks even ended up in Hawaiʻi. There are records of African-American seamen deserting in Hawaiʻi—incredible tales like that of Anthony Allen, an African-American from Schenectady, New York, who by the early 1820s was living in Waikīkī, Oʻahu, on a plot of land with a Hawaiian wife and three kids. Most deserters, however, were white. No matter how diverse American whaling crews were when they left the United States, the number of Polynesians onboard was bound to increase over the course of the voyage.26 The account book of the Italy shows a gradual “browning” of its crew. The ship left Long Island in 1854 without anyone onboard of known Hawaiian or Polynesian descent. In April 1855, during their first stop in Hawaiʻi, they took on three Hawaiian seamen. Then in November they recruited more Hawaiians, bringing the total number of Native men onboard to five. At the same time, they lost at least two Euro-American men to desertion. The next month, the Italy visited the island of Maʻuke in the Cook Islands and presumably picked up at least three, maybe four, local men, raising the number of Polynesian seamen to eight or nine. Back at Lāhainā in March 1856 they lost two more Euro-American men to desertion, and recruited at least three, but as many as five, more Hawaiian men. Thus, as the Italy entered the North Pacific and Arctic Ocean in the summer of 1856, less than two years since departing Long Island, they sailed with at least eleven if not fourteen Polynesian men onboard. The total number of men working onboard the Italy at any one time is not clear, but the ship’s account book lists only twenty-three seamen who were not Polynesian who served on the vessel over its entire three-year cruise. It is not hard to imagine, then, that the Italy’s crew had gone from zero to perhaps 50 percent Polynesian over the course of three years.27 When Anakala stepped off the wharf in Lāhainā, Maui in April 1855 and onboard the Italy, he linked his Hawaiian roots to the global routes of the ever-shifting whaling industry. This moment of labor recruitment on the wharf was a complex dance: foreign ships had to find available workers, workers looking for a contract had to find a ship, and, as demonstrated in the 64

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Italy’s records, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi and labor contractors were also sometimes involved, with money changing hands, and men like Anakala playing roles, as well, in this grand drama. It is hard to locate primary data showing exactly what labor recruitment looked and felt like from a worker’s perspective, but there are some clues. American missionaries, for example, commented on labor recruitment in the early years of the whaling industry. Missionary Charles Stewart, visiting Honolulu Harbor in October 1823, only three years after the commencement of Hawaiian participation in the industry, acknowledged that a regular system of labor recruitment was already a feature of that port’s economic life. Autumn, he remarked, “is the season at which the whale ships recruit at the [Hawaiian] islands, on their way from Japan to the American coast, and I had the pleasure of seeing the captains and officers of nearly thirty ships in that business. The harbour looked quite like a busy port.” In November 1830, James Ames, a clerk on the American trans-Pacific trading vessel Edward, while docked at Honolulu Harbor loading sandalwood, also remarked that “there were a great number of whale ships in the harbor which come off of the coast of Japan to trim their Oil & recruit their sailors & also to get vegitables.” Ames’s comment suggests that when whalers visited Hawaiʻi they almost always acquired the same basic staples: water, vegetables, labor.28 From the Hawaiian perspective, recruitment was not so simple as just showing up at the right place at the right time. Records of the Honolulu Harbormaster from the 1860s demonstrate that Hawaiian men were sometimes recruited on very short notice—as soon as one day before setting sail— or as far in advance as one month prior to departure. For most ships, recruitment at Hawaiian ports was a process rather than an event. It frequently lasted days, but sometimes weeks or even months, with Hawaiian men signing up a few at a time over the course of multiple recruitment efforts, rather than all men signing up at once. Thus we can imagine that there was a lot of waiting around on both sides, for employers and employees, and this is perhaps why port cities such as Lāhainā and Honolulu developed such vibrant service/supply economies supporting the trade.29 It is not clear how Hawaiian whale workers felt about signing onto American vessels and leaving home for months or even years. Jacobus Boelen, a Dutch sea captain visiting Honolulu in 1828, described the ordeal of the men he met who signed onto whaling vessels only to return many years later. These “islanders,” he wrote, “often serve on the whalers that from time to time call here, and usually stay on board until the oil casks are fi lled and the m ig r a n t wor k e r s a n d m ig r at or y a n i m a l s

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vessels make a final stop at the Sandwich Islands.” Boelen himself recruited an “islander” to join him on his journey back to Holland. He described an unusual parting scene between the young migrant and the friends and family he left behind. “The young naked Indians”—about fift y or so Hawaiians— “grouped themselves on the quarterdeck—their favorite playing ground— danced and sang while making all kinds of grotesque gestures, and did not cease until the ship was close to the bar, when all raised shrieking cries and jumped into the sea to swim back to shore.”30 Sometimes Hawaiian whalemen were recruited to work on one ship but then transferred to another, raising even greater uncertainty about how long they would be gone, and whether they would return home. For example, there were the “4 Hawn [Hawaiian] Seamen” recruited by the bark Zoe at Honolulu Harbor in the spring of 1863. In reality, the Zoe was then thousands of miles away. Kuionuo, Apai, Opunui, and Keapikia all signed articles to work aboard the ship, but on the back of their shipping articles, written in hand, it stated that “Zoe 4 Hawn Seamen to join her up in Plover Bay. Passengers pr the Catherine April 10th 1863.” These men actually shipped out on the bark Catherine at Honolulu the next day in order to get to Plover Bay, a location on the Chukchi Peninsula in the Russian Arctic. “During the time they are on board the ‘Catherine’ on their way up to join the Zoe in Plover Bay,” their shipping article stated, “the within named men agree to work and to assist the crew of the ‘Catherine’ in all lawful orders of the Commanding Office.” The Zoe depended upon the Catherine to get these men from Hawaiʻi up to the Arctic. For the four men, they discovered that they had to work their way north on the Catherine before their contract even began for work aboard the Zoe.31 Herman Melville, years after returning from his own whaling adventure in the Pacific Ocean, acknowledged through Ishmael, in Moby-Dick, that “Islanders seem to make the best whalemen.” But what made Pacific Islanders the “best” labor for the job? Historian Margaret Creighton argues that whaling captains “were drawn to native labor because it was cheap.” In Melville’s imagination, islanders were useful to ships’ captains because they were so abundant and expendable. When Captain Ahab asked the captain of the ship Bachelor of Nantucket, upon meeting up near the Japan whale grounds, if the Bachelor had lost any men, the captain told Ahab: “Not enough to speak of—two islanders, that’s all.” His curt reply suggested that some captains gave little value to the lives of Pacific Islander workers.32 Besides their “cheap” nature, island labor was also desired based on the prevailing Euro-American belief that Hawaiian and Polynesian men were 66

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better suited for physically demanding—rather than mentally demanding— work. Melville, in Moby-Dick, acknowledged as much, with Ishmael comparing the racial divide in the whaling industry to the broader racial and class divide in all American industry. “It is the same with the American whale fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies,” he stated. “The same, I say, because in all these cases the native American [EuroAmerican] liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles.”33 Anakala’s story does not end there. From the moment he was hired in April 1855 to his discharge in November, Anakala and his comrades were subject to the wages of whaling work: money, clothing, tobacco, debt, discipline. In Make’s case, this included a beating. Yet for most Hawaiians, whaling work was cruel in other ways. Life aboard ship was a complicated dance. No longer in Hawaiʻi nor completely apart from it, Native workers were what Ishmael, in Moby-Dick, called “neither caterpillar nor butterfly,” lost somewhere in the limen of the whaling ship in the middle of the world’s largest ocean.

neither caterpillar nor butterfly When Ishmael met the Pacific Islander harpooner Queequeg in a small inn in the Massachusetts whaling town of New Bedford, he was shocked by the man’s strange behavior. Watching Queequeg struggling to put on his boots made Ishmael ponder the islander’s inability to conform to American societal standards. “If he had not been a small degree civilized,” Ishmael conceded, “he very probably would not have troubled himself with boots at all; but then, if he had not been still a savage, he never would have dreamt of getting under the bed to put them on.” If Queequeg’s handling of his boots was odd, his method of shaving his face—using a whaling harpoon—was outrageous. “Neither caterpillar nor butterfly,” in Ishmael’s mind Queequeg was neither wholly savage nor wholly civilized; he was caught in the inbetween, in the limen, as historian David Chappell argues, where nearly all Pacific Islander seamen found themselves when they shipped out on foreign vessels and lived at sea, neither at home nor in a wholly foreign land.34 Life at sea consequently presented a new world of experiences and social realities for Hawaiian men. Actually, every seaman on a whaling ship was in a sense “foreign”; the forecastle resembled no one’s home. Sailors from Massachusetts, just as those from Hawaiʻi, necessarily had to adapt to new m ig r a n t wor k e r s a n d m ig r at or y a n i m a l s

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conditions aboard ship that reflected none of their home cultures in full. Take, for example, the men’s diet. On American whaling ships, seamen got used to eating a monotonous cuisine of heavily salted foods based on only a few ingredients: salt beef, salt pork, hard tack, tea, coffee. These were the staples of the whaleman’s existence. Sometimes they also ate “duff,” a “kind of Pudding made of flour and slush.” Hawaiians, accustomed to meals of fish and poi, could not have enjoyed this cuisine very much. But in the shared foreignness of ship life, which soon became a shared familiarity and commonness, lay the seeds of a potential multiracial solidarity.35 Some men found solidarity in their shared opposition to the discipline meted out by an authoritarian captain. Corporal punishment was legally permissible until the end of the nineteenth century, and men like Captain Gray of the Hannibal, as we have seen, beat their workers without mercy. Some Hawaiian men resisted. Hawaiians participated in, and in some cases even led, mutinies against Euro-American employers. In 1834, the Hawaiian crew of the John Little killed their captain, burnt the ship, and fled to Honolulu. In 1853, fifteen Polynesian seamen led by a Hawaiian sailor named “Henry” (or “Harry”) mutinied on the whaleship William Penn. They killed the captain and cook and injured the first mate and steward. And yet mobility, rather than mutiny, was the Hawaiian workers’ most effective means of resistance. Their contracts aboard whaling ships usually covered twelve months’ labor. Mutinies were rare, as long as Hawaiians could imagine escaping soon enough by more peaceful means, either waiting for their contract to expire or by jumping ship.36 To understand what led Hawaiian men to mutiny, or run away, we must first understand the conditions that likely worked against seamen’s interracial solidarity, namely differences in pay received by Euro-American versus Polynesian men. Most whalemen were paid a “lay,” a percentage of total profits. When Hawaiian seamen signed on to work on whaling ships, they agreed to a specific lay, an amount determined largely by skill and rank. In the 1860s, almost all contracts for Hawaiian whale workers stated that “the same Premium or advance will be charged the within named men as is charged the American crew.” But the advance was just an initial outlay of cash. It was the lay that really mattered. It is likely that race played a factor in determining seamen’s compensation. According to historian David Chappell, many Polynesian men were paid in “slop”: clothing and other handouts from the ship’s store. In the early decades of whaling, Hawaiian men could hope to present these items to chiefs back home in exchange for land or status. But, 68

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table 2 Data on 408 Hawaiian whale workers, their titles and compensation, from a total of 39 voyages over the period 1862–1868 Occupation

No. of Hawaiians Advance

Th ird Mate Fourth Mate Boatsteerer Able Seaman

1 1 19 42

Ordinary Seaman Seaman

Greenhand

Boy

$300 $150 $50–100 $22.50–60

15 296

$40–60 $10–60

29

$30–50

5

$0–40

Compensation 1/37 lay 1/38 lay 1/50 – 1/90 lay 1/130 – 1/145 lay, or $10–18 monthly wage 1/140 – 1/155 lay 1/130 – 1/180 lay, and sometimes additional $10 monthly wage 1/140 – 1/160 lay, and sometimes additional $10 monthly wage 1/145 – 1/160 lay

Sources: Shipping articles sampled in Box 1, Folder 1, “Shipping Articles 1864”; Box 5, Folder 1, “Shipping Articles 1862–1863”; Box 5, Folder 2, “Shipping Articles 1864, 1866, 1867”; and Box 5, Folder 3, “Shipping Articles Jan–Dec 1868,” in Harbormaster’s Shipping Articles, 1862–1900, Record Group 89, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. Compiled by the author.

in reality a Hawaiian seamen’s slop was most often deducted from his earnings. In other words, he was advanced credit by the ship to purchase untold amounts of slop that in the end he had to pay off when he finally received his lay. If a seaman had received more slop than his lay provided for, then he ended up in debt. Seamen’s lays were recorded in account books as fractions; the higher the denominator, the worse the lay. Hawaiian seamen received lays as low as 1/200 or as high as 1/95. In Moby-Dick, the greenhorn Ishmael signed onto the Pequod for an abysmal lay of 1/300. Queequeg, despite being a Pacific Islander, was given a lay of 1/90 because he had proved himself an expert harpooner, a skill that Ishmael lacked. The range of advances and lays awarded to 408 actual Hawaiian seamen on 39 voyages is summarized in Table 2.37 Aboard the Italy, Hawaiian crewmembers such as Anakala struggled to stay out of debt as their ship advanced them cash and credit and a variety of provisions (slop) that were ultimately deducted from their lay at the conclusion of the voyage. Not knowing exactly how much their lays would be at the end of the voyage, these men had to make wise decisions about spending, or else end up with nothing—or end up in debt—at the conclusion of months m ig r a n t wor k e r s a n d m ig r at or y a n i m a l s

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or years of hard work. The first three Hawaiian recruits on the Italy, in 1855, were offered lays of 1/170 and 1/160. The account book does not list the lays for the next five Hawaiian men who were recruited in fall 1855, but it does show that three of these men received the exact same amount at the end of their tour, while one, Kaliko, received a higher rate than the others. The actual amounts of money involved were not very much. Kewau and Kahula, the Lāhainā seamen who only worked for one summer and had lays of 1/160, earned a total of $81.61. Anakala, on the other hand, signed on for a lay of 1/170, and thus earned $76.87. The four Hawaiian men who signed on in November 1855 and finished their voyages in December 1856, perhaps because they served many months longer than the earlier recruits, earned larger amounts. Poai, Paona, and Kamakamia each earned $117.65. Kaliko, at an apparently (and extremely) higher lay than the others, earned $203.93.38 Clearly, different Hawaiian seamen received different compensation for presumably different work aboard the Italy. Elsewhere, there is evidence that Hawaiian whale workers sometimes received wages in addition to their lays (see Table 2). For example, on the whaling bark Coral six Hawaiian men were contracted for work at a 1/140 lay in 1862, but after each worker’s name was also penciled in the phrase “10$ pr month,” and the contract was amended to read: “10$ pr month for the cruise home only,” suggesting that these men were compensated for their time traveling between Hawaiʻi and the whaling ground. In another case, ten Hawaiian seamen signed up for work on the brigantine April in 1868 “on a whaling and trading voyage North.” With this mission, each seaman was promised a lay as well as “& $10 pr month . . . No lay in Trade.” When trading, the men would receive an uku malama (monthly wage); when whaling, they received a lay. But how the captain determined which type of pay was in effect at any given time is not clear.39 Each Hawaiian seaman on the Italy handled his credit and cash advances in a different manner. Of the first three men—Anakala, Kewau, and Kahula—Anakala, at a slighter lower lay, received a $25 cash advance upon joining the crew; the other two received cash advances of $30. The Italy charged interest on these advances, and so, theoretically, the Hawaiians were supposed to pay the ship back before the end of their voyage. But this was never the case. When the men checked out in November after whaling for the summer in the North Pacific and Arctic Ocean, they were charged a whopping 25 percent interest on their cash advances. This put Anakala back an extra $6.25, and Kewau and Kahula back $7.50. Also, in April 1855 when they signed on, these men were in need of various articles of clothing to keep them 70

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warm as they sailed into the cold, icy Arctic waters. Perhaps cold-weather clothing was not readily available onshore in Lāhainā, so these men had no other option but to purchase these items as slop from the Italy’s store. On April 25, Anakala purchased “1 Undershirt,” “1 pr Drawers,” “2 pr Stockings,” “1 pr Mittens,” “1 Coat,” “1 Wool Over Shirt,” “1 pr Wool Pants,” “1 Cap,” and “1 pr Shoes.” He not only purchased clothing but also “1 Lb Tobacco.” In October, presumably as the whaling season was coming to a close and the Italy was returning to Lāhainā, Anakala purchased yet more clothing, including replacement shoes and another pound of tobacco. All three men purchased extra clothing, including “duck pants,” in October, as their Arctic cruise turned colder. All these purchases, over the course of just one season of whaling, put these men so far behind in the ship’s account that they ended up with barely any earnings upon discharge in November. Between his purchases of clothing and tobacco, and his cash advance and its 25 percent interest, Anakala ran up a bill of $69.80. Kewau likewise owed the ship $73.41. Kahula owed the Italy $75.36. When their lays were estimated on November 6, Anakala was paid only $7.07, Kewau received $8.20, and Kahula just $6.25. Although they had smoked through all their tobacco, they at least still had the mittens, jackets, duck pants, and other clothing that they had purchased along the way, items totally useless in tropical Lāhainā unless they could sell them back to the Italy or to other seamen seeking employment in the Arctic fishery. It is not clear what the men did with their cold-weather clothing, but there is no record of the Italy purchasing back these items. And so, Anakala went home after a summer of whaling with just a few dollars and a pile of useless clothing on his back.40 Anakala’s situation, as with the other Hawaiian whale workers, was also shaped by interventions in the labor market by the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. The Kingdom began forcing ships such as the Italy to give their Hawaiian men large cash advances, perhaps with the idea that these men could give that money to their families before heading off to sea. In a law passed in 1841, the government required foreign ships to pay Hawaiian seamen a minimum $20 cash advance upon recruitment. The legislation also required foreign ships to post a $200 bond guaranteeing the men’s safe return to Hawaiʻi, and furthermore, it stipulated something of a minimum wage for Hawaiian migrant seamen at $5/month. But Hawaiian law did not regulate the system of credit that allowed the Italy to function as a floating shopping mall. Taken as a whole, most nineteenth-century Hawaiian workers ended up with little to no money at the conclusion of their whaling voyages. It was a system designed m ig r a n t wor k e r s a n d m ig r at or y a n i m a l s

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not to reward hard work, but to encourage workers to keep working until they could finally, if ever, pay back their debts. Outstanding debt, of course, kept Hawaiian seamen signing up year after year for more whaling work. This was an economic system that kept thousands of Hawaiian whale workers caught in a never-ending dance of work and debt upon the waves.41

whale worlds: lāhainā and new london What happened offshore affected life onshore. Whale work linked port cities across the globe into a diaspora of whale worlds. Local places felt the impact of the global industry in various, nuanced ways. Take, for example, Lāhainā, Maui. In the 1840s, Lāhainā became Hawaiʻi’s principal whaling port. Lāhainā was a much smaller city than Honolulu, and the effect of ship arrivals there was especially pronounced. In Lāhainā, American whalers initially found a relatively quiet harbor, but overnight the port and its Maui hinterland became a radically altered place. Here, the ecological interdependencies of Hawaiian land and the great ocean were on full display. Early visitors to Lāhainā were unimpressed. “Lahina looks like a very pleasant place as seen from the harbour,” wrote sandalwood trader Charles Hammatt in 1823, “but when you come on shore, it appears a heap of sand & taro patches, dirty & mean, tho’ there are more trees than at Annalulu [Honolulu].” “Dirty and mean” and full of trees, Lāhainā was a wilderness to Hammatt. This place served as a royal retreat for Hawaiian nobility, but it had none of the signs of a bustling marketplace servicing a global economy. As the number of whaling ships increased, however, changes in the city’s ecology were underfoot. One agent of this change came aboard the whaleship Wellington, en route from San Blas, Mexico in 1826. Carrying barrels of fresh water for the supply of its crew, the Wellington carelessly dumped its excess San Blas water into a Lāhainā stream. The mixing of these waters left an enduring legacy in Hawaiʻi: the water that the Wellington had picked up in San Blas included a cargo of mosquitoes. Consequently, these insects found a new habitat in the pools of water around “dirty and mean” Lāhainā. They were the first such mosquitoes in Hawaiʻi, a consequence of the new transPacific partnerships engendered by Pacific whaling.42 Visiting whaling ships such as the Wellington not only sought fresh water at Lāhainā, but also fresh fruits and vegetables. To accommodate these demands, makaʻāinana farmers began altering the contents of their gardens 72

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to suit the tastes of Yankee consumers. According to one historian of this agroecological transformation, Irish potatoes, corn, cabbages, onions, pumpkins, squash, cucumber, beans, and radishes were all “cultivated almost exclusively for the refreshment of ships, and the tables of foreign residents.” Another historian’s list went like this: “fresh and salt beef, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes and other vegetables, pork, and salt, all locally produced” fi lled the stomachs of hungry whalemen at port and at sea. Islands such as Maui became, in essence, agricultural hinterlands of America’s floating industrial economy. In turn, local farmers’ focus on producing agricultural exports threatened food security for Native families. One Christian missionary based in Lāhainā in 1837 wrote that “all the food produced on this plain added to some cultivation up the ravine, in whh [which] the streams descend, does not supply half the food needed by the inhabitants. This fact alone will limit the native population to what it now is.” As whale ship visits crescendoed in the 1840s, it would have been impossible for Maui farmers to produce enough sustenance for both Native families and the visiting whale workers.43 Hawaiian commoners witnessed these agroecological transformations firsthand. An 1861 article in the Hawaiian-language newspaper Ka Hae Hawaii described the rapid changes that the whaling industry had brought to Hawaiian cities such as Lāhainā in the 1840s and 1850s. “The whaling ships brought great fortune previously upon this archipelago, for their sailing here for provisioning, and that’s the first reason for [the] establishing [of] the great planting of the uala [ʻuala; sweet potato]. The merchant haole also came greatly and live in the port cities to seek profit with the whaling ships, and multiply the settlements[,] namely cities.” This writer noted approvingly that the global whaling industry had transferred value from distant parts of the ocean into Hawaiian hands, thereby increasing “the wealth of men.” He also expressed his gratitude to the industry for the service/supply economies it engendered in Hawaiʻi’s cities, for providing “the farming/agricultural things [items]” necessary “for planting” in the countryside. By the 1840s and 1850s, port cities such as Lāhainā were overflowing with goods and people willing to buy them. In the 1850s, with a suddenly large population of hungry miners in California desiring Hawaiian agricultural goods, there arose yet even more incentive, the writer claimed, to “cultivate sweet potato to enlarge the planting, for the happy laughter of the profitability of the work. The hard work of the planting is beautiful,” he proclaimed, “and the sparkling of the shiny dollars earned from the work is really beautiful.” m ig r a n t wor k e r s a n d m ig r at or y a n i m a l s

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This new market economy—despite the agroecological changes it engendered, and despite its unsustainable foundations upon a foreign consumer base and a finite amount of land and labor—had brought “happy laughter” to the Hawaiian sweet potato farmers. With their “sparkling . . . shiny dollars . . . the men dress up in party suits, and ‘dressed to perfection’ the women in silk,” the writer claimed.44 Hawaiʻi’s whaling economy was subservient to the ups and downs of a trans-Pacific economy, subservient to the consumption habits of people thousands of miles away, and subservient to the ability of ka ʻāina (the land) to support this new agroecology in place of the subsistence kalo patches once at the heart of Hawaiian life and labor. But it was “really beautiful,” some thought, the way land and labor were transformed into “shiny dollars.” Lāhainā’s economic and ecological transformations were matched, halfway around the world, by social and cultural transformations in places such as New London, Connecticut. In New England ports ringing the Long Island Sound and facing out onto Atlantic waters, Hawaiian migrant workers left their mark. In Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, Hawaiians were said to have hung out on the porch of a local inn, carving bone ornaments, and giving credence to the block’s reputation as Bedlam Street. In New Bedford, Massachusetts, in a scene imagined by Herman Melville in Moby-Dick, “actual cannibals stand chatting at street corners; savages outright.” But this was not just in the writer’s mind. A Hawaiian government minister in 1846 noted, “We have heard that there is no part in this ocean untrodden by Hawaiians; and they are also in Nantucket, New Bedford, Sag Harbor, New London and other places in the United States.” Indeed, Hawaiians attended a school in Nantucket as early as the 1820s and some may have stayed at the local “Canacka Boarding-House.”45 New London, Connecticut, was just one of the whale worlds shaped globally by economic and ecological forces yet experienced locally by Hawaiian migrant men. According to a database of New London crew lists from the nineteenth century, at least 120 Hawaiian sailors shipped out of New London in the half-century between 1820 and 1870. On average, these men were between twenty and thirty years old. Their birthplace was the “Sandwich Islands”; their place of residence, New London. Neither caterpillar nor butterfly, ships’ captains alternately labeled the men’s “complexions” as “Dark,” “Black,” “Copper,” “Yellow,” “Light,” and “Colored.” Ships’ manifests also noted that some of these migrants, now living in the Atlantic World, departed New London on voyages to new corners of the world’s oceans, 74

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20 15 10 5

74

71

18

68

18

65

18

62

18

59

18

56

18

53

18

50

18

47

18

44

18

41

18

38

18

35

18

32

18

29

18

26

18

23

18

18

20

0 18

Number of departures per year

25

figure 7. Departures of Hawaiian Seamen from the Port of New London, Connecticut, 1820–1876. Source: New London Crew Lists Index, 1803–1878, G. W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut. Compiled by the author.

expanding yet further Hawaiian working-class geographies. Kiack Canacker and Tamara [Thomas] Brown, for example, both traveled on voyages to the Indian Ocean in the 1840s. One man who went by the name of Spunyarn shipped at least four times out of New London in the 1830s for points in the South Atlantic off of Brazil. About ten Hawaiian men were enumerated in the 1860 U.S. census as living in New London, their occupations recorded as “Seamen Registered at Custom House.” They were mostly in their twenties, and some had come and gone from New London for many years.46

the world turned upside down If we follow whaling’s reverberations even further inland, beyond the wharf and the customhouse, beyond the inn and the tavern, we find that the industry’s most momentous dance was occurring in the countryside. Whale ship arrivals peaked in the Hawaiian Islands in the 1840s and 1850s. According to Marshall Sahlins, Honolulu and Lāhainā were the two most visited ports in the entire world for American ships in those decades. Even the landlubbing U.S. vice-consul at Lāhainā, Giles Waldo, felt the entirety of the world swirling around him in the 1840s as thousands of seamen disembarked from ships and brought their multitudinous stories ashore. “I feel myself more familiar with our earth now than I ever expected to be,” he wrote. “The matter of fact way m ig r a n t wor k e r s a n d m ig r at or y a n i m a l s

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700

All ports Other ports Lahaina Honolulu

Total ship arrivals per year

600

500

400

300

200

100

80 18

76 18

72 18

68 18

64 18

60 18

18

56

52 18

48 18

44 18

40

36

18

32

18

28

18

18

18

24

0

Year

figure 8. Whale Ship Arrivals at Hawaiian Ports, 1824–1880. Sources: Theodore Morgan, Hawaii: A Century of Economic Change, 1778–1876 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948), 225–26; Marshall Sahlins (with Dorothy B. Barrère), Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii: Volume One, Historical Ethnography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 103. Compiled by the author.

in which every new captain tells you ‘the news’ in Tahiti, Kamschatka, Jeddo [Tokyo], Borneo, Guham [Guam], New Zealand, New Holland [Australia], & many other places from all of which we are having arrivals every day, makes me feel quite familiar with them all, & I know not only the physical features of the countries, but the names & characters of all the principal foreign residents in all the ports of the Pacific, as well as the manners & customs of the natives.” This was not only a peak period for foreign seamen visiting Hawaiʻi, but also a peak period for Hawaiian men visiting foreign lands and bringing home stories of foreign peoples and environments. The consequences of so many ship arrivals on Hawaiian society were far-reaching.47 Imagine that for every foreign ship that arrived in a Hawaiian port at mid-century three to five Hawaiian men signed up for work and shipped out on multiyear-long voyages. Even just one peak year, with five hundred ships visiting the islands, would mean thousands of Hawaiian men leaving their families, abandoning their farms, moving to cities, and in some 76

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cases moving as far away as other continents. Historians have long debated how many Hawaiians took this journey. Some have suggested that Hawaiians comprised as many as one in three, or even one in two, of all crewmembers on American whaling ships at various moments. No one has ever attempted to calculate the cumulative number of Hawaiians who worked in the global whaling industry. An accurate enumeration is likely impossible.48 Primary data is fragmentary, but it begins to fi ll in some of the gaps in the quantitative history as well as providing a raw sense of just how momentous this grand dance was. According to one Hawaiian government source, for example, between January 1, 1843 and June 1, 1844—in one seventeen-month period—an estimated 550 Hawaiians shipped out of Hawaiʻi. They went to Alta California, Kamchatka, China, the Columbia River, Valparaiso, Mazatlán. This data includes all emigrants, so only some of these were whale workers.49 Further data on Hawaiian maritime labor is available for a twelvemonth period from August 1845 to August 1846. In this period, based on reports of the minister of the interior of the Hawaiian Kingdom, at least 651 Hawaiians shipped out on whaling vessels. Compared to the 550 Hawaiians who left in 1843–1844, this was a marked increase in labor migration, from 32 migrants per month in 1843–1844 to 54 per month in 1845–1846. The 1846 report of the minister of the interior also claimed that one in every five Hawaiian young men then alive was currently employed either abroad or on ships at sea. Th is represented a total number of approximately 3,000 Hawaiian men, although not all were involved in whaling. That same year the Hawaiian newspaper The Polynesian estimated that at least 700 Hawaiians had served on whaling vessels in the previous year (1845). But this estimate seems extraordinarily low. There were over 700 American whaling vessels cruising the Pacific Ocean in 1846. This estimate would suggest that only one Hawaiian, on average, served on each ship. That does not conform with all available evidence, which points to a much higher rate of Hawaiian service on American whaling vessels.50 More concrete data is available for a slightly later period thanks to the records of the Honolulu Harbormaster. For example, the Harbormaster’s records show that approximately 1,000 Hawaiian men shipped out of Honolulu in just one year (1859). In the following years, 650 men shipped out in 1860; 371 men in 1861; 352 men in 1862; 480 men in 1863; and 762 men in 1864. These data were recorded during a historic slump in the whaling industry, due primarily to the American Civil War. This would suggest that the m ig r a n t wor k e r s a n d m ig r at or y a n i m a l s

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number of Hawaiian men annually shipping out on foreign vessels in the years previous to 1859 likely numbered well into the thousands.51 The mid-nineteenth century was a period of unprecedented mobility for Hawaiians, both inside and out of Hawaiʻi. By linking histories of transoceanic migration to internal migration within Hawaiʻi, we can see that whaling capitalism not only rearranged the Pacific World but also played upon an internal proletarian dance in which makaʻāinana shed their connection to the land and became an untethered wage-working class. This is readily apparent by looking at changes in the archipelago’s principal port city, Honolulu. The urban population had grown rapidly to approximately 14,000 persons by mid-century, but this number fluctuated literally by the thousands every season as ships arrived in spring and fall and then vacated for various whaling grounds in summer and winter. Imagine the scene, in spring and fall of any given year in the 1850s, when over two hundred whaling ships visited the port, unloaded men, and took on new ones. Imagine the thousands of sailors released on liberty or lost to desertion, both Native and haole, who clogged the streets, and all the Native bartenders, prostitutes, and hoodwinkers who were there to greet them. This was a society and economy in flux, as changes in the countryside paralleled the emergence of a global whaling economy, resulting in rapid urbanization, emigration, and social upheaval.52 Hawaiʻi’s cities experienced phenomenal growth at mid-century, but especially Honolulu. This went against the overall trend of population decline across the archipelago from the late eighteenth century through the end of the nineteenth century. Note, for example, that the rural population of the island of Oʻahu fell from over 16,000 to below 6,000 in just forty years. Meanwhile, the city’s share of the island’s population rose from 45 percent in 1831–32 to 72 percent in 1872. The Hawaiian government fretted nervously over these numbers. As shown previously, the Kingdom had begun managing labor emigration in 1841 with laws requiring foreign ships to post bonds guaranteeing the safe return of Native sailors, and guaranteeing Hawaiian seamen a cash advance and a minimum wage. In 1847, the Kingdom passed further legislation concerning its indigenous workers. This new law targeted workers themselves, requiring Hawaiian men shipping out on foreign ships to post a bond to support their wives and families back home. Apparently there were too many cases of men like Anakala who came back empty-handed after spending their entire lays on tobacco and clothing; but more likely, the intended target of the law was the 50 percent of men who never returned at all, who resettled in Mexican California or in Oregon Territory or who died 78

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18,000 Honolulu city Rural districts

16,000 14,000

Population

12,000 10,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000 0 1831–32 1835–36

1850

1853

1860

1866

1872

figure 9. Oʻahu Urban vs. Rural Population, 1831–1872. Source: Robert C. Schmitt, Historical Statistics of Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1977), 12. Compiled by the author.

at sea, leaving wives and children behind. Overall, Hawaiʻi’s total population was in free fall, but population loss was not equal across the archipelago. Honolulu and other cities continued to grow even as rural areas were emptied out by disease and internal migration. In the mid-nineteenth century, Hawaiʻi experienced an immense rural-to-urban migration unlike anything in its history.53 The result of massive rural-to-urban migration was that hundreds if not thousands of Hawaiians yearly abandoned their agricultural labor in the interior for opportunities afforded by wage labor in the cities and in distant lands only reached through Hawaiian ports. Marshall Sahlins has argued that cities like Honolulu were not prepared to receive the thousands of rural, unskilled, migrant workers from the mountains and valleys who descended looking for work. There simply were not enough jobs for this newly visible underclass; as a result, vagrancy, prostitution, and other social “disorders” manifested. The service/supply economies of Honolulu and Lāhainā boomed in the 1840s, but, as Sahlins put it, while the Hawaiian nobility and their Euro-American merchant allies were profiting, “capitalism was leaving m ig r a n t wor k e r s a n d m ig r at or y a n i m a l s

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[everyday] Hawaiians in its wake.” Commoners’ rural-to-urban migration in the 1840s was also, he argues, an act of resistance. It was a manifestation of resistance against the oppressive, hierarchical social structure they had long lived under in the countryside. By the 1840s the amount of corvée labor demanded of Hawaiian commoners had risen out of proportion to their traditional makaʻāinana responsibilities. Aliʻi basically bowed out and handed over the responsibilities of securing and utilizing makaʻāinana labor to exploitative konohiki (land managers) who used sandalwood labor techniques of mass turnout to intensify agricultural production in the interior. As a result, the makaʻāinana came to owe labor to an increasing array of overlapping officials, from local luna (bosses) and konohiki to the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi itself.54 Wage labor, even contract labor, was a type of freedom for these men and women, freedom from the tyranny of land tenantry. If migration to the cities was an act of resistance, then it also represented perhaps the major turning point in Hawaiian commoners’ evolution from makaʻāinana (people of the land) to a new, modern status as wage workers. When makaʻāinana turned their back on the land and headed to cities with no property but their own labor to sell, they thus unchained themselves from ka ʻāina, the very land that had for centuries defined their identity and social status. Cities, and the ocean beyond, represented new opportunities for these formerly rural commoners. Work aboard a whaling ship meant selling one’s labor in exchange for a lay, a much better deal, some Hawaiians believed, than having to give their labor to upper-class Hawaiians simply to maintain the right to live on the land.55 These changes, of course, were part and parcel of the Māhele, the land reforms enacted in the late 1840s. Except that we know, from looking at whaling labor, that despite the Kingdom’s efforts to proletarianize the makaʻāinana, the reality is that the makaʻāinana engaged with the capitalist economy on their own terms. In Marx’s famous analysis of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the peasantry first face enclosure, then dispossession, then proletarianization.56 But in nineteenth-century Hawaiʻi, thousands of Hawaiian men pursued wage labor and contract labor at sea and abroad even before the Māhele had begun, and certainly before it was complete in the mid-1850s. Rather than waiting for dispossession, makaʻāinana left for cities and signed onto foreign ships as wage workers in defiance of the efforts of aliʻi, haole, and the state to bind them to the land. Mobility was resistance. Call it a proletarian whale dance. Opportunities for wages and 80

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adventure beckoned offshore, and thousands of Native people took up this challenge, migrating from the countryside to cities, and then from cities onto ships.

rqr Captain Gray did not die. And so, following his death-wish dance, Make returned to regular duties aboard the Hannibal. They continued northward into the icy waters in and around the Bering Strait in the summer of 1850. The Hannibal hunted whales all summer and then, in early October, arrived in Lāhainā, Maui, and six days later docked in Honolulu for a month of provisioning and refreshment. On November 5, as the Hannibal was readying to depart the Islands once more, the Hawaiian worker John Bull made his last stand for freedom. “John Bull the Kanacker, and a native here, is missing. I think we shall not see him again soon.” He broke contract. He jumped ship. Meanwhile, “Make, another Kanacker, the Capt has discharged, on paying him 78 dollars. not half his just due.” 57 Make’s dance had taken him across the world’s oceans from New London to Honolulu. He had chased whales in the North Pacific as a whale rider. His captain beat him. John Bull had had enough and deserted ship, while Make was not paid fairly for fourteen months of work. Hawaiian whale workers labored for lays, wages, advances, and often ended up in debt. They followed whales to where the squid and zooplankton were. They loaded and unloaded ships in tempo with global markets and got onto and off of ships in tune with nature’s seasons and the rhythmic changes of ocean and air temperatures and human and nonhuman migrations. Make was just one of thousands of Hawaiian men who left the countryside for the city, or the city for the ship; in his own case, he ended up halfway around the world in the newly emerging whale world of New London, Connecticut. All these movements and circulations were interrelated. This is what nineteenth-century whaling—and, by extension, capitalism—looked and felt like.

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Kealoha in the Arctic whale blubber and human bodies

charles edward kealoha likely knew a thing or two about the Arctic even before going there. Hawaiian whale workers sang songs about the North, about its geography, its wonders, its dangers. Whaling mele (songs) traveled to Honolulu in whalemen’s mouths, then went out again with the migrant workers heading back north. Kealoha probably knew the one that mentioned the “beautiful” places in the Arctic: “Hudson Bay has a beauty all its own,” the song intones. “Beautiful, too, is Baffin Bay and Kaliona. Greater still is . . . Aukaki. Those are the places loved by the sailors.” This song praises locations in northern Canada, even bordering Greenland, as well as Aukaki, a place near the Bering Strait where most Hawaiian whale workers spent their days and nights. These were “the places loved by the sailors.” Theirs was a wide and sprawling Pacific World—a world made by Hawaiian migrant labor.1 But the song that most came to Kealoha’s mind when he came back from the Arctic was one that included this line: “Famous is the cold of the Arctic, overwhelming the entire body.” Kealoha’s experience of the Arctic was a bodily one. His ship, the Desmond, was lost in sea ice on the North Slope of Alaska in September 1876. He was stranded and was not rescued until eleven months later. Many other comrades had perished. Kealoha spent nearly one year in the Arctic. He and other Polynesian migrant workers lived side-byside with the Native Inupiat people of this land. He lived through a winter without light. As a bodily experience—as a “tropical” worker in an Arctic environment—Kealoha and other Hawaiian whale workers challenged every established nineteenth-century idea about race, nature, environment, and the human body. Whale bodies and human bodies came into contact in this place, as did Hawaiian and Alaskan peoples, as a trans-Pacific whaling 82

economy drew disparate peoples, places, and processes together into a web of global capitalism.2 Through participation in an Arctic industry in the period from 1848 to 1876, Hawaiian workers confronted and challenged a dominant EuroAmerican discourse that held that Hawaiian bodies were not fit for work in cold climates. Euro-Americans believed that Hawaiian bodies were fi xed, immutable, and only suitable for work in tropical settings. By the 1870s, however, Hawaiian whale workers proved them wrong. They excelled at work in the Arctic, even proving more useful than their Euro-American counterparts. In the Arctic work environment, the Hawaiian male body was both a site of individual experience as well as a vehicle for collective resistance. Furthermore, it was through their bodies that Hawaiian workers experienced the cold, ice, and snow of Arctic nature. Men’s bodies were integral to local experiences of whaling and masculinity in the North, but women’s bodies were equally important back home. Returning whalemen frequently patronized prostitutes, and local women in turn received the “boys of the cold seas” (as Hawaiian Arctic whale men were known) and the stories, and diseases, they carried with them. Whale bodies, too, mattered. On the whaling ship, Hawaiian workers cut, chopped, boiled, and fried parts of the whale carcass. Some Hawaiians ate whale blubber. And some Hawaiians, even back home in Hawaiʻi, began to fundamentally rethink their relationship with whales and with the wider world beyond their shores.

boys of the cold seas Like Kealoha and the whaling songs he knew that circulated the ocean, Arctic worlds lived inside Hawaiʻi. Northern experiences animated daily life in Honolulu as well as in the countryside, impacting gender relations, as well as changing ideas about, and material relations with, whales and the wider ocean. The Arctic first came to Hawaiʻi when a Honolulu-based newspaper, The Friend, broke news of the discovery of a new whaling ground north of the 70th parallel in 1848. The news spread quickly, and after one ship broke through in 1848, the following year 50 ships plied the Bering Strait in search of whales. Arctic whaling peaked in 1852 as 224 ships visited these seas.3 Hawaiian workers traveled north on Arctic whaling ships. In fact, some Hawaiian men worked onboard Hawaiian-owned vessels as an independent whaling fleet based in Honolulu flourished in the Arctic trade in the 1850s. w h a l e blu bbe r a n d h u m a n b odi e s

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By 1852, four Hawaiian whaling ships were active in the Arctic; by 1858, nineteen Honolulu ships sailed in northern waters. Hawaiʻi’s fleet decreased in the following decades, yet it still comprised anywhere between two and ten vessels throughout the 1870s. Hawaiian ships were notorious for engaging in contraband trade supplying Alaskan and Eurasian indigenous peoples with arms and liquor. These were the very things that the U.S. government administering the territory (post-1867) desperately wanted to keep out of Native hands.4 Most Hawaiians, however, continued to work onboard American ships. They were called nā keiki o nā kai anuanu, the “boys of the cold seas.” Thousands of Hawaiian Arctic whalemen came home from the hunt in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. They brought knowledge and experiences back to Hawaiʻi, and they surely brought back great stories and songs, too. They were ambassadors of the far northern wing of the Hawaiian diaspora, bridging the ocean between their homeland and its migrant workers abroad; they were the “children of the sea” (nā keiki o ke kai) living thousands of miles away from home. But returning Arctic whalemen were not always given a hero’s welcome. For many Hawaiians, returning whalemen were a nuisance and a danger, frequently threatening to disrupt the peace and quiet—and the supposed moral purity—of their communities. For most Hawaiians, this is how they knew the Arctic: through returning whalemen’s bodies and behaviors. Honolulu and Lāhainā—the two most important Hawaiian whaling ports in the nineteenth century—consistently erupted in bedlam in these years, with rioting, fornication, and public intoxication frequent scenes of city life. Even as early as 1840, Charles Pickering of the U.S. Exploring Expedition described Honolulu as an uncultured place with “a superfluity of Taverns, Bowling Allies, Billiard Tables,” and other lowbrow amusements for the sailors. Returning Arctic whalemen made these scenes yet more riotous. For example, the Hawaiian-language newspaper Ka Nupepa Kuokoa reported in 1866 that in Honolulu there was a “breaking up in masses of the kanaka [Hawaiian men] on Nuuanu [Nuʻuanu] Street, [and by] recognition of their general appearance, it looked like the boys of the Cold seas of the Arctic and Aukakina, have returned and are watch-jumping on shore here.” By calling them “boys of the Cold seas,” the paper was taking note of their status as Arctic whale workers. “Watch-jumping” [a lele uwaki ana] is an ambiguous phrase, but it may refer to what Americans called liberty. The logbook of the whaleship Adeline demonstrates that each day at port either the larboard watch or the starboard watch (terms that refer to the labor division of the 84

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ship’s crew) were allowed liberty onshore. Thus the term “watch-jumping” possibly refers to this daily alternation of two watches receiving liberty. Or perhaps the term suggests the act of “jumping ship,” an act that each watch engaged in when ashore. Either way, the newspaper reported that the ships (and their Hawaiian labor) arrived in “masses” and swarmed Nuʻuanu Street in Honolulu. This street must have housed all the establishments favored by the whalemen. That the news was printed under the headline “The Town Is Dense with People” gives a sense of the overcrowding and general disorder occasioned by the whalemen’s sudden return in autumn, as the northern seas turned to ice.5 When the boys of the cold seas mentioned in Ka Nupepa Kuokoa arrived in Honolulu, their discharge brought conflict to the city streets: “The sea’s boys [the whalemen] will not disappear and also the town’s boys will not disappear,” the paper reported. Did the sea’s boys and town’s boys combine to cause mayhem on Nuʻuanu Street, or were they sparring against each other? As arriving whalemen came into town, the newspaper reported, “the line of the boys of the sea, [received] the hanging of lei on the neck and the head, that appear to be piling up.” These men engaged in other indulgences, too, for although the newspaper did not name them, they wrote nonetheless of the “wastefulness” in town that may have contributed to “the kanaka’s continuing [to be] looked at with angry eyes” by so many in the community.6 Two years later, in October 1868, Ka Nupepa Kuokoa published another news report titled “Na keiki o ke kai” (the Boys of the Sea). “In these late afternoons and these nights brightened by the moon,” the paper wrote, “we frequently meet with the children of the cold seas of the Arctic and Aukakina, watch-jumping on our Streets, although [this was] the first time we had received a sudden watch-jump, from the time of them having settled in their seamen’s buildings until returning to the land.”7 The men’s “returning to the land” perhaps refers to their reconciliation with family members and with ka ʻāina (the land) in the countryside where many of them likely grew up. But as “boys of the cold seas,” Hawaiian whalemen were almost written of as a distinct class of worker with a unique sense of their place in the world, a geographical worldview completely different from that of the makaʻāinana, the “people of the land.” This distinction between “land” Hawaiians and “sea” Hawaiians was seen in the Nupepa Kuokoa article referring to the “sea’s boys” and the “town’s boys.” These terms sought to distinguish the whale workers and urban residents as two separate groups of workers, but in reality they were the same people: the makaʻāinana of the first half of the w h a l e blu bbe r a n d h u m a n b odi e s

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century had become a migrant proletariat that traveled to the farthest reaches of the ocean in the latter half of the century in search of wages. Concern over returning Hawaiian whalemen often focused on their bodies: on the undisciplined mobility and disorderliness of the men flooding into Nuʻuanu Street, disrupting the peace of local communities. An 1875 report in the newspaper Ka Lahui Hawaii noted the continued ruckus that whalemen were causing back home, stating that if that summer’s hunt was a great success, with each ship “increasing the[ir] barrels [of oil],” then the profits would “attractively adorn once again the boys of the sea,” who would come “roaring into the calm sea of Kou [Honolulu Harbor] here, and trample again the quiet of Kakuhihewa [the legendary king of Oʻahu].” 8 There was another side to this story: the undisciplined women who received seamen’s bodies upon their return to Hawaiʻi. One of the most notable consequences of Hawaiian whalemen’s return each season and each year was the increased visibility of a sexual marketplace. Changes in the Hawaiian countryside, the land reforms of the Māhele, plus the rapid growth of service/supply economies in the archipelago’s main whaling ports, Honolulu and Lāhainā, had engendered the migration of thousands of rural Hawaiian men and women to port cities by mid-century. While many rural Hawaiian men found work on whaling ships, options for women were more limited. Peddling and prostitution were the two most common opportunities seized by unskilled Hawaiian women from the countryside. Both of these market activities—selling material goods and selling one’s body—occurred on the street or behind closed doors, seemingly marginal to the true business of the city. Yet while seemingly marginal, this “aloha trade,” as Marshall Sahlins terms these exchanges, was in fact a significant component of Hawaiʻi’s economy.9 By the 1850s, the most successful Hawaiian women in Honolulu and Lāhainā were earning tremendous amounts of money as prostitutes. This was the period of peak whaling in Hawaiʻi, when hundreds of ships visited Hawaiian ports each year, and thousands of male customers were present to engage in a sexual marketplace. Historian Sally Engle Merry has argued that many makaʻāinana women benefited from the whaling industry by way of prostitution, and at first these women encountered very few laws limiting their trade. During the heyday of whaling in the 1840s, prostitution in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was not criminalized; only adultery was illegal. In other words, the Kingdom was not opposed to the commodification of sex per se, only the damage inflicted on the institution of marriage by commodified sex. 86

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This policy changed in the 1850s and 1860s as the government heightened its prosecution of prostitutes.10 Hawaiʻi’s Christian community, ever since the 1820s, had long been opposed to prostitution on moral grounds. Yet as the number of whalemen visiting Honolulu and Lāhainā increased in the second half of the nineteenth century, the influence of missionary zeal upon Hawaiian society waned. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) stopped sending new missionaries to Hawaiʻi in the 1840s. By the 1860s, the original missionaries’ children were growing into adulthood, and many of them attained power and political influence. These “missionary children,” as they are often called, largely cared more about the health of the economy than the moral or spiritual health of Hawaiian society. The moralizing zeal was not dead, however, among Native Hawaiians. Hawaiians trained in mission schools carried forth a campaign against prostitution in the Hawaiian-language press. J. A. K. Halaulani wrote a letter to the newspaper Ka Nupepa Kuokoa in 1865 published under the title, “The going-on of Prostitution of the women of Hilo.” In his letter to the editor, Halaulani described Hilo—the most important whaling port on the island of Hawaiʻi, third to Honolulu and Lāhainā in overall significance—as a community undergoing rapid moral and societal decay. Worst of all, he wrote, was the degeneracy of the Hawaiian ʻohana, the family. Halaulani visited “some houses in Puueo [Puʻuʻeo; a neighborhood of Hilo], for my knowing well the women and their men of the Whaling ship[s]” there. Halaulani felt sorry for the women watching their husbands “going without recompense and shabbily for the oil of the Aukaki sea.” Whaling was hard work, and the men often came home without much to show for it. It was then spring, and the whaling ships were crowding inside Hilo’s harbor, readying to sail north for the summer with fresh labor recruits. Halaulani was in town as a guest “living in the house of a certain native-born” woman. During his stay he “saw the great number of the haole and the native kanaka born of this land.” Halaulani’s comment subtly suggests that it was in this woman’s house that he saw so many haole and Hawaiian men, presumably visiting for sex. “It was just like the women of Honolulu in carrying the license [a prostitution license], like that here I experienced,” he wrote. “What a shame [for] the tender-eyed girls living a dissipated/reckless life.”11 In the sexual marketplace of Hawaiian port cities, the bodies of returning Arctic whalemen and local Hawaiian women came into contact. This was an economic exchange. Ship captains recognized prostitution as a necessary w h a l e blu bbe r a n d h u m a n b odi e s

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“liberty” for returning whale workers, and Hawaiian women saw it as an advantageous opportunity to earn income. Sex was an important niche market within the larger Arctic whaling economy. It was also a significant local and bodily experience of whaling and of the Arctic world brought home. Hawaiian men also brought home strange behaviors, demonstrating that these boys of the cold seas were no longer the landlubbers they had once been. In the 1850s, some Hawaiians wrote to Hawaiian-language newspapers to report seeing whale hunting taking place off the shores of Hawaiian Islands, a rare sight indeed. J. W. Kuhelemai of Lāhainā reported seeing whales off the coast of Maui butchered by newly skilled Hawaiian whalemen and “Whalerhaole” in 1858. (Another writer referred to the white whalemen as “butcher haole.”) Kuhelemai wrote to the newspaper Ka Hae Hawaii to admit that “our skepticism of the Whale is over[;] the men, the women and children have seen [them], these great fish.” People in Hawaiʻi were impressed by the work of the newly returned whalemen, who demonstrated to their Hawaiian peers “the skill of the fishing [whaling] people.”12 J. A. Kaelemakule of Hilo also witnessed a whale hunt that year, apparently just off of Hilo Bay. A crowd gathered onshore, and upon the return of the whalemen the crowd exclaimed in cheer: “This work is Amazing.” These stories demonstrate that Hawaiian migrant whalemen returned with labor skills that impressed the local Native community. The men returned not only with new skills, but also with new cultural habits. As evidence, Kuhelemai reported that when a few of the whales were caught offshore of Maui, after the oil was tried, “their meat was eaten by the kanaka.” It was “truly delicious, according to them.” By all accounts, Hawaiians rarely, if ever, consumed whale meat, and so Kuhelemai expressed surprise at the scene. Perhaps these Hawaiian workers had been exposed to the dietary practices of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, and some chose to adopt this northern custom of eating raw whale blubber.13 While accounts of whale hunting and even whale blubber chow-downs on the shores of Maui and Hawaiʻi were strange occurrences indeed, even stranger was the story recounted by J. M. Kalanipoo, who in 1858 wrote to Ka Hae Hawaii claiming to have come eye-to-eye with a great whale. He was out boating with friends not far offshore, when suddenly five whales appeared. “[We] Jumped up on top of a certain big Whale completely [on] its body, almost perhaps two fathoms [about four yards] up from the surface of the sea.” Teetering atop the back of this massive whale, suddenly the whale began to submerge, and “by its dropping down below with the kick of its tail and the head, it was like the sound of the cannon, with great strength, and at its 88

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site of falling down, it was breaking the waves on all sides.”14 Off of Maui and Hawaiʻi Islands, newly returned whale workers, fresh from the Arctic Ocean, brought the body of the whale closer to Hawaiian public consciousness. In the Arctic, these bodily intimacies—men’s bodies and whale bodies—were brought into even closer contact as Hawaiians engaged in a perilous hunt upon the world’s most icy waters.

bodies at work Is it “an unalterable law in this fishery,” the narrator Ishmael asks in Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick, “for an oarsman to break his own back pulling himself back-foremost into death’s jaws?” Between the worker’s back and the whale’s jaws, Melville highlights whaling as a bodily experience for both predator and prey.15 And for Hawaiian whale workers, the bodily experience began even before they left port, for it was there, as well as on ships, where Euro-American racial ideas about the kanaka body began influencing the work opportunities available to Hawaiian men. Melville had suggested some of the racial stereotypes at play in the whaling industry in Moby-Dick. Accompanying Ishmael, Captain Ahab, and the other men of European descent aboard the Pequod were also three harpooners: Queequeg, a Polynesian; Tashtego, a Native American; and, Daggoo, an African. All three men—all men of color, all assumedly closer to savagery than men of lighter skin on the ship—were hired as hunters. This association between so-called primitive men and hunting animals aligned with common Euro-American understandings of non-European peoples in the nineteenth century. Even though Polynesian men such as Queequeg did not traditionally hunt whales, they could still easily be cast in the role of hunter aboard the whaleship. (Spear fishing, common throughout Polynesia, may have led some Euro-American employers to imagine Polynesians in this role.)16 In reality, Hawaiian men were recruited to serve in various capacities aboard American whaling ships. Many Pacific Islander recruits were employed as waisters; they had no specific duties, just dirty, grunt work for which they received little compensation. Yankee whaling captains praised Pacific Islander men for their “bravery and boat skills,” but recruited them simply because they were “cheap.” Captains also sought out men who were of “good size,” “stout” and “heft y.” Many Hawaiian men’s bodies fit that ideal. But once aboard ship, workers of color were often stripped of their masculine w h a l e blu bbe r a n d h u m a n b odi e s

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identities. Melville’s Daggoo was an African harpooner, but most men of African ancestry on American ships were employed as cooks and stewards. Traditionally female occupations such as cooking, cleaning, and mending were tasked to people of color. Historian Margaret Creighton suggests that this was one way of reinforcing white men’s masculine identities through the emasculation of the nonwhite “other.” Hawaiian men may have been recruited for their strong, masculine bodies, but as waisters they were often treated as “women.”17 Perhaps more romantically, Hawaiian men were also hired as lookouts. Some Hawaiians were praised for their supposed keen eyesight, and they were enticed by tobacco bonuses given to the first person onboard ship to spot a whale. Lookouts spent long hours perched high above the main deck of the whaleship. On some ships they nestled into what was called the crow’s-nest; more often they precariously balanced upon the cross-trees, two wooden planks resting beneath their feet. It was a superb vantage for Hawaiian workers to take in the nature of the ship and the churning sea around them. In Melville’s mind, up alone on the perch the whale worker was liable to romantic daydreaming, “lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant unconscious reverie . . . by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity.” Hawaiians were less noted as daydreamers and more often praised for their careful reading of the sea. Some Polynesian lookouts knew that seabirds circling above the ocean might signal a submerged whale about to surface. A geyser of water, seemingly appearing out of nowhere, signaled the presence of a whale coming up for air. An 1883 whaling song published in the Hawaiian-language newspaper Ke Koo o Hawaii, referred to the lukau (lookout) position in the midst of an Arctic whaling scene, the singer cautioning, “You are not to escape / To the vigilance of the lookout.” While the lookout was important work, it was also thought of as a sanctuary from the more dangerous labor tasked to men below. To be a lookout was particularly more desirable than to be a boatsteerer or harpooner, as Ishmael suggests in his query about breaking his back at “death’s jaws.” But Hawaiian boatsteerers often earned a much higher lay than those men engaged in more common tasks as seamen. Furthermore, Hawaiians who took up either boatsteering or harpooning were often eligible for special bonuses. For example, Kemaha, a Hawaiian able seamen on the New Bedford whaleship Alpha in 1866, was offered the following deal, penned next to his name on his shipping article: “One season North and if he performs Boatsteerer’s duty shares 10 dollars for every whale struck by crew.” Two Hawaiian seamen on the 90

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New Bedford bark Oriole in 1869 likewise were offered “& $5 for every whale he strikes,” even though the men received seamen’s lays and not the higher lay commonly given to harpooners.18 When a lookout spotted a whale, the captain immediately sent out whaleboats (small wooden rowboats) to begin chasing the animal. A team of seamen rowed each whaleboat while a mate navigated and the harpooner, iron weapon in hand, readied for the kill. In Moby-Dick, Ishmael wrote how one of the mates continually barked at and threatened the men to row faster as they pursued their prey. He ordered the men to bite down on their knives to mitigate the pain they felt in their backs from rowing so hard. From this grueling labor came Ishmael’s rhetorical question, whether it was “an unalterable law in this fishery . . . for an oarsman to break his own back.” The men on the whaleboat became intimately close to the cetacean body. When their rowboat pulled within striking distance of a whale, it was the harpooner’s responsibility to stand up on the end of the teetering, rickety boat, harpoon in hand, and throw a perfect shot into the whale’s body. The likely result of this javelin toss was that the whale was startled and would immediately begin swimming away, dragging the whaleboat (attached by the harpoon) across the ocean at speeds so fast that New England whalemen called this a “Nantucket sleigh ride.” J. A. Kaelemakule of Hilo, describing a whale chase off of Hawaiʻi in 1858, explained “that’s the nature of the working”: first, the “thrust/push of the harpoon, [then] the striking of the Whale, and [then] the chase out.”19 During the sleigh ride, the injured whale eventually tired and the men were able to finish the kill. Next they had to tow the dead carcass back to the whaling ship, a slow and painful transport that sometimes retraced tens of miles and lasted many hours. In the case of the hunt Kaelemakule witnessed, the whale chase traversed three miles. “The beginning [of the hunt] was after lunch, [and there was] darkness when [the whaleboats finally] arrived [back] at the ship.”20 Men’s experiences of the whale’s body became even more intimate upon return to the whaleship with their tethered corpse. It was the harpooner’s duty to flense and strip the dead body. To do this, the harpooner stood on the whale’s back while it floated precariously on the surface of the water beside the ship. “So down there, some ten feet below the level of the deck,” explained Ishmael, “the poor harpooner flounders about, half on the whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill beneath him.” The only thing protecting the harpooner from falling off the whale and into the ocean, and then being crushed between the whale’s body and the ship, was the w h a l e blu bbe r a n d h u m a n b odi e s

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monkey-rope, a cord attached to a canvas belt that he wore attached to the ship above, or in the case of Melville’s tale, attached to another man’s waist aboard the ship. On Melville’s Pequod, the monkey-rope  was fastened between Queequeg’s and Ishmael’s bodies. It symbolized the precarious interdependence of these two men’s lives. Were either one to slip, both men would fall to their deaths.21 Whether from the perch of the lookout or from the perch of a whaleboat in the throes of the chase, Hawaiian men on American whaling cruises experienced the wind and salt water in their faces and upon their bodies. Harpooners had an even greater vantage—rowing into “death’s jaws”—to experience nature’s ultimate sublimity, its darkness and unsettling danger. The whale, however, became most real to Hawaiians and other whalemen when its body was finally brought onboard—in chunks and in pieces, in blood and in slime—over the course of multiple days as the deceased was boiled and drained of everything good that it had to offer to American commerce. At the center of this operation—the transformation of whale bodies into whale products—was the try-works. Located at the center of the ship, the try-works were the great fires that workers stoked and kept burning day and night. Huge iron cauldrons sat atop the flames. Whales, flensed and stripped, were cut into, and chunks of blubber removed and thrown into iron pots. The blubber was then tried. It went in as solid mass but under the pressure of heat whale bodies became part meat and part oil. The meat became crispy like it had been dipped into a deep-fryer. The resulting fritters were scooped out by members of the whaling crew with big ladles. These were byproducts; their only usefulness was as fuel. Ladlers removed the fritters and often threw them back into the fire. As such, whale blubber was often tried by the heat of its own burning body.22 No wonder some have referred to the nineteenth-century whaleship as a floating factory. When the try-works were alight, the ship belched black smoke into the air, poisoning the area where whalemen worked and slept. The whale oil and its crispy fritters, bubbling wildly in the cauldrons as the ship rocked back and forth, led to splashing oil and flashes of fire. Men ladling and stirring this heinous mixture sometimes received burns or were otherwise injured. Ishmael referred to his vessel as the “fire-ship.” Describing one of the most dirty and dangerous industrial work environments of the nineteenth century, he stated that “[the whale’s] smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you must live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it such as may lurk in the vicin92

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ity of funeral pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the pit!” In life and in death, cetacean bodies—their sight, texture, and smell—comprised Hawaiian men’s work environment.23 Hawaiian men died, too, in the Arctic whaling industry. Their bodies were not boiled down as whale blubber was, but the treatment of injured and dead workers’ bodies says even more about the corporeality of nineteenthcentury whaling work. When a Hawaiian seaman died, his family was eligible to receive the income he had accrued while working at sea. This was just one more way that the Arctic came home to Hawaiʻi. For example, when a Hawaiian seaman named Kaiko expired aboard the ship La Manche, his employer was liable to pay all of the man’s earnings to his wife, Lilia. However, according to the records of the Honolulu Harbormaster, who oversaw “amounts received & Disbursed on a/c [account] of Deceased Natives,” 5 percent of Kaiko’s compensation was deducted for an “Agents fee” and even more went to the costs of “Advertising.” It seems that in order to connect Lilia with her husband’s employer, she necessarily had to hire an agent, and from the ship’s perspective, they had to run advertisements in order to find Lilia, so in the end Kaiko’s wife was liable for all the costs involved with receiving her husband’s compensation. Of Kaiko’s accrued $38.33, Lilia received $34.18.24 It was not only seamen’s wives that collected deceased men’s earnings. In Honolulu in the mid-1850s, as Hawaiian whalemen were dying in the Arctic Ocean, earnings were collected at times by fathers, mothers, wives, sisters, and even once by a brother-in-law “having charge of [the] deceased’s wife & child.” In one case, the death of a seamen named Paahao on the ship Oahu resulted in the division of his earnings between his wife ($27.12½) and his father ($27.25). These records eerily hint at the exchange-value of Hawaiian men’s bodies. The men’s use-value was in the work they performed aboard ships, but their bodily exchange-value was evidenced in this transformation of their labor power into wages, an extracorporeal remnant of their former selves that family members could collect even as their material bodies had sunk to the ocean floor.25 The hazards of whaling work were numerous, and the opportunities for injury and death manifold. Captains had little sympathy for sick workers because if they were too sick to work then they became a drain on the ship’s limited resources. Such was the case in 1857 when the ship Corinthian returned to Honolulu with Kaai, a Hawaiian seaman who had been sick for probably quite some time. As each man received his earnings, the w h a l e blu bbe r a n d h u m a n b odi e s

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Harbormaster recorded that “Captain Russell refused to pay anything [to Kaai] as Kaai had been ill with [illegible].” Sickness was seen by some employers as a breach of contract, meaning that a seaman’s lay was no longer guaranteed if his body became unable to perform the work. But as was common with most Hawaiian maritime workers, most ended up in debt to their employers. When the seaman Moluila “fell from aloft and was killed” on the bark Goswold, he was still listed as “in debt” by the Harbormaster upon the ship’s return to Honolulu. Even as his body may have sunk to the bottom of the sea, there was still this brutal reminder to his family that nothing would be coming home, not even a dollar in exchange for his bodily sacrifice.26 Employers refusing to pay a deceased worker’s earnings to his family was not uncommon. In the fall of 1861, the Harbormaster recorded next to the name of a Hawaiian seaman named Onomaoli: “(dead) 27.96 Captain kept his money.” Five days later, news of another deceased whaleman came to Honolulu: Kanaali was listed as “dead nothing coming to him.” Since the only record of whether a Hawaiian seaman was owed compensation was in the hands of his employer, it was probable that some employers sought to deceive family members out of their deceased loved one’s earnings.27 The other way to get rid of unwanted bodies—and to resist compensating the workers and their families—was to discharge them. Scores of Hawaiian whale workers were removed from whaling ships in the 1850s and 1860s. This was the case with two Hawaiian seamen on the ship Delaware in 1860 who were forced off the ship for being “sick.” In cases such as these, men not only lost their jobs but potentially had to find their way back to Hawaiʻi. There was the case of the seaman Nailiile who was removed from the ship Harrison in 1860 and “put on shore sick.” His comrade, Kailipololuua, fared little better. He was, according to the Harbormaster, “left behind through mistake on the part of Kailipololuua [himself].”28 All of these “mistakes,” including the gravest of all—getting sick—put Hawaiian whale workers on fragile footing in the Arctic whaling industry. They had to maintain the physical fitness of their bodies or else they might very well find themselves put ashore by impatient and unsympathetic captains. They also had to compete with other workers’ bodies. In Arctic whaling, this meant proving the suitability of their tropical kanaka bodies for work in the cold in contestation with Yankee bodies from New England that most employers believed were better fit for the Arctic environment. Ships’ captains paid attention to workers’ bodies, noting the differences among men from various regions of the world. Whalemen came in all shapes 94

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and sizes; they spoke various languages, and their skin was a rainbow of hues. Also, each whaleman came with a conditioned body. The Yankee seaman’s body had been conditioned by a childhood of recurrent cold winters and snow; the Hawaiian seaman’s body conditioned by an upbringing in a tropical land. Yet on top of these men’s actual bodies were also placed so many different ideas about their bodies. These were arguably more influential in shaping seamen’s experiences of work and environment than any actual physical differences among them. One commonly held idea regarding seamen’s bodies was that they were malleable and in danger of—or capable of—racial transformation. Seen this way, every man, not just Queequeg, was “neither caterpillar nor butterfly.” In liminal maritime spaces, white men could become not white, and thus nonwhite, through exposure to sea and sun. Hawaiian bodies, on the other hand, were largely seen as fi xed and immutable, and thus not capable of the same racial metamorphoses as Yankee men. Ideas about seamen’s bodies in the nineteenth century thus contained an interesting double standard: while it was commonly understood that “white” men from New England were capable of becoming “brown” or “black,” the opposite—of Hawaiian men becoming “white”—was not possible. In other words, seamen’s bodies seemed to be capable of changing in only one direction: toward darkness, toward racial degeneracy. The sea apparently preferred (and made) dark-colored men. A dual discourse therefore developed regarding the dangers that white men faced from working in tropical climates—because their bodies could change—and the simultaneous dangers facing Hawaiian men in high latitudes—because their bodies could not change. This discourse shaped the employment opportunities available to different men, but also served as a site of resistance for workers—particularly Hawaiians—who challenged these assumptions about their bodies.29 Melville wrote of bodily changes at sea—of changes to white men’s bodies that left them looking no longer exactly “white.” Some Yankee seamen painted their bodies with ink. Euro-American sailors were fascinated by Polynesia’s tattoo culture. The word tātau (tattoo) is of Polynesian origin. In Hawaiian kākau means, in the most general sense, “writing.” Before 1820 and the arrival of foreign Christian missionaries to Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiian language did not have an alphabetic script, yet Hawaiians nevertheless “wrote”— in images rather than words—with tattoos upon their bodies and with images stamped onto kapa cloth. In America, however, tattooing was seen by many as corrupting the racial purity of white men. An arm that was half white skin and half dark ink was no longer “white.”30 w h a l e blu bbe r a n d h u m a n b odi e s

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More fundamentally, white seamen on long voyages had exposed their skin to the sun for years, and this, too, transformed their racial appearance. These bodily changes were Ishmael’s first introduction to the whaling industry as he bunked down at the Spouter-Inn in New Bedford, Massachusetts, before signing up for work aboard the Pequod. There he met a soon-to-be shipmate who had just come back from a four-year whaling cruise. Ishmael remarked on the man’s racial transformation: “I have seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast.” At breakfast, Ishmael met yet more “brown” whalemen. One man’s “cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue,” Ishmael stated, guessing that he had probably come ashore only three days ago. Another man, “a few shades lighter,” had certainly returned to New Bedford earlier than the first whaleman. “You might say a touch of satin wood is in him.” Of a third worker, on his face “still lingers a tropic tawn,” Ishmael noted, “but slightly bleached withal.” He had returned many weeks earlier, Ishmael concluded. Overall, Melville’s perception of white men’s bodies was that they were malleable; they adapted to hot and cold weather equally well, as long as they were okay with being racially unstable for a time. Old salts like the first mate Starbuck—men who had spent their entire lives at sea—had bodies so altered by decades of maritime work that they appeared to Ishmael as if they belonged in a separate racial category. In describing Starbuck’s altered body, Ishmael remarked, “though born on an icy coast, [he] seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. . . . Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his thinness . . . was merely the condensation of the man. . . . His pure tight skin was an excellent fit.”31 While bodily changes at sea had the potential to disrupt a man’s racial identity, the same changes could also potentially reinforce his gender identity. Margaret Creighton has argued that white men of New England sought out whaling work as an opportunity not just to prove their manliness but also to eradicate femininity from their bodies. Rough, physical work in harsh environments may have diminished a man’s whiteness, but some “white” men embraced this change as a corporeal expression of an invigorated masculinity. Creighton writes of one whaleman in 1855 who wrote in a letter to loved ones back home: “I am getting quite used to work now, and my hands can testify to that quite plainly—for they are as hard as horn inside—pulling and haul-

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ing on hard ropes—and the outsides have a most beautiful brandylike brown color . . . the handling of ropes & tar has a very visible effect on the hands.”32 Herman Melville had less to say about the malleability of nonwhite men’s bodies. Upon first meeting Queequeg, Ishmael was taken aback by the Pacific Islander’s strange appearance. Ishmael described the Polynesian man’s skin variously as “purple” and “purplish yellow,” a racial “type” entirely new and foreign to him. As Ishmael discreetly watched Queequeg undress for bed at the Spouter-Inn in New Bedford, he soon recognized that the man’s body was covered head-to-toe with tattoos. It was tattoo ink that gave Queequeg his mottled purple appearance. Later, Ishmael noticed how sunburn and tattoo interacted upon Queequeg’s arm, “no two parts of which were of one precise shade—owing I suppose to his keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade.” The islander was a handsome man, Ishmael admitted. It was his simultaneous attraction to, and repulsion from, Queequeg’s “savagery” that titillated Ishmael. So much so that Ishmael could not look away as Queequeg undressed. And to top it off there was Queequeg’s stately head, which, as Ishmael described it, was extremely impressive, something like that of “George Washington cannibalistically developed.”33 From the decimation of whale bodies to the disposal of workers’ bodies to the degeneration of white men’s bodies, nineteenth-century whaling was an industry based on bodily destruction. In the Arctic Ocean, bodies were put to yet a further test. The challenges facing Hawaiian whale workers in this environment were manifold: cold, snow, wind, and ice among them.

bodies on ice The Arctic whaling season of 1876 was a summer of misfortune. At least twelve ships were lost in sea ice that year; fift y-five workers lost their lives. One of the ships that did not make it was the Desmond. One of its crewmembers was Charles Edward Kealoha. He along with J. Polapola of the whaling brig William H. Allen are the only two Hawaiian whale workers known to have written down their experiences of the Arctic in the Hawaiian-language press. Their stories speak to the violence of this northern world where workers’ bodies faced danger from snow, ice, wind, and fellow humans.34 The Desmond left Honolulu in February 1876 and was wrecked in the sea ice near Point Tangent on the North Slope of Alaska on September 5, 1876.

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After the ships grounded, some of the Hawaiian workers mutinied. According to Kealoha, he himself did not participate in the mutiny, but he was forced at gunpoint to stay with the Desmond and its mutineers. Eventually he wandered off with a few fellow shipmates, a Tahitian crewmember named Kenela and two other Tahitian seamen, onto the ice and into Inupiat society. It was only after an entire year on land, in August 1877, that Kealoha and Kenela were finally rescued by the brig William H. Allen. The two Tahitian men they had befriended did not survive, having succumbed near Point Barrow, Alaska, unable to accommodate their bodies to the unforgivingly harsh environment.35 During Kealoha and Kenela’s year on the North Slope of Alaska, they lived with the local indigenous people and learned about Inupiat society and culture. Moreover, they experienced a full year’s worth of changing seasons in the Arctic, experiencing all the effects of changing weather conditions upon their bodies. Kealoha, for example, quoted from the whaling song “Famous is the cold of the Arctic, overwhelming the entire body” to help orient land-bound readers in Hawaiʻi to the whaleman’s unique bodily experiences of Arctic cold. Rather than “body,” ka ʻili can be translated as “the skin,” making this line “completely overwhelming the skin.” Whereas the skin is a barrier between the inner body and the outside world, Kealoha’s song reflects on the penetrating force of cold upon his body and how the air got in and “overwhelmed” the skin’s efforts to keep it out.36 Kealoha, in his own words, had more to say about the relationships between the Arctic environment and his body. “Since this was my very first trip to this area,” he wrote, “I had never experienced a cold like this, my fingers had become numb, my feet could not feel the slightest bit of warmth, and because of the chill, my lips were quivering with the cold. The warm clothes that we consider thick and heavy were of no use in this place.”37 Like the “skin,” Kealoha mentions the specific body parts that were affected by the cold. This cold was unlike anything he had ever experienced before, he wrote. It affected his fingers, his feet, his skin, and his lips. He could no longer feel his fingers, his “feet could not feel the slightest bit of warmth,” and his “lips were quivering with the cold.” These descriptive statements helped readers back home in Hawaiʻi imagine what this kind of cold felt like and understand how the Arctic environment interacted with and upon workers’ bodies. Besides the cold, Arctic wind also presented a frequent hazard to whaling ships and whalemen. The Hawaiian-language newspaper Ka Nupepa Kuokoa reported in 1868 on the whaleship Hae Hawaii, destroyed by winds on the 98

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North Slope of Alaska. “We have heard, this whaling ship sailing under the Star Flag [ka Hae Hoku, the American Stars and Stripes] has perished, on the day September 23, in the Arctic Ocean,” the newspaper reported. “The reason of this disaster, it was overwhelmed by the storm wind [ka makani ino], that’s the wind that is called here by men, a ‘gale’ wind [makani gale].”38 Gale winds had pushed the Hae Hawaii into the sandy shores of the Seahorse Islands off of the North Slope of Alaska where the ship crashed and was completely destroyed.39 Ice—and its capacity to quickly expand and surround a ship—presented yet another hazard for whale ships and whalemen. Ka Nupepa Kuokoa reported in 1868 of a terrible disaster in the Arctic in which scores of whaleships were caught in rapidly expanding sea ice. “On the day July 12,” reported the paper, “the ships altogether [were] 52, [and] only 51 Whales were obtained by them.” They had caught less than one whale per ship—a very poor catch. But “the Arctic sea [had been] greatly lacking in ice, until the first of July, and the Whaling ships numerously sailed there.” Even so, “not one Whale [was] obtained there, and from that moment on, the ice came, and every one of the Whaling ships received this trouble.” The trouble was ice. The air became suddenly colder, and the ice grew. This was unusual for early July—so unusual that, according to Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, it even shocked the whales: “The ships were greatly afflicted because of the cold, and the Whales were truly frightened by the ice, too.” Perhaps this explains why so few whales were caught that summer. While whales swam to safety underneath the sea ice, the whaleships were surrounded and fastened by it. As the ice continued to expand, it began to tear the ships apart: “of the great majority of the ships, the metals of the bow of the ship were all completely unfastened, and also on one occasion, were completely [torn off ] with the wood because of the clinging of the ice.” Arctic whaling vessels were fitted with metal sheeting along the front to help plow through ice, but here the sea ice fought back, ripping the metal sheeting away from the wood of the ship. The ice finally let up, and in the end this was not a major disaster for the fleet. But it was still bad. According to Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, of some ships, “the[ir] rudders were a little bit broken,” and others “were very leaky”; overall, only “four, or only five ships perhaps were [completely] free from misfortune.” This was only a foreshadowing, however, of the misfortunes that would befall the Arctic whaling fleet in the 1870s. Later that year, in late October 1868, Ka Nupepa Kuokoa reported that the ships were returning from the Arctic “almost entirely completely full with oil.” The whalers had experienced “a type of true luck this w h a l e blu bbe r a n d h u m a n b odi e s

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season . . . , [it was] certainly not like the one that predicted disaster here, [that predicted] they will return lacking.” 40 Sometimes the dangers of wind and ice combined to bring peril to whaleships and whalemen in the Arctic. The Hawaiian newspaper Ka Lahui Hawaii reported of such an instance in the summer of 1875. “The bark Arctic, captain Whitney,” was stopped “at the bay of Wamwright [Wainwright Inlet],” on the North Slope of Alaska, when, according to the paper, a “strong sudden burst of wind struck at the western horizon, and that wind pushed on with iciness and strength, and fell upon the ship Arctic.” “After the losing of the schooner’s two big anchors, it [the Arctic] received the problem of unfastening/discharging itself out of the ice,” which it finally did “by means of shattering.” But the bark was not yet free. “The Arctic [was] tossed inside of 11 feet the depth of the sea,” suggesting that although it had freed itself from the ice, the ship also likely grounded in the shallow Wainwright Inlet. So, “the captain worked hard at the removal of the entire cargo, and in the lightening of the ship, [it] unfastened again.” 41 Despite these difficulties, the Arctic went on to extract 140 barrels of oil from Arctic whales that summer. That was not much, but it was at least something to make up for all the crew’s hard work. As Charles Kealoha and his Tahitian friend Kenela lived among the Inupiat of Alaska’s North Slope in 1876–1877, they encountered a place and people that was eerily Hawaiian. Migrant workers from Hawaiʻi had been coming to the Arctic Ocean for over twenty-five years. Just as there was a little bit of the North in Hawaiʻi, so there was a bit of tropical Hawaiʻi resident in Alaska. There was a point on the southeast corner of Wrangell Island in the Chukchi Sea, for example—today it is part of Russia—that an American whaling captain named “Cape Hawaii.” Other Hawaiian terms were incorporated into this Arctic soundscape. Among foreign whalemen, traders, and their indigenous Alaskan and Eurasian trading partners, a pidgin language developed on the coasts that incorporated various Hawaiian loanwords, including pau (“not or none”); hana-hana (“work”); puni-puni (“sexual intercourse,” probably based on the Hawaiian panipani); and wahini (“woman,” based on the Hawaiian wahine). Yupik, Inupiat, and Chukchi peoples speaking Hawaiian was just one of the ways that whale workers helped weave a Hawaiian Pacific World in every corner of this ocean.42 Meanwhile, in July 1877, a rescue ship William H. Allen was on its way to Kealoha and Kenela, but the rescuers met their own match in the waters off of the Diomedes Islands and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, in the Bering Strait. Becalmed there, the William H. Allen found itself boarded by local 100

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Inupiat traders desirous to barter fox skins for any liquor the brig might offer. The Inupiat were given whisky and then sent on their way. But the next morning they returned desiring even more whisky, even though they had brought nothing this time to exchange for it. The twenty-four-person crew of the brig comprised mostly Hawaiians who the captain described as “a peaceable lot to get along with, unless something turns up to make them mad.” Something did turn up: a crew of drunken Native Alaskans. Charles Brower wrote years later of the event: “When [Captain] Gilley refused them [the Inupiat], they got ugly, shoving the crew around, thinking that they were in their power.” “The [Hawaiian] crew stood the shoving around for a long time, all the time trying to get their anchor and get away from the drunken Eskimo [Inupiat]. Things went from bad to worse, the Eskimo getting worse all the time. At last the mate struck one of them[.] Another at once drew his knife stabbing the mate, killing instantly.” From this a melee ensued, with Hawaiian crewmembers inflicting great violence upon the inebriated Inupiat traders. “The crew went crazy,” Brower wrote, “with axes, spades, or anything they could lay their hands on. They started for the drunken natives, driving those still uninjured and the wounded ones forward under the forecastle head[.] From there they pulled them out with boathooks[,] knocked them over the head with anything they could get their hands on, throwing the bodies into the boat along side, then turned the boat adrift.” 43 This account of Hawaiian migrant workers exacting horrific violence against local indigenous people aboard the William H. Allen is shocking. But the account must be read carefully. It reflects the perspective of one man, the haole Charles Brower, who heard the story from the lips of the captain of the William H. Allen but did not pen the tale until nearly ten years later. A Hawaiian crewmember on the William H. Allen, J. Polapola, actually wrote about this violent encounter, as well. By his own admission, he took part in the violence. His narrative offers a Native Hawaiian perspective on Hawaiian–Inupiat violence, unbiased by Euro-American conceptions of Hawaiian men as—in Brower’s words—“a peaceable lot to get along with, unless something turns up to make them mad,” or as a group that “went crazy” upon the poor Inupiat with uncontrolled violence. In his narrative, Polapola noted that the Inupiat were the ones who started the conflict. The “Nakulu [Inupiat] chief fiercely grabbed the Captain by the throat.” They started fighting over rum, Polapola wrote. It was when “[the chief ] was roughly attempting to grab the Captain’s gun, and the same was happening to the ship’s mate,” that Polapola decided to act. Holding a “large piece of w h a l e blu bbe r a n d h u m a n b odi e s

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wood in my right hand,” he wrote, “I flung the wood at the neck of the chief’s younger brother and he fell down dead upon the deck.” After that, fighting broke out between the Hawaiians and the Native Alaskans, and “on deck, the Hawaiians, along with the Nakulu were dropping all over.” Polapola described poignantly the death of a Hawaiian crewmember by an Inupiat fighter’s sword. As the Hawaiian named Honuailealea fell, he exclaimed “e! make au” (“Alas! I have been killed!”).44 The most violent moment in Brower’s narrative is related in nearly the exact same language by Polapola. Th is concerns the moment when those remaining Inupiat who had survived the melee were caught, one by one, “with the boat hook, and pulled out,” as Polapola phrased it. “They were all shot with pistols and thrown overboard into the sea.” Those that survived the slaughter threw themselves over the edge of the ship and into the ocean. But as Polapola noted, these men’s bodies were nothing like Hawaiian men’s bodies: “there was no trace of their bodies because they are a people who do not know how to swim.” 45 In Polapola’s narrative, the crew of the William H. Allen had engaged in “battle” against indigenous Alaskans and the Hawaiians were “victorious.” There was also another battle that Hawaiian whalemen were fighting. This was against a racist, emasculating Euro-American discourse that held that Hawaiian bodies were unfit for work in cold climates. As early as the 1830s, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., who was a friend to many Hawaiian migrant workers in Mexican California, wrote that Hawaiians are “good hands in warm weather,” but “in high latitudes . . . they are useless in cold weather.” This narrative of Hawaiians’ presumed unfitness for the cold was a product of Euro-American discourse on race and labor. Meanwhile, it was repeated over and over again in the nineteenth century, as when U.S. Navy commodore Henry Erben, writing from Honolulu in 1874–1875, noted that “the Kanakas (natives) are fast dying out—and it is estimated that within 40 years they will cease to exist”—adding that “they are improvident, lazy and unreliable, doing work only upon the water”—yet, he admitted that “as whalemen they stood the rigors of an Arctic winter, in season, better than the white-men—though they are natives of the tropics.” This came as somewhat of a surprise to Erben, who like most Euro-Americans in the nineteenth century believed that Hawaiian men’s usefulness was limited to tropical and marine environments that they were inherently fit for. But in the Arctic, Hawaiian whalemen proved their manly determination and perseverance in the face of supposedly natural inabilities, forcing Erben to reconfigure his perceptions regarding 102

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Hawaiian men’s bodies. Later, in January 1875, Erben’s comments were recycled into an official “Report concerning Honolulu” for the U.S. Navy. In this report he stated that “this [Honolulu] is the principal depot for whalers in the Pacific; here they leave their oil and bone for shipment, and find Kanakas to man their ships; and though born in the tropics, these Kanakas have been found to stand the cold of the arctic regions much better than white men from cold climates.” Thus, in the mid-1870s, it was entered into the official record of the U.S. government that Hawaiian men were actually more fit for work in Arctic environments than anyone had previously allowed.46 In this sense, Polapola’s account of Hawaiian heroics in battle against Alaska Natives echoed the manliness-discourse of both Henry Erben’s naval account of the 1870s as well as Charles Kealoha’s story of his incredible survival among the Inupiat in 1876–1877. For Erben, Hawaiian men’s bodies were supposed to be limited by their tropicality. Hawaiian labor was well suited for maritime work, especially in tropical waters, but it was not fit for the cold, icy, windy Arctic. However, by the 1870s, Hawaiian men had proved Erben wrong and he was forced to admit that Hawaiian men’s bodies withstood the hardships of the Arctic Ocean better than most Euro-American men’s bodies. Similarly, Charles Kealoha sought to challenge the EuroAmerican discourse of Hawaiian men’s fitness by sharing his own personal tale of survival among the Inupiat of Alaska’s North Slope. For Hawaiian readers back home, Kealoha’s narrative evoked a Hawaiian masculinity reclaimed through the whale worker’s engagement in physically demanding and risk-taking labor. Furthermore, J. Polapola’s story of saving his captain’s life through violence, of a Hawaiian people “victorious” in battle against another “other” was about reclaiming Hawaiian masculinity through work, and proving once again that there was no place on Earth where Hawaiian men could not succeed in demonstrating strength, bravery, and manliness.

rqr Kealoha’s and Polapola’s stories from the Arctic Ocean were the Hawaiian whale workers’ swan song. The discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania in 1859, joined with the global economic disruptions of the American Civil War (1861–1865), led to a rapid decrease in the market value of whale products in the 1860s. According to economic historian Theodore Morgan, the average price of whale oil began a steady decline in 1864, while sperm oil followed suit w h a l e blu bbe r a n d h u m a n b odi e s

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in 1866.47 Meanwhile, the U.S. government appropriated scores of commercial whaleships and sunk them to barricade northern ports. Arctic whalers, too, fell prey to a far-reaching Confederate navy. At least 34, but perhaps as many as 46, American whaleships were destroyed by Confederate naval vessels over the course of the war. Hawaiian whale workers were taken hostage in this conflict; some of them ended up stranded in San Francisco, and stories and songs of the infamous Kenedoa (the Confederate war ship Shenandoah) entered Hawaiian diasporic print and oral cultures.48 “The number of whaling ships is presently very quickly diminishing,” wrote the newspaper Ka Hae Hawaii in 1861. “The number that arrive now are only a fraction. Concerning the lack of growth the basis of this perhaps are the whales in the northern ocean.” 49 Indeed, Arctic whales were overhunted in the 1850s and 1860s, so much so that by the time of Kealoha’s misadventure in the 1870s, overfishing in the industry had likely reduced the Arctic bowhead population to just onethird of what it had been three decades earlier in 1848. For indigenous Arctic peoples who relied on whale meat and blubber as a source of food, the ravages of this industry resulted in severe famines in northern Alaska in the late 1870s and early 1880s. The Arctic whaling industry was collapsing upon itself.50 When Kealoha sailed into the Arctic in 1876, he was, as it turns out, engaging in the last gasps of what was once the most significant extractive industry in the Hawaiian Pacific World. Arctic whaling was a bodily experience for Hawaiian workers. Kealoha felt it in the cold air getting underneath his skin. Hawaiian men also experienced it when employers marked their bodies as tropical, and when newspapers back home wrote of them as the boys of the cold seas, those men who rampaged through the city streets, patronizing brothels and taverns. Hawaiian workers experienced the whale in bodily ways, too. They chased it, looked deep into its jaws, rolled on top of it, butchered it, fried it, ate it. Work itself encompassed bodily toil: biting down on one’s knife or getting splashed with burning whale oil. As imagined bodies, the Arctic environment presented a battleground of ideas about the fitness of Hawaiian men’s bodies for work in these cold climates. Hawaiian workers understood this as a battle over both gender and race, and in this battle they were victorious, as symbolized by the workers’ “victory” over the violent Inupiat, over the death-defying weather, and over the expectations of Hawaiians and haole alike who put them down and imagined them as unable to succeed. But the Arctic was only one harsh environment among many that tested Hawaiian workers’ resolve. Barren, isolated islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean were another. 104

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fou r

Kailiopio and the Tropicbird life and labor on a guano island

j. m. kailiopio had come from Hawaiʻi, nearly two thousand miles away, to a desolate island along the equator to labor for just “one ten dollar bill perhaps of G. P. Judd,” a Euro-American missionary doctor and capitalist who had invested in the global guano industry. After a year of hard labor on Baker Island, Kailiopio wrote home to the Hawaiian-language newspaper Ka Nupepa Kuokoa in 1866 that “my humble conscience has drifted to scatter away to these places of little specks of scattered dust”—the latter word (lepo) also meaning “feces,” an apt descriptor for this malodorous place. He dreamed of the day when he could return to “live there [where] the sun rises at Haehae [Haʻehaʻe], and greatly rises away to the setting of the sun at the horizon of Lehua,” tracing the rise and fall of the sun from the eastern shore of Hawaiʻi to the archipelago’s western terminus at ocean’s edge. Kailiopio missed home.1 Approximately five years earlier, a red-tailed tropicbird was dragged to the shore of nearby Howland Island and placed in captivity aboard a nearby ship. This vessel then traveled over thirty miles to Baker Island, the same place where Kailiopio later languished. One morning, members of the ship’s crew held down the tropicbird and tied a small piece of cloth around its ankle. Then they set it free. The red-tailed tropicbird flew back all the way to Howland Island, returning to its nest. Later, guano workers discovered it and the cloth was removed and delivered to the island’s luna (overseer). The redtailed tropicbird would be employed like this again, “as occasion demanded, [bringing] back messages, proving useful in the absence of other means of communication.”2 Kailiopio and the tropicbird both worked for the global guano industry. The tropicbird was employed by a guano company to ferry messages back and 105

forth between islands. Kailiopio was employed by a similar company to dig, bag, and haul fossilized bird droppings. This intersection of human and avian work experiences suggests that these places were what historian Thomas Andrews calls a workscape. A workscape is “not just an essentially static scene or setting neatly contained within borders,” he writes, “but a constellation of unruly and ever-unfolding relationships—not simply land, but also air and water, bodies and organisms, as well as the language people use to understand the world, and the lens of culture through which they make sense of and act on their surroundings.” On nineteenth-century guano islands, interdependent relationships between human and avian environments were conditioned by the fact that seabirds outnumbered humans by the millions. Seabirds like the working tropicbird were arguably more influential in shaping this workscape than Kailiopio and his comrades’ human labor. It was a lopsided relationship. This was an environment in which bountiful birds forced hundreds of Hawaiian workers to accept the messy, nonlinear bounds between their work and the nature inside and all around them.3 Bodies, both human and avian, were important mediums that connected disparate natures and wove guano islands into the larger Hawaiian Pacific World. In writing home, Hawaiian migrant workers evinced their concerns, as well as those of the larger community, of the pono (well-being) of their kino (bodies). In the harsh working environment, Hawaiian men struggled to keep their bodies pono by eating right, maintaining ample rest and sleep, and inventing novel ways to recreate and exercise their bodies in what was an unaccustomed environment. Seabird bodies were also significant. They were vehicles for incorporating—literally digesting—the larger transoceanic ecology of fish, squid, winds, and waves, and transforming it all into feces that later became guano. It was seabirds’ bodies that built the “land” of these islands and largely constituted the environment that Hawaiian migrant workers lived in and worked in as guano miners.

global guano The 1850s and 1860s were a period of global economic and ecological changes known as the “great guano rush” or “guano island mania.” At this time, Euro-American farmers in the United States desired bird guano to fertilize overworked, nutrient-exhausted fields. In the 1840s and 1850s, most Americans purchased guano that was imported from the Chincha Islands off 106

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of Peru. But U.S. farmers and business leaders were unhappy with the high prices that Peruvian authorities charged for this nutrient-rich fertilizer. They united in calling upon the U.S. government to find untapped sources of guano at more reasonable prices. The U.S. Congress therefore passed the Guano Islands Act in 1856, an act that gave private entrepreneurs the power to annex and exploit remote equatorial islands in the Pacific Ocean and in the Caribbean under the protection of the U.S. flag. Shrewd business leaders, many already in the business of whaling and trans-Pacific trade, immediately sent ships to traverse the ocean in quest of uninhabited islands—that is, uninhabited by humans, but hopefully inhabited by millions of seabirds and their accumulated droppings. Sticking an American flag in the coral sand and burying a glass bottle with a declaration of annexation inside was the only act necessary for the U.S. government to recognize sovereignty over these islands. Baker, Jarvis, and Howland Islands were three of the first such “guano islands” gobbled up by transnational American companies. These islands became part of a continually expanding U.S. empire. These islands were also where the most extensive guano extraction took place in the Central Pacific.4 To make these islands profitable, American businesses relied almost exclusively on Hawaiian migrant labor, shipping in hundreds of men from roughly two thousand miles away. The employment of kanaka labor on U.S. guano islands in the 1850s and 1860s was a continuation of trends already reflected in American whaling: indeed, many Hawaiian guano workers had previously served on whaling ships, and vice versa. Capital flowed into both industries, frequently from the same sources. This guano boom, however, was short lived. The U.S. Civil War (1861– 1865) significantly disrupted the global fertilizer industry. During the war, Northern military forces curtailed and blockaded international trade with ports in the U.S. South, which was the largest market in the world for Pacific Island guano. Plantation-scale cotton production in the South required significant inputs of nutrient replacement. The Boston firm Glidden & Williams remarked on this situation in 1862 when they, in a letter to D. C. Waterman and Company, a Honolulu firm contracting Hawaiian labor for the islands, recommended “to take only a small force [of laborers to Howland Island].” Earlier in the year they had cautiously expressed hope that the war would soon end, “& then the South would be opened for Guano.” But during much of the early 1860s, the market was constricting and the need for labor diminishing.5 l i f e a n d l a b or on a gua no i s l a n d

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Fear of the collapse of the industry, less than one decade after it had begun in 1856, prompted another business partner, P. W. Penhallow, to write to D. C. Waterman in 1864 with his “hope [that] this Guano business is just beginning to be developed,” so that “both yourself & the writer may get something out of it before it is done.” The industry did not immediately collapse due to the U.S. Civil War, but rather the war combined with the discovery of new, less expensive, more locally produced sources of phosphorus and other nutrients made the extraction of seabird guano half a world away seem a ludicrous investment. Consequently, just as opportunities for Hawaiian employment in whaling and other international industries were fast disappearing, the Hawaiian role in guano extraction declined as rapidly as it had first appeared.6 In this time, perhaps as many as one thousand Hawaiian men traveled to the guano islands and experienced life and labor among the birds. The importance of guano in the Hawaiian psyche during this decade cannot be overstated. Guano was on everyone’s minds, even that of the young kamaʻāina (Hawaiʻi-born) George Dole, son of a Euro-American Christian missionary. In 1859, Dole wrote a school essay on the topic of the newly found, newly famous feces. “The Peruvian government have, for a number of years past, exported large quantities of guano from the Chincha Islands, which are situated about 150 miles west of Lima,” he wrote. But now, “guano islands have lately been discovered in the Pacific Ocean near the equator, and large companies have been formed in the United States for the purpose of working them and taking the guano to North America or Europe.” Despite never having visited these islands, Dole attempted to describe the mysterious seabird world of Jarvis Island, over one thousand miles east of Baker and Howland. “Jarves Island is low and almost entirely destitute of verdure. No wild animals abound except a few goats which came originaly from Honolulu.” As for the work, “the guano lies in beds of different sizes, depth, and value, in various parts of the island. These beds are worked by laborers imported chiefly from the Hawaiian Islands.”7 Dole’s data was likely compiled from the frequent reports published in Hawaiian newspapers discussing conditions on these remote islands. It is not clear if Dole read the Hawaiian-language newspapers in addition to Honolulu’s many English-language ones. Workers’ stories, in their own voices, were almost exclusively confined to the Hawaiian-language press. In his school essay, Dole concluded that “it is thought by some that the guano trade will in a few years take the place of the whaling business, which is 108

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already declining, and which will perhaps in half a century, entirely disappear.” His premonitions were incorrect, but the importance he placed on the industry at the time was appropriate. In the 1850s and 1860s, guano simultaneously captured the imaginations of capitalists just as it captured the labor (and sometimes the lives) of Hawaiian migrant workers who experienced firsthand what haole schoolboys could only imagine.8

birdland The red-tailed tropicbird takes wing again. The equatorial Pacific where so many seabirds nest is not as biologically productive as other parts of the ocean, meaning that these animals must travel thousands of miles away, for days if not weeks at a time, to find the fish and squid that they need to feed themselves and their young. There is great ichthyological diversity within Howland, Jarvis, and Baker Islands’ reef flats. Within the coral reef ecosystem live many hundreds of species of reef fish, but these are not the preferred food of the seabirds. Immediately beyond the reef ’s edge, the equatorial ocean is barren of biology: it is an oceanic desert. Thus the tropicbird takes wing for a while, seeking productive ocean waters well beyond the equator. Seabirds know where these places are, although they are incredibly small. Comprising only approximately 0.1 percent of the entire ocean’s surface, seabirds’ feeding grounds are places where fish and squid arise and provide them with food for life. Underneath the surface of these unmarked sites are oceanic processes unnoticeable to humans, yet recognized by seabirds.9 Below seabird feeding grounds sit giant sentinels of rock called seamounts, the ruins of former volcanic mountains. Millions of years ago these mountains soared above the sea and provided a place for seabirds to nest; now submerged, they provide seabirds with a place to feed. Below the surface, underwater ocean currents propel deep, cold ocean water up the seamount’s steep slopes. As the cold water rises, so do cold-water fishes and squids. When these species arrive at the surface of the ocean, seabirds like the red-tailed tropicbird are there, waiting for their meal. This oceanic process, termed upwelling, occurs elsewhere throughout the Pacific Ocean. The famous Humboldt Current forces the upwelling of cold water as far north along the South American Pacific shelf as the Galapagos Islands where, remarkably, even penguins live. Upwelling also occurs in remote areas of the ocean where two underwater currents converge, pushing cold water to the surface along with l i f e a n d l a b or on a gua no i s l a n d

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figure 10. Charles Livingston Bull, Tropic-Bird Fishing, 1902. Reproduced from James D. Hague, “Our Equatorial Islands; with an Account of Some Personal Experiences,” Century 64, no. 5 (1902): 669.

fish and squid. Seabirds live in an oceanic world where land, air, and water converge, act upon each other, and make up separate yet combined components of oceanic space. If we were to draw a map of this space, we would have to include the underwater topography of seamounts, as well as the seamounts’ resident cephalopod and ichthyological mountain climbers.10 On a whole, seabirds spend most of their lives in the airspace just above the ocean, not on land. Some seabirds spend weeks, even years, soaring along 110

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the winds without ever alighting on a hard surface. The red-tailed tropicbird, like many seabirds, depends on equatorial Pacific islands for breeding only— as safe places for mating, laying eggs, rearing young. Some seabirds even sleep on the wing, riding the winds and somehow never crashing into the ocean. They soar at work and at play, returning to land only when their inner timepieces tell them it is time to breed. When they do return to land, they encounter a world that really could not be any more different than the one they have known at sea. After months of flying solo, many seabirds come to rest on Baker, Jarvis, and Howland Islands among millions of other birds all sharing the same space. Although frequently documented by nineteenth-century human admirers due to their attractive red tail feathers, tropicbirds were only a fraction of the seabird species utilizing these islands. King of all were the sooty terns, black and white squawkers that together formed visible “clouds” of bodies when circling in the air. When they weren’t blackening the sky, these sooties lived in a very un-Christian fashion, or so said humans who disparaged the birds for their lackluster efforts at domesticity; female sooties frequently released multiple eggs onto bare coral rock without constructing any sort of nest, much to the shock of nineteenth-century human observers.11 Through the cloud of sooties also flocked the frigatebirds. With their sharp V-shaped tails, taunting calls, and aerial maneuvers, frigatebirds threatened the other birds on the islands as they preyed on their chicks. Frigatebirds also waited on the aerial outskirts of islands for seabirds returning home with fish and squid. These frigatebirds surrounded and accosted the returning birds until forcing them to cough up their food, which the frigatebirds then fought over mid-air in a remarkable performance of aerial acrobatics. Because frigatebirds sometimes made a living this way—as “pirates” rather than as decent laborers—they, just like the sooty terns, received the scorn of many a nineteenth-century human. Various terns, boobies, petrels, noddies, shearwaters, and even the occasional albatross, also nested on these islands. Crammed within an area only one mile long by one mile wide, these seabirds coexisted most of the time in a remarkable state of peace. Their various nesting behaviors had evolved so sharply into differentiated ecological niches that each species’ nests varied both spatially and temporally from all others. But overall, life on land for seabirds was hot, flat, and crowded, and not anything like life on the wing.12 Still, life in a seabird colony fostered bonds between members of the same species, and sometimes even across species. Human visitors frequently commented on just how talkative the birds were. One visitor recounted an awful l i f e a n d l a b or on a gua no i s l a n d

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figure 11. Charles Livingston Bull, Frigate Bird, or Man-O’-War Hawk, 1902. Reproduced from James D. Hague, “Our Equatorial Islands; with an Account of Some Personal Experiences,” Century 64, no. 5 (1902): 656.

night spent on Baker Island: “It seemed at times as if the house were besieged by innumerable tom-cats; then the tumult resembled the suppressed bleating in goats, and I heard noises as of bats grinding their teeth in rage; again it was the querulous cooing of doves, and soon the chorus was strengthened by unearthly screams, as of ghouls and demons in mortal agony.” This symphony of sounds, heightened during the nesting season, attested to vibrant conversations between partners, families, enemies, and even the occasional overly 112

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10 8 6 4 2

SHOREBIRDS All curlew Kioea (curlew) All snipe All plover Kōlea (plover) “Nu-e-ko”/nueku (plover) All tringa Willet ʻŪlili (tattler)

SEABIRD SPECIES Masked booby Red-footed booby White booby Red-tailed tropicbird Koaʻe (tropicbird) Sooty tern White tern Brown noddy Phoenix petrel Wilson’s storm petrel Wedge-tailed shearwater ʻAʻo (shearwater) “Mutton-bird” (shearwater)

0 SEABIRD GROUPS Albatrosses Boobies/Gannets Frígatebirds Gulls Noddies Petrels Shearwaters Terns Tropicbirds

Number of recorded sightings

12

figure 12. Seabird Demography of the Equatorial Pacific Ocean, by Group and by Species, including Shorebirds, 1854–1877. Sources: Llewellyn Howland, ed., “Howland Island, Its Birds and Rats, as Observed by a Certain Mr. Stetson in 1854,” Pacific Science 9, no. 2 (1955): 95–106; Albert Francis Judd’s diary [1858], reprinted in A. F. Judd II, ed., The Guano Islands (Honolulu: Family Records, House of Judd, 1935); J. Kuhaloa, “He palapala mai ka mokupuni o Jarvis mai [A letter from the island of Jarvis],” Ka Hae Hawaii, November 17, 1858; Observations of J. M. Brooke [1859], reprinted in A. Binion Amerson, Jr. and Philip C. Shelton, The Natural History of Johnston Atoll, Central Pacific Ocean. Atoll Research Bulletin no. 192 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1975), 165–66, 190, 207, 244, 346, 473; G. P. Judd’s journal [1859], reprinted in Judd, Guano Islands; Daily Evening Standard, February 13, 1860, reprinted in R. Gerard Ward, ed., American Activities in the Central Pacific, 1790–1870, 8 vols. (Ridgewood, NJ: Gregg Press, 1966–67), 4:94–96; Mabel H. Closson’s observations, seemingly inspired by Elizabeth Kinau Wilder’s recollections [c. 1859–60], in “Under the Southern Cross,” Overland Monthly 21 (1893): 205–16; J. D. Hague, “On the Phosphatic Guano Islands of the Pacific Ocean,” American Journal of Science and Arts 34, no. 101 (1862): 2–21; J. D. Hague, “Our Equatorial Islands; with an Account of Some Personal Experiences,” Century 64, no. 5 (1902): 653–70; “Life on a Guano Island,” New York Times, April 21, 1869; Richard Branscombe Chave, Adventures of a Guano Digger in the Eastern Pacific (unpublished manuscript, 1871; available on microfi lm from Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, Australian National University); and observations of Dr. Thomas H. Streets [1877] in Ward, American Activities, 5:473–82. Compiled by the author.

inquisitive neighbor. There were also definite seasons and defined rituals of courtship within each seabird community. Albatross males and females frequently developed and maintained life-long pairings, usually initiated when the male albatross clucked and clapped his long beak against his lover’s as he gently nibbled her in a prelude to courtship, and perhaps concluding in a performance of synchronized imitative dancing. Frigatebird males showed off their distinctive bright red air pouches underneath their beaks to any and all passing females. They inflated these pouches until they looked like big red balloons. Along with the security of pair bonding, seabirds also experienced predation in their colonies. We cannot know with certainty what emotions the birds experienced when threatened by predators, but contemporary human observers were less hesitant to speak of avian emotions in response to danger. Rat infestations were one source of predation. These rats were the result of perhaps unintended ecological imperialism by previous human visitors. Rats attacked baby birds and also excelled at stealing eggs from nests. Seabird parents and neighbors banded together to shriek at, flap wings at, and do their best to scare away rats, but they were rarely successful. The piratical frigatebirds sometimes actually helped by gobbling up any rats they could get their beaks on. Newborn chicks faced great odds against survival on a crowded island. Frigatebird and rat attacks, as well as sudden climatic events and even parental abandonment, meant that hundreds of thousands of seabirds each year never lived to see the world beyond their islands. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands did take flight. They would sculpt a life for themselves out of many decades exploring the wonders of this oceanic world.13 When millions of seabirds nested each year on tiny coral islands sheltered by the dry winds of the equator, vast quantities of feces accumulated. Hundreds if not thousands of miles away, Pacific Ocean seabirds consumed prodigious amounts of fish and squid, some for their hatchlings and some for their own caloric intake. During periods of feeding, seabirds expelled their feces over the ocean, “wasted,” as an entrepreneurially minded guano businessman might have put it. On land, however, feces accumulated. But it did not just sit there; it seeped into the interstices of coral rock, chemically altering the content of the land itself. To be sure, there was never any land or rock here to begin with, at least not within the past few million years. Baker, Jarvis, and Howland Islands, as seen above the ocean’s surface, consist entirely of calcareous sand and coral rock. The actual mountaintops of Baker Mountain and Jarvis Mountain rest far below sea level. These islands would 114

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be completely submerged if not for the dynamic coral growth that maintains a visible presence above the sea. In addition to coral rock, windblown calcareous sands and a few plants have taken root, but otherwise, for tens of millions of years the only organic input to the construction and maintenance of these islands has come from the seabirds themselves: their bones and their feces. When seabird feces interact with the coral rock beneath the birds’ feet, it thus creates a new type of substrate we call guano. Therefore seabirds, like the red-tailed tropicbird, corporeally made the world in which they lived. They maintained their island’s ecology by bringing fish and squid in their bellies back from distant corners of the ocean, and then translated their digestions into life-giving food for their young, and into island-making guano for the ground beneath them. These birds courted, fought, and were witness to birth, death, and the struggles of survival. They lived in a massive, crowded colony. They lived for scores of years and knew the ocean world in a way that humans did not. Most important of all, they were part of history. Their unique individual lives were infrequently documented, but we do have remnants. We have the story of one red-tailed tropicbird from around 1860, and we have other anecdotes about particular sooty terns, frigatebirds, and other birds. We can hardly know any one bird’s whole biography from birth to death. Yet through human-produced texts and images, as well as through the archeological remains of bones and guano left behind by each seabird on his or her journey, untold stories are just waiting to be revealed.14

to the equator In July 1866, Kailiopio wrote from Baker Island of “periods without food.” Here, “the body is taxed, and the people [that] head straight down the path of no return are very numerous.” Some workers had recently fallen ill; others had died. Life and labor for Hawaiian migrant workers was no different than that experienced by the seabirds. Both seemingly straddled two worlds: the isolated island and the great moana (ocean) beyond. For Kailiopio, Hawaiʻi called out from beyond the horizon, while Baker Island was like a prison. Now that he was on the equator, all he wanted to do was go home.15 But even getting to the equator in the first place was a challenge. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Hawaiian men experienced the passage. Men from every corner of the Kingdom assembled at Honolulu Harbor to take l i f e a n d l a b or on a gua no i s l a n d

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advantage of the opportunities afforded by the guano industry. Perhaps they had heard about ke kuano (guano) in Ka Hae Hawaii, the islands’ Hawaiianlanguage newspaper weekly, or perhaps they just needed the work, and they waited where firms and agents could find them. At Honolulu, men piled into ships like the Josephine and the Sadoga for their southern journey. They were E. Mookini from Molokaʻi, W. Kaawa from Kauaʻi, C. D. Kahina from Maui, George Kahea from Hawaiʻi, and others.16 While Hawaiian men were recruited primarily in Honolulu for this industry, in actuality they came from all over the archipelago, and from all across the Pacific World, to work on the guano islands. Some recruiters, like the Honolulu-based firm D. C. Waterman and Company, meticulously calculated the demand and supply of labor in the equatorial islands and shipped men accordingly. In October 1862, William Chisholm, Howland Island agent for the United States Guano Company (based in New York), wrote to D. C. Waterman with news of “seven men which have been on the Island over a year[,] which you will forward to San-francisco at the least possible expense.” At the same time, Chisholm reported that one Captain Penhallow was “expected to go to Honolulu” the month before “& bring a crew of Kanackas down to the Island.” This back and forth transshipment of kanaka bodies involved a myriad of business partners. There was D. C. Waterman in Honolulu, ship captains like Penhallow writing from abroad, local agents such as Mr. Chisholm, and then other firms, such as Flint, Peabody & Company in San Francisco, which in 1864 requested that D. C. Waterman “please engage, say for six months or a year, ten (10) good reliable Kanaka laborers who will stand by Capt Chisholm in any emergency, and send them to Howland’s Island by this ship.” All firms and agents were ostensibly acting on behalf of the best wishes of the distant United States Guano Company. At the same time, the Hawaiian men were like commodities shifting hands across the Pacific World, lining the pockets of various business partners and middlemen.17 As in whaling, demand for guano labor frequently followed the rhythm of the seasons. All mining ceased during wet weather, as the rain leached guano of its precious nutrients. The firm Glidden & Williams of Boston acknowledged this fact when they wrote in November 1862 to D. C. Waterman advising the company “to take only a small force [to Howland Island], as we should work the Island but slowly during the Winter months, our object being not to land more than one Ship at a time there.” Yet in the same letter, they expressed the need for further recruitment of “Kanackas”: “we would have you send an additional number by this vessel—say 10 or 15 with supplies for 116

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them.” And, “in the Spring we shall want an additional number sent.” Glidden & Williams’s correspondence also highlights another aspect of Hawaiian labor recruitment for the guano islands: different islands were owned and operated by different companies, and each company was thus frequently in competition with the others for Hawaiian men. In particular, Glidden & Williams warned D. C. Waterman of the aggressive behavior of G. P. Judd, the Euro-American missionary-doctor and agent for the rival American Guano Company. “Some people think that Mr. Judd has such control over the natives,” the letter warned, “& he being in the interest of the Am Guano Co, would try to prevent their going to work for other parties.”18 The movement of Hawaiian workers’ bodies was often directed from afar, such as in the case of Captain Penhallow, who from San Francisco frequently requested D. C. Waterman to move Hawaiian workers to and from the guano islands, as well as to and from Hawaiʻi and San Francisco. On March 17, 1862, Penhallow wrote “requesting you to have laborers from Howland’s, if it was necessary to do so, forwarded to San Francisco at as little expense as possible.” The transoceanic transshipment of both guano and men linked Hawaiʻi, California, and the equatorial islands in a new iteration of the triangular trade, a new geographic manifestation of an interwoven Pacific World.19 It is not clear how Hawaiian workers themselves experienced recruitment. In fact, even middlemen like Captain Penhallow had no idea what Hawaiian workers experienced, writing in late 1862 to D. C. Waterman that he should “engage say twelve Kanaka laborers to work upon said island for a term of time not over one year, or in the usual way for Guano island laborers, with a supply of their customary food,” whatever that was.20 Workers themselves knew that recruitment began with signing a contract. The Honolulu Harbormaster collected copies of these, listing the names of workers shipping for the guano islands and the conditions of their labor. These contracts were written in a set, typewritten language including terminology and details designed for maritime work such as trading and whaling—not exactly the conditions that workers would encounter on the guano islands. Therefore, workers’ contracts were frequently scribbled all over with amendments: phrases scratched out, new words penciled in. (A sample contract is reproduced in the Appendix.)21 In the 1860s, workers’ contracts were often bilingual. In fact, this was the case with all Hawaiian shipping articles in the 1860s, whether for trading, whaling, or guano work. However, when an employer made amendments to a contract, these amendments were usually made only in English; the l i f e a n d l a b or on a gua no i s l a n d

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Hawaiian language version was not only left unchanged but was often not even completed with the necessary information including the date of the voyage, the terms of service, or even the name of the company the men would be working for. While most Hawaiians were literate, including workers, very few could read English. This meant that when pressured to sign labor contracts, their eyes had to dart back and forth between the amended English and the incomplete, unamended Hawaiian. They could only hope to make sense of it all before affi xing an X next to their name on the document, signaling their consent to the contract’s terms.22 The journey from Honolulu to the islands could last anywhere from one week to as many as twenty days, depending on the winds and weather. The two-thousand-mile voyage was a necessary part of the workers’ experience; indeed, in some cases these men were required to work their way down to the equator, as in the case of the Hawaiian men hired by the Phoenix Islands Guano Company. Their contract noted in the margins that “wages to commence from the day the [ship] ‘Active’ leaves this Harbor[.] The within named men agree to work the said schooner ‘Active’ down [illegible] [to the] Phoenix Group.” The American Guano Company’s policy was the exact opposite, noting in one of their contracts that “the Agent of the American Guano Co . . . will find them [the workers] a free passage from Honolulu to Bakers Island and from thence back to Honolulu after the expiration of a years service on said Island.” In the former case, laborers were required to work as seamen aboard ship and then as miners onshore; in the latter case, the men were only paid for their work onshore, meaning that the many weeks they spent in transit went unpaid.23 The passage from Hawaiʻi to the equator was not only unpredictable due to wind and weather, but also due to the rough character of the ships they traveled in. The American Guano Company’s Josephine, for example, regularly traveled between Honolulu and the guano islands, ferrying supplies and freshly recruited workers to the islands. But in at least one instance, the Honolulu Harbormaster, an appointee of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, was compelled to write G. P. Judd, the missionary/doctor/guano capitalist, to complain that the Josephine was not fit for sail. “I have been on board the Brig Josephine,” the Harbormaster wrote in 1859, “and find that there are no chain cables on board, and that it is not safe, nor is she ready, to haul away from the wharf.” It is possible that the Josephine had been operating in this manner for some time, ferrying workers to and from the islands without satisfying the Kingdom’s requirements for workers’ safety.24 118

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Once on the island, guano laborers shared diverse perspectives on work, body, and environment. S. W. B. Kaulainamoku was a loquacious guano laborer from Honolulu who often praised the working conditions. He tended to paint a rosy picture of life and labor in nā ʻāina kūkae manu (the guano lands). On the other hand, Kailiopio wrote with a witty and incisive pen, attempting to warn potential recruits not to sign up for the dangerous guano work. According to both of them, passage to the equator was one thing, but life and labor on a guano island was like being transported into a whole new world.

the workscape One of the first lessons that Hawaiian migrant workers learned upon reaching the guano islands was that the language written in their contracts actually meant nothing. As Kailiopio explained in 1866 from Baker Island: “The work rules of ours are just things that are not true/representative of our working, for the Luna is really able to change the rules” as he sees fit. The luna was the foreman or overseer of the guano work, often a haole who lived on the island with his family. The labor contract was just a “thing,” he explained, while in reality the luna had nearly unlimited power. On the other hand, many luna complained that they were the ones constrained by the demands of the workers. The wife of one Jarvis Island luna complained that the workers were organized and even manipulative. “The workers are all very anxious to go home for a visit,” she wrote, “but will stay for $12.” “They say they will [only] come back by and by.” Her exasperation demonstrates the power that Hawaiian workers wielded through organization, and through real threats of undisciplined mobility.25 Workers’ demands for $12/month were not unusual. However, contracts in the industry almost always pegged workers’ uku malama (monthly wage) at a lower standard: generally $10/month, not $12. Table 3 shows the range of cash advances (paid to workers at the outset of their labor) and monthly wages in the industry in the mid-1860s. This data covers 581 Hawaiians who worked for various guano companies in the equatorial Pacific Ocean over a five-year period. While almost all men were hired simply as “Laborers,” for an average of $10/month, on some islands these men received as much as $14/ month while elsewhere they received as little as $5/month. A few Hawaiian men worked as skilled workers, as smiths and as carpenters, earning higher l i f e a n d l a b or on a gua no i s l a n d

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wages, while at least one Hawaiian was listed as a servant to a luna and his family; this domestic laborer received only $5/month. The data also records at least one Hawaiian woman who labored in the guano work. She was recorded next to her husband, listed simply as “his wife.” She received the exact same advance and wage as her husband did, indicating that their collective employer, the Phoenix Islands Guano Company, saw both husband and wife as equally valuable to the industry. Her presence on the islands was extremely unusual. During their time in the guano islands, Hawaiian men lived in communal housing in close proximity to their workspace. A map of Baker Island drawn by the resident luna in 1859 depicts the “Natives house” just south of the railroad track where the laborers daily pushed and pulled railcars fi lled with bagged guano. The luna’s house, in marked distinction, was located on the opposite side of the tracks at a greater remove from the men’s work. Guano laborer S. W. B. Kaulainamoku described Jarvis Island’s “Natives house” in an 1859 letter. He said that the luna Samuel Wilder and George Wilcox had built the Hawaiian men a new dormitory. It was 54 feet long, 22 feet wide, 10 feet high, and “the interior has been decorated well.” There were two lamps, and a sizeable number of puneʻe (movable day beds) for the men to sleep on. The flooring was simply comprised of “small stones,” but all “inside has been covered and made very beautiful with good mattresses and sleeping cushions.” “The construction of this building was genuinely beautiful, and its entrance is turned to the harbor where the ships dock.” The picture Kaulainamoku paints for Ka Hae Hawaii readers is one of comfort and bodily pleasures. Yet the dormitory’s planned view of the sparkling blue harbor was surely not meant to please the workers’ eyes so much as reveal particular labor cues—the arrival of ships, for example—that defined the syncopated rhythms and dispersed spaces of the men’s workscape. Through the production of workers’ rest and relaxation spaces, luna ensured that their Hawaiian workers could never fully escape from their roles, responsibilities, and identities as human labor. The guano island workscape was omnipresent.26 The luna not only attempted to control laborers’ work space, but also their work time. The Hawaiian men’s daily rhythms were organized according to the demands of the luna. Often certain quantities of bagged guano had to be prepared within defined measures of time. On Jarvis Island in 1858, the luna measured work time according to the clock. The men’s workday began promptly at 6 or 7am. They were sometimes even forced to dig and haul guano before eating breakfast. The men were frequently pau hana—done 120

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table 3 Data on 581 Hawaiian guano workers, their titles and compensation, from shipping records for the period 1862–1867 Occupation Blacksmith Carpenter Carpenter’s Mate Laborer (or unlisted) Laborer’s Wife Servant to Luna

No. of Hawaiians

Advance

Compensation

2 1 2 574 1 1

$34–50 $34 $30–50 $15–50 $15 $20

$17/month $17/month $15/month $5–14/month $10/month $5/month

Source: Shipping articles sampled in Volume 3, 1858–67, Collector General of Customs Seamen’s Records, Record Group 88, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. Compiled by the author.

with work for the day—by 3 or 4pm, unless needed for irregular tasks such as storing provisions. Hawaiian workers would not have necessarily disagreed with their luna’s conception of the space/time parameters of the workscape, but they also knew this place differently and more intimately than their supervisors did. According to Kaulainamoku, on Jarvis Island the Hawaiian men divided into specialized tasks, with various men perfecting different skills, and each experiencing work through a unique space/time perspective. Twelve men were tasked with loading the guano into bags. These men dug the guano out of the ground with shovels, risking not only pulling out their backs but also breathing in the guano dust that their shovels released into the air. Another six men were employed with wheelbarrows to collect the bagged guano, ten bags per man per shift. Sometimes their company-issued shovels and wheelbarrows provided the men with extra hardship; as the wife of one luna reported in 1859, “the wheelbarrows are a failure; too short and easily broken.” These men carted the bags of guano from the mining site to the weighing and inspection station alongside the railroad track. Standing beside the rail were “separate people that hold open the mouths of the bags,” Kaulainamoku wrote, “and other people that hoist the bags into the large cars manned by four people, two on one side, two on the other side.” In sum, Kaulainamoku described a labor force of twenty to thirty men producing sixty bags of guano in one shift.27 Sometimes the nature of the guano islands did not cooperate with the desires of foreign companies for increased extraction and output. William Chisholm frequently wrote to Honolulu from Howland Island with l i f e a n d l a b or on a gua no i s l a n d

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complaints about the conditions on the ground. The “Guano on the north end is getting far from landing & thin at that,” while “the Guano on the South end is getting far from the landing, but got two ships cargo pretty handy in its native bed.” He indicated a widening gap between sites of guano extraction and sites along the coast where ships could safely approach for pickup. Thus the very act of mining the guano shifted the geography of the island, rapidly making some infrastructure obsolete as the center of extraction moved across the island over time. Inputs of rain and dirt further complicated the extraction of guano, making the work hard to impossible. “About two feet of dirt to one of Guano. Rather slow work,” Chisholm wrote in 1863, while the following summer he complained of the “wet weather,” with rain almost every day leaving the “Guano like mush.” As a co-production of human labor and nature’s agency, the guano island’s topography itself was transformed as workers dug out feces and consequently left the island pockmarked with holes like the surface of the moon. This meant that during rainy periods, such as in October 1864, Chisholm could report seeing “2 feet of fresh water on the Island in places,” presumably in the holes that workers themselves had made.28 The wetness meant that “some days [the workers] do nothing [but] trying to dry.” This meant that during dry seasons Hawaiian men had to work that much harder to make up for missed days and missed shipments. Even when the guano was dry, though, a full bag of the substance usually weighed at least one hundred pounds, and one guano laborer even boasted of carrying a bag in excess of 189 pounds. Th is meant that hoisting bags of guano into railcars was no easy task. While Kaulainamoku wrote that everyone received a fortyfive-minute break after completing their tasks, the daily output of guano in any given day upon Baker and Jarvis Islands during this period suggests that these men had no such time for rest. Some accounts suggest that the men loaded as many as one hundred tons, or in another instance as many as 2,640 bags, of guano each day onto ships anchored offshore. The weight of each bag varied considerably, and the 2,640-bag figure was accomplished by a workforce three to four times larger than the one Kaulainamoku described; even so, Kaulainamoku’s men would have had to repeat the above-described work sequence forty-four times per day in order to process that much guano. These figures strongly suggest that, at least on some workdays, the Hawaiian men worked much harder than Kaulainamoku lets on. Some of the laborers upon Jarvis Island made this clear by referring to their island as Paukeaho, literally meaning “out of breath” or “exhausted.” “Out of breath” defined the workers’ 122

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environment as they experienced it: through their work and through their bodies.29 Life was not just all work for the men. After pau hana each day, and especially on Sundays as the entire island observed the Christian Sabbath, Hawaiian men were free to explore, to learn about their island’s environment, and to engage in familiar pastimes like fishing, surfing, or just relaxing while reading the latest Ka Hae Hawaii or “talking story” about Hawaiʻi nei (beloved Hawaiʻi). As they began to acquaint themselves with their new island environments, workers developed their first impressions of the land. These were never very enthusiastic: “Concerning the land,” wrote laborer G. W. Kaluahine from Paukeaho in 1859, “it is a very small land; if you were to stand and look out in any other direction, you’d see the breaking waves [all around].”30 Besides the island’s tiny size, the unusual climate was also a source of discomfort for the workers: “This is a very hot land,” Kaluahine added. Guano worker J. Kuhaloa felt similarly that “the heat of the sun is great,” and you cannot look around for you might “damage the eye.” The Hawaiians also noticed that the islands lacked color. Kaluahine and Kuhaloa both referred to the islands as completely “white.” Kailiopio added that even their work uniforms were “white,” although they were undoubtedly dirtied by the guano; but, the guano, too, was white. As a people racialized as “copper” or “bronze,” in distinction to the “white” haole, and as a people accustomed to environments brimming with colorful birds and flowers back home, anything colorful here provided an important symbol to the men. It is fitting then that they named Baker Island Puakaʻilima, meaning “flower of the ʻilima,” named for “the most abundant thing here.” The little yellow flowers that sprouted along the periphery of the men’s workscape provided color in an otherwise bleak environment.31 Perhaps the men felt more at home wading in the shallow water of the reef flat, smelling the salt of the familiar ocean that somehow bound together their former and present island worlds. Many luna described the laborers constantly fishing along the reef flat during their free time: at pau hana (after work), and at night along the wharf. One haole even described the men at the break of dawn on a Sunday morning cleaning and skinning fish. J. Kuhaloa assured readers back home that “the fish [at Jarvis] are truly similar with Hawaii’s,” including “Ulua-ulaula [Ulua ʻulaʻula], Mano [Manō], Aholehole [Āholehole],” and many others. Albert Judd noted Hawaiian workers catching “Avai,” “Manini,” and “Ulaula [ʻUlaʻula],” and he himself went fishing one evening with the help of a worker named Kahikelani and they caught l i f e a n d l a b or on a gua no i s l a n d

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“Ulua.”32 Luna were supposed to provide their laborers with proper amounts of food, but this was not always the case. The men therefore regularly supplemented their diet with fish from the reef and nearshore waters. Kailiopio also writes of how he and his friends collected pūleholeho (cowry shells) along the reef flats at low tide. They used the shells as a sort of currency on the island: “[at] the coming of the period of extreme low tide, exposed are the black cowry shells, [with] little spots[,] and little white cowry shells and every kind and variety of shell . . . these little things [bring] good fortune/blessings to the living conditions of kanaka here,” he wrote. This was because the men could “sell them to the haole, [for] obtaining some ragged/worn-out work clothes, tobacco, tobacco pipes, matches, and some other things as well for making pono the living condition of kanaka.”33 Kailiopio’s concern for having material goods to make life pono (balanced; fair) for himself and his fellow workers was a sentiment echoed by others on Baker and Jarvis Islands. Both the Hawaiian men and their communities back home in Hawaiʻi demonstrated frequent concern for ka pono o ke kino, “the well-being of the body.” One distinct challenge was how to eat a pono diet. There were no natural sources of fresh water on the islands, and furthermore, all attempts at growing food crops in the dry coral sand were a dismal failure. Therefore, guano companies had to import fresh food and water from Hawaiʻi in order to feed their workers. The luna William Chisholm wrote to Honolulu from Howland Island in 1863 pleading that he only had “about 6000 Gal[lons] of water on the Is[land]. I use about 60 Gal per day[;] men requires a good deal of water working in Guano. hoping you will bear this in mind.” Chisholm’s math suggests that he had about one hundred days’ worth of water on hand, but this may have felt like a dangerously low amount if the supply ships visiting the islands came only infrequently. Besides water, Chisholm also needed to feed them. He attempted to do so on a diet comprising mostly poi, salted meats, and salted fish. But these, too, ran low. “I have not got more than six weeks Poi for Kanackas,” he wrote in February 1863. Nine months later, he continued to plead for D. C. Waterman & Company to send more rations: “send by first opportunity water, poi, net, stores.” By Chisholm’s estimate, he had only eighty days’ worth of poi left on the Island. The ever-itinerant Captain Penhallow even chimed in from London, England, to comment on the precarious food situation on Howland Island: “Should not the Kanakas on Howlands have some more Poi sent them by this time?” Of course, Penhallow had no way of knowing how many barrels of poi Chisholm had on hand, but he guessed—quite rightly—that 124

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the workers were in need of more. In the spring of 1864, Chisholm wrote again, admitting that he was now forced to put one of his guano miners on fishing duty every day just to procure enough food to feed the workers. It is “very fortunate you sent Beef & fish for natives,” Chisholm wrote. “I keep one man fishing all the time & on an average he gets fish for only one meal per day.” In the same message, he requested Waterman to send down fishing nets; if supplies ran dangerously low, Chisholm reasoned, he might have to put more men on fishing duty, rather than digging guano.34 The ecology of companies feeding their migrant workers on a remote guano island was actually similar to the ecology of a seabird feeding its chick. For seabirds, newly hatched young were too frail to fly and thus immobile, just as Hawaiian migrant workers dropped off by ships on these islands had nowhere to go and no way to get there. Therefore, both young chicks and migrant men relied upon more mobile actors—whether their biological parents or “parent”-like companies that cared for them—to go out and procure their food, be it squid, fish, poi, or salt beef. The ecology of feeding workers, like the ecology of feeding chicks, linked equatorial islands with the broader oceanic environment stretching out from and surrounding these remote islands. Distant resources were brought in, by wing and by ship, transforming food into energy that powered human and avian bodies and in the end produced waste, some of which became guano. The ecology of the human body and its need to feed was particularly reliant on outside resources in the guano islands. Despite the many challenges of securing abundant, healthy food, however, some laborers sought to paper over all these problems. S. W. B. Kaulainamoku in late 1859 wrote that “we never have problems with the pono of the body, there is a lot of food, and fish, and water, and the kanaka eat the food and leave it unfinished, and the fish is left unfinished, [and they] drink wastefully of the water just as they do here in Honolulu.” His public account contradicted Chisholm’s worried private correspondence in nearly every way possible.35 Indeed, some laborers like Kaulainamoku tried to paint the guano workscape as one that actually strengthened men’s bodies. Kaulainamoku may have even seen the workscape as fostering the re-embodiment of a uniquely Hawaiian masculinity, one that appeared in peril due to the death of Hawaiian men back home from disease and from the steady flow of emasculating rhetoric emanating from haole merchants and missionaries. On this point, Kaulainamoku stated outright that “the strength of the kanaka was greatly desired for the working of the guano.” As an exemplar of pono masculinity, he described “one little boy” who was able to carry more than his own bodily l i f e a n d l a b or on a gua no i s l a n d

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weight in guano. The young man’s body demonstrated, Kaulainamoku argued, that “the burdensome things here [are] an insignificant matter to the men”; “the weak newcomers curse aloud upon coming here,” he conceded, but naturally, “the strength of the kanaka progressed at the working.” Thus, through their interactions with the guano workscape, these men were building new, strong, male bodies, not only to maintain ka pono o ke kino (the pono of the body), but for the very preservation of the Hawaiian “race.”36 Kaulainamoku’s interpretation of this interface among bodies, work, and environment helped to reassure Hawaiian readers back home. Not only did they have fresh water, fish, and food, but the men were restrengthening their bodies and rekindling their masculinity. But six years later, J. M. Kailiopio found a workscape not at all similar to the pono one described by Kaulainamoku. In the summer of 1865, Kailiopio was witness to a worker-led riot on Baker Island—the only known labor disturbance to have occurred on these islands, although everyday resistance was commonplace. The 1865 riot began when a certain luna called for a Hawaiian laborer using the term “kanaka” rather than referencing his given name, Heanu. The laborer was insulted, for “kanaka” was a term sometimes used by haole as a racial slur. From the luna’s tongue, the word “kanaka” essentialized Hawaiian men as workers: as beasts of burden, as servants of capital. So when this luna, angry that Heanu was ignoring his call, came to beat Heanu with a stick, the Hawaiian man began throwing punches in his face. His fellow laborers came to the rescue, whisking Heanu away to a temporary safe place. Meanwhile, the islands’ haole began to arm themselves with rifles and pistols, anticipating a melee. The Hawaiian laborers, in self-defense, brandished the only weapons they had: their shovels. Uncontrolled violence was averted only at the last second when the head luna threatened to shoot one of the guano workers, Imaia, with a pistol at close range. Upon this, the Hawaiian men gave up their fight in order to save their fellow man; they eventually returned to work.37 Kailiopio was still working on Baker Island one year later when he wrote that many of the Hawaiian men’s bodies were far from pono. The men had resorted to eating seabirds and eggs to quell their hunger. He spoke in direct contradiction to Kaulainamoku when he said that life on Puakailima “does not resemble the living conditions of the homeland . . . here, the living condition is stifling, this land, does not possess periods of pono satisfaction.” He described the working men’s bodies as sick and debilitated. Indeed, sickness was common. William Chisholm recorded many workers falling ill in 1864. “I sent by ship 3 natives which was sick & no use to the Island,” he wrote in 126

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April, followed two months later by another comment that “3 men sick out of 6.” D. C. Waterman’s policy regarding sick workers was harsh and unforgiving. The language of one 1868 contract noted that “on arrival at H. [Howland] Island, if any of the within named men are unable to work from disease brought on by their own imprudence previous to leaving Honolulu, their wages will be stopped all the time they are off duty from such disease contracted as above mentioned, and they may be sent back by the first opportunity to Honolulu.” Of course, most sick guano workers probably believed that their illnesses were due to the harsh work environment of the islands, but employers were determined to blame illness on bad “kanaka” behaviors cultivated in Hawaiʻi. Sickness was an excuse for employers to rid their payrolls of unwanted, debilitated bodies. In another instance, a sick guano worker was forced by his employer to pay for his own hospital fees, which at the time of his discharge equaled half of the wages he had earned as an employee. In his letter to Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, Kailiopio described an almost complete lack of medical services available to the men on Baker Island. “Where indeed then the pono care for the kanaka in his time of sickness,” he asked. “For the haole offers castor oil, with salt, and even painkillers,” but then will “discharge some [sick workers] to go [back] to work.”38 Kailiopio wrote that many guano workers had gone “straight down the path of no return”—straight down the path to death. Indeed, death was all too common in the guano industry. For example, of 218 guano workers listed in the discharge records of the Honolulu Harbormaster for the years 1864– 67, at least six died before completing their labor contracts. This put the death rate among guano workers in those years at nearly 3 percent, or, to put it another way, one in every 36 workers was likely to die in the guano islands rather than return home. Perhaps this is why, in concluding his letter, Kailiopio wrote that coming to Baker Island was as good as saying “your life has ended at Honolulu.” Facing hunger, weakness, disease, and even death, Kailiopio saw the workscape, just as Kaulainamoku had, as an interface among work, body, and environment. But for Kailiopio, these elements were out of balance; the workscape was not pono.39

men and birds First came the rats, then came the humans. This was likely how one generation of seabirds witnessed the double invasion. By 1854 on Howland Island, l i f e a n d l a b or on a gua no i s l a n d

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the rats were everywhere, terrorizing chicks and parents alike. A human visitor that year wrote of “armies of rats.” But the seabirds were not passively exterminated. The writer claimed to have witnessed some seabirds—most likely frigatebirds—scooping up rats in their beaks and depositing the rodentsoldiers into the surf. If cleaning out rats was a necessary act of seabird defense, something had to be done about the invading humans, too. “We seemed to be targets for the birds,” this writer stated, now under attack by an altogether different army of animals. Before long, with so many seabirds taking position over his head, “we were completely encased in a thick film of bird manure.” The seabirds had a potent weapon against human invaders: their feces.40 Perhaps the frigatebirds took greatest advantage of the humans. On Jarvis and Baker Islands around 1860, one frigatebird flew down and “snatched a note-book” away from a luna. He soared high up into the air and then dropped the book down to the ground again. Elsewhere, in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, frigatebirds were having similar interactions with human trespassers. One writer recounts how Japanese laborers, collecting bird feathers and guano on Laysan Island in the 1890s, were targeted by frigatebirds. One particular bird was said to swoop down and steal a laborer’s hat. “It played for quite some time before dropping it.” “The bird repeated this scenario for several days thereafter.” On Jarvis and Baker Islands the frigatebirds closely followed human strangers around the island. They learned how humans inadvertently created new feeding niches for them. Traditionally, frigatebirds waited on the aerial outskirts of islands, forcing returning boobies to vomit up the fish that they had caught at sea. Now these frigatebirds realized that the boobies felt equally threatened by humans. When a human inadvertently approached a booby, the bird, acting in self-defense, vomited up their fish. Then, the ever-watchful frigatebirds—seemingly in concert with the humans’ reign of terror—swooped down and gobbled up the boobies’ mess.41 Individual taunting frigatebirds and aerial fecal bombers aside, the nesting seabirds of Jarvis and Baker Islands held no advantage against their human counterparts. From the humans’ perspective, while many EuroAmerican men on these islands claimed to admire the great diversity of birds, they also were greatly annoyed by the quantity of them. They “swarm like the flies of Egypt’s plague,” one uncomfortable visitor remarked. Furthermore, these men knew that to mine the islands’ guano they would necessarily have to destroy much of the birds’ habitat. Perhaps the only benefit they saw in the birds’ existence was that there were so many of them to kill and eat, and so 128

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many unhatched eggs to snack on.42 Yet the impact of bird hunting and egg harvesting was negligible when compared to the greater impact that the humans’ domesticated animals had upon the nesting seabirds. To Baker and Jarvis Islands the guano companies brought sheep, goats, rabbits, chickens, mules, and horses. The ungulates grazed on the sparse and salty grass, removing the fragile habitat preferred by tropicbirds, terns, and boobies for nesting. The movements of large mammals like horses and goats across the island meant the trampling of tens of thousands of speckled sooty tern eggs. The livestock also kicked up and scattered what little shrubbery existed, the only nesting habitat preferred by the frigatebirds. Worse, yet, were those animals that preyed directly on chicks and eggs, including rats and the occasional house cat.43 The Hawaiian laborers who lived and worked on these equatorial islands came with their own set of knowledge about seabirds. They likely already knew many of the migratory seabird species in Hawaiʻi, birds that they perhaps often saw nesting in the pali (cliffs) that interfaced the human world and “the dark, invisible beyond of Kāne” where seabirds reign. J. Kuhaloa wrote from Jarvis in 1858 that “the types of birds [here] are quite like some of Hawaii’s birds.” He lists: “the Ao [ʻAʻo], Kolea [Kōlea], Ulili [ʻŪlili], Kioea, and Koae [Koaʻe].” Kailiopio, writing from Puakailima, added that “The land [here] is surrounded by birds.” He singled out “the noisy Nueku always moving around until late at night, that’s the bird that lays the most eggs.” “Nueku” is a term that does not correspond with any known Hawaiian bird. However, one haole from the time helpfully remarked that the bird looked like a plover, its back was brown with gray spots, and its eggs speckled. Kailiopio hints that the “Nueku” birds and their eggs provided food for the Hawaiian men during times of hardship. Interestingly, on Kuhaloa’s list of birds, three of the five he singled out—just like Kailiopio’s “Nueku”—were shorebirds or wading birds, not seabirds: the kōlea (plover), ʻūlili (tattler), and kioea (curlew). He mentions only two seabirds: the ʻaʻo, a shearwater endemic to Hawaiʻi that was probably only seasonally visiting Jarvis Island, and the koaʻe, the tropicbird. Kuhaloa does not tell us if this was a white-tailed or red-tailed tropicbird. He does not mention if the bird had a piece of cloth tied around its ankle; if he had, we might have wondered if this was the same tropicbird that nested on Howland Island and was held captive off of Baker Island during the period from 1859 to 1861. We can see here how close, yet still how far, we are from fully understanding the historical convergences between seabird and human narratives of work and migration in the guano islands.44 l i f e a n d l a b or on a gua no i s l a n d

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It takes a volcanic mountain like those underpinning Baker and Jarvis Islands something like sixty to seventy million years to rise and fall, to become nothing but a speck of coral sand where once rose a great mountain spewing molten lava. Some seabird species have existed in their current anatomical form in the Pacific, also, for sixty to seventy million years. Islands, atolls, and seabirds evolved for millions of years over a slowly shifting oceanscape. This is a place where seabirds learned to be seabirds in the context of the space/time-world that lava, coral, wind, waves, underwater mountains, fish, and squid made. Just like Andrews’s concept of the workscape as more than a fi xed, static backdrop for human behavior, but rather “a place shaped by the interplay of human labor and natural processes,” the seabirds’ world was similarly co-constructed. There were never any fi xed environments here in the longue durée of seabird history. No cut-out stage set appeared when the curtain rose sixty to seventy million years ago and the first seabirds made their grand entrance. Rather, seabirds made this world as it made them. Then, very suddenly in the past five thousand years, countless communities of nesting seabirds made contact with humans for the first time. Yet it was not until the nineteenth century that remote Baker, Jarvis, and Howland Islands became the site of sustained and recorded encounters between seabirds and humans. The reports from Hawaiian migrant workers living and laboring on these islands in the 1850s and 1860s thus is a window into an encounter that had occurred many times over, across many millennia, on so many islands, when humans and seabirds first met.45

rqr Kailiopio and the tropicbird co-inhabited and co-produced the guano islands as a mid-nineteenth-century Pacific Ocean workscape. In their own microcosmic worlds, they engaged in parallel forms of work, feeding, play, and rest. They both worked to feed themselves and their loved ones; the only difference was that Kailiopio worked for a wage which he then hoped to cash in for material rewards back home—if he ever made it back to Hawaiʻi. Both men and birds spent the majority of their time somewhere else. Baker, Jarvis, and Howland Islands were pit stops in their life journeys: a safe place to raise a chick but a rather dangerous place to make a buck. Migrant workers and migratory seabirds both contributed to this world. Seabird bodies made the ground underneath their feet, and they shaped the ecology of these remote 130

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islands. Workers remade the ground by digging it up. They remade the air by throwing guano dust into the wind. They remade the water through the construction of wharfs and the destruction of sunken ships. Both man and bird knew this world through their bodies, through work, and through the ecological relationships they formed with the greater world around them. Both man and bird connected these “little specks of scattered dust” in the middle of the world’s largest ocean to the global capitalist economy swirling around them: an economy that they felt at the bodily level and that they shaped through their own actions. Some Hawaiian guano miners even participated in one of the world’s most famous capitalist bonanzas—one of the most famous mining episodes in world history: the California Gold Rush.

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five

Nahoa’s Tears gold, dreams, and diaspora in california

henry nahoa, a young man, possibly eighteen years old, wrote a letter to his family in Hawaiʻi. They lived on the island of Maui. He lived in a mining camp in the Sierra foothills of California. Nahoa had been on this side of the ocean for eight long years, and not a single letter had arrived from home. Here is “a little clarifying thought of mine for my people on the body/self,” he wrote in his letter, which was published in the Hawaiian-language newspaper Ka Hae Hawaii. “Perhaps [they] are living, perhaps not, this is the eighth year of my living in California here, [I have] not received one letter, I am setting out letter[s] for them, [they] have perhaps arrived perhaps not, I think death has transpired.” Nahoa wrote these words on May 24, 1858. He sent this letter out across the great ocean with a bundle of others, via steamship post, thousands of miles west to Hawaiʻi. Approximately six weeks later, Ka Hae Hawaii printed Nahoa’s letter along with those of fellow California compatriots S. Wahaulaula, B. E. Kamae, and Iosepa Opunui.1 “Here are the names of them,” Nahoa continued, calling out each of his family members in turn. “Maau my sister, her place of living is at Lahaina, Maikai a woman, their place of living, [is] Kapahumanamana, Kaiwi my father, his place of living is Oloalu, perhaps [he] is living perhaps not, would that you are all living.” Why had they not written to Nahoa in eight long years? He finished his letter, “Aloha with tears, it is I here Nahoa your son, your brother, they fail to recognize, it is I here in California, here at Irish Creek.” Nahoa’s tears were not alone. Each letter in that bundle sent off to Ka Hae Hawaii was soaked with migrant workers’ aloha me ka waimaka (aloha with tears). B. E. Kamae, after calling on his friends and family in Hawaiʻi to “pray with determination to God to reach him to release this heavy baggage from us,” ended his letter: “Oia ka manao aloha me ka waim132

aka pu kekahi [That’s the loving thoughts with tears of someone].” S. Wahaulaula, after calling out his two older brothers in Honolulu for never writing to him in California, ended his letter: “Owau no o ko olua pokii aloha me ka waimaka [It is I your younger brother[,] aloha with tears].” And Iosepa Opunui, right before listing the names of the recently deceased, wrote: “A he nui no hoi ko’u aloha ia lakou me ka waimaka [Our aloha for them with tears is extremely great].”2 In this middle ground between isolation and transoceanic connection— where workers cried over the lack of attention from family members back home in Hawaiʻi, yet their written words traveled thousands of miles across a sprawling diaspora connected through the reading, writing, and oral transmission of nū hou (news)—Hawaiian migrant workers experienced California as both a land of opportunity and a place of loneliness and suffering. Love (aloha) and tears (waimaka) were the twin poles of the Hawaiian migrant workers’ experience. Hawaiians interfaced with California amid ever-shifting terrains and temporalities of work, exploitation, and opportunity. Some Hawaiians cured cattle hides on a beach near San Diego, while others “pacified” Native Americans in the interior. Some worked as boatmen and stevedores in San Francisco, while others skinned sea otters in the Channel Islands. Some mined for gold as independent and collective entrepreneurs, while others worked for wages in gold mining’s increasingly industrial mode of production. Some fled for the cities, or stayed put in cities, panhandling, prostituting, shoe shining, rabble-rousing. Some lived in jails and in prisons, others on boats; some lived in tents; others, homeless, lived on the streets. Some Hawaiians worked in factories, while others worked on farms. Spatially, Hawaiian migrants lived and labored all across California, from the shores to the Sierras. Temporally, they similarly straddled many boundaries. Hawaiians came to California under Spanish conquest, then Mexican rule, then U.S. occupation. Some came for gold; most likely came and stayed for something else. Most workers’ lives transcend simple classifications. These were not just gold miners. They were first and foremost workers—laborers in a global capitalist economy. But also, many Hawaiians transitioned from a wage-working proletariat into something more like a lumpenproletariat in California’s post–Gold Rush economy. Out of work, homeless, begging on the streets, the deindustrialization of California in the 1850s and 1860s was mirrored in the deindustrialization of Hawaiian men’s bodies. They became surplus labor, no longer necessary, trapped in a cycle of poverty, dislocation, g ol d, dr e a m s , a n d di a s p or a i n c a l i for n i a

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and abandonment. This is the story, then, of not only how hundreds of Hawaiians came to California and made this place a diasporic home, but also how a global capitalist economy shaped the geographies, temporalities, and livelihoods of an ever-precarious Hawaiian migrant workforce.3

working the coastline Hawaiian-Californian connections long predate the Gold Rush. Historian David Igler has shown that between the years 1786 and 1848, 953 foreign vessels visited California, and of those ships, 42 percent also alighted in Hawaiʻi. Ecological relationships piggybacked on these economic connections. The first cows to arrive in Hawaiʻi—the origins of a ranching economy that still thrives today—came from Spanish California in the 1790s. The first mosquitoes came on a whaling ship from San Blas, Mexico, in the 1820s. Even measles is said to have come to Hawaiʻi from Mazatlán, Mexico, on an American naval ship during the Mexican-American War. To see things the other way around, an aliʻi from the island of Niʻihau visited the port city of San Blas as early as 1789; he was likely the first Hawaiian to visit Latin America. Apparently his hosts tried to convert him to Catholicism, but he refused. In the early 1800s, scores of Hawaiian sailors worked on ships off of California’s shores, hunting sea otter furs, harvesting sealskins, and conducting trade with local villages. In 1806, several Hawaiian sailors deserted ship and fled into the mountains above San Buenaventura mission. The following year, a sixty-yearold Hawaiian performed traditional burial rites for a young Hawaiian comrade on the island of Cerros [Cedros] off of Baja California. And on July 4, 1808, Hawaiian workers in Baja California helped their American captain celebrate U.S. independence by roasting a pig “bak’d in the ground in the Sandwich Island manner” on the Benito Islands [Islas San Benito]. Hawaiians brought their culture, and their labor, to Spanish California.4 Thirteen years later, Mexico declared its independence from Spain. In the decades that followed, Hawaiians were everywhere in Mexican Alta California. They worked on the shores of San Diego, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco Bay; they labored in the Channel Islands; they interacted with Catholic missions; they helped pioneer and found a major settlement in the interior. One of the best sources for this period comes from Richard Henry Dana, Jr. who detailed the lives of several Hawaiians living on a beach near San Diego in the mid-1830s in his book Two Years Before the Mast. 134

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figure 13. William H. Meyers, Hide Houses at San Diego, California, c. 1841–44. From William H. Meyers, Journal of a Cruise to California and the Sandwich Islands in the United States Sloop-of-War Cyane, 1841–1844 (San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1955). Image #94562d, New-York Historical Society. Photography © New-York Historical Society.

There was “Mr. Mannini,” who explained to the captain of the American brig Pilgrim in broken English how he and his fellow men felt about wage work. “Aole! Aole make makou i ka hana. Now, got plenty money; no good, work. Mamule, money pau—all gone. Ah! Very good, work!—maikai, hana nui!” Instead of working, Mr. Mannini said, “Oh, we play cards, get drunk, smoke—do anything we’re a mind to.” When their money is pau (all gone), “then Kanaka work plenty.” As many as twenty Hawaiians shared the beach with Mr. Mannini. They squatted in an abandoned brick bread oven. They were part of a surprisingly large floating population of Hawaiian migrant workers living up and down the coast of Alta California in the Mexican period. Before reaching San Diego, Dana had reported Hawaiian men working onshore near both the settlements of Monterey and Santa Barbara. He referred to the Santa Barbara settlement as a “little dark-looking town, a mile from the beach; and not a sound to be heard, or anything to be seen, but Sandwich Islanders, hides, and tallow-bags.” Dana noted that the Hawaiian language was common on this shore, and he himself was learning bits and pieces “of the Sandwich island tongue which is singular enough.” 5 g ol d, dr e a m s , a n d di a s p or a i n c a l i for n i a

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Dana met and befriended other Hawaiian workers on the beach near San Diego. One was named Tom Davis. He could read and write, and spoke good English. He had also previously visited the United States. He took the name Tom Davis because it was the name of a sea captain, his first Euro-American employer. Dana also met Hope, whose name originated with the name of a vessel he had previously served on. For Tom Davis and Hope and other Hawaiian men in California, personal work histories were inscribed in their names. English-language names may have signified a certain pride in one’s cosmopolitanism, but they also functioned as a curriculum vitae. Hope could not read or write, yet he asked questions about Boston often, demonstrating a knowledge of distant interconnected nodes of the global economy. Dana was disturbed when, after having left San Diego for a few months, he returned to find Hope lying in the abandoned bread oven, sickened by disease. He pleaded with the captain of the Pilgrim to visit the dying Hawaiian, saying “but he has worked four years for our vessels, and has been in the employ of our owners, both on shore and aboard.” The captain replied, “Oh! He be d—d!” If Hope ever saw Hawaiʻi again, or if he died in the abandoned brick oven, we do not know.6 The work available to Mr. Mannini, Tom Davis, and Hope was largely in processing cattle hides and tallow. These men found themselves in the middle of Alta California’s most profitable pre–Gold Rush industry, the hide and tallow trade. Following colonization of Alta California in the 1770s, Spanish authorities had established missions along the coast, and imported cattle to “civilize” the native Indians by teaching them the art of animal husbandry. It was only after Mexican Independence, however, that the hide and tallow trade really took off as Mexican authorities privatized former mission lands and legalized foreign trade along the coastline.7 Cattle hides were in great demand among early nineteenth-century United States consumers. California cow skins became Boston men’s shoes and the belting inside New England factories. There was an ironic circularity to this transformation of cow skin, as Dana noted, for “many of them, very probably, in the end, [were] brought back again to California in the shape of shoes, and worn out in pursuit of other bullocks, or in the curing of other hides.” Tallow, on the other hand, provided raw material for candle production, for illuminating American homes (until whale oil took precedence). It was this global trade in hides and tallow that put Alta California in the U.S. orbit, as Yankee ships dominated Alta California’s economy, and California resources became integral to the United States’ Industrial Revolution. It was also at this time that 136

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California became part of the Hawaiian Pacific World, for the hide and tallow trade amplified the movement of Hawaiians across the ocean.8 Hawaiian workers performed the maritime aspects of this trade, tasks that landlubbing white men were either unable or unwilling to do. “They are complete water-dogs,” Dana remarked of the Hawaiians, “and therefore very good in boating. It is for this reason that there are so many of them on the coast of California; they being very good hands in the surf.” The most important task of the Hawaiians was to transport processed cattle hides and bags of tallow from the beach to ships waiting offshore, which meant that they carried hides one or two at a time upon their heads as they waded through surf. They wore “thick woolen caps” to protect their heads from the hides’ rough textures. They carried these products as high above their heads as possible to avoid soaking them. It was a delicate task and one that Dana and other EuroAmericans believed suited the men’s nature as “amphibious” labor.9 Yet despite being typecast for maritime work, these men’s experiences of labor on the beach—on terra firma —were just as significant as their work in the surf. In 1835 Dana and four Hawaiian men shared the responsibility of curing cattle hides. Their work was both time consuming and body punishing. From the California interior, cattle hides came to the shore, sometimes drawn by mule or oxcart, sometimes flung by the strength of men who chucked them off of towering precipices onto the beach. The men got to work puncturing holes on either side of the hide so that the skin could be suspended above the sand on sticks to dry in the sunshine (and get “as stiff as boards”). Once dry, they were staked near the shore at low tide so that incoming seawater could soak them. They processed one hundred and fi ft y hides a day. After soaking for forty-eight hours, the men then rolled up the hides and soaked them in vats of brine (seawater plus extra salt) for another forty-eight hours. Then the men stretched and staked the hides to dry in the sun again for twenty-four hours. Stretched like this, they then went to work with knives cutting off the “bad” parts—a laborious task because “the Spaniards are very careless in skinning their cattle.” They had to completely cut and shave the skins before noon because as the sun rose the hides became too stiff to clean. They spent their afternoons using scrapers to remove grease from the hides. Dana tells us that the sun’s rays drew the grease right out. Following more days of drying, the men then staked and beat the hides with flails in the open air to remove dust. Then, at last, the hides were ready for storage and transport. In all these ways, Hawaiian men came to know nature through work. They learned about cattle through the animals’ skin, through the g ol d, dr e a m s , a n d di a s p or a i n c a l i for n i a

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figure 14. E. Boyd Smith, Hide Droghing, 1911. From Richard Henry Dana, Jr. Two Years Before the Mast (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911). Courtesy, Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

grease that seeped out of it, through the smell and texture of bovine bodies. The Hawaiian men also learned about Californian nature through their experiences of the workscape: the sun, surf, wind, and waves, and the characteristics of an unusual life lived out in an abandoned brick bread oven on a California beach.10 138

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Hawaiian experiences of Alta California were not wholly defined by work. These men also engaged in consumption and leisure. In their bread oven, the “Kanaka Hotel” or “Oahu Coffee-house,” as Dana liked to call it, the Hawaiian men played cards, drank, smoked—doing “anything we’re a mind to,” as Mr. Mannini stated. When not working, the community lived off of one cow per week and sent one man to town each day to purchase “fruit, liquor, and provisions.” Indeed, Hawaiians in San Diego often put their wages back into the local economy through purchases at local businesses. Records from hide and tallow trader Henry Delano Fitch reveal at least five Hawaiians doing business at his San Diego store during the years between 1838 and 1843. One man, Namahana, sold fifty-one cattle hides to Fitch in exchange for cash and to pay off his prison debt. Another exchanged two hides for some rope. Jack Canaca, Bill Canaca, and another simply named “Canaca” exchanged labor for cash and material goods such as clothing, shoes, and tobacco. The money necessary for sustaining this way of life only lasted for so long, and it was only seasonal. Eventually, poverty pushed these men to sign contracts with foreign employers and, at least temporarily, give up their domestic way of life.11 Just off the coast of Alta California, Hawaiian migrants also worked on California’s Channel Islands in the 1830s. If the coast was devoted to the cattle industry, then the offshore islands became the last stand in a nearly century-long battle with sea otters. Indigenous labor from Russian Alaska (mostly Aleuts) had dominated the extraction of sea otter furs from the California coast for much of the early nineteenth century, but in the 1830s American trans-Pacific merchants increasingly turned to Hawaiian labor. In 1835 worlds of cattle and sea otters collided as the African-American steward of the brig Pilgrim—the cattle hide-collecting ship that Richard Henry Dana, Jr. had served on—deserted and took to hunting sea otters along the coast and Channel Islands. Allen Light (or Black Steward, as he was called) hired kanaka labor to assist in the hunt. They were employed mostly as swimmers. For example, on Santa Rosa Island, American marksmen stood on shore and shot at rafts of sea otters; then Hawaiians were tasked with swimming out to retrieve the corpses. This was a new way of procuring furs. Indigenous hunters from Kodiak Island and the Aleutian Islands in Russian Alaska hunted on kayaks with harpoons. No swimming was necessary. Only when Euro-American and African-American hunters, more accustomed to shooting fur-bearing mammals in the forests of North America, came to Alta California were the so-called amphibious Hawaiians necessary to perform the maritime aspects of the hunt. Hawaiian sea otter hunters worked for g ol d, dr e a m s , a n d di a s p or a i n c a l i for n i a

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wages, generally ten to twenty dollars per month, and traveled with and lived with the American hunters. The sea otter hunter George Nidever, for example, explained that he hired “a Kanaka Indian [a Hawaiian], employed to swim out for the otter killed; at $16 a month.”12 There were other Hawaiians in San Diego. Hawaiian migrants not only lived in bread ovens on the beach and hunted sea otters in the islands, but some also interacted intimately with the Spanish missions, including the Catholic mission in San Diego. Church records—namely marriage, baptism, and death notices—reveal evidence of Hawaiian migrants living up and down the California coast. At least twenty Hawaiians interacted with the missions between 1815 and 1846. Of these, fifteen were male, five female. Ten were listed as Canaca (using a common Spanish spelling), another listed as Yndio, or Indian, and others were not listed by ethnicity, although the priests described three of them as having mixed Hawaiian/white ancestry (what Hawaiians call hapa haole). Mission data also notes that the majority of Hawaiian converts in Mexican California were under the age of thirty: two were in their twenties, five in their teens, and three under the age of ten.13 Yet another group of Hawaiians came to Mexican California in 1839. In that year, Johann (John) Sutter of Switzerland came to California with ten Hawaiian laborers in tow. Together they founded a colony on the banks of the Sacramento River called “New Helvetia.” These ten Hawaiians—eight men and two women—were paid ten dollars a month, hired on three-year contracts. Their task was to domesticate the land, and they did so first by building grass huts in the model of traditional Hawaiian hale, then by helping build “the crude nucleus of Sutter’s Fort” and practicing agriculture alongside Native California Indians. Some historians even contend that Sutter had a romantic affair with one of his female Hawaiian workers, Manuiki (Manaiki, Manniki). There is no doubt that Hawaiian migrant workers were essential to the founding of this settlement that would later become the city of Sacramento.14 Sutter’s letters reveal more about his relationships with Hawaiian workers, including Manuiki. The earliest such letter, written by Sutter in January 1844, provides instructions to a friend that “In the Case I should be killed You will see that Manniki receive well her wages comming to her untill the last day of her being in the Establishment.” A year later, Sutter wrote from afar, instructing that the lock on Manuiki’s bedroom door be repaired. Kanaka Harry, Sutter noted, “knows where the keys are.” He did not mention that Harry and Manuiki were, as some historians suggest, a couple, and

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figure 15. Joseph W. Revere, Sutter’s Fort—New Helvetia, c. 1846. From Joseph W. Revere, A Tour of Duty in California; including a Description of the Gold Region . . . (New York: C. S. Francis & Co., 1849). Courtesy, Special Collections, The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Arlington, Texas.

that Sutter was using his power as boss to take advantage of them. With his own wife and kids back in Europe, perhaps Sutter (and also Manuiki) felt free to engage in polyamory without guilt on this distant frontier.15 Hawaiians engaged in various labor at Sutter’s fort. One worker, Kukui, must “deliver every evening the Keys, he have also to look out that the 2 Soldiers do their Duty on the Night Garde.” Makaena, on the other hand, “need very bad one plough for a couple of days to plough his field.” Even Manuiki labored. As Sutter explained, “Every Year Manuiki make a Garden of her own to plant Melons etc. Please let her choice a piece where she likes in the Garden she have allways the best and largest Melons and Watermelons.” In this same letter, Sutter explained that the worker Makaena is “to raise 25 or 30 good Christian Indians near San Jose or more, and come up to you so quick as he possibly can to assist you to protect the fort.” From agriculture to soldiering to everyday maintenance of the fort to the recruitment of Indians from the countryside, these ten Hawaiians hired and brought to California by John Sutter provided him with the necessary labor to accumulate wealth and power on the Mexican frontier.16

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table 4 Census data for San Francisco, June 1847 Category

Men

Whites Indians Sandwich Islanders Negroes TOTALS

Women

247 26 39 9 321

128 8 1 1 138

Totals 375 34 40 10 459

Source: “The First American Census in California,” Sacramento Daily Union, July 25, 1860. Compiled by the author.

By 1840, there were as many as 380 foreigners living in Mexican Alta California. One in ten were likely Hawaiian.17 The Hawaiian population of Yerba Buena—the future city of San Francisco—was even more striking. By 1847, about one in ten persons in that city, foreign or otherwise, were Hawaiian. Forty Hawaiians were reported working the ports of San Francisco Bay in 1847. Elsewhere, it should be noted, Hawaiians traveled in and out of Mexican port cities, not just Yerba Buena but also San Blas, Mazatlán, and Acapulco. On the eve of the California Gold Rush, perhaps as many as one hundred Hawaiians were living and working up and down the coasts of Mexico, the great majority in California, and the great majority of them in San Francisco.18 The Hawaiians of San Francisco present a fascinating case study of migrant workers’ diverse experiences within the Hawaiian Pacific World. Their labor—even their names—is well documented in the historical record. San Francisco’s first census, conducted in 1847 amidst the Mexican-American War, noted at least forty Hawaiians living in the city. They constituted 8.7 percent of San Francisco’s growing population. As a percentage of the city’s male population, Hawaiian men represented an even greater share: over 12 percent. “The Indians, Sandwich Islanders and negroes, who compose nearly onefi fth of the whole population of the town, are mostly employed as servants and porters,” the census reported. More specifically, “the Sandwich Islanders are usually employed as boatmen in navigating the bay, and they are said to be very serviceable in the business. Some few of the Sandwich Islanders read, and two or three can both read and write their own language.”19 These men were highly visible and well-known members of the community, if not well liked. Visiting soldier K. H. Dimmick, helping to occupy Yerba Buena for the United States during the Mexican-American War, wrote in August 1847 that 142

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“there is another people here from the Sandwich Islands called Kanakas, which I do not trouble myself to learn their alphabet, They are a puny and less intelligible race than the negroes at home And of Dirty-fi lthy beings I must say that all of the inhabitants are about alike[.] Even dogs and animals killed in the streets lay in front of the dwellings and there putrefy and not without every being removed So assostomed are they to filth that they deem it not offensive.” Meanwhile, a Protestant “sabbath school” was established in Yerba Buena that same summer, and the enrollees “included a promising class of kanakas.” It “was to meet every Sunday forenoon at the alcalde’s office.” Thus, while some saw the city’s Hawaiians as savage, others recognized them as Christian and civilized.20 Hawaiian labor was in great demand throughout the city. Even the alcalde (the mayor) of Yerba Buena, who hosted the Protestant Sabbath school, hired kanakas to work for him. A receipt from February 1847 noted frequent payments of one dollar for “labour of 1 Canaca” or “1 Canacas labour” throughout the first two months of 1847. To acquire Hawaiian workers, the alcalde turned to William A. Leidesdorff, an Afro-Caribbean entrepreneur and labor contractor in Yerba Buena. Leidesdorff exerted near monopoly control over Hawaiian workers in this city, contracting over twenty of the estimated forty Hawaiian men and women living and working in San Francisco on the eve of the Gold Rush.21 Glimpses of workers’ lives—and their personalities—can be found in Leidesdorff ’s payroll books and other business accounts. For example, there was “Capt Johnney ‘Canaca’ ” and his wife “Canaca Johney Wina.” They both worked for Leidesdorff in 1846 and 1847; they both fell deeply into debt. Leidesdorff was not a forgiving employer: when one of Captain Johnney’s friends died in San Francisco, Leidesdorff docked him pay for having “lost ½ day burying a Canaka.” Johney Wina also had her pay docked when, in October 1847, she went off with “Canaka Joe Ham” and others, playing hooky from work, and they ended up losing (presumably sinking) one of Leidesdorff ’s anchors. The Hawaiian “John Russel” also participated in that misadventure, and he was charged four dollars for his “share on Ankor lost.” He and Joe Ham were also charged forty cents each for “1 day lost going with Johney wine.” Meanwhile, Capt Johnney lost “½ day being drunk,” once in May, then twice in September just before the anchor incident.22 There were others. “Harry Oahu” bought tobacco, wine, and grog with the cash advance Leidesdorff forwarded him upon recruitment. We know more about this specific moment of labor recruitment from Leidesdorff ’s records, g ol d, dr e a m s , a n d di a s p or a i n c a l i for n i a

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including a copy of the contract that Harry Oahu, Joe Ham, and another Hawaiian named “Ben” signed on November 1, 1847. Their contract read in part: “This is to certify that we the undersigned do hereby agree to serve Capt Leidesdorff in Launches or on Shore for and in consideration of the sum of $15 pr month as follows Joe Ham 2 months, Ben 1 month. Harry Oahu 1 month and agreeing to this do make our marks herewith.” Three Xs next to their names indicated the Hawaiian men’s consent to these terms.23 There was also “Johnny Lewis,” advanced two bottles of Mexican aguardiente (brandy) when he signed up for work in 1847. There was also the worker “Thomas Edwards,” given a bottle of champagne in exchange for his labor on New Year’s Day, 1848. Shortly after enjoying his champagne, he became sick “& remained sick 2 days & 2 weeks in the calobeza,” the jail. By spring he was out and back on the streets, working for Leidesdorff wearing a beaver hat and perhaps playing “fiddle-strings,” all of which he bought from his boss in exchange for his labor. There were other Hawaiians who signed up, too: “Jack,” “Johney Lili,” and “Jim.” Jim’s Hawaiian name was Kinokolo or Kimokolo. Shipping papers indicate his agreement “to serve Capt. Leidesdorff in the Steamboat or in Launches, or on shore for the Term of four months to commence from date, for and in consideration of the sum of twelve dollars ($12) pr month.” Another Hawaiian, simply named “Canaka Boy,” presumably just a young man, was charged three dollars for “losing 3 days from being sick by drunkness” in June 1847. Ominously, John Russel, one of the anchor-losing hooligans, was charged four dollars for “damage done to the dark eyed maid” in August 1847.24 In addition to Leidesdorff ’s retinue of Hawaiian wage workers, there was also a small class of Hawaiian landowners in early San Francisco. Their presence disturbs the narrative that all Hawaiian migrants who came to North America sold their labor. Some, in fact—though a very small minority—had acquired land. Their names are recorded in at least two places: in Hubert Howe Bancroft’s 1886–1888 History of California, and in an 1873 advertisement published in the Hawaiian-language newspaper Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, which informed “friends with the blood relatives of Jack Hina, Pika Paele, Kale Puaanui, Kaupalewai, Keoni Kiwini and Keoni Parani, Keoni Panana, you should come to my office, and talk with me, then, hear of some benefits belonging to you.”25 The aforementioned men were landowners in 1847. When the Gold Rush hit the following year, they all lost their land, a dispossession that mirrored that of the Mexican Californios who also lost their land in the 144

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wake of U.S. occupation, but also mirroring the simultaneous Māhele in Hawaiʻi that dispossessed the makaʻāinana from their ancestral lands.26 Hawaiian landowners’ experiences of dispossession in California are largely unknown, except in the case of one couple, Jack and Mary Hina. A bevy of documents in both English- and Hawaiian-language newspapers from the 1850s through the 1870s record the Hinas’ struggle to hold onto their property in the wake of U.S. colonization. Jack Hina died in either 1850 or 1852. He was survived by his wife, Mary Hina, who fought in American courts to hold onto her husband’s land. We know that she lost her legal battle and that the land was taken away from her in the early 1850s. One account suggests that she moved to El Dorado County, in the heart of Gold Country, where a large Hawaiian community was then forming in the foothills. That Hawaiian land claims in California remained unsettled for decades is clear by the 1873 newspaper advertisement that announced “benefits” to the Hawaiian descendants of these men and women who had owned land in Mexican California in the years prior to U.S. occupation.27 From cattle skinning to otter hunting to maritime and domestic labor on the shores of San Francisco bay, Hawaiian men and women proved themselves essential to Mexican California’s coastal economy in the first half of the nineteenth century. Their stories, however, were quickly forgotten as workers awoke in 1848 to a new golden dawn.

going for gold Henry Nahoa was likely just ten years old when he came to California. The year was 1850. Two years prior the Hawaiian-language newspaper Ka Elele Hawaii had warned that “[we] think the people to come [to California will be] 20,000 just before January, and another one year soon [will be] 50,000. The majority will come needy.” Hawaiians did leave for California, but never in those numbers. The English-language newspaper The Polynesian estimated in early 1849 that the entire Hawaiian population stood at 80,641. With rampant disease and emigration, The Polynesian predicted that in just one year, by 1850, the population would likely be reduced by six thousand. The population had been in free fall since the arrival of Captain Cook in 1778. From an estimated precontact population of nearly half a million, the first missionary census in 1831 recorded only 130,313 Hawaiians. In 1849, with the Native population at a low of 80,000 people, The Polynesian estimated that g ol d, dr e a m s , a n d di a s p or a i n c a l i for n i a

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in fift y years only 1,070 Hawaiians would remain. Fears of accelerated demographic collapse even compelled the mōʻī, Kauikeaouli, to declare a day of “fasting, humiliation, and prayer to Almighty God” in early December 1848. It was in this context that hundreds of Hawaiians, including boys like Nahoa, left Hawaiʻi to follow their dreams in California.28 Hawaiʻi’s Christian missionaries, including those who ran the newspaper Ka Elele, were having none of it. Ka Elele’s editors saw the Gold Rush as a rush into sin. “Yet very great are the problems there [in California],” they editorialized in August 1848. “Here is a problem, famine; no food, the cost of food is very burdensome. Very long [time] for one to obtain food[.] Here is another problem, the disease; disease is abundant, and death is also abundant. Here is another; great is the rum drink, and the rioting; no Laws, nothing to protect him; no Sabbath; a truly very sinful/wicked place.” The newspaper warned its Hawaiian readers not to descend into Californian chaos. “The thoughts of some kanaka to sail there are afloat. Because of ignorance! Go; live [there]; the [things] going on there are not pono. We will soon see, the people going there, will be forgotten.” Even the Euro-American judge William Little Lee, who oversaw the Kingdom’s Māhele, agreed that “the state of morals” in California was “horrible. What else could we expect in a land where no God but Mammon is worshipped?”29 But leave for California they did. Those Hawaiians already in the state gravitated to the gold diggings along the American River. From Oregon, as many as one-third of the one hundred and fift y Hawaiian employees of the British Hudson’s Bay Company deserted for the gold mines. Hawaiian seamen on American whalers deserted at San Francisco and made their way inland toward Sutter’s settlement where Hawaiians had already been employed for years. As U.S. soldier K. H. Dimmick reported in September 1848, “People in great numbers are daily arriving here from the Sandwich Islands and other places and hardly a ship comes into port but that they loose a large portion of their Sailors.” There was even a plan afoot in Honolulu to organize a “Royal Kanaka Co.”—consisting of “30 or 40 Kanakas”—to send to California to earn profits on behalf of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi and its aliʻi and haole ministers. “Everything faces California,” wrote Lee from Honolulu; “hundreds of our best men have gone there to dig gold and die.”30 The 1850 U.S. census shows the level of Hawaiian emigration to California at the height of this transoceanic movement. The census records at least 230 Hawaiians living in California in 1850, with nearly 50 percent (N = 113) crowded into just one county: Sutter. Of those Hawaiians in Sutter County, 146

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60 were recorded as living in one of two encampments at Lacy Bar and Manhattan Bar on the North Fork of the American River. These camps were just some of the places where Hawaiian miners resided throughout California. Anecdotal data suggests that there were other major Hawaiian mining camps at the time: Sutter’s mining camp “ten miles above Mormon Island with 100 Indians and 50 kanakas” in summer 1848, and the so-called Kanaka Diggins, an “encampment of Sandwich Islanders,” numbered at “about 75” Hawaiians in summer 1849. The majority of Hawaiians were listed in the federal census without personal names, simply labeled “Kanakas.” There are several caveats to the census data. Due to the rapid mobility and invisibility of Hawaiian workers moving between San Francisco and mountain camps, it is likely that many gold miners were not counted by census enumerators. Furthermore, the San Francisco data was later destroyed by fire, and therefore hundreds of Hawaiians living and working in the Bay Area are likely not enumerated in the data. There were at least 230 Hawaiians living in California in 1850, but most probably there were many more.31 The invisibility of Hawaiian workers in the Gold Rush is evidenced by the fact that only one image is known to exist of Hawaiian miners in California, and that comes from the memoir of a white gold miner published four decades after the fact. Charles Warren Haskins described the scene in which “a number of Kanakas from the Sandwich Islands came up into the mines” in the spring of 1850. “Being of an amphibious nature,” he noted, “they concluded to prospect the bed of the South Fork of the American River.” The Hawaiian miners prospected by diving. Indeed, their “habits of diving for the precious metals in California streams entertained observers” in California, according to one historian. Haskins explained how the men did it. “They procured a number of empty kegs to which rocks and ropes were attached. These were sunk at the most favorable points, and the Kanakas, by diving down, would shovel the sand into them. They were hauled up and the sand was washed in cradles in the usual manner.”32 When Henry Nahoa arrived in California as a young man in 1850 it was an inopportune time to be a Hawaiian migrant worker in these parts. That year, California’s state legislature (California became a state in 1850) passed the Foreign Miners Tax, placing Hawaiian miners and all other immigrants at a severe disadvantage to Euro-American miners. Meanwhile, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi passed its own legislation in 1850 banning Hawaiian emigration without the express permission of the government. A companion law passed two weeks earlier, the Masters and Servants Act, had codified a system of g ol d, dr e a m s , a n d di a s p or a i n c a l i for n i a

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figure 16. Eugene Bauer, Kanakas Mining on the River, 1890. Reproduced from C. W. Haskins, The Argonauts of California (New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1890).

contract labor in the islands—perhaps an incentive for Hawaiian workers to stay and find work closer to home. When these two acts became law in 1850, both government officials and foreign capitalists held hopes that Hawaiʻi could provide for its own domestic economic growth with indigenous labor, if only workers could be forcibly restrained from leaving the Islands. This law “to Prohibit Natives from Leaving the Islands” was couched in the language of protecting the health of Hawaiian bodies, its preamble matter-of-factly stating that Hawaiians in California were dying “in great misery,” and that it was in the interest of the government to “prevent such loss to the nation, and such wretchedness to individuals.” When the law was signed by Kamehameha III in July 1850, the haole Minister of Foreign Affairs, Robert C. Wyllie, wrote to a friend: “Here we are going to enact a law to prohibit the natives from leaving the Islands, for a country where they ought to be restrained from rushing to their own death and destruction, personal rights notwithstanding.” As Wyllie reasoned, “Nobody can plead a right to suicide.”33 Eight years later, Nahoa was still in California. In 1858 he lived in a settlement of about twenty to twenty-five Hawaiians camped out along Irish Creek in El Dorado County. In September of that year, Lowell Smith, a haole missionary to the Hawaiians, visited their encampment. Smith listed the names of fourteen Hawaiian men. Like Nahoa, half of them had arrived in California 148

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in either 1849 or 1850. The other seven had trickled in from Hawaiʻi, one in 1851, four in 1852, one in 1854, one in 1857. When this Hawaiian community took shape in El Dorado County remains unclear; Hawaiian-language newspapers do not mention the men at Irish Creek until 1858.34 Nahoa had asked his family members on Maui to write to him via the post office at Coloma. But by September when Smith arrived in Coloma, Nahoa was no longer there. In fact, on his way to Coloma via Sacramento, Smith had serendipitously discovered Nahoa, although the young man did not make much of an impression on him. “I went in search of several natives of Hawaii who were living in Sacramento,” Smith wrote to Ka Hae Hawaii. “I found only three of them, Nahoa and Ainanui from Honolulu, and Haleole from Kailua. These were the only native Hawaiians I saw in Sacramento.”35 Arriving at Coloma, Smith was met by a Hawaiian named, of all things, Hawaii. Hawaii informed Smith that “only nine” Hawaiians were at Irish Creek “at this time.” Hawaii stated that “17 [had] left elsewhere, these days, because, the [amount of] water at ‘Irish Creek’ is small now. 30 miles above the cliffs, some of them have left, they are going to look for work.” The next day three Hawaiians came down from Irish Creek to meet Smith; they had hired a horse-drawn wagon to pull Smith up from Coloma to the Hawaiian encampment in the hills above. At Irish Creek, Hawaiian miners were pleased that a white missionary had arrived from the islands to provide them with Christian instruction and, even more importantly, palapala (written materials), including “Bibles, new testament, praise hymns, children’s hymns, lyrics, sermons, geography, mental arithmetic, children’s arithmetic”—texts of both religious and secular natures, almost all in the Hawaiian language. Smith wrote, “They are very happy, for the arrival of some Hawaiian palapala.” Palapala may refer to any written documents, not just Bibles and schoolbooks, but also perhaps private letters from family members back home. We do not know if Smith brought letters from Hawaiian loved ones, but either way, Hawaiian palapala brought great happiness to the migrant workers that day.36 During his one week in the mining country, Smith became despondent about the conditions that the Hawaiian men faced. “I saw their work, the gold digging,” he wrote, “and I also saw some haole people and Chinese, digging the gold. They don’t find much these days, for the lack of water. Some [make] two dollars, some three dollars a day; and some even [make] nothing.” The lack of water at Irish Creek and elsewhere around Coloma was a serious issue, not just for quenching the men’s thirst, but also for facilitating the g ol d, dr e a m s , a n d di a s p or a i n c a l i for n i a

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extraction of gold. In the early years of the Gold Rush, miners panned for gold in clear mountain streams and picked nuggets right out of the water, but by the late 1850s most mining in California was dependent upon hoses and hydraulic pressure to blast away rock and reveal the gold hidden underneath.37 It is not clear if the Hawaiians in El Dorado County were dependent on hydraulic technology in their mining. If so, we can assume that they did not control the means of production. Smith’s letters to Ka Hae Hawaii reveal as much, for he states that the Hawaiian men were not working for gold, but for wages. “They don’t save [their] money,” he wrote, “or [their] gold like the haole, or the Chinese [do]. Because, if they are earning some money, [they] go to the haole village, and buy that thing and this thing for the kino [body].” “[They] spend everything,” he noted, “then return to work again.” Here is the same critique that was put to Mr. Mannini on the beach at San Diego over twenty years earlier: why do you spend all your money rather than saving it to bring home? Smith blamed the Hawaiians’ careless spending as the primary reason why these men would likely never see Hawaiʻi again. “In my opinion they will not come back to Hawaii. The death of some people has occurred having come to California; and these people perhaps will live at that gold land, and die there,” he remarked. In their own defense, the Hawaiian miners replied to Smith, “[you] don’t understand.” “The love for [our] parents is great,” they stated, “and for [our] cousins at Hawaii, but, we are ashamed to return empty handed and worthless.” And so, fearing embarrassment, Hawaiians stayed in California, making new lives out of nearly nothing and doubling down in their commitment to make a go of it in Gold Country; in the process, they sacrificed their golden dreams on the altar of a new and less shiny reality.38 By 1860, the Hawaiian presence in gold mining had decreased. The great majority of Hawaiians in California yet continued to reside in rural mining districts. From a high of 230 Hawaiians in 1850, U.S. census data indicates that only 71 Hawaiian immigrants continued to reside in the state of California ten years later. Many had died. Joseph Opunui, in an 1858 letter to Ka Hae Hawaii, listed the names of 18 Hawaiians who had recently died in Coloma. Death was a common occurrence and may have outpaced new arrivals from Hawaiʻi. Some, too, went home, although few went home rich. Of the 71 Hawaiians in California in 1860, many were new arrivals. We know this because there were more Hawaiian women in California in 1860 than in 1850, especially when figured as a percentage of the total Hawaiian population in the state (2 percent of migrants in 1850 were women; 11 percent 150

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were women in 1860). Of those Hawaiians still in California in 1860, more were settling down with families, perhaps giving up dreams of returning home with pockets full of gold. Many Hawaiian men married Native California women and had families. Indeed, the 1860 census interestingly lists many men named “Kanaka” and even others with Hawaiian-sounding names living among bands of Indians in Fresno County. Some Hawaiians, as historian David Chang has shown, melded into Indian society in the Sierra foothills and, perhaps in the eyes of the U.S. census, may have become “Indian.” Some Indians also became “Hawaiian.” The average Hawaiian in California in 1860 was probably a single man living among other men, mostly Hawaiians, almost all in their twenties, some in their thirties, living and working in the mining regions of the state’s mountainous interior.39 Working conditions for Hawaiian gold miners were debated at length in the Hawaiian-language press. In April 1861, Ka Hae Hawaii reprinted a letter from one Dr. Frick, a Honolulu haole, who had written to a French-language paper in San Francisco to share his views about Hawaiian labor migration to California. In his letter, Dr. Frick stated that “a certain person of California is searching, [yet I] do not know his name, to get some kanaka maoli [Hawaiians] to go to his land, to work as hired hands for him.” Frick thought this was an awful idea. “If the free children of the pleasant land of Hawaii desire,” he admonished his readers, “to transfer their bodies, having been born and living beneath the hot sun of their Islands, [to] the difficulties of the cold and the heat of the four seasons of the entire year within the first year; Then, they will be pono to go to California. If they desire to give up their good and abundant food, and comfort, for the type of food [here] is not right for their well-being, and buying [food] is a great cost; then, they will be pono to go to California.” Frick continued, “If they are prepared for the appropriate clothing, the shirts and the woolen shawls, the things not desired in their native land, just the things it is impossible to be without in this land; then, they will be pono to go to California. If they seek to sharpen the fatigue, to sharpen the oppression, to live with heaviness, no comfort, with the problem of the foreigner who treats [him] with contempt because of his dark skin, then, they will be pono to quickly go to California.” Frick concluded his premonition of Hawaiian suffering arguing that out-migration to California would lead to the “diminishment of their lahui [lāhui],” and that “the delicious kalo [taro] of the fine valleys of their land [will be] no more, the fish of the sea is no more for the sailing away [of] a small portion of the commoners who haul [the catch] for the haole.” In other g ol d, dr e a m s , a n d di a s p or a i n c a l i for n i a

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words, Hawaiʻi faced ecological ruin and social disintegration should its indigenous workers leave the Islands in pursuit of wages abroad.40 Dr. Frick’s letter prompted a quick response from a Hawaiian migrant who actually knew the conditions for migrant workers in the interior of the state. From a riverside farm in Vernon township, Sutter County, T. B. Kamipele admitted that he used to live in the gold fields but had since left. He proceeded to explain what conditions were really like for Hawaiian wage workers. “In these years having lived here,” he wrote, “all the people living in the mountains, digging the gold, [we] did not receive just wages for the work.” All we got in return for our work, he wrote, was “the trembling of the swollen chest for some food and some fish.” Lacking in wages and food, Kamipele admitted that he became distrustful of his Euro-American employers in California. He warned Ka Hae Hawaii’s readers that “hired work with haole employers [in California], was close to the nature of [that of] oppressed slaves.” Giving an example, Kamipele described “a certain haole [named] Coneki,” who brought over “some kanaka people from the land [from Hawaiʻi], the number of them was perhaps fift y.” These migrants worked in California for six months, but then as “their work did not earn at all even a little compensation. They quit, and everyone went [off ] to his place as he wished.” “So that’s the importance of the hired work at this time,” he concluded. “A certain little minority has succeeded, [but] the majority, they have not succeeded.” 41 Kamipele, however, did not wholly agree with Frick’s negative assessment of the Hawaiians’ experience in California. Frick, like many other foreigners, believed that Hawaiian men’s bodies were only fit for tropical climates and would suffer if exposed to extreme cold, such as in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Dr. Frick warned Hawaiians of “transfer[ing] their bodies” to “the difficulties of the cold and the heat of the four seasons of the entire year.” But Kamipele rejoined that “there is no problem with the clothing things, the wool/flannel shirts are numerous for keeping warm for the cold season.” These items, he stated, can be found “in the store[s] in every location of California, with blanket[s] for sleeping in the night,” as well.42 Similarly, where Dr. Frick warned of famine, “for the type of food [here] is not right for [a Hawaiian’s] well-being, and buying [food] is a great cost,” Kamipele shot back that “there is absolutely no famine concerning food, the food is numerous in every location.” Frick’s final warning to the Hawaiians concerned “the diminishment of their lahui,” the Hawaiian nation. Decades of population loss due to epidemic diseases, decreased fertility, and, of course, emigration, 152

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had put the future of the Hawaiian lāhui in jeopardy. Leaving for California would not help preserve your people, he warned. But Kamipele came to a very different conclusion. “[As for] sickness,” he wrote, “there is no great sickness in California here, it is like the [native] land, the amount of illness. The living here is good for the lack of disease.” Despite haole fears for his body, Kamipele ultimately considered California to be a healthy environment, at least as healthy as Hawaiʻi, and certainly no worse. Not only was California a healthy environment, he wrote, but the health of the Hawaiian people was maintained by the care of the community. Here, “all the lala [lālā; branches/limbs; i.e., members of society] are strong in aiding the kino [body].” “Therefore,” he proudly proclaimed, “the work is going well everyday with the lack of pain for the body.” 43

in the city Henry Nahoa was determined to avoid embarrassment. After eight years in the gold mines, and still without any aloha from family members back home, he wiped away his tears and left the mines for the bustling city of Sacramento in the summer of 1858. By spring 1859 he had settled in. Friends or family had clearly gotten wind of the move, for by February he now had mail waiting for him at the Sacramento post office. He was renting a tiny space in a “small building,” in the alleyway between Front and Second Streets and I and J Streets, one block from the Sacramento River, near the docks. He shared the building with another person, a “mulatto” woman named Lucretia Grossbeck. On March 3, 1859, they had a dispute in which the police became involved and Nahoa and Grossbeck were arrested. Apparently Nahoa was Grossbeck’s tenant, and she desired to evict him from the building. On March 3 while Nahoa was away she threw all his furniture into the alley. When Nahoa returned to see his belongings in the street, he beat the woman, thus prompting police to intervene. She was charged with “malicious mischief ” for destroying his furniture, while Nahoa was charged with assault and battery. Two weeks later, Nahoa, along with another man named John Alexander, “both colored,” were charged by Lucretia Borgia (Grossbeck?) with “disturbing the peace” and tried in the city’s police court, then promptly “discharged.” Nahoa was free, but he was most likely not moving back in with that woman. Yet all indications suggest that Nahoa remained in the city of Sacramento throughout the 1860s. Remarkably, the Sacramento Daily Union reported g ol d, dr e a m s , a n d di a s p or a i n c a l i for n i a

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that Nahoa was evicted once again from another city residence in 1868, although this time the eviction took place in court, not in the alleyway with all his furniture splayed out on the ground.44 The move to the city was a common experience for many Hawaiian workers in California. With their golden dreams dashed, these globetrotting proletarians now had to find new sources of revenue. Many moved into the maritime and domestic trades that their ancestors had pioneered a generation earlier in Mexican California. Some disembarked from ships in San Francisco and in fact never went to the mountains. The allure of the city was just too great, although not every Hawaiian felt that way. The future mōʻī, Alexander Liholiho, for example, dismissed San Francisco when he wrote home to a friend circa 1850 that “I did not write you from San Francisco as I promised. . . . I knew you would not like to hear about sufferings and murderers and gamblers, and what else could I write from there?” Despite his royal misgivings, these two regions—Hawaiʻi and San Francisco—became intricately linked almost immediately after the Gold Rush began. “The city that shared the name of the gentle St. Francis of Assisi,” wrote historian Gray Brechin, “began to act like Poe’s Maelstrom, drawing everything from the Rockies to China, and from Alaska to Chile, into its growing maw.” Hawaiian migrants, too, were sucked into San Francisco’s maelstrom, and so was Hawaiian agriculture. The production of salt beef, fresh fruits and vegetables, and even sugar, expanded rapidly in the early 1850s to feed hungry gold miners thousands of miles away. In some ways, Hawaiʻi was San Francisco’s “cantado,” a term Brechin uses to define San Francisco’s tributary regions, those places transformed by the power of the all-consuming yet distant metropolis.45 Not yet a metropolis, San Francisco in 1850 was more of a “dunescape” and tent city: deforested down to its last tree in just a few years, there was seemingly not enough wood, labor, or perhaps even time to build a sturdy city on the bay. Merchandise was stacked out in the open. Ships in the harbor were creatively converted into shops and residences. In the early 1850s, a new downtown was built entirely upon landfill in Yerba Buena Cove, and wharfs, including the 700-yard-long Central Wharf, were extended into the bay to accommodate hundreds of ships coming and going. English-language newspapers reported Hawaiian migrants on the streets, on the wharfs, among the tents. The newspapers more often than not depicted Hawaiian urban pioneers as homeless vagabonds with penchants for drink and violence. They were also frequently presented as victims. Their bodies were seen as weak and 154

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their deaths duly noted. For example, there was “Bill,” a Hawaiian migrant who died in the fall of 1850 after having slept in a tent with diarrhea for the last few nights of his life. The Sacramento Transcript reported his death as part of a larger cholera outbreak among Hawaiian migrants in both Sacramento and San Francisco. Attempting to locate the source of the disease, the Transcript reported that in San Francisco a camp of “Kanakas”—at least seven of them—were living “in the midst of fi lth and dirt” and that the men were “of irregular and intemperate habits.” Thus readers were told that urban Hawaiians were at least in part cultivating cholera through “irregular” behaviors, perhaps endangering the rest of the city in the process. In this discourse, cholera marked Hawaiians, and not the urban environment, as diseased.46 Health, indeed, was a real concern for newly arrived migrants. U.S. Navy midshipman Edward Brinley, Jr. wrote from Honolulu en route to San Francisco in 1849 that “I may be in San Francisco the next time I write—but I am sure I would rather stay here till I can leave for home, for it is very sickly over there & no fresh provisions.” Upon arrival in San Francisco Bay, Brinley described the coast as a “miserable climate.” “I dont wonder there is so much sickness on shore [here],” he wrote; “it is estimated that at least one half of the population of San Francisco are constantly sick.” He blamed the sickness partly on the quality of housing in the city. “Half the town is nothing but tents: & the other half shanties that are roofed with [illegible] canvass or such like—very few of the houses except the old ones have shingle roofs.” The Kingdom of Hawaiʻi’s own consul in San Francisco in September 1850 wrote to Honolulu with concern for the health of this city’s Hawaiian workers: “Last winter I had a great deal of trouble with the poor ‘Kanakas,’ ” he wrote. They “were in a deplorable & starving condition, many of them died. I could not see them suffer and with the assistance of some of the old residents of the Islands succeeded in rendering them comparatively comfortable and no doubt saved many of the poor creatures lives.” 47 More sensational than stories of kanakas dying, however, were stories of kanakas already dead. In 1849, Brinley wrote that “it is not at all rare to pick up one & two dead bodies in the streets in the mornings half buried in the mud & water.” In the spring of 1851 the body of a “Mexican or Kanaka” was discovered, headless, floating in San Francisco Bay near Central Wharf, reported the Daily Alta California. The newspaper did not make clear why this body was “Mexican or Kanaka,” in fact stating that “there were no marks upon the body by which it could be identified.” Yet skin color marked the g ol d, dr e a m s , a n d di a s p or a i n c a l i for n i a

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body as nonwhite, and an ambiguous designation was sufficient enough for most readers. A second body was found in the sand on Dupont Street in San Francisco two years later that locals surmised might be the corpse of a “Kanaka woman” who years earlier “had a tent near the spot” but hadn’t been seen since. These decapitated and decomposing bodies—headless, nameless, hard to identify—marked Hawaiians as shadowy figures in the urban collective. Kanakas only seemed to appear when corpses washed up on shore.48 As for the living, California newspapers provided frequent updates on the bad behavior of urban kanakas, portraying them not only as victims of crime but also as its perpetrators. There was the Hawaiian who got upset with the French card dealer during a game of “Monte Bank” on San Francisco’s Long Wharf, and “fell to and gave [the Frenchman] a severe thrashing.” Or there was the Hawaiian man on horseback on Third Street in the city of Sacramento who almost ran over a pedestrian, pulled his pistol on the man, and then using “very undignified and insolent language” sped away upon the approach of a police officer. Tit for tat, Hawaiians in the city were frequent targets of violent crime. There was a kanaka “with an unpronouncable name,” reported the Daily Alta California, who was robbed of his pistol on the Long Wharf by a youth. There were also a group of Hawaiian men drinking at the Abbey, a tavern on Pacific Street in San Francisco, in May 1852, who were assaulted when a man at the bar called one of them a “d—n bloody Kanaka” and drew a revolver. Sometimes the police made arrests; sometimes they did not.49 The unusual behaviors of exotic immigrants in a cosmopolitan city sometimes also caught the eye of city journalists. Readers of the Sacramento Daily Union probably found amusing the tale of a drunken “Kanaka” who the night before had “walk[ed] the plank” across the slough near the Sacramento courthouse. Drunk, he lost his balance and fell into the “commingled mass of mud, water and offal of that interesting locality.” He pulled himself out, only then to immediately flip over and back into the muck. Readers were likely less amused by the reported use of Sacramento’s Sutter Lake as the “City Bath House” by an “unwashed” and unwanted mix of Chinese, Hawaiians, and African-Americans. The writer of this April 1852 article was embarrassed to see the men “disrobe” and “make their toilet” at I Street beside the lake. Such savagery in the city was just what Hawaiʻi’s Christian missionaries had feared would become of Hawaiians in this land of golden sin.50 Besides diseased, dead, and disorderly bodies, the most popular imagining of Hawaiian migrants in the city was the “destitute” kanaka, the homeless and shivering migrant worker sleeping on the streets. The destitute kanaka 156

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represented what Euro-Americans most feared about Hawaiian bodies, that they were strong at work but simultaneously weak and fragile when exposed to unfamiliar environments, such as the climate and society of California. In 1857 the Daily Alta California reported on “an old Kanaka” who was found “last night, wrapped in his blankets, with a handkerchief of crackers by his side, lying on the sidewalk of Davis street, shivering and chattering with cold.” The article went on to identify the man as David Anton, a thirty-year veteran of the American whaling industry, now seventy-five years old and living on the streets of San Francisco. “He speaks good English, and has forgotten his native tongue,” the writer continued. “He says that he visited the Islands a few months ago, for the first time in thirty years, and found himself a stranger in his native land, and could scarcely recognize the town of Lahaina where he was born,” which would have been in the 1780s, only a few years after the death of Captain Cook. The grizzled Hawaiian man told the reporter that he “despises” the way Hawaiians act today like they are Americans, but “how [can they] be good Americans, when they have never lived in New Bedford, and never been a whaleman for thirty years, as he has?” And yet Anton’s claims to Americanness, won over thirty years of service in the U.S. whaling industry, could not protect him from his near-death, huddled on a San Francisco sidewalk with only a blanket on his body and crackers by his side. Although he felt “a stranger in his native land,” he was just as much a stranger in California.51 Poverty and homelessness were rampant among Hawaiians in San Francisco, such that the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi’s consul to the city, Charles Hitchcock, wrote to Honolulu many times requesting instructions as to what he might do, if anything, to help the destitute Hawaiians knocking at his door. “There are two Hawaiian subjects here now sick and destitute—at least they say they are,” he explained in July 1862. “I have become responsible for their Board & Medical attendance and wish you would inform me whether such expenses will be reimbursed by the Govt & if so how?” Furthermore, he requested “instructions as to what I am to do in cases like this for now that the Hawaiians have commenced applying for relief I must expect more. In the two cases alluded to they are miners and not Seamen & what I have done I ask no recompense for; but would like to know what to do in future.” Two months later, he wrote to the Hawaiian government in Honolulu again, stating that “several cases of Hawaiian subjects—mostly seamen—applying for relief at this Consulate have occurred of late . . . Please inform me what I am to do in such cases, for in this as in cases like Heleike [a Hawaiian arrested g ol d, dr e a m s , a n d di a s p or a i n c a l i for n i a

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and jailed in San Francisco], I incur expenses not provided for by your circlur to diplomates Agents & consuls. I have paid out for legal advice, services of police, photographs &c. in Heleikes case $30. for which I have taken no vouchers, the sums paid being only in small amounts.” Finally, three years later, Hitchcock received vague instructions noting only that Hawaiian migrant workers’ “ignorance of the language and ways of your town makes them fall an easy prey to a certain class of men.” “Our natives,” the instructions continued, “more than any others, require an almost parental protection and I hope you will extend it over them whenever practicable.” 52 Sacramento, too, had homeless Hawaiians. One wonders what Henry Nahoa thought of these men who lived on the streets of his city. In October 1860 under the straightforward headline, “The Destitute Kanaka,” the Sacramento Daily Union described a Hawaiian, “[a] poverty-striken and destitute subject,” who was “found near the furnace of the Pioneer Mills, on First street,” sleeping close to the furnace’s flames to keep warm through the night. When he was discovered in the morning, his pants were reportedly on fire, and one leg was “burned to a blister.” He was no prince, no veteran whaler. He was just one poor man, with no great story to tell. The Union reported some people in the neighborhood had fed him through the night, but that he was on the path of no return toward death. Expressing thoughtfulness and great aloha, the Union editorialized that if the man “dies where he lays, his death will leave a stigma upon the people of Sacramento not soon to be forgotten.” The man was taken to the city hospital by a police officer, but before night, “he ran away again . . . and sought his warm lodgings, near the furnace of the Pioneer Mill, on First street.” Because of this, the Union lost all sympathy and the next day changed their headline from “Destitute Kanaka” to “The Imbecile Kanaka.” “He is such a miserable object,” the paper declared. A “poor creature, lower, if possible, than the brute,” was the newspaper’s assessment of the dying man. For rebuffing the city’s philanthropy—for denying the white community their role as uplifters of the world’s less fortunate races, their “white man’s burden”—the “imbecile” Hawaiian was ridiculed, insulted, and left to die on First Street.53 If Nahoa had not witnessed these occurrences in person, he may have read about them in the papers, for by 1860 he was reading and writing in English, or so he told Ka Hae Hawaii. Writing from Sacramento, he wrote “half of his letter [to Ka Hae] in the Hawaiian language, and half in the haole [English] language.” Nahoa told the paper that “a majority of the kanaka in that foreign land [California] are searching for the dala [kālā; money] inside 158

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of the dirt of the earth.” But there were also at least six Hawaiians living in the city of Sacramento, he reported. They were “R. H. Nahoa, Davida, L. A. Maikai, Elia Waikane, Kapua, Kae.” This was more than the two Hawaiians living in Sacramento according to the 1860 U.S. census, but it was also perhaps less than the actual number, for the question remained: did Nahoa know of and include the name of the Hawaiian man who slept on First Street beside the furnace of the Pioneer Mill? And if not, how many other Hawaiians were living in the interstices of California’s cities in the decades following the Gold Rush?54

on the farm Sometime between 1868 and 1870, Henry Nahoa left Sacramento to reside in a boardinghouse in the rural town of Vernon, Sutter County, about twentyfive miles north of the city along the Sacramento River. The 1870 U.S. census recorded “Henry Mahoa,” thirty years old, living in Manneha Kapu’s boardinghouse along with eleven other Hawaiian men. The census listed each man’s occupation—including Nahoa’s—as “fisherman.” They ranged in age from Nahoa, thirty, to Bull Kaawa, sixty. Manneha Kapu, the female boardinghouse owner was also sixty years old, and living alongside her and the twelve male boarders were a few younger relations, three California-born Hawaiian children of undetermined parentage: Hamet Kapu, male, 16; Lipica Kapu, female, 8; and, John Davis, male, 5. The biological parents of these children are not recorded in the census, but it can be assumed that Kapu and her husband were raising the children as their own. Her husband, John, was recorded living next door with four other Hawaiian men on the agricultural estate of the Euro-American Roth family of Pennsylvania. The five Hawaiian men at Roth’s were also listed as “fishermen.” Remarkably, between the Kapus, the twelve Hawaiian men in the boardinghouse, the four other Hawaiian men on the Roth farm, and the three children living with Manneha Kapu, this Hawaiian community at Vernon—twenty-one people in all—comprised nearly 3 percent of the town’s population and was the largest nonurban congregation of Hawaiian migrants then living in the state of California.55 Nahoa was not the only one to move to the farm. By 1870, Hawaiian migrants had scattered from mining camps into jobs and livelihoods, as well as unemployment and homelessness, all across California, from the mountains to the cities to farms. While most Hawaiians still engaged in some form g ol d, dr e a m s , a n d di a s p or a i n c a l i for n i a

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of mining (or at least that was the occupation most frequently recorded in the federal census), the trend in the 1860s was diversification in work and work environments. In the 1860s, more Hawaiian women were living in California than ever before. Some worked as prostitutes, others as domestic servants, but most simply married working men and, according to the census, stayed at home and engaged in unpaid domestic work. Fully 36 percent of all Hawaiian migrants living in California in 1870 were women (up from 11 percent in 1860). One consequence of this change was more and more Hawaiian men in California started families, having given up dreams of returning home with riches to share with their kin. Geographically, this phase of Hawaiian migration to and within California not only saw the spreading out of Hawaiians across a greater assemblage of California counties, but also witnessed a marked exodus away from the traditional mining regions and toward cities and farms.56 In some ways these migration patterns were a reflection of larger economic and ecological transformations in California’s post–Gold Rush trajectory. Historian Andrew Isenberg has argued that Frederick Jackson Turner was wrong when in the 1890s he claimed that the history of the American frontier (i.e., the U.S. West) followed a linear progression from wilderness to agriculture to industrialization. Rather, the history of California, at least after U.S. annexation, followed the exact opposite trajectory: first it was industrial, then agricultural, and only later, in the age of John Muir, was there ever any “wilderness.” Other scholars have shown how in post–Gold Rush California, Euro-American male experts sought to “reform” the postindustrial landscape by turning it (back, as they supposed) into a “garden.” They saw California’s mining landscape as not just ecologically ruined but also socially and morally deformed. By promoting small-scale agricultural production, they hoped for a latter-day manifestation of Thomas Jefferson’s ideal society built upon a foundation of free-laboring white male small-scale producers. But California’s postmining turn to agriculture was in fact just as “industrial” as mining. Rather than providing support for small-scale producers, agricultural development in California largely benefited huge corporations that came to own the great majority of land and water resources. In this environment, immigrants continued to work mostly for wages, and only few came to control the means of production.57 Before Nahoa had even arrived in Vernon, other Hawaiians were already there building a rural Hawaiian community. T. B. Kamipele had settled in Vernon as early as 1861. By 1867, John Kapu was also living in Vernon, writing 160

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frequently to, and regularly reading, Ka Nupepa Kuokoa. According to the missionary newspaper The Friend, prior to 1868 “Kapuu” [John Kapu], the Hawaiian “chief” of the Vernon community, as the paper styled him, led his people eastward across the Sacramento River from Fremont to Vernon. In Vernon, the newspaper reported eight Hawaiian men, one Hawaiian woman, three Hawaiian children, and one Native American woman living in this new settlement. The newspaper reported that the Hawaiians were good fishermen; they had a skiff on which they plied the river, catching pike and sturgeon in prodigious quantity. The Hawaiians invited the newspaperman to share a supper of fresh Sacramento River fish and blackberries with their community. Living off the land, it appeared that these migrants had found a way to avoid wage labor by living a life centered around communal subsistence production.58 But the Hawaiians in Vernon could not completely avoid capitalist intervention in their lives. On April 4, 1868, Kapu wrote to Ka Nupepa Kuokoa to complain about the tax system in California. In precapitalist Hawaiʻi, access to common lands and waters were controlled by land managers known as konohiki who acted as middlemen between the makaʻāinana (commoners who grew food and caught fish) and the aliʻi (the ruling class who lived off of makaʻāinana labor). California, Kapu wrote, had its own konohiki. When you fish the rivers, he explained, you must withhold some fish “for the Konohiki, because that side and this side of the entire River is held by haole.” In the early days of the Gold Rush, rivers were common property. But, rapidly, mining claims were extended to cover the mineral resources within river and streambeds, and eventually even the water flowing through these beds was claimed. Kapu had perhaps expected twenty-five miles north of Sacramento that Hawaiians could find a fishing commons to live by, but instead he found that every riverbank was the private property of white men.59 Kapu’s access to fish was not only threatened by the enclosure of this riparian commons, but also by long-term ecological transformations in the Sacramento River. Decades of mining upstream had left the Sacramento River watershed clogged with sediment and mining sludge. As a result, several fish species were extirpated from the Sacramento, including the oncenumerous salmon. By the 1870s decades of mining had, according to one historian, “rendered the American and Feather tributaries [of the Sacramento] all but useless for salmon production.” Apparently, Hawaiian fishermen were still catching pike and sturgeon, but by the 1870s their commons, both in the river and on the lands surrounding it, was fast disappearing.60 g ol d, dr e a m s , a n d di a s p or a i n c a l i for n i a

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Between 1868 and 1870, more Hawaiians—including Nahoa—arrived at Vernon. The small community was thriving, and John Kapu was extending his business interests beyond fishing. As early as the summer of 1872, some Hawaiians began to grow opium in Sutter County. A Sacramento Daily Union article reported a “Kanaka company” raising the poppy at Butte slough in the northern part of Sutter County. John Kapu also began opium production in Vernon. In June 1873, the Daily Alta California reported that Kapu owned a ranch near Vernon on which he was growing “two acres of opium poppies.” The paper reported the climate in Sutter County was favorable for opium production and that the Hawaiian farmer would likely harvest a marketable product. Meanwhile, fishing continued at Vernon, and some Hawaiian men may have worked on the river boats plying up and down the Sacramento. Even as the community dwindled in the 1870s, in 1877, a California newspaper reported “a colony” of “Kanaka fishermen . . . [who] ply net and line” in the Sacramento River near Vernon, but the paper only mentioned these men to substantiate a local rumor accusing the Hawaiians of having quietly buried a drowned man’s corpse on “Wilcox’s Island.” As much as the Hawaiians in Vernon desired to live apart from the white man’s ways, they were still seen as transgressors by the Euro-American community. By 1880, only fifteen Hawaiians continued to fish at Vernon. They lived among four separate residences, and over half of them were under the age of eighteen, six of whom were not even born in Hawaiʻi; they were American-born Hawaiians. Vernon had become a community in transition, where stories of old Hawaiʻi, of trans-Pacific migrations and diaspora, and of a generation of hard work in the gold mines were the stuff of memory rather than lived experience.61 Henry Nahoa never lived to see Hawaiʻi again. After moving to Vernon, he did, however, do something quite extraordinary. On September 3, 1871, he traveled to the Sacramento County courthouse with fellow Hawaiian Abel Mapuowai, also of Vernon, to become a naturalized citizen of the United States. He was not alone. On September 1, six Hawaiian men, including John Kapu, became naturalized, and on September 4, five more Hawaiian men were naturalized, making thirteen new Hawaiian-Americans in all. One wonders what motivated these men to become U.S. citizens. Were they renouncing their status as Hawaiians? Were they hoping to gain greater opportunities as Americans? It is strange to consider these men choosing to become American citizens, when just a generation later, following U.S. annexation, tens of thousands of Hawaiian men and women became U.S. citizens against their will. 162

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figure 17. Portrait of Jennie Mahuka, Ellen Mahuka, and Serrah Keaala, Vernon, California, c. 1880. [SC30090] MSS 160 Dorothy M. Hill Collection, Meriam Library Special Collections, California State University, Chico.

But men such as Henry Nahoa had lived nearly their entire adult lives in the United States. They had come to California as immigrants just as EuroAmericans had come following the Mexican-American War. They had worked alongside people of all races in the mines, and staked their claims to Californian soil as much as any other man. Perhaps it was their “color” that persuaded them to become citizens. They lived in a California in the 1870s increasingly dominated by discourses of race and racism. They had witnessed g ol d, dr e a m s , a n d di a s p or a i n c a l i for n i a

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African-Americans granted full citizenship following the U.S. Civil War, and yet they simultaneously saw white working-class men and women organize vehemently, and sometimes violently, against Chinese workers. Their own racial status was confused at best. Census enumerators in 1870 reported most Hawaiians in California as “white” (53 percent) but others were listed as “black” (19 percent), “mulatto” (4 percent), and “Indian” (1 percent), and even at times they were assigned made-up categories not officially recognized by the census, such as “Colored” (12 percent), “P” (for Polynesian?) (7 percent), and “K” (for Kanaka?) (3 percent). Nahoa and his fellow fishermen were listed as “black” in the 1870 census. As a “black” man in race-sensitive California, did Nahoa seek citizenship to overcome racial oppression?62 Nahoa was not an American for long before he suffered a debilitating injury. He was admitted to the Sacramento County hospital on June 3, 1873. He gave his name as “Henry,” and told the hospital “that he [had] hurt his arm by being thrown from a horse some months since, and that he worked at the Lambard Mills.” Whether his injury was work-related—related to a job at the Lambard Flour Mills in downtown Sacramento, a line of work not at all revealed by the title “fisherman” in the U.S. census—is unknown. But after injuring his arm, Nahoa had apparently failed to seek treatment until June. The doctors were forced to amputate his arm “about three inches from the shoulder joint.” Nahoa never left Sacramento County hospital. He spent eight days without an arm and then died of pyemia on June 11, 1873.63

rqr Henry Nahoa’s life story offers a window into a new history of California as an essential node in the nineteenth-century Hawaiian Pacific World. Hawaiians came to California as early as the late eighteenth century and kept coming throughout the nineteenth century. Hawaiians in the Mexican era took on Hispanicized names, worked on the margins of the cattle industry, hunted sea otters, married locals, and some even converted to Catholicism. Nahoa came to California as a young boy, probably just ten years old. He passed through San Francisco in 1850, which just years earlier had been a fairly Hawaiianized city: migrant Hawaiians served as stevedores and as domestic laborers; some even owned land. Later, as San Francisco continued to grow into a major Pacific metropolis, Hawaiians were more likely to be 164

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found begging in the streets or languishing in prisons. Those who never made it home to Hawaiʻi became part of California’s emerging lumpenproletariat—a permanent underclass of surplus labor, deindustrialized bodies. Nahoa himself made the move from mountainous mining to urban industrial labor. He was, at times, evicted from his dwellings, and he worked for a time as a fisherman, escaping from the capitalist economy in search of the last vestiges of California’s rural commons. Hawaiians did it all. They were landowners and wage laborers; they were unemployed and homeless; they were farmers and fishermen; some went off to live with Native American families, and some became U.S. citizens. The declining work opportunities available to Hawaiian men in California mirrored a process playing out all across the Pacific World in the 1860s and 1870s. Extractive industries such as gold mining, guano mining, and whaling were all fast disappearing. For nearly a century, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi had been a net exporter of human labor. Now the tides were turning. In place of a transpacific extractive economy dependent on Hawaiian migrant labor, a new mode of production was emerging: the monocultural plantation complex. In Hawaiʻi, all eyes turned toward sugar. Hawaiian workers were encouraged to come home and work in the cane fields. They would ultimately find that their labor was no longer needed there, as well.

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Beckwith’s Pilikia “kanakas” and “coolies” on haiku plantation

“we are likely to be very pilikia [troubled] for want of sufficient cattle,” George Beckwith wrote to a company agent on April 5, 1865. But cows were not his only problem. One year later he wrote, “Worms, as well as dry weather, are upon us. Food is very scarce, much sickness prevails among the men, and we have no judge for the delinquents.” Out of frustration, or perhaps exasperation, Beckwith threw all his problems into just two sentences: worms, dry weather, lack of food, sick workers, delinquent workers. Running a sugar plantation was more pilikia (trouble) than he had asked for.1 Beckwith’s pilikia—his challenge—was to manage and discipline both labor and environment on the Haiku Sugar Company plantation in East Maui in the 1860s.2 Human bodies and sugarcane agroecology shaped the contours of intense racial and class struggle in the second half of the nineteenth century in Hawaiʻi. Plantation managers such as Beckwith were often displeased with their Native workers and sought to import Chinese “coolies” to take their place.3 The ultimate triumph of coolies over kanakas in Hawaiʻi was the consequence of a twenty-five-year process of experimentation, shifting racial categorizations, and the increasing use of legal and extralegal means to discipline workers’ bodies. Beckwith’s letters from Haʻikū are the perfect case study for understanding how Hawaiian and Chinese workers, alongside worms, cows, and soil, in a world of labor contracts, police raids, courthouses, and prisons, came together to make plantation life very pilikia indeed for capitalists and their surrogates. Moreover, Beckwith’s trials and tribulations at Haʻikū show how macrolevel global transformations regarding land, labor, and trade across the Pacific World influenced the micro-narratives of one small place in East Maui. In the wake of free trade and free labor victories in both China and Hawaiʻi, 166

workers were uncoupled from the land and began to move in new directions across the Pacific World.4 The first coolies came to Hawaiʻi in 1852. At Haʻikū, Beckwith fought on two fronts as he simultaneously sought to acquire coolie labor from China but also struggled against local Hawaiians who controlled the nearby land and their own bodily labor. Feeding workers and getting the plantation’s products to market involved a transoceanic network of labor, capital, and nature from across the Pacific World, tying Hawaiʻi even tighter into the capitalist net of the world economy. This is the story of how Chinese migrant workers displaced and replaced indigenous workers not just in Hawaiʻi but throughout the Pacific, closing the book on a century of economic, demographic, and cultural changes that had made the Hawaiian Pacific World. By 1880, the majority of workers in Hawaiʻi were no longer Hawaiian, and coolies rather than kanakas were sought the world over for their labor.

from tangshi to coolies In 1861, J. A. Kaelemakule, a supporter of Hawaiʻi’s sugar industry, wrote in a local newspaper that sugar was nothing new to Hawaiians. Cane, or kō, had flourished in the archipelago for over one thousand years. The first Polynesian settlers intentionally brought it with them from the South Pacific. While Hawaiians did not traditionally mill or process kō, it was still a useful plant. “The value of sugar at that time,” Kaelemakule wrote, was as “a medical item, a kapa dye, a rum, and as food.” 5 People of Chinese descent in Hawaiʻi claim a different origin story for the cultivation of sugarcane. In 1802, a Chinese tangshi (sugar master) remembered as Wong Tze-Chun arrived in the Islands. He took passage on a foreign sandalwood-trading ship from Guangzhou. He carried a stone mill and boilers, and upon arrival set up shop on Lānaʻi, one of the driest islands in the archipelago, a place where all attempts at sugar cultivation in the nineteenth century would fail. Wong tried his hand at milling the wild kō that grew on the island. He is said to have returned to China one year later. He is often credited with being the first person to mill sugarcane in Hawaiʻi.6 Chinese sugar masters like Wong helped pioneer Hawaiʻi’s early sugar industry. In 1828, two Chinese migrants, Ahung and Atai, established a company, Hungtai Company, and erected a sugar mill at Wailuku, Maui. Another Chinese-run company, Samsing & Company based in Honolulu, “k a n a k a s” a n d “cool i e s” on h a i k u pl a n tat ion

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established cane plantations on the islands of Hawaiʻi and Maui. In the late 1820s, there were approximately thirty to forty Chinese migrants living in the Hawaiian Islands. Samsing’s plantations employed Chinese tangshi as managers and an all-Hawaiian workforce in the fields.7 Boki even had a mill and plantation in Oʻahu’s Mānoa valley. After leasing his operation to four Euro-Americans, one of these men, William French, began operating his own cane mill in 1835 at Waimea, Kauaʻi. French employed Chinese sugar masters to design and manage the mill. He did not establish a plantation; rather, he counted on local Hawaiians to harvest wild cane or grow their own cane to bring to the mill for processing. That same year, three EuroAmerican men of the firm Ladd & Company established a rival sugar operation at nearby Kōloa, Kauaʻi. Significantly, Ladd & Co. worked 980 acres of good land at Kōloa that was leased by the mōʻī, Kauikeaouli (Kamehameha III), on which Ladd & Co. established not only a mill—as many had before them—but also a large-scale plantation. They were forced to hire significant numbers of Native workers to grow and harvest cane. When they started, the company’s plantation manager at Kōloa, a haole named William Hooper, hired twenty-five Hawaiians to work as field laborers.8 The two rival sugar companies on Kauaʻi advanced rapidly. By March 1838, anywhere from one hundred to four hundred Hawaiians were employed on the Ladd & Co. plantation in Kōloa. Meanwhile, William French was “paying the Chinese at Waimea 10 dolls. per month” to work his Chinese-style mill. By comparison, the average Native field worker on the Kōloa plantation made 12.5 cents per day (approximately $3.25 per month). In this battle between two haole-run sugar companies—French’s Waimea mill focused on boiling and milling, recruited Chinese tangshi and employed Chinese technologies, but relied on the harvesting of wild cane; while Ladd & Co.’s plantation at Kōloa focused on cane cultivation, relied on Native wage labor, but neglected milling—it was the latter company, under Hooper’s management at Kōloa, that ended up on top. By the end of 1838, French’s mill had closed. It was Hooper’s focus on cultivating Hawaiian workers that proved more successful than French’s cultivation of Chinese expertise.9 Ladd & Co.’s operation in Kōloa had two advantages. One, they grew their own sugar. While French’s Chinese-run operation followed a more Guangdong-based model of sugar manufacture—cane cultivation and milling were undertaken by separate entities—this model did not result in commercial success in Hawaiʻi, probably because the Hawaiian makaʻāinana could not be induced to harvest as much cane individually as Ladd & Co. 168

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could produce collectively by means of the plantation system. Two, Ladd & Co. had steamed ahead of French’s operation by replacing their mill’s Chinese-style vertical rollers with new horizontal iron rollers. While the Chinese double-roller mill remained the most commonly used technology in Hawaiʻi until the early 1850s, eventually steam-driven iron rollers, like the ones on William Hooper’s plantation, became the norm, and the technologies of the Chinese sugar master became obsolete.10 In the 1840s, the role of the Chinese tangshi faded into the not-so-distant past as plantations emerged that were wholly reliant on Euro-American and Hawaiian labor alone, the former providing skilled labor, the latter unskilled. By 1850, the sugar industry had reached a turning point. Only a handful of mills were in operation in 1849 when the California Gold Rush created a huge and sudden demand for foodstuffs, including sugar, which gold miners put into their coffee and tea. The Gold Rush sent planters scrambling to assemble the Hawaiian labor and resources necessary to supply the burgeoning North American market. New plantations were established in the early 1850s, and although two Chinese-run plantations still operated in the archipelago by 1855, there were also now hundreds of Chinese coolies on Hawaiian shores. The era of skilled Chinese labor in Hawaiʻi was over. They were replaced by the unskilled masses. The role of Chinese in the Hawaiian sugar industry went from tangshi to coolies, from sugar masters to sugar workers. Tens of thousands of common Chinese would come to work in the Hawaiian cane fields.11 To manage kanaka and coolie labor, as well as revolutionize the political economy of land, labor, and law in the Hawaiian Islands, an elite group of haole merchants and government officials held a meeting in April 1850 to discuss “the formation of a society for the promotion of Hawaiian agriculture.” The majority of Hawaiʻi’s farmers, the makaʻāinana, did not attend and were not invited. Rather, those who came were planter-capitalists with little to no practical experience in farming. They were mostly foreigners intrigued by the profitability of expanding sugar production in Hawaiʻi. They met to discuss issues such as property rights, labor management, and the latest agricultural science.12 They called themselves the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society (RHAS). In June they published a circular announcing a more formal meeting to be held in August. The circular stated in no uncertain terms that a great age was dawning for Hawaiʻi. The once-mighty trade at Guangzhou had dried up, but a new market for Hawaiian goods was manifest in Gold Rush California. “k a n a k a s” a n d “cool i e s” on h a i k u pl a n tat ion

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“Within the last two years . . . a great and sudden change has taken place in the prospects of this group [archipelago],” the circular stated. “The extension of the territory and government of the United States to the borders of the Pacific, the wonderful discoveries in California, and the consequent almost instantaneous creation of a mighty state on ‘the western front of the American Union,’ has, as it were, with the wand of a magician, drawn this little group into the very focus of civilization and prosperity.” Amidst this moment, however, Hawaiian export agriculture was “checked and embarrassed by the insufficiency of the four great requisites of capital, experience, proper implements and labor.” Capital could be encouraged to migrate from the eastern United States. Experience and technology could be procured from the Caribbean (as it once had been from the tangshi of South China). But what about labor? It was a “subject of great importance before this association.” “The introduction of Coolie labor from China to supply the places of the rapidly decreasing native population is a question that is already agitated among us, and should such a step become necessary, the aid of such an association in accomplishing this object would be of great benefit.”13 The group’s desire for Chinese labor was predicated on an underlying assumption that Hawaiian bodies were not biologically fit for the task of growing cane. They believed that the reproduction of labor in the archipelago was jeopardized by the Native people’s vulnerability to disease epidemics. Planter-capitalists and employers alike used the discourse of imminent extinction to argue for the Hawaiian worker’s replacement by Chinese coolies. Depopulation was real, but foreign and Native elites employed a hyperbolic construction of Hawaiian biological “unfitness” to force Native workers out of the labor market and create an imaginary gap that rationalized the importation of coolies. This ideological endeavor is evident in the logo that RHAS adopted for itself. It depicts a volcano spewing smoke out across an almost wholly denuded landscape, save for a few palm trees. In the foreground, the implements of modern agricultural industry are shown: the animal-drawn plow, the hoe, the rake. The prominence of those objects (and the lack of people) suggests that these tools possessed an almost magical power to transform denuded, unproductive landscapes into lush and profitable ones. Yet despite an apparent faith in technology, RHAS members knew that people were needed to handle these tools. What was missing from this image—from the landscape—was labor. In other words, RHAS was saying that there will be no sugar economy if we cannot bring in new laborers from afar.14 170

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figure 18. Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society logo, c. 1851. Reproduced from Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 1, no. 3 (1852).

There was no lack of labor in Hawaiʻi. In fact, there were approximately eighty thousand Hawaiian men and women still living in the Islands in 1850. However, there were also tens of thousands of Chinese peasants looking for work abroad. Following the Opium War, China’s borders, penetrated and made porous by imperialism, released hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers through the cracks of Qing society and onto foreign vessels. Many went to California to take part in the Gold Rush. Compounding these trends, South China entered a period of civil war in the early 1850s known as the Taiping Rebellion. War refugees added to the flood of Chinese migrants. These rapid transformations in Qing society and the global economy made unskilled Chinese labor mobile and accessible. Hawaiʻi’s planter-capitalists took notice. Rationalizations of Chinese “fitness” and Hawaiian “unfitness” began. RHAS members had to make themselves (and the state, whose cooperation they relied upon) believe that Hawaiian labor was unfit for work in their own indigenous environment. They had to believe that Hawaiian labor was nearly all gone, as if the landscape was completely barren of men, an image that they already had in their minds.15 In RHAS meetings in the 1850s, Native and foreign elites both pontificated at great length about what they saw as the inherent deficiencies of Hawaiian labor. Robert J. Hollingsworth, for example, stood up before the “k a n a k a s” a n d “cool i e s” on h a i k u pl a n tat ion

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body in 1851 to say that “there is in my opinion very nearly as much work in a native as there ever was in a negro, but we have no legal and efficient means at present adapted for getting it out of them.” He suggested the task system would incentivize productivity; otherwise, left to their own devices the Hawaiians would wallow in indolence. Euro-American merchant and RHAS member Stephen Reynolds, in a “Report on the Committee on Labor” in 1852 noted that he thought the problem with Hawaiians was that they were just too mobile. “Sugar plantations find it difficult to engage natives for any long term of time,” he explained. Few Hawaiians “are willing to engage for more than three to six months. Importation is the only reliable source for permanent labor.” Reynolds’s kanaka was not the passive indolent creature of Hollingsworth’s mind, but an actively disobedient worker.16 Even the Hawaiian people’s own leaders expressed ambivalence regarding the employment of Native labor, demonstrating that class, alongside race, greatly influenced national debates over coolies and kanakas. When Prince Alexander Liholiho, nephew of the mōʻī Kauikeaouli [Kamehameha III], addressed the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society on the topic of labor, he at first came to the defense of indigenous workers, stating “it is only as yesterday that forced labor was abolished, and the people are still taking breath, as it were, for to be coerced to do a thing is to hate it.” The problem was not a lack of labor in the islands, but the issue more squarely centered “on the fact of laboring power being allowed to lie dormant; of good muscle becoming flaccid from inaction.” Hawaiian bodies were strong, full of “laboring power” and embodying “good muscle.” But they needed incentive to put their bodies to work in the service of global capitalism. This would not be easy, Alexander Liholiho admitted, for “the Hawaiians are not naturally fond of labor; the natives of hot countries seldom are.” Thus the prince, too, revealed his penchant for the dominant racial stereotypes of the era: kanaka workers were strong and muscular, yet unfit for physical exertion due to the enervating, tropical environment.17 On the other side of RHAS debasements of the Hawaiian worker was the initially unbridled optimism that they had for the untested coolie. At their 1852 annual meeting, Reynolds reported that “since our last meeting, the ship Thetis has arrived from Amoy, China, with about two hundred Coolies, which were distributed among the planters.” These migrants—from Xiamen (Amoy) in coastal Fujian province east of Guangzhou—were the first coolies to arrive in Hawaiʻi. To promote coolies as a viable alternative to Native labor, members of RHAS found it necessary and useful to compare and con172

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trast Hawaiian and Chinese male workers, to search, as it were, for the essential differences between their “natures.” Reynolds weighed in. The Chinese “have proved, thus far, diligent, but not swift; obedient, but require looking after.” Hawaiian workers, on the other hand, “are stronger, and for heavy work, in getting timber from the mountains, or working in the water, are the better help.” Once again, stereotypes of Hawaiians as best suited for work in amphibious environments weighed on the minds of landlubbing employers. Beyond qualitative analyses, Reynolds also suggested that planters might quantify racial differences. “Planters,” he reported, “have different views as to the relative value, as laborers, between Coolies and Natives. Some think four Coolies equal to five Natives, in amount of labor; others reverse the matter by placing three natives against four coolies.” In terms of cost, Reynolds noted that coolies, at $7/month, were slightly more expensive than hiring Native labor, at $6/month. The most expensive part of coolies was the outlay for transportation, for it was a long way from China to Hawaiʻi.18 Chinese workers were real people, however, and all the rationalizations in the world could not control their behaviors once in the archipelago. Things took an ominous turn when, just months after the first landing, several Chinese workers committed suicide. As the RHAS committee on labor reported, “one on Mr. Titcomb’s plantation cut his throat; one on Hale Maile plantation, East Maui, cut his throat, and one died of a fever; one, a domestic of R. C. Janion, in Honolulu, Oahu, cut his throat. So that three have committed suicide.” For those that did not choose the path of suicide to cancel their contracts, Chinese workers found other ways to resist planter authority. Most ominous in the planters’ eyes were the immediate conflicts that arose between Hawaiian and Chinese workers. On one plantation, Reynolds reported that “there was some apparent jealousy by the natives when the coolies first arrived among them.” And at Kōloa, the birthplace of the sugar industry, there was “some little skirmishing at first” between Chinese and Hawaiians, “but it soon subsided.” On another plantation, in 1853, a Hawaiian worker named Kuina was arrested for beating his Chinese luna (overseer) with a stick. After this incident, the two men started throwing punches at each other, and all the Hawaiian workers joined in to help Kuina, exclaiming, “Let’s help the boy, don’t let the Chinaman hurt him.” Because the Chinese luna was the Hawaiian workers’ supervisor, the court accepted his interpretation of the incident and fined Kuina ten dollars. Racial and class antagonisms festered side-by-side with attacks on workers’ masculinity. In one case, all the male Chinese workers on a plantation “k a n a k a s” a n d “cool i e s” on h a i k u pl a n tat ion

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taunted the Hawaiian men, shouting “Wahine! Wahine!” meaning “Women! Women!” They felt “a pride over the natives,” Reynolds wrote. The Chinese, in a nearly all-male work environment, apparently felt the need to emasculate the Hawaiian men, making them their “women.” This contest over gender only grew wider and wilder in coming decades as Hawaiian men fought Chinese men over access to the islands’ Native women. Race, class, and gender were all pressure points between coolies and kanakas in the early years of the sugar plantation system.19 Despite these episodes of violence among Chinese and Hawaiian workers— evidence of Hawaiian workers’ active resistance to the coolie trade—Native leaders such as Prince Alexander Liholiho endorsed the continued recruitment of Chinese labor, writing that “Chinese coolies have been introduced here, and more of them are on their way hither. With all their faults, and a considerable disposition to hang themselves, they have been found very useful.” He continued, reasoning that because the “plantations are now chiefly dependent upon them for the principal amount of labor done,” more should be tried. “That they might be better than they are, ought not to be used as an argument against them. That they are procurable,—that they have been procured,—that their wages are reasonable,—that you can calculate upon retaining them for a certain term,—that the climate suits them, and that they are handy in the house and in the field, are great facts.” The prince concluded, “They are the best immigrants we can get;—at all events, they are the best we have hitherto got, or are likely to get.” Note how the prince highlighted the fitness of the coolies for the climate, as if somehow they were better suited for Hawaiʻi’s climate than the indigenous people. These were “great facts.”20 As the number of Chinese workers in the Kingdom increased, newspaper editors—and common Hawaiians writing letters to the editor, too—began weighing in on the “coolie problem.” The first Hawaiian-language editorial to comment on coolies was published in July 1856 under the title, “Some Ways of the Chinese People.” It begins by describing the strange and foreign character of the Chinese migrants’ behaviors, dress, and diet. It is a remarkable document for it is likely the earliest Hawaiian-language essay on the topic of Chinese coolies. It begins, “This is a very old people.” They are a people mentioned “in the stories of the Bible concerning the ancient lands,” and in the “work of all the nobles and common people of all of Europe.” Yet despite, or perhaps because of, their deep history and culture, they have a “very strange and extraordinary character.” “Their pono,” the editor writes, “is associated with animals and beasts, [and] we laugh at their conversation 174

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and their strangeness among us.”21 The Chinese who came to Hawaiʻi had left a country ruled by Manchus, founders of the Qing Empire. Under Manchu rule, Chinese men were forced to shave the front of their heads and wear their hair in a long braid known as a queue hanging down the back of their heads. It was a hairstyle derided as “pigtails” by non-Chinese observers across the Pacific World. Often Chinese male workers were emasculated by rhetoric that drew attention to the queue as a representation of their supposed femininity. The editor of Ka Hae Hawaii also chimed in: “We consider, what is the reason for the looseness of their pants, and what is the reason for keeping the hair in only a small spot of the head, and the greater part flowing?” This behavior was nonsensical. But the editor cautioned that “however strange they are, the careless telling of these things without seeing the source is not pono.”22 The editor suggested, in fact, that Hawaiians might learn a thing or two from the Chinese. First, he pointed out that in China what is seen as normal is different than what is considered normal in Hawaiʻi. “In their land the size of pants is not an issue, and the length of the hair, if they behave differently, [if] the hair then is cut, they are ridiculed, and it is a greatly embarrassing thing.” No one notices, or laughs at, the bagginess of workers’ pants in China because they are commonplace. It is the same with their hair. It would be like Hawaiians going around “naked,” he wrote, a very “embarrassing thing.” Second, the editor argued that the Chinese workers’ loose clothing is a good fit for the work environment. “The loose clothing is truly comfortable, [and] the clothes of the haole are worthless [and] a nuisance [for] working [because they] stick so much to the thighs,” the editor wrote. The Chinese worker “seeks comfort,” while “the haole seeks the beauty of pride/vanity.” To everything there is a season, including workers’ clothing. The Chinese were not unfit for work in Hawaiʻi; they were just differently fit.23 Besides clothing and hairstyle, the editor of Ka Hae Hawaii also drew attention to differences in diet among Hawaiian and Chinese workers. “If deprived of Rice, it is just like, the kanaka lacking in poi.” The author here highlights ecological relationships among workers and food crops: Chinese depended on rice cultivation as Hawaiians relied on the production of kalo. Indeed, employers became increasingly concerned with quantifying the value of Hawaiian versus Chinese labor by calculating the relative costs of feeding one “race” over the other. When the cost of rice was low, hiring Chinese was favorable. When the cost of rice was high, hiring Hawaiians was favorable. The fact that Hawaiian and Chinese contract laborers also sometimes “k a n a k a s” a n d “cool i e s” on h a i k u pl a n tat ion

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cultivated kalo and rice on their own, in gardens on plantations or in paddies off to the side, even further complicated efforts by employers to rationalize and systematize plantation labor and the maintenance of workers’ bodies.24 This debate over coolies and kanakas continued throughout the 1850s. When the firm Castle & Cooke sought to establish a plantation at Haʻikū, Maui, in the late 1850s, they hired George Beckwith, a Euro-American man, as plantation manager. In him they found “a man of Extensive knowledge and strong Common Sense. He understands natives well.” But in letters from Haʻikū, Beckwith shows the difficulties he faced in hiring and managing both kanaka and coolie labor. For, while it was one thing for men to debate the coolie question at RHAS meetings and in print, the real battle over the future of labor in Hawaiʻi took place in the cane fields.25

land and labor at haʻikū Despite massive dispossession resulting from the Māhele a decade prior, there were still Hawaiians living on the land in Haʻikū when the sugar company arrived. These homesteaders represented both a benefit and an obstacle to the company: they could potentially be hired as workers, but they also might refuse to work, and not only that, their homesteading muddied the boundaries between the disciplined agroecology of the sugar plantation and the undisciplined ecological commons embraced by Native Hawaiians. The job of the plantation manager, then, was to bound both the land and its workers, to bring them both under company control. Furthermore, George Beckwith sought to control workers’ bodies at Haʻikū, to bound their movements and control their behaviors. Truant workers and deserters forced the plantation manager to involve the collaboration of local judges and police to round up workers and discipline their bodies. Beckwith also sought to control his workers’ diets, to force them to eat company food rather than grow their own. He judged the value of workers’ bodies according to the economic and ecological costs of feeding them. These struggles over bodies and borders defined the coolie/kanaka conflict in the 1860s. Indeed, plantation management was all about measuring, bounding, and seeking control over migrant ecologies that threatened to disrupt and disorganize the highly disciplined agroecology of the sugar plantation. Cattle, fish, poi, rice, and disease are all actors that destabilized the careful management of this monocultural enter176

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prise. Workers, Hawaiian and Chinese, exercised control and resistance in cooperation or in contestation with these natures. They used food and animals and disease to complicate the bounds of the plantation, to make arguments about the fitness of different workers, and to challenge the authority of their boss, the plantation manager George Beckwith. Bounding the land began with building a fence. Fences, material embodiments and articulations of private property, worked to fortify the laws that governed land use, in this case the Māhele. The story of Haʻikū begins with a small battle over land and labor: who will build the company fence? As manager, Beckwith sought to enclose company land and dispossess Native homesteaders of their rights to the land. In the nineteenth century, Karl Marx theorized that enclosures such as these necessarily lead to proletarianization: the newly landless would become a wage-working class. But at Haʻikū in the late 1850s, land and labor were stuck in an intermediate stage in this process. Some Hawaiians were landless, but others were not. The Māhele had created a patchwork of economic survival strategies among the makaʻāinana. Erecting a fence was meant to police the gains of the Māhele for private property and capital in the face of a resistant Native populace.26 The company asked E. M. Kapihe, a commoner living nearby, to build the fence. Together they wrote up a contract in the Hawaiian language. This first contract between a Hawaiian farmer and a haole planter had everything to do with borders. The company wanted to build a wire fence to control the movement of cattle, but also presumably to mark the boundaries of the land. In 1859 Kapihe wrote “To the Sugar Planters’ association at Haiku”: “Here’s my suggestion to you all[,] I will search for the Posts for your wire fence at Haiku.” Kapihe made the company an offer. He would cut four hundred wooden posts in the forest, “good, straight [posts] from four to five inches in diameter to seven feet in length.” These posts, “I will haul to the sea,” he wrote, so that they can then be shipped to Haʻikū.27 “Limaikaika” (a transliteration of “Armstrong,” the surname of one of the company directors: literally lima means “arm” and ikaika means “strong”), writing “on behalf of the administrators of the Sugar Planters’ Association, of Haiku,” responded to Kapihe’s offer. We “read your letter. Feb. 17 just ago, before the administrators of the plantation company at Haiku Maui at our meeting.” The directors agreed to the offer. You “will search for the posts, for our wire fence at Haiku, four hundred, similar with the kind in your letter,” and haul those “posts to the sea.” When the work is complete, “at that time we will compensate [per] this agreement, for this work; only when the wood “k a n a k a s” a n d “cool i e s” on h a i k u pl a n tat ion

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is [brought] to the sea.” At the bottom of the letter, Kapihe signed his name and wrote that the contract was “pono”—it was just.28 This contract evidences several key points about the business of sugar in the 1850s: one, that early business transactions were conducted in Hawaiian rather than English, a decided advantage to Native entrepreneurs like Kapihe; two, that unproletarianized homesteaders, not necessarily needing to sell their labor for a wage, had even greater advantage over the company in that they could determine when and where they labored; and, three, that fences were important business. Fences allowed Beckwith to discipline the mobility of his contracted workers, to create a desirable division between the proletariat inside the fence and the landowners outside the fence. But in getting the Haʻikū plantation off the ground, Beckwith was consistently challenged by Native landowners surrounding company land. For example, in late 1859 Beckwith wrote to one of the directors of the company complaining of a “Native who owns . . . Kalo patches” directly along the path of a proposed irrigation pipe. Beckwith reported that the Hawaiian was willing “to exchange one of his for one above had we not Better. Exchange that Piece of Land on the Opposite Side of the Gulph for the Kalo patches along side of our feed or drive pipes and give him the use of the Patches.” As in the case of Kapihe and the fence, this was a surprisingly unbalanced negotiation between a Hawaiian and the sugar company. Hawaiian commoners, by virtue of controlling both the available land and labor that the company needed, held a distinct advantage in determining the value of both that land and labor, and they held power over who could access those resources.29 Beckwith continued to negotiate and struggle with Native homesteaders surrounding company property into the early 1860s. “The natives” of East Maui, he wrote, were uncooperative in ceding their land and their bodies. Hawaiian homesteaders growing kalo were obstacles that needed to be removed and their plots replaced with fields of cane. “This portion of the land is so full of kuleanas,” Beckwith wrote, referring to properties claimed by makaʻāinana after the Kuleana Act of 1850, “that it cannot be of any great use to us without much annoyance while the portion I propose to retain lying next to the plantation is almost wholly free from kuleanas.” The land on which the Haiku Sugar Company hoped to cultivate cane was riddled with makaʻāinana land claims, thus placing Hawaiian commoners in a position of power in negotiations over land and labor with the company. All of this slowed efforts of the Haiku Sugar Company to take advantage of the new 178

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market demand occasioned by the U.S. Civil War and the disruption of sugar production in the U.S. South.30 Echoing Beckwith’s frustrations, during this same period a “committee appointed to investigate the affairs of the Haiku Sugar Coy [Company]” stated that “the position of natives in that region tends to make it rather difficult for the Coy [Company] to do it all unless they obtained labor from other islands. There are several well to do natives. But are not a good many Laborers that will work if the work is let out by contract, that would not do so for the Coy [Company].” Of course, these “well to do natives” with land had no need to sell their bodily labor for a wage; they had no need to sign labor contracts with haole employers. This was a frank assessment of the power of East Maui Hawaiians to resist the mode of production company leaders sought to force upon them.31 Because the land was riddled with Hawaiians’ small-scale farms, Beckwith struggled to find enough workers to labor for the company. More importantly, those Hawaiians who did work for the sugar company were constantly disappearing. Desertion was extremely common throughout the industry. For example, a worker named Kea, bonded to a “Hilo Plantation,” was discharged in September 1859 “to Hilo.” Presumably he was sent back to work, but only after having been imprisoned in the Harbormaster’s station house in Honolulu for several days. A similar instance, in December 1859, concerned Pahulima, a contract worker on a “Chinese plantation,” according to the Harbormaster’s records. He was arrested on December 24 and sent back on December 27 to “Hilo Plantation.” Mahoi [Mahoe], a worker at “Metcalfs Plantation,” was arrested in Honolulu in May 1860 and “Sent [back] to Hilo” two days later. Mau [Waa], of the “Brown Plantation,” was arrested and discharged on the same day in July 1860. And, in December 1860, two Hawaiian contract laborers two days in a row were arrested in Honolulu for having fled their employers. Few deserters got away with it, but by means of running away Hawaiian contract workers were able to throw a wrench into the gears of the sugar industry. By moving their bodies against the wishes of the law and against the desires of employers, Hawaiian workers exercised a form of resistance. For managers such as Beckwith, it appeared that bounding workers, just as bounding the land, was no easy task.32 At Haʻikū, local police often became involved in these conflicts, sometimes arresting workers and forcibly removing them from the plantation, at other times going after truant workers and bringing them back. “One man,” Beckwith explained, “shipped about 2 mos. [months] since under the name “k a n a k a s” a n d “cool i e s” on h a i k u pl a n tat ion

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Kaleikuahulu, received $2500 advance & still in debt to the amount of $1658, was arrested under a warrant issued from Honolulu for having previously shipped & received an advance from some Chinaman.” A Chinese employer claimed ownership over the bodily labor of the Hawaiian worker at Haʻikū and requested that the state issue an arrest warrant because Kaleikuahulu had deserted before his contract was up. When Beckwith wrote that Kaleikuahulu had “previously shipped,” he meant that the worker had already signed a contract with the Chinese employer. “He was a good man for work,” Beckwith wrote of Kaleikuahulu. “Please see Mr. Parke about it & get him returned if possible[.] If not, please get the advance from the Shipping agent, who, according to the man arrested, was in fault.” At Haʻikū, labor was in such demand that Beckwith had to hound down the police just to retrieve one missing worker.33 The following year, one of Beckwith’s employees was arrested again. “There is a half white boy—Hiram—you know him,—so do the police men—belonging to the plantation, who was at Honolulu before I left. He has a wife here, and is some in debt, I think. He should be sent back. He has become somewhat useful on the plantation, and is needed.” Beckwith put considerable time and energy into retrieving workers detained by the police. As workers refused to respect the boundaries of labor contracts and plantation fences, slipping (rather than shipping) out to Honolulu to evade work— sometimes voluntarily, sometimes in chains—legal mechanisms were used to force these men back to work, but it was not without considerable effort. One month later, in August 1865, Hiram was returned by the Honolulu police to Haʻikū.34 In addition to policing workers’ movements, another area where Beckwith sought control was over workers’ bodies. He was particularly concerned with the cost of feeding his Hawaiian men. Beckwith experimented over the decade with a variety of means for feeding his Hawaiian workers. In 1860 he wrote to Honolulu requesting “one of Motts Agricultural Furnaces for cooking native food.” Of course, along with the furnace he would have to hire a cook, unless he could get the Hawaiians to cook their own food. Four years later, Beckwith’s letters to company agent Samuel Savidge reveal an increasing quantity of purchases of imported and preserved foods for feeding workers. In September 1864 he requested Savidge to send to Haʻikū “½ bl. [barrel] Mackerel. I learn that good Mackerel in ½ bbls. [barrels] can be had.” “I think these would retail among the natives with profit,” Beckwith suggested, “as there are no Salmon.” Hawaiian workers liked fish, but living on 180

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the sugar plantation meant they were alienated from their traditional subsistence commons: the ocean. Workers’ alienation from the ocean was evidenced in their consumption of imported fish such as salmon. Beckwith had salmon shipped to Hawaiʻi from the distant northwest coast of North America. It was a food that Hawaiians had first encountered in the early nineteenth century when many lived and worked along the North American coast in the sea otter fur trade. Removed from the ocean as they were on the Haʻikū plantation, consumption of foreign salmon demonstrated Hawaiian workers’ increasing reliance on commodities from the global capitalist marketplace. As Beckwith stated, mackerel, just like salmon, would likely “retail among the natives with profit.” The value of these fish was not just to provide sustenance to his workers, he reasoned, but to hook them into a capitalist mode of consumption. Mackerel and salmon presented a means of luring Hawaiian workers into debt; and an indebted worker, he knew, was a worker easily coerced into renewing his contract with the company.35 Besides economic concerns, ecological ones also pervaded Beckwith’s analysis of Hawaiian workers’ bodies and their diets. The value lost or gained by supplying workers with local or global food was not just an issue of dollars and cents—it was also about understanding Hawaiian workers’ bodies as part of a larger ecology of sugar production. Beckwith frequently ordered mackerel and salmon from Honolulu suppliers, linking Maui bodies with sites of production thousands of miles away. But he also inquired into the “grasing Co. [grazing company] at Kawaihae” for providing workers with beef. He had heard that the Kawaihae company, located on Hawaiʻi Island, can “pack beef for Plantations at 3 cts. per lb., putting in nothing but clear lean meat.” He asked the company agent to “send 10 good molasses bbls [barrels] to Kawaihae for this purpose.” Beckwith planned to give Haʻikū sugar products to the meatpackers of Kawaihae in exchange for beef to feed his employees. A traditional Hawaiian diet did not include the consumption of beef; cows were not even present in the Islands until the 1790s. But Beckwith’s mind was solely focused on locating the best value, even if it meant linking the ecologies of bodies and cane at Haʻikū with that of cattle ranches and salmon fisheries hundreds and thousands of miles away.36 Beckwith also explored purchasing a “poi machine, to be taken on trial, not to be paid for unless it proves valuable.” He never described how it worked, whether it was employed, or how the Hawaiian workers perceived this contraption. As long as Hawaiian workers had access to nearby kalo paddies, or access to neighbors willing to sell their own kalo, they did not “k a n a k a s” a n d “cool i e s” on h a i k u pl a n tat ion

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have to rely on the company store for food. This tension, between subsistence production and market purchases, upset Beckwith. He believed that workers should be coerced into spending all their wages at the company store. His brother, the secretary of the company, perceptively noted in July 1865 that “those nearest the store [are] most in debt.” This logic best explains Beckwith’s zeal for “poi machines” to do the work of food production that workers could easily have done themselves. Despite all his efforts to bound workers to the plantation economy—as both producers and consumers of company goods— workers consistently pushed back against his plans.37 Hawaiian workers at Haʻikū not only troubled Beckwith’s efforts to control their diets, but they troubled his ability to plow the fields. Local men, including some of the Haʻikū workers, held a monopoly over cattle in that part of Maui. Once again, Hawaiian property owners, in this case cattle owners, held power over the sugar company. Beckwith explained in 1865 that “there are some 10 or 12 prs. [pairs] Cattle owned by natives living on the Plantation having little patches of land. We are obliged to pasture these, & I have been accustomed to hire them at $500 per month, whenever we needed them.” Hawaiian workers were actually leasing out their cattle to the company at five dollars per month. Beckwith suggested that the company buy these cows off of the Hawaiians and remove this property from their grasp. “The demand for cattle is rapidly increasing,” he warned, fearing that Hawaiians at Haʻikū could use this demand to inflate the value of their cattle for hire.38 Later that year Beckwith wrote that “everything is moving on well” except for the cattle situation. Hawaiian cattle owners were now using their cows for their own means, to haul wood, so that the animals were not available just when Beckwith needed them. The Hawaiians were also unwilling to sell their cattle to Beckwith and cede control over this lucrative commodity. “Now our land is fenced,” Beckwith pleaded, “I think we must raise our own cattle.” He suggested going to Kona, Hawaiʻi, to “get 30 or 40 young heifers, say one cargo of heifers & steers, at $500 per head. What do you think of it? going, say, when the grinding is done.” Instead, Beckwith ended up traveling to the island of Molokaʻi to buy sixty-six cows: “53 steers and 13 heifers, at a cost of $784.00, besides expense of transportation.” The transportation expense was considerable, for he had to transport sixty-six large animals from Molokaʻi to Maui. Beckwith was forced to travel to a completely different island to acquire cattle to plow his fields, once more linking Haʻikū’s local ecology to a larger transregional economic and ecological system.39 182

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From cattle to workers’ diets to truancy and desertion, the Haʻikū plantation complex—an uneasy marriage of capital, labor, and nature—seemed always teetering on the edge of collapse, or at least that was how Beckwith perceived it. By the summer of 1865, the Hawaiian workers had become a real thorn in his side. Beckwith wrote of mobile and missing workers ad nauseum in the mid-1860s. He reported to Savidge feeling almost paralyzed by a constant fear that he might lose his Hawaiian workforce at any moment. Their control over their own bodies, over their labor, over their land, and over their cows frightened him into submission. “I should be glad if we could turn off quite a large number of our men while the mill stops,” he wrote in May 1865, “and, if possible, materially lessen our expenses for the time, but the demand for help is so great, that we could not well send them off, without losing them.” The next month, the Hawaiian workers at Haʻikū demanded their monthly wages but Beckwith did not have the money to pay them. Forced with the options of either submitting to his workers’ power or losing them to other opportunities, Beckwith was ready, against his own better judgment, to bring on the coolies.40

the science of chinese bodies In 1860, the Hawaiian-language press began to report on a new disease spreading among the Native population. They called it maʻi Pākē (“Chinese disease”). Over the next several years hundreds of Hawaiians were infected with this disease, once again leading elites to consider the fragility and unfitness of Hawaiian bodies for the modern economy. Although it remains inconclusive whether Chinese migrants were actually to blame for bringing Hansen’s disease, or leprosy, to Hawaiʻi, there is no denying that the disease influenced Hawaiian views of the Chinese and simultaneously impacted employers’ views of both groups.41 When Beckwith turned to importing coolies at Haʻikū in the mid-1860s, he did so within the context of a new science of Chinese bodies. Racial and class antagonisms, dangerous stereotypes, and flawed understandings of human biology influenced the views of many across the Hawaiian Islands. While many commoners feared the porousness of diseased Chinese bodies, Native elites yet promoted a eugenicist program of “admixture” between Hawaiians and Chinese, calling the Chinese a “cognate race.” These dual discourses of “Chinese disease” and “race admixture” highlight the confused and contradictory approaches that the Kingdom “k a n a k a s” a n d “cool i e s” on h a i k u pl a n tat ion

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of Hawaiʻi and its subjects took to the coolie question in the 1860s.42 The first Hawaiian-language report on the disease came in the form of an 1860 letter to the editor from Hoikeike, a resident of Lāhainā, Maui, who wrote that “a certain disease has spread in Lahaina here, called by the name ‘Chinese Disease.’ ” It is “a very awful disease to look at,” he wrote, characterized by “a callous pock-marking on the eyes, the cheeks, the nose, and the forehead, and the surrounding areas.” Chinese disease, he explained, had the ability to transform Hawaiian bodies. It turned smooth faces into “rough” and “callous” ones, and no part of one’s face was spared from disfiguration. Hawaiian writers such as Hoikeike never explained why or how they thought this disease was related to China. Perhaps the Hawaiian term maʻi Pākē simply referred to the fact that leprosy was common in China. But some commentators—particularly working-class Hawaiians—associated the arrival of maʻi Pākē with the arrival of the Pākē (Chinese) themselves. Perhaps this disease came to Hawaiʻi with a boatload of coolies, they thought. The disease’s sudden appearance raised urgent questions. Where had it come from? How did it get here? How did it spread? Folks wondered how this disease jumped from Chinese bodies to Hawaiian bodies, and whether there was any way to protect Hawaiians from acquiring this awful disease?43 Hoikeike explained to Ka Hae Hawaii that, once planted in a body, “if the time having this disease is very long, it wickedly spreads beyond compare” and then “it is nearly dreadful to look at.” Hoikeike compared the hunger of the disease for Hawaiian flesh to that of “the hungry akua of Moaula [Moaʻula]! Equally frightening!” (He refers to a waterfall on the windward side of the island of Molokaʻi where some Hawaiians believe an akua [a god] dwells with a “swollen” belly, hungry for human prey.) If you contract the disease, Hoikeike warned, once it reaches “down below the neck” there is nothing that can be done to stop it. “It is casually said [by] the people who know, it is not a curable disease.” 44 With Hawaiʻi’s environment thrown out of balance by the Māhele, as seen through the eyes of observers such as Hoikeike, diseases like maʻi Pākē thrived and spread unchecked across the archipelago. “The work everywhere is for making things pono,” Hoikeike pleaded. But the balance between humans and nature previously maintained by mālama ʻāina (care for the land) was now in flux. The introduction of Chinese migrant labor, in many Hawaiians’ eyes, had the result of even further destabilizing ka pono o ka ʻāina (the pono of the land). “It is perhaps pono there” in Honolulu still, 184

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Hoikeike pondered, but in Lāhainā where the disease was spreading, ka pono o ke kino (the pono of the body) was under assault. “The people fond of beauty,” he thought, “will not be pono, [for] the old friend [death/disease] has come.” Their bodies will be disfigured, and they will become walking embodiments of the Kingdom’s fall from grace.45 As Chinese disease spread, so did confusion as to how it spread, and how it could possibly be prevented. Hoikeike called it a maʻi lele, literally a “jumping disease,” suggesting it was highly communicable. It jumps “from one kanaka to another,” he wrote. “It is not however a sudden jump, [but] actually very slow.” One year later, the newspaper Ka Hoku o Ka Pakipika published an article reporting that it had not yet spread to Honolulu, but the disease’s spread was under careful observation. Unfortunately, as they admitted at the start of their article, “we certainly are not able at this time to clearly state [even] one clear thing regarding this disease.” The paper reported that “the Board of Health [of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi] will reflect upon this disease, and they will determine that which is pono.” 46 In March 1865, the independent Hawaiian-language newspaper Ka Nupepa Kuokoa published a letter from J. H. Kaonowai “Concerning the people with the wicked Chinese disease.” Relationships between Chinese and Hawaiian bodies were a central concern for the Hawaiian working class, and Kaonowai’s letter comes closest to placing blame for the disease squarely on the sugar economy’s new migrant workforce. He referred to Chinese disease as a seed, a “greatly wicked seed, now growing in every part of the land,” and wrote that “here the Chinese lumpy disease [leprosy] was seeded.” Like sugarcane, leprosy was “seeded” in Hawaiian soil, suggesting the close relationship that some Hawaiians perceived between the spread of the disease and the agricultural industry’s importation of Chinese workers. Kaonowai suggested how he thought the disease moved from one body to the next, with “the working of every Chinese-diseased person in peddling food, with their blending/mixing in the wicked ehu [ʻehu; spray/foam/mist/dust/pollen] of the disease inside of the food, and carrying [it] into the city here, the place of the public for buying and selling with the good [healthy] people.” 47 Kaonowai was outraged that Chinese-diseased people were drifting into Honolulu from the countryside, “blending in” or “mixing in” their “wicked ehu” in the food that was sold on street corners. Here, another boundary—the boundary between city and country; the boundary between diseased people and “good people”—was violated. The boundary between the inside and outside of the diseased person’s body was also crossed, for the ʻehu of the disease “k a n a k a s” a n d “cool i e s” on h a i k u pl a n tat ion

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was released from the body and absorbed into the food that passed hands in unbounded marketplaces. Ka ʻehu can mean “spray,” “foam,” “mist,” “dust,” and/or “pollen”; it is airborne, and in this case, contagious. In Kaonowai’s perspective, it was the responsibility of the diseased to police their own ʻehu. When the ʻehu appeared in the food of city peddlers, a line was crossed and rural migrants from the countryside were to blame. If maʻi Pākē revealed rifts between Hawaiian and Chinese workers, it also revealed simmering class tensions between urban and rural Hawaiians on the island of Oʻahu.48 “This disease is Chinese,” Kaonowai confidently wrote, “a very wicked disease, a truly greatly festering disease. That [information is] from a wealthy ‘Pake’ in speaking of the ones of [his] land in China having acquired this wicked disease.” In Kaonowai’s account, a wealthy “Pake” (a Chinese man) in Honolulu explained to him that the disease was carried by Chinese persons, presumably working-class Chinese. Here, too, class tensions are revealed not just within the Hawaiian community but in the Chinese community, between the urban Chinese merchants in Honolulu and the coolies in the cane fields. Perhaps this “wealthy Pake” looked down upon the coolie Chinese and sought to blame them for maʻi Pākē. In Honolulu society in 1865, stories of maʻi Pākē undoubtedly circulated by word of mouth in even greater frequency than they did in print. Everyone had their own interpretation of the disease and who was to blame; every interpretation was situated within a context of racial and class tensions engendered by the sugar industry.49 Kaonowai concluded his letter to Ka Nupepa Kuokoa with a public call for the Kingdom’s Board of Health to respond to this crisis. “It is pono,” he wrote, “to severely quarantine the people who have obtained the Chinese disease.” A law should be promulgated, he suggested, that the “carrying of the food in this city by them is not pono.” That was February 1865. By June, the board had acted. Instead of focusing on the policing of street vendors and rural migrants in the city—a problem that dated back to the 1840s and was never subject to government surveillance—the Board of Health focused instead on quarantining everyone known to have the disease. In June, Ke Au Okoa, the official Hawaiian-language newspaper of the Kingdom, reported that there were people living on every island in the archipelago with Hansen’s disease; the total number infected was over two hundred and fift y persons. In response, the legislature passed an “Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy.” It stipulated that a quarantine station should be established in the city of Honolulu, and a remote place on the edge of an island shall be deemed a permanent home for the incurable. That place became Kalaupapa peninsula, on the north shore of 186

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Molokaʻi. Over the next one hundred years, thousands of subjects of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi (and later the United States) were forcibly removed to Kalaupapa to live the rest of their lives in this leper colony. Although the disease itself was “Chinese,” as many Hawaiians pointed out, the great majority of those afflicted and sent to Molokaʻi were Hawaiian. In fact, during the period 1866 to 1893, when the leper colony was administered by the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, over 90 percent of the exiled were Hawaiian.50 In the battle between Hawaiian bodies and Chinese bodies, the supposed porosity of the coolie body, as manifested by the spread of maʻi Pākē, ultimately engendered the permanent disfigurement and displacement of thousands of Hawaiian bodies. It was a decisive win for Chinese migrant workers. By what only may have been a strange coincidence, that same year (1865) the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi began a concerted effort to import even more Chinese into the Hawaiian Islands. While they forcibly sent thousands of Hawaiians away to what one writer called “the land of the skeletons,” they simultaneously sought to replace the dead and dying with a new race of workers from afar.51 David Kalākaua, the future mōʻī of the Kingdom (r. 1874–1891), spearheaded this effort. Ostensibly, the Hawaiian state’s push to import coolies in 1865 was for the purpose of procuring labor for the growing sugar industry. But, in actuality, this people trade was also about something else. The Hawaiian state’s interest in Chinese migrants, an interest that came into conflict with the state’s other interest in protecting its indigenous people, was rationalized as an effort to save the Hawaiian “race” from extinction. Native and foreign elites presented the coolie trade as a solution to Hawaiʻi’s most existential threat: the inevitable auto-genocide of the Native Hawaiian. The people trade therefore was not just about importing and reselling human beings as commodities in support of capitalism. The state also simultaneously held hopes that Chinese coolies, as biological agents, would do what bodies do best: reproduce. Unlike southern planters in the United States who worked hard to ensure that black slaves reproduced new slaves for coming generations, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi did not necessarily want Chinese workers to reproduce more Chinese. Instead, they wanted the Chinese to intermarry with Hawaiians and produce a new super race, a Chinese-Hawaiian amalgam. The science of Chinese bodies in the 1860s included this early eugenicist program. Hawaiian leaders such as Kalākaua not only sought to create a super race of workers to provide for capitalist growth in the Islands, but on a much deeper level, they feared that the Kingdom’s sovereignty would be compromised if the indigenous population went extinct. There was strength in numbers. And “k a n a k a s” a n d “cool i e s” on h a i k u pl a n tat ion

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there was also a rising tide of foreigners settling in the archipelago. Hence, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi began to actively search for a “cognate race” to interbreed with the Hawaiians. The only way to save the Hawaiian was to mix in the blood of another more viable people. This issue concerned the Kingdom from the 1860s until its overthrow in 1893. For much of that time, the campaign for a cognate race focused on the Chinese.52 Kalākaua was secretary of Ka Papa Hoʻopae Lima Hana, literally the “Board to Land Laborers,” often glossed in English as the “Board of Immigration.” The Hawaiian title is actually closer to the board’s mission: to import and “land” foreign labor onto Hawaiian soil. The Hawaiian Kingdom established this board in 1864. Interestingly, this was the same year that the United States established its own federal Bureau of Immigration. Th is was not a coincidence. In the United States the age of black slavery had finally come to an end, and the United States sought to recruit European wage workers from across the Atlantic Ocean to take the slaves’ place. In the Pacific, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi sought to recruit Chinese workers from across the ocean to take the indigenous workers’ place. Whether in Washington, D.C., or in Honolulu, the 1860s witnessed a global shift in labor regimes. Kalākaua’s Board to Land Laborers was one manifestation of this moment in world history.53 In July 1865, Kalākaua wrote to Ke Au Okoa to state that “the Hon. W. Hillebrand” (William Hillebrand) has written “from China” with news of the “success of his work.” Hillebrand was “hopeful in the possibility of sending 500 Worker Chinese, perhaps twenty or thirty women within the one hundred.” Local Christians in Hawaiʻi were opposed to the people trade, likening the commodification of Chinese immigrants to slavery. But the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was not engaged in a slave trade, Kalākaua argued. “Although [there is] a wicked name and a hatred of the people connected to the sale of Worker Chinese if an independent party handles the transaction,” the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi’s efforts on the other hand were different. These coolies would be treated humanely, “in the management within its [the Kingdom’s] hand[s] and underneath its mana [power].” 54 If Kalākaua sought to deflect attention from the fact that Chinese men and women were bought and sold as commodities in Hawaiʻi, he let his guard down in the next paragraph. “The Board to Land Laborers is calling out, to the people who want Chinese Laborers, for the sugar plantation, workers, and perhaps kauwa [kauā], to be set aside for them, at request to the Board, and with the payment of 10 dollars in advance, for all Chinese Kauwa[,] men or 188

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perhaps [even] women.” Kalākaua was asking potential employers to apply to the board to receive coolies. The board was advertising “workers, and perhaps kauwa.” Kauā is the Hawaiian term for “servant” but can also mean “slave.” Perhaps kauā here referred to domestic servants: coolies who would serve in elite haole family homes rather than dirty their hands in the cane fields. Whatever the case, the use of the term kauā, the same term used to describe African-American slaves in the United States, is surprising. As Kalākaua stated, employers simply had to pay a deposit of ten dollars and then “that Chinese kauwa or this kauwa” would be theirs. There was no denying that the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was now involved in the business of selling human labor.55 This new push for coolies was grounded in an ongoing conversation about race, biology, and Hawaiian and Chinese bodies in Hawaiʻi. In 1854, Prince Alexander Liholiho, nephew of Kauikeaouli [Kamehameha III], addressing the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society, claimed that “man, the highest of all animals, being nevertheless subject to certain laws, in common with pigs, monkies and what not, the result of the intermixture of two races, or of long separate families of the same race, cannot but increase the ratio of fecundity.” In this case, the prince was promoting the intermixture of two “races” of people, Hawaiian and Chinese. This may have been the first public call by a Hawaiian official for the admixture of Chinese and Hawaiian “races,” but it was not the last.56 Haole advisors to the Kingdom embraced Prince Alexander Liholiho’s ideas of race admixture. At the following year’s meeting of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society, Doctor Hillebrand addressed the society and reinforced the prince’s eugenicist ideas. By that time the Hawaiian prince had succeeded to the throne as Kamehameha IV; as mōʻī, he was in a position of great power to shape Hawaiian policy toward the coolie trade. Hillebrand, in his remarks, argued that the importation of Chinese labor was a good thing. “As house servants they are particularly valuable. But it is a question, whether their constant increase in this country is not fraught with evil. Their moral degredation, thievish propensities and turbulence render them an undesirable admixture to the social stock of our islands.” This was a different position than Kamehameha IV’s. Hillebrand essentialized Chinese workers as characterized by a peculiar “nature” that included “thievish propensities.” He argued that these characteristics would likely transfer to the Hawaiians if racial admixture were pursued. Furthermore, asserted Hillebrand, “the Chinese never amalgamates with other races; but, like the Jew, retains his national habits and characteristics. He imparts more than he accepts.” “k a n a k a s” a n d “cool i e s” on h a i k u pl a n tat ion

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Ultimately, however, the Hawaiian “race” needed Chinese blood. “So long as no females of their own race migrate hither, the evil may be considered remediable,” Hillebrand argued, because that way the Chinese will not produce more Chinese (with attendant bad habits and morals). “Perhaps it may be asserted, in their favor,” he concluded, “that their intermixture with Hawaiians will impart to these some of their industrious habits.” There was a lot at stake in the consideration of mixing Hawaiians and Chinese, Hillebrand noted, but as long as Chinese men were forced to intermarry with Hawaiian women, planters and government could expect that the offspring would be endowed with the Chinese’s unique “industrious habits.” 57 It was, of course, a ridiculous claim: that Hawaiian-Chinese biracial children would be more industrious than their Hawaiian parents simply because of their embodiment of Chinese blood. But it is what Hillebrand and so many other officials and elites believed. This discourse not only circulated among the elite of Hawaiʻi, but even among commoners. Hawaiian-language newspapers frequently printed commentary on the eugenicist question. As a baseline, in the early 1860s it seems that Hawaiian readers (and authors and editors) struggled with the simple task of even defining what kind of Chinese these coolies were. An 1860 editorial in the government newspaper Ka Hae Hawaii, on “The Abuse of the Chinese,” painted coolies as an exploited people: they were victims of violence, and yet somehow also naturally prone to violence themselves. “They are a slave people, and they have been sold like goods like the negroes of the southern lands of the United States,” the article asserted. “If one gazed upon the sinners living in the Prison in Honolulu here, this matter [is] made clear to them, because, the Chinese that are imprisoned are numerous. These people have been called ‘chink Chinese.’” They were an unwanted people, the author stated. The implication was that they are not the kind of people that Hawaiians should want living and reproducing in their midst. “The merchant Chinese, they are a completely different people,” however; “they keep quiet and greatly care for the Laws of the land, and these people are called, ‘Vancouver Chinese.’” This class difference between “chink Chinese” and “Vancouver Chinese” was racialized in the writer’s eyes. These were two different “types” of Chinese— two different “races” almost—and Hawaiians should be careful when deciding which ones they want to amalgamate with their families.58 In 1868, the English-language missionary newspaper The Friend weighed in. The Friend reported that the Kingdom, now under the rule of Kamehameha IV’s brother, Lot (Kamehameha V), had taken positive steps to ensure that imported Chinese laborers were treated fairly. It was also 190

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apparent that Lot had the same interest as his brother in mixing Chinese and Hawaiians. “His Majesty,” The Friend reported, “alludes to the appropriation of funds by the Legislative Assembly for ‘introducing immigrants of a kindred race.’ ” The Friend’s position was that “we should deprecate any system of compulsion, or any system which did not embrace whole families. We do not believe the introduction of a large number of male laborers alone from any country into the Hawaiian Islands will prove advantageous to our islands and aboriginal community.” “We want laborers,” the paper concluded, “but at the same time we desire to see growing up a healthy, moral and religious community.” Apparently, the introduction of Chinese contract labor into the islands, and the coupling of Chinese men with Hawaiian women, promised to disrupt the “health,” “morality,” and “religiosity” of Hawaiian society. This editorial suggested that “families” rather than individuals should be enticed to come voluntarily, that they will be taught Christianity and uplifted from the darkness they inhabit at home. But, The Friend was firmly against an unregulated, wild admixture of Chinese and Hawaiian bodies.59 One year later, in late 1869, The Friend published another take on “The Labor Question.” “It is certainly desirable that persons who are brought or attracted here to raise sugar, or engage in other labor, should be such as will readily affiliate with the Hawaiian people. The only apparent means of rescuing the native population from speedy extinction is by the infusion into them of other blood.” Just years earlier the missionary newspaper had advocated the abolition of the coolie trade and the voluntary recruitment of Chinese families. By the end of the decade, The Friend was convinced that the Hawaiian “race” was in need of an “infusion.” New blood would “build up from them and immigrants,” Hawaiians and Chinese together, “a new nation in which they will be one of the prominent constituent elements.” 60 No newspaper in the 1860s explicitly took the position that Chinese were the best choice for admixture with Hawaiians; they simply called for some kind of active process of racial amalgamation. As demonstrated, most Hawaiians and haole actually held generally negative views of the Chinese, yet at the same time they appeared resigned to the fact that Chinese were the most “kindred” or “cognate” race available under present circumstances. If it had to do with racial similarities between Chinese and Hawaiians, these were not stated; instead, it was the racial differences between Chinese and Hawaiians that attracted eugenicists’ attention. The Chinese had a “nature” that was exactly what Hawaiians needed. In racial and/or genetic difference was the key to saving the Hawaiian “race.” 61 “k a n a k a s” a n d “cool i e s” on h a i k u pl a n tat ion

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kanakas and coolies at haʻikū Beckwith had resisted coolie-mania for much of the early 1860s. But by the summer of 1865 he had had it with his Hawaiians. On September 27, Beckwith mentioned coolies for the first time in a letter to company agent Samuel Savidge. “Thus far, I have not been able to ship any new natives,” he wrote. “In relation to Coolies, I do not wish to employ them, unless it is absolutely necessary but perhaps we shall be obliged to come to it, the demand for labor is so great.” Beckwith then explained his lingering opposition to coolies: “The expense of feeding Coolies with the present price of rice, will probably be twice the expense of feeding natives.” From his perspective, hiring coolies was an expense, a quantifiable budget proposition. Their diet determined their value, and at “twice the expense” of hiring Hawaiians, they were not a valuable investment. This was the crux of the matter. Coolies came with an attendant ecology that itself had to be disciplined. If the price of rice could not be brought down, then the feeding of coolies was prohibitively expensive. Kanakas, too, came with ecological demands. The choices facing Beckwith therefore concerned how to balance and ultimately control the ecologies of both groups of workers: their cattle, their diets, their illnesses, their bodies.62 Within weeks Beckwith was readying Haʻikū for its first coolies. “I can hardly see where the help we shall need for the next six months is coming from,” he wrote to Savidge, “and if the Directors think best, perhaps we must have from 25 to 50.” “If so, we shall need to put up at once, one or two buildings for them.” 63 By October, Beckwith’s mind was fully absorbed in imagining the new plantation environment that Chinese would live in at Haʻikū, and this vision looked significantly different than the world of his Hawaiian workers. In constructing this vision, Beckwith employed limited understandings of the ecological needs of coolies versus kanakas to imagine how the plantation environment might change with the coming of Chinese labor. He suggested that coolies should be kept separate from the Hawaiians. “I think we should use them simply as field hands, and keep them entirely away from the natives, putting up their building, say on the bank of Maliko gulch, just above the hill, so that they would be near the work at Hamakuapoko as well as Haiku.” Beckwith reimagined the geography of the plantation, placing the coolie population equidistant between two possible work sites, and as far away from the Hawaiians as possible.64

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The first Chinese workers arrived in October 1865. They consisted mostly of men, but also some women. Beckwith developed a budget assessment and management plan for dealing with the coolies. He planned for their diet (rice), their housing (cheap and quickly thrown together), their “ablutions” (in the ravine), and even the character of their community life (one woman per every five men, he stated; always kept separate from the Hawaiians). When the coolies actually arrived, though, he found himself clumsily negotiating with the nature of their bodies. “We have 3 diseased Chinamen on the sick list,” he wrote to Savidge, just weeks after their arrival. “Cannot we in some way reduce the cost of Rice?” Beckwith did not consider how to restore the health of the sick coolies; what troubled him most was their cost. Not only did they eat an alien food that had to be found at reasonable prices, but some workers were not acclimating well to the new environment and were driving up costs. One week later, Beckwith wrote again of “the chinamen.” “Many of them are deseased and will be expensive help until we get them cured up, and accustomed to work.” In late November, Beckwith told the company that “every thing is moving on well. Some sickness among the men.” The constant disorderliness of the Chinese workers’ bodies proved a headache for Beckwith. “Cannot the China girl, who is sick, & the china man sick with consumption, go to the hospital? They belong there rather than on the plantation.” 65 Even as Chinese workers recuperated from illness, Beckwith continued to struggle with the simple task of feeding his workers. “The 28 [coolies] sent before,” he wrote in November, “eat 50 lbs. rice per day, besides meat, so you will see the importance of making rice cheaper in some way. Otherwise, it will cost 5 or 6 dollars per month to feed them.” He also wrote that “the 2000 lbs. Rice sent, will not last very long. We should have some without fail, next week, as it will be very important to have their food prompt & regular.” Beckwith thought of coolie bodies as machines needing just the right amount of fuel. “They are very slow, but hope will improve.” They were consuming massive amounts of rice, and Beckwith feared that he might not always have enough on hand to feed them.66 Sometimes harsh measures were necessary, such as when he was “able to reduce their rice to about 50 lbs. to 40 people, by giving them a whole bag at a time, telling them it is for two days, & generally they do not come for more. They seem to be contented & happy,” despite the fact that he was forcing them to eat less. “The Chinamen are now well broken in. Are very obedient to me,” he explained. He had been too lenient

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with his Hawaiian workers, and consequently they had walked all over him. He was not going to let the “Chinamen” do the same.67 But as the Chinese workers’ first year dragged on, Beckwith continued to struggle with the task of feeding these men. “My great difficulty in regard to the Chinamen has been, that they have been so expensive,” he wrote. “Still, I think they may be, most of them, good laborers. and if we can bring down reasonably the expense of keeping them, they may still be profitable.” He pleaded with Savidge to “please also keep us supplied with rice. nearly a ton per month, or 60 lbs. per day.” Beckwith had not earlier chosen to micromanage the diet of his Hawaiian workers, but managing Chinese stomachs became something of a daily chore for him. In fact, once the first coolies arrived, Beckwith changed his tune and increasingly sought to manage both populations’ diets. Indeed, feeding coolies versus kanakas became an ecological assessment for the plantation manager. Beckwith sought to understand and control where the natural resources for different foods came from, who turned those resources into food, and how to get that food into workers’ stomachs. Despite his protestations over the trouble with feeding coolies, feeding kanakas was also complicated. Fewer Hawaiian workers were growing their own kalo in the mid-1860s. Beckwith hoped all along to be able to provide for his workers’ needs at the company store (as a means of retrieving their wages), but this meant finding a steady supply of whatever food items workers desired. It was at this time that the Haiku Sugar Company began to make increasing payments for “paiai” (paʻi ʻai), a kalo product favored by the Hawaiian workers. Beckwith sold paʻi ʻai to workers through the company store. The same was not true of rice, however, which was often figured into the cost of hiring coolies to begin with, and deducted from their wages.68 The operational strategy for running the Haʻikū plantation increasingly became a mathematical equation: paʻi ʻai versus rice; the costs of feeding Hawaiians versus Chinese. The answers derived from this equation would define the fitness of the workers for the plantation environment. In 1866, Beckwith called his Chinese workers “the most expensive help we have ever had, by from 25 to 50 percent. You will see therefore the importance of reducing the price of Rice.” He began importing “China Rice” from Asia. Beckwith’s demands demonstrated the increasingly transoceanic ecological relationships that kept workers fed on Hawaiian plantations. As he explained to Savidge, “there is little difference in the quantity of Rice consumed by Chinamen whether it be China [rice] or Hawaiian. The price being the same, I think the China is best.” The workers may have preferred it; perhaps the 194

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taste was familiar to them. Meanwhile, the Haʻikū plantation could not import paʻi ʻai from far away like they did with rice. As more Hawaiians moved onto plantations and gave up kalo farming altogether, Beckwith started to have trouble finding enough of the product. This is the problem with primitive accumulation. Once you dispossess the kalo fields, who will grow the food to feed the workers? The capitalist agroecology had transformed kalo farmers into wage workers, which meant that the simple task of feeding workers had become increasingly complex as people’s stomachs were divorced from the ecological parameters of the local environment. “The supply of paiai from Wailuku, is likely to run short,” Beckwith wrote in March 1866; he suggested the company purchase paʻi ʻai from Molokaʻi, just as he had purchased cattle from that island, but this would mean covering the expense of shipment over the strait. “I should like to order from there from 50 to 75 bundles per week,” Beckwith explained. “It is very important to keep on hand a good supply of food. Otherwise, natives get tired, & go off to Wailuku as soon as time expires. Besides, they eat a great deal of cane if they have not plenty of food.” Beckwith never explained what Chinese workers do when they don’t have enough rice—get sick, apparently—but he admitted that the Hawaiians actually ate the company’s product, the sugarcane, when they were hungry. It was one more level of Hawaiian resistance to Beckwith’s attempts to control their bodies, just as their tramping off to Wailuku, a nearby town, was a similar act of defiance.69 In the spring, Beckwith lamented that the cost of “labor & food are going up. There is great scarcity of food on this Island, & unless we can devise some means of getting it from Molokai, shall soon be obliged to stop.” Beckwith’s words had never been so strong. “We have 3 weeks food engaged for Haiku, but the Hamakuapoko people have had little or none for three weeks, so that that gang is scattering in search of food, as I have promised them for the last three or four weeks that the vessel would next trip bring from Molokai.” With workers scattering across the countryside and toward port towns such as Wailuku in search of food, Beckwith was powerless to control them. The problem was not just economical, it was ecological. Capitalism and monoculture had come to Maui so rapidly that plantation managers failed to consider the need to maintain the loʻi kalo (taro patches) necessary to feed a wage-working community. When no workers were producing their own food, instead it had to be imported from Molokaʻi and from even farther afield. When workers went hungry, now there was nothing for them to do but put down their tools and search for sustenance. For a time, Beckwith “k a n a k a s” a n d “cool i e s” on h a i k u pl a n tat ion

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sough to hire “poi men,” as he called them, to make poi expressly for the purpose of feeding his workers, but in one case, “The Hamakuapoko poi man” he had hired “left us this week.” Later, Beckwith lamented, “Our poi man for 2½ years has now failed us, & if the Molokai supply fails, we shall be in great trouble.” The sugar industry on Maui was a system teetering on the edge of ecological collapse.70 Finally, Haʻikū, with all its problems, also faced a fate that plagued many sugar plantations in Hawaiʻi in the late nineteenth century: violence. Just one month after the first coolies arrived at Haʻikū, Beckwith reported to Savidge that “we had a little rebellion among them a few days since and in subduing them one was shot by the overseer thro’ [through] the leg, without any serious injury to him. I think, however, the result was, a thorough subduing of the whole gang.” Of course, Beckwith prided himself on his ability to subdue his workers. In the same letter, he explained that “No. 272,” a Chinese worker, “also hung himself, on Tuesday last, and was not found till dead. He was not among the rebels, but was very much adicted to the use of opium, & probably was either under the influence of it, or the reaction after the supply was exhausted.” Suicide was not unheard of among Chinese migrant workers. Sometimes they simply could not accept the conditions of their life as coolies.71 Some Chinese workers put their faith in the pono of Hawaiian law. They believed that the Kingdom’s legal system could rectify unwholesome situations in the workplace. But Beckwith could not stand the idea of coolies talking to Hawaiian judges behind his back. “I don’t want a judge so near, so accessible especially to the Chinamen,” he wrote to Savidge. The coolies have “a strong tendency to hurry away to the Judge for the merest trifle. One day two of them started for Makawao to see the judge, without my knowledge. After walking about halfway, they got tired, and hired a man to bring them back. Thus the advantage of a remote judge.” Beckwith preferred his own system: “My Chinamen, if disobedient, . . . I cowhide on the spot.”72 The story of Hawaiian and Chinese workers at Haʻikū is a story of managerial efforts to understand and control workers’ bodies and their relationships to the environment. Beckwith’s greatest pilikia in the 1860s was figuring out how to feed his workers. Because Hawaiians preferred some foods and Chinese preferred others, Beckwith was constantly on the search for supplies. As monoculture took hold over East Maui, Beckwith was forced to look farther and farther afield for food for his workers, just as he was finally forced in 1865 to look to China for labor. Not only people were mobile, but so were cattle, rice, paʻi ʻai, and even Hansen’s disease. The job of the capital196

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ist was to manage and discipline all these circulations and ensure that they operated at the lowest cost possible (or in the case of diseases, resulted in the least disturbance to company profits). Circulating things—workers, cattle, rice, kalo, diseases—were essential actors in the unfolding environmental drama at Haʻikū. By the 1870s, the power of states, treaties, and global capitalists’ unquenched desires for free trade pushed the conflict between kanakas and coolies to its final stage.

sugar is king In 1875, the United States and the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi signed the Treaty of Reciprocity. This treaty removed all U.S. tariffs on Hawaiian sugar. It was the apex of foreigners’ decades-long push for free trade in the Pacific. “Reseprocity is a delusion,” wrote one haole plantation manager, “impossible by the very nature of things.” The delusional nature of reciprocity was nowhere more evident than in the Hawaiian working class’s unsettling experience of this treaty. Free trade was a disaster for Native workers. This treaty encouraged plantercapitalists to pour even more capital into sugar’s expansion while they encouraged the state to import exponentially greater numbers of foreigners into Hawaiʻi. Sugar production went into overdrive, and careful considerations of workers’ fitness were thrown aside in favor of a tidal wave of coolies.73 Sugar production boomed, jumping in four years to nearly three times its previous output so that by 1880 the Kingdom was exporting over 30,000 tons of sugar every year. To accommodate this growth, the Kingdom began a campaign of mass importation of human labor. In 1876 the population of Hawaiʻi had reached an all-time low. The nearest census data is from December 1872, when only 56,897 people lived in the archipelago, and just over 50,000 were indigenous Hawaiians. Statistician Robert Schmitt estimates that the islands’ population actually hit its nadir in 1876, coincidentally the same year that the Treaty of Reciprocity took effect. Schmitt estimates that the population dropped to just under 54,000 in 1876, and the indigenous population was below 50,000. Still, as of 1876, at least 90 percent of the population was Hawaiian, with Chinese, Euro-Americans, and others comprising the remainder.74 The demography of labor was altogether different. In 1872, there were at least thirty-five sugar plantations in Hawaiʻi, employing anywhere from 3,786 to 4,772 total workers. Using the lower estimate of 3,786 workers, 69 “k a n a k a s” a n d “cool i e s” on h a i k u pl a n tat ion

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35,000

Annual sugar exports (in tons)

30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 0 1836 1840 1844 1848 1852 1856 1860 1864 1868 1872 1876 1880 Year

figure 19. Hawaiian Sugar Exports, 1836–1880. Source: Theodore Morgan, Hawaii: A Century of Economic Change, 1778–1876 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948), 227–28. Compiled by the author.

percent (N = 2,627) of workers were Hawaiian men, while 10 percent (N = 364) were Hawaiian women. The remaining 21 percent (N = 795) were almost all Chinese. The 1872 census recorded approximately 2,000 Chinese living in the Hawaiian Islands, so the Chinese recorded as working on plantations was likely an undercount. This data further shows that, although the population of the Kingdom was 90 percent Hawaiian, the labor force was only 80 percent indigenous. Following reciprocity, this gap continued to widen. The Kingdom, after 1876, imported more workers annually from abroad, on average, than the number of Hawaiians who emigrated, died, or otherwise disappeared from the labor force. The period from 1878 to 1885 witnessed the government’s most intensive effort to date to fi ll Hawaiian cane fields with foreign bodies: nearly 25,000 coolies arrived from China, while approximately 2,500 Pacific Islanders arrived as contract workers and the first wave of Portuguese workers arrived as well. Just two years following the removal of tariffs on sugar, the Chinese population in Hawaiʻi was estimated at nearly 6,000 persons (up from 2,000 six years earlier). With nearly 8,000 contract laborers in the archipelago as of 1878, it was very likely sometime that year that the Chinese immigrant population overcame the indigenous one as Hawaiʻi’s new working class. A plurality of workers in Hawaiʻi were now no longer Hawaiian.75 198

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10,000 9,000 8,000

Total annual arrivals

7,000

Norwegians Germans Portuguese Oceanian Japanese Chinese

6,000 5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 1,000 0 1852 1856 1860 1864 1868 1872 1876 1880 1884 1888 1892

figure 20. Immigrant Arrivals in Hawaiʻi, 1852–1893. Source: Robert C. Schmitt, Historical Statistics of Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1977), 97–98. Compiled by the author.

This demographic shift was evidenced on the local level. From one plantation to the next, workforces shifted in the 1870s from Hawaiian majorities to Chinese pluralities (if not outright Chinese majorities). On the island of Kauaʻi, the Lihue Plantation Company (in Līhu‘e, Kauaʻi) had a largely Hawaiian workforce in the early 1870s. Although they had hired a Chinese cook as early as 1866, it was not until 1870 that they hired twenty or so Chinese workers to work alongside the Hawaiians. By 1874, the company’s payroll book listed over ninety Hawaiians workers. The payroll book also revealed that Līhuʻe had seven or eight Japanese workers as of 1874. The Japanese were also listed on the payroll alongside “Honolulu men,” a group of 21 Hawaiian workers listed separately from the main group of Native workers. The Honolulu men engaged in night work (keeping guard over the plantation during evening hours). In October 1874, the payroll book recorded the “Pay day of Women in Employ of [the] Lihue Plantation Co[mpany].” This list included the names of 13 Hawaiian women. All told, as of 1874, the Līhu‘e plantation had mostly Hawaiian workers in its employ, men and women; Chinese and Japanese workers were also present, but they represented a fraction of the company’s labor force.76 “k a n a k a s” a n d “cool i e s” on h a i k u pl a n tat ion

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Post-reciprocity, the plantation’s demographics rapidly shifted. Just six months after the treaty took effect, the Līhu‘e plantation’s payroll book listed the “Pay day of Chinese & Bolabola & Guano & Spanish in Employ of [the] Lihue Plantation.” This strange category referred to the total non-Hawaiian workforce. (The “Bolabola” men were presumably Tahitians; “Guano” workers likely I-Kiribati from Micronesia; “Spanish” workers, ironically, Portuguese.) Meanwhile, the company maintained a separate list of Japanese workers, all 14 of them.77 The Lihue Plantation Company still employed over 130 Hawaiian workers. But by mid-1878, the “Chinese &c” population (Chinese and non-Hawaiians) had overcome the Hawaiian population to become the dominant work force on the plantation. Hawaiians were a minority.78 Similar post-reciprocity trends were evident on the Honokaa Sugar Company plantation, located in Honokaʻa on the island of Hawaiʻi. Their 1875–1877 cash book listed 20 Hawaiian workers, and no workers of any other race. In 1877 the Honokaʻa company hired its first Chinese worker. The number of Hawaiians in the employ of the company decreased steadily thereafter, from a high of 36 workers in March to a low of 20 in August. The company purged their Hawaiians and replaced them with Chinese. In September 1877 the company was employing 21 Hawaiians versus 18 Chinese workers. By March 1878 the company had 54 Chinese. By the turn of 1879, the company’s payroll book lists 29 “white men,” 40 Hawaiians, and 55 Chinese. This is how Hawaiians became a minority in their own land. By 1876 they were no longer needed or wanted for employment abroad; they were no longer needed or wanted for employment at home. A combination of Hawaiian resistance and coolie-mania resulted in the dissolution of the Hawaiian working class.79

rqr The story of sugar’s first half-century in Hawaiʻi is not the one we might expect. Euro-American planter-capitalists did not just barge right in, take ownership over the land, import foreign workers, and lure Hawaiʻi into the global capitalist economy. Rather, plantation owners and managers experimented and failed over and over again. Hawaiian and Chinese workers alike threw up roadblocks to capitalist success: they deserted, they fought back, they got sick, and sometimes they even killed themselves; they rejected the food, they refused to give up their kalo fields or lease their cattle. They did 200

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not combine and rise up en masse against the capitalist elite. But they engaged in everyday forms of resistance that made sugar plantation management, in George Beckwith’s estimation, very pilikia. Throughout the nineteenth century, both Native leaders and haole elites sought to discipline Hawaiian workers’ mobility and freedom. They attempted to keep Hawaiians from going to California and elsewhere abroad, hoping instead that they might proletarianize in place—that the Māhele might make domestic wage workers out of them. Some even thought that this would improve their health and increase the reproduction of the nation. Yet at the same time haole discourses about the kanaka body had seeped so deeply into Hawaiian national discourse that both Native and haole elites alike did not believe that indigenous workers were capable of serving the nation as a permanent working class. Certain of the Native worker’s inevitable extinction, capitalists and the state joined forces to import Chinese workers to take the Hawaiians’ place. They hoped that Chinese “blood” would reinvigorate the nation, and that Chinese labor would bring great profit to the Kingdom and its supporters. But as haole planters and Hawaiian officials lined up behind the importation of Chinese coolies, they turned their back on Hawaiʻi’s indigenous working class. The great age of the Hawaiian worker—and the Hawaiian Pacific World—was over.

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Epilogue legacies of capitalism and colonialism

in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, hundreds of Hawaiians voluntarily migrated to the deserts of Utah in the western United States. They sought to join up with other followers of the Mormon Church.1 Over one hundred years later, thousands of Hawaiians are migrating again to the deserts of the United States. In 2010, the U.S. federal census noted that the tiny city of Eloy, Arizona, halfway between Tucson and Phoenix, had the largest percentage increase of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander people of any census district in the entire country. From just eleven Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders in 2000, the population had jumped to nearly one thousand in 2010. By 2013, the Hawaiian population of Eloy had reached nearly two thousand.2 What explains this rapid growth in the Hawaiian diaspora? Unlike in the nineteenth century, these specific transoceanic migrants are not wage laborers. Rather they are prisoners of the State of Hawaiʻi, forcibly exiled to a private prison three thousand miles away from home. In 2007, the State of Hawaiʻi partnered with the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest for-profit correctional company in the United States. Together, they designed and built a jail in the middle of the Sonoran desert specifically for Native Hawaiian “criminals.” It is cheaper, the State of Hawaiʻi argues, to lock up Hawaiians abroad rather than in the Islands. The CCA has promised “cultural sensitivity” for diasporic inmates, yet reports regularly suggest that Native Hawaiian inmates face violence, are denied the right to practice their faith, and are prohibited from reading and writing in the Hawaiian language.3 203

The State of Hawaiʻi’s biopolitical regime extends far beyond the removal of Native men to a private prison in Arizona. Back in the Islands, only a small percentage of Native Hawaiians control the means of production; in other words, few own property or capital that they can use to feed themselves and their families. Indeed, houselessness is rampant in Hawaiʻi. Thousands of Native people live on the beach, on the streets, or in emergency housing. Some, such as those at Mākua Beach on Oʻahu, have defiantly resisted state power, refusing to cede their rights to the land. These so-called squatters are routinely arrested and evicted from the last vestiges of an indigenous commons.4 Homeless foreigners likewise may soon be put on airplanes with one-way tickets, paid for by the State of Hawaiʻi, to be shipped back to the mainland, if some politicians have their way.5 And despite a nearly one hundred-year-old federal law that guarantees the right of Hawaiians to at least some of their land, only a fraction of the Hawaiian homelands have been redistributed from the government back to the Native people.6 The nineteenth-century enclosure of the commons, the dispossession of indigenous peoples, the increasing legal circumscription of workers’ movements, the harsh discipline of workplace violence, the commodification of nature and the body, the marriage of private capital and the state, the biopolitics of eugenics and genocide: these are legacies of nineteenth-century Hawaiian capitalism that continue to reverberate in twenty-first-century colonial Hawaiʻi. But what was once the great strength of ka lāhui (the nation) in the nineteenth century—its migrant, diasporic workers—remains just as true today, albeit largely unrecognized. The 2010 U.S. census recorded more Hawaiians living in the continental United States than in Hawaiʻi itself. This is a nation in perpetual diaspora. Today’s migrant workers cross the ocean more frequently than their ancestors did, on airplanes rather than on ships. Young Hawaiians pursue higher education on the mainland. Some migrate for jobs. Tens of thousands are born in the diaspora. Some have never even seen Hawaiʻi.7 In the nineteenth century, thousands of Hawaiians left Hawaiʻi to work on ships and in nā ‘āina ‘ē (foreign lands). Through movement, they connected disparate peoples, places, and processes into an interwoven Hawaiian Pacific World. In the sandalwood trade, they began to transition from makaʻāinana into a working class, from forced and coerced labor into “free” labor. Workers began demanding money in exchange for work. They learned to see the profit in trees, salt, and furs. In the whaling industry, thousands of Hawaiians traveled as far as the Atlantic Ocean, the Arctic Ocean, and Japan 204

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in pursuit of whales and wages. They learned about contracts, advances, slop, and debt. They sang songs about the world’s many oceans and continents. In the Arctic, thousands proved their manliness and the strength of their “race” in the face of a debilitating haole discourse and a dangerous work environment. They connected Hawaiʻi to Alaska and facilitated the transmigration of words, liquor, and music. They engaged in violence against other Native peoples. In the guano industry, one thousand Hawaiians struggled to make a home for themselves in a deserted corner of their diaspora, learning how to survive until the next boat came. In California, Hawaiian men pioneered towns and cities, worked for contracts and as day laborers, and joined the great exodus for the mines in the mountains. After the Gold Rush, many tasted the bitter pill of deindustrialization, their surplus bodies languishing on beaches and on the street. They were arrested and evicted; their own government even sought to have them deported back to Hawaiʻi. Washed up onshore, they became homeless, unemployed, or incarcerated. Their late nineteenth-century condition is reflected in today’s haunting mirror, as “surplus” and “precarity” define the working class’s descent into a permanent underclass. Encampments on a beach and prison cells in a foreign desert represent integral nodes in an ever-expanding Hawaiian diaspora—a diaspora no longer built upon labor alone, but realized through displacement, marginalization, and incarceration. The past becomes the present. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was on a path toward major revolutions in political economy, fundamentally altering the bonds between Native Hawaiians and global capitalism. The Māhele land reforms, coupled with concurrent legal reforms that encouraged contract labor and criminalized idleness, set the stage for the decline of the Native worker in the global economy, as industrial winds shifted from extractive industries to a plantation-based economy. Native workers thrived in the trans-Pacific extractive economy. Sandalwooding, whaling, salt mining, guano mining, sea otter hunting, and gold mining relied on site-specific modes of production in which capital and labor were brought in from the outside to exploit an endemic natural resource. Kanaka bodies, racialized as amphibious labor suitable for maritime work, were in high demand in all of these industries. They could work their way to and from sites of extraction by serving as sailors on foreign ships, and in riparian and nearshore industries they were believed to be highly suited for moving things into and out of the water, from diving for gold to carrying cattle hides high above their heads. The plantation economy, unlike extractive industries, was not so site-specific. E pi l o gu e

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Instead of bringing capital and labor to bear upon a unique natural resource, sugar planters simply sought the land itself. They could transform the land into a commodity and grow monocultural crops upon it. The Māhele and concurrent labor reforms alienated both land and labor in Hawaiʻi, allowing the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society to imagine Hawaiʻi as an empty place, devoid of both products and producers. From the beginning, Native leaders and foreign elites both knew that their plantation dreams rested on the reality of mass importation of foreign labor. Thus, within the span of one generation, Hawaiʻi’s sugar industry transitioned from an almost exclusively indigenous workforce to a laboring population dominated by Chinese migrants. Meanwhile, as petroleum replaced whale oil, menhaden replaced guano, and industrial farming replaced gold, few Hawaiians in the 1870s and 1880s could still imagine, as their forefathers did, that the world was at their fingertips. Ships came for sugar, not for workers. Land, not labor—plantations, not people—was the new name of the game in the rapidly evolving Pacific World. By the early twentieth century, work, for many Hawaiians, meant cultural labor. A tourist industry blossomed around the commodification of indigenous practices and Native bodies. Foreign people paid money to see Hawaiian men surf, to watch Hawaiian women dance, to eat Hawaiian foods, to experience indigenous aloha. Following the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi in 1893 by haole usurpers, in what the U.S. government called “an act of war,” Hawaiian independence activist Joseph Nāwahī warned that “we have been ousted by trespassers who entered our house and who are telling us to go and live in a lei stand that they think to build and force us all into. I am telling you, my fellow citizens, we should not agree in the least.” But the convergence of settler colonialism and capitalism was so strong that many Hawaiians did, in fact, turn to cultural work, such as selling lei, in order to make a living. Foreigners at the dawn of the twentieth century defined the Hawaiian people as a race “losing its identity,” beset by “indolence” and “decadence.” “Hawaiian unskilled laborers,” one writer stated, “are, to a great extent, an unattached and irresponsible part of the community, with few family ties or common bonds of interest with the rest of their people except that of race.” The idea of the Hawaiian worker was an oxymoron.8 Today there are more Hawaiian people in the world than ever. Some Hawaiians own land, run businesses, or otherwise control capital. Far too many are homeless, unemployed, imprisoned, or exiled. The vast majority are somewhere in the middle: they are workers. Most of them work outside of 206

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Hawaiʻi. The integration of the Hawaiian people into the global capitalist economy, a process that began in the early nineteenth century, is now at its highest stage. In the wake of the first U.S. gunboat to shore up sandalwood payments in 1826, today the U.S. military conducts an ongoing archipelagowide occupation of the islands, controlling huge swaths of land and engendering social and ecological disorder.9 In the footsteps of planters who sought to curtail Native food production and make workers dependent on foreign commodities, now the Hawaiian Islands import roughly 90 percent of its food from abroad.10 A huge number of Hawaiians live in greater Honolulu, one of the most expensive metropolitan regions in the U.S. empire, where gentrification engenders yet further waves of indigenous dispossession.11 Capitalism and colonialism pervade everyday life in Hawaiʻi. No wonder so many hundreds of thousands of Hawaiians currently pursue life and labor abroad. I conclude with some hard and perhaps unanswerable questions. What would it look like for anticolonial struggle in Hawaiʻi to include the voices of, and harness the power of, the archipelago’s indigenous workers, as well as those who are out of work and those under the discipline of the state? What would it look like for anticolonial struggle to include the voices of, and harness the power of, the hundreds of thousands of Hawaiians living in diaspora? This book has profiled the lives of thousands of Native men who experienced capitalism and globalization on the front lines, through their bodies, in an era of rapid, revolutionary changes in political economy. I have sought to show how class is a crucial analytic for understanding the history of nineteenth-century Hawaiʻi, its people, and their position in the world. Today, hundreds of millions of people are migrant laborers across the world. Crossing and blurring all boundaries, they show us that we live in an age of one world economy with one global working class. Thinking about capitalism and class, understanding how labor and migration have shaped and continue to shape Hawaiian lives, may offer new tools for critiquing and dismantling the colonial state.

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Appendix sample guano laborer’s contract

The following text reproduces a sample shipping article for the U.S. Guano Company (1864) from Box 1, Folder “Shipping Articles 1864,” Harbormaster’s Shipping Articles, 1862–1900, Record Group 89, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. Strikethroughs (example: example) denote markings in pencil made by the company agent to strike out words or phrases from the contract. Words and phrases in parenthesis are amendments made in pencil that the company agent has added to the contract. Sometimes these words or phrases fi ll in appropriate blank spaces in the contract; sometimes they are scribbled into spaces between other words. Underscores (example: ) denote blank spaces in the contract that were supposed to be fi lled with information, but were often left blank. For discussion of how Hawaiian laborers read and used these contracts, see pages 117–119.

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We, whose names are hereunto affi xed, do hereby agree and bind ourselves to serve in the capacities set opposite our respective names, on board the (Company) called the (United States Guano Co) of (at Baker’s Island) whereof (S.G. Waterman) is at present Master (Agent), now lying in the Port of (Honolulu) and bound (to proceed to said Baker’s Island there to labor) for a term not to exceed (twelve) months, or until the said (U.S. Guano Co) shall return (us) to these Hawaiian Islands, provided that takes place before the expiration of said term of (twelve) months. And we further agree, that during said voyage (term of service) we will perform our duty faithfully, where on board said (shore) or in her boats, whether by night or day, as good and obedient seamen (servants). It is also agreed by the Master (Agent) of said (U.S. Guano Co) that at the end of the voyage (term of service), we shall each of us be paid the amount of compensation per month set opposite our respective names in the column marked “Wages.” In witness of which agreement, the Master (Agent) hath hereto first set his name. And we bind ourselves to be on board said (the ‘Sadoga’) vessel at or before the hour of (Noon) on the (26th) day of (May) A.D. 18 (64) O Makou ka poe i kakau i ko makou mau inoa malalo, ke ae aku nei makou, a ke hoopaa nei makou ia makou iho e hana i ka oihana i kauia mahope o ko makou mau inoa, maluna o ka i kapaia no o ke Kapena i keia manawa, e waiho ana no ma ke awa o e holo ana no i aole nae e oi aku na malama a e hoi mai paha o ua i kea Pae Aina o Hawaii nei; ina paha e hoi e mai mamua o ka pau ana o ua mau malama la. Ke ae aku nei no hoi makou, ma ia holo ana, e hana no i ka makou oihana a pau me ka oiaio, ina paha maluna o ua moku la, ina paha ma na waapa, i ka po paha i ke ao paha, a like ma na luina maikai a hoolohe. Ua aeia mai hoi e ke Kapena o ua moku la i kapaia o a pau ia holo ana, alaila, e hookaaia mai i kela mea keia mea o makou i ka uku a pau e like me ke kakau ana mahope o ko makou mau iona ma ka lalani i kapaia “Ka Uku.” No ka oiaio o keia hoolimalima, ua kakau mua ia ka iona o ke Kapena. Ke hoopaa nei makou ia makou iho e ee maluna o ia moku i ka o ka hora i ka la o 18

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introduction 1. Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1938–1966); Lilikalā Kameʻeleihiwa, Native Land and Foreign Desires: Pehea Lā e Pono ai? (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1992); Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwoʻole Osorio, Dismembering Lāhui: A History of the Hawaiian Nation to 1887 (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2002); Noenoe K. Silva, Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). 2. Ronald Takaki, Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii, 1835–1920 (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1983); Edward D. Beechert, Working in Hawaii: A Labor History (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1985); Moon-Kie Jung, Reworking Race: The Making of Hawaiʻi’s Interracial Labor Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006); JoAnna Poblete, Islanders in the Empire: Filipino and Puerto Rican Laborers in Hawaiʻi (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2014). 3. Matt K. Matsuda, Pacific Worlds: A History of Seas, Peoples, and Cultures (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012); David Igler, The Great Ocean: Pacific Worlds from Captain Cook to the Gold Rush (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Gregory T. Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); David Armitage and Alison Bashford, eds., Pacific Histories: Ocean, Land, People (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 4. In this book, I use the italicized kanaka (singular) / kānaka (plural) to denote indigenous Hawaiian uses of this word. I use the romanized, lowercased “kanaka” to refer to haole (foreign) uses and manipulations of this word. Stylistic conventions do not allow for the continued application of quotation marks around “kanaka,” a term of shifting, unstable, and historically contingent meanings. Readers are advised that when they see the term in roman type I am referring to an imagined, discursive construction of the Hawaiian male worker. I follow historian Moon-Ho

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Jung’s insight that the nineteenth-century term “coolie” was more a discursive construction than corporeal reality, “a product of the imaginers rather than the imagined.” The same can be said for “kanaka.” Moon-Ho Jung, Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006), 5. Early uses of the term “kanaka” (or “canaca” in Spanish) to refer to Native Hawaiian male workers include entries for January 24 and 29, 1814, Log of the ship Atahualpa, 1811–1816, Microfi lm P-104, Reel 4, William Sturgis Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston; entries for November 14 and 22, 1818, Sultan (ship) Account Book, 1815–1819, Ms. N-833 Tall, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston; Charles Bullard to Mess. James P. Sturgis & Co., July 3, 1822, Charles B. Bullard, Letterbook, 1821–1823, Ms. N-1962, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston; Accounts of the Schooner Julia Ann (1844), Folder 628:4, William A. Leidesdorff Papers, 1838–1848, MSS C-B 628, Box 1, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; Accounts with Wm. A. Leidesdorff for supplies, Folder 628:22, ibid. For more on the kanaka as a stock figure in American whaling lore and music, see James Revell Carr, “In the Wake of John Kanaka: Musical Interactions Between Euro-American Sailors and Pacific Islanders, 1600–1900” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2006). Note that when quoting primary sources, I maintain the spelling and orthography of “kanaka,” “canaca,” or otherwise, per original nineteenth-century Hawaiian, English, and/or Spanishlanguage texts. 5. Kameʻeleihiwa, Native Land and Foreign Desires, 53, 74, 350n5; Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 147; Marshall Sahlins (with Dorothy B. Barrère), Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii: Volume One, Historical Ethnography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 27–28. 6. On the politics of naming in cross-cultural contexts, see Greg Dening, Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land: Marquesas, 1774–1880 (Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1988), 23; David Chappell, Double Ghosts: Oceanian Voyagers on Euroamerican Ships (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 50; Silva, Aloha Betrayed, 15–16; Jeremy Prestholdt, Domesticating the World: African Consumerism and the Genealogies of Globalization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 18–21; Alastair Couper, Sailors and Traders: A Maritime History of the Pacific Peoples (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2009), 125. 7. On the racialization of Pacific peoples, see Bernard Smith, “Constructing ‘Pacific’ Peoples,” in Remembrance of Pacific Pasts: An Invitation to Remake History, ed. Robert Borofsky (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2000), 152–68; Bronwen Douglas and Chris Ballard, eds., Foreign Bodies: Oceania and the Science of Race, 1750–1940 (Canberra, Australia: ANU Press, 2008); James Belich, “Race,” in Pacific Histories, ed. Armitage and Bashford, 263–81. 8. Sahlins, Islands of History, 17–19; Sahlins, Anahulu, 57; Sally Engle Merry, Colonizing Hawaiʻi: The Cultural Power of Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 228–29; Nicholas Thomas, Islanders: The Pacific in the Age of Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 76.

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9. On Hawaiian body politics, and the continuity of the kanaka body into the twentieth century, see Jane Desmond, Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), esp. 122–30. For nineteenth-century reflections on aliʻi “fleshiness,” see Charles B. Bullard to Mess. Bryant & Sturgis, March 20, 1821, in Charles B. Bullard, Letterbook, 1821–1823, Ms. N-1962, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston; C. S. Stewart, Journal of a Residence in the Sandwich Islands, during the years, 1823, 1824, and 1825 (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1970), 133; Auguste Duhaut-Cilly, A Voyage to California, the Sandwich Islands & Around the World in the Years, 1826–1829, trans. and ed. August Frugé and Neal Harlow (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 208; Jacobus Boelen, A Merchant’s Perspective: Captain Jacobus Boelen’s Narrative of his Visit to Hawaiʻi in 1828, ed. and trans. Frank K. A. Broeze (Honolulu: Hawaiian Historical Society, 1988), 78–79; Sahlins, Anahulu, 78–79, 109. 10. William Ellis, Polynesian Researches . . . , Vol. IV (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833), 269; Paul D’Arcy, The People of the Sea: Environment, Identity, and History in Oceania (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2006), 30–33. 11. On perceptions of Hawaiian “amphibiousness,” see Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea [1840] (New York: Modern Library, 2001), 65, 93; E. Gould Buff um, Six months in the gold mines; from a journal of three years’ residence in Upper and Lower California, 1847–8–9 (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1850), 32; Charles Warren Haskins, The Argonauts of California (New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1890), 77–78; James D. Hague, “Our Equatorial Islands; with an Account of Some Personal Experiences,” Century 64, no. 5 (1902): 660; C. H. Judd to Joseph O. Carter, December 7, 1859, reprinted in A. F. Judd II, ed., The Guano Islands (Honolulu: Family Records, House of Judd, 1935); William Henry Ellison, ed., The Life and Adventures of George Nidever, 1802–1883 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1937), 36; Pacific Commercial Advertiser, April 27, 1867, reprinted in R. Gerard Ward, ed., American Activities in the Central Pacific, 1790–1870, 8 vols. (Ridgewood, NJ: Gregg Press, 1966–67), 2:552–57. On Native bathing and surfing cultures, see Edward Brinley, Jr., to Francis W. Brinley, September 1–17, 1848, HM 74025, Edward Brinley, Jr. Papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California; Charles Bernhard Richard, Travel Sketches, being a Narrative of his Travels from 1846 to 1849, 149, New-York Historical Society; Isaiah Helekunihi Walker, Waves of Resistance: Surfing and History in Twentieth-Century Hawaiʻi (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2011), 27–28. 12. Stewart, Journal of a Residence, 93, 151; George H. Dole, “Hawaiians at Church,” Dec. 13, 1859, HM 57931, George H. Dole Papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California; George H. Dole, “Industry” [c. 1855–1862], HM 57932, ibid. On climate, race, bodies, and tropicality, see Gary Y. Okihiro, Pineapple Culture: A History of the Tropical and Temperate Zones (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 1–14. 13. R. C. Wyllie, Answers to Questions: proposed by His Excellency, R. C. Wyllie, His Hawaiian Majesty’s Minister of Foreign Relations, and addressed to all the Missionaries in the Hawaiian Islands, May, 1846 (Honolulu: Department of Foreign

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Affairs, 1848), 5–7; Robert J. Hollingsworth to the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society, August 14, 1851, published in Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 1, no. 2 (1851): 99–103; Stephen Reynolds, “Report on the Committee on Labor,” Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 1, no. 3 (1852): 69–71; William Hillebrand, “Report on Labor and Population,” Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 2, no. 2 (1855): 69–77. 14. Stewart, Journal of a Residence, 154–56; William Little Lee to Simon Greenleaf, August 16, 1849, William Little Lee letters, 1847–1850, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Also see O. A. Bushnell, The Gifts of Civilization: Germs and Genocide in Hawaiʻi (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1993); David Igler, “Diseased Goods: Global Exchanges in the Eastern Pacific Basin, 1770–1850,” American Historical Review 109, no. 3 (2004): 693–719; Igler, Great Ocean, ch. 2; Seth Archer, “Epidemics and Culture in Hawaiʻi, 1778–1840” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Riverside, 2015). 15. On nineteenth-century narratives of indigenous extinction, see Brian W. Dippie, The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1982); Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003). 16. On “roots” and “routes,” see James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). That islanders were/are mobile, and not just in situ actors in history, has been an important theme in Pacific historiography since the 1990s; see Epeli Hauʻofa, “Our Sea of Islands,” in A New Oceania: Rediscovering our Sea of Islands, ed. Eric Waddell, Vijay Naidu, and Epeli Hauʻofa (Suva, Fiji: School of Social and Economic Development, The University of the South Pacific, in association with Beake House, 1993); Ben Finney, “The Other One-Third of the Globe,” Journal of World History 5, no. 2 (1994): 273–97; Chappell, Double Ghosts; Jean Barman and Bruce Watson, Leaving Paradise: Indigenous Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest, 1787–1898 (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2006); Gary Y. Okihiro, Island World: A History of Hawaiʻi and the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Couper, Sailors and Traders; Thomas, Islanders; Terry L. Jones, Alice A. Storey, Elizabeth A. Matisoo-Smith, and Jose Miguel Ramirez-Aliaga, eds., Polynesians in America: Pre-Columbian Contacts with the New World (Lanham, MD: AltaMira, 2011); Kealani R. Cook, “Kahiki: Native Hawaiian Relationships with Other Pacific Islanders, 1850–1915” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2011); David A. Chang, The World and All the Things upon It: Native Hawaiian Geographies of Exploration (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016). 17. On dismemberment, see Osorio, Dismembering Lāhui; on “re-memberment,” see Ty P. Kāwiki Tengan, “Re-membering Panalāʻau: Masculinities, Nation, and Empire in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific,” The Contemporary Pacific 20 (2008): 27–53; Ty P. Kāwika Tengan, Native Men Remade: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Hawaiʻi (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008); also see Epeli Hauʻofa, “Pasts to Remember,” in Remembrance of Pacific Pasts, ed. Borofsky, 453–71.

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18. On the importance of narrating labor and class into indigenous histories, see Alice Littlefield and Martha C. Knack, eds., Native Americans and Wage Labor: Ethnohistorical Perspectives (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996); William J. Bauer, Jr., We Were All Like Migrant Workers Here: Work, Community, and Memory on California’s Round Valley Reservation, 1850–1941 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); Anna Keala Kelly, “Portait. Marie Beltran and Annie Pau: Resistance to Empire, Erasure, and Selling Out,” in A Nation Rising: Hawaiian Movements for Life, Land, and Sovereignty, ed. Noelani GoodyearKaʻōpua, Ikaika Hussey, and Erin Kahunawaikaʻala Wright (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 36–47. 19. On Hawaiian migrant women in the entertainment industry, see Adria L. Imada, Aloha America: Hula Circuits Through the U.S. Empire (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012). 20. Jocelyn Linnekin, Sacred Queens and Women of Consequence: Rank, Gender, and Colonialism in the Hawaiian Islands (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990); Jennifer Thigpen, Island Queens and Mission Wives: How Gender and Empire Remade Hawaiʻi’s Pacific World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014). 21. On the feminization of Hawaiʻi, see Desmond, Staging Tourism; Merry, Colonizing Hawaiʻi; Imada, Aloha America. On the discursive dispossession of Native men, see Tengan, Native Men Remade; Walker, Waves of Resistance, ch. 4. 22. Arif Dirlik, “The Asia-Pacific Idea: Reality and Representation in the Invention of a Regional Structure,” Journal of World History 3, no. 1 (1992): 55–79; Stuart Banner, Possessing the Pacific: Land, Settlers, and Indigenous People from Australia to Alaska (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 1; Katrina Gulliver, “Finding the Pacific World,” Journal of World History 22, no. 1 (2011): 83–100, esp. 93. 23. Lon Kurashige, Madeline Y. Hsu, and Yujin Yaguchi, “Introduction: Conversations on Transpacific History,” Pacific Historical Review 83, no. 2 (2014): 183– 88; Janet Hoskins and Viet Thanh Nguyen, eds., Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2014). 24. J. R. McNeill, “Of Rats and Men: A Synoptic Environmental History of the Island Pacific,” Journal of World History 5, no. 2 (1994): 299–349; Okihiro, Island World, ch. 1; Cushman, Guano; Ryan Tucker Jones, “The Environment,” in Pacific Histories, ed. Armitage and Bashford, 121–42. 25. Marshall Sahlins, “Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of ‘The World-System,’” in Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory, eds. Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B. Ortner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 412–55; Armitage and Bashford, “Introduction: The Pacific and its Histories,” in Pacific Histories, ed. Armitage and Bashford, 1–28, esp. 16–17. 26. Igler, Great Ocean; Ryan Tucker Jones, Empire of Extinction: Russians and the North Pacific’s Strange Beasts of the Sea, 1741–1867 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). See also Edward Dallam Melillo, Strangers on Familiar Soil: Rediscovering the Chile-California Connection (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015);

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and John Ryan Fischer, Cattle Colonialism: An Environmental History of the Conquest of California and Hawaiʻi (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015). 27. B. Pualani Lincoln Maielua, “Moanaākea,” in The Space Between: Negotiating Culture, Place, and Identity in the Pacific, ed. A. Marata Tamaira (Honolulu: Center for Pacific Island Studies, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2009), 141–50; Damon Salesa, “The Pacific in Indigenous Time,” in Pacific Histories, ed. Armitage and Bashford, 31–52. 28. Igler, Great Ocean, 11; Matsuda, Pacific Worlds, 5. For a nuanced approach at the intersection of local, national, and transnational scales, see David A. Chang, “Borderlands in a World at Sea: Concow Indians, Native Hawaiians, and South Chinese in Indigenous, Global, and National Spaces,” The Journal of American History 98 (2011): 384–403. 29. Chang, The World and All the Things upon It. 30. Helen G. Chapin, Shaping History: The Role of Newspapers in Hawaiʻi (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1996); Silva, Aloha Betrayed, 45–86; M. Puakea Nogelmeier, Mai Paʻa i Ka Leo: Historical Voice in Hawaiian Primary Materials, Looking Forward and Listening Back (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press/ Awaiaulu, 2010). On print cultures, nation, and diaspora, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (rev. ed.; London: Verso, 1991); Pier M. Larson, Ocean of Letters: Language and Creolization in an Indian Ocean Diaspora (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 31. Chang, The World and All the Things upon It, 103–55. On the transoceanic power of words, see Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). On indigenous articulations of diaspora, see Clifford, Routes; Katerina Martina Teaiwa, “Our Sea of Phosphate: The Diaspora of Ocean Island,” in Indigenous Diasporas and Dislocations, ed. Graham Harvey and Charles D. Thomson, Jr. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005), 169–91; Katerina Martina Teaiwa, Consuming Ocean Island: Stories of People and Phosphate from Banaba (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015). 32. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton Univeresity Press, 2000); Robert B. Marks, The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002); A. G. Hopkins, ed., Globalization in World History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002). 33. Prestholdt, Domesticating the World; Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014). 34. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 1–18.

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35. Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I: A Critique of Political Economy [1867] (New York: The Modern Library, 1906); E. P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present 38, no. 1 (1967): 56–97; Wolf, Europe and the People Without History; Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (New York: Verso, 2001); Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Vintage Books, 2015). 36. Kameʻeleihiwa, Native Land and Foreign Desires, 140. 37. Ibid. On the history of the commons, see Peter Linebaugh, Stop, Thief! The Commons, Enclosure, and Resistance (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2014). 38. Banner, Possessing the Pacific; Mark Rifk in, “Debt and the Transnationalization of Hawaiʻi,” American Quarterly 60 (2008): 43–66; Beckert, Empire of Cotton, esp. 309–11. 39. On capitalism and the body, see Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Ava Baron and Eileen Boris, “ ‘The Body’ as a Useful Category for Working-Class History,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 4, no. 2 (2007): 23–43; Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012). 40. On workers’ experiences of nature, see Richard White, “ ‘Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?’: Work and Nature,” in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 171–85; Andrew Hurley, Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race, and Industrial Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945–1980 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Kathryn Morse, The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003); Myrna I. Santiago, The Ecology of Oil: Environment, Labor, and the Mexican Revolution, 1900–1938 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Chad Montrie, Making a Living: Work and Environment in the United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008); Stefania Barca, “Laboring the Earth: Transnational Reflections on the Environmental History of Work,” Environmental History 19, no. 1 (2014): 3–27; Douglas Sackman, “Trafficking Nature and Labor Across Borders: The Transnational Return of US Environmental History,” International Labor and Working-Class History 85 (2014): 177–93. 41. On capitalism and nature, see Donald Worster, “Transformations of the Earth: Toward an Agroecological Perspective in History,” Journal of American History 76, no. 4 (1990): 1087–1106; Jason W. Moore, “Capitalism as World-Ecology: Braudel and Marx on Environmental History,” Organization & Environment 16, no. 4 (2003): 431–58; Bartow J. Elmore, Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2015); Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017). 42. Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Penguin, 1985); Lawrence Kessler, “Planter’s Paradise: Nature, Culture, and Hawaiʻi’s Sugarcane Plantations” (Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 2016). On

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animals in the Pacific, see Ryan Tucker Jones, “A ‘Havock Made among Them’: Animals, Empire, and Extinction in the Russian North Pacific, 1741–1810,” Environmental History 16, no. 4 (2011): 585–609; Ryan Tucker Jones, “Running into Whales: The History of the North Pacific from below the Waves,” American Historical Review 118, no. 2 (2013): 349–77; Bathsheba Demuth, “The Power of Place: Ideology and Ecology in the Bering Strait, 1848–1988” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2016). 43. Thomas G. Andrews, Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 122–56. 44. On cosmopolitanism, see Glenda Sluga and Julia Horne, “Cosmopolitanism: Its Pasts and Practices,” Journal of World History 21, no. 3 (2010): 369–73. On poor people’s environmentalisms, see Ramachandra Guha, Environmentalism: A Global History (New York: Longman, 2000), esp. 98–124; Joan Martinez-Alier, The Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2002); Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 45. On proletarianization, see Marx, Capital, 784–848; Beckert, Empire of Cotton, 175–98. 46. Haunani-Kay Trask, “Natives and Anthropologists: The Colonial Struggle,” The Contemporary Pacific 3, no. 1 (1991): 159–67; Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaiʻi (rev. ed.; Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1999); Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (Dunedin, New Zealand: University of Otago Press, 1999); Julie Kaomea, “Contemplating Kuleana: Reflections on the Rights and Responsiblities of Non-Indigenous Participants in Programmes for Indigenous Education,” AlterNative 5, no. 2 (2009): 79–99; also, Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, Ikaika Hussey, and Erin Kahunawaikaʻala Wright, eds., A Nation Rising: Hawaiian Movements for Life, Land, and Sovereignty (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014).

chapter one. boki’s predicament 1. Auguste Duhaut-Cilly, A Voyage to California, the Sandwich Islands & Around the World in the Years, 1826–1829, trans. and ed. August Frugé and Neal Harlow (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 204, 207. 2. Samuel Manaiakalani Kamakau, Ruling Chiefs of Hawaii (Honolulu: Kamehameha Schools Press, 1961), 278, 294–96; Gavan Daws, “The High Chief Boki: A Biographical Study in Early Nineteenth Century Hawaiian History,” Journal of the Polynesian Society 75, no. 1 (1966): 65–83, esp. 79; Dorothy Shineberg, They Came for Sandalwood: A Study of the Sandalwood Trade in the South-West Pacific, 1830–1865 (Melbourne, Australia: Melbourne University Press, 1967), 20–22. 3. On the Canton trade, see Jacques Downs, The Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China Policy, 1784–1844 (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1997); Robert B. Marks,

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Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Paul Van Dyke, The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700–1845 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005); William T. Rowe, China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2009), 122–148. On China as the center of the early nineteenth-century global economy, see R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Robert B. Marks, The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002). 4. David Mackay, In the Wake of Cook: Exploration, Science & Empire, 1780–1801 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985); Edward G. Gray, “Go East, Young Man,” Common-place 5, no. 2 (2005), http://www.common-place-archives.org/vol-05 /no-02/gray/index.shtml (accessed June 17, 2016). 5. Lilikalā Kameʻeleihiwa, Native Land and Foreign Desires: Pehea Lā e Pono ai? (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1992), 3, 13, 25, 29–30. On pono, also see Sally Engle Merry, Colonizing Hawaiʻi: The Cultural Power of Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 60; Noenoe K. Silva, Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 16, 33, 37–40. On ka pono o ke kino (the pono of the body), see S. W. B. Kaulainamoku, “No ka maikai o na Aina Kukaemanu o G. P. Judd [Concerning the well-being of the Guano Lands of G. P. Judd],” Ka Hae Hawaii, December 14, 1859; Kaulainamoku et al., “Mea hou ma Jarvis Island [News at Jarvis Island],” Ka Hae Hawaii, November 9, 1859; “He mau wahi olelo no ka holo ana o na kanaka maoli i Kaliponia [A few words on the going of Native Hawaiians to California],” Ka Hae Hawaii, April 17, 1861; T. B. Kamipele, “No Kalifonia Mai [From California],” Ka Hae Hawaii, July 3, 1861. For more complex discussions of ahupuaʻa, see Theodore Morgan, Hawaii: A Century of Economic Change, 1778–1876 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948), 16–31; Marion Kelly, “Changes in Land Tenure in Hawaii, 1778–1850” (M.A. thesis, University of Hawaiʻi, 1956), 11–20; Kameʻeleihiwa, Native Land and Foreign Desires, 26–29. 6. Marshall Sahlins (with Dorothy B. Barrère), Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii: Volume One, Historical Ethnography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 27–33, 108–15, 146, 149–50. On forced labor at Āliapaʻakai, Oʻahu’s “Salt Lake,” see C. S. Stewart, Journal of a Residence in the Sandwich Islands, during the years, 1823, 1824, and 1825 [1830] (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1970), 285–88; Sahlins, Anahulu, 146n13. 7. Adele Ogden, The California Sea Otter Trade, 1784–1848 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1941); James R. Gibson, Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods: The Maritime Fur Trade of the Northwest Coast, 1785–1841 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992).

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8. On tea and sugar, see Sidney Mintz’s classic Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Penguin Books, 1985). On triangulating among China, Hawaiʻi, and the northwest coast of North America, see Marshall Sahlins, “Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of ‘The WorldSystem,’ ” in Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory, ed. Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B. Ortner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 412–55. 9. On the Russian Pacific, see John F. Richards, The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 517–46; John R. Bockstoce, Furs and Frontiers in the Far North: The Contest among Native and Foreign Nations for the Bering Strait Fur Trade (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Ryan Tucker Jones, Empire of Extinction: Russians and the North Pacific’s Strange Beasts of the Sea, 1741–1867 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). On Russia and Hawaiʻi, specifically, see Glynn Barratt, The Russian View of Honolulu, 1809–26 (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1988); Peter R. Mills, Hawaiʻi’s Russian Adventure: A New Look at Old History (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2002). 10. O. A. Bushnell, The Gifts of Civilization: Germs and Genocide in Hawaiʻi (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1993), 156–59; David Igler, “Diseased Goods: Global Exchanges in the Eastern Pacific Basin, 1770–1850,” American Historical Review 109, no. 3 (2004): 693–719. On Hawaiian migrant workers along the northwest coast of North America, see Janice K. Duncan, Minority without a Champion: Kanakas on the Pacific Coast, 1788–1850 (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1972); Jean Barman and Bruce Watson, Leaving Paradise: Indigneous Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest, 1787–1898 (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2006). 11. John Suter, copy of a letter to Messrs. James & Thomas Lamb, July 15, 1808, Miscellaneous Papers, 1804–1811, John Suter Papers, 1804–1848, Microfi lm P-451, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston; J. C. Jones Jr. to Josiah Marshall and Dixey Wildes, December 23, 1821, Volume 1, Josiah Marshall Letters and Accounts, 1821–1841 (MS AmW 63), Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 12. Morgan, Hawaii, 59; Edward Beechert, Honolulu: Crossroads of the Pacific (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), 23. 13. Morgan, Hawaii, 59. Turnbull, as quoted in John Ryan Fischer, Cattle Colonialism: An Environmental History of the Conquest of California and Hawaiʻi (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 89. On Hawaiian salt extraction, also see William Ellis, Journal of William Ellis: A Narrative of an 1823 Tour Through Hawaiʻi [1825] (Honolulu: Mutual Publishing, 2004), 17–18, 407. 14. Stewart, Journal of a Residence, 285–88. Early descriptions of Āliapaʻakai also include: Duhaut-Cilly, A Voyage to California, 225–26; Lahainaluna, “He mau ninau no Aliapaakai, ma Moanalua i Oahu [Questions concerning Aliapaakai, at Moanalua in Oahu],” Ka Nonanona, March 23, 1843; response from Ioane [John], letter to the editor, Ka Nonanona, April 25, 1843.

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15. “Journal by C. Pickering. In his handwriting, kept by him while on the United States Exploring Expedition, Wilkes, Commander,” entries for October 2 and November 30, 1840, Charles Pickering Journal, 1838–1841, Microfi lm P-118, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston; Stewart, Journal of a Residence, 288; Sahlins, Anahulu, 146, including note 13. On the geology and limnology of Āliapaʻakai, see Kost A. Pankiwskyj, “Geology of the Salt Lake Area, Oahu, Hawaii,” Pacific Science 26 (1972): 242–53; J. A. Maciolek, “Lakes and Lake-like Waters of the Hawaiian Archipelago,” Occasional Papers of Bernice P. Bishop Museum 25, no. 1 (1982): 1–14. Economist Theodore Morgan’s data demonstrates that Hawaiian salt production peaked in 1847; see Morgan, Hawaii, 96–97. 16. Beechert, Honolulu, 11–14; Alastair Couper, Sailors and Traders: A Maritime History of the Pacific Peoples (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2009), 83–84; Robert J. Hommon, The Ancient Hawaiian State: Origins of a Political Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), ch. 15. 17. Sahlins, Anahulu, 42. On Kamehameha’s control over international trade in the 1810s, see Samuel Hill, Journal and Log of Two Voyages, Samuel Hill Papers, New York Public Library. 18. Isaac Iselin, Notes and Excerpts, 1880, Volume 1, 43–44, New-York Historical Society. 19. Ibid., Volume 1, 23; Nicholas Thomas, Islanders: The Pacific in the Age of Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 20, 80. 20. “Pages from James Hunnewell’s Journal,” entries for December 17, 1817, December 19, 1817, and June 10, 1818, Folder 1a, Box 13 (Volume 25 1817–1840), James Hunnewell, Business Papers, 1823–1883, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts; Isaiah Lewis, instructions for John Scovill, 2nd Officer of the ship Arab, April 1820, Isaiah Lewis Letter Book, 1819– 1821, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts. 21. On the mutability of things, see Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I: A Critique of Political Economy [1867] (New York: Modern Library, 1906), 41–96; Daniel Miller, Stuff (Malden, MA: Polity, 2010). 22. “Sandalwood in the Pacific: A State-of-Knowledge Synthesis and Summary from the April 1990 Symposium,” and Mark Merlin and Dan VanRavenswaay, “The History of Human Impact on the Genus Santalum in Hawaiʻi,” in Proceedings of the Symposium on Sandalwood in the Pacific; April 9–11, 1990; Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, ed. Lawrence Hamilton and C. Eugene Conrad (Berkeley, CA: Pacific Southwest Research Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1990), 1–11, 46–47; Christopher Cottrell, “Splinters of Sandalwood, Islands of ʻIliahi: Rethinking Deforestation in Hawaiʻi, 1811–1843” (M.A. thesis, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2002), 68–70. 23. Morgan, Hawaii, 40–41; Cottrell, “Splinters of Sandalwood,” 20–21; Merlin and VanRavenswaay, “The History of Human Impact,” 46, 49–50. William Ellis described the process by which women made (and perfumed) kapa in Journal of William Ellis, 91–95.

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24. “He Lahui puni hanohano, puni maikai, puni hookano, puni hoohiehie, he puni i na mea aala, i na luakapa i hoopeia i na mea ala”; S. M. Kamakau, “O ke ano o kekahi mau mea o ka Lahui Hawaii [The character of some things of the Hawaiian Nation],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, August 8, 1868. This translation is from the permanent exhibition at Hawaiian Hall, Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi (visited January 7, 2010); also see the permanent exhibition on kapa and fragrances at the Kauaʻi Museum, Lihuē, Hawaiʻi (visited January 13, 2010). 25. John Kieschnick, The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 277–78; also, Valerie Hansen, The Open Empire: A History of China to 1600 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 153–75. Edward Schafer claims the first mention of sandalwood in Chinese literature was in the fi fth century CE; see Edward H. Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T’ang Exotics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), 137, 157. 26. John S. Strong, “Gandhakutī: The Perfumed Chamber of the Buddha,” History of Religions 16, no. 4 (1977): 390–406. Also see James McHugh, Sandalwood and Carrion: Smell in Indian Religion and Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 27. W. W. Wood, Sketches of China (Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1830), 250. On the commercialization of the Pearl River Delta region in the Qing era, see Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt. 28. Wood, Sketches of China, 147, 185, 193. 29. On the naming of Xianggang, see Chan Ka Yan, “Joss Stick Manufacturing: A Study of a Traditional Industry in Hong Kong,” Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 29 (1989): 94–120. On the longue durée history of aromatics in China, see Schafer, Golden Peaches of Samarkand, 133–38, 155–63; Edward H. Schafer, The Vermillion Bird: T’ang Images of the South (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 193–200. 30. Beyond sandalwood, these included aloeswood and agarwood (chenxiang); see Kieschnick, Impact of Buddhism, 277–78; Chan, “Joss Stick Manufacturing,” 94–95; Iu Kow-Choy, “The Cultivation of the ‘Incence Tree’ (Aquilaria Sinensis),” Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 23 (1983): 247–49. 31. Hill, Journal and Log of Two Voyages, 5, 88, Samuel Hill Papers, New York Public Library. On use-value versus exchange-value, see Marx, Capital, 41–96. 32. On the exchange of “Moku (forests) for Moku (boats),” see Denise Noelani Arista, “Histories of Unequal Measure: Euro-American Encounters with Hawaiian Governance and Law, 1793–1827” (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 2010), 105–12. 33. Hill, Journal and Log of Two Voyages, 92, Samuel Hill Papers, New York Public Library; Isaiah Lewis to Messrs. Bordman & Pope, December 21, 1819, Isaiah Lewis Letter Book, 1819–1821, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts; “Pages from James Hunnewell’s Journal,” entry for April 8, 1821, Folder 1a, Box 13 (Volume 25 1817–1840), James Hunnewell, Business Papers, 1823–1883, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts; Charles B. Bullard to William Sturgis, November

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1, 1821, Charles B. Bullard Letterbook, 1821–1823, Ms. N-1962, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston; Sahlins, “Cosmologies of Capitalism.” 34. Kenneth Wiggins Porter, “John Jacob Astor and the Sandalwood Trade of the Hawaiian Islands, 1816–1828,” Journal of Economic and Business History 2 (1930): 495–519; Agnes C. Conrad, “Hawaiian Registered Vessels,” Hawaiian Journal of History 3 (1969): 31–41; Beechert, Honolulu, 26–27, 30; Cottrell, “Splinters of Sandalwood,” 33–34; Couper, Sailors and Traders, 84. 35. Hill, Journal and Log of Two Voyages, 231, 243, Samuel Hill Papers, New York Public Library; Levant (ship) Logbook, entries for June 16–24, 1820, New York Public Library; James B. Ames, Diary, 1829–1830, November 2, 1830, New-York Historical Society; Ellis, Journal of William Ellis, 430–31; Beechert, Honolulu, 42–43; Cottrell, “Splinters of Sandalwood,” 46–47; Mills, Hawaiʻi’s Russian Adventure, 24–25, 116. Also see “Ka Hae Hawaii [The Hawaiian Flag],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, January 1, 1862. 36. Isaiah Lewis, instructions for John Scovill, 2nd Officer of the ship Arab, April 1820, Isaiah Lewis Letter Book, 1819–1821, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts. 37. James Hunnewell to Capt Andrew Blanchard, October 6, 1821, Folder 4: Waste Book, Brig Thaddeus, 1821, 1822, 1823, & 1824, Box 13 (Volume 25 1817–1840), James Hunnewell, Business Papers, 1823–1883, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts. 38. Cottrell, “Splinters of Sandalwood,” 106; Shineberg, They Came for Sandalwood, 82–83. 39. Ellis, Journal of William Ellis, 299–300; Bullard quoted in Charles H. Hammatt, Ships, Furs, and Sandalwood: A Yankee Trader in Hawaiʻi, 1823–1825, ed. Sandra Wagner-Wright (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1999), xxiv. 40. Ellis, Journal of William Ellis, 69–70, 299–300, 400, 404–6; Kamakau, Ruling Chiefs, 204; Sahlins, Anahulu, 82–84; Cottrell, “Splinters of Sandalwood,” 34–36, 51–52, 114, 139. 41. Stewart, Journal of a Residence, 365; Sahlins, Anahulu, 50–51. 42. Ellis, Journal of William Ellis, 405–6; Cottrell, “Splinters of Sandalwood,” 34; Merlin and VanRavenswaay, “History of Human Impact,” 52. 43. Kamakau, Ruling Chiefs, 286; Stephen Reynolds, Journal of Stephen Reynolds, Volume I, 1823–1829, ed. Pauline King (Honolulu: Ku Paʻa Inc.; Salem, MA: Peabody Museum, 1989), 28–29. 44. “Pages from James Hunnewell’s Journal,” entries for September 4–11, 1818, and October 31, 1820, Folder 1a, Box 13 (Volume 25 1817–1840), James Hunnewell, Business Papers, 1823–1883, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts; “Tax Wood general account Dr [debit] to James Hunnewell for the following Expences Paid by him,” Folder 17: Early papers found in a large book, 1820–1830, Box 13 (Volume 25 1817–1840), James Hunnewell, Business Papers, 1823–1883, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts. 45. Hill, Journal and Log of Two Voyages, 85–88, 91–92, Samuel Hill Papers, New York Public Library.

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46. Kameʻeleihiwa, Native Land and Foreign Desires, 140, 170. On the reimagination of pono in post-1819 Hawaiʻi, see also Kameʻeleihiwa, ch. 6. 47. Reynolds, Journal of Stephen Reynolds, 123–28; Hiram Bingham, A Residence of Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Islands (Hartford, CT: H. Huntington; New York: S. Converse, 1847), 283–89; Daws, “High Chief Boki,” 70–71. On the increasing U.S. naval presence in the Pacific Ocean during the 1820s, see Donald D. Johnson (with Gary Dean Best), The United States in the Pacific: Private Interests and Public Policies, 1784–1899 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995). 48. Reynolds, Journal of Stephen Reynolds, 110, 142, 149, 169; Mark Rifk in, “Debt and the Transnationalization of Hawaiʻi,” American Quarterly 60 (2008): 43–66. 49. Morgan, Hawaii, 66; Sahlins, Anahulu, 84; Cottrell, “Splinters of Sandalwood,” 61–63. 50. Reynolds, Journal of Stephen Reynolds, 185; Jacobus Boelen, A Merchant’s Perspective: Captain Jacobus Boelen’s Narrative of his Visit to Hawaiʻi in 1828, ed. and trans. Frank K. A. Broeze (Honolulu: Hawaiian Historical Society, 1988), 76. On the extent of actual sandalwood deforestation in Hawaiʻi during this period, which remains inconclusive, see Merlin and VanRavenswaay, “History of Human Impact.” 51. James B. Ames, Diary, 1829–1830, November 2, 1830, New-York Historical Society. 52. On “blame the aliʻi” interpretations, Cottrell offers a succinct discussion in “Splinters of Sandalwood,” 133–57. On “blame the haole,” see Rifk in, “Debt and the Transnationalization of Hawaiʻi.” An important study of the controversial historiography of land and resource use by indigenous peoples is Shepard Krech III, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999). 53. James Hunnewell to Capt Andrew Blanchard, November 20, 1821, Folder 4: Waste Book, Brig Thaddeus, 1821, 1822, 1823, & 1824, Box 13 (Volume 25 1817–1840), James Hunnewell, Business Papers, 1823–1883, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts. 54. Downs, Golden Ghetto, 67–70, 105–8; Marks, Origins of the Modern World, 112–14. On the Macartney embassy, see George Macartney, An Embassy to China; being the journal kept by Lord Macartney during his embassy to the Emperor Ch’ ienlung, 1793–1794, ed. J. L. Cranmer-Byng (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1963); James L. Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995). 55. Marks, Origins of the Modern World, 123–30. 56. James B. Ames, Diary, 1829–1830, November 2, 1830, and November 16, 1830, New-York Historical Society. 57. Kelly, “Changes in Land Tenure,” 100; Morgan, Hawaii, 67; Robert C. Schmitt, Historical Statistics of Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1977), 369. 58. George H. Dole, “A Ride from Lihue to Waioli” [c. 1855–1862], HM 57933, George H. Dole Papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California; Charles Bernhard Richard, Travel Sketches, being a Narrative of his Travels from 1846 to 1849, 153, New-York Historical Society; Schmitt, Historical Statistics of Hawaii, 369.

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59. Kauikeaouli et al to anonymous [ABCFM], August 23, 1836, in both English and Hawaiian, Volume 8: Sandwich Islands Mission. General Letters and Documents, 1836–1843, Series 19.1, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Pacific Islands Missions Records, 1819–1960 (ABC 19), Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 60. Morgan, Hawaii, 66; Marks, Origins of the Modern World, 115, 123–53; Stuart Banner, Possessing the Pacific: Land, Settlers, and Indigenous People from Australia to Alaska (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 47–127; Rowe, China’s Last Empire, 168–74; Matt K. Matsuda, Pacific Worlds: A History of Seas, Peoples, and Cultures (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 202–9. On events leading up to the Opium War, also see Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 143–64; James M. Polachek, The Inner Opium War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); Rowe, China’s Last Empire, 149–74. 61. Beechert, Working in Hawaii, 25–29. 62. Morgan, Hawaii, 118–19; Merry, Colonizing Hawaiʻi, 82–83. For comparison, see Marx, Capital, 805–14, on laws against homelessness and idleness as a catalyst for proletarianization. 63. Morgan, Hawaii, 66; Beechert, Honolulu, 55; Kameʻeleihiwa, Native Land and Foreign Desires, 183–85; Silva, Aloha Betrayed, 37. Kauikeaouli’s statement is today, ironically, the state motto of U.S.-controlled Hawaiʻi. 64. Charles Bernhard Richard, Travel Sketches, being a Narrative of his Travels from 1846 to 1849, New-York Historical Society; Steven W. Hackel, “Land, Labor, and Production: The Colonial Economy of Spanish and Mexican California,” in Contested Eden: California Before the Gold Rush, ed. Ramon A. Gutierrez and Richard J. Orsi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 111–46, esp. 136–37; Banner, Possessing the Pacific, chs. 5–7; Bruce Cumings, Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). On the environmental legacies of the demarcation of a Pacific Ocean border between the United States and Canada, see Lissa K. Wadewitz, The Nature of Borders: Salmon, Boundaries, and Bandits on the Salish Sea (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012). 65. Banner, Possessing the Pacific, 1, 128–62. 66. William Little Lee to Simon Greenleaf, November 2, 1847, William Little Lee letters, 1847–1850, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; Kameʻeleihiwa, Native Land and Foreign Desires, 193–97; Sahlins, Anahulu, 129–37. 67. Lee quoted in Kameʻeleihiwa, Native Land and Foreign Desires, 215. 68. Ibid., 209, 227. Also, David W. Forbes, An Act to Prohibit Hawaiians from Emigrating to California “Where They May Die in Misery.” 1850 (San Francisco: Paul Markham Khan, 1986); Schmitt, Historical Statistics of Hawaii, 58; Beechert, Working in Hawaii, 29–33; Robert C. Schmitt and Eleanor C. Nordyke, “Death in Hawaiʻi: The Epidemics of 1848–1849,” Hawaiian Journal of History 35 (2001): 1–13; Seth Archer, “Epidemics and Culture in Hawaiʻi, 1778–1840” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Riverside, 2015). William Little Lee described the outbreak of

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disease in a letter to Simon Greenleaf, March 3, 1849, William Little Lee letters, 1847–1850, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 69. On relationships among enclosure, dispossession, and proletarianization, see Marx, Capital, 784–848. 70. Beechert, Working in Hawaii, 42–48; Merry, Colonizing Hawaiʻi, 97–98. Full text of the Masters and Servants Act in both English and Hawaiian is available at the website of the Center for Labor Education & Research (CLEAR), http:// www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/home/NaHakuamekaKauwa.html (accessed June 20, 2016). 71. Beechert, Working in Hawaii, 33–34; Kameʻeleihiwa, Native Land and Foreign Desires, 209, 295–97; Merry, Colonizing Hawaiʻi, 94–95. 72. Sahlins, Anahulu, 136; Merry, Colonizing Hawaiʻi, 94. 73. William Little Lee to Simon Greenleaf, March 3, 1849, William Little Lee letters, 1847–1850, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

chapter two. make’s dance 1. Hannibal (ship), Journal 1849 September 6—1851 March 20, Log 862, G. W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut. 2. On the story of the whale rider, see Susan A. Lebo, “A Local Perspective on Hawaii’s Whaling Economy: Whale Traditions and Government Regulation of the Kingdom’s Native Seamen and Whale Fishery,” CORIOLIS 1, no. 1 (2010): 3–37, esp. 5; modern iterations include Witi Ihimaera, The Whale Rider (Auckland, New Zealand: Reed Books, 1987) and the fi lm version, Whale Rider, directed by Niki Caro (Los Angeles: Newmarket Films, 2003), DVD. 3. Theodore Morgan, Hawaii: A Century of Economic Change, 1778–1876 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948), 76; Arrell Morgan Gibson (with John S. Whitehead), Yankees in Paradise: The Pacific Basin Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), 138. Morgan states that the earliest American whalers visited Kealakekua Bay on the island of Hawaiʻi in 1819. They were from New Bedford, Massachusetts. On the sex trade, see David Chappell, “Shipboard Relations between Pacific Island Women and Euroamerican Men, 1767–1887,” Journal of Pacific History 27, no. 2 (1992), 131–49. 4. Morgan, Hawaii, 76. 5. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale [1851] (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), 98. On commodities and value, see Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I: A Critique of Political Economy [1867] (New York: Modern Library, 1906), 41–96. On the commodification of nature, see William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), esp. chs. 3–5. On the consumption of nature, see Matthew Klingle, “Spaces of Consumption in Environmental History,” History and Theory 42, no. 4 (December 2003): 94–110. 6. Morgan, Hawaii, 219; Gibson, Yankees in Paradise, 132. On the role of cattle, see John Ryan Fischer, Cattle Colonialism: An Environmental History of the Con-

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quest of California and Hawaiʻi (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015). On New England and the industrial revolution, see Chad Montrie, Making a Living: Work and Environment in the United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 13–34; Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (2nd ed.; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 55–70. 7. Melville, Moby-Dick, 172. On the alienation of labor, see Karl Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844,” in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The MarxEngels Reader (2nd ed.; New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), 66–125, esp. 70–81. 8. Gibson, Yankees in Paradise, 132–33. On baleen as nineteenth-century plastic, see J. R. McNeill, “Of Rats and Men: A Synoptic Environmental History of the Island Pacific,” Journal of World History 5, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 320. On women’s consumption of nature, see Jennifer Price, Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America (New York: Basic Books, 1999), esp. ch. 2. 9. Herman Melville, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life [1846] (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), 128. On European and Euro-American perceptions of Pacific Islands and Islanders as Edens and noble savages, see Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 222–44, 316–28. On American romanticism and the Industrial Revolution, see Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964) and Roderick Frazier Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967). 10. Campbell quoted in Morgan, Hawaii, 45–46. The use of kukui nuts is also mentioned in William Ellis, Journal of William Ellis: A Narrative of an 1823 Tour Through Hawaiʻi [1825] (Honolulu: Mutual Publishing, 2004), 380–81; and Jacobus Boelen, A Merchant’s Perspective: Captain Jacobus Boelen’s Narrative of his Visit to Hawaiʻi in 1828, ed. and trans. Frank K. A. Broeze (Honolulu: Hawaiian Historical Society, 1988), 66. Also see Alan Ziegler, Hawaiian Natural History, Ecology, and Evolution (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2002), 247–49, 330–31. 11. On mana and whale teeth, see Samuel Hill, Journal and Log of Two Voyages, 5, 8, Samuel Hill Papers, New York Public Library; also, Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). 12. Ryan Tucker Jones, “Running into Whales: The History of the North Pacific from below the Waves,” American Historical Review 118, no. 2 (April 2013): 349–77. On workscapes, see Thomas G. Andrews, Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 125. On the study of oceans as historical space, see Ben Finney, “The Other One-Third of the Globe,” Journal of World History 5, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 273–97; and Jerry H. Bentley, “Sea and Ocean Basins as Frameworks of Historical Analysis,” The Geographical Review 89, no. 2 (April 1999): 215–24. 13. On sperm whale feeding behavior and geographical distribution, see L. Harrison Matthews, The Natural History of the Whale (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 70–72, 126–27; Hal Whitehead, Sperm Whales: Social Evolution in the

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Ocean (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 12, 33–38, 45, 53–55, 79–80. On the Humboldt Current in environmental history, see Kristin Wintersteen, “Fishing for Food and Fodder: The Transnational Environmental History of Humboldt Current Fisheries in Peru and Chile since 1945” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 2011); Edward D. Melillo, “The First Green Revolution: Debt Peonage and the Making of the Nitrogen Fertilizer Trade, 1840–1930,” American Historical Review 117, no. 4 (October 2012): 1028–1060; and Gregory T. Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). For an interesting global historical perspective on ENSO (the El Niño– Southern Oscillation phenomenon), see also Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (New York: Verso, 2001). 14. On the ecology of right and bowhead whales, see Matthews, Natural History of the Whale, 43, 64, 117, 126. On zooplankton biogeography, see Todd D. O’Brien, COPEPOD: The Global Plankton Database. An overview of the 2010 database contents, processing methods, and access interface, U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA Technical Memorandum, NMFS-F/ST-36, December 2010; accessible at http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/plankton/ (accessed May 31, 2016). 15. Maury’s Whale Chart is available in various locations and formats. I first witnessed the map in 2010 at the exhibition “On the Water” at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., http:// americanhistory.si.edu/onthewater/exhibition/3_7.html (accessed May 31, 2016). On Maury’s contributions to the science of oceanography, see Helen M. Rozwadowski, Fathoming the Ocean: The Discovery and Exploration of the Deep Sea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). Maury’s attempted simplification (and rationalization) of complex nature in the service of industrial capitalism was a common aspect of American science in the nineteenth century. See Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis; Steinberg, Down to Earth. 16. George Brown Goode, The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1887), plate 183. 17. Italy (ship), Account book, 1854–1857, New-York Historical Society. 18. On “in-between” or liminal spaces in maritime history, see David Chappell, Double Ghosts: Oceanian Voyagers on Euroamerican Ships (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), xv, 6–10; and Greg Dening, Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land: Marquesas, 1774–1880 (Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1988), 157. 19. Edward Beechert, Honolulu: Crossroads of the Pacific (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991); Marshall Sahlins (with Dorothy B. Barrère), Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii: Volume One, Historical Ethnography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 102; Gibson, Yankees in Paradise, 138–140. 20. Adeline (ship) Logbook, New York Public Library. 21. Italy (ship) Account book, 1854–1857, New-York Historical Society. For further examples, see Log of the ship Hillman (1851–54), HM 16764, and Log of the ship Reindeer (1856–58), HM 16596, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

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22. See shipping articles of the bark Helen Snow (1864) in Box 1, Folder 1, “Shipping Articles 1864”; the bark Coral (1862) in Box 5, Folder 1, “Shipping Articles 1862–1863”; the brig Victoria (1863) in ibid.; and the bark Martha (1863) in ibid., all in Harbormaster’s Shipping Articles, 1862–1900, Record Group 89, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. Note that historian Denise Noelani Arista has argued that the 1819 abolition of the kapu marked the end of a way of organizing space and time in the early Hawaiian world, and that the arrival of whaling ships the next year marked the beginning of a new way of organizing space and time bound to the comings and goings of ships; see Arista, “Histories of Unequal Measure: Euro-American Encounters with Hawaiian Governance and Law, 1793–1827” (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 2010), 168–69. On the relationship between capitalism and time, see E. P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present 38, no. 1 (1967): 56–97. 23. On desertion, see Margaret Creighton, Rites and Passages: The Experience of American Whaling, 1830–1870 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 144–46. Records of Hawaiian deserters are in Volume 3, 1858–1867, Collector General of Customs Seamen’s Records, Record Group 88, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. On the Bounty, see Jennifer Newell, Trading Nature: Tahitians, Europeans, and Ecological Exchange (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2010), 141–70. 24. John C. Jones, Jr. to Lieut. John Percival, April 13, 1826, John Percival Papers, 1826–1841, Ms. N-691, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. On the manyheaded hydra, see Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000). 25. Italy (ship) Account book, 1854–1857, New-York Historical Society. 26. Charles S. Stewart, Journal of a Residence in the Sandwich Islands, During the Years 1823, 1824, and 1825 (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1970), 157; Eleanor C. Nordyke, “Blacks in Hawaiʻi: A Demographic and Historical Perspective,” Hawaiian Journal of History 22 (1988): 241–55; Chappell, Double Ghosts, 41; W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); Nancy Shoemaker, Native American Whalemen and the World: Indigenous Encounters and the Contingency of Race (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015). 27. Italy (ship) Account book, 1854–1857, New-York Historical Society. Creighton states that the average size of a whaling crew in the nineteenth century was approximately thirty men. Creighton, Rites and Passages, 27–28. 28. Stewart, Journal of a Residence, 233–34; James B. Ames, Diary, 1829–1830, November 2, 1830, New-York Historical Society. On roots and routes, see James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 29. See shipping articles for the ship Isaac Howland (1862–63), in Box 5, Folder 1, “Shipping Articles 1862–1863”; the ship Gustavo (1864), in Box 5, Folder 2, “Shipping Articles 1864, 1866, 1867”; the bark Jno Howland (1868), in Box 5, Folder 3, “Shipping Articles Jan-Dec 1868”; and the ship California (1868), in Box 5, Folder 3,

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all in Harbormaster’s Shipping Articles, 1862–1900, Record Group 89, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. 30. Boelen, A Merchant’s Perspective, 72–74, 80. 31. Shipping articles for the ships Zoe and Catherine (1863), in Box 5, Folder 1, “Shipping Articles 1862–1863,” in Harbormaster’s Shipping Articles, 1862–1900, Record Group 89, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. Further examples are the shipping articles for the brigs Kohola and Victoria (1863), in ibid. 32. Melville, Moby-Dick, 107, 375; Creighton, Rites and Passages, 143. 33. Melville, Moby-Dick, 107. 34. Ibid., 38–39; Chappell, Double Ghosts, xv, 6–10, 42. 35. Thomas Hazard Roe, “Journal of a voyage to the Pacific in the Whale Ship Chelsea,” July 17, 1831, Chelsea (ship), Journal 1831 Jun—1834 Jun, Log 1004, G. W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut. Also see Morgan, Hawaii, 220–21; Creighton, Rites and Passages, 125–27. 36. On seamen’s life in the forecastle, see Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea [1840] (New York: Modern Library, 2001). On corporal punishment, see Creighton, Rites and Passages, 94–96, 108–11. On mutinies, see somewhat confl icting accounts in Chappell, Double Ghosts, 71; and Alastair Couper, Sailors and Traders: A Maritime History of the Pacific Peoples (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2009), 129–32. 37. See shipping articles for the ships Emily Morgan (1866) and Alpha (1866), in Box 5, Folder 2, “Shipping Articles 1864, 1866, 1867,” in Harbormaster’s Shipping Articles, 1862–1900, Record Group 89, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. Also, Melville, Moby-Dick, 77, 85; Creighton, Rites and Passages, 143; Chappell, Double Ghosts, 44, 57–58. According to Creighton, the average lay for a boatsteerer (whose duties included harpooning) in the nineteenth century was 1/90. The average lays for seamen, depending on their level of skill, ranged from 1/190 to 1/150. Creighton, Rites and Passages, 27–30. 38. Italy (ship) Account book, 1854–1857, New-York Historical Society. 39. Shipping articles for the bark Coral (1862), Box 5, Folder 1, “Shipping Articles 1862–1863”; and the brigantine April (1868), Box 5, Folder 3, “Shipping Articles JanDec 1868,” all in Harbormaster’s Shipping Articles, 1862–1900, Record Group 89, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. 40. Italy (ship) Account book, 1854–1857, New-York Historical Society. 41. Ibid.; Chappell, Double Ghosts, 58. On debt, see the records of the “Seamen discharged before Harbor Master under the Act of June 25, 1855,” in Volume 2, Oct 1853–Aug 1866, Collector General of Customs Seamen’s Records, Record Group 88, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. 42. Charles H. Hammatt, Ships, Furs, and Sandalwood: A Yankee Trader in Hawaiʻi, 1823–1825, ed. Sandra Wagner-Wright (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1999), 29; O. A. Bushnell, The Gifts of Civilization: Germs and Genocide in Hawaiʻi (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1993), 50. 43. Dwight Baldwin to Rev. R. Anderson, August 18, 1837, Volume 14, Series 19.1, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Pacific Islands Mis-

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sions Records, 1819–1960, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts; Marion Kelly, “Changes in Land Tenure in Hawaii, 1778–1850” (M.A. thesis, University of Hawaiʻi, 1956), 116; Sahlins, Anahulu, 102. Also see Morgan, Hawaii, 81; and John S. Whitehead, “Noncontiguous Wests: Alaska and Hawaiʻi,” in Many Wests: Place, Culture, and Regional Identity, ed. David M. Wrobel and Michael C. Steiner (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997), 321. 44. “Ua hoopomaikai nui ia mai mamua keia pae moku o na moku kohola, no ko lakou holo ana mai ia nei e hoolako ai, a oia no ke kumu makamua nana i hookahua ai i ke kanu nui ana o ka uala. Ua hele nui mai hoi na haole kalepa a noho ma na kulanakauhale awa ku moku e hoopukapuka ai me na mokukohola, a kawowo aku la na kahua oia mau kulanakauhale a akea loa, a ua kukuluia na hale paa a me ka maikai hoi, a mahuahua malie mai la ka waiwai o kanaka, a ua hooluoluia ka noho ana o kekahi no ka loaa ana mai i na mea e kuonoono ai; a ma ia mau wahi hoi, ua loaa i na mea mahiai, kahi e kuai aku i na mea a lakou i kanu ai. A mahope wale mai o ke ku ana mai o na mokukohola, nee mai la ke kau Kaliponia, a ua hookikina hou ia na mea mahi uala e hoomahuahua i ke kanu ana, no ke akaka lea o ka makepono o ka hana. Nani ka hooikaika ana o na mea kanu, a nani no hoi ka lilelile mai o na dala hulali i loaa mai ma o ua hana la; kahiko iho la na kane i na paa lole paina, a ‘hao no a linohau’ na wahine i ke kilika . . .” “Ke emi wawe loa nei ka nui o na mokukohola . . . [The number of whaling ships is presently very quickly diminishing . . . ],” Ka Hae Hawaii, April 17, 1861. 45. Melville, Moby-Dick, 41; Richard A. Greer, “Wandering Kamaʻainas: Notes on Hawaiian Emigration Before 1848,” Journal of the West 6, no. 2 (1967): 221–25; Chappell, Double Ghosts, 132; Edward D. Melillo, “Making Sea Cucumbers out of Whales’ Teeth: Nantucket Castaways and Encounters of Value in NineteenthCentury Fiji,” Environmental History 20, no. 3 (2015): 449–74, esp. 464–65. 46. New London Crew Lists Index, 1803–1878, G. W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut; U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Office, 1860 Manuscript Census, population schedules, familysearch.org, http:// familysearch.org (accessed June 13, 2016). In the New London Crew List database, I found 144 instances of men of Hawaiian ancestry departing New London on American whaling ships. Of these, approximately 120 distinct men are represented because some of these men departed multiple times over the course of their careers. The data in figure 7 includes all 144 New London departures. 47. Giles Waldo to George Waldo, November 2, 1845, HM 17463, Letters of Giles Waldo, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California; Sahlins, Anahulu, 101–2. For a sense of the numbers of American seamen visiting the Hawaiian Islands at this time, note U.S. consul to the Hawaiian Kingdom John Turrill’s 1848 report that over the past two and a half years (1846–1848) “some thirty or forty thousand [American] Seamen have visited these Islands.” J. Turrill to James Buchanan, Secretary of State, Dec. 22, 1848, Volume 1, Letter books of the U.S. Consul in Hawaii, MS Vault 62, California Historical Society, San Francisco. 48. See competing analyses in Chappell, Double Ghosts, xiii, 42, 186n5; and Gary Y. Okihiro, Island World: A History of Hawaiʻi and the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 154.

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49. Greer, “Wandering Kamaʻainas,” 222–23; Morgan, Hawaii, 140; Okihiro, Island World, 156. Hawaiian Minister of Foreign Affairs Robert C. Wyllie is the original source of the “550 emigrants” figure. See Wyllie, section 59 titled “Native Seamen,” in “Notes, on the Shipping, Trade, Agriculture, Climate . . . ,” The Friend, September 4, 1844. Wyllie’s data showed 275 emigrants leaving Honolulu during that period, and so he estimated that another 275 probably left from Lāhainā. Of the actual 275 emigrants recorded, 114 left on whaling ships (41 percent); 63 on ships going to California (23 percent); 50 on trading ships to the Columbia River; 18 left on ships to various Pacific Islands; 10 to Mazatlán, Mexico; 9 to Valparaiso, Chile; 6 to Kamchatka, Russia; and 5 to China. 50. Morgan, Hawaii, 148n21; Sahlins, Anahulu, 103n6; Chappell, Double Ghosts, xi, 17; Gibson, Yankees in Paradise, 148; Beechert, Honolulu, 52. 51. Data compiled from “Native Seamen shipped before the Harbor Master in the year 1859,” Volume 3, 1858–1867; and Volume 4, 1859–1865, Collector General of Customs Seamen’s Records, Record Group 88, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. 52. Sahlins, Anahulu, 106. 53. Ibid.; Chappell, Double Ghosts, 163; Robert C. Schmitt, Historical Statistics of Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1977), 8, 12, 16. On the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi’s concern over population decline in the late 1840s, also see David W. Forbes, An Act to Prohibit Hawaiians from Emigrating to California “Where They May Die in Misery.” 1850 (San Francisco: Paul Markham Khan, 1986). On relationships between internal migration and overseas migration, see Philip A. Kuhn, Chinese Among Others: Emigration in Modern Times (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), as a useful model. 54. Sahlins, Anahulu, 107–108, 111–12. 55. Ibid., 108, 112–15. 56. Marx, Capital, 784–848. 57. Hannibal (ship), Journal 1849 September 6—1851 March 20, Log 862, G. W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut.

chapter three. kealoha in the arctic 1. “Makemake nā au e ʻike iā Kaleponi / I ka ʻāina o ka nani a me ka maikaʻi./ Maikaʻi ʻokoʻa no ke kai kūono o Hukekona / He nani Papine me Kaliona. / Ka ʻoi loa aku nā o ka Lae Hao me Aukaki. / He home i aloha ʻia na nā holokahiki. . . .” Nā Mele Welo: Songs of Our Heritage, trans. Mary Kawena Pukui (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1995), 206–9. Translation by Pukui. For references to Aukaki (or Aukakina), see “Lau Kanaka Ke Kaona Nei [The Town Is Dense with People],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, November 3, 1866; “Na keiki o ke kai [The Boys of the Sea],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, October 31, 1868; “He lono mai ke Kai Anu o Alika [News from the Cold Sea of the Arctic],” Ka Lahui Hawaii, October 7, 1875.

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2. “Kaulana ke anu i Alika, ka lalawe i ka ili a puni.” On Kealoha’s journey, see Charles Edward Kealoha, “He Moolelo Walohia! Ka noho pio ana iwaena o ka Lahui Naguru ma Alika! Ka ike hou ana i ka aina! [A Heartwrenching Tale! Living as a captive amongst the Naguru people in the Arctic! Seeing Land Again!],” Ka Lahui Hawaii, November 8 and 15, 1877; Susan A. Lebo, “Native Hawaiian Seamen’s Accounts of the 1876 Arctic Whaling Disaster and the 1877 Massacre of Alaskan Natives from Cape Prince of Wales,” Hawaiian Journal of History 40 (2006): 99–129. Translation by Lebo with slight modification. 3. Edward Brinley, Jr. to Francis W. Brinley [November 1849], Edward Brinley, Jr. Papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California; Theodore Morgan, Hawaii: A Century of Economic Change, 1778–1876 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948), 76; John R. Bockstoce, Furs and Frontiers in the Far North: The Contest among Native and Foreign Nations for the Bering Strait Fur Trade (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 260–61. 4. Morgan, Hawaii, 146; Bockstoce, Furs and Frontiers, 327; Bathsheba Demuth, “The Power of Place: Ideology and Ecology in the Bering Strait, 1848–1988” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2016), 31, 36–37. On the U.S. adminstration of Alaska, see Stuart Banner, Possessing the Pacific: Land, Settlers, and Indigenous People from Australia to Alaska (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), ch. 9. 5. “i ka haki nua o na kanaka ma ke Alanui Nuuanu, i ka hoomaopoopo ana aku i ko lakou mau hiohiona, ua ike ia aku o na keiki o na kai Anuanu o Arita a me Aukakina, ua hoi mai a lele uwaki ana mauka nei.” “Lau Kanaka Ke Kaona Nei [The Town Is Dense with People],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, November 3, 1866; Adeline (ship) Logbook, New York Public Library; “Journal by C. Pickering. In his handwriting, kept by him while on the United States Exploring Expedition, Wilkes, Commander,” entry for November 7, 1840, Charles Pickering Journal, 1838–1841, Microfi lm P-118, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. On seamen’s understandings of “liberty,” see Paul A. Gilje, Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 6. “Aole no e nalo ko kai keiki a aohe no hoi e nalo ko ke kaona keiki. O ke aho no o na keiki o ke kai o ke kau mai o na lei ma ka ai a ma ke poo, hoonuanua kela ke ike aku”; “ka loaa ae la no o ka uhauha aku la noia. O ko kanaka mau no o ka hoomaeo.” All quotes from “Lau Kanaka Ke Kaona Nei [The Town Is Dense with People],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, November 3, 1866. 7. “I keia mau aluna ahiahi a me keia mau po konane a ka mahina, ua halawai pinepine mai makou me na keiki o na kai anu o Arita a me Aukakina, e lele waki ana ma ko kakou mau Alanui, oiai akahi no a loaa ia kakou he lelewaki honua, mai ka wa aku a lakou i kau ai maluna o ko lakou mau hale holo moana a hiki i ka hoi ana mai i ka aina nei.” “Na keiki o ke kai [The Boys of the Sea],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, October 31, 1868. 8. “e mahuahua ana na barela, a e ulumahiehie hou ana na keiki o ke kai. He mau la koe a halulu ana i ke kai malino o Kou nei, a hehi hou i ke noe o Kakuhihewa.”

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“He lono mai ke Kai Anu o Alika [News from the Cold Sea of the Arctic],” Ka Lahui Hawaii, October 7, 1875. 9. Marshall Sahlins (with Dorothy B. Barrère), Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii: Volume One, Historical Ethnography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 107–8; David A. Chappell, “Shipboard Relations between Pacific Island Women and Euroamerican Men, 1767–1887,” Journal of Pacific History 27, no. 2 (1992): 131–49. 10. Sally Engle Merry, Colonizing Hawaiʻi: The Cultural Power of Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 42, 221, 226–27, 242–43. 11. “I ko’u hele ana a ku ma kekahi mau hale ma Puueo, no ko’u ike nui i na wahine me ka lakou mau kane no ka moku Okohola mai, i hele wale a hapaupau i ka aila o ke kai Aukaki; ia’u e noho ana ma ka hale o kekahi kamaaina, ike iho la au i ka nui mai o na haole a me na kanaka kupa o keia aina hanau”; “Ua like pu me na wahine o Honolulu i lawe i ka laikini, pela maanei a’u i ike iho nei. Aloha ino na kaikamahine maka-palupalu e luaiele ia ana i-o ia nei.” J. A. K. Halaulani, “Ke holo nei ka Hookamakama o na wahine o Hilo [The going-on of Prostitution of the women of Hilo],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, April 27, 1865. 12. “na haole Okohola”; “pau ko makou hoomaloka i ke Kohola, ua ike na kane, na wahine a me na kamalii, i keia mau ia nui”; “i ike lakou i ke akamai oia poe lawaia.” J. W. Kuhelemai, “Kohola [Whales],” Ka Hae Hawaii, March 24, 1858. The “butcher haole” [“na haole pepehi”] comment is from J. A. Kaelemakule, “Kohola [Whales],” Ka Hae Hawaii, May 5, 1858. 13. “Kupanaha keia hana.” Quote from Kaelemakule, “Kohola [Whales],” Ka Hae Hawaii, May 5, 1858. “O ko lakou io, ua ai ia e na kanaka, ono maoli, wahi a lakou.” Quote from Kuhelemai, “Kohola [Whales],” Ka Hae Hawaii, March 24, 1858. On the rarity of whale hunting in early Hawaiʻi, see Alan Ziegler, Hawaiian Natural History, Ecology, and Evolution (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2002), 327. Historian Susan Lebo argues otherwise, that whale hunting and whale meat consumption were not uncommon in early Hawaiʻi; see, Susan A. Lebo, “A Local Perspective of Hawaii’s Whaling Economy: Whale Traditions and Government Regulation of the Kingdom’s Native Seamen and Whale Fishery,” CORIOLIS 1, no. 1 (2010): 3–37, esp. 7–8, 17–19; Nancy Shoemaker, “Whale Meat in American History,” Environmental History 10, no. 2 (2005): 269–94. 14. “Lele ae la iluna kekahi Kohola nui a pau loa kona kino, aneane elua anana paha mai ka ili kai ae, i kona haule ana ilalo me ke kupaka o kona hiu a me ke poo, ua like me ke kani ana o ka pukuniahi, me ka ikaika loa, a ma kona wahi i haule ai, e haki ana na nalu ma na aoao a pau.” “Na palapala i loaa mai [Letters Received],” Ka Hae Hawaii, May 12, 1858. 15. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale [1851] (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), 189. 16. Ibid., 106; David Chappell, Double Ghosts: Oceanian Voyagers on Euroamerican Ships (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 41.

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17. Chappell, Double Ghosts, 43, 55, 158; Margaret Creighton, Rites and Passages: The Experience of American Whaling, 1830–1870 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 44–45, 143, 185. 18. “Aole no oe e pakele / I ka makaala a ka lukau.” “He Mele Inoa no Kekaulike [A Name Song for Kekaulike],” Ke Koo o Hawaii, September 12, 1883; shipping articles for the ship Alpha (1866), in Box 5, Folder 2, “Shipping Articles 1864, 1866, 1867,” and the bark Oriole (1869), in Box 5, Folder 3, “Shipping Articles Jan-Dec 1868,” in Harbormaster’s Shipping Articles, 1862–1900, Record Group 89, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu; Melville, Moby-Dick, 134–36; Creighton, Rites and Passages, 61–62; Alastair Couper, Sailors and Traders: A Maritime History of the Pacific Peoples (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2009), 106. 19. “a hou i ke o, o ke ku no ia o ke Kohola, a ahai iwaho, io ianei, pela ke ano o ka hana ana.” Kaelemakule, “Kohola [Whales],” Ka Hae Hawaii, May 5, 1858; Melville, Moby-Dick, 181–89; Creighton, Rites and Passages, 65–68; Nathaniel Philbrick, Away Off Shore: Nantucket Island and its People, 1602–1890 (New York: Penguin, 1994), 192. 20. “Mahope o ka aina awakea ka hoomaka ana, poeleele hiki i ka moku.” Kaelemakule, “Kohola [Whales],” Ka Hae Hawaii, May 5, 1858. 21. Melville, Moby-Dick, 254–57. 22. Ibid., 325–28; Jacobus Boelen, A Merchant’s Perspective: Captain Jacobus Boelen’s Narrative of his Visit to Hawaiʻi in 1828, ed. and trans. Frank K. A. Broeze (Honolulu: Hawaiian Historical Society, 1988), 75; Creighton, Rites and Passages, 69–72. 23. Melville, Moby-Dick, 326–27; Creighton, Rites and Passages, 31, 71. 24. “Amounts received & Disbursed on a/c of Deceased Natives,” in Volume 2, Oct 1853—Aug 1866, Collector General of Customs Seamen’s Records, Record Group 88, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. Emphases in original. 25. Ibid. On use-value versus exchange-value, see Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I: A Critique of Political Economy [1867] (New York: Modern Library, 1906), 41–96. 26. “Seamen discharged before Harbor Master under the Act of June 25, 1855,” in Volume 2, Oct 1853—Aug 1866, Collector General of Customs Seamen’s Records, Record Group 88, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. 27. Ibid. 28. See records of the ships Delaware (1859) and Harrison (1860) in Volume 3, 1858–67, Collector General of Customs Seamen’s Records, Record Group 88, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. 29. On the malleability of race and relationships between race and class, see David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working-Class (New York: Verso, 1991). On tropicality and the body, see Philip D. Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe’s Encounter with the Tropical World in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Gary Y. Okihiro, Pineapple Culture: A History of the Tropical and Temperate Zones (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 1–14; Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaʻakahaʻopulani

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Hobart, “Tropical Necessities: Ice, Taste, and Territory in Settler Colonial Hawaiʻi” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 2016). On the supposed fi xity of Hawaiian bodies, see Merry, Colonizing Hawaiʻi, 75–76, 128–30. 30. Nicholas Thomas, Oceanic Art (London: Thames & Hudson, 1995), 99–114; Chappell, Double Ghosts, 70; Couper, Sailors and Traders, 20; Nicholas Thomas, Islanders: The Pacific in the Age of Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 101. 31. Melville, Moby-Dick, 29, 40, 101–2. 32. Creighton, Rites and Passages, 56, and ch. 7, passim. On the importance of hands as corporeal expressions of one’s class, see Ava Baron and Eileen Boris, “ ‘The Body’ as a Useful Category for Working-Class History,” Labor: Studies in WorkingClass History of the Americas 4, no. 2 (2007): 23–43. 33. Melville, Moby-Dick, 34, 37, 55. 34. Morgan, Hawaii, 144; Creighton, Rites and Passages, 39; Lebo, “Native Hawaiian Seamen’s Accounts,” 100. 35. Lebo, “Native Hawaiian Seamen’s Accounts,” 101–102. 36. Ibid., 105, 112. 37. “Oiai, o ka makamua keia o ko’u hele ana ma keia wahi, aole io no hoi i ke anu a anu, ke hele la na manamanalima a maeele, a o na wawae hoi, aohe hiki ke hoomaopopo iho i ka mehana, i ka ua mea o ke anu, hele ka lehelehe a haukeke i ke anu. He mea ole na paalole mehana a kakou e ike nei i ka manoanoa ma keia wahi.” Lebo, “Native Hawaiian Seamen’s Accounts,” 105, 113. Translation by Lebo with slight modifications. 38. “Ua lohe mai makou, ua make keia moku o kohola e holo ana malalo o ka Hae Hoku, ma ka la 23 o Sepatemaba, ia ma ka Moana Anu Akau. O ke kumu o keia poino ana, i lohia i ka makani ino, oia hoi ka makani e kapaia nei e kanaka, he makani gale. Ua hookauia mai na kanaka a pau maluna o ka moku Ohio. Ua loaa pu hoi na moku Reinadia a me Uleu i keia makani iho, a ua pakele mahunehune mai nae laua, aole hoi i iho aku e like me kela.” “Make ke o kohola ‘Hae Hawaii’ [Destruction of the Whaler ‘Hae Hawaii’],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, October 31, 1868. 39. “Alaskan Shipwreck Table,” Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, State of Alaska, http://www.boem.gov/uploadedFiles /BOEM/About_BOEM/BOEM_Regions/Alaska_Region/Ships/2011_Shipwreck .pdf (accessed June 20, 2016). 40. “A i ka la 12 o Iulai, o na moku a pau loa he 52, he 51 wale no Kohola i loaa ia lakou”; “ua nele loa ke kai o Atika i ka hau, a hiki i ka mua o Iulai, a ua holo nui ae na moku Okohola malaila, aka. aole nae hookahi Kohola i loaa malaila, a ma ia hope iho, ua hiki mai la ka hau, a ua loaa iho la na moku Okohola a pau loa malaila i keia pilikia”; “ua pilikia loa na moku no ke anuanu, a ua puiwa nui hoi na Kohola i ka hau”; “o ka nui loa o na moku, ua pau loa na keleawe o ka ihu i ka hemo, a i kahi wa hoi, ua pau pu me ka laau no ka pili ana o ka hau”; “ua hakihaki liilii na hoeuli”; “e liu nui ana laua”; “eha, a elima paha mau moku wale no i nele i ka poino.” “Nu hou mai Atika mai [News from the Arctic],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, August 29, 1868; “He kokoke e pau loa na moku i ka piha pono i ka aila, a he ano laki maoli keia kikina i

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ka nana aku, aole hoi e like me ka mea i hooiloiloia iho nei, e hoi nele mai ana lakou.” “Na o kohola ma Honolulu nei [The Whalers at Honolulu],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, October 31, 1868. 41. “ke kiapa Arctic, kapena Whitney, ma ke kuono o Wamwright, ua pa mai la ka makani kikiao ikaika ma ke kukulu komohana, a na ia makani i hoonee mai i ka hau me ka ikaika, a ili iho la ka moku Arctic. Mahope iho o ka lilo ana aku o ko ke kuna mau heleuma nui elua, ua loaa ka pomaikai iaia ma ka hemo ana mawaho o ka hau, a he mau la mahope iho, i ka pau ana o ka hau i ka nahaha, ua hoi hou aku, a hui hou me ka Arctic e ka ana iloko o na kapuai he 11 ka hohonu o ke kai. Ua hooikaika ke kapena ma ka hoolele ana i na ukana a pau, a i ka mama ana o ka moku, ua hemo hou.” “He lono mai ke Kai Anu o Alika [News from the Cold Sea of the Arctic],” Ka Lahui Hawaii, October 7, 1875. 42. “Arctic Land Discoveries,” The Friend, December 2, 1867; Bockstoce, Furs and Frontiers, 333; Demuth, “Power of Place,” 31–33. 43. As quoted in Bockstoce, Furs and Frontiers, 312–313. 44. Ibid., 404n45; Lebo, “Native Hawaiian Seamen’s Accounts,” 120–25. Translations by Lebo. The original publication is J. Polapola, “He kaua weliweli ma Alika maluna o ka moku Alepani [A Fierce Battle in the Arctic aboard the ship Alepani],” Ka Lahui Hawaii, November 1, 1877. 45. Lebo, “Native Hawaiian Seamen’s Accounts,” 125. Translations by Lebo. 46. Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea [1840] (New York: Modern Library, 2001), 93; Henry Erben, Jr., “Remarks of Comm. Erben, upon passage from San Francisco to Honolulu, in the U.S.S. Tuscarora,” [November 1874], and “Report concerning Honolulu” from a midshipmen to Commodore Henry Erben, Jr., January 8, 1875, Box 1: Correspondence & Papers, 1848–1875, Henry Erben, Jr. Papers, New-York Historical Society. 47. Morgan, Hawaii, 140–45. On the 1859 discovery of petroleum, see also Brian Black, “Oil Creek as Industrial Apparatus: Re-Creating the Industrial Process through the Landscape of Pennsylvania’s Oil Boom,” Environmental History 3, no. 2 (April 1998): 210–29. 48. “Ka Moku Kipi Kenedoa [The Rebel Ship Shenandoah]” and “Na Hana a ka moku Kenadoa [The Activity of the ship Shenandoah],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, June 29, 1865; “Puamana no! [A Poor Man!],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, February 24, 1866; Charles E. Hitchcock to “His Excellency, The Minister of Foreign Relations,” August 7, 1865, and C. Hitchcock to “Friend Wyllie,” August 18, 1865, Folder 584, Box 36, Correspondence with Hawaiian Officials Abroad, 1842–1900, Record Group 404, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu; Gibson, Yankees in Paradise, 150–51; Creighton, Rites and Passages, 37. On the transoceanic influence of the U.S. Civil War on Hawaiʻi, see also Gary Y. Okihiro, Island World: A History of Hawaiʻi and the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 160–66. 49. “Ke emi wawe loa nei ka nui o na mokukohola; he hapa wale no ka nui i ku mai i neia manawa. No ka mahuahua ole paha o na kohola ma ka moana akau ke

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kumu o keia.” “Ke emi wawe loa nei ka nui o na mokukohola . . . [The number of whaling ships is presently very quickly diminishing . . . ],” Ka Hae Hawaii, April 17, 1861. 50. Bockstoce, Furs and Frontiers, 315–18; Demuth, “Power of Place,” 33.

chapter four. kailiopio and the tropicbird 1. “No kahi umi dala no hoi paha a G. P. Judd”; “Ua lana mai ko’u wahi Lunamanao e hoohelelei aku i na wahi Hunahualepo”; “e noho maila i ka la hiki i haehae, a hiki loa aku i ka welo ana a ka la i ka ilikai a Lehua.” All quotes from J. M. Kailiopio, “Moolelo o ka Mokupuni Baker’s Is. Puakailima [History of Baker’s Island/ Puakailima],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, July 7, 1866. 2. J. D. Hague, “On the Phosphatic Guano Islands of the Pacific Ocean,” American Journal of Science and Arts 34, no. 101 (1862): 2–21, esp. 16–17; James D. Hague, “Our Equatorial Islands; with an Account of Some Personal Experiences,” Century 64, no. 5 (1902): 653–70, esp. 664. On red-tailed tropicbird behavior, also see J. M. Brooke’s 1859 report on Johnston Island avifauna, reprinted in A. Binion Amerson, Jr. and Philip C. Shelton, The Natural History of Johnston Atoll, Central Pacific Ocean. Atoll Research Bulletin no. 192 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1975), 190; and Dr. Thomas H. Street’s 1877 report on Palmyra and Christmas Islands in The American Naturalist Magazine (Boston, Mass.), reprinted in R. Gerard Ward, ed., American Activities in the Central Pacific, 1790–1870, 8 vols. (Ridgewood, NJ: Gregg Press, 1966–67), 5:473–82. 3. Thomas G. Andrews, Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 125. 4. Richard Wines, Fertilizer in America: From Waste Recycling to Resource Exploitation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985); Jimmy Skaggs, The Great Guano Rush: Entrepreneurs and American Overseas Expansion (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1994); Christina Duff y Burnett, “The Edges of Empire and the Limits of Sovereignty: American Guano Islands,” American Quarterly 57, no. 3 (2005): 779–803; Gregory T. Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 5. Glidden & Williams to Messrs. D. C. Waterman & C[ompany], March 4, 1862, and Glidden & Williams to D. C. Waterman Co[mpany], November 10, 1862, in D. C. Waterman & Co. Business correspondence, Ms. Group 126, Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum Library and Archives, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. The U.S. Civil War’s impact on the industry is also discussed in “Life on a Guano Island,” New York Times, September 9, 1866; Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 81–82, 115–17; Cushman, Guano, 84. 6. P. W. Penhallow to D. C. Waterman, March 25, 1864, D. C. Waterman & Co. Business correspondence, Ms. Group 126, Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum Library and Archives, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. On the replacement of bird guano by menhaden and other substitutes, see Pacific Guano Company, The Pacific Guano Company: Its

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History; Its Products and Trade; Its Relation to Agriculture . . . (Cambridge, MA: Printed for the Pacific Guano Company at The Riverside Press, 1876); Wines, Fertilizer in America, 87–95. 7. George H. Dole, “Guano,” September 7, 1859, HM 57930, George H. Dole Papers, 1846–1902, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. 8. Ibid. The topic of ke kuano (guano) was first introduced in the Hawaiianlanguage press in Ka Hae Hawaii, July 23, 1856; Ka Hae Hawaii, February 4, 1857; Ka Hae Hawaii, May 27, 1857. 9. N. Philip Ashmole and Myrtle J. Ashmole, Comparative Feeding Ecology of Sea Birds of a Tropical Ocean Island, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Bulletin no. 24 (New Haven, CT: Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, 1967); Bryan Nelson, Seabirds: Their Biology and Ecology (New York: A&W Publishers, 1979), 29, 31–63; Carl Safina, Eye of the Albatross: Visions of Hope and Survival (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), 55–59. On the productivity of Baker, Jarvis, and Howland Islands’ nearshore reef fisheries, see contemporary data in U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Baker Island National Wildlife Refuge Comprehensive Conservation Plan (Honolulu: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2008), 4:15; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Jarvis Island National Wildlife Refuge Comprehensive Conservation Plan (Honolulu: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2008), 4:16; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Howland Island National Wildlife Refuge Comprehensive Conservation Plan (Honolulu: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2008), 4:14. 10. Nelson, Seabirds, 27–30; Safina, Eye of the Albatross, 46–48, 60–63; Alan Ziegler, Hawaiian Natural History, Ecology, and Evolution (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2002), 18–21. 11. Richard Branscombe Chave, Adventures of a Guano Digger in the Eastern Pacific (unpublished manuscript, 1871; available on microfi lm from Australian National University, Pacific Manuscripts Bureau); anonymous report on Baker Island’s avifauna for The Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, D.C.), May 4, 1857, reprinted in Ward, American Activities, 1:193–95; Dr. Thomas H. Streets’ report on Palmyra Island for The American Naturalist Magazine (Boston), November 1877, reprinted in Ward, American Activities, 5:473–82; Mabel H. Closson, “Under the Southern Cross,” Overland Monthly 21 (1893): 205–16, esp. 212; Safina, Eye of the Albatross, 3–6. 12. Hague, “On the Phosphatic Guano Islands,” 15–16; “Life on a Guano Island,” New York Times, April 21, 1869; Hague, “Our Equatorial Islands,” 663; Nelson, Seabirds, 41–42, 52–53. On seabirds’ ecological niches, see Amerson and Shelton, Natural History of Johnston Atoll, 116–38; Ziegler, Hawaiian Natural History, 297–98. On the size of these islands, contemporary data suggests that Baker is 531 acres; Jarvis, 1,273 acres; Howland, 648 acres. See U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports for Baker, Jarvis, and Howland Islands. 13. Llewellyn Howland, ed., “Howland Island, Its Birds and Rats, as Observed by a Certain Mr. Stetson in 1854,” Pacific Science 9, no. 2 (1955): 96; “Life on a Guano Island,” New York Times, September 9, 1866 and April 21, 1869; Nelson, Seabirds, 64–117; Safina, Eye of the Albatross, 86, 296, 300. On ecological imperialism, see

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Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986). On rats, see Howland, passim; A. F. Judd II, ed., The Guano Islands (Honolulu: Family Records, House of Judd, 1935), 33; Hague, “On the Phosphatic Guano Islands,” 17–18; Hague, “Our Equatorial Islands,” 665; J. R. McNeill, “Of Rats and Men: A Synoptic Environmental History of the Island Pacific,” Journal of World History 5, no. 2 (1994): 299–349. 14. Chester K. Wentworth, “Geology of the Pacific Equatorial Islands,” Bishop Museum Occassional Papers 9, no. 15 (1931): 3–25; Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 140– 42; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports for Baker, Jarvis, and Howland Islands. 15. “ka wa ai ole”; “a he nawaliwali ke kino, a he nui no hoi ka poe i mokio aku i ke ala hoi ole mai.” All quotes from Kailiopio, “Moolelo o ka Mokupuni Baker’s Is. Puakailima [History of Baker’s Island/Puakailima],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, July 7, 1866. 16. G. W. Kaluahine, “No na Aina Kukae Manu [Concerning the Guano Lands],” Ka Hae Hawaii, August 24, 1859; S. W. B. Kaulainamoku et al., “Mea hou ma Jarvis Island [News at Jarvis Island],” Ka Hae Hawaii, November 9, 1859; Judd, Guano Islands, 6–29. 17. William Chisholm to D. C. Waterman, October 16, 1862, and Flint, Peabody & Co. to Messrs. D. C. Waterman & Co., May 3, 1864, in D. C. Waterman & Co. Business correspondence, Ms. Group 126, Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum Library and Archives, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. 18. Glidden & Williams to D. C. Waterman Co., November 10, 1862, and Glidden & Williams to Messrs. D. C. Waterman & C[o]., March 4, 1862, in D. C. Waterman & Co. Business correspondence, Ms. Group 126, Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum Library and Archives, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. 19. P. W. Penhallow to D. C. Waterman, March 10 and March 17, 1862, D. C. Waterman & Co. Business correspondence, Ms. Group 126, Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum Library and Archives, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. 20. P. W. Penhallow to Messrs. D. C. Waterman & Co., September 11, 1862, D. C. Waterman & Co. Business correspondence, Ms. Group 126, Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum Library and Archives, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. 21. Shipping article for U.S. Guano Company (1864) in Box 1, Folder “Shipping Articles 1864,” Harbormaster’s Shipping Articles, 1862–1900, Record Group 89, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. 22. Scores of contracts for guano labor are found in the Harbormaster’s Shipping Articles, 1862–1900, Record Group 89, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. On literacy among nineteenth-century Hawaiians, see M. Puakea Nogelmeier, Mai Paʻa i Ka Leo: Historical Voice in Hawaiian Primary Materials, Looking Forward and Listening Back (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press/Awaiaulu, 2010), xii, 59, 71. 23. Shipping articles for Phoenix Isl[an]d Guano Co[mpany] (1864) and American Guano Co[mpany], in Box 5, Folder 2, “Shipping Articles 1864, 1866, 1867,” Harbormaster’s Shipping Articles, 1862–1900, Record Group 89, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu.

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24. Copy of a letter from Harbor Master to Dr. Judd, April 30, 1859, in Volume 2, Oct 1853—Aug 1866, Collector General of Customs Seamen’s Records, Record Group 88, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. 25. “O na rula hana a makou he mau mea wale no i ku i ka oiaio ole o ko makou hana ana, he hiki no hoi i ka Luna ke hoololi.” J. M. Kailiopio, “Moolelo o ka Mokupuni Baker’s Is. Puakailima [History of Baker’s Island/Puakailima],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, July 7, 1866; Elizabeth Kinau Wilder to G. P. Judd, n.d., reprinted in Elizabeth Leslie Wight, ed., The Memoirs of Elizabeth Kinau Wilder (Honolulu: Paradise of the Pacific Press, 1909), 130–31. On contract labor, see Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 165–67. 26. “ua hoonani ia o loko a maikai”; “na iliili”; “a ua halii la oloko a nani loa me na pela maikai me na uluna moe”; “Ua nani maoli ke kukulu ana o keia hale, a huli aku kona puka i ke awa e ku ai na moku.” Quoted passages are from Kaulainamoku et al., “Mea hou ma Jarvis Island [News at Jarvis Island],” Ka Hae Hawaii, November 9, 1859; Hague, “Our Equatorial Islands,” 670. The map drawn by Charles H. Judd, luna of Jarvis Island in 1858, and of Baker Island in 1859, is reprinted in Judd, Guano Islands, 101. On the production of space, see Andrews’s discussion of workers’ housing and “company towns” in Killing for Coal, 186–89, 197–232. 27. “he okoa loa ka poe nana e paa ka waha o ka eke paiki”; “i ka poe hapai eke iluna o ke kaa nui eha kanaka, elua ma kekahi aoao, elua ma kekahi aoao.” Quoted passages from S. W. B. Kaulainamoku, “No ka maikai o na Aina Kukaemanu o G. P. Judd [Concerning the well-being of the Guano Lands of G. P. Judd],” Ka Hae Hawaii, December 14, 1859; E. P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present 38, no. 1 (1967): 56–97. For more reflections on time, see Judd, Guano Islands, 33, 37, 38, 40–41, 51; Closson, “Under the Southern Cross,” 210. On guano dust, see “Life on a Guano Island,” New York Times, June 20, 1869; Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 159–61, 167. Shovels, wheelbarrows, and other company investments in labor-aiding technologies are in an article in The Daily Evening Standard, December 27, 1856, reprinted in Ward, American Activities, 1:190; J. M. Kailiopio, “Mai Puakailima mai [From Puakailima],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, December 23, 1865; Judd, Guano Islands, 34; Wight, Memoirs of Elizabeth Kinau Wilder, 128–29. 28. William Chisholm to Capt[ain] Waterman, November 27, 1863; Wm Chisholm to D. C. Waterman, June 28 [1864]; William Chisholm to Capt[ain] Waterman, October 25 [1864], in D. C. Waterman & Co. Business correspondence, Ms. Group 126, Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum Library and Archives, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. Emphases in the original. 29. Wm Chisholm to D. C. Waterman, June 28 [1864], D. C. Waterman & Co. Business correspondence, Ms. Group 126, Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum Library and Archives, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. On the weight of bagged guano, see Kaulainamoku et al., “Mea hou ma Jarvis Island [News at Jarvis Island],” Ka Hae Hawaii, November 9, 1859; “Life on a Guano Island,” New York Times, April 21, 1869; Judd, Guano Islands, 36. On the loading rate, see Kaluahine, “No na Aina Kukae Manu [Concerning the Guano Lands],” Ka Hae Hawaii, August 24, 1859; Judd, Guano

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Islands, passim. On Paukeaho, see Kaluahine, “No na Aina Kukae Manu [Concerning the Guano Lands],” Ka Hae Hawaii, August 24, 1859. Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel H. Elbert in Hawaiian Dictionary: Hawaiian-English, English-Hawaiian (rev. ed.; Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1986), suggest that Paukeaho may be Baker Island, but this is inaccurate. Laborers’ letters to Hawaiian newspapers make clear that Puakaʻilima is Baker, and Kaluahine’s letter notes a great sailing distance between Paukeaho and Puakaʻilima, therefore Paukeaho must be Jarvis. Also see Ty P. Kāwika Tengan, “Of Colonization and Pono in Hawaiʻi,” Peace Review 16, no. 2 (2004): 157–67, esp. 158. 30. “O ka aina”; “he wahi aina uuku no; ina e ku aku a nana ma kekahi aoao, ike ia aku no ke poi mai ka nalu.” Kaluahine, “No na Aina Kukae Manu [Concerning the Guano Lands],” Ka Hae Hawaii, August 24, 1859. On reading Ka Hae Hawaii, see J. Kuhaloa, “He palapala mai ka mokupuni o Jarvis mai [A letter from the island of Jarvis],” Ka Hae Hawaii, November 17, 1858. Kuhaloa ends his letter stating that all the laborers eagerly await the brig Josephine to “[a ku koke hou mai me ka Hae Hawaii, iloko o na pule elua] swiftly return with ka Hae Hawaii, within two weeks.” Elsewhere, Albert Judd describes how laborers on Jarvis were “eagerly devouring the ‘Hae Hawaii’ & their letters which I had brought” from Honolulu. Three days later, on the Sabbath, “The natives are quietly engaged in their room & read their testaments & the ‘Hae Hawaii’ all in a hubbub together.” See Judd, Guano Islands, 31, 35–36. 31. “He aina wela loa keia”; “ua nui ka wela o ka la, aole hiki ke nana poho ka maka”; “ka mea nui loa maanei.” Quoted passages from Kaluahine, “No na Aina Kukae Manu [Concerning the Guano Lands],” Ka Hae Hawaii, August 24, 1859; Kuhaloa, “He palapala mai ka mokupuni o Jarvis mai [A letter from the island of Jarvis],” Ka Hae Hawaii, November 17, 1858; Kailiopio, “Moolelo o ka Mokupuni Baker’s Is. Puakailima [History of Baker’s Island/Puakailima],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, July 7, 1866. Workers’ clothing is described in Kailiopio, “Moolelo o ka Mokupuni Baker’s Is. Puakailima [History of Baker’s Island/Puakailima].” On guano “as white as snow,” see Hague, “Our Equatorial Islands,” 658, 661. On “bronze” bodies, see Closson, “Under the Southern Cross,” 211. 32. “o ka ia like no me ko Hawaii.” Quote from Kuhaloa, “He palapala mai ka mokupuni o Jarvis mai [A letter from the island of Jarvis],” Ka Hae Hawaii, November 17, 1858; Judd, Guano Islands, 37–38, 53. On fish species, Kuhaloa’s “Ulua-ulaula” translates literally as red trevally (ulua ʻulaʻula), although ʻulaʻula can also denote “sacred” or “royal” in addition to the color red. It is also possible that he refers to two separate species: ulua (trevally) and ʻulaʻula (red snapper). Manō refers to shark. Āholehole refers to young-stage Hawaiian flagtail. Albert Judd’s “Avai” does not correlate with any known Hawaiian fish. Manini is reef sturgeon. ʻUlaʻula is red snapper. Other useful accounts of Hawaiian laborers’ fishing practices are in “Life on a Guano Island,” New York Times, April 21, 1869; Judd, Guano Islands, 41, 46–47. 33. “ke hiki mai i ka wa kaiamaloo, ahu wale kepuleholeho eleele, opikopiko liilii a me kepuleholeho liilii keokeo a me kela ano keia ano pupu . . . he mau mea ia e hoopomaikai mai ana i ka noho ana o kanaka maanei”; “kuai aku la me na haole,

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loaa mai ia kahi awelu lole hana, ka paka, ipupaka, kukaepele, a me kekahi mau mea e ae no hoi kekahi e pono ai ka noho ana o kanaka.” Kailiopio, “Moolelo o ka Mokupuni Baker’s Is. Puakailima [History of Baker’s Island/Puakailima],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, July 7, 1866. 34. Wm Chisholm to “Gentlemen,” February 5, 1863; P. W. Penhallow to “Esteemed o kind Friend,” May 30, 1863; William Chisholm to Capt[ain] Waterman, November 27, 1863; William Chisholm to D. C. Waterman, March 25, 1864, in D. C. Waterman & Co. Business correspondence, Ms. Group 126, Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum Library and Archives, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. Emphases in the original. On the lack of fresh water, also see The Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), May 4, 1857, and Daily Mercury (New Bedford, MA), May 15, 1857, both reprinted in Ward, American Activities, 1:193–98; Hague, “On the Phosphatic Guano Islands,” 3; “Life on a Guano Island,” New York Times, September 9, 1866 and June 20, 1869; Hague, “Our Equatorial Islands,” 666; Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 166. On failed efforts to grow food, see Kailiopio, “Moolelo o ka Mokupuni Baker’s Is. Puakailima [History of Baker’s Island/Puakailima],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, July 7, 1866. 35. “Aole makou i pilikia i na mea pono o ke kino, nui ka ai, me ka ia, me ka wai, a i na kanaka i ka ai a haalele, a me ka ia e haalele, inu hoomaunauna i ka wai e like me ia ma Honolulu nei.” Kaulainamoku, “No ka maikai o na Aina Kukaemanu o G. P. Judd [Concerning the well-being of the Guano Lands of G. P. Judd],” Ka Hae Hawaii, December 14, 1859. 36. “ua iini loa ka ikaika o na kanaka ma ka hana ana i ka lepo guano”; “hookahi wahi keiki”; “na mea kaumaha maanei me he mea ole la i na kanaka”; “he mea uwa ia ka poe malihini ikaika ole ke hele mai maanei”; “ua holo ka ikaika o na kanaka ma ka hana ana.” Quoted passages alternately from Kaulainamoku, “No ka maikai o na Aina Kukaemanu o G. P. Judd [Concerning the well-being of the Guano Lands of G. P. Judd],” Ka Hae Hawaii, December 14, 1859; and Kaulainamoku et al., “Mea hou ma Jarvis Island [News at Jarvis Island],” Ka Hae Hawaii, November 9, 1859. On Hawaiian masculinity, see Ty P. Kāwika Tengan, “Re-membering Panalāʻau: Masculinities, Nation, and Empire in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific,” The Contemporary Pacific 20, no. 1 (2008): 27–53. On haole missionary interpretations of Hawaiian bodies, disease, and death, see Seth Archer, “Remedial Agents: Missionary Physicians and the Depopulation of Hawaiʻi,” Pacific Historical Review 79, no. 4 (November 2010): 513–44. 37. Kailiopio, “Mai Puakailima mai [From Puakailima],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, December 23, 1865. On everyday acts of resistance, see William Chisholm to Capt[ain] Waterman, November 27, 1863, D. C. Waterman & Co. Business correspondence, Ms. Group 126, Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum Library and Archives, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi; James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). 38. “aole i like me ka noho ana o ka aina hanau . . . he ikiiki ka noho ana, o keia wahi aina, aohe loaa mai o ka wa oluolu kupono, a he nawaliwali ke kino, a he nui no hoi ka poe i mokio aku i ke ala hoi ole mai”; “auhea la hoi auanei ka malama pono ia o ke kanaka iloko o ka wa maimai”; “Haawi mai no ka haole i ka aila naha, a me ka

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paakai, a penikila no hoi”; “kipaku pu mai no hoi kekahi e hele no i ka hana.” Quoted passages from Kailiopio, “Moolelo o ka Mokupuni Baker’s Is. Puakailima [History of Baker’s Island/Puakailima],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, July 7, 1866. Wm Chisholm to D. C. Waterman, April 11, 1864, and Wm Chisholm to D. C. Waterman, June 28 [1864], in D. C. Waterman & Co. Business correspondence, Ms. Group 126, Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum Library and Archives, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi; shipping article for United States Guano Co[mpany] (1868), Box 5, Folder 3, “Shipping Articles JanDec 1868,” Harbormaster’s Shipping Articles, 1862–1900, Record Group 89, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu; “Seamen discharged before Harbor Master under the Act of June 25, 1855,” Volume 2, Oct 1853—Aug 1866, Collector General of Customs Seamen’s Records, Record Group 88, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. 39. “ua pau kou ola i Honolulu.” Kailiopio, “Moolelo o ka Mokupuni Baker’s Is. Puakailima [History of Baker’s Island/Puakailima],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, July 7, 1866; “Various lists of Laborers paid off from Guano Islands,” Volume 2, Oct 1853— Aug 1866, Collector General of Customs Seamen’s Records, Record Group 88, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. 40. Howland, “Howland Island,” 97, and passim. On frigatebirds and rats, see Hague, “Our Equatorial Islands,” 665. On rats more generally, Hague, “On the Phosphatic Guano Islands,” 17–18; Judd, Guano Islands, 32; Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 72, 167. 41. Hague, “Our Equatorial Islands,” 663; Hugo H. Schauinsland, Three Months on a Coral Island [1899], trans. Miklos D. F. Udvardy, and published in I. G. MacIntyre, ed., Laysan Island and Other Northwest Hawaiian Islands: Early Science Reports with a Laysan Island Bibliography, Atoll Research Bulletin no. 432 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1996), 1–53, quote on 18–19. On boobies’ vomiting behavior, see Hague, “On the Phosphatic Guano Islands,” 15–16; Hague, “Our Equatorial Islands,” 663. 42. “Life on a Guano Island,” New York Times, April 21, 1869. On human consumption of seabirds and eggs, see Kailiopio, “Moolelo o ka Mokupuni Baker’s Is. Puakailima [History of Baker’s Island/Puakailima],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, July 7, 1866; The Friend (Honolulu), March 31, 1857, and Pacific Commercial Advertiser (Honolulu), April 27, 1867, both reprinted in Ward, American Activities, 2:170–73, 552–57; Judd, Guano Islands, 31, 47, 50, 52–3; Closson, “Under the Southern Cross,” 211; Wight, Memoirs of Elizabeth Kinau Wilder, 127. 43. On animal introductions, see “Life on a Guano Island,” New York Times, September 9, 1866 and April 21, 1869; Closson, “Under the Southern Cross,” 211; Hague, “Our Equatorial Islands,” 665–66; Judd, Guano Islands, 10, 32, 38, 98; Skaggs, Great Guano Rush, 72, 166. On seabird nesting habitats, see Hague, “On the Phosphatic Guano Islands,” 15–16; Ward, American Activities, 5:473–82; Nelson, Seabirds, 118–31; Ziegler, Hawaiian Natural History, 297–98. On the destructive potential of introduced land mammals on nesting seabird populations, see Nelson, Seabirds, 203–6; Per Milberg and Tommy Tyrberg, “Naïve Birds and Noble Savages: a Review of Man-caused Prehistoric Extinctions of Island Birds,” Ecography 16 (1993): 229–50, esp. 233–34. 44. “ka Polikua a Kane”; “he manu ano like no kekahi ine ko Hawaii mau manu”; “o ka Ao, Kolea Ulili, Kioea a me ke Koae”; “Puni ka aina i ka manu”; “o ka

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Nueku waha hanalea pio ole i ke kuluaumoe, oia ka manu hanau nui.” Quoted passages from J. Kuhaloa, “He palapala mai ka mokupuni o Jarvis mai [A letter from the island of Jarvis],” Ka Hae Hawaii, November 17, 1858; Kailiopio, “Moolelo o ka Mokupuni Baker’s Is. Puakailima [History of Baker’s Island/Puakailima],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, July 7, 1866. Kailiopio’s “ka Polikua a Kane” appears to be a reference to the Kumulipo, the traditional Hawaiian creation chant. In the Kumulipo, the god Kāne is said to live at the Polikua (the unknowable world beyond the horizon), and the Polikua may also be where seabirds first came into being. See Martha Warren Beckwith, ed., The Kumulipo: A Hawaiian Creation Chant (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 68–74. On the “Nueku” bird, see Kailiopio, “Moolelo o ka Mokupuni Baker’s Is. Puakailima [History of Baker’s Island/Puakailima],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, July 7, 1866; “Life on a Guano Island,” New York Times, April 21, 1869. 45. Andrews, Killing for Coal, 125. Also see David Steadman, “Prehistoric extinctions of Pacific Island birds,” Science 267 (1995): 1123–31; Milberg and Tyrberg, “Naïve Birds and Noble Savages”; Dirk H. R. Spennemann, “Excessive Exploitation of Central Pacific Seabird Populations at the Turn of the 20th Century,” Marine Ornithology 26 (1998): 49–57; Ziegler, Hawaiian Natural History, 251–60; Patrick V. Kirch, On the Road of the Winds: An Archeological History of the Pacific Islands Before European Contact (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 61. On the geological age of these islands, see U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports for Baker, Jarvis, and Howland Islands, 4:7 for each report; also Ziegler, Hawaiian Natural History, 17–31; Safina, Eye of the Albatross, 46–48. On seabird evolution, see Nelson, Seabirds, 6–7.

chapter five. nahoa’s tears 1. “He wahi manao hoakaka ka’u no ko’u poe ma ke kino eia no paha ke ola nei, aole paha, o ka walu keia o na makahiki o ko’u noho ana ma Califonia nei, aole loaa mai o kahi palapala, owau ke kau aku i palapala na lakou, ua hiki aku paha aole paha, manao au ua pau i ka make.” R. Henry Nahoa, “He mea hoakaka na koʻu poe ma ke kino [A clarification for my people on the body],” Ka Hae Hawaii, July 14, 1858. The 1870 U.S. census lists Nahoa’s age as thirty, which if true means that he was born circa 1840. U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Office, 1870 Manuscript Census, Vernon Township, Sutter County, California, population schedule, p. 8, s.v. “Henry Mahoa,” familysearch.org, http://familysearch.org (accessed March 10, 2012). 2. “eia na inoa o lakou, o Maau ko’u kaikuahine, aia ma Lahaina kona wahi i noho ai, o Maikai he wahine ia, o ko laua wahi i noho ai, o Kapahumanamana, o Kaiwi ko’u makuakane, o Oloalu kona wahi noho, ke ola nei paha aole paha, ina ke ola nei oukou a pau. Aloha me ka waimaka, owau no nei o Nahoa ko keiki, kaikunane, mai hoohewahewa lakou, eia no au i Califonia nei, eia ma Irish Creek.” Nahoa, “He mea hoakaka na koʻu poe ma ke kino [A clarification for my people on the body],” Ka Hae Hawaii, July 14, 1858; “e pule ikaika i ke Akua i hiki ai ia ia ke kala

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ae i keia ukana kaumaha a makou.” B. E. Kamae, “No ke aloha o ka poe Kalifonia [Concerning the love of the California people],” Ka Hae Hawaii, July 14, 1858; S. Wahaulaula, “He wahi ukana kaumaha [A little heavy baggage],” Ka Hae Hawaii, July 14, 1858; Iosepa Opunui, letter to the editor, Ka Hae Hawaii, July 14, 1858. 3. On nineteenth-century lumpenproletarians, see Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” [1852], in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (2nd ed.; New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), 594–617; Seth Rockman, Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2009). On the revolutionary potential of the lumpenproletariat, see Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth [1961] (New York: Grove Press, 2004), 63–96. On the limitations of this concept, see Mark Cowling, “Marx’s Lumpenproleriat and Murray’s Underclass: Concepts Best Abandoned?” in Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire: (Post)modern Interpretations, ed. Mark Cowling and James Martin (Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2002), 228–42. On deindustrialization in post–Gold Rush California, see Ian Tyrrell, True Gardens of the Gods: Californian-Australian Environmental Reform, 1860–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 4. John T. Hudson, Journal of the Tamana [1805–1807], HM 30491, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California; “Journal of a voyage perform’d on the ship Amethyst. From Boston to the Coast of California. &c,” Lewis Coolidge Diary, 1806–1811, Ms. S-805, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston; Robert C. Schmitt and Eleanor C. Nordyke, “Death in Hawaiʻi: The Epidemics of 1848–1849,” Hawaiian Journal of History 35 (2001): 1–13; David Igler, “Diseased Goods: Global Exchanges in the Eastern Pacific Basin, 1770–1850,” American Historical Review 109, no. 3 (2004): 693–719; Jean Barman and Bruce Watson, Leaving Paradise: Indigenous Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest, 1787–1898 (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2006), 24–25, 60; John Ryan Fischer, “Cattle in Hawaiʻi: Biological and Cultural Exchange,” Pacific Historical Review 76, no. 3 (2007): 347–72; David Igler, The Great Ocean: Pacific Worlds from Captain Cook to the Gold Rush (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 25–26. 5. Richard Henry Dana, Jr. to Charlotte [his sister], March 20, 1835, in Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Journal of a Voyage to the Coast of California, 1834–1836, Microfi lm P-124, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston; Richard Henry Dana, Jr. Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea [1840] (New York: Modern Library, 2001), 79, 93, 153–54. Hawaiian-language phrases, and italics, in the original. On Dana, see also Arrell Morgan Gibson (with John S. Whitehead), Yankees in Paradise: The Pacific Basin Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), 379–410; Paul A. Gilje, Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 228–58. 6. Dana, Two Years Before the Mast, 158–61, 265–67. There is an intriguing record of “Kanaka John alias Hope,” one of four Hawaiian sailors who shipped out of Boston in 1831 and arrived on the California coast in 1832–33. It is not clear if this is the same Hope as befriended by Dana in 1835. See Voyage of the brig Chalcedony,

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Logbook 1829–1837, Edward Horatio Faucon Logbooks, 1829–1863, Ms. N-1216, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. 7. Steven W. Hackel, “Land, Labor, and Production: The Colonial Economy of Spanish and Mexican California,” in Contested Eden: California Before the Gold Rush, ed. Ramon A. Gutierrez and Richard J. Orsi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 111–46, esp. 132–34; John Ryan Fischer, Cattle Colonialism: An Environmental History of the Conquest of California and Hawaiʻi (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015). 8. Dana, Two Years Before the Mast, 165; Fischer, Cattle Colonialism, 100–111. 9. Dana, Two Years Before the Mast, 65, 93; William Ellis, Polynesian Researches . . . , Vol. IV (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833), 269. 10. Dana, Two Years Before the Mast, 98, 152–53, 165. On “knowing nature through work,” see Richard White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995). On workscapes, see Thomas G. Andrews, Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 122–56. 11. “Libro de Cuentas Corrientes Fol. 3 que sigue del fol. 2 Deciembre 3, 1838 y perteneciente a H. D. Fitch [Current Account Book Vol. 3 following Vol. 2 December 3, 1838 and belonging to H. D. Fitch],” Volume 5, Fitch Family Papers, MSS C-B 357, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; Dana, Two Years Before the Mast, 153–54, 166. 12. William Henry Ellison, ed., The Life and Adventures of George Nidever, 1802–1883 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1937), 36, 40; Adele Ogden, The California Sea Otter Trade, 1784–1848 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1941), 3–14, 106–13, 127. 13. Early California Population Project Database (2006), The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, http://www.huntington.org/Information /ECPPmain.htm (accessed July 17, 2013). Data on Hawaiians at California missions is tabulated in appendix B, tables 1.1–1.5, in Gregory Rosenthal, “Hawaiians Who Left Hawaiʻi: Work, Body, and Environment in the Pacific World, 1786–1876” (Ph.D. diss., Stony Brook University, 2015), 460–61. 14. Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, 7 vols. in The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, vols. 18–24 (San Francisco: The History Company, 1886–88), 4: 131–32; Barman and Watson, Leaving Paradise, 152; Albert L. Hurtado, John Sutter: A Life on the North American Frontier (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), 43–51, 65. 15. J. A. Sutter to P. B. Reading, January 3, 1844 and January 1, 1845, “Letters to Pearson Barton Reading (transcripts),” Volume 2, Box 1, John Augustus Sutter Papers, MSS C-B 631, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; Hurtado, John Sutter, 58, 115. 16. [Roster of the forces which left Sutter’s Fort, January 1, 1845], n.d., Volume 1, Box 1, John Augustus Sutter Papers, MSS C-B 631, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; J. A. Sutter to P. B. Reading, April 24, 1844, January 1, 1845,

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and February 15, 1845, “Letters to Pearson Barton Reading (transcripts),” Volume 2, Box 1, ibid. 17. James P. Delgado, To California by Sea: a Maritime History of the California Gold Rush (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990), 8–9; David Chappell, Double Ghosts: Oceanian Voyagers on Euroamerican Ships (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 106; Hackel, “Land, Labor, and Production,” 136. 18. “The First American Census in California,” Sacramento Daily Union, July 25, 1860; Richard A. Greer, “Wandering Kamaʻainas: Notes on Hawaiian Emigration Before 1848,” Journal of the West 6, no. 2 (1967): 221–25, esp. 223; Barman and Watson, Leaving Paradise, 152. On Hawaiian sailors in Mexican ports, also see Accounts of the Schooner Julia Ann (1844), Folder 628:4, William A. Leidesdorff Papers, 1838–1848, MSS C-B 628, Box 1, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; Accounts with Wm. A. Leidesdorff for supplies, Folder 628:22, ibid.; Accounts for the crew of the Schooner Julia Ann, 1843, Folder 5, Box 1, William A. Leidesdorff collection, MS 1277, California Historical Society, San Francisco; Johny et al., Agreement to serve on Leidesdorff ’s ship, August 22, 1846, Reel 1, Box 2, William A. Leidesdorff Papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California; Joe Ham et al., Agreement to serve on Leidesdorff ’s boat, November 1, 1847; and Jim [Kinokolo], Shipping paper with W. A. Leidesdorff, December 22, 1847, Reel 2, Box 4, ibid. 19. “The First American Census in California,” Sacramento Daily Union, July 25, 1860. On domestic servitude in San Francisco, see Robert Crichton Wyllie, section 59, “Native Seamen,” in “Notes, On the Shipping, Trade, Agriculture, Climate . . . ,” The Friend, September 4, 1844; and Charles Hitchcock to R. C. Wyllie, private communication, February 20, 1854, Folder 577, Box 35, Correspondence with Hawaiian Officials Abroad, 1842–1900, Record Group 404, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. 20. K. H. Dimmick to Sarah [his wife], August 2, 1847, “Letters. June 27, 1847— August 12, 1847,” Box 1, Kimball Hale Dimmick Papers, MSS C-B 847, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; Bancroft, History of California, 5:657. 21. Alcalde’s Office to W. A. Leidesdorff, February 22, 1847, Folder 11, Box 1, William A. Leidesdorff Collection, MS 1277, California Historical Society, San Francisco. On Leidesdorff, see W. S. Savage, “The Influence of William Alexander Leidesdorff on the History of California,” The Journal of Negro History 38, no. 3 (1953): 322–32. 22. See “Canaca and Indian Accounts” and “Book Canacar” in Folders 7, 8, and 11, Box 1, William A. Leidesdorff Collection, MS 1277, California Historical Society, San Francisco. 23. Ibid.; Joe Ham et al., Agreement to serve on Leidesdorff ’s boat, November 1, 1847, Reel 2, Box 4, William A. Leidesdorff Papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. 24. “Canaca and Indian Accounts” and “Book Canacar” in Folders 7, 8, and 11, Box 1, William A. Leidesdorff Collection, MS 1277, California Historical Society, San Francisco; Jim [Kinokolo], Shipping paper with W. A. Leidesdorff, December 22, 1847, Reel 2, Box 4, William A. Leidesdorff Papers, The Huntington Library,

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San Marino, California. The full list of Leidesdorff ’s Hawaiian workers in Yerba Buena circa 1847 are: Capt Johnney Canaca (1845–48); Canaca Johney Wife (Wina) (1846–47); Harry Oahu (1847–48); Joe Ham (1846–48); Ben (1847); Johnny Lewis (1847–48); Henry (1847–48); Johnny Davis (1847–48); William Russell (1847); Joe Russell (1847–48); Thomas Edwards (1847–48); Jack (1847); Johney Lili (1847–48); Jim (1847–48); Jack Cayman (1847–48); Canaka George (1847); Canaka Boy (1847); John Russel (1846–47); Canaka Thom (1847); Canaka Joe Parker (1846–47). 25. “Ina makamaka me na pili koko o JACK HINA, Pika Paele, Kale Puaanui, Kaupalewai, Keoni Kiwini a me Keoni Parani, Keoni Panana, e hele mai oukou ma kuu keena, a kamailio me a’u, alaila, hoolohe ana kekahi pomaikai pili ana ia oukou. W. C. Jones (Aeto.) Honolulu, Iune 24, 1873”; “Ina makamaka me na pili koko o . . . [If friends with the blood relatives of . . . ],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, June 28, 1873; Bancroft, History of California, 5:678–85. 26. On the dispossession of Californios following U.S. conquest, see Albert Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society: from Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848–1930 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), esp. 35–37, 113–16. 27. “Law Courts,” Daily Alta California, June 5, 1851; “Olelo Hoolaha [Notice],” Ka Hae Hawaii, January 7, 1857; “Court Proceedings,” Daily Alta California, May 1, 1860; Charles A. Tuttle, Reports of Cases Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of California, vol. 29 (Sacramento: O. M. Clayes & Co., 1866), 19–47; “Ina makamaka me na pili koko o . . . [If friends with the blood relatives of . . . ],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, June 28, 1873. 28. “Ua manaoia e hiki mai na kanaka 20,000 mamua ae o Ianuari e hiki mai ana, a hookahi makahiki hou aku 50,000. E hele nele mai ka nui o lakou.” “Kalifornia [California]” and “He Goula Ma Kalifornia [Gold at California],” Ka Elele Hawaii, August 26, 1848; John Paty to Capt. Henry D. Fitch, October 1, 1848, and Everett & Co. to Capt. H. D. Fitch, October 24, 1848, Folders 535 and 551, Box 3, Documentos para la historia de California, MSS C-B 55, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Data from The Polynesian is in David W. Forbes, An Act to Prohibit Hawaiians from Emigrating to California “Where They May Die in Misery.” 1850 (San Francisco: Paul Markham Khan, 1986). On population loss, see Schmitt and Nordyke, “Death in Hawaiʻi”; Seth Archer, “Epidemics and Culture in Hawaiʻi, 1778–1840” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Riverside, 2015). 29. “Nui loa no nae ka pilikia malaila; Eia kekahi pilikia, o ka wi; aole ai, kaumaha loa ke kumukuai o ka ai. Loihi loa kahi e loaai ka ai, Eia kekahi pilikia, o ka mai; nui ka mai, a nui hoi ka make. Eia kekahi; nui ka inu rama, a me ka haunaele; aole Kanawai, aole mea nana e hoomalu; aole la Sabati; he wahi ino loa maoli no”; “Ua lana ka manao o kekahi poe kanaka e holo ilaila. No ka naaupo! Mai holo; e noho no; aole pono ka holo ilaila. E ike auanei kakou, o ka poe holo ilaila, e poino ana.” “Kalifornia [California]” and “He Goula Ma Kalifornia [Gold at California],” Ka Elele Hawaii, August 26, 1848; William Little Lee to Simon Greenleaf, August 16, 1849, William Little Lee letters, 1847–1850, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

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30. K. H. Dimmick to Sarah [his wife], September 3, 1848, “Letters. September 3, 1848—April 10, 1849,” Box 1, Kimball Hale Dimmick Papers, MSS C-B 847, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; A[nthony] Ten Eyck to J. L. Folsom, November 14, 1848, Reel 2, Box 5, William A. Leidesdorff Papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California; William Little Lee to Simon Greenleaf, August 16, 1849, William Little Lee letters, 1847–1850, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; Forbes, An Act to Prohibit; Delgado, To California by Sea, 97–99; Barman and Watson, Leaving Paradise, 152. 31. “A Trip from the Sandwich Islands to Lower Oregon and Upper California,” The Friend, December 1, 1849; Bancroft, History of California, 6: 77; U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Office, 1850 Manuscript Census, California, population schedules, familysearch.org, https://www.familysearch.org (accessed March 10, 2012). Data on Hawaiians in California—in the 1850, 1860, and 1870 U.S. censuses—is tabulated in appendix B, tables 2.1–4.6, in Rosenthal, “Hawaiians Who Left Hawaiʻi,” 461–67. My methodology for using the census data is as follows: I used digital scans of the original manuscript population schedules at familysearch.org to search for all persons born in the “Sandwich Islands,” “Sandwich Isles,” “Sandwich Is.,” “Sand Isles,” “Hawaii,” “Honolulu,” and other permutations of these place names then residing in the State of California. I also searched for “Kanaka” and “Kanakas” in California, and found many more nameless Hawaiians by that method. My data analysis differs from that of Janice K. Duncan, Minority without a Champion: Kanakas on the Pacific Coast, 1788–1850 (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1972), 14, who reported 319 Hawaiians living in California in 1850. Her data is from Doris Wright, “The Making of Cosmopolitan California: An Analysis of Immigration, 1848–1870,” California Historical Society Quarterly 19, no. 4 (1940): 323–43. 32. Charles W. Haskins, The Argonauts of California (New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1890), 77–78; Malcolm J. Rohrbough, “ ‘We Will Make Our Fortunes— No Doubt of It’: The Worldwide Rush to California,” in Riches for All: The California Gold Rush and the World, ed. Kenneth N. Owens (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 55–70, esp. 57. 33. Rohrbough, “We Will Make Our Fortunes,” 56; Richard H. Dillon, “Kanaka Colonies in California,” Pacific Historical Review 24, no. 1 (1955): 17–23; Edward D. Beechert, Working in Hawaii: A Labor History (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1985), 37, 41–49; Wyllie to friend, July 11, 1850, as quoted in Forbes, An Act to Prohibit. 34. Iosepa Opunui, letter to the editor, Ka Hae Hawaii, November 24, 1858; L. Kamika [Lowell Smith], “Ku holo ana o L. Kamika mai Sacramenato i Coloma [The going of L. Smith from Sacramento to Coloma],” Ka Hae Hawaii, January 12, 1859; Charles Kenn, “A Visit to California Gold Fields,” Seventy-Fourth Annual Report of the Hawaiian Historical Society for the Year 1965 (Honolulu: Hawaiian Historical Society, 1966), 7–16. Phyllis Lindert Gernes, the editor of The Daily Journal of Stephen Wing, 1852 to 1860 (Garden Valley, CA: Phyllis Gernes, 1982), 33, claims “Irish creek falls” was “an area being worked by Kanakas” as early as 1855. Also, the 1860 U.S. census noted 25 Hawaiians living at Irish Creek: 22 male migrants, one

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female migrant, and two small children born in California to the sole woman and her husband. U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Office, 1860 Manuscript Census, Coloma Township, El Dorado County, California, population schedule, p. 353, familysearch.org, https://www.familysearch.org (accessed March 10, 2012). 35. Translation by Charles Kenn in “A Visit to California Gold Fields,” 11. 36. “eiwa wale noi keia wa; he 17 ka i hele aku ma kahi e, i keia mau la, no ka mea, he uuku ka wai ma ‘Irish Creek’ i keia manawa. He 30 mile maluna o na pali, kahi a lakou i hele aku ai, e imi ana i ka hana”; “he mau Baibala, kauoha hou, himeni hoolea, himeni kamaliii, lira, haiao, hoikehonua, helunaau, helu kamalii”; “Hauoli nui lakou, no ka hiki ana mai o kekahi mau palapala Hawaii.” All quotes from Kamika [Lowell Smith], “Ku holo ana o L. Kamika mai Sacramenato i Coloma [The going of L. Smith from Sacramento to Coloma],” Ka Hae Hawaii, January 12, 1859. 37. “Ua ike au i ka lakou hana, o ka eli goula; a ua ike hoi au i kekahi poe haole a me na Pake, e eli ana i ke goula. Aole loaa nui mai ia lakou ia mau la, no ka uuku o ka wai. Elua dala kekahi, ekolu kekahi i ka la; a he ole hoi kekahi.” Kamika [Lowell Smith], “Ku holo ana o L. Kamika mai Sacramenato i Coloma [The going of L. Smith from Sacramento to Coloma],” Ka Hae Hawaii, January 12, 1859. On hydraulic mining in California, see Gray A. Brechin, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 32–34; Andrew C. Isenberg, Mining California: An Ecological History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), 23–51. 38. “Aole lakou malama i na dala, a me goula e like me na haole, a me na Pake. No ka mea, ina e loaa mai ia lakou kekahi mau dala, ua hele i ke kauhale haole, a kuai i kela mea keia mea no ke kino, a pau aku, alaila hoi a hana hou”; “I ko’u manao aole lakou e hoi nui mai ma Hawaii nei. Ua pau i ka make kekahi poe i hele ma Kalefonia; a e noho paha keia poe ma kela aina goula, a make ilaila”; “aole maopopo. Nui ke aloha i na makua, a me na hoahanau ma Hawaii, aka, ua hilahila makou e hoi wale me ka waiwai ole.” All quotes from Kamika [Lowell Smith], “Ku holo ana o L. Kamika mai Sacramenato i Coloma [The going of L. Smith from Sacramento to Coloma],” Ka Hae Hawaii, January 12, 1859; Lowell Smith to James Hunnewell, February 22, 1867, Folder 3: Letters, 1864–1867, Box 12 (Volume 24 1864–1879), James Hunnewell, Business Papers, 1823–1883, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts. 39. Opunui, letter to the editor, Ka Hae Hawaii, July 14, 1858; U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Office, 1860 Manuscript Census, California, population schedules, familysearch.org and ancestry.com, https://www.familysearch.org and http://ancestry.com (accessed March 10, 2012); David A. Chang, “Borderlands in a World at Sea: Concow Indians, Native Hawaiians, and South Chinese in Indigenous, Global, and National Spaces,” The Journal of American History 98 (2011): 384–403. On return migration, see Chappell, Double Ghosts, 138–40; Barman and Watson, Leaving Paradise, 150–51. For more information on the census data, see note 31. 40. “Ina i makemake na keiki kuapaa ole o ka aina oluolu o Hawaii . . .”; “Ina makemake lakou e hoolilo i ko lakou mau kino, i hanau ia a ola ia malalo o ka la wela o ko lakou mau Mokupuni, o na pilikia o ke anu a me ka wela o na kau eha o ka

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makahiki okoa iloko o ka la hookahi; Alaila, pono ia lakou ke holo i Kaliponia. Ina makemake lakou e haalele i ko lakou ai maikai a nui, a oluolu i ka loaa ana, no ka ai ano e kupono ole i ko lakou ola, a uku nui i ke kuai ana; alaila, pono ia lakou e holo i Kaliponia. “Ina ua makaukau lakou i na lole kupono, na palule a me na kihei huluhipa, na mea i makemake ole ia ma ko lakou aina hanau, o na mea hoi i hiki ole ke hooneleia ma ia aina; alaila, pono ia lakou e holo i Kaliponia. Ina imi lakou i hana oi ka luhi, i haku oi ka hookaumaha ana, i ola kaumaha, oluolu ole, a me ka pilikia o ka malihini i hoowahawaha ia no kona ili eleele, alaila, pono ia lakou e holo wikiwiki i Kaliponia. “A eia ka hope, ina i ike lakou, ua lohi pono ole ka emi ana o ko lakou lahui, ua pau ke kalo ono o na awawa maikai o ko lakou aina, ua pau na ia o ke kai i ka holo aku he hapa uuku na ino i lawe ia mai e na haole; alaila, e wiki lakou i ka holo aku i ka aina kahi e loaa’i ia lakou na ino o ka naau a me ke kino e pau koke lakou i ka hoowalewaleia . . .” “He mau wahi olelo no ka holo ana o na kanaka maoli i Kaliponia [A few words on the going of Hawaiians to California],” Ka Hae Hawaii, April 17, 1861. 41. “I keia mau makahiki e noho ia nei, o ka poe a pau e noho ana ma na kuahiwi, e eli ana i ke gula, aole i loaa ka uku kupono no ka hana ana. O ke kapalili o ka houpo kai pono i kahi ai a me kahi ia, oia kahi mea i loaa mai”; “Ka hana hoolimalima me na haku haole, ua pili aku no i ke ano o na kauwa hooluhi”; “Ua lawe mai kekahi haole o Coneki, i kekahi poe kanaka mai ka aina mai, he kanalima paha ka nui o lakou”; “Aole i loaa iki mai kekauwahi uku iki o ko lakou luhi ana. Haalele iho la lakou, a hele aku la kela mea keia mea ma kana wahi i manao ai”; “Pela no ke ano nui o na hana hoolimalima i keia manawa. Loaa kekahi wahi hapa iki, o ka nui aku, aole i loaa mai.” All quotes from T. B. Kamipele, “No Kalifonia Mai [From California],” Ka Hae Hawaii, July 3, 1861. 42. “Aole he pilikia ma na mea aahu, ua nui na palule huluhulu e mehana ai no ka wa anu, e waiho ana ma hale kuai ma na wahi a pau o Kalifonia nei, a me ka huluhulu no ka moe ana i ka po”; Kamipele, “No Kalifonia Mai [From California],” Ka Hae Hawaii, July 3, 1861. 43. “Aole no hoi he wi no ka ai, ua nui ka ai ma na wahi a pau”; “Ka mai, aole he mai nui ma Kalifonia nei, e like me ka aina la, ka nui o ka mai. Ua maikai ka noho ana maanei no ka mai ole”; “A ua ikaika na lala a pau e kokua ana i ke kino; nolaila, holo maikai ka hana i na la a pau me ka eha ole mai o ke kino.” All quotes from Kamipele, “No Kalifonia Mai [From California],” Ka Hae Hawaii, July 3, 1861. Hawaiian migrants’ food options were not always to everyone’s liking; see Moses Nahora’s letter from Coloma describing his struggle to replicate poi by mixing flour with boiling water. M. Nahora, “He Poi Palaoa [Flour Poi],” Ka Hae Hawaii, March 16, 1859. 44. “List of Letters Remaining in the Post Office at Sacramento for the month of February, 1859,” Sacramento Daily Union, February 25, 1859; “City Intelligence: Arrests,” Sacramento Daily Union, March 4, 1859; “City Intelligence: Police Court,” Sacramento Daily Union, March 21, 1859; “Ejectment Suits in the Sixth District Court: Suits by John C. Reilly,” Sacramento Daily Union, May 2, 1868.

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45. Alexander Liholiho to Elizabeth Kinau Judd, c. 1850, as quoted in Elizabeth Leslie Wight, ed., The Memoirs of Elizabeth Kinau Wilder (Honolulu: Paradise of the Pacific Press, 1909), 86; Brechin, Imperial San Francisco, xxiv-xxvi. On Hawaiian export trade to California during the Gold Rush, see Chas [Charles] Brewer to Henry A. Peirce, October 2 and 9, 1848, Volume 46 (1848–1852), Box 24, James Hunnewell, Business Papers, 1823–1883, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts; Louis J. Rasmussen, San Francisco Ship Passenger Lists: Volume II (Colma, CA: San Francisco Historic Records, 1966), 5–6, 9, 12, 17, 39, 58, 73–74, 80; Delgado, To California by Sea, 74–75. On ecological relationships between cities and countrysides, see William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991). 46. “Health of the City,” Sacramento Transcript, October 25, 1850; “Cholera at San Francisco,” Sacramento Transcript, October 26, 1850; “Coroner’s Inquisition,” Sacramento Transcript, October 26, 1850; Delgado, To California by Sea, 79–87; Brechin, Imperial San Francisco, 76. On perceptions of disease in early California, see Linda Nash, Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 16–48. 47. Edward Brinley, Jr., to Francis W. Brinley, November 4, 1849 and [November 1849], HM 74031–74033, Edward Brinley, Jr. Papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California; G. Oldfield to R. C. Wyllie, September 1, 1850, Folder 575, Box 35, Correspondence with Hawaiian Officials Abroad, 1842–1900, Record Group 404, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. Underscoring in the original. 48. Edward Brinley, Jr., to Francis W. Brinley [November 1849], HM 74033, Edward Brinley, Jr. Papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California; “City Intelligence: Coroner’s Inquests,” Daily Alta California, March 16, 1851; “Local Matters: Body Found,” Daily Alta California, August 11, 1853. 49. “Items from the Bay: ‘Monte’ Dealer Thrashed,” Sacramento Transcript, January 15, 1851; “A Kanaka in Trouble,” Sacramento Daily Union, May 24, 1851; “City Intelligence: Robbery,” Daily Alta California, May 25, 1851; “Local Matters: Assault with a Deadly Weapon,” Daily Alta California, May 13, 1852. 50. “The City: A Stubborn Evening,” Sacramento Daily Union, August 13, 1853; “Local Affairs: City Bath House,” Sacramento Daily Union, April 20, 1852. 51. “City Items: Interesting from the Sandwich Islands,” Daily Alta California, July 30, 1857. 52. C.[harles] Hitchcock to “Friend Wyllie” [R. C. Wyllie], July 21, 1862; C. Hitchcock to “Friend Wyllie,” September 27, 1862, Folder 582, Box 36, Correspondence with Hawaiian Officials Abroad, 1842–1900, Record Group 404, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu; C. De Varigny to Charles E. Hitchcock, October 21, 1865, Folder 584, Box 36, ibid. 53. “City Intelligence: The Destitute Kanaka,” Sacramento Daily Union, October 26, 1860; “City Intelligence: The Imbecile Kanaka,” Sacramento Daily Union, October 27, 1860. 54. “o ka hapa o kona leta ma ka olelo Hawaii, a o ka hapa ma ka olelo haole”; “he nui no na kanaka ma kela aina e imi ana i ke dala iloko o ka lepo o ka honua, a eono

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wale no ma kulanakauhale o Sacramento. Eia ko lakou mau inoa, R. H. Nahoa, Davida, L. A. Maikai, Elia Waikane, Kapua, Kae.” “Na Palapala no ka Hae [Letters for ka Hae],” Ka Hae Hawaii, August 22, 1860. 55. U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Office, 1870 Manuscript Census, Vernon Township, Sutter County, California, population schedule, pp. 7–8, familysearch.org, https://www.familysearch.org (accessed March 10, 2012). 56. Of 49 Hawaiian women in California in 1870, 19 (or 39 percent) are listed as married in the U.S. census. (By way of comparison, only 24 percent of Hawaiian men are listed as married.) U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Office, 1870 Manuscript Census, California, population schedules, familysearch.org, https:// www.familysearch.org (accessed March 10, 2012). For more information on the census data, see note 31. On prostitution, see “Conviction of a Keeper of a House of Ill-Fame,” Daily Alta California, November 16, 1871. 57. Isenberg, Mining California; Tyrrell, True Gardens of the Gods; David Igler, Industrial Cowboys: Miller & Lux and the Transformation of the Far West, 1850–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). On immigrant contributions to Californian agriculture, also see Sucheng Chan, This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860–1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Cecilia M. Tsu, Garden of the World: Asian Immigrants and the Making of Agriculture in California’s Santa Clara Valley (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 58. “He mau wahi olelo no ka holo ana o na kanaka maoli i Kaliponia [A few words on the going of Hawaiians to California],” Ka Hae Hawaii, April 17, 1861; Kamipele, “No Kalifonia Mai [From California],” Ka Hae Hawaii, July 3, 1861; J. Kapu, “No ka mai Colera [Concerning the Cholera sickness],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, November 30, 1867. The Friend’s 1868 coverage is described in Dillon, “Kanaka Colonies in California,” 21–22. 59. “ka paa hoi i na Konohiki, no ka mea o kela aoao a me keia aoao o ka Muliwai holookoa ua paa i na haole.” Quote from J. Kapu, “Palapala mai Kaleponi mai: No Ka Auhau Ana o Na Holoholona Ma Calefonia Mei, a me Na Pili [Letter from California: Concerning the Taxing of Animals in California, and Grass],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, July 11, 1868. On konohiki and taxation systems in early Hawaiʻi, see Beechert, Working in Hawaii, 6–10, 26–27; Marshall Sahlins (with Dorothy B. Barrère), Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii: Volume One, Historical Ethnography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 29–33. On the fishing commons and enclosure movement in California, see Arthur F. McEvoy, The Fisherman’s Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries, 1850–1980 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 60. McEvoy, Fisherman’s Problem, 47–48, 83–84; Isenberg, Mining California, 43–45. 61. “Pacific Coast Items,” Sacramento Daily Union, July 30, 1872; “Interior Items,” Daily Alta California, June 9, 1873; “A Mystery of the River,” Daily Alta California, January 20, 1877; U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Office, 1880 Manuscript Census, Vernon Township, Sutter County, California, population schedule, ancestry.com, http://www.ancestry.com (accessed March 10, 2012). Fur-

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ther reflections on the Hawaiian community at Vernon are in Margaret A. Ramsland and Henry Keʻaʻaʻla Azbill, “The Forgotten Californians” (unpublished manuscript, 1974), MSS 75/8 c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 62. “State and County Statistics: Court Business for 1871: Naturalizations,” Sacramento Daily Union, January 1, 1872; U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Office, 1870 Manuscript Census, California, population schedules, familysearch.org, https://www.familysearch.org (accessed March 10, 2012). For more information on the census data, see note 31. On the politics of race and labor in nineteenth-century California, see Chan, This Bittersweet Soil, 369–402. On American racializations of Hawaiians as “black” or “negro,” see also Barman and Watson, Leaving Paradise, 14, 136–38; David A. Chang, The World and All the Things upon It: Native Hawaiian Geographies of Exploration (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), 178–83; Chang, “Borderlands in a World at Sea,” 402. The first American census in California, conducted by occupying forces during the Mexican-American War in 1847, included the category “Sandwich Islanders,” but every census after that in the nineteenth century did not include an appropriate category for Hawaiians. “Documents for the History of California 1846–9 Presented by Dr. George McKinstry of San Diego to the Bancroft Library 1872,” 27, Papers on the History of California, MSS C-B 84, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 63. “City Intelligence: Brief Reference,” Sacramento Daily Union, June 10, 1873; “City Intelligence: County Hospital,” Sacramento Daily Union, July 2, 1873. Pyemia is septicemia, a bacterial infection.

chapter six. beckwith’s pilikia 1. G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, April 5, 1865, “Haiku, 1865 Managers letters Beckwith” and G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, May 15, 1866, “Haiku, Maui 1866 Managers letter Beckwith (a few Goodale),” Castle & Cooke Business Papers, 1850–1915, Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society Library, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. 2. I use the contemporary spelling “Haʻikū” when referring to the place on Maui, but the older spelling “Haiku” when referring to the eponymously named nineteenth-century company. 3. On the discursive construction of the “coolie,” see Moon-Ho Jung, Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006); Lisa Yun, The Coolie Speaks: Chinese Indentured Laborers and African Slaves of Cuba (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008). 4. On Chinese immigration to Hawaiʻi, see Tin-Yuke Char, The Sandalwood Mountains: Readings and Stories of the Early Chinese in Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1975); Clarence E. Glick, Sojourners and Settlers: Chinese Migrants in Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1980); Adam McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, Hawaii, 1900–1936 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).

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5. “a o ka waiwai o ke ko i kela wa i manao ia, he mea lapaau, a he mea hooluu kapa, he rama, a he mea ai.” J. A. Kaelemakule, “No ka Mahi ko [Concerning the Sugar Plantation],” Ka Hoku o Ka Pakipika, December 26, 1861. See also Robert L. Cushing, “The Beginnings of Sugar Production in Hawaiʻi,” Hawaiian Journal of History 19 (1985): 17–34, esp. 17–18; Alan Ziegler, Hawaiian Natural History, Ecology, and Evolution (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2002), 322–325. 6. Historians debate whether Wong really existed. See Char, Sandalwood Mountains, 54; Glick, Sojourners and Settlers, 2; Cushing, “Beginnings of Sugar Production,” 19–23; McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks, 33. On the origins of South China’s sugar industry and its tangshi, see Sucheta Mazumdar, Sugar and Society in China: Peasants, Technology, and the World Market (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). 7. Char, Sandalwood Mountains, 54; Glick, Sojourners and Settlers, 2–3; Cushing, “Beginnings of Sugar Production,” 27–29. 8. Stephen Reynolds, Journal of Stephen Reynolds, Volume I, 1823–1829, ed. Pauline King (Honolulu: Ku Paʻa Inc.; Salem, MA: Peabody Museum, 1989), 83, 100, 177, 189; Char, Sandalwood Mountains, 54; Glick, Sojourners and Settlers, 3–4; Ronald Takaki, Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii, 1835–1920 (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1983), 3–6; Edward D. Beechert, Working in Hawaii: A Labor History (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1985), 22; Cushing, “Beginnings of Sugar Production,” 29–31. 9. Wai-Jane Char, “Three Chinese Stores in Early Honolulu,” Hawaiian Journal of History 8 (1974): 11–38, esp. 14–16; Robert C. Schmitt, Historical Statistics of Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1977), 359; Takaki, Pau Hana, 8, 13; Christian Daniels and Nicholas K. Menzies, Biology and Biological Technology, vol. 6, no. 3, Joseph Needham, gen. ed., Science and Civilisation in China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 417. 10. On technologies and methods of sugar production in South China, see Daniels and Menzies, Biology and Biological Technology, 43; Mazumdar, Sugar and Society, 123, 147, 152–61, 180–81, 237, 277, 283. 11. Char, “Th ree Chinese Stores,” 33; Glick, Sojourners and Settlers, 6, 9; Beechert, Working in Hawaii, 58–60; Sally Engle Merry, Colonizing Hawaiʻi: The Cultural Power of Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 157. 12. “Proceedings of Preliminary Meeting,” Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 1, no. 1 (1850): 4–5. 13. “Circular,” Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 1, no. 1 (1850): 5–8. On the important role of the California market at this time, see John S. Whitehead, “Noncontiguous Wests: Alaska and Hawaiʻi,” in Many Wests: Place, Culture, and Regional Identity, ed. David M. Wrobel and Michael C. Steiner (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997), 315–41, esp. 323. 14. On discourses of indigenous extinction, see Brian W. Dippie, The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1982); Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003).

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15. Frederic Wakeman, Jr., Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorder in South China, 1839–1861 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966); Jonathan D. Spence, God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996); Philip A. Kuhn, Chinese Among Others: Emigration in Modern Times (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 107–52; Adam McKeown, “Chinese Emigration in Global Context, 1850–1940,” Journal of Global History 5 (2010): 95–124; Adam McKeown, “Movement,” in Pacific Histories: Ocean, Land, People, ed. David Armitage and Alison Bashford (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 143–65. 16. Robert J. Hollingsworth to the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society, August 14, 1851, published in Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 1, no. 2 (1851): 99–103; Stephen Reynolds, “Report on the Committee on Labor,” Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 1, no. 3 (1852): 69–71. 17. Prince [Alexander] Liholiho, “Report on Labor and Population,” Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 2, no. 1 (1854): 101–5. Emphasis in the original. 18. Reynolds, “Report on the Committee on Labor,” 69–70. On the 1852 arrival of the first coolies, see Char, Sandalwood Mountains, 60; Glick, Sojourners and Settlers, 9; McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks, 33. 19. “Proceedings of the Royal Agricultural Society,” Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 1, no. 2 (1851): 4–9; “Report of the Committee on Labor,” Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 1, no. 2 (1851): 90–92; Merry, Colonizing Hawaiʻi, 271–73. On suicide as a form of resistance, see Yun, The Coolie Speaks, 143–50. 20. Prince Liholiho, “Report on Labor and Population,” 103–4. On the Hawaiian environment as “analogous” to that of South China’s and thus appropriate for Chinese workers’ bodies, see C. De Varigny to J. Whittall, August 4, 1866, Folder 203, Box 12, Correspondence with Hawaiian Officials Abroad, 1842–1900, Record Group 404, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. 21. “He kanaka kahiko loa keia, ua komo ko lakou inoa, a me na inoa o na wahi nui o ko lakou aina i ka moolelo ma ka palapala hemolele no na aina kahiko, a me ka hana a na ‘lii me na kanaka a pau o Europa a pau, kau pinepine ko kakou maka maluna o lakou me he ano kupainaha loa lakou”; “a o ka launa me ka holoholona ko lakou pono, akaaka kakou i ko lakou kamailio a me ke ano e iwaena o kakou.” “Kekahi Mau Ano o Ka Poe Pake [Some Ways of the Chinese People],” Ka Hae Hawaii, July 23, 1856. 22. “Noonoo kakou, heaha la ka mea i alualu ai ko lakou lole wawae, a heaha ka mea i hookoeia ai ka lauoho o ke poo ma kahi uuku, a kahe ia ka nui. He ano ‘e io no lakou aka, aole pono ke hai wale i keia mau mea me ke ike ole i ke kumu.” Ibid. 23. “Ma ko lakou aina he mauu ka nui o ka lole, a me ka loihi o ka lauoho, ina lakou e hana okoa, e oki i ka lauoha alaila, ua henehene ia lakou, a he mea hilahila loa ia, e like me kakou nei ina hele wale no aole kapa, he mea hilahila. A pela hoi ka lole. A i ko’u he mea maikai pono no ia, no ka mea he oluolu maoli ka lole he alualu, he oleloa na lole o ka haole he pilikia hana ia a pili loa i na uha, o ka Pake ua imi i ka oluolu, o ka haole ua imi i ka nani o ka hookano.” Ibid.

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24. “Ina hooneleia ka Laiki, ua like pu, me ke kanaka ke nele i ka poi.” Ibid. 25. L. L. Torbert to Mr. [Richard] Armstrong, September 23, 1858, “1858 Beginning Haiku Sugar Maui,” Castle & Cooke Business Papers, 1850–1915, Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society Library, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. 26. Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I: A Critique of Political Economy [1867] (New York: Modern Library, 1906), 784–848. On fences, see William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England [1983] (New York: Hill and Wang, 2003), 127–56. 27. “E Ka poe hui Kanuko ma Haiku”; “Eia Ko’u manao ia oukou na’u no e huli ina Pau no Ko oukou pa Uwea ma Haiku eha haneri pou ohia Alii pololei maikai mai Ka ha ai Kalima iniha ke amawaena a ehiku Kapua[?] ai ka loa e lawe no au i Kai me Ka hoai keohi i ke kumu Kahi Komo ai iloko o Kalepo a ewehe no i Ka ili a pau loa.” M. Kapihe to “Ka poe hui Kanuko ma Haiku” [the Haiku Sugar Company], February 17, 1859, “Haiku, Maui 1859,” Castle & Cooke Business Papers, 1850–1915, Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society Library, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. 28. “no na Kahu o ka ahahuikanuko, o Haiku”; “na heluheluia kau palapala. Feb. 17 iho nei, imua o na Kahu o Ka ahahuimahiai ma Haiku Maui i Ka halawai o makou”; “nau no no e huli i pou, no ka pauwea o makou ma Haiku, eha haneri, e like me ke ano o Kau palapala; e hau[?] no nae na pou i Kai”; “Ia wa no e uku no makou ia ae, no keia hana; aia hau na laau i kai”; “Ua pono keia.” “Limaikaika” to E. M. Kapihe, March 13, 1859, “Haiku, Maui 1859,” Castle & Cooke Business Papers, 1850–1915, Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society Library, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. 29. G. E. Beckwith to Rev. R. Armstrong, December 27, 1859, “Haiku, Maui 1859,” Castle & Cooke Business Papers, 1850–1915, Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society Library, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. Hawaiian remained the language of business at Haʻikū well into the 1860s. See G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, November 12, 1866, “Haiku, Maui 1866 Managers letter Beckwith (a few Goodale),” ibid., in which Beckwith requests “1 copy Andrews Hawaiian Dictionary” be shipped to the plantation for his use. 30. G. E. Beckwith to Directors of the Haiku Sugar Co[mpany], February 17, 1863, “Haiku, Maui 1863,” ibid. On the impact of the U.S. Civil War, see Theodore Morgan, Hawaii: A Century of Economic Change, 1778–1876 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948), 180–81; Whitehead, “Noncontiguous Wests,” 324; Jung, Coolies and Cane, 48, 63. For further global repercussions, see Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Vintage, 2015), 242–73. 31. Report on the “Committee appointed to investigate the affairs of the Haiku Sugar Coy [Company],” [1863], “Haiku, Maui 1863,” Castle & Cooke Business Papers, 1850–1915, Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society Library, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. 32. Desertion records from “Volume 7, 1859–1862” and “Volume 8, 1860–61; 1866–67,” Collector General of Customs Seamen’s Records, Record Group 88, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. 33. G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, August 29, 1864, “Haiku, Maui 1864 July-Sept,” Castle & Cooke Business Papers, 1850–1915, Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society Library, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi.

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34. M. B. Beckwith to S. Savidge, July 20, 1865 and August 9, 1865, “Haiku, 1865 Managers letters Beckwith,” ibid. 35. G. E. Beckwith to “The Sec. of the H.S.Co.,” February 6, 1860, “Haiku, Maui 1860” and G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, September 26, 1864, “Haiku, Maui 1864 July-Sept,” ibid. On Hawaiians and salmon, see Jean Barman and Bruce Watson, Leaving Paradise: Indigenous Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest, 1787–1898 (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2006), 47, 99; Lissa K. Wadewitz, The Nature of Borders: Salmon, Boundaries, and Bandits on the Salish Sea (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012), 36–38. 36. G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, April 5, 1865, “Haiku, 1865 Managers letters Beckwith,” Castle & Cooke Business Papers, 1850–1915, Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society Library, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. On geographically distant ecologies linked through the consumption of food, see Kathryn Morse, The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003). 37. G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, April 5, 1865 and April 19, 1865, and M. B. Beckwith to S. Savidge, July 10, 1865, “Haiku, 1865 Managers letters Beckwith,” Castle & Cooke Business Papers, 1850–1915, Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society Library, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. 38. G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, January 3, 1865, “Haiku, 1865 Managers letters Beckwith,” ibid. 39. G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, April 5, 1865 and June 14, 1865, “Haiku, 1865 Managers letters Beckwith,” ibid. 40. G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, May 29, 1865, June 29, 1865, August 19, 1865, and August 28, 1865, “Haiku, 1865 Managers letters Beckwith,” ibid. 41. Histories of Hansen’s disease include Pennie Moblo, “Blessed Damien of Molokaʻi: The Critical Analysis of Contemporary Myth,” Ethnohistory 44, no. 4 (1997): 691–726; R. D. K. Herman, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind, Out of Power: Leprosy, Race and Colonization in Hawaiʻi,” Journal of Historical Geography 27, no. 3 (2001): 319–37; Michelle T. Moran, Colonizing Leprosy: Imperialism and the Politics of Public Health in the United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); Michelle T. Moran, “Telling Tales of Koʻolau: Containing and Mobilizing Disease in Colonial Hawaiʻi,” in Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility, and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire, ed. Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 315–33; Kerri A. Inglis, Maʻi Lepera: Disease and Displacement in Nineteenth-Century Hawaiʻi (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2013). 42. On scientific racism in the Pacific, see Bronwen Douglas and Chris Ballard, eds., Foreign Bodies: Oceania and the Science of Race, 1750–1940 (Canberra, Australia: ANU Press, 2008); James Belich, “Race,” in Pacific Histories, 263–81. On eugenicist efforts in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, see brief accounts in Moon-Kie Jung, Reworking Race: The Making of Hawaiʻi’s Interracial Labor Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 80; J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity (Durham: Duke University Press,

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2008), 82. Kauanui’s discussion is important for underscoring how Westerners in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries understood racial identity as a matter of blood quantum, whereas many Hawaiians saw (and continue to see) their identity as defined by ancestry and genealogy rather than blood quantum. 43. “Ua lahaia ma Lahaina nei i kekahi mai, i kapaia ka inoa he ‘Mai Pake.’ He mai inoino loa i ka nana ana’ku, he hakumakuma manoanoa ma na maka, na papalina, ka ihu, a me ka lae, a me na wahi e pili ana.” “He mai Pake [Chinese disease],” Ka Hae Hawaii, May 2, 1860. Moblo, “Blessed Damien of Molokaʻi,” 697, argues that Hansen’s disease did, in fact, come from China, but that government officials and wealthy planters in Hawaiʻi hesitated to acknowledge this fact as it threatened their goal of importing more Chinese labor. Some contemporary observers, however, were less sure regarding the disease’s origins; see Nathaniel Bright Emerson, “Ahia, the first leper in Honolulu” [c. 1882], EMR 155 and “How is Leprosy Communicated? [c. 1880], EMR 165, Box 5, Nathaniel Bright Emerson Papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California; Inglis, Maʻi Lepera, 33–34. 44. “A ina i loihi loa ka wa i loaa ai keia mai, ua kiokio inoino launa ole mai; ua aneane e weliweli no ke nana aku. Oia no ke akua pehu o Moaula la! Hoomakau lua!”; “Ua olelo wale ia e ka poe i. ike, he mai ola ole. O ka ai iho la no ka ia a hiki i ka la e make ai.” “He mai Pake [Chinese disease],” Ka Hae Hawaii, May 2, 1860. 45. “ke hana ma kela mea keia mea e pono ai. I pono paha ilaila. O ka poe puni nani nae la, aole e pono, ua hele ka pili mua.” Ibid. 46. “He mai lele no hoi keia, mai kekahi kanaka a i kekahi mea e. Aole nae he lele hiki wawe, he akahele loa no.” Ibid. “Aole no e hiki ia makou i keia manawa ke hai akaka aku i kekahi mea maopopo loa no keia mai”; “e noonoo no ka Papa Ola no keia mai, a e hooholo no lakou i ka mea kupono.” “Mai Pake [Chinese Disease],” Ka Hoku o Ka Pakipika, November 28, 1861. 47. “o keia anoano ino loa, e ulu mai nei ma kela wahi keia wahi o ka aina”; “Eia ua anoano ino la o ka mai puupuu pake”; “Eia nae ka mea makau loa, o ka hana ana mai o kela mai pake keia mai pake i ka ai maauauwa, me ko lakou kawili ana i ke ehu ino o ka mai iloko o ka ai, a lawe mai i ke kulanakauhale nei, i kahi o ka lehulehu e kuai ai me ka poe maikai.” J. H. Kaonowai, “No ka poe mai ino Pake [Concerning the people with the wicked Chinese disease],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, March 9, 1865. 48. I have interpreted the nineteenth-century term “ehu” as ʻehu, rather than ehu; the latter signifies, more directly, “dust.” For even more nuanced definitions of ʻehu, see Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel H. Elbert, Hawaiian Dictionary: Hawaiian-English, English-Hawaiian, rev. ed. (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1986), 38. Also see Moran, Colonizing Leprosy, 4, for a scientific explanation of the “respiratory droplets” (ʻehu?) believed to spread Mycobacterium leprae bacillus. 49. “O keia mai he pake, he mai ino loa, he mai aa-i loa no hoi. Pela mai kekahi ‘Pake’ waiwai i olelo mai ai i na mea o ko lakou aina ma Kina i loaahia ia e keia mai ino.” Kaonowai, “No ka poe mai ino Pake [Concerning the people with the wicked Chinese disease],” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, March 9, 1865. 50. “e pono e hoomalu loa ia ka poe i loaa i ka mai pake.—‘Aohe pono ia lakou ke lawe mai i ka ai ma keia kulanakauhale.’ ” Ibid; “Ka Mai Pake [Chinese Disease],”

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Ke Au Okoa, June 26, 1865; Robert C. Schmitt, Historical Statistics of Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1977), 72–75; Inglis, Maʻi Lepera, 33, 35. Jack London’s famous story, “Koolau the Leper,” is based on the true history of Hawaiian militant resistance to the government’s quarantine policy in the 1890s; see Jack London, Tales of the Pacific (New York: Penguin, 1989), 135–50; Moran, “Telling Tales of Koʻolau.” 51. “ka aina o ka poe iwi-maloo.” Siloama, “Ua Auhauia na mai Lepera! [The Lepers are Taxed!]” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, December 11, 1875. 52. On the role of human reproduction in American slavery, see Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). On scientific racism and eugenics, see note 42. 53. David Kalākaua, statement on behalf of “ka Papa Hoopae Lima Hana [The Board to Land Laborers],” Ke Au Okoa, July 24, 1865. Also see Wm. [William] Hillebrand, Report on Supply of Labor, Etc. (Honolulu: Government Press, 1867), 27; Beechert, Working in Hawaii, 62; Jung, Coolies and Cane. 54. “Ua loaa mai na palapala i ka Papa Hoopae Luina Hana mai ia Hon. W. Hilibarani mai Kina mai; ua kakauia ua mau palapala la ma Hongkong i ka la 14 o Iune, 1865. Ua hai mai o Kauka Hilibarani i ka holo pono o kana hana e pili ana i ka hoouna ana mai o na Coolies, (Pake Limahana,) i Hawaii nei, a ua manaolana ia e hiki ana ia ke hoouna mai i 500 Pake Limahana, he iwakalua a he kanakolu paha wahine iloko o ka haneri hookahi”; “Oiai he inoa ino a he inaina ia ka poe e pili ana i ke kuai Pake Limahana ana, ina na kekahi poe kaokoa e lawelawe, aka, ina na ke Aupuni, aohe e hoopoho ko lakou manao, i ke kaa ana iloko o kona lima a malalo o kona mana.” Kalākaua, statement on behalf of “ka Papa Hoopae Lima Hana [The Board to Land Laborers],” Ke Au Okoa, July 24, 1865. 55. “Ke kahea aku nei ka Papa Hoopae Lima Hana, i ka poe e makemake ana i mau Limahana Pake, no ka mahi ko, kanaka hana, a kauwa lawelawe paha, e hookaawaleia no no lakou, ma ke noi ana mai i ka Papa, a me ka hookaa e ana mai no hoi i na dala he umi mamua, no kela Kauwa keia Kauwa Pake kane a wahine paha.” Kalākaua, statement on behalf of “ka Papa Hoopae Lima Hana [The Board to Land Laborers],” Ke Au Okoa, July 24, 1865. On kauā as a term for African slaves, see “Ka Hoomainoino i na Pake [The Abuse of the Chinese],” Ka Hae Hawaii, September 19, 1860. The aforementioned coolies were indeed “distributed” among several plantations within a few months of their arrival to Hawaiʻi; see C. de Varigny to J. Whittall, October 17, 1865, Folder 202, Box 12, Correspondence with Hawaiian Officials Abroad, 1842–1900, Record Group 404, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. 56. Prince Liholiho, “Report on Labor and Population,” 104. 57. William Hillebrand, “Report on Labor and Population,” Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 2, no. 2 (1855): 77. See also Hillebrand, Report on Supply of Labor. 58. “he poe kanaka kauwa lakou, a ua kuaiia aku lakou me he mea waiwai la e like me na nika ma na aina hema o Amerikahui”; “he poe kolohe lakou a me ka aihue kekahi”; “Ina ua halalo aku kekahi i ka poe lawehala e noho nei iloko o ka Halepaahao

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ma Honolulu nei, e akaka ai no ia mea ia lakou, no ka mea, he nui na Pake i hoopaahaoia. Ua panaia ia poe he ‘Pake kinikiu.’ Aka, o ka poe Pake kalepa, he poe kanaka okoa no lakou, he noho malie a me ka malama nui i na Kanawai o ka aina, a ua kapaia ia poe, he ‘Pake kanekona.’ ” “Ka Hoomainoino i na Pake [The Abuse of the Chinese],” Ka Hae Hawaii, September 19, 1860. 59. “The Coolie System Improved,” The Friend, July 7, 1868. 60. “The Labor Question,” The Friend, November 1, 1869. 61. In the 1880s—a decade of global “yellow peril” that saw both the United States and the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi pass anti-Chinese laws—the search for a cognate race in Hawaiʻi shifted from Chinese to Japanese immigrants. See Char, Sandalwood Mountains, 74; Jung, Reworking Race, 70; Kauanui, Hawaiian Blood, 91–96; Kuhn, Chinese Among Others, ch. 5. 62. G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, September 27, 1865, “Haiku, 1865 Managers letters Beckwith,” Castle & Cooke Business Papers, 1850–1915, Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society Library, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. 63. G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, October 6, 1865, “Haiku, 1865 Managers letters Beckwith,” ibid. 64. G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, October 7, 1865, “Haiku, 1865 Managers letters Beckwith,” ibid. 65. G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, October 21, 1865, October 30, 1865, November 6–7, 1865 and November 30, 1865, “Haiku, 1865 Managers letters Beckwith,” ibid. 66. G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, November 6–7, 1865, “Haiku, 1865 Managers letters Beckwith,” ibid. 67. G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, January 31, 1866 and March 14, 1866, “Haiku, Maui 1866 Managers letters Beckwith (a few Goodale),” ibid. 68. Ibid. See references to paʻi ʻai in “Haiku, Maui 1865 Oct-Dec,” ibid. 69. G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, January 11, 1866, March 14, 1866, and July 26, 1866, “Haiku, Maui 1866 Managers letters Beckwith (a few Goodale),” ibid. 70. G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, March 14, 1866, April 18, 1866, and May 8, 1866, “Haiku, Maui 1866 Managers letters Beckwith (a few Goodale),” ibid. 71. G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, November 30, 1865, “Haiku, 1865 Managers letters Beckwith,” ibid.; Yun, The Coolie Speaks, 143–50. In early 1868, some of Haiku’s coolies even “murdered one & perhaps two natives [Hawaiians]”; see W. Goodale to S. M. Castle, January 13, 1868, “Haiku, Maui Goodale letters Jan—June 1868,” Castle & Cooke Business Papers, 1850–1915, Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society Library, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. On the Hawaiian government’s fears of “combined action between the Coolies” in which the state is unable to restore “order and discipline,” see C. de Varigny to J. Whittall, August 4, 1866, Folder 203, Box 12, Correspondence with Hawaiian Officials Abroad, 1842–1900, Record Group 404, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. 72. G. E. Beckwith to S. Savidge, May 23, 1866, “Haiku, Maui 1866 Managers letters Beckwith (a few Goodale),” Castle & Cooke Business Papers, 1850–1915, Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society Library, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi; Merry, Colonizing Hawaiʻi, appendix A.

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73. George H. Dole, “Agriculture on Hawaii nei,” March 7, 1860, HM 57920, George H. Dole Papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California; George H. and Clara Rowell Dole, Diaries, 1873, February 11, 1873, HM 76340, Dole Family Papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. On the Treaty of Reciprocity, see Donald D. Johnson (with Gary Dean Best), The United States in the Pacific: Private Interests and Public Policies, 1784–1899 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), 102–5; Jung, Reworking Race, 12, 68. 74. Schmitt, Historical Statistics of Hawaii, 8–9, 25. Note that while the total population of the archipelago began to increase in 1876 (and continues to grow to this day), the indigenous population declined until 1910, when it reached a nadir of 38,547 individuals. 75. Schmitt, Historical Statistics of Hawaii, 90–91, 97–98, 122, 359; Beechert, Working in Hawaii, 60, 86; McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks, 33–34; Jung, Reworking Race, 68. 76. “Ka Book Hoike La no Ka poe Kanaka Hana o Lihue Plantation E Hoomaka ana ma Feberuary 1866 [The Exhibition Book of the Working Kanaka Personnel of Lihue Plantation Commencing in February 1866],” Lihue Plantation Company, Time Book, Feb 1866—June 1867, LPC 0–1/5, Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association Archive, Hawaiian Collection, Hamilton Library, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa; “Time Book of Lihue Plantation Company,” Lihue Plantation, Time Book, May 1870—Feb 1871, LPC PV.1, ibid; Records for 1874 from Lihue Plantation Company, Payroll Book July 1874—Dec 1879, LPC PV.2, ibid. I use the contemporary spelling “Līhu‘e” when referring to the place on Kauaʻi, but the older spelling “Lihue” when referring to the eponymously named nineteenth-century company. 77. “Pay day of Chinese & Bolabola & Guano & Spanish in Employ of Lihue Plantation,” June 5, 1876, ibid. 78. See records from June 17, 1876 to end, ibid. By mid-1878 the company was using the term “Chinese &c” to describe the old “Chinese”/ “Bolabola” / “Guano” /“Spanish” category. 79. Honokaa Sugar Company, Cash Book 1875–1877, HSC V.2A, Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association Archive, Hawaiian Collection, Hamilton Library, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa; Honokaa Sugar Company, Payroll Book 1876–1878, HSC O-1/1, ibid. I use the contemporary spelling “Honokaʻa” when referring to the place on Hawaiʻi Island, but the older spelling “Honokaa” when referring to the eponymously named nineteenth-century company.

epilogue 1. Matthew Kester, Remembering Iosepa: History, Place, and Religion in the American West (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). On Hawaiians and Mormonism, see Hōkūlani K. Aikau, A Chosen People, A Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawaiʻi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012). No t e s t o Pag e s 19 7– 2 0 3

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2. “Defi ning America: Exploring the 2010 Census,” CNN, http://www.cnn .com/SPECIALS/defining.america/map/index.html?hpt = hp_abar (accessed July 4, 2016); Toshio Meronek, “Islands in the Sand: Why Thousands of Hawaiian Prisoners are Languishing in the Arizona Desert,” Hyphen, January 24, 2013. 3. Corrections Corporation of America, “A Commitment to Culture,” January 28, 2009, https://www.cca.com/insidecca/a-commitment-to-culture (accessed July 4, 2016); Meronek, “Islands in the Sand”; Audrey McAvoy, “Isle Inmates in Arizona Win Class-Action Status for Religion Suit,” Honolulu Star-Advertiser, October 4, 2014; Eli Hager and Rui Kaneya, “The Prison Visit that Cost My Family $2,370: How Loved Ones Bear the Hidden Cost of Shipping Inmates Out of State,” The Marshall Project, April 12, 2016; Nelson Daranciang, “Inmate Sues State over Prison Policy Banning Letters Written in Hawaiian,” Honolulu Star-Advertiser, June 3, 2016. On this topic, also see Healani Sonoda, “A Nation Incarcerated,” in Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in Hawaiʻi, ed. Candace Fujikane and Jonathan Y. Okamura (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2008), 99–115. 4. U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, “Report on Homelessness Among American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians,” September 27, 2012, https://www.usich.gov/tools-for-action/report-on-homelessness-amongamerican-indians-alaska-natives (accessed July 4, 2016); Anna Keala Kelly, “Portrait. Marie Beltran and Annie Pau: Resistance to Empire, Erasure, and Selling Out,” in A Nation Rising: Hawaiian Movements for Life, Land, and Sovereignty, ed. Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, Ikaika Hussey, and Erin Kahunawaikaʻala Wright (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 36–47; Kalamaokaʻāina Niheu, “Puʻuhonua: Sanctuary and Struggle at Mākua,” in ibid., 161–79. 5. Nathan Eagle, “Homeless in Hawaii? State Will Fly You Back to Family on Mainland,” Honolulu Civil Beat, July 23, 2013. 6. Brittany Lyte, “Hawaiian Natives Have Been Waiting Since 1920 for Promised Land,” Al Jazeera America, July 11, 2015. For a history of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, see J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008). 7. Lindsay Hixson, Bradford B. Hepler, and Myoung Ouk Kim, “The Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander Population: 2010,” U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census Briefs, May 2012, http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-12 .pdf (accessed July 4, 2016). On late twentieth-century life in the Hawaiian diaspora, see Rona Tamiko Halualani, In the Name of Hawaiians: Native Identities and Cultural Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). 8. Caspar Whitney, Hawaiian America: Something of its History, Resources, and Prospects (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1899), 51, 67; William W. Goodale, “Brief History of Hawaiian Unskilled Labor,” Thrum’s Hawaiian Almanac and Annual for 1914 (1913): 170–91, esp. 170–71, 183; Joseph Nāwahī, as quoted in Noenoe K. Silva, Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 137–38. On cultural work, also see Jane Desmond, Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World (Chicago: University

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of Chicago Press, 1999); Adria L. Imada, Aloha America: Hula Circuits Through the U.S. Empire (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012). 9. Kalamaokaʻaina Niheu, Laurel Mei Turbin, and Seiji Yamada, “The Impact of the Military Presence in Hawaiʻi on the Health of Na Kānaka Maoli,” Developing Human Resources for Health in the Pacific 14, no. 1 (2007): 205–12; Laurel Turbin Mei-Singh, “Geographies of Desecration: Race, Indigeneity, and the Militarization of Hawaiʻi” (Ph.D. diss., Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2016). 10. On food sovereignty, see Leʻa Malia Kanehe, “Kūʻē Mana Māhele: The Hawaiian Movement to Resist Biocolonialism,” in A Nation Rising: Hawaiian Movements for Life, Land, and Sovereignty, edited by Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, Ikaika Hussey, and Erin Kahunawaikaʻala Wright (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 331–53; Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaʻakahaʻopulani Hobart, “Tropical Necessities: Ice, Taste, and Territory in Settler Colonial Hawaiʻi” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 2016). 11. Eric Pape, “Living Hawaii: Where the Rent Is Too Damn High,” Honolulu Civil Beat, November 25, 2014; Office of Hawaiian Affairs, “An Assessment of Rental Housing Affordability and its Impact in Native Hawaiian Communities,” Hoʻokahua Waiwai (Economic Self-Sufficiency) Fact Sheet 2015, no. 1 (September 2015), http://www.oha.org/wp-content/uploads/An-Assessment-of-RentalHousing-Affordability-and-its-Impact-in-Native-Hawaiian-Communities.-2015 .pdf (accessed July 4, 2016).

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glossa ry

Nouns in the Hawaiian language are generally preceded by a particle that signifies whether the word is singular or plural. Singular particles include ka and ke; a common plural particle is nā. For example, ka ʻāina (land) versus nā ʻāina (lands). Readers may at times encounter these particles in the text preceding Hawaiianlanguage terms. The following glossary provides simple definitions that are used in this book. For further elaboration on the multiple meanings of these words, see Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel H. Elbert, Hawaiian Dictionary: HawaiianEnglish, English-Hawaiian, rev. ed. (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1986). aho breath ahupuaʻa traditional Hawaiian land division ʻāina land ʻāina ʻē foreign land ʻaʻo shearwater (bird) akua god ʻala fragrant; fragrance aliʻi chief; ruler aliʻi nui high chief aloha love; greetings; affection; sentiments dala (kālā) “dollar”; money ea sovereignty; independence ʻehu spray; foam; mist; dust; pollen hae flag hale house hana work

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haole foreigner; white person hapa haole someone of mixed Hawaiian/white ancestry Hawaiʻi nei this beloved Hawaiʻi heiau temple hoʻokupu tribute ʻili skin ʻiliahi sandalwood (plant) ʻilima sida fallax (plant) kai sea kākau “tattoo” kalo taro (plant) kamaʻāina someone considered a local of a place; sometimes used to describe a Hawaiʻi-born person but not necessarily Native/indigenous kanaka (s.) / kānaka (pl.) person/people, sometimes gendered as man/men; in contemporary usage, and when capitalized as Kanaka / Kānaka, specifically refers to Native Hawaiian people. European and Euro-American usage of the term “kanaka” has its own history. See pages 2–5. kaona hidden meaning, in the context of literature, poetry, and song lyrics kapa cloth; clothing, traditionally made from bark of the wauke tree kapu “taboo”; law; restriction; sacred kauā servant; slave keiki child; boy kiaʻāina governor kino body; physical self kioea curlew (bird) kō sugar cane (plant) koaʻe tropicbird koholā whale kōlea plover (bird) konohiki land manager; later, tax collector kua leho lit., “calloused back” kuano “guano” kūkae manu guano kukui candlenut (plant) kuleana right; privilege; responsibility lāʻau wood; tree

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lāhui nation; people lālā branch; limb le “lay” (a percentage of total profits distributed to a whale worker at the end of the voyage) lei necklace limahana laborer lukau “lookout” (job on a whaling ship) luna boss; overseer māhele division; to divide; to apportion maʻi disease; sickness; illness maʻi Pākē “Chinese disease”; an early term used for Hansen’s disease, or leprosy makaʻāinana commoner makani wind make dead; death mālama ʻāina care for the land mana power; divine power; sacred power; political authority mele song; poetry; lyrics moana ocean mōʻī monarch; king moku ship; island; district nū hou news nūpepa newspaper ʻohana family ʻōlelo language; word ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi Hawaiian language paʻi ʻai undiluted, cooked kalo (taro), in a dough-like state Pākē early term used to denote a Chinese person palaoa sperm whale palapala reading; writing; text panipani sexual intercourse pau done; completed; finished pau hana the end of the workday pilikia trouble; burden poi cooked kalo (taro), mashed and thinned with water pono just; proper; right; the ways things should be

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pūleholeho cowry shell ʻuala sweet potato (plant) uku wage uku malama monthly wage ʻūlili tattler (bird) wahine woman waimaka tears

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bi bliogr a ph y

archival and manuscript collections Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts James Hunnewell, Business Papers, 1823–1883 Isaiah Lewis Letter Book

The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley Kimball Hale Dimmick Papers Documentos para la historia de California, 1827–1858 Fitch Family Papers William Little Lee letters William A. Leidesdorff Papers Papers on the History of California, 1846–1865 Margaret A. Ramsland and Henry Keʻaʻaʻla Azbill, “The Forgotten Californians” John Augustus Sutter Papers

Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum Library and Archives, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi D. C. Waterman & Co. Business correspondence

G. W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut Chelsea (ship), Journal Hannibal (ship), Journal New London Crew Lists Index, 1803–1878

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California Historical Society, San Francisco William A. Leidesdorff collection Letter books of the U.S. Consul in Hawaii

Hamilton Library, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Honokaa Sugar Company, Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association Archive Lihue Plantation Company, Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association Archive

Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu Collector General of Customs Seamen’s Records, Record Group 88 Correspondence with Hawaiian Officials Abroad, 1842–1900, Record Group 404 Harbormaster’s Shipping Articles, 1862–1900, Record Group 89

Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society Library, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi Castle & Cooke Business Papers, 1850–1915

Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Pacific Islands Missions Records, 1819–1960 Josiah Marshall Letters and Accounts

The Huntington Library, San Marino, California Edward Brinley, Jr. Papers Dole Family Papers George H. Dole Papers Early California Population Project Database, 2006. Accessed July 17, 2013. http:// www.huntington.org/Information/ECPPmain.htm. Nathaniel Bright Emerson Papers Log of the ship Hillman Journal and Logbook of John T. Hudson William A. Leidesdorff Papers Log of the ship Reindeer Letters of Giles Waldo

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Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston Log of the ship Atahualpa Charles B. Bullard Letterbook Lewis Coolidge Diary, 1806–1811 Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Journal of a Voyage to the Coast of California, 1834–1836 Edward Horatio Faucon Logbooks John Percival Papers Charles Pickering Journal, 1838–1841 William Sturgis Papers Sultan (ship) Account Book John Suter Papers

New-York Historical Society James B. Ames, Diary, 1829–1830 Henry Erben, Jr. Papers Isaac Iselin, Notes and Excerpts, 1880 Italy (ship) Account book Charles Bernhard Richard, Travel Sketches, being a Narrative of his Travels from 1846 to 1849

New York Public Library Adeline (ship) Logbook Samuel Hill Papers Levant (ship) Logbook

newspapers & periodicals Daily Alta California The Friend Ka Elele Hawaii Ka Hae Hawaii Ka Hoku Loa Ka Hoku o Ka Pakipika Ka Lahui Hawaii Ka Nonanona Ka Nupepa Kuokoa Ke Au Okoa Ke Koo o Hawaii The New York Times

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Sacramento Daily Union Sacramento Transcript Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society

hawaiian-language primary sources Halaulani, J. A. K. “Ke holo nei ka Hookamakama o na wahine o Hilo [The goingons of Prostitution of the women of Hilo].” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, April 27, 1865. “He Goula Ma Kalifornia [Gold at California].” Ka Elele Hawaii, August 26, 1848. “He lono mai ke Kai Anu o Alika [News from the Cold Sea of the Arctic].” Ka Lahui Hawaii, October 7, 1875. “He mai Pake [Chinese disease].” Ka Hae Hawaii, May 2, 1860. “He mau wahi olelo no ka holo ana o na kanaka maoli i Kaliponia [A few words on the going of Hawaiians to California].” Ka Hae Hawaii, April 17, 1861. “He Mele Inoa no Kekaulike [A Name Song for Kekaulike].” Ke Koo o Hawaii, September 12, 1883. “Ina makamaka me na pili koko o . . . [If friends with the blood relatives of . . . ].” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, June 28, 1873. Ioane [John]. Letter to the editor. Ka Nonanona, April 25, 1843. “Ka Hae Hawaii [The Hawaiian Flag].” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, January 1, 1862. “Ka Hoomainoino i na Pake [The Abuse of the Chinese].” Ka Hae Hawaii, September 19, 1860. “Ka Mai Pake [Chinese Disease].” Ke Au Okoa, June 26, 1865. “Ka Moku Kipi Kenedoa [The Rebel Ship Shenandoah].” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, June 29, 1865. Kaelemakule, J. A. “Kohola [Whales].” Ka Hae Hawaii, May 5, 1858. . “No ka Mahi ko [Concerning the Sugar Plantation].” Ka Hoku o Ka Pakipika, December 26, 1861. Kailiopio, J. M. “Mai Puakailima mai [From Puakailima].” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, December 23, 1865. . “Moolelo o ka Mokupuni Baker’s Is. Puakailima [History of Baker’s Island/ Puakailima].” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, July 7, 1866. Kalākaua, David. Statement on behalf of “ka Papa Hoopae Lima Hana [The Board to Land Laborers].” Ke Au Okoa, July 24, 1865. “Kalifornia [California].” Ka Elele Hawaii, August 26, 1848. Kaluahine, G. W. “Make ma Bakers Island Puakailima [Death at Baker’s Island/ Puakailima].” Ka Hae Hawaii, August 14, 1861. . “No na Aina Kukae Manu [Concerning the Guano Lands].” Ka Hae Hawaii, August 24, 1859. Kamae, B. E. “No ke aloha o ka poe Kalifonia [Concerning the love of the California people].” Ka Hae Hawaii, July 14, 1858. Kamakau, S. M. “O ke ano o kekahi mau mea o ka Lahui Hawaii [The character of some things of the Hawaiian Nation].” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, August 8, 1868.

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Kamika, L. [Lowell Smith]. “Ku holo ana o L. Kamika mai Sacramenato i Coloma [The going of L. Smith from Sacramento to Coloma].” Ka Hae Hawaii, January 12, 1859. Kamipele, T. B. “No Kalifonia Mai [From California].” Ka Hae Hawaii, July 3, 1861. Kaonowai, J. H. “No ka poe mai ino Pake [Concerning the people with the wicked Chinese disease].” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, March 9, 1865. Kapu, J. “No ka mai Colera [Concerning the Cholera sickness].” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, November 30, 1867. . “Palapala mai Kaleponi mai: No Ka Auhau Ana o Na Holoholona Ma Calefonia Mei, a me Na Pili [Letter From California: Concerning the Taxing of Animals in California, and Grass].” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, July 11, 1868. Kaulainamoku, S. W. B. “No ka maikai o na Aina Kukaemanu o G. P. Judd [Concerning the well-being of the Guano Lands of G. P. Judd].” Ka Hae Hawaii, December 14, 1859. Kaulainamoku, [S. W. B.], et al. “Mea hou ma Jarvis Island [News at Jarvis Island].” Ka Hae Hawaii, November 9, 1859. “Ke emi wawe loa nei ka nui o na mokukohola . . . [The number of whaling ships is presently very quickly diminishing . . . ].” Ka Hae Hawaii, April 17, 1861. Kealoha, Charles Edward. “He Moolelo Walohia! Ka noho pio ana iwaena o ka Lahui Naguru ma Alika! Ka ike hou ana i ka aina! [A Heartwrenching Tale! Living as a captive amongst the Naguru people in the Arctic! Seeing Land Again!]” Ka Lahui Hawaii, November 8 and 15, 1877. “Kekahi Mau Ano o Ka Poe Pake [Some Ways of the Chinese People].” Ka Hae Hawaii, July 23, 1856. Kuhaloa, J. “He palapala mai ka mokupuni o Jarvis mai [A letter from the island of Jarvis].” Ka Hae Hawaii, November 17, 1858. Kuhelemai, J. W. “Kohola [Whales].” Ka Hae Hawaii, March 24, 1858. Lahainaluna. “He mau ninau no Aliapaakai, ma Moanalua i Oahu [Questions concerning Aliapaakai, at Moanalua in Oahu].” Ka Nonanona, March 23, 1843. “Lau Kanaka Ke Kaona Nei [The Town Is Dense with People].” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, November 3, 1866. “Mai Pake [Chinese Disease].” Ka Hoku o Ka Pakipika, November 28, 1861. “Mai Pake [Chinese Disease].” Ka Hoku Loa, August 1864. “Make ke o kohola ‘Hae Hawaii’ [Destruction of the Whaler ‘Hae Hawaii’].” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, October 31, 1868. “Na Hana a ka moku Kenadoa [The Activity of the ship Shenandoah].” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, June 29, 1865. “Na keiki o ke kai [The Boys of the Sea].” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, October 31, 1868. “Na o kohola ma Honolulu nei [The Whalers at Honolulu].” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, October 31, 1868. “Na palapala i loaa mai [Letters Received].” Ka Hae Hawaii, May 12, 1858. “Na Palapala no ka Hae [Letters for ka Hae].” Ka Hae Hawaii, August 22, 1860. Nahoa, R. Henry. “He mea hoakaka na koʻu poe ma ke kino [A clarification for my people on the body].” Ka Hae Hawaii, July 14, 1858.

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Nahora, M. “He Poi Palaoa [Flour Poi].” Ka Hae Hawaii, March 16, 1859. “Nu hou mai Atika mai [News from the Arctic].” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, August 29, 1868. “Olelo Hoolaha [Notice].” Ka Hae Hawaii, January 7, 1857. Opunui, Iosepa. Letter to the editor. Ka Hae Hawaii, July 14, 1858. . Letter to the editor. Ka Hae Hawaii, November 24, 1858. Polapola, J. “He kaua weliweli ma Alika maluna o ka moku Alepani [A Fierce Battle in the Arctic aboard the ship Alepani].” Ka Lahui Hawaii, November 1, 1877. “Puamana no! [A Poor Man!]” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, February 24, 1866. Siloama. “Ua Auhauia na mai Lepera! [The Lepers are Taxed!]” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, December 11, 1875. Wahaulaula, S. “He wahi ukana kaumaha [A little heavy baggage].” Ka Hae Hawaii, July 14, 1858.

english-language primary sources Bingham, Hiram. A Residence of Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Islands. Hartford, CT: H. Huntington; New York: S. Converse, 1847. Boelen, Jacobus. A Merchant’s Perspective: Captain Jacobus Boelen’s Narrative of his Visit to Hawaiʻi in 1828, edited and translated by Frank K. A. Broeze. Honolulu: Hawaiian Historical Society, 1988. Buff um, E. Gould. Six months in the gold mines; from a journal of three years’ residence in Upper and Lower California, 1847–8–9. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1850. Chave, Richard Branscombe. Adventures of a Guano Digger in the Eastern Pacific. Unpublished manuscript, 1871. Microfi lm available from the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, Australian National University. “Circular.” Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 1, no. 1 (1850): 5–8. Closson, Mabel H. “Under the Southern Cross.” Overland Monthly 21 (1893): 205–16. Dana, Richard Henry, Jr. Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea [1840]. New York: Modern Library, 2001. Duhaut-Cilly, Auguste. A Voyage to California, the Sandwich Islands & Around the World in the Years, 1826–1829, translated and edited by August Frugé and Neal Harlow. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Ellis, William. Journal of William Ellis: A Narrative of an 1823 Tour Through Hawaiʻi [1825]. Honolulu: Mutual Publishing, 2004. . Polynesian Researches . . . Vol. IV. New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833. Ellison, William Henry, ed. The Life and Adventures of George Nidever, 1802–1883. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1937. Gernes, Phyllis Lindert, ed. The Daily Journal of Stephen Wing, 1852 to 1860. Garden Valley, CA: Phyllis Gernes, 1982.

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Goodale, William W. “Brief History of Hawaiian Unskilled Labor.” Thrum’s Hawaiian Almanac and Annual for 1914 (1913): 170–91. Goode, George Brown. The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1887. Gutzlaff, Charles. A Sketch of Chinese History, Ancient and Modern; comprising a Retrospect of the Foreign Intercourse and Trade with China. New York: John P. Haven, 1834. Hague, James D. “On the Phosphatic Guano Islands of the Pacific Ocean.” American Journal of Science and Arts 34, no. 101 (1862): 2–21. . “Our Equatorial Islands; with an Account of Some Personal Experiences.” Century 64, no. 5 (1902): 653–70. Hammatt, Charles H. Ships, Furs, and Sandalwood: A Yankee Trader in Hawaiʻi, 1823–1825, edited by Sandra Wagner-Wright. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1999. Haskins, Charles Warren. The Argonauts of California. New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1890. Hillebrand, William. “Report on Labor and Population.” Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 2, no. 2 (1855): 69–77. . Report on Supply of Labor, Etc. Honolulu: Government Press, 1867. Hollingsworth, Robert J., to the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society, August 14, 1851, published in Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 1, no. 2 (1851): 99–103. Howland, Llewellyn, ed. “Howland Island, Its Birds and Rats, as Observed by a Certain Mr. Stetson in 1854.” Pacific Science 9, no. 2 (1955): 95–106. Ihimaera, Witi. The Whale Rider. Auckland, New Zealand: Reed Books, 1987. Judd, A. F., II, ed. The Guano Islands. Honolulu: Family Records, House of Judd, 1935. Kamakau, Samuel Manaiakalani. Ruling Chiefs of Hawaii. Honolulu: Kamehameha Schools Press, 1961. Liholiho, Prince [Alexander]. “Report on Labor and Population.” Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 2, no. 1 (1854): 101–5. London, Jack. Tales of the Pacific. New York: Penguin, 1989. Macartney, George. An Embassy to China; being the journal kept by Lord Macartney during his embassy to the Emperor Ch’ ien-lung, 1793–1794, edited by J. L. Cranmer-Byng. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1963. Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale [1851]. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002. . Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life [1846]. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Pacific Guano Company. The Pacific Guano Company: Its History; Its Products and Trade; Its Relation to Agriculture . . . Cambridge: Printed for the Pacific Guano Company at The Riverside Press, 1876. “Proceedings of Preliminary Meeting.” Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 1, no. 1 (1850): 4–5. “Proceedings of the Royal Agricultural Society.” Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 1, no. 2 (1851): 4–9.

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“Report of the Committee on Labor.” Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 1, no. 2 (1851): 90–92. Reynolds, Stephen. Journal of Stephen Reynolds, Volume I, 1823–1829, edited by Pauline King. Honolulu: Ku Paʻa Inc.; Salem, MA: Peabody Museum, 1989. . “Report on the Committee on Labor.” Transactions of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society 1, no. 3 (1852): 69–71. Schauinsland, Hugo H. Three Months on a Coral Island [1899], translated by Miklos D. F. Udvardy. In Laysan Island and Other Northwest Hawaiian Islands: Early Science Reports with a Laysan Island Bibliography, edited by I. G. MacIntyre, 1–53. Atoll Research Bulletin no. 432. Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1996. Stewart, C. S. Journal of a Residence in the Sandwich Islands, during the years, 1823, 1824, and 1825. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1970. Tuttle, Charles A. Reports of Cases Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of California, vol. 29. Sacramento: O. M. Clayes & Co., 1866. U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Office. 1850 Manuscript Census, population schedules. familysearch.org. Accessed March 10, 2012. https://familysearch .org/. . 1860 Manuscript Census, population schedules. familysearch.org and ancestry.com. Accessed March 10, 2012. https://familysearch.org/ and http://ancestry .com/. . 1870 Manuscript Census, population schedules. familysearch.org. Accessed March 10, 2012. https://familysearch.org/. . 1880 Manuscript Census, population schedules. ancestry.com. Accessed March 10, 2012. http://ancestry.com/. Whitney, Caspar. Hawaiian America: Something of its History, Resources, and Prospects. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1899. Wight, Elizabeth Leslie, ed. Memoirs of Elizabeth Kinau Wilder. Honolulu: Paradise of the Pacific Press, 1909. Wood, W. W. Sketches of China. Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1830. Wyllie, R[obert] C[richton]. Answers to Questions: proposed By His Excellency, R. C. Wyllie, His Hawaiian Majesty’s Minister of Foreign Relations, and addressed to all the Missionaries in the Hawaiian Islands, May, 1846. Honolulu: Department of Foreign Affairs, 1848. . “Notes, On the Shipping, Trade, Agriculture, Climate . . . ” The Friend, September 4, 1844.

english-language secondary sources Aikau, Hōkūlani K. A Chosen People, A Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawaiʻi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. Amerson, A. Binion, Jr., and Philip C. Shelton. The Natural History of Johnston Atoll, Central Pacific Ocean. Atoll Research Bulletin no. 192. Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1975.

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Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 1991. Andrews, Thomas G. Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Archer, Seth. “Epidemics and Culture in Hawaiʻi, 1778–1840.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Riverside, 2015. . “Remedial Agents: Missionary Physicians and the Depopulation of Hawaiʻi.” Pacific Historical Review 79, no. 4 (2010): 513–44. Arista, Denise Noelani. “Histories of Unequal Measure: Euro-American Encounters with Hawaiian Governance and Law, 1793–1827.” Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 2010. Armitage, David, and Alison Bashford. “Introduction: The Pacific and its Histories.” In Pacific Histories: Ocean, Land, People, edited by David Armitage and Alison Bashford, 1–28. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. . Pacific Histories: Ocean, Land, People. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Ashmole, N. Philip, and Myrtle J. Ashmole. Comparative Feeding Ecology of Sea Birds of a Tropical Oceanic Island. Peabody Museum of Natural History, Bulletin no. 24. New Haven, CT: Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, 1967. Bancroft, Hubert Howe. History of California, 7 vols. In The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, 24 vols. San Francisco: The History Company, 1886–88. Banner, Stuart. Possessing the Pacific: Land, Settlers, and Indigenous People from Australia to Alaska. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. Barca, Stefania. “Laboring the Earth: Transnational Reflections on the Environmental History of Work.” Environmental History 19, no. 1 (2014): 3–27. Barman, Jean, and Bruce Watson. Leaving Paradise: Indigenous Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest, 1787–1898. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2006. Baron, Ava, and Eileen Boris. “ ‘The Body’ as a Useful Category for Working-Class History.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 4, no. 2 (2007): 23–43. Barratt, Glynn. The Russian View of Honolulu, 1809–26. Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1988. Bauer, William J., Jr. We Were All Like Migrant Workers Here: Work, Community, and Memory on California’s Round Valley Reservation, 1850–1941. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. Beckert, Sven. Empire of Cotton: A Global History. New York: Vintage, 2015. Beckwith, Martha Warren. The Kumulipo: A Hawaiian Creation Chant. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951. Beechert, Edward D. Honolulu: Crossroads of the Pacific. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991. . Working in Hawaii: A Labor History. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1985. Belich, James. “Race.” In Pacific Histories: Ocean, Land, People, edited by David Armitage and Alison Bashford, 263–81. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

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Bentley, Jerry H. “Sea and Ocean Basins as Frameworks of Historical Analysis.” The Geographical Review 89, no. 2 (April 1999): 215–24. Black, Brian. “Oil Creek as Industrial Apparatus: Re-Creating the Industrial Process through the Landscape of Pennsylvania’s Oil Boom.” Environmental History 3, no. 2 (1998): 210–29. Bockstoce, John R. Furs and Frontiers in the Far North: The Contest among Native and Foreign Nations for the Bering Strait Fur Trade. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Bolster, W. Jeffrey. Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Borofsky, Robert, ed. Remembrance of Pacific Pasts: An Invitation to Remake History. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2000. Brantlinger, Patrick. Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. Brechin, Gray A. Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Burnett, Christina Duff y. “The Edges of Empire and the Limits of Sovereignty: American Guano Islands.” American Quarterly 57, no. 3 (2005): 779–803. Bushnell, O. A. The Gifts of Civilization: Germs and Genocide in Hawaiʻi. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1993. Camarillo, Albert. Chicanos in a Changing Society: from Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848–1930. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. Carr, James Revell. “In the Wake of John Kanaka: Musical Interactions Between Euro-American Sailors and Pacific Islanders, 1600–1900.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2006. Chan, Ka Yan. “Joss Stick Manufacturing: A Study of a Traditional Industry in Hong Kong.” Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 29 (1989): 94–120. Chan, Sucheng. This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860– 1910. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Chang, David A. “Borderlands in a World at Sea: Concow Indians, Native Hawaiians, and South Chinese in Indigenous, Global, and National Spaces.” The Journal of American History 98 (2011): 384–403. . The World and All the Things upon It: Native Hawaiian Geographies of Exploration. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016. Chapin, Helen G. Shaping History: The Role of Newspapers in Hawaiʻi. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1996. Chappell, David. Double Ghosts: Oceanian Voyagers on Euroamerican Ships. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. . “Shipboard Relations between Pacific Island Women and Euroamerican Men, 1767–1887.” Journal of Pacific History 27, no. 2 (1992): 131–49. Char, Tin-Yuke. The Sandalwood Mountains: Readings and Stories of the Early Chinese in Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1975.

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Char, Wai-Jane. “Three Chinese Stores in Early Honolulu.” Hawaiian Journal of History 8 (1974): 11–38. Clifford, James. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Conrad, Agnes C. “Hawaiian Registered Vessels.” Hawaiian Journal of History 3 (1969): 31–41. Cook, Kealani R. “Kahiki: Native Hawaiian Relationships with Other Pacific Islanders, 1850–1915.” Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2011. Cottrell, Christopher. “Splinters of Sandalwood, Islands of ʻIliahi: Rethinking Deforestation in Hawaiʻi, 1811–1843.” M.A. thesis, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2002. Couper, Alastair. Sailors and Traders: A Maritime History of the Pacific Peoples. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2009. Cowling, Mark. “Marx’s Lumpenproletariat and Murray’s Underclass: Concepts Best Abandoned?” In Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire: (Post)modern Interpretations, edited by Mark Cowling and James Martin, 228–42. Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2002. Creighton, Margaret. Rites and Passages: The Experience of American Whaling, 1830–1870. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England [1983]. New York: Hill and Wang, 2003. . Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991. Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Cumings, Bruce. Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Curtin, Philip D. Death by Migration: Europe’s Encounter with the Tropical World in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Cushing, Robert L. “The Beginnings of Sugar Production in Hawaiʻi.” Hawaiian Journal of History 19 (1985): 17–34. Cushman, Gregory T. Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. D’Arcy, Paul. The People of the Sea: Environment, Identity, and History in Oceania. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2006. Daniels, Christian, and Nicholas K. Menzies. Biology and Biological Technology, vol. 6, no. 3, Joseph Needham, gen. ed., Science and Civilisation in China. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Daranciang, Nelson. “Inmate Sues State over Prison Policy Banning Letters Written in Hawaiian.” Honolulu Star-Advertiser, June 3, 2016. Davis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. New York: Verso, 2001. Daws, Gavan. “The High Chief Boki: A Biographical Study in Early Nineteenth Century Hawaiian History.” Journal of the Polynesian Society 75, no. 1 (1966): 65–83.

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. “Re-membering Panalāʻau: Masculinities, Nation, and Empire in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific.” The Contemporary Pacific 20 (2008): 27–53. Th igpen, Jennifer. Island Queens and Mission Wives: How Gender and Empire Remade Hawaiʻi’s Pacific World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. Thomas, Nicholas. Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. . Islanders: The Pacific in the Age of Empire. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. . Oceanic Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 1995. Thompson, E. P. “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism.” Past and Present 38, no. 1 (1967): 56–97. Trask, Haunani-Kay. From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaiʻi. Rev. ed. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1999. . “Natives and Anthropologists: The Colonial Struggle.” The Contemporary Pacific 3, no. 1 (1991): 159–67. Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. Tsu, Cecilia M. Garden of the World: Asian Immigrants and the Making of Agriculture in California’s Santa Clara Valley. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Tyrrell, Ian. True Gardens of the Gods: Californian-Australian Environmental Reform, 1860–1930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Baker Island National Wildlife Refuge Comprehensive Conservation Plan. Honolulu: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2008. . Jarvis Island National Wildlife Refuge Comprehensive Conservation Plan. Honolulu: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2008. . Howland Island National Wildlife Refuge Comprehensive Conservation Plan. Honolulu: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2008. Van Dyke, Paul. The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700– 1845. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005. Wadewitz, Lissa K. The Nature of Borders: Salmon, Boundaries, and Bandits on the Salish Sea. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012. Wakeman, Frederic, Jr. Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorder in South China, 1839–1861. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Walker, Isaiah Helekunihi. Waves of Resistance: Surfing and History in TwentiethCentury Hawaiʻi. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2011. Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Capitalist World-Economy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Ward, R. Gerard, ed. American Activities in the Central Pacific, 1790–1870, 8 vols. Ridgewood, NJ: Gregg Press, 1966–67. Wentworth, Chester K. “Geology of the Pacific Equatorial Islands.” Bishop Museum Occasional Papers 9, no. 15 (1931): 3–25.

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I n de x

April brigantine, 70 Arctic bark, 100 Arctic whaling work. See whaling work in Arctic Aukaki (Arctic), songs about, 82

Acushnet ship, 52 Adeline ship, 60–61, 62fig., 84–85 agriculture: development in California, 160; Hawaiians in California, 140, 141, 159, 161–64; and sandalwood, 32; of sugarcane, 167–68; transformation by Euro-American capitalists, 169–70; for visiting ships in Hawaiʻi, 72–74 ahupuaʻa, 18, 32, 46 ʻāina, 9, 10, 74, 80. See also land Alaska, 98–99. See also Inupiat Āliapaʻakai (Salt Lake), 20–21 aliʻi: body, 3; consolidation on Oʻahu, 32; debt to American creditors, 16–17, 34–36, 41; in economy, 18; harvest of sandalwood, 32; and labor for sandalwood, 32, 34; predicament with sandalwood, 16–17, 36, 47; sandalwood as exchange-value, 27–29, 30 aloha me ka waimaka (aloha with tears), for California workers, 132–33 Alta California, 136–38, 138fig., 139, 142 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), 87 American Civil War, 103–4, 107–8 American Guano Company, 117, 118 American River, gold mining, 147 Ames, James, 36, 39, 65 amphibious body of Hawaiians, 3–4, 137, 139, 147, 173, 205 Andrews, Thomas, 106 animals, and capitalism in Hawaiʻi, 10 Anton, David, 157

Baker Island, 107, 114–15, 123, 126, 128; J.M. Kailiopio on, 105, 115, 126, 127 baleen of whales, 52, 55 Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 144 Banner, Stuart, 43 Beckwith, George: cattle on Haiku company land, 182; control of land and workers, 176–83, 196–97; desertions by workers, 179–80; employment of coolies, 192–93; feeding of workers, 180–82, 192, 193–97; importation of coolies, 183; as manager, 176; pilikia on plantation, 166, 196–97; treatment of coolies, 193–94. See also Haiku Sugar Company plantation Bill (migrant), 155 birds. See seabirds blubber, 51–52, 88, 92 boatsteering, as whaling job, 90–91 Boelen, Jacobus, 36, 65–66 Boki: debt to American creditors, 16–17, 35; Eromanga trip, 16; home and possessions, 16, 23; predicament with sandalwood, 13, 16–17, 36, 47; sugar plantation, 168; trading of sandalwood, 23 bowhead whales, 55 Brechin, Gray, 154

295

Brinley, Edward Jr., 155 Britain. See Great Britain Brower, Charles, 101, 102 Buddhism, and sandalwood, 25 Bull, John, 48, 81 Bullard, Charles, 29, 31 California, viiimap; agricultural development, 160; agriculture and farm life of Hawaiians, 140, 141, 159, 161–64; behavior and criminality of Hawaiians, 156; cattle hides and tallow trade, 136–39, 138fig.; census with Hawaiians, 142, 142fig., 146–47, 150–51, 159–60, 164; Channel Islands work, 139–40; citizenship in U.S. of Hawaiians, 162–64; city life, 153–59; coastal work, 133–45; contracts of workers, 144; deaths of Hawaiians, 150, 155–56; early connections with Hawaiʻi, 134; fishing by Hawaiians, 161, 162; food, 151, 152; Foreign Miners Tax, 147; Gold Rush (See Gold Rush in California); health and sickness of Hawaiians, 152–53, 155; homelessness and destitution of Hawaiians, 156–58; internal migration by Hawaiians, 146, 160; landowners from Hawaiʻi, 144–45; letters about Hawaiians in newspapers, 149, 150, 158–59; letters from workers to newspapers, 132–33, 150; Native Americans and Hawaiians, 151; “New Helvetia” colony, 140–41, 141fig.; opium growing, 162; racial status of Hawaiians, 164; San Diego beach residents and workers, 134–36, 135fig., 139; San Francisco population and workers (See San Francisco); Spanish missions interaction, 140; tax system, 161; wages of workers, 140; women from Hawaiʻi, 150–51, 160; workers’ experiences in general, 133–34, 151–53, 160, 164–65. See also specific locations in California Campbell, Archibald, 53 canaca. See kanakas Canada, sovereignty, 43 “Canaka Boy” (worker), 144 cane. See sugarcane industry capitalism: in agricultural transformation,

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169–70; changes in 18–19th centuries, 21–22; influence in Hawaiʻi, 9–11, 34, 47, 203, 204–7; and land in Hawaiʻi, 9, 161; and makaʻāinana, 80, 169; overview, 1–2, 47; and Pacific World, 8–9, 167; and sandalwood, 16–17, 23, 30, 34; and sugar industry, 166–67, 195, 200–201 Captain Johnney and Johney Wina, 143 Castle & Cooke firm, 176 Catherine bark, 66 cattle: at Haʻikū, 181, 182; hides and tallow trade in California, 136–39, 138fig. cetaceans. See whales Chang, David, 7, 8 Channel Islands (CA) work, 139–40 Chappell, David, 67, 68 chiefs. See aliʻi China: free trade, 41; opium trade and war, 38–39, 40, 41; sandalwood trade and imports, 26–27, 27fig., 38, 39; sandalwood use, 25–26; workers for abroad, 171. See also Qing Empire “Chinese disease.” See maʻi Pākē Chinese people: early sugar industry in Hawaiʻi, 167–69; intermarriage with Hawaiians, 187–88; merchants vs. coolies, 190; population in Hawaiʻi, 198; unskilled workers in sugar industry (See coolies) Chisholm, William, 116, 121–22, 124–25, 126–27 Christian, Fletcher, 61 Christians in Hawaiʻi, on prostitution, 87 citizenship of Hawaiians in United States, 162–64 Clark, A. Howard, 56, 58map class: emergence of working class, 45, 47, 198, 204; impact in Hawaiʻi, 3, 41–42, 207; and sugar industry, 166, 172, 173– 74, 186, 201 cognate race in Hawaiʻi, 188, 191 cold in Arctic, 98, 102–3 colonialism, 5, 206–7 commoners. See makaʻāinana constitution of 1840, 41–42 contract labor, 45, 148 contracts of workers: in California, 144; English language in, 117–18, 178, 210; for

i n de x

fence at Haʻikū, 177–78; guano industry and mining, 117–18, 119, 127, 209–10; Hawaiian language in, 117–18, 177–78, 210; in whaling industry, 61, 66, 68 convict labor, 18, 42 Cook, James, and ships, 17 coolies: admixture of races, 187–88, 189, 190–91; behavior and appearance, 174–75; employment, 192–93; feeding and diet, 175–76, 192, 193–95; first arrivals and start in Hawaiʻi, 167, 169, 172; “fitness” as workers, 171, 172–73, 174; impact of free trade, 197; importation, 183, 187, 188–89, 191, 197, 198, 201; and maʻi Pākē, 183, 184–85, 186, 187; population in Hawaiʻi, 198; relationship with Hawaiian workers, 172–73; replacement and displacement of kanakas, 166–67, 170, 171–73, 174, 176, 198–200; science of Chinese bodies, 183–84, 189; suicides, 172, 196; use of law, 196; views of in newspapers, 174, 175, 190 Coral bark, 70 Corinthian ship, 93–94 Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), 203 corsets, and baleen, 52, 55 corvée labor of makaʻāinana, 18 Creighton, Margaret, 66, 96–97 cultural labor in Hawaiʻi, 206 D.C. Waterman and Company, 107, 108, 116, 117, 127 Daily Alta California, 155, 156, 157, 162 Dana, Richard Henry Jr., 102, 134–36, 137, 139 Davis, Tom, 136 deaths in whaling, 94 Delaware ship, 94 desertions by workers, 61–62, 64, 179–80 Desmond ship, 82, 97–98 diaspora of Hawaiians, 203, 204, 205 Dimmick, K.H., 142–43, 146 disease and diseased body: in California, 152–53, 155; epidemics in Hawaiʻi, 3, 44; in guano industry, 126–27; of Hawaiians, 3–4; maʻi Pākē, 183–87; in sugar

i n de x

industry, 193; in whaling in Arctic, 93–94 Dole, George, 39–40, 108–9 Dolphin ship, 34–35 Duhaut-Cilly, Auguste, 16 economy in Hawaiʻi: changes in 18–19th centuries, 21–23, 41–42, 47; description, 18; economic crisis of 1820s, 34–36; and free trade, 9, 41–43, 197; global influences, 40–41, 49; salt trade, 20; and sea otter fur trade, 17, 18–19, 20 Edwards, Thomas, 144 El Dorado County (CA), 148–50 Ellis, William, 31–32 Eloy (AZ), 203 emigration by Hawaiians: for Gold Rush, 145, 146–48, 151–52; legislation, 147–48; overview, 77, 203; for work (See labor in the Pacific) English language, in work contracts, 117– 18, 178, 210 environment in Hawaiʻi, impact of capitalism, 10 Erben, Henry, 102–3 Eromanga (Vanuatu), 16 extinction of Hawaiians discourse, 170, 187–88 farming. See agriculture farm life in California, 159, 161–64 fishing by workers, 123–24, 161, 162 Fitch, Henry Delano, 139 Forester ship, 28 fragrance in Hawaiʻi, 24 free labor, 41–42, 45 free trade, 9, 41–43, 197 French, William, 33, 168 Frick, Dr., 151–52 The Friend newspaper, 83, 161, 190–91 frigatebirds, 111, 112fig., 114, 128 fur trade. See sea otter fur trade Glidden & Williams firm, 107, 116–17 globalization, 8–9 glossary of Hawaiian terms, 267–70 Gold Rush in California: diving for gold, 147; emigration from Hawaiʻi, 145,

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Gold Rush in California (continued) 146–48, 151–52; image of Hawaiian miners, 147, 148fig.; impact on sugar industry in Hawaiʻi, 169; internal migration by Hawaiians, 146, 160; and land dispossession, 144–45; miners and mining camps, 147, 148–51, 160; mining work and technology, 147, 149–50; missionary presence, 149; wage work, 150, 152; warnings about, 146; working conditions, 151–53 Gray, Sluman L., 48, 81 Great Britain: free trade and rights in China, 41; free trade in Hawaiʻi, 42–43; opium trade, 38, 40, 41; sandalwood trade, 26–27, 27fig.; tea trade, 19 Grossbeck, Lucretia, 153 Guangzhou (Canton), 17, 25, 27fig., 38 guano: creation, 114, 115; as fertilizer, 106–7 guano industry and mining: after-work activities, 123–24; bodies in, 106, 125–26, 130–31; contracts of workers, 117–18, 119, 127, 209–10; deaths in, 127; decline, 107–8; disease and sickness, 126–27; extraction and topography, 121; food and water for workers, 124–25; Hawaiian labor, 107, 108–9, 115–23, 126–27; housing for workers, 120; importance to Hawaiʻi, 108–9; island environment and climate, 123; journey from Hawaiʻi to guano islands, 118; labor of people and seabirds, 105–6, 115; luna, 119, 120–21, 123–24, 126; output by workers, 121–22; recruitment of workers, 116–17; riot of 1865, 126; seabirds in (See seabirds); strength and masculinity, 125–26; wages and cash advances, 119–20, 121fig.; women in, 120; workers’ experiences, 105, 115, 119, 126, 127, 130; work schedules and tasks, 120–21 guano islands: birds on, 111–15, 127–130; humans and domesticated animals, 127–29; as land, 114–15; as workscape, 106 Guano Islands Act (1856), 107 Hae Hawaii ship, 98–99 Haiku Sugar Company plantation (Haʻikū, Maui): cattle, 181, 182; contract, 177–78;

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control of land and workers, 176–83; desertions by Hawaiian workers, 179– 80; employment at, 192–93; fence, 177–78; food for workers, 175–76, 179–82, 192, 193–97; Hawaiians living on land of plantation, 176, 177; importation of coolies, 183; land boundaries and ownership, 176–79; and maʻi Pākē, 183, 184; negotiations with Hawaiians, 178; pilikia on plantation, 166, 196–97; poi and taro, 181–82; replacement and displacement of kanakas, 166–67, 170, 171–73, 174, 176, 198–200; sickness in workers, 193; violence problem, 196. See also Beckwith, George Halaulani, J.A.K., 87 Ham, Joe, 143, 144 Hammatt, Charles, 72 Hannibal ship, 48, 81 Hansen’s disease. See maʻi Pākē harpooning, as whaling job, 91–92 Harrison ship, 94 Haskins, Charles Warren, 147 Hauʻofa, Epeli, 4 Hawaiʻi (Kingdom), viimap; admixture of races, 187–88, 189, 190–91; Board to Land Laborers / Board of Immigration, 188–89; centrality as whaling port, 60–61; constitution of 1840, 41–42; consul in San Francisco, 155, 157–58; diminishment of nation, 151–53; emigration legislation, 147–48; extinction of Hawaiians discourse, 170, 187–88; as feminine country, 5; importation of coolies, 187, 188–89, 191, 197, 198, 201; legislation for workers, 35, 42, 71, 78; as midway stop in Pacific, 17, 19, 22–23; movement of workers in 19th century, 204–5; overthrow, 206; population, 78–79, 79fig., 145–46, 197, 198; private property, 43–45; rural-to-urban migration, 78–79, 79fig., 86; science of Chinese bodies, 183–84, 189; sovereignty, 42–43; Treaty of Reciprocity (1875), 197; visits and return by migrant laborers, 150, 157; whaling in, 88

i n de x

Hawaiʻi (State): Native Hawaiians in, 204; prison system, 203–4; workers in 20th– 21st centuries, 204, 206–7 Hawaiian language. See language (Hawaiian) Hawaiian workers. See kanakas Hawaii (worker), 149 Heanu (worker), 126 heartwood of sandalwood trees, 24 hide and tallow trade in California, 136–39, 138fig. Hill, Samuel, 27–28, 34 Hillebrand, William, 188, 189–90 Hilo, as whaling port, 87 Hina, Jack, and Mary, 145 Hiram (worker), 180 Hitchcock, Charles, 157–58 Hoikeike (resident of Lāhainā), 184–85 Hollingsworth, Robert J., 171–72 Honokaa Sugar Company (Honokaʻa, Hawaiʻi), 200 Honolulu, as whaling port, 50, 65–66, 75, 77–78, 79, 84–86 hoʻokupu, in economy, 18 Hooper, William, 168, 169 Hope (worker), 136 Howland Island, 105, 107, 114, 124 Hungtai Company, 167 Hunnewell, James, 23, 28–29, 30, 33, 38 ice in Arctic, 99–100 identity. See race and identity Igler, David, 134 illumination, products for, 51, 53 Imada, Adria, 5 immigration: arrivals in Hawaiʻi, 198, 199fig.; Board to Land Laborers / Board of Immigration, 188–89; in United States, 188. See also emigration by Hawaiians incense of sandalwood, 25–26 Indians (of California) and Hawaiians, 151 Inupiat (of Alaska), 98, 100, 101–2 Irish Creek (CA), 148–50 Iselin, Isaac, 22 Isenberg, Andrew, 160 Ishmael of Moby-Dick, 51, 66–67, 69, 91, 92–93, 96, 97

i n de x

Italy whaling ship: crew and recruitment, 59, 62–65; lay and wages, 69–71; seasonality, 61, 62fig. Japan, 50 Jarvis Island, 107, 108, 114–15, 120–21, 128, 129 John Little ship, 68 Jones, John C., 19–20, 61–62 Jones, Thomas ap Catesby, 35 Josephine ship, 118 Judd, Albert, 123–24 Judd, G.P., 105, 117, 118 Ka Elele Hawaii newspaper, 145, 146 Kaelemakule, J.A., 91, 167 Ka Hae Hawaii newspaper: guano, 120, 123; letters about Hawaiians in California, 149, 150, 158–59; letters from California to Hawaiian families, 132–33, 150; on maʻi Pākē, 184–85; as source, 11; view of coolies, 175, 190; on whaling, 73, 88, 104; working conditions of Gold Rush miners, 151–52 Ka Hoku o Ka Pakipika newspaper, 185 Kailiopio, J.M.: birds on guano islands, 129; as employee of guano industry, 105–6; experience of guano labor, 105, 115, 119, 126, 127, 130; on food and material goods, 124 Ka Lahui Hawaii newspaper, 85, 100 Kalākaua, David, 187–89 Kalanipoo, J.M., 88 Kalaupapa peninsula leper colony, 186–87 Kaleikuahulu (worker), 180 kalo and paʻi ʻai, for Haʻikū workers, 175– 76, 181, 194–95 Kaluahine, G.W., 123 Kamae, B.E., 132–33 Kamakau, Samuel Manaiakalani, 24 Kamehameha I: economic and political role, 21–22, 30; sandalwood trade, 28, 29–30, 36; on sandalwood workers and wages, 34 Kamehameha II (Liholiho), and sandalwood, 28, 30, 36 Kamehameha III. See Kauikeaouli (Kamehameha III)

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Kamehameha IV (Alexander Liholiho), 189; as prince, 154, 172, 174 Kamehameha V (Lot), 190–91 Kameʻeleihiwa, Lilikalā, 18, 34, 45–46 Kamipele, T.B., 152–53, 160 kanaka / kānaka, definition and use of term, 2, 211n4 kanakas (Hawaiian workers): body and stereotypes, 3–4; coolies and kanakas, 166–67, 170, 171–73, 174, 176, 198–200; definition, 2, 268; history in newspapers, 11; labor in Hawaiʻi (See labor in Hawaiʻi); migrant labor in Pacific (See labor in the Pacific); proletarianization, 10–11, 47; as slur, 126; term use in book, 2–3, 211–12n4; wage work (See wage work and wage workers); words and writings, 7, 8, 11; work’s meaning for, 4. See also specific topics Ka Nupepa Kuokoa newspaper: on guano, 105, 127; Hawaiian landowners in California, 144; life in Vernon, 161; on maʻi Pākē, 185–86; as source, 11; on whaling, 84–85, 98–100 Kaonowai, J.H., 185–86 kapa, and perfume, 24 Kapihe, E.M., 177 Kapu, John, 159, 160–61, 162 Kapu, Manneha, 159 kauā, 188–89 Kauikeaouli (Kamehameha III): demographic decline in Hawaiʻi, 146; emigration legislation, 148; free trade and free labor, 40–42; land for sugar industry, 168; private property conversion, 44; sandalwood harvesting, 39; sovereignty of Hawaiʻi, 43 Kaulainamoku, S.W.B., 119, 120, 121, 122, 125–26 Kawaihae beef production, 181 Kealoha, Charles Edward: bodily experience of North, 82, 97–98, 103, 104; knowledge and songs of Arctic, 82, 98; life with Inupiat, 98, 100, 103 Ke Au Okoa newspaper, 186, 188 Ke Koo o Hawaii newspaper, 90 Kemaha (seaman), 90–91 Kenela (of Tahiti), 98, 100

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Kinokolo / Kimokolo (worker), 144 kō. See sugarcane industry koaʻe. See tropicbird konohiki, 161 Kuhaloa, J., 123, 129 Kuhelemai, J.W., 88 Kuina (worker), 173 kukui, 53 Kuleana Act (1850), 45, 46, 178 kuleana of author, 12–13 labor in Hawaiʻi: changes of 1840s, 41–42; foreign influence, 18–19, 47; legislation, 35, 42, 71, 78; and Pacific World, 167; in sandalwood trade, 30, 32–34, 35–36; in sugar industry (See sugarcane industry); traditional practices, 18. See also kanakas; labor in the Pacific; makaʻāinana labor in the Pacific: amphibious work, 3–4, 137, 139, 147, 173, 205; in California (See California); guano work (See guano industry and mining); overview, 1–2, 4; and Pacific World, 6, 7–9, 204–5; visits and return to Hawaiʻi, 150, 157; in whaling industry (See whaling industry and workers; whaling work in Arctic). See also kanakas; labor in Hawaiʻi Ladd & Company, 168–69 Lāhainā, as whaling port, 62–63, 64, 72, 73, 84 land: ahupuaʻa, 18, 32, 46; and capitalism, 9, 161; as commodity, 45; at Haʻikū, 176– 79; legislation, 45; for sugar industry, 168. See also ʻāina land claims by Hawaiians in California, 145 land reforms, 9, 45, 205. See also Māhele land tenure and title system, 41, 43–46 language (Hawaiian): in contracts, 117–18, 177–78, 210; glossary of Hawaiian terms, 267–70; materials for Gold Rush miners, 149; in newspapers, 11; terms from Hawaiʻi in Arctic, 100; translations in book, 11–12 lay in whaling, 68–70, 69fig. laziness of Hawaiians discourse, 3–4

i n de x

Lee, William Little, 44, 47, 146 Leidesdorff, William A., 143–44 leper colony on Molokaʻi, 186–87 leprosy. See maʻi Pākē letters to the editor (in newspapers): about Hawaiians in California, 149, 150, 158–59; on “coolie” problem, 174; for families from workers in California, 132–33, 150; as source, 11 Lewis, Isaiah, 23, 28 Lewis, Johnny, 144 Light, Allen (aka Black Steward), 139 Liholiho, Alexander (Kamehameha IV), 154, 172, 174; as mōʻī, 189 Liholiho (Kamehameha II), and sandalwood, 28, 30, 36 Lihue Plantation Company (Līhuʻe, Kauaʻi), 199–200 Lin Zexu, 41 lookouts, as whaling job, 90–91 Lot (Kamehameha V), 190–91 Macartney, Lord, 38 Māhele: description, 13; impact on workers, 205, 206; Ka Māhele (The Division), 43–46; legislation, 45; and sugar industry, 176, 177, 206; and whaling industry and workers, 80 maʻi Pākē (“Chinese disease”), 183–87 makaʻāinana: agriculture for visiting ships, 72–74; and capitalism, 80, 169; and constitution of 1840, 41–42; corvée labor, 18; private property and land title, 43–46; in production, 18; as proletariat and wage workers, 45, 46, 47, 78, 79–81; rural-to-urban migration, 80, 86; in salt production, 21; sandalwood harvest and labor, 31–32, 33–34, 35–36 Make (whale worker), 13, 48, 81 mālama ʻāina, as process, 18 mana, and sandalwood, 23, 27–28 Mannini, Mr. (worker), 135 Manuiki (or Manaiki, Manniki) (worker), 140–41 Mapuowai, Abel, 162 maritime work, fitness for, 3–4, 137, 139, 147, 173, 205 Marx, Karl, 177

i n de x

masculinity and manliness of Hawaiians, 89–90, 103, 125–26, 173–74 Masters and Servants Act (1850), 45, 147–48 Maury, Matthew Fontaine, 56, 57map mele, of Arctic whaling, 82, 90 Melville, Herman, 52–53, 66–67, 89, 95, 96 men, in colonial view, 5 Merry, Sally Engle, 42, 86 Mexico, 43, 134, 136, 142 migrant labor of kanakas. See labor in the Pacific missionaries and mission schools, 87 modes and relations of production, 10, 18, 21, 41 morality in Hawaiʻi, 87 Morgan, Theodore, 103–4 Nahoa, Henry: in California, 145, 148–49, 153, 163, 164–65; citizenship in U.S., 162, 164; letter for family to newspaper, 14, 132; in Sacramento, 153–54, 158–59; in Vernon, 159, 162 nationalism in Hawaiʻi, 6–7 Native Americans and Hawaiians, 151 Nāwahī, Joseph, 206 New England, in whaling industry, 51, 60, 64, 74 “New Helvetia” colony, 140–41, 141fig. New London (CT), in whaling industry, 74–75, 75fig. newspapers: arrival in Hawaiʻi, 11; guano information in, 108; and Pacific World, 8; views of coolies, 174, 175, 190. See also letters to the editor; specific newspapers Nidever, George, 140 The North, whaling in. See whaling work in Arctic “Nueku” bird, 129 Oahu, Harry, 143–44 Oʻahu, 32, 78–79, 79fig. oceans: and history of the world, 53–54; and seabirds, 109–10; and whales, 54–59, 57fig., 58fig. oil from whales, 51–52, 88, 92 opium trade and war, 38–39, 40, 41 Opunui, Iosepa, 133, 150 Oriole bark, 91

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Pacific World, vimap; capitalism and globalization, 8–9, 167; description and use in book, 5–7; and guano industry, 106; and Hawaiian labor, 6, 7–9, 167, 204–5; and sovereignty, 43; and whaling industry, 50–51 paʻi ʻai and kalo, for Haʻikū workers, 175– 76, 181, 194–95 palapala, 11, 149 Paulet, George, 42–43 Peacock ship, 35 Pearl River Delta (China), 26 Pearl ship, 19 penal labor, 18, 42 Penhallow, P.W., 108, 117, 124–25 Percival, John, 34–35 perfume of sandalwood, 24 Peru, guano in, 106–7 Phoenix Islands Guano Company, 118, 120 Pickering, Charles, 21, 84 Pilgrim brig, 139 plantations. See sugarcane industry Polapola, J., 97, 101–2, 103 The Polynesian newspaper, 77, 145–46 pono: and coolies, 174–75, 184–85, 186; description and in economy, 18; in guano industry, 106, 124, 125, 126, 127; and land, 18, 45; and sandalwood industry, 34, 42; and work in California, 151 private property, 43–45 production, modes and relations, 10, 18, 21, 41 proletariat and proletarianization: and fences at Haʻikū, 177–78; and makaʻāinana, 45, 46, 47, 78, 79–81; proletarianization of workers, 10–11, 47; whaling industry and workers, 75–81. See also wage work and wage workers prostitution, 86–88 Qing Empire: coolies in sugar industry, 171, 175; opium trade and war, 39, 41; sea otter furs and tea trade, 17, 18–19, 38 Queequeg of Moby-Dick, 67, 69, 89, 97 race and identity: admixture of races, 187–88, 189, 190–91; cognate race in

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Hawaiʻi, 188, 191; in Pacific World, 8; in whaling industry, 64, 68, 89–90, 95–97 rats and seabirds, 114, 127–28 red-tailed tropicbird. See tropicbird religion, and sandalwood incense, 25–26 Reynolds, Stephen, 33, 35, 36; workers in sugar industry, 172, 173, 174 rice, for Haʻikū workers, 175–76, 192, 193–95 Richard, Charles Bernhard, 40 right whales, 55 riparian rights in California, 161 Roth estate in California, 159 Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society (RHAS): admixture of races, 189; creation, 169; “fitness” and “unfitness” of workers, 172–73; logo, 170, 171fig. Russel, John, 143, 144 Russian Empire, sea otter furs and tea trade, 19 Sacramento (CA): Hawaiians workers, 140; life of Hawaiians, 155, 156, 158–59; H. Nahoa in, 153–54 Sacramento Daily Union, 156, 158, 162 Sacramento River, 161, 162 Sacramento Transcript, 155 Sahlins, Marshall, 32, 75, 79–80 Salesa, Damon, 6 salt and salt trade, 18, 20–21, 22 Salt Lake (Āliapaʻakai), 20–21 Samsing & Company, 167–68 sandalwood and sandalwood trees: author’s quest, 12; and capitalism on Hawaiʻi, 16–17, 23, 30, 34; in China, 25–27, 27fig., 38, 39; collapse of industry, 36–38, 39–40; compensation and wages, 32, 33–34; debt to American creditors, 16–17, 34–36, 41; description and habitat, 23–24; economic crisis of 1820s, 34–36; Eromanga trip by Boki, 16; exchange rates, 28, 29fig.; as exchangevalue, 27–29, 30; famines of laborers, 32; fragrance and incense, 24–26; harvesting and cutting, 30–36, 40; Hawaiian workers, 30, 32–34, 35–36; imports and exports, 36–38, 37fig.; predicament in, 13, 16–17, 36, 47; quality, 33; for ships,

i n de x

28–29; as source of riches, 16; storage and loading, 32–33; taxation, 35–36; trade, 23, 26–27, 27fig., 28–30, 33, 36–37, 37fig., 38, 39; wage work and workers, 33–34, 47 San Diego, Spanish missions, 140 San Diego beach, workers from Hawaiʻi, 134–36, 135fig., 139 San Francisco (Yerba Buena): behavior of Hawaiians, 156; city life, 154–58; deaths and health in, 155–56; description of Hawaiians, 142–43; early days, 154; Hawaiian landowners, 144–45; labor experiences of Hawaiians, 142–44; population of Hawaiians, 142, 142fig., 147 Savidge, Samuel, letters from G. Beckwith, 180, 183, 192, 193, 194, 196 Schmitt, Robert, 197 seabirds: behavior and habits, 110–14; bodies in guano industry and mining, 106, 130–31; co-evolution with guano islands, 130; communication and noise, 111–14; demography in Pacific Ocean, 113fig.; feces and guano, 114–15; feeding grounds and food, 109–10, 125; interactions with and impact of humans, 128–29, 130; knowledge of from Hawaiʻi, 129; predation on, 111, 114, 127–28. See also tropicbird sea otter fur trade and work, 17, 18–20, 139–40 ships, exchanged for sandalwood, 28–29 sickness. See disease and diseased body Silva, Noenoe K., 8 “slop” in whaling, 68–69 Smith, Lowell, 148–50 sooty terns (sooties), 111 sources used in book, 11–12 sovereignty of Hawaiʻi, 42–43 Spanish missions, 140 sperm whales, 54–55 stevedores for sandalwood, 33 Stewart, Charles, 20–21, 32, 65 strength of Hawaiian workers, 3, 125–26 sugarcane industry: and capitalism, 166–67, 195, 200–201; and class, 166, 172, 173– 74, 186, 201; contracts in industry, 178;

i n de x

“coolie problem” in newspapers, 174; demographics of workforce, 198–200; desertions by Hawaiian workers, 179– 80; early industry in Hawaiʻi, 167–69; Euro-Americans in, 168–70; exports from Hawaiʻi, 197, 198fig.; feeding of workers, 175–76; free trade’s impact, 197; gender relationships, 174; Gold Rush impact, 169; Haiku plantation (See Haiku Sugar Company plantation); Hawaiian workers, 168, 169, 170, 171–73, 174, 198–200, 201; immigrant workers (non-Chinese), 198, 199–200; importation of coolies, 187, 188–89, 191, 197, 198, 201; leased land for, 168; Māhele and land, 168, 176, 177, 206; and maʻi Pākē, 185; models of operation, 168; relationships among coolies and kanakas, 172–73; replacement and displacement of kanakas, 166–67, 170, 171–73, 174, 176, 198–200; skilled Chinese workers, 167–68, 169; tariffs, 197; technology, 169, 170; total labor in 1872, 197–98; transformation, 169–70; “unfitness” of kanakas for work, 170, 171–72, 174; unskilled Chinese workers (See coolies); wages of workers, 168, 173 Suter, John, 19 Sutter, Johann (John), 140–41 Sutter County (CA), Hawaiians in, 146– 47, 159, 162 Sutter’s fort, 141, 141fig. tattoos, 95, 97 tea trade, 19 Tengan, Ty P. Kāwika, 4, 5 trade in 18–19th centuries: Hawaiʻi as port of call, 17, 19, 22–23; monopolization by Kamehameha, 22; sandalwood, 23, 26–27, 27fig., 28–30, 33, 36–37, 37fig., 38, 39; triangular nature, 20 translations in book, 11–12 transnational view of Pacific, 7 transpacific, as concept, 6 Treaty of Nanjing (1842), 41 Treaty of Reciprocity (1875), 197 Treaty of Wangxia (1844), 41 tropicality, and Hawaiian bodies, 102–3

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tropicbird (koaʻe), 105–6, 109, 110fig., 111, 129. See also seabirds try-works on whaling ships, 92 Turnbull, John, 20 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 160 United States: citizenship by Hawaiians, 162–64; control of Pacific World, 43; debt of Hawaiians to creditors, 16–17, 34–36, 41; deserters from ships, 61–62; free trade and rights in China, 41; guano extraction, 106–7; immigration, 188; migration by Hawaiians within, 146, 160; Native Hawaiians in 21st century, 204; sandalwood trade, 27, 27fig., 38; tariffs on sugar, 197; tea trade, 19; whale oil and products, 51–52 United States Guano Company, 116, 118, 209 upwelling in ocean, 109–10 U.S. Civil War, 103–4, 107–8 USS Dolphin, 34–35 USS Peacock, 35 Vernon (CA), Hawaiians in, 159, 160–62, 163fig. wage work and wage workers: contracts (See contracts of workers); development in Hawaiʻi, 10–11, 47, 80; in Gold Rush, 150, 152; and makaʻāinana, 45, 46, 47, 78, 79–81; and sandalwood, 33–34, 47; in whaling industry, 78. See also proletariat and proletarianization Wahaulaula, S., 133 waisters, as whaling job, 89–90 Waldo, Giles, 75–76 Walker, Isaiah Helekunihi, 5 warships to Hawaiʻi (from U.S.), 34–35 “watch-jumping,” 84–85 Wellington ship, 72 whalebone, 52, 55 whales: bodies, 51, 83, 88–89, 91–92; species and behavior, 54–55; stripping and processing work, 91–93; teeth, 27–28, 53; whale grounds, 50, 54–55, 56, 58map, 59, 83; whale maps and movements, 56–59, 57–58map

304

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whaling for oil, decline, 103–4 whaling industry and workers: agriculture for visiting ships, 72–74; in Arctic (See whaling work in Arctic); beatings of workers, 48, 68; compensation and wages, 68–72, 69fig.; contracts of workers, 61, 66, 68; crew composition and race, 64, 68; desertions by workers, 61–62, 64; and globalization, 72–75; Hawaiʻi’s centrality in, 60–61; and Hawaiian labor, 50, 66–67; Hawaiians living and staying abroad, 74–75, 75fig., 76, 78–79; impact on Hawaiʻi, 78; legislation in Hawaiʻi, 71, 78; length of service, 65–66; mutinies, 68; numbers of Hawaiians employed, 77–78; on-and-offships movement by workers, 59–67; in the Pacific, 50–51; and proletariat, 75–81; purchases and clothing onboard, 70–71; recruitment of workers, 59–60, 62–63, 63fig., 64–66; seasonality of hunt, 60–61, 62fig., 63fig.; ship arrivals in Hawaiʻi, 75–76, 76fig.; social and environmental change, 72–75, 78; social conditions and foreignness, 67–68; whale grounds, 50, 54–55, 56, 58map, 59; whale maps and movements, 56–59, 57–58map; whales as commodity, 51–53; work environment, 54; workers’ experiences, 48–49 whaling work in Arctic: in Alaska, 98–99; blubber, 88, 92; bodily experience of Arctic work, 82–83, 89–92, 94–95, 97–98, 102–3, 104; cold, wind and ice, 98–100; decline of whales and whaling, 104; Hawaiian-owned ships, 83–84; knowledge and songs of Arctic by workers, 82, 84, 90; lost and wrecked ships, 97–99; prostitution for whalemen, 86–88; race and identity of workers, 89–90, 95–97; returning whalemen, 83–85; sickness and deaths, 93–94; social and labor changes, 88; stripping and processing work, 91–93; terms from Hawaiʻi in Arctic, 100; violence against native Alaskans, 101–2; whaling grounds, 83; whaling in Hawaiian waters, 88; workers from Hawaiʻi, 83–85, 104; work performed, 89–92

i n de x

white men, racial and bodily changes, 95–96 William H. Allen ship, 97, 98, 100–102 William Penn ship, 68 wind in Arctic, 98–99 women: in guano industry and mining, 120; labor history role, 4–5; as leaders, 5; penal labor, 42; prostitution for whalemen, 86–88; as sexual exchange, 34–35; views of Pacific Islander women, 52–53; whale products consumption, 52; work and life in California, 150–51, 160

i n de x

Wong Tze-Chun, 167 Wood, W.W., 25–26 wood cutters of sandalwood, 30–34 working class, emergence in Hawaiʻi, 45, 47, 198, 204 workscapes, 106 Wyllie, Robert C., 148 Yerba Buena. See San Francisco Zoe bark, 66 zooplankton, 55

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