HAWAIIAN HISTORY
The epic drama of Hawaiian history is an apt match for its breathtaking landscape. From the languid tropical rain forests to the barren and foreboding lava fields, this has forever been a place of contrast and tumult. Centuries of relentless assault on native people and culture by explorers, missionaries, and corporations have been followed by the modern renaissance of the Hawaiian Islands, culminating in today’s quest for sovereignty. These, the remotest islands on earth, the “land of the raging fire,” have been oasis, bounty, and burial ground for a stunning array of adventurers and marauders living out sagas of conquest and hope amid unbelievable beauty. And through it all, as unvanquished by time and change as Kilauea, the tolerance and welcome of “aloha” lives on.
INHABITATION AND EARLY CULTURE OF THE ISLANDS
The first inhabitants of Hawai‘i arrived at Ka La‘e (South Point) on the Big Island between A.D. 500 and 750 not by accident—unlike many who were to follow. The Polynesians paddled there to colonize, probably from the Marquesas Islands. They traveled more than 2,500 miles in double-hulled canoes up to 100 feet in length, with platforms and shelters containing their families, dogs, and small livestock. They also carried the future staples of the Hawaiian diet and economy: coconuts, bananas, taro, breadfruit, and sugarcane. Their masterful early navigation techniques included following stars, migrating birds, and wind and ocean currents.
There was no formal economy, but land was apportioned by mighty aristocratic chiefs or ali‘i, according to the rules of a rigid caste system. It was divided into wedge-shaped pieces called ahupua‘a, literally, “place where the hogs are stored.” Each section was larger at the coast, where the natives lived, and narrowed as it went inland into pasture and wooded areas. The land was irrigated and farmed by ordinary citizens (maka‘ainana), who were taxed to live on and cultivate it, in the feudal style. The ali‘i won rank by physical power and force of personality, and individual dynasties waged constant battles of conquest within and between islands. With the arrival of the Tahitians around A.D. 1000, the first chapter in a long history of subjugation in the Hawaiian Islands was written. The original Polynesians were subdued by force and put to work building fishponds, temples, and further infrastructure.
There is no written history from the time humans arrived in the Hawaiian Islands until the first contact of the natives with the white man. Chants, talk stories, and petroglyphs carved in lava are the only record of the wars between tribes and islands, of building shelter to sustain life without metal or clay, or of humankind’s relationship to the gods.
MANA, SACRIFICE, AND SURFING
Just beneath the ali‘i in status, the authorities in religious and spiritual matters were the kahunas or high priests. Religion consisted of prayer and offerings from the harvests to gods, who would in turn ensure safety, health, and plenty. Around the 12th century Pa‘ao, a mighty Tahitian kahuna, believing the existing rituals insufficient, further codified prayer and worship, and introduced human sacrifice in temples (luakini heiau) built for that purpose.
The heiaus, containing taboo, prayer, and drum towers, were commonly tributes to Lono, the god of the harvest, or Ku, the god of war. Often located in majestic settings, temple sites were chosen for their perceived mana or spiritual power. Most were built for specific times or purposes; if the mana of the location was perceived to diminish or the occasion passed, the temple was relocated or fell into disuse.
Pa‘ao also instituted and entrenched kapu—a persistent coda of taboos that ruled all things social and most matters of daily life. Kapus, for instance, dictated that women were not allowed to eat certain fish, coconuts, bananas, and pork, while men could not eat dog meat. Women and commoners were forbidden to eat or fraternize with royal males. A commoner (maka‘ainana) or slave (kauwa) could be put to death for crossing paths with a chief or a king. Husbands maintained separate homes and pounded, cooked, and ate poi separately from their wives. Husband and wife—who were particularly celebrated if they were incestuous siblings of royal birth—could sleep together only in a structure built for that purpose, the hale noa. Polygamy was the norm, and the population grew to about a million people.
Where there was a difference in social standing, even between husband and wife, kapu ruled. It is claimed that one of Kamehameha the Great’s wives was so superior in status to him that he was reduced to approaching her only if he was unclothed and on his hands and knees. Breaking kapu could result in death, but penalties were variously enforced, and each island had a place of escape or pu‘uhonua that sheltered offenders from death.
Even then, as ancient petroglyphs attest, surfing was the most popular hobby in the islands. But in sport, as in all else, caste was key—the ali‘i used 16-foot-long boards while commoners were relegated to the 5-to 7-footers of inferior wood.
THE DEPARTURE OF LONO
Among the many legends the natives passed down from generation to generation was one about the enigmatic chief Lono. He arrived from heaven astride a rainbow, landing in Waipi‘o Valley on the Big Island. There he met, fell in love with, and married the lovely Kaikilani and moved with her to the Kona Coast. Lono suspected another chief of coveting his bride and beat her savagely in a jealous rage. With her dying breath, Kaikilani declared her love for Lono alone. In abject grief, Lono traveled around the islands for months, challenging men to wrestling and other contests. Finally his guilt led him to quit the islands altogether in an enormous canoe laden with food and provisions. He vowed to return one day, sailing clockwise into the bay atop a floating island abundant with chickens and pigs. In Lono’s honor, each year from October to February the natives held a cease-fire and harvest festival called makahiki complete with athletic contests, games, and festivities.
THE ARRIVAL OF CAPTAIN COOK AND THE FLOATING ISLAND
As the end of the 18th century neared, the Hawaiian Islands remained divided into feuding factions—the standout in battle, a 20-year-old warrior named Kamehameha. Not many on the island, warrior or otherwise, had seen Europeans until 1778, although the term for “white man”—haole, literally “one without breath,” to describe their sickly paleness—was already in use, probably based on talk stories from sightings of Spanish explorers.
British captain James Cook, at 50, was the most celebrated explorer of the 18th century. Nevertheless, he missed both Maui and the Big Island before sailing to Kaua‘i while in search of the nonexistent Northwest Passage to the Atlantic. On January 18, 1778—during the festival of makahiki—Cook’s ships Discovery and Resolution sailed into Waimea Bay. He dubbed them the Sandwich Islands, in honor of the Earl of Sandwich.
Cook and his men were amazed by many things they saw. First, the natives looked so Tahitian in dress and features. Next, these “Tahitian” men and women were paddling and swimming out to his ships in great numbers to give gifts and bid him welcome. He was surprised to find them completely uninterested in the beads and cheap trinkets he had used successfully to barter with indigenous people elsewhere in his travels. Instead they wanted what they did not have: nails, bits of the ship, anything made of metal. In fact, a native man who attempted to take a piece of iron from one of the ships was shot to death, giving the natives the first of many experiences with firearms and supporting the growing suspicion that Cook was a god.
Mindful of infecting the natives with venereal disease, Cook had given an order against fraternization. But the willpower of his sea-weary crew was no match for the gaggles of native women who were warmly welcoming the men with dances and affection. The natives were certain by now that the huge clockwise-sailing ships—arriving, as they had, at makahiki—that had returned to their midst were none other than the god Lono and his attendants. Thus gonorrhea and syphilis were introduced to the islands. In the years to come, exposure to these diseases would kill or sterilize large portions of the native population. Cook and his men stayed in Kaua‘i for several idyllic days, restocking provisions, before continuing north to continue their search for a passage to the Atlantic.
On the return trip, a year later, they returned to their fondly remembered paradise. As they sailed into Kealakekua Bay on the Big Island, they were greeted by even greater and more enthusiastic crowds of makahiki celebrants, chanting “Lono” at Cook and falling to the ground, covering their heads and faces in a worshipful posture. Drawings made on this trip by the ship’s artist, John Webber, offer one of the few surviving firsthand visual accounts of people and life in Hawai‘i at that time.
This visit by Cook and his men was longer and ultimately far less successful. At first they enjoyed a cultural exchange. Cook was shown the thick mountain forests and a demonstration of canoe making, and the natives watched blacksmiths and listened to flute and violin music for the first time. But weeks passed, and the greedy crew nearly exhausted local provisions and connubial hospitality. As they finally departed, they unceremoniously tore down a fence and took carved wooden icons of a seaside temple, ironically to Lono, to be used as firewood.
All might have been well if they had sailed off and disappeared on February 4, 1779, as planned. But storms damaged one of Cook’s ships, and they returned less than a week later. For many reasons, including that the festival of makahiki was now over and that they sailed counterclockwise in a crippled ship, they did not receive a warm greeting. Cook was never aware that the festival had to do with his reception in Hawai‘i; he believed this treatment was accorded all visitors and was surely confused by the markedly changed atmosphere that greeted his third arrival.
Rather than gifts, Cook and company were met with thievery. After several incidents, a cutter was stolen and Cook retaliated with a blockade of the bay and a plan to kidnap a chief as hostage until his equipment was returned. En route to find his intended hostage, High Chief Kalaniopu‘u of the Big Island, the English fired on a canoe sailing out of the bay. A lower chief, Noekema, was killed. The attempted kidnapping of Kalaniopu‘u was foiled by his wailing wife, but as Cook and his troops retreated, Cook fired at a native blocking his way. Just as the shot missed its mark, word of the death of Noekema reached the roiling mob. In an angry frenzy, the crowd of Hawaiians took turns striking and stabbing Cook and four of his sailors to death.
Cook’s men retaliated by beheading two natives and setting fire to a village before rowing back to their ship. Days passed, and the natives, despite having un-masked him as a commoner, gave Cook an ali‘i funeral rite by removing his bones and stripping the skin from his skull. These remains were presented to his horrified crew, who buried him at sea, in turn causing the islanders to place a kapu on the bay. The British ships finally parted from Hawaiian waters in mid-March 1779, having unleashed more destruction in one year—with guns, disease, dissolution of native blood, and tales of bounty, along with accurate maps that soon established Hawai‘i as a port of call for a steady stream of traders and plunderers—than had been seen in the entire 700 years prior.
KAMEHAMEHA THE GREAT
Kamehameha was born at Kohala on the Big Island in 1758 to parents of royal blood. He was a fierce and driven soldier, said to be over 6 feet 6 inches tall, thus a valuable asset to his uncle, Chief Kalaniopu‘u. The young warrior was present at the scene of James Cook’s death. Even today Kamehameha is deified as the most enduring hero in Hawaiian history. The sad irony is that his acquisitive conquest of Hawai‘i and his courting of trade just at the time when the isolation of the islands was coming to an end provided a singular platform for exploitation by the outside world and the beginning of the end of native culture and self-determination.
Kamehameha’s unification of the islands was ultimately made possible by firearms bought or raided from trading ships. His series of battle campaigns for unification lasted more than 10 years. His ultimate victories over rival chiefs Keoua and Kahekili required the services of paid haole patrons, including John Young and Isaac Davis, upon whom Kamehameha conferred chieftain status.
Young and Isaac helped equip Hawaiian fleets with cannons and mercenary soldiers; when the wars were successfully concluded, they married Hawaiian women and settled permanently in the islands. This was the story of hundreds of British, French, Welsh, Chinese, and Spanish by then. More than the human population boomed; Kamehameha was forced to import cowboys (paniolo) from Mexico and Spain to cope with the burgeoning herds of wild cattle and horses on the islands.
A lover as well as a fighter, Kamehameha had 21 wives, including the noble-woman Keopuolani, whom he married in 1795. Her lineage assured him children of the ali‘i rank, although only three of 11 offspring lived to adulthood. Although his social aspirations lay with Keopuolani, the king’s heart belonged to Ka‘ahumanu, a tall, audacious, 200-pound beauty who, though childless, would utterly alter Hawaiian history in her own inimitable way.
SANDALWOOD—A CAUTIONARY TALE
The story of sandalwood is a fitting metaphor for the forces that subsumed Hawai‘i as dealings with trade grew. In the early years, native Hawaiians practiced an innate ecology and primitive but highly effective conservation. There was a kapu, for instance, against harvesting certain kinds of trees without planting two more in their place. As Yankee traders found their way to Hawai‘i, these ancient practices fell prey to more modern mercantile interests, particularly the newfound native demand for firearms.
In the 1790s, American sea captains identified that Hawai‘i had vast groves of sandalwood trees—a fragrant wood much in demand in Asia. A trade route, which became disproportionately profitable to the sea merchants, was opened. Shiploads of sandalwood were delivered from the islands to Canton and traded for china and silks, which were in turn delivered to New England. In New England, the Asian bounty was unloaded and the boats were reloaded with items coveted in Hawai‘i—from weapons to furniture, depending on trends and tastes.
Kamehameha had been an old-style conservationist, but his successor son Liholiho allowed chiefs to import luxury items with promissory notes of future deliveries of sandalwood. These debts mounted, and the frenzied harvests that followed crippled and maimed indentured commoners who carried the wood miles and miles on their backs from the interior to the waiting ships. The logs were amassed in piculs or log pits carved into the mountains in the exact dimension of a ship’s hull. One picul sold in China for 34 cents. Written records exist of chains of laborers, thousands long, in painful lockstep toward the sea. Within a few short years of Kamehameha’s death, the sandalwood forests were utterly bare, the agricultural system had collapsed from lack of focus on other crops, and the credit-happy chiefs were deeply in debt with no way to pay.
KAMEHAMEHA II (LIHOLIHO)
On Kamehameha’s deathbed in 1819, Ka‘ahumanu, the wife who would not be denied her place in history, claimed he asked her to guide the fate—as the kuhina nui—of the kingdom and his heir, Kamehameha’s 20-year-old son Liholiho, crowned Kamehameha II.
Her first official act was to enhance her own power by supplanting the ancient hold of kapu. Less than six months after her husband’s death and secret burial at Kailua-Kona, she convinced the weak-willed Liholiho—whether by intoxicants or sheer persuasion—to throw a lavish feast attended by royals. At the dinner she pressed Liholiho to sit by her, flaunting the ancient kapu against men and women dining together. Social engineer Ka‘ahumanu had personally placed forbidden foods and then encouraged the consumption of them by the male and female guests—including dog meat, which Liholiho was reported to have tasted.
The world did not end, the heavens did not weep, and the gods did not exact revenge. In one libertine evening, centuries of taboos and traditions succumbed. The response across the land was gleeful and destructive as Hawaiians splintered and torched temples and idols in fits of wanton disobedience. They were blissfully unaware in those episodes of carefree wilding that a religion with equally divisive and far-reaching consequences was, even then, scant months from their shores.
Liloliho was at loose ends as Ka‘ahumanu ran the islands and the first whaling ships landed, fast-forwarding Westernization with new diseases and liquor. He decided in 1823 at the age of 28 to visit England and pay an uninvited call to ask for kingly advice from George IV. Despite his bounty of $25,000 in gold coins and a shipload of sperm oil, he was not only not received by King George but also broadly caricatured by British newspapers, which called him a “cannibal” among other racial epithets. As Liholiho sought intervention and grooming to become worthy of the king’s audience, he and Kamamalu, his sister and his favorite of five wives, contracted measles, died, and were buried with Christian rites in 1824.
When word of his death reached the islands, Liholiho was succeeded on the throne by the second of Kamehameha I’s sons, Kauikeaouli, crowned Kamehameha III. Ka‘ahumanu, however, was very much the power behind the throne and would remain so for roughly another decade. A less likely development was her role as a fervent promoter of Christianity.
CHRISTIANITY COMES ASHORE
The end of the old religion and kapu left a sense of moral anarchy, particularly felt by older, more traditional Hawaiians. In 1820, Thaddeus—the first missionary ship—landed within shouting distance of the site of the dinner party that sunk kapu. The sojourners were freshly tutored in the Hawaiian language and, after six months at sea, ripe to preach. This group of 23, led by Hiram Bingham and Asa Thurston, was the first of a dozen from New England’s American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions. This troupe was moved to their mission in Hawai‘i by an encounter with a Hawaiian expatriate named Henry Opukaha‘ia, who had died in Boston with the wish on his lips that people in his homeland could hear and be comforted by the word of Christ, as he had been.
When she took gravely ill in 1824, the mighty trendsetter Ka‘ahumanu was nursed back to health by Bingham’s wife, Sybil. In her joyful recovery, Ka‘ahumanu saw the hand of the Christian god of Sybil’s prayers; she was converted, and she set about converting others. Even the most royal Keopuolani, the mother of the king, converted, and a massive movement of the population toward Christianity began in earnest.
The missionaries had their hands full. The existing offenses—the suggestive undulations of the hula, bare-breasted women, polygamy, incest, promiscuity, and the frayed remnants of pagan religion—had been augmented recently by the tastes of traders to include tobacco, liquor, and prostitution. The missionaries even took umbrage at innocent but indolent and “lewd” pastimes like kite flying, surfing, and wearing leis.
Clad in thick, dark, itchy wool, the missionaries forced the women into modest tentlike dresses called mu‘umu‘us. There went dancing, leis, boxing and wrestling, drinking and smoking, and lighting fires on the Sabbath. The normally spirited Hawaiians might have argued had they not been freshly parted from their centuries-old traditions, but they fell quickly into the new order, relinquishing almost all that remained of their native ways.
They learned to read in droves, using the missionaries’ oversimplified 12-letter Hawaiian alphabet, which permanently altered the character of their language. This seemed to the missionaries a small price to pay for Hawaiians becoming, by 1846, the most literate people in the world. They had printing presses and were dictating their oral histories into book form. The missionaries were far from universally generous about their new converts. Asa Thurston described Kailua as a “filthy village,” and Bingham wrote that the Hawaiians were “stupid and polluted worshippers of demons.”
The overarching religion of the missionaries, however, seemed to be capitalism. It is often repeated in Hawai‘i that the preachers came to do good and stayed to do well. They formed the first tier of the emerging middle class by intermarrying and, when the laws changed to allow it, purchasing land and importing immigrant labor to work their fields.
KAMEHAMEHA III (KAUIKEAOULI)
Kamehameha III took the throne at nine and ruled for nearly 30 years, aided at the beginning of his reign, of course, by the omnipresent kuhina nui, Ka‘ahumanu. He was educated as a Christian by Bingham himself, but he resisted internalizing Western values and fundamentally embraced Hawaiian culture and beliefs—rejecting Bingham’s suggestion to make scripture the law of the islands.
In 1833 Ka‘ahumanu died, just months after her baptism. She was succeeded as regent by Kauikeaouli’s sister Kinau, a devout Christian. The two rulers disagreed, and in an argument over religion he stripped her of her title. For a time there was resurgence of old customs. Then the king reinstated Kinau to her throne and, in apology for his haste, declared her son Alexander Liholiho his successor. Bingham and the reinstated Queen Kinau established firmer religious order, including exile colonies where sinners and offenders were sent for punishment.
The true love affair of Kamehameha III’s dynasty was his marriage to his sister Nahi‘ena‘ena, which produced one stillborn child. She died at 20, and the king moved the site of his monarchy from the Big Island to Maui to be near her grave site. Many Hawaiians were dying in the 1840s—reportedly of epic sadness. Oral histories refer to this time when imported racism was beginning to convince Hawaiians of their inferiority as the time when Na kanaka okuu wale aku no i kau uhane—“People dismissed their souls and died.”
THE GREAT MAHALE
In addition to enhancing Hawai‘i’s political infrastructure with the first constitution and legislature, Kamehameha III bought land commission called the Great Mahale (divide) in 1848. This instituted, for the first time, private ownership of Hawaiian land and allowed land to be bought and sold. Title was transferred from the king to chiefs and, primarily, divided into 3-acre farm plots called kuleana. All who desired land were required to pay a tariff and register the plots. This was intended to turn the islands into a land of small farms, but the result was that only a few thousand wealthier Hawaiians carried through and registered. Commoners, who were required to pay the tax in cash, were largely unable to pay or simply did not grasp the idea of private landownership until it was too late. In 1850, foreigners were allowed to purchase land, and so many relished the opportunity that within 20 years, 80 percent of the property in Hawai‘i was owned by foreigners and missionaries. Native Hawaiians were marginalized in their own land. The distribution of lands in the Great Mahale continues to cause contention today.
KAMEHAMEHA IV (ALEXANDER LIHOLIHO)
Further struggles of identity with the West marked the nine-year reign of the nephew Kamehameha IV. He married Emma Rooke, granddaughter of haole chieftain John Young, whose weapons and advice had helped Kamehameha I unify the islands. Their efforts in the monarchy were spent in health-care initiatives to try and stave off the decimating diseases brought to the islands by Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Portuguese, and Puerto Rican immigrants imported to work the sugarcane fields. Queen Emma established the Queen’s Hospital, which still exists today. But their efforts made scant inroads into the plagues of leprosy and other dread diseases.
After a series of tragedies, including the death of their only son—and the only possible continuation of the monarchy—as a toddler and the death of a close friend from a shooting during an argument, Kamehameha IV died from complications of emotional exhaustion, liquor, and asthma at 29.
KAMEHAMEHA V (LOT KAMEHAMEHA)
By the reign of Alexander’s brother Lot, Kamehameha V, the wealth of the missionaries had led them into the sugar business—some of the many white men becoming entrenched in the political and mercantile life of the islands. This was the last king of a lineage that stretched back to the 12th century. His unrequited love for Princess Bernice Pauahi—who jilted him to marry an American—made him a lifelong bachelor and guaranteed no heirs. He was an advocate of bringing back the indigenous culture and again increased the power of the monarchy over constitutional government, but no real inroads into a renaissance were forthcoming. Lot died with no heir and no successor named.
WILLIAM C. LUNALILO
The outcome of a power struggle with David Kalakaua, William C. Lunalilo’s reign as Hawai‘i’s first elected king lasted one year before his years of fast living, womanizing, and drinking caught up with him and he died of tuberculosis. His advisers and officials were overwhelmingly American, and their most lasting action was the groundwork to a treaty of trade reciprocity with the United States, born of the sugar plantation owners’ distaste for the heavy tariff paid on sugar imported into the United States. The movement was afoot by the growers to annex Hawai‘i to the States as a means of eliminating the tax and increasing their profit. The United States cared little about the sugar tax and annexation, but was quite keen on the concept of a naval outpost on O‘ahu. General Schofield was sent to inspect the site that became Pearl Harbor and was well pleased, and soon—despite significant protest—there was a naval base in Pearl Harbor, in exchange for duty-free Hawaiian sugar.
DAVID KALAKAUA
After David Kalakaua successfully contested Queen Emma, wife of Kamehameha IV, for the throne, a riot by her followers had to be calmed by the military. Kalakaua, the Merrie Monarch and Hawai‘i’s last king, made a priority of returning life to more native influences. He reinstituted the hula, surfing, and a native-style state song. Among his wide travels, he visited the United States to convince President Ulysses Grant to honor the reciprocity agreement with the islands. Understanding that Hawai‘i needed liaisons to survive in the increasingly complex world, he tried to broker a Polynesian-Pacific empire and proposed prudent marriages to solidify power bases. He built the lavish ‘Iolani Palace, to the chagrin of sugar plantation owners who feared his lifestyle of spending. These owners introduced a new constitution severely limiting his power and granting the vote only to property holders, a very small minority of Hawaiians. King Kalakaua died in San Francisco in 1891.
LILIUOKALANI
Queen Liliuokalani, the final Hawaiian monarch, was the wife of the governor of O‘ahu. In her two-year reign, she attempted to restore royal power. As she did so, haole businessmen, led by the grandson of missionary Asa Thurston, addressed this threat to their earnings by overthrowing the monarchy by force and charging treason in order to imprison Liliuokalani in ‘Iolani Palace for eight months. They placed Sanford Dole at the head of a provisional government. An appeal to President Grover Cleveland brought the queen a brief reprieve, but in the end his support was rhetoric in the face of the potential political damage of supporting a Native Hawaiian government over white American business interests. The republic, with Dole as president, prevailed. Cleveland later wrote, “Hawai‘i is ours. As I…contemplate the means used to complete the outrage, I am ashamed of the whole affair.”
When Liliuokalani died in 1893, the people of Honolulu spilled into the streets to bid a tearful farewell to the embattled woman who remained queen in their hearts. In 1898, Hawai‘i was officially annexed to the United States by Congress, and Stanford Dole was appointed governor. In 1901, the first tourist hotel, the Moana Surfrider (now a Sheraton), was built on Waikiki Beach.
PEARL HARBOR, WORLD WAR II, AND STATEHOOD
On December 7, 1941, nearly 3,000 were killed as the Japanese bombed the U.S. naval station at Pearl Harbor, forcing America into World War II. Japanese on the islands were subject to the same suspicion as they were on the mainland; many were sent to internment camps, and nisei (second-generation Japanese) were dismissed from the army, employment, and civic life. Late in the war, a nisei unit of the National Guard was formed and deployed, which performed with distinction in battle and at war’s end produced, in the true spirit of aloha, some of Hawai‘i’s most talented and influential professionals and statesmen, including U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye. In 1959, the United States passed legislation granting Hawai‘i statehood.
SOVEREIGNTY FOR HAWAI‘I
In 1993, Native Hawaiians marked the 100th anniversary of the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani with a call for sovereignty. Since the 1980s, the movement for sovereignty—to right some of the wrongs done to Native Hawaiians—has grown more strident. These calls were answered and encouraged in 1993, when the U.S. Congress and President Bill Clinton issued a resolution of apology to the Native Hawaiians for the overthrow and promised to provide “a proper foundation for reconciliation.” Bills were subsequently introduced in the Hawaiian legislature proposing a new Hawaiian nation of varying descriptions, and a commission was formed to gather input and options for the form it would take.
Amid a modern renaissance of native language, dress, dance, and customs, polls now show that the majority of Hawaiians, regardless of ethnicity, support a vision of sovereignty as a nation-within-a-nation. The consensus and legislative process continue today, stewarded largely by descendants of Native Hawaiians.
SOME HISTORICAL DATES
A. D. 500–700: The first settlers, thought to be from the Marquesas Islands in Polynesia, arrive in Hawai‘i. They navigate across the Pacific by the stars, sun, clouds, ocean swells, and currents.
A. D. 1000: The first Tahitians arrive in the islands and probably conquer the Marquesans.
1778: Captain Cook lands his ships, Resolution and Discovery, in Waimea, Kaua‘i. He names the archipelago the Sandwich Islands, in honor of the Earl of Sandwich.
1810: Believing in his destiny, King Kamehameha I wages war on the rulers of other islands using Western weapons. In doing so, he unifies the islands for the first time under one leader.
1819: Whaling ships arrive in Kealakekua Bay on the Big Island and bring opportunity for industry and commerce.
1820: The first American missionaries arrive to spread Christianity.
1850: Foreigners (haole) are permitted to purchase land. The legislature approves hiring of foreign laborers, which encourages an influx of Chinese, Japanese, and Portuguese workers. The number of immigrants increases as the sugar and pineapple industries prosper.
1893: Tired of taxation and decreased sugar sales, sugar planters plot to end the monarchy with a United States takeover. The Annexationists overthrow Queen Liliuokalani. A provisional government is established and later replaced by the Republic of Hawai‘i.
1898: The United States annexes Hawai‘i and creates the Territory of Hawai‘i. Later that year the U.S. acquires the Philippines and Guam.
1900: Duke Paoa Kahanamoku (1890–1968) puts the spotlight on Hawai‘i by winning several Olympic gold medals and setting the world record in the 100-meter freestyle. He continues to set records at the 1924 and the 1928 Olympics.
1927: Matson places the deluxe passenger ship SS Malolo (flying fish) into service between San Francisco and Honolulu and times the inaugural voyage with the opening of the new Royal Hawaiian hotel in Waikiki.
1941: On December 7, the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor on O‘ahu, and the United States enters World War II.
1958: Pan Am’s Boeing 707 opens international travel to the islands.
1959: Hawai‘i becomes the 50th state of the United States.
1970s: Native Hawaiians and local activists gain recognition through protests against the military’s bombing practices on Kaho‘olawe.
1993: The U.S. Congress apologizes for overthrowing the Hawaiian monarchy, and the state of Hawai‘i creates a formal process to recognize Hawaiian sovereignty.