Historical Collections of The Hawaiian Islands -  Part 4 - The Ancients

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Historical Collections of Hawaii
Keepers of the Culture
Influence of Foreigners on the Ancients
Part 4- The Ancients
The Coming of Foreigners to Hawaii

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Part 4.

In the midst of the storm at sea, when off the coast of Kohala, the
foremast of the Revolution received an injury which made immediate
repairs necessary. It was decided to return to Kealakekua, and on the
morning of February 11, the ships took up their former stations in the
bay. At the time quiet reigned over the bay and it was reported that the
king had gone off leaving it under a head chief. However, the king came
back the next day and the old relations were resumed, although the
Hawaiians were curious as to why the foreigners had returned. The
injured mast was taken on shore and placed beside the heiau, with the
carpenters, sailmakers, and a guard of marines housed nearby; the
astronomical instruments were set up on the end of the heiau with tents
for the astronomer and Lieutenant King; all of these had the friendly
protection of the priests.

Nothing of special note happened until the afternoon of the thirteenth
when a watering party on shore from one of the ships had some kind of
altercation with the natives. At nearly the same time, a native on board
the Discovery daringly seized a pair of tongs and a chisel from the
blacksmith's forge and made his escape in a canoe that lay alongside the
ship. Shots were fired after him and he was pursued by one of the ship's
boats. The stolen goods were restored, but the thief escaped and the
officer in charge of the the ship's boat attempted-- unwisely, it would
seem -- to seize the canoe. This lead to a scuffle on the beach in which
the chief named Palea was struck on the head with an oar and the boat's
crew was rather roughly handled by the natives As it happened, the canoe
belonged to Palea, the chief. It appears also that it was he who caused
the tongs and chisel to be restored.

On the following morning it was found that the Discovery's large cutter
had been stolen during the night. Afterwards it was reported on good
authority, that the cutter was taken by some of Palea's people as a
reprisal for the indignity he suffered; but it is uncertain whether
Palea himself was the instigator of the deed. Capt. Clerke being unwell,
Capt. Cook assumed direction of the effort to recover the stolen cutter.
He first placed a cordon of boats to guard the entrance of the bay and
then went in a pinnace with Lieutenant Phillips and a squad of nine
marines to the village of Kaawaloa where King Kalaniopuu was residing;
he was accompanied by a launch and a small cutter, both under the
command of Lieutenant Williamson. Cook's plan was to get the King on
board the Resolution and keep him there until the stolen boat was
returned -- a plan that had been effective under simular circumstances
in the south Pacific.

Cook landed with Lieutenant Philips and the marines and marched to the
house where the king was staying. The latter came out and after a short
conversation with him, Cook became satisfied that he was entirely
innocent of what had happened, Kalaniopuu readily consented to go with
Captain Cook and they started to walk down toward the shore. The king's
youngest son, a boy of perhps twelve years, ran on ahead and climbed in
the pinnace. Before the king reached the shore, his wife Kanekapolei and
several chiefs surrounded him and begged him not to go farther; he
stopped and sat down. The suspicions of the Hawaiians had evidently been
aroused, as well as they might be. Lono, if indeed this was Lono, had
never before come to visit the king in this fashion ---armed, supported
by an escort of soldiers, and with a concerted and apparently hostile
movement of armed boats from the two ships. In the meanwhile, a great
crowd had gathered about, many of the natives being armed with daggers,
clubs, spears, and stones. While the king was hesitating, news came that
the chief crossing the bay in a canoe had been killed by a shot from one
of the foreign boats. This caused an angry reaction among the people and
some of the bolder ones began making threatening motions toward Cook and
the squad of marines.

Captain Cook gave up the attempt to take the king on board, and directed
his efforts to getting the marines and himself safely into the boats.
The marines withdrew to the waterside and formed in line on the rocks.
One of the natives made a pass at Cook witha dagger and Cook replied by
firing one barrel of his gun, either a blank or a charge of small shot
-- the accounts differ at this point --which apparently did no damage
and only served to embolden the Hawaiians. The king's son became alarmed
at the ominious change in the situation and was allowed to return on
shore and joined his father. Cook fired the other barrel of his gun,
loaded the ball, and killed a man. Lieutenant Phillips also fired and
the marines on shore and the sailors in the boats began firing. Cook
turned, ordered the boats to cease firing and come in close, and then
started toward the water. By this time a general melee was in progress;
Cook was knocked down with a club and as he tried to get up was struck
in the back with a dagger and fell into the water; it is uncertain
whether he drowned or died of his wounds. Four of the marines were
killed; the others managed to swim off to the pinnace. The Hawaiians
carried of the bodies of Cook and the four marines. Cook's body was
treated like that of a high chief. Some of the journel's of the voyage
blame Lieutenant Williamson for not making a vigorous effort to protect
the party on shore; a more later writer, a British navel officer, says
flatly that 
" Cooks death must lie at Williamson's door. [ Capt. James Colnett, who
visited the islands in the early part of 1788, met on Kauai a man who
claimed that he was the one who gave Cook the fatal dagger blow and had
in his possesson the shirt worn by Cook on the occassion. There is a
photstat copy of the Hawaiian portion of Colnett's journal in the AH. ]

Captain Clerke, who succeeded to command the expedition, decided upon a
conciliatory policy in the hope of restoring peace and recovering the
bodies of the slain Englishmen; most of the Hawaiian priests and a few
of the chiefs evidently favored such a policy; but it was difficult to
carry out. The hot anger on both sides kindled by the tragic affray of
February 14 was not easily cooled. During the next few days there was
desultory fighting, in which the Hawaiians exhibited great courage and
daring in the face of gunfire.A good many of them being killed; a number
of houses in which the native warriors sheltered themselves, were burned
down by the foeigners. A few of the latter indulged in reprisals for
which the savages might blush. Finally, however, after about a week or
so, peace was restored. Part of the bones of Capt. Cook were given up by
the Hawaiians, and a kapu placed on the bay while the funeral service
was held on February 21. On the next day friendly relations were re-
established. " Many Chiefs came on board, who showed both a great sorrow
for what had happened as well as great pleasure that we were friends --
Maiha maiha [Kamehameha] and others, who were perhaps afraid of
venturing themselves, sent large hogs as peace offerings."

Late in the evening of February 22 the Resolution and Discovery weighed
anchor and stood out in the bay. They sailed northwesterly past Maui,
Lanai, and Molakai, Oahu, where Captain Clerke and some other officers
made brief visits ashore; and then crossed over their former anchorage
for a few hours at Waimea, Kauai. At this place and off Niihau they
remained two weeks, taking
in water and food supplies. In these leeward islands a civil war was in
process, and the goats and possibly the pigs left there by Captain Cook
the year before had been killed in the course of the struggle. On March
15, 1779, the English ships took their final departure from the Sandwich
Islands in order to continue their explorations in the north along the
coasts of America and Asia.

After the departure of the resolution and the Discovery, no foreign
ships are known to have visited the islands until 1786. It has been
suggested by some writers that the death of Capt. Cook implanted in the
minds of European and Americans a belief that the Sandwich Islanders
were fierce and cruel savages and that this belief deterred ships from
visiting the islands. But it is doubtful that was the case. The simple
fact may lie in the fact that for several years there were no occasion
for ships to visit Hawaii. It was the development of the fur trade along
the northwest coast of America that brought many ships of many nations
into the north Pacfic at the end of the eighteenth century; that trade
was a direct consequence of Cook's last voyage, but it was required
several years for the trade to get under way. When it did get under way
the Hawaiian islands very soon became a familiar resort for fur traders.

In 1786 four foreign ships visited the islands. Two of them, commanded
by Captains Portlock and Dixon, were connected with an English
commercial enterprise; the other two were French navel vessels under the
command of the celebrated explorer La Perouse. The English ships came
twice in 1786 and returned again the following year for a short stay.
From then on, not a year passed without one or more ships visiting the
islands, and in short time Hawaii became well established as a port of
call and wintering place, not alone for ships engaged in the fur trade
but also for those engaged in the more general trade which grew up
between Asia and the west coast of North and South America.

It was not long until foreigners of various nations began to see how
desireable it would be to get possession of the Sandwich Islands, either
for colonization or for the promotion of commerce. In 1789, a Spanish
Naval officer, Ensign E.J. Martinez, who had been on the Northwest
Coast, wrote about the Sandwich Islands and called attention to their
fruitfulness and their convenient location. He suggested to the viceroy
of New Spain that would be useful for the Spanish government to make a
settlement on the islands for the purpose of conquering the Hawaiians
and preventing other nations from using the islands to the disadvantage
of Spain. The viceroy was not convinced of the advisability of attemping
such an occupation, but he sent one of his naval
officers, Lieutenant Manuel Quimper, in the spring of 1791, to make an
exploration, instructing him to collect information about the commerce,
situation, and natural products of the islands and to secure the good
favor of the inhabitants by kind treatment and gy gifts of various
kinds. Quimper made the exploration as directed; but Spain was not then
in position to undertake such a project as Martinez had proposed.

Captain John Meares, one of the early English traders, who visited
Hawaii in 1787 and in 1788, thought the islands might be made to answer
very important commercial purposes, and gravely expressed the idea that
Providence intended it to belong to Great Britain. Capt. George
Vancouver, who visited Hawaii five times, twice as an junior officer
under Capt. Cook in 1778 and 1779 and three times as commander of an
exploring expedition in 1792, 1793, and 1794, was impressed with the
value of this group of islands and earnestly sought to attach it to the
British Empire.

The ship captains who brought their ships into Hawaiian waters during
these early decades were mainly interested in obtaining fresh supplies
of meat and vegetables, water, salt, firewood, and rest from the
hardships of a sea voyage. But they discovered another valuable
commodity, man power, and before long began to recruit sailors from
among sturdy sons of Hawaii. Ordinarily, the Hawaiians were glad to go,
but in at least one case of record, in 1795, several natives were
kidnaped for service on a voyage to the Northwest Coast. Strangely
enough, the very first Hawaiian employed on a foreign voyage -- indeed,
the first to leave the islands, as information shows -- was a woman. The
British ship Imperial Eagle visited the islands in May, 1787. The
captain, Charles W. Barkley was accompanied by his wife and she engaged
a young Hawaiian woman to go with her as a lady's maid. The lure of
foreign travel strongly attracted many of the Hawaiians. Capt. Meares,
at the islands in August 1787, stated that numbers pressed forward, with
impressionable eagerness to accompany him to " Brittannee." Mortimer two
years later noticed the same eager desire of many of the natives to go
abroad. Besides those Hawaiians who enlisted as sailors on various
ships, there were a number who traveled to foreign lands somewhat in the
manner of tourists, as guests or personal servants of sea captains, and
whose experiences in detail would make an entertaining story. the most
distinguished of these early Hawaiian tourist was the high chief Kaiana,
who went away with Meares in 1787 and returned the following year after
having visited China and the Northwest Coast.

Util the year 1796, war was the characteristic note in the islands, with
various chieftains engaged in a fierce struggle for supremacy. The
actual fighting was intermittent, but, until the question of supremacy
was settled, the warring chiefs grasped every chance to strengthen their
positions. The coming of the foreigners presented a golden opportunity
and foreign men, foreign weapons, and foreign ships were eagerly sought.
When Capt. Cook was at Kealakekua Bay in January, 1779, King Kalaniopuu
seriously asked him to leave Lieutenant King behind, and King , who was
very popular with the natives, noted that they urged him to stay with
them, promising to hide him in the hills until the ships were gone and
to make him a great man. In the following month, Capt. Clerke reported
that on Kauai, where a civil war was in progress, the chiefs made many
large offers and fair promises to some of his men to induce them to run
away and assist the chiefs in their battles. Similar attempts were made
in 1788 to get some of Capt James Colnett's men to remain on Kauai in
the service of King Kaeo. After the trading ships began to visit the
islands, it became quite fashionable for every chief of note to have one
or more foreigners in his employ. They were serviceable as interpreters
and factors in trading with the foreign ships; their skill and
adroitness in managing firearms, and in many other things hitherto
unknown to the Hawaiians, made them valuable to the chiefs. In Dec,
1794, King Kalanikupule of Oahu sought and obtained the aid of part of
the crew of an English ship anchored in Honolulu harbor, to assist him
in repelling an invasion from Maui.

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To be Continued in part 5.