Statewide County HI Archives News.....Portuguese in Hawai'i -- part 1. July 21, 2008 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/hi/hifiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 August 3, 2008, 7:14 pm Keepers Of The Culture, A Study In Time Of The Hawaiian Islands July 21, 2008 Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 July 21, 2008. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Historical Collections of Hawai'i. Keepers of the Culture A study in time, of the Hawai'ian Islands. Portuguese in Hawai'i -- part 1. by Darlene E. Kelley ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Portuguese in Hawai'i Part 1 -- The Portuguese have given Hawai'i many traditions. In music -- they created the 'ukelele and slack-key guitar. The enriched Hawai'i's cooking with malasadas ( a light doughnut ) , paodoce ( sweet bread ), beef and fish marinated in vin d'alhos, bean soup and tasty sausages. They are honored with street names on O'ahu; like Lusitana, Funchal, Lisbon, Madeira, Correa, and Enos. In rural areas, they are famous for ranching, homesteading thousands of acres. But perhaps the most noticeable contribution across the islands is their kindly and humerous approach to life, with a large body of jokes and a reputation for non-stop chattering. The Portuguese in Hawai'i, however, possess a rich history that is largely overlooked. Their seafaring heritage predates European discovery of America. Seafarers from Portugal settled the Azore and Madeira islands in the Atlantic leading the way to Brazil and possibly pre-dating the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Western Hemisphere. Columbus was from Genoa, Italy, but applied a nautical knowledge gained from the Portuguese to sail his tiny ships across the Atlantic. Columbus' father-in-law, Bartholomew Perestrello, was the governor of Porto Santo, in the Madeira Islands. The first Portuguese nationals to live in the Hawai'ian Kingdom sailed through there as early as 1794 and jumped ship. The first recorded Portuguese visitor was John Elliot de Castro, who sailed to Hawai'i in 1814. De Castro was a rover seeking easy fortune across the globe. During his sojourn in Hawai'i, he became a retainer of King Kamehameha I, serving as his personal physician and as a member of the Royal Court. Kamehameha awarded large tracts of land to de Castro, but after a year he sailed off to the island of Sitka, Alaska. De Castro joind the Russian-American Company under Alexander Baranov, who hired him to guard a shipment heading to California. In October of 1816 de Castro joined forces with Otto von Kotzebue, the German explorer, who became Kamehameha's foreign minister. The next record of Portuguese immigration occurred in 1827, with the baptism of two Portuguese children in Honolulu. In 1828, Antonio Silva arrived, planting one of the first commercial sugar crops. For 50 years after these early visitors arrived, Portuguese sailors came ashore alone or in small groups, jumping ship to enjoy Hawai'ian life and turning their backs on the rough life aboard whalers and other vessels. Eventually several hundred Portuguese made the Islands their home, keeping in communication with growing colonies in San Francisco and New England. Many of the sailors were from Fayal, Graciosa, and Sao Jorge in the western Azores, and from the Cape Verde Islands off Africa. Many of the settlers came from the Madeira Islands, off the coast of Africa, and about the size of O'ahu. They also came from the Azores, nine islands half-way between Portugal and the United States, and about 1.5 times the size of O'ahu. Many had inter-mixed with their freed African slaves. Population records show that in 1853 the 86 Potuguese on O'ahu had become known a Pokiki to Hawai'ian language speakers. Jacintho Pereira, a Portugese citizen of Hawai'i and owner of a dry goods store in Honolulu, suggested in 1876 that Hawai'i government look for sugar laborers to Madeira where farmers were succumbing to a severe economic depression fostered by a blight that decimated vineyards and the wine industry. A German botanist named Hildebrand toured Madeira in the late 1860s to survey its plant life. Instead he discovered a hard-working people who tilled island farm lands simular to Hawai'i. Hilldebrand enthusiastically told his Hawai'ian contacts that Madeira migh be a source of plantation laor. Sao Miguel in the eastern Azores was also chosen as a source of labor. In 1878, 114 Madeireans, including a number of wives and children, arrived aboard the ship, Priscilla. In 1881, King David Kalakaua visited Portugal and was entertained in royal fashion by Portugal's King Dom Luis. The same year, two ships delivered 800 men, women, and children from Sao Miguel. the next year a treaty of immigration and friendship was signed between Portugal and the Hawai'ian Kingdom. Migration to Hawai'i became a popular way to escape poverty and a cruel military system. The dream of settling in islands that looked like home, drew workers away from offers to labor in the fields of Brazil and urban seaports of the U.S. Mass immigration of thePortuguese laborers joined Chinese and Japanese worrkers in the sugar fields. They came to replace Chinese workers who left plantations for to Honolulu and Hilo to open stores and work in the trades. The reciprocity treaty in 1876 between the Kingdom of Hawai'i and the United States opened the U.S. sugar market to Hawai'i and greatly added increased demand for workers. Leo Pap's Book," The Portuguese Americans, " describes life in Hawai'i for early Portuguese immigrants to Kaua'i. In 1887, Madeirean-born M.F. Olival, a age 15, stowed away on a Hawai'ian bound English bark, calling at Funcha, Madeira's capitol. " Together with 11 other stowaways, he was soon put to work by the captain. After a grueling voyage of over five months ( including 33 days just to get around Cape Horn in a heavy storm), during which time 16 persons died and 16 were born aboard the battered sailing vesel, they arrived in Honolulu, April 1888. Olival went to work on a sugar plantation ( in this instance as a free laborer, not indentured ). In 1894, he married a girl from Sao Miguel. A year later he quit plantation labor to join the new army of the Republic of Hawai'i ( the monarchy there having been overthrown); and upon annexation of th islands by the United States in 1898, he served as a volunteer in the American Army there until 1902. Three years later he moved to California, permanently." Several thousand more Portuguese immigrants arrived through 1913 when the last mass immigration was made. Portuguese from continental Portugal also joined their islander cousins during this era, many of them becoming paniolo, the Hawai'ian term for cowboys. Travel and communication with Portuguese colonies in the San Francisco Bay area, Sacramento and other west coast cities allowed the Potuguese immigrants to move back and forth from Hawai'i, shifting home to make the most money, or to settle where they felt most comfortable. Geographically, the early Potuguese in Hawai'i seemed to like hillsides that reminded them of the sea cliffs of Madeira. Punchbowl in Honolulu, cattle country around Kalaheo in southwest Kaua'i and mountainous areas in the coffee growing district of Kona and cattle lands of the saddle area on the Big Island developed Portuguese communities, Kaka'ako, now an industrial and office area near down town Honolulu, was once named the Potuguese Suburb. The Portuguese were also wide range individuals, with one man becoming the Kaliau, or governor, of isolated Ni'ihau in 1912. The Poruguese left the sugar fields to establish small independent farms outside the plantation districts. They started dairy farms, and introduced the commercial manufacturer of butter and corn growing. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Continued in part 2. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/hi/statewide/newspapers/portugue18nnw.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/hifiles/ File size: 8.3 Kb