Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii (11 page)

And therein may lie the clue—that she was never awed by the sanctity of the forbidden. Indeed she demonstrated as much when she defied
kapu
by refusing to give her youngest daughter, Nahi‘ena‘ena, in
hanai
to anyone, and raised her herself, although she was restricted by the
kapu ‘uha
(sacred lap) which decreed death to any child she tried to rear.
26
And, while famed for her gracious bearing, perhaps she never forgave her fate at being bartered off at the age of eleven to marry her father’s killer. (That Kamehameha cared for her was certain; her health had always been fragile, and in 1806 when she grew dangerously ill, the Conqueror sacrificed people until she recovered,
27
but the feeling was proprietary. It could not be said that there was love between them.) She was also ten years younger than Ka‘ahumanu, and while being mentored by her, may have been somewhat dominated as well. But whatever the reason, when Ka‘ahumanu put her life on the line by advocating the destruction of
kapu
, Keopuolani threw in with her.

In far-off Kaua‘i the vassal king Kaumuali‘i happily agreed to abandon the idols and their
kapus
, and remarkably the reigning high priest, Hewahewa, also acquiesced in the new order, but the destruction of
kapu
did not take place without dissent. Many still believed in the power of the old gods and were prepared to fight for them. Even as in his youth Kamehameha had been named guardian of the war god, the Conqueror had entrusted the same office to the high chief Kekuaokalani, son of his younger brother, the “good chief” of Kohala. Now the nephew became a magnet that attracted dissenters. When Liloliho, coaxed in from his two-day bender, had endorsed and participated in the
‘ai noa
with the women, those who did not approve picked up and followed Kekuaokalani south to Kealakekua Bay, where armed men collected about him. No doubt, the chiefs who followed him were also looking for better selections of land than they would get from the drunk and the women. It was the worst of the old days, all over again.

When negotiation failed, and Keopuolani herself made a personal appeal for peace, the two queens deputed the Conqueror’s prime minister, Kalanimoku, to lead an army down to fight him. It was a wrenching task for him, for his sister Manono was the rebellious chief’s wife, and she had resolved to fight at his side. The battle was brief; the dissenters fought gamely, but the royal forces had muskets and the rout was complete. The rebel army was driven down to the shore, where they were fired on by men in double-hulled canoes, one of which mounted a small cannon, commanded by Ka‘ahumanu.
28
Kekuaokalani was killed and Manono after him, shot down while calling for mercy. Armed opposition to the new regime ceased there, and the common people continued to revere their household gods, but from this day the old religion was ended.
Heiaus
were dismantled; those
ki‘i
that were not burned were either neglected or given away as souvenirs to foreigners.

*   *   *

The uproar over ending
kapu
was enough of a social upheaval to attend the new reign, without engaging in the usual fratricidal war over redistribution of land. Instead Kamehameha II and the queen regent decided to win the loyalty of the chiefs by ending the royal monopoly on sandalwood, giving them the freedom to earn the best they could at it. And the
ali‘i
, after years of seeing the Conqueror’s storehouses swell with luxury goods, fell upon their forests with a vengeance. Chiefs and chiefesses competed with one another for the latest fashions; household items such as mirrors that they had lived without for generations were suddenly seen as indispensable necessities, and merchants overcharged them mercilessly.

It was true that Americans had introduced Hawaiian sandalwood to an international market, and that they introduced the islanders to the concept of resource extraction to fund a consumer economy, but the nobility grasped the essentials of capitalism in a heartbeat. And when sandalwood trees became scarce, they were equally quick to comprehend the nature of a futures contract, paying for this year’s purchases with the next year’s product—which they then browbeat their tenants to scour the forests in search of. The difference between them and the Conqueror was that when Kamehameha saw the resource declining, he used his superior intellect to protect it, placing young trees under
kapu
. Some chiefs, on the contrary, when sandalwood was hard to find, actually ordered their jungle burned, with woodcutters commanded to follow their noses to the burning sandalwood trees and extinguish the fire before the valuable inner wood could be damaged—a ravenous act that hastened the disappearance of sandalwood by incinerating the saplings and seedlings.

The standard unit of measure for sandalwood was the
picul
, the equivalent of 133
¹
/
₃
pounds, worth an average of ten dollars but varying from three to fifteen dollars depending on its quality. Within three years of the Conqueror’s death, just one trading company had chiefs in their debt up to 23,000
piculs
of product—a debt that they could not just repudiate because they knew exactly how powerful these new people were, and if they exacted their revenge, or even if they just stopped coming, all that remained was the old life, and now they had seen better: Possessions came with worry.

Before he died the Conqueror expressed his desire that the line of future kings stem from one of his sons by his sacred wife, united with one of his daughters by his sixth wife, who was Ka‘ahumanu’s sister.
29
The plan was given effect when Liholiho married his half sister Kamamalu, and then for good measure also married her sister Kina‘u, both young women who rivaled their aunt in size, with Kamamalu by one account towering some six feet seven inches tall.
30
The new king hosted a lavish three-week luau to celebrate his accession and recognize Kamehameha Day. A large number of foreigners attended, and it was his half sister, Queen Kamamalu, who presided, dressed in Western satin and lace, personifying both the generosity of the culture and the relaxed etiquette of the luau: “She personally saw that none of the company was in any degree neglected; and extended her kindness even to those who had no claim to special civility. For instance, seeing a crowd of American seamen … she immediately gave orders to have refreshments served to them.”
31
The coup that toppled
kapu
was now all but complete, and this was the face of the culture that American sailors saw when their ships anchored: festive hospitality, the bounty of nature readily shared, the chiefs supported by the labor of an enormous, imposed-upon but apathetic class of serfs. Only at the core of it now lay a spiritual vacuum.

*   *   *

During all these events the brig
Thaddeus
heaved southward on the rolling seas of the Atlantic. Conditions on board the little vessel were claustrophobic: “Chests, trunks, bundles, bags, &c., were piled into our little room six feet square,” wrote Lucy Thurston, “until no place was left on the floor for the sole of one’s feet.… With such narrow limits, and such confined air, it might well be compared to a dungeon.” And in this tiny cabin she was confined for her first two days and nights with seasickness.
32
January 26, three months and a week into the voyage, found the
Thaddeus
attempting to enter the Straits of Magellan, and the missionaries discovered the legendary terrors of rounding Cape Horn. Lucia Ruggles (sister of Samuel, who would marry Dr. Thomas Holman) committed to her journal, “The wind having turned against us, we were driven off and on for 12 hours, in no small danger of being dashed against the rocks.”

“Suffer much from the cold,” she added six days into the ordeal, “there being no fire in the cabin, nor are we allowed a foot stove in the cabin as the Magazine is under us.… It is more than 3 months since I have seen a fire.”

They exited the Straits a week later: “Last night, the winds began to blow and the seas to roll, as we had never before witnessed; so that the two conflicting powers seemed to agitate the ocean to its very foundations. Our vessel labored excessively, the seas constantly breaking over, threatened every moment to overpower her. I think I never so much realized the weakness of man, and the
power
of the Almighty.”

Once safely through to the Pacific, the terrors abated and they rolled before favorable trade winds for a month, and then discovered the reason for the ocean’s name. “A calm of 6 or 7 days has detained us here in the most sultry region of the globe,” she bemoaned on March 11. “The hot and scorching rays of the sun are almost insupportable. We hoped to be at or near Owhyhee before this time, but the Lord would have it otherwise, and for wise reasons, no doubt.” Six of the men ventured to go swimming that day, were in the water for some twenty minutes, and had just returned aboard when a ten-foot blue shark was hauled out of the water, which was found, when gutted, to have been following the vessel devouring table scraps.

Thankful for their escape, they continued until finally, on March 30, 1820, “the long wished for Owhyhee is in full view on our left.” They could make out streams coursing down the flank of Mauna Loa. “The country before us is beautiful,” wrote Lucia Ruggles, “wearing the appearance of a cultivated place—with houses and huts, and plantations of sugar cane and Tarrow.” After 160 days at sea, the missionaries were awash with gratitude, their native Hawaiian converts overjoyed. At nine in the morning a boat was sent ashore to discover whether they would be received.

At four in the afternoon the boat returned, “with news of King Kamehameha’s death; that the worship of Idolatry and other heathenish customs are entirely abolished. Such glad news we were not prepared to receive. Truly the Lord hath gone before us in mercy.”
33

4.
Abhorring a Vacuum

The
Thaddeus
skirted the Big Island before dropping anchor at Kailua, and a deputation rowed ashore to announce their business. As usual, Kamehameha II was loath to commit himself to anything more than a spree. He declined to give the newcomers an audience for days, and when he did the meetings were inconclusive. Eventually he gave his consent that the missionaries could stay there in Kailua, provisionally, for a year. With a little more persuasion he consented to their starting a mission in Honolulu, and to run an errand north to Kaua‘i to take Prince George home to his father. (Lucy Thurston believed they would not have been permitted to stay, except that the presence of the women proved the men’s benign intent.
1
) Between the king’s stipulations and the casting of ballots, the Kailua mission would consist of the Thurstons, Dr. Holman, and Hopu and Kanui. With the Binghams disembarked at Honolulu on April 14, the Ruggleses and the Whitneys sailed on to Kaua‘i, where an ecstatic Kaumuali‘i greeted his son and insisted that they stay and open a mission at Waimea. Kalanimoku, who had stayed on at the change of reigns as prime minister, and who now was even more important for having married the widowed Keopuolani, claimed Elisha and Maria Loomis for himself, to reside at Kawaihae. Although he was a printer by trade, Loomis had studied at the preparatory mission school enough to impart Calvinism’s central elements to the prime minister.

The missionary effort was safest with Kalanimoku. He was more curious, sympathetic, and helpful than any others, and became the missionaries’ most valued friend. Ka‘ahumanu’s bearing was ambiguous. She was the one who caused the destruction of
kapu
, so naturally she was interested in whether the Americans brought a religion that could do better by her people. But she had also seen enough of Americans, with their sharp dealing and overbearing ways, to be cautious with any endorsement. Thus Bingham and the others courted her, and she was kind but noncommittal. What eventually turned her was Sybil Bingham’s nursing her through a dangerous illness, from which the queen regent emerged, to their perception, as the “new Ka‘ahumanu.”

The distracted king went on his rum-soaked way, dividing his time. To the traditional capitals of Kailua and Honolulu he now added Lahaina, on the leeward side of Maui, which was a favorite residence of his birth mother. As his reign lengthened and he shifted the royal household, with enormous disruption, among his islands, it became increasingly apparent that he was no Conqueror. Throughout his reign Kamehameha had built a fleet, by bargaining, by extortion, by cash purchase, and by compulsion of native labor. Liholiho, by contrast, became enamored of a fancy vessel built in Salem,
Cleopatra’s Barge
, and bought her on credit, which probably meant sandalwood futures. Meanwhile he lost his grip on the Conqueror’s sandalwood monopoly, which put him in financial straits. Hiram Bingham got a closer look at him when, on the spur of the moment, Liholiho boarded
Cleopatra’s Barge
and materialized, suddenly and unannounced, in Honolulu. Cannons thundered in salute as he passed Waikiki, and by the time he entered the harbor his criers were working the town, “demanding hogs, dogs, poi, etc., to be gathered for the reception of his majesty (who was in his cups).”

To the Americans the worst part of the cacophony was the yelping dogs, tied to poles for slaughter. The missionaries, while dependent at first upon the kindness of the
ali‘i
for their provisions, uniformly declined the offer of dogs, explaining that they were not part of their accustomed diet, but taking some chiding in return for their squeamishness.
2

“Calling on the king at evening,” wrote Bingham, “Mr. Thurston and myself” found Kamehameha II too drunk to talk. “We were struck, however, with the ingenuity of Kamamalu … who, in the dilemma, unexpectedly lifted the nerveless hand of her lord” to acknowledge their visit.
3
But with Kalanimoku’s help, the mission prospered. They passed a milestone on January 7, 1822, when their printing press went into operation. And the following April 15 they received a boost with the arrival of William Ellis, twenty-seven, a veteran of several years’ missionary effort in Tahiti and the Society Islands. Like the Americans, he was a Congregationalist, but he was British, part of that evangelizing effort that came out of England and preached seemingly everywhere in the Pacific except Hawai‘i. Ellis’s fluency in Tahitian made it easy for him to add the Hawaiian dialect to his portfolio of vocabularies in just a few weeks. He had intended only a short visit, but the Americans prevailed upon him to stay much longer.