Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii (6 page)

The split began over a sacrifice before the old man was even dead. In the thousand years since this isolated archipelago was first settled by voyagers from the Marquesas Islands, and in the perhaps four hundred years since the Tahitian conquerors arrived and subjugated the original settlers, the religious system developed around two concepts:
kapu
and
mana
. The common people were kept under control by the regimen of
kapu
, a complex list of foods, lands, and practices that were forbidden to defined classes of people.
Mana
was the source of spiritual power for the chiefs, and
mana
was gained somewhat by descent but more by killing one’s enemies in battle, sacrificing them to the gods, and/or having possession of their mortal remains—hence their reluctance to hand over more than a token of the bones of such a powerful man as Captain Cook.

Even though Kamehameha had become keeper of the war god, it was the king’s prerogative to make sacrifices to him, so that the
mana
of the victims would flow to him. When Kamehameha himself sacrificed a rebellious
ali‘i
to Kuka‘ilimoku and took that
mana
for himself, it was a serious challenge to the power of Kiwala‘o. Six months after the death of Kalaniopu‘u a sharp, brief war erupted; the death of Kiwala‘o at the Battle of Moku‘ohai in July 1782 left Kamehameha supreme ruler of three of the Big Islands’ six districts: Kona along the west coast, Kohala at the northern end, and Hamakua, southeast of there. Emboldened to seize his dream to conquer the entire island, Kamehameha opened a campaign against the Hilo district in the east, but suffered a blistering defeat and was forced to withdraw.

Then followed a series of conflicts with Keoua Kuahu‘ula, the younger half brother of the deceased Kiwala‘o, who had escaped that fatal battle to his own district of Kau on the southern point of the island. The two fought repeatedly, depleting land and people, with no decisive victory. In 1785 Kamehameha returned to his own stronghold at Kailua, midway up the Kona coast, regrouped, and married a new wife, Ka‘ahumanu, the teenage daughter of a Maui ally. With her he shared both an intense devotion and bitter combat for the rest of his life. By now Kamehameha had also gained control of two districts on Maui, but those chiefs rebelled in 1786 and maintained their freedom against an army that he sent under one of his brothers. The destructive stalemates continued for some four years before fate—and America—handed him a breakthrough.

*   *   *

Even as it was an American—marine corporal John Ledyard—who viewed Captain Cook as having a different impact on Hawai‘i than the one memorialized by his officers, so it was an American who, albeit unwittingly, gave Kamehameha the means to transform himself from only a partially successful war chief, who was defeated as often as he was victorious, into the Conqueror.

Capt. Simon Metcalfe was a Yorkshireman by birth but American by long residence and disposition—deputy surveyor of New York and a supporter of the colonial Americans’ revolution. Imprisoned by the British for a time in Montreal, and his Vermont property lost during the war, he settled his wife and younger children in Albany, and went to sea as a trader. At fifty-two, in 1787, he acquired a brig called the
Eleanora
and entered the Pacific fur trade, installing his son Thomas Humphrey Metcalfe as captain of the small schooner
Fair American
to sail and trade in concert with him. Two years later the two ships were ensnared in the trading dispute between Britain and Spain known as the “Nootka Crisis,” and became separated; the
Eleanora
managed to escape Spanish capture but the
Fair American
was taken briefly to Mexico.

Father and son had, it is believed, agreed in case they were separated to rendezvous on the west coast of Hawai‘i. January of 1790 found Simon Metcalfe’s
Eleonora
off the Kohala coast on the northwest of the Big Island, where Metcalfe received a local chief aboard his vessel. The nature of the incident is lost, but the chief did something to offend the captain. Brittle, severe, authoritarian, and ignorant of the station of the
ali‘i
, Metcalfe had the chief flogged with a rope’s end. It was Metcalfe’s bad luck that the headman he abused was Kame‘eiamoku, a high chief and cousin of Kamehameha’s mother, and one of the first chiefs to rally to the Conqueror in his campaign to rule the entirety of the Big Island. He remained one of Kamehameha’s most trusted advisers. Mortally insulted, he vowed to avenge himself on the next foreign vessel he encountered.

Oblivious, Metcalfe then sailed the
Eleanora
across the strait to Maui to trade. There one of his crewmen disappeared, along with a small boat, and he made sufficient inquiry to learn that it was not a desertion, that islanders had stolen the boat and killed the man. As an American on a far frontier, Metcalfe behaved just like later Americans on the Western frontier, arrogating to himself the roles of judge, jury, and executioner, and he determined upon massive retaliation to teach the natives a lesson. Learning that those who stole his boat were from Olowalu, about four miles south of Maui’s main settlement of Lahaina, Metcalfe sailed there and indicated his eagerness to trade. No canoe, however, might approach his port side; all the transacting would be done to starboard. The
Eleanora
carried seven guns below the main deck, all of which were moved to the starboard side and loaded with small shrapnel. As the swarm of canoes gathered, the gunports were opened and a broadside fired into the canoes only a few feet away. At least one hundred Hawaiians were killed and countless more wounded.

The place where he massacred the natives, Olowalu, was a
pu‘u honua
, a “city of refuge.” In Hawaiian culture, common persons be they born ever so low, if they violated a
kapu
and if they reached a city of refuge before they could be apprehended and killed, could be ritually cleansed and returned to their lives without fear of further molestation. For Metcalfe to kill people there, aside from mass murder, was an unspeakable sacrilege.

Ignorant of the Olowalu massacre and unaware of the near presence of his father, whom he was searching for, Thomas Metcalfe in the
Fair American
called on the Kohala coast—the domain of Kame‘eiamoku. That chief and several men came aboard under the guise of trading; one account had the high chief himself presenting Metcalfe with a feather helmet. Metcalfe was in the act of setting it upon his head when Kame‘eiamoku seized him and pitched him overboard, his men doing the same with the remainder of the crew. As they floundered in the water, more warriors in canoes beat them to death with paddles. The lone survivor, a Welshman named Isaac Davis, was taken half dead into a canoe, and Kame‘eiamoku might have completed his vengeance on him, but for the intercession of another chief who cited Davis’s brave fighting and asked that he be spared. Davis, the
Fair American
, and its cannons were all presented to Kamehameha.

Sometime later Simon Metcalfe, unaware of the near presence of his schooner or death of his son, entered Kealakekua Bay to see what trading he might generate there. Aware that there were other foreigners residing in the west coast’s principal settlement, Metcalfe sent ashore his English boatswain, forty-eight-year-old John Young, to make contact. Kamehameha, fearful lest the new ship learn the fate of the recently captured schooner but not knowing of the relationship of the captains, detained Young ashore, and laid a
kapu
against any canoes going out to the
Eleanora
. He also, according to a native historian, leapt at the chance to dragoon these immensely capable foreigners into his service.
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Metcalfe waited, and then wrote a threatening letter to the foreign community ashore: “Sirs, As my Boatswain landed by your invitation if he is not returned to the Vessel consequences of an unpleasant nature must follow.… If your Word be the Law of Owhyhe as you have repeatedly told me there can be no difficulty in doing me justice in this Business, otherwise I am possessed of sufficient powers to take ample revenge which it is your duty to make the head Chief acquainted with.”
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The standoff continued for a few days before Metcalfe weighed anchor and sailed for China, leaving John Young behind. So far as is known, Metcalfe never learned of his son’s death or its circumstances, and he never returned to New York. (He was killed, ironically, four years later when Haida Indians in the Pacific Northwest boarded the
Eleanora
ostensibly to trade, suddenly realized their superior numbers, and massacred all the crew save one.) But it was Metcalfe’s visit to Hawai‘i that altered the course of those islands forever; it was his self-righteous bloodlust that handed John Young and Isaac Davis over to Kamehameha. That chief now had not only the cannons and muskets from the captured
Fair American
, he had two white sailors to teach his warriors how to use them. To Young and Davis he gave a choice: Serve him and be richly rewarded, or be put to death. The two Britons became close friends; they attempted an escape, once, and were thwarted, before accepting their fate. Both served Kamehameha ably and faithfully for many years, and were showered with land, power, and highborn wives.

*   *   *

In the eight years since Kalaniopu‘u died, word spread in the West of the existence of the islands, and other foreign ships began to arrive: the first traders in 1785, two British warships,
King George
and
Queen Charlotte
in 1786. In that same year the French explorer the Comte de Lapérouse, an admirer of Captain Cook, arrived with an expedition in the
Boussole
and the
Astrolabe
, before continuing on to disaster. The next year one of Kamehameha’s high chiefs, Ka‘iana, left for China aboard the
Nootka
and returned the next year from Oregon on the
Iphigenia
, the first Hawaiian to travel beyond his native shores.
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The
Imperial Eagle
brought the first (willing) white resident, John Mackay, in 1787. The next year the trading ships
Prince of Wales
and
Princess Royal
tarried for three months. In 1789 the first American trader, Capt. Robert Gray in the
Columbia
(the first American vessel to circumnavigate the earth), arrived to do business, the same year that a visiting Spanish captain recommended the islands’ seizure as a strategic outpost for that empire. Most of the American ships that called were in the fur trade, such as the brigantine
Hope
and the brig
Hancock
, which came in 1791. There were other fiercely independent chiefs in Hawai‘i, but Kamehameha, because his domain was the largest, and because of his fame and history with Captain Cook, was the most sought after. Always and ever he required one currency for his trade: weapons—cannons, muskets, powder, even ships. This condition was quickly seized upon by other traders, such as the American captain John Kendrick in the
Lady Washington
, with a whole cargo of guns and ammunition.

Kamehameha was quick to grasp the concept of money, and soon his storehouse contained a chest of coins, which was equally effective in trading for more armaments. And now he had Davis and Young to train his army, and they also had cannons mounted and lashed to large double-hulled canoes. Gaining in ambition, Kamehameha diverted his attention from the Big Island to trade invasions with Kahekili of Maui, who had watched his possible son grow in power. While Kamehameha failed to establish a permanent conquest of Maui at this time, he came away with a valuable possession. Thinking their cause lost and with Kahekili on the Big Island, the surviving royal family fled in canoes to Moloka‘i. There Kamehameha overtook them, strengthening his claims by marrying the highest-ranking girl in the islands, one whose
kapu
was almost equal to that of the gods themselves. Her name was Keopuolani, daughter of Kiwala‘o whom Kamehameha had sacrificed. The girl’s grandmother Kalola, exercising the Hawaiian woman’s wonted shrewdness, realized that the Conqueror after winning his battles would want to cement his rule by having children with the highest-ranking females he could acquire. Keopuolani was born so far above him that even he had to strip to the waist in her presence. But no one now could doubt his right to rule, or that of his children by her, who would also outrank him. She was still a girl of perhaps only twelve, and Kamehameha did not have sex with her for some years more, but she was a signal possession that ended any dispute over his lordship.

The year that Kalaniopu‘u died, Kahekili conquered O‘ahu and added that to his domain, building the House of Bones with the skeletons of O‘ahu
ali‘i
who had opposed him. Looking to his own defense, he also took to actively trading for Western weapons. He and Kamehameha fought to a stalemate: In a sea battle fought in the Maui Channel both the rival kings had cannons, but Kamehameha had Davis and Young to aim and fire his, and Kahekili’s fleet was decimated. But the king of Maui was more than a match on his own island, and the two withdrew to their own kingdoms to regroup and round up more warriors to pour into the fight.

If any natives doubted the new king’s
mana
, they were convinced in 1790, when Kamehameha attacked the district of Puna in the east to add it to his domain. While his back was turned the troublesome Keoua Kuahu‘ula invaded again. After conquering Puna, Kamehameha returned to suppress Keoua’s uprising. Aided with cannons and muskets from the
Fair American
(Keoua had also once captured firearms but was virtually helpless in how to use them) Kamehameha slowly gained the upper hand, and when Keoua retreated past Kilauea, that volcano erupted and about a third of his army perished in a cloud of poisonous gas.

This unexpected “miracle” was a sobering portent to victors as much as victims, and Kamehameha consulted with priests how to safeguard his power. He had always been devout in his observance of
kapu
, and always quick to testify that his success in war was attained by the gods’ favor. At the small
heiau
near his family compound in Halawa, “many people were burned on the adjoining hill for breaking the
kapus
.”
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