Beyond Hawai'i

by Gregory Rosenthal

  Hawaiian experiences of Alta California were not wholly defined by work. These men also engaged in consumption and leisure. In their bread oven, the “Kanaka Hotel” or “Oahu Coffee-house,” as Dana liked to call it, the Hawaiian men played cards, drank, smoked—doing “anything we’re a mind to,” as Mr. Mannini stated. When not working, the community lived off of one cow per week and sent one man to town each day to purchase “fruit, liquor, and provisions.” Indeed, Hawaiians in San Diego often put their wages back into the local economy through purchases at local businesses. Records from hide and tallow trader Henry Delano Fitch reveal at least five Hawaiians doing business at his San Diego store during the years between 1838 and 1843. One man, Namahana, sold fifty-one cattle hides to Fitch in exchange for cash and to pay off his prison debt. Another exchanged two hides for some rope. Jack Canaca, Bill Canaca, and another simply named “Canaca” exchanged labor for cash and material goods such as clothing, shoes, and tobacco. The money necessary for sustaining this way of life only lasted for so long, and it was only seasonal. Eventually, poverty pushed these men to sign contracts with foreign employers and, at least temporarily, give up their domestic way of life.11

  Just off the coast of Alta California, Hawaiian migrants also worked on California’s Channel Islands in the 1830s. If the coast was devoted to the cattle industry, then the offshore islands became the last stand in a nearly century-long battle with sea otters. Indigenous labor from Russian Alaska (mostly Aleuts) had dominated the extraction of sea otter furs from the California coast for much of the early nineteenth century, but in the 1830s American trans-Pacific merchants increasingly turned to Hawaiian labor. In 1835 worlds of cattle and sea otters collided as the African-American steward of the brig Pilgrim—the cattle hide-collecting ship that Richard Henry Dana, Jr. had served on—deserted and took to hunting sea otters along the coast and Channel Islands. Allen Light (or Black Steward, as he was called) hired kanaka labor to assist in the hunt. They were employed mostly as swimmers. For example, on Santa Rosa Island, American marksmen stood on shore and shot at rafts of sea otters; then Hawaiians were tasked with swimming out to retrieve the corpses. This was a new way of procuring furs. Indigenous hunters from Kodiak Island and the Aleutian Islands in Russian Alaska hunted on kayaks with harpoons. No swimming was necessary. Only when Euro-American and African-American hunters, more accustomed to shooting fur-bearing mammals in the forests of North America, came to Alta California were the so-called amphibious Hawaiians necessary to perform the maritime aspects of the hunt. Hawaiian sea otter hunters worked for wages, generally ten to twenty dollars per month, and traveled with and lived with the American hunters. The sea otter hunter George Nidever, for example, explained that he hired “a Kanaka Indian [a Hawaiian], employed to swim out for the otter killed; at $16 a month.”12

  There were other Hawaiians in San Diego. Hawaiian migrants not only lived in bread ovens on the beach and hunted sea otters in the islands, but some also interacted intimately with the Spanish missions, including the Catholic mission in San Diego. Church records—namely marriage, baptism, and death notices—reveal evidence of Hawaiian migrants living up and down the California coast. At least twenty Hawaiians interacted with the missions between 1815 and 1846. Of these, fifteen were male, five female. Ten were listed as Canaca (using a common Spanish spelling), another listed as Yndio, or Indian, and others were not listed by ethnicity, although the priests described three of them as having mixed Hawaiian/white ancestry (what Hawaiians call hapa haole). Mission data also notes that the majority of Hawaiian converts in Mexican California were under the age of thirty: two were in their twenties, five in their teens, and three under the age of ten.13

  Yet another group of Hawaiians came to Mexican California in 1839. In that year, Johann (John) Sutter of Switzerland came to California with ten Hawaiian laborers in tow. Together they founded a colony on the banks of the Sacramento River called “New Helvetia.” These ten Hawaiians—eight men and two women—were paid ten dollars a month, hired on three-year contracts. Their task was to domesticate the land, and they did so first by building grass huts in the model of traditional Hawaiian hale, then by helping build “the crude nucleus of Sutter’s Fort” and practicing agriculture alongside Native California Indians. Some historians even contend that Sutter had a romantic affair with one of his female Hawaiian workers, Manuiki (Manaiki, Manniki). There is no doubt that Hawaiian migrant workers were essential to the founding of this settlement that would later become the city of Sacramento.14

  Sutter’s letters reveal more about his relationships with Hawaiian workers, including Manuiki. The earliest such letter, written by Sutter in January 1844, provides instructions to a friend that “In the Case I should be killed You will see that Manniki receive well her wages comming to her untill the last day of her being in the Establishment.” A year later, Sutter wrote from afar, instructing that the lock on Manuiki’s bedroom door be repaired. Kanaka Harry, Sutter noted, “knows where the keys are.” He did not mention that Harry and Manuiki were, as some historians suggest, a couple, and that Sutter was using his power as boss to take advantage of them. With his own wife and kids back in Europe, perhaps Sutter (and also Manuiki) felt free to engage in polyamory without guilt on this distant frontier.15

  FIGURE 15. Joseph W. Revere, Sutter’s Fort—New Helvetia, c. 1846. From Joseph W. Revere, A Tour of Duty in California; including a Description of the Gold Region . . . (New York: C. S. Francis & Co., 1849). Courtesy, Special Collections, The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Arlington, Texas.

  Hawaiians engaged in various labor at Sutter’s fort. One worker, Kukui, must “deliver every evening the Keys, he have also to look out that the 2 Soldiers do their Duty on the Night Garde.” Makaena, on the other hand, “need very bad one plough for a couple of days to plough his field.” Even Manuiki labored. As Sutter explained, “Every Year Manuiki make a Garden of her own to plant Melons etc. Please let her choice a piece where she likes in the Garden she have allways the best and largest Melons and Watermelons.” In this same letter, Sutter explained that the worker Makaena is “to raise 25 or 30 good Christian Indians near San Jose or more, and come up to you so quick as he possibly can to assist you to protect the fort.” From agriculture to soldiering to everyday maintenance of the fort to the recruitment of Indians from the countryside, these ten Hawaiians hired and brought to California by John Sutter provided him with the necessary labor to accumulate wealth and power on the Mexican frontier.16

  TABLE 4 Census data for San Francisco, June 1847

  By 1840, there were as many as 380 foreigners living in Mexican Alta California. One in ten were likely Hawaiian.17 The Hawaiian population of Yerba Buena—the future city of San Francisco—was even more striking. By 1847, about one in ten persons in that city, foreign or otherwise, were Hawaiian. Forty Hawaiians were reported working the ports of San Francisco Bay in 1847. Elsewhere, it should be noted, Hawaiians traveled in and out of Mexican port cities, not just Yerba Buena but also San Blas, Mazatlán, and Acapulco. On the eve of the California Gold Rush, perhaps as many as one hundred Hawaiians were living and working up and down the coasts of Mexico, the great majority in California, and the great majority of them in San Francisco.18

  The Hawaiians of San Francisco present a fascinating case study of migrant workers’ diverse experiences within the Hawaiian Pacific World. Their labor—even their names—is well documented in the historical record. San Francisco’s first census, conducted in 1847 amidst the Mexican-American War, noted at least forty Hawaiians living in the city. They constituted 8.7 percent of San Francisco’s growing population. As a percentage of the city’s male population, Hawaiian men represented an even greater share: over 12 percent.

  “The Indians, Sandwich Islanders and negroes, who compose nearly one-fifth of the whole population of the town, are mostly employed as servants and porters,” the census reported. More specifically, “the Sandwich Islanders are usually employed as boatmen in navigating the
bay, and they are said to be very serviceable in the business. Some few of the Sandwich Islanders read, and two or three can both read and write their own language.”19 These men were highly visible and well-known members of the community, if not well liked. Visiting soldier K.H. Dimmick, helping to occupy Yerba Buena for the United States during the Mexican-American War, wrote in August 1847 that “there is another people here from the Sandwich Islands called Kanakas, which I do not trouble myself to learn their alphabet, They are a puny and less intelligible race than the negroes at home And of Dirty-filthy beings I must say that all of the inhabitants are about alike[.] Even dogs and animals killed in the streets lay in front of the dwellings and there putrefy and not without every being removed So assostomed are they to filth that they deem it not offensive.” Meanwhile, a Protestant “sabbath school” was established in Yerba Buena that same summer, and the enrollees “included a promising class of kanakas.” It “was to meet every Sunday forenoon at the alcalde’s office.” Thus, while some saw the city’s Hawaiians as savage, others recognized them as Christian and civilized.20

  Hawaiian labor was in great demand throughout the city. Even the alcalde (the mayor) of Yerba Buena, who hosted the Protestant Sabbath school, hired kanakas to work for him. A receipt from February 1847 noted frequent payments of one dollar for “labour of 1 Canaca” or “1 Canacas labour” throughout the first two months of 1847. To acquire Hawaiian workers, the alcalde turned to William A. Leidesdorff, an Afro-Caribbean entrepreneur and labor contractor in Yerba Buena. Leidesdorff exerted near monopoly control over Hawaiian workers in this city, contracting over twenty of the estimated forty Hawaiian men and women living and working in San Francisco on the eve of the Gold Rush.21

  Glimpses of workers’ lives—and their personalities—can be found in Leidesdorff’s payroll books and other business accounts. For example, there was “Capt Johnney ‘Canaca’” and his wife “Canaca Johney Wina.” They both worked for Leidesdorff in 1846 and 1847; they both fell deeply into debt. Leidesdorff was not a forgiving employer: when one of Captain Johnney’s friends died in San Francisco, Leidesdorff docked him pay for having “lost ½ day burying a Canaka.” Johney Wina also had her pay docked when, in October 1847, she went off with “Canaka Joe Ham” and others, playing hooky from work, and they ended up losing (presumably sinking) one of Leidesdorff’s anchors. The Hawaiian “John Russel” also participated in that misadventure, and he was charged four dollars for his “share on Ankor lost.” He and Joe Ham were also charged forty cents each for “1 day lost going with Johney wine.” Meanwhile, Capt Johnney lost “½ day being drunk,” once in May, then twice in September just before the anchor incident.22

  There were others. “Harry Oahu” bought tobacco, wine, and grog with the cash advance Leidesdorff forwarded him upon recruitment. We know more about this specific moment of labor recruitment from Leidesdorff’s records, including a copy of the contract that Harry Oahu, Joe Ham, and another Hawaiian named “Ben” signed on November 1, 1847. Their contract read in part: “This is to certify that we the undersigned do hereby agree to serve Capt Leidesdorff in Launches or on Shore for and in consideration of the sum of $15 pr month as follows Joe Ham 2 months, Ben 1 month. Harry Oahu 1 month and agreeing to this do make our marks herewith.” Three Xs next to their names indicated the Hawaiian men’s consent to these terms.23

  There was also “Johnny Lewis,” advanced two bottles of Mexican aguardiente (brandy) when he signed up for work in 1847. There was also the worker “Thomas Edwards,” given a bottle of champagne in exchange for his labor on New Year’s Day, 1848. Shortly after enjoying his champagne, he became sick “& remained sick 2 days & 2 weeks in the calobeza,” the jail. By spring he was out and back on the streets, working for Leidesdorff wearing a beaver hat and perhaps playing “fiddle-strings,” all of which he bought from his boss in exchange for his labor. There were other Hawaiians who signed up, too: “Jack,” “Johney Lili,” and “Jim.” Jim’s Hawaiian name was Kinokolo or Kimokolo. Shipping papers indicate his agreement “to serve Capt. Leidesdorff in the Steamboat or in Launches, or on shore for the Term of four months to commence from date, for and in consideration of the sum of twelve dollars ($12) pr month.” Another Hawaiian, simply named “Canaka Boy,” presumably just a young man, was charged three dollars for “losing 3 days from being sick by drunkness” in June 1847. Ominously, John Russel, one of the anchor-losing hooligans, was charged four dollars for “damage done to the dark eyed maid” in August 1847.24

  In addition to Leidesdorff’s retinue of Hawaiian wage workers, there was also a small class of Hawaiian landowners in early San Francisco. Their presence disturbs the narrative that all Hawaiian migrants who came to North America sold their labor. Some, in fact—though a very small minority—had acquired land. Their names are recorded in at least two places: in Hubert Howe Bancroft’s 1886–1888 History of California, and in an 1873 advertisement published in the Hawaiian-language newspaper Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, which informed “friends with the blood relatives of Jack Hina, Pika Paele, Kale Puaanui, Kaupalewai, Keoni Kiwini and Keoni Parani, Keoni Panana, you should come to my office, and talk with me, then, hear of some benefits belonging to you.”25

  The aforementioned men were landowners in 1847. When the Gold Rush hit the following year, they all lost their land, a dispossession that mirrored that of the Mexican Californios who also lost their land in the wake of U.S. occupation, but also mirroring the simultaneous Māhele in Hawaiʻi that dispossessed the makaʻāinana from their ancestral lands.26 Hawaiian landowners’ experiences of dispossession in California are largely unknown, except in the case of one couple, Jack and Mary Hina. A bevy of documents in both English- and Hawaiian-language newspapers from the 1850s through the 1870s record the Hinas’ struggle to hold onto their property in the wake of U.S. colonization. Jack Hina died in either 1850 or 1852. He was survived by his wife, Mary Hina, who fought in American courts to hold onto her husband’s land. We know that she lost her legal battle and that the land was taken away from her in the early 1850s. One account suggests that she moved to El Dorado County, in the heart of Gold Country, where a large Hawaiian community was then forming in the foothills. That Hawaiian land claims in California remained unsettled for decades is clear by the 1873 newspaper advertisement that announced “benefits” to the Hawaiian descendants of these men and women who had owned land in Mexican California in the years prior to U.S. occupation.27

  From cattle skinning to otter hunting to maritime and domestic labor on the shores of San Francisco bay, Hawaiian men and women proved themselves essential to Mexican California’s coastal economy in the first half of the nineteenth century. Their stories, however, were quickly forgotten as workers awoke in 1848 to a new golden dawn.

  GOING FOR GOLD

  Henry Nahoa was likely just ten years old when he came to California. The year was 1850. Two years prior the Hawaiian-language newspaper Ka Elele Hawaii had warned that “[we] think the people to come [to California will be] 20,000 just before January, and another one year soon [will be] 50,000. The majority will come needy.” Hawaiians did leave for California, but never in those numbers. The English-language newspaper The Polynesian estimated in early 1849 that the entire Hawaiian population stood at 80,641. With rampant disease and emigration, The Polynesian predicted that in just one year, by 1850, the population would likely be reduced by six thousand. The population had been in free fall since the arrival of Captain Cook in 1778. From an estimated precontact population of nearly half a million, the first missionary census in 1831 recorded only 130,313 Hawaiians. In 1849, with the Native population at a low of 80,000 people, The Polynesian estimated that in fifty years only 1,070 Hawaiians would remain. Fears of accelerated demographic collapse even compelled the mōʻī, Kauikeaouli, to declare a day of “fasting, humiliation, and prayer to Almighty God” in early December 1848. It was in this context that hundreds of Hawaiians, including boys like Nahoa, left Hawaiʻi to follow their dreams in California.28

  H
awaiʻi’s Christian missionaries, including those who ran the newspaper Ka Elele, were having none of it. Ka Elele’s editors saw the Gold Rush as a rush into sin. “Yet very great are the problems there [in California],” they editorialized in August 1848. “Here is a problem, famine; no food, the cost of food is very burdensome. Very long [time] for one to obtain food[.] Here is another problem, the disease; disease is abundant, and death is also abundant. Here is another; great is the rum drink, and the rioting; no Laws, nothing to protect him; no Sabbath; a truly very sinful/wicked place.” The newspaper warned its Hawaiian readers not to descend into Californian chaos. “The thoughts of some kanaka to sail there are afloat. Because of ignorance! Go; live [there]; the [things] going on there are not pono. We will soon see, the people going there, will be forgotten.” Even the Euro-American judge William Little Lee, who oversaw the Kingdom’s Māhele, agreed that “the state of morals” in California was “horrible. What else could we expect in a land where no God but Mammon is worshipped?”29

  But leave for California they did. Those Hawaiians already in the state gravitated to the gold diggings along the American River. From Oregon, as many as one-third of the one hundred and fifty Hawaiian employees of the British Hudson’s Bay Company deserted for the gold mines. Hawaiian seamen on American whalers deserted at San Francisco and made their way inland toward Sutter’s settlement where Hawaiians had already been employed for years. As U.S. soldier K.H. Dimmick reported in September 1848, “People in great numbers are daily arriving here from the Sandwich Islands and other places and hardly a ship comes into port but that they loose a large portion of their Sailors.” There was even a plan afoot in Honolulu to organize a “Royal Kanaka Co.”—consisting of “30 or 40 Kanakas”—to send to California to earn profits on behalf of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi and its aliʻi and haole ministers. “Everything faces California,” wrote Lee from Honolulu; “hundreds of our best men have gone there to dig gold and die.”30