Morning of Fire

by Scott Ridley

  As Vancouver went among the Leeward Islands, he saw more devastation from the incessant warring. His sense of failure at Kamehameha’s rejection deepened, as did his desire to promote the mixed purposes of British dominion and peace. “Every hour,” he wrote, “produced some new intelligence, to convince me of the necessity of bringing, if it were possible, to an immediate conclusion, the ambitious pretentions of these sovereigns; being now decidedly of [the] opinion, that a continuation of such commotions [wars] would soon desolate these islands and render them incapable of affording those abundantand excellent supplies we had constantly derived, and without which the English traders would be ill qualified to maintain the commerce of north-west America.”

  There was no question in Vancouver’s mind that British control of the islands was essential to control of trade on the Northwest Coast. This was the vital resupply point for ships sailing between the East and the Americas. If peace could be established under a British flag, he mused, captive labor would be guaranteed and the resulting agriculture and supplies from the islands for ships would be “almost inexhaustible.”

  But wherever Vancouver went, he found men standing in his way who served under an American flag and worked for Kamehameha or Kahekili. At Hawaii, Vancouver and Menzies had met John Smith, a British sailor who had been left by an American ship and was now a chief like John Young. At Maui, they encountered an American who said he had been empowered by Kahekili to visit ships that arrived at the island “and to order them such supplies of wood, water, and refreshments, as they might have occasion for, without their commanders having the trouble of bartering with the natives.” This man also told Vancouver that Kahekili, although old and infirm, was on the way to meet him.

  Kahekili arrived on the afternoon of March 13, accompanied by several canoes and no special fanfare. He came boldly alongside the ship and climbed on board with an accustomed confidence. Several chiefs followed him and constantly attended him. Vancouver judged him to be well over sixty years old (he was in his eighties) and noted that he was emaciated, with scaly skin, indicating that he drank the narcotic awa excessively. Kahekili’s voice was faltering and he gave Vancouver several lean hogs, apologizing that his people were poor and their farms still devastated from the invasion by Kamehameha two years before in the Battle of the Dammed Waters of the Iao. In the brief occupation that followed, Kamehameha’s warriors had killed or captured a vast number of villagers, taken existing food stores andhogs, destroyed irrigation systems, and wasted fields that still had not recovered. Moreover, the warriors he kept ready on the island took up much of the food supply.

  Vancouver gave Kahekili and his men many presents, including a red robe similar to the one he had given Kamehameha. Kahekili seemed pleased and sent for his half-brother, Kaeo, who arrived the next afternoon from Molokai. Although Vancouver thought he recalled him as a young warrior, Kaeo appeared to be about fifty years old and suffering from the same scrofulous effects of drinking too much awa. To Vancouver’s surprise, Kaeo remembered him and said he had kept the lock of his hair that had been given to him as a gift. When shown the lock, which was carefully wrapped in cloth and decorated with feathers, Vancouver thought it resembled his own hair, but privately noted he did not recall granting the gift.

  In discussions with the two chiefs, Vancouver offered terms of peace he said were acceptable to Kamehameha, but they told him they had no faith in the integrity of the Hawaiians. If their warriors assembled at Maui for the protection of the Leeward Islands were to return home, the island would be left vulnerable “to the invasion of Kamehameha, whose unconquerably ambitious spirit would not allow him to neglect a favorable opportunity.” Kaeo challenged Vancouver on his sincerity in promoting peace. Vancouver answered that foreign traders were promoting war in order to increase demand for European weapons.

  Given Vancouver’s surveying and intent to take possession of the islands, Kaeo may have sensed that his arguments were naive or duplicitous. The causes of war were deep, and filled with a twisted history and emotion that could not be laid only at the feet of foreign traders, or easily negotiated away. Among the interrelated rulers, a belief in destiny, a desire to right old wrongs, and a hunger for power underlay the treachery and invasions. If Vancouver had looked deeply enough he would have seen the dynastic plotting and retributions of the ruling ali’i families. Kahekili was rumored to be Kamehameha’s father and Kaeo his uncle. Inamoo was said to be an uncle to Kaeo. Kaiana was said to be Kaeo’s slighted younger brother. Vancouver did convince Kahekili and Kaeo to send an emissary to John Young with a letter proposing peace. One of Kahekili’s fierce-looking tattooed warriors was chosen for the task of delivering it. He would be killed at Hawaii.

  In his own show of power, Vancouver demanded that the three or four warriors responsible for killing the men of the Daedalus be captured and executed. He wanted Kahekili’s chiefs to perform the execution alongside the ship and for everyone to be required to witness it. Vancouver wanted the islanders to understand that any individual who committed a similar crime would be hunted down “be the distance of time ever so great, so long as the offending parties had life, or the English continued to visit these islands.” Kahekili designated a chief to carry this out.

  Sailing on to Oahu, on March 19 the Discovery encountered James Coleman, one of Kendrick’s men, whom they had met the year before at Kauai. Like the American on Maui, Coleman claimed that Kahekili had given him power to regulate traffic and prevent any disturbance between the natives and the vessels that might visit Oahu. In keeping with his role, Coleman helped interrogate the three murder suspects brought aboard the Discovery at Waikiki. Although they protested their innocence, Vancouver’s tribunal convicted them. There was a long deliberation concerning how the men were to be killed. Kahekili’s chiefs wanted them taken offshore and drowned. Vancouver insisted the execution be carried out there in the harbor as an example to others. He assembled his armed men on the quarterdeck and ordered a double canoe brought to the gangway. Taking each bound prisoner down to the canoe, the chief executed him with a pistol.

  A few hours after the execution, Kalanikupule appeared. He was Kahekili’s son and regent of Oahu. Though he was only thirty-three years old, he too was ill, and had to be carried aboard in a chair. He confirmed the guilt of the three men. When Vancouver suggested terms of peace with Kamehameha to him, Kalanikupule answered with thesame mistrust of the Hawaiian chiefs as his father, causing Vancouver to despair that peace would ever be established.

  VANCOUVER APPROACHED HONOLULU HARBOR on March 23, a bay they had been told of by trading ship captains on the Northwest Coast. “In the evening observing an apparent inlet in the western side of the bay, we came to anchor before the entrance to it, and being informed while on the north-west cost of America by the masters of some of the trading vessels that a small snug harbor was situated in this side of the bay, boats were sent out early next morning to examine the passage in, but they found it so guarded by a reef a little distance from the shore that there was no access even for vessels of a small drought of water … The appearance of another opening was seen a little to the northward of this one, whose entrance might perhaps be more favorable, but the boats had not time to examine it, and were hoisted in …” This was Wai Momi, or Pearl Harbor, which would hold fateful significance for the British and Kendrick.

  During the seventy-mile passage from Oahu to Kauai, Vancouver encountered three double canoes and a large single one, about sixty feet long, carrying spears, two muskets, and arm and leg bones of men killed in what was described as an “insurrection” on Kauai ten days before (March 16). Several principal chiefs had been killed. The men were going back to report to Kaeo with a few prisoners.

  As they approached the island, Kendrick’s former first mate John Williams “and two other sailors came off to us from Puna.” Williams explained that the insurrection “was not so much against Kaeo or any of the present royal family, as against old Inamoo for his cruel and tyranic administrati
on from which it was intended to eject him and put the young king Kaumaulii in the regency during his father’s absence.” Inamoo had apparently suspected he was being poisoned and conducted “frequent private assassinations for the most frivolous reasons, even among chiefs, sparing neither rank nor sex.” Several of thoseinvolved were made prisoners, including one of Kaeo’s favorite wives, who was among the women being transported to Oahu.

  John Meares had considered Inamoo “a monster,” and he looked the part as he came out to the ship. He had grown feeble since the last visit, his “limbs no longer able to support his aged and venerable person,” and he too was emaciated, with his skin hanging loose. Like Kahekili, a “dry white scurf, or rather scales which overspread the whole surface of his body from head to foot, tended greatly to increase the miserable and deplorable appearance of his condition.” Vancouver presented him with a scarlet cloak and a complete set of armourer’s tools, but did not trust him.

  The British relationship with Kauai had long been tenuous. John Meares had fired on villagers at Kauai in 1787. James Colnett had done the same in 1788, winning for the British the concealed mistrust and enmity of Kaeo and Inamoo. Vancouver was aware of this, and during his last visit, he had been anxious about a suspected attack. In light of the insurrection and the number of muskets in the hands of the natives, William Brown was also afraid to land there.

  Vancouver believed the insurrection was caused by Americans advising Inamoo, and he later heard from Brown a long stream of allegations concerning the Americans. Brown wanted Vancouver to remove all foreigners from the island. Although Vancouver now regarded Kendrick as the leader of a “banditti of renegadoes,” he was in no position to seize Kendrick’s men, or have them and other American advisers banished. For all he had heard of the brazen American captain, he was yet to even glimpse Kendrick, who was at this time hundreds of miles to the north, following the Black Current to the American coast.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  A Rising Tide

  Northwest Coast

  MAY–SEPTEMBER 1793

  BREAKERS WERE ROLLING IN on the point south of Nootka, with whitewater combing the rocky beach all the way to the entrance. It was nearly two years since Kendrick had entered Nootka Sound. He had missed the skirmishing of last summer between traders and natives, but was about to find tensions had intensified, and the tribes were fractured.

  From the cannon battery on the crest of Hog Island, the gunners could see the Lady Washington preparing to enter the sound and sent word to Salvador Fidalgo, the latest in a series of Spanish officers to command the port. During the rainy winter, Fidalgo had increased the strength of the battery to eleven nine-pound cannons and reinforced Fort San Miguel at the mouth of the cove. As the Washington came abreast of the forts, Kendrick fired a salute. The Spanish gunners answered. There were no orders shouted through a speaking trumpet this time. Perhaps hoping for the festive atmosphere that prevailed under Quadra, Kendrick put out a boat to tow the Washington into Friendly Cove.

  From the mouth of the cove, he could see that much had changed. The Spanish outpost onshore had become a crude frontier village. Tall fir trees were cleared back from the shore and on the high bank where Mowachaht houses had stood the two-story commandant’s house sat surrounded by a hospital, barracks, several storehouses, blockhouses, a blacksmith shop, a bakery, and other rough dwellings. Chickens roamed the beach and the yards. In the middle of the village stood a tall wooden cross surrounded by extensive gardens fenced with stick palings. Kendrick might have looked at the nearly deserted house frames of Yuquot remaining farther along the bank and remembered the first desolate winter in 1788 when only a few Mowachaht people were there, and how Estevan Martinez had erected the first temporary fort and outbuildings. Inside the cove, the San Carlos lay at anchor, and smoke rose from the bakery at the edge of the beach below the commandant’s house.

  KENDRICK HAD MISSED MEETING VANCOUVER by several days. The Discovery had arrived on May 20 and found that Quadra was not there. Fidalgo told Vancouver that the mail on the San Carlos had letters from Quadra and viceroy Revillagigedo, but nothing for him from London. Frustrated by the lack of new instructions and eager to pursue discovery of the Straits of Admiral de Fonte, Vancouver departed for the north after only three days.

  With Quadra gone, Fidalgo was facing challenges on all fronts. The viceroy in Mexico City had sent orders to warn off all ships that were not British or Spanish. While considered a prudent measure in distant viceregal offices, the order was not practical out here in the wilderness. Having armed foreign ships in the harbor provided a sense of comfort against the hostility of the Mowachaht. In Kendrick’s case, however, the situation was different. His ties with Maquinna, Wickaninish, Claquakinnah, and other chiefs made him a formidable enemy. He dressed in part like the natives when among them, spoke their language fluently, and supplied them with arms. Yet he could not beeasily warned off. Quadra had acknowledged the American captain’s ownership of extensive lands surrounding the Spanish fort, and Kendrick’s power was also magnified by a chill that gripped relations with Maquinna after Quadra left.

  Fidalgo deeply mistrusted all Mowachaht. Like the British and many of his own officers, he believed that Quadra was too good to the natives. Fidalgo’s friend and first pilot, Antonio Serantes, had been killed at Neah Bay, his body stripped and left in the bushes near the Spanish fort there. Fidalgo responded by firing on two canoes of the southern chief Tatooch, killing seven or eight people. His hatred and suspicion had grown to the point that when Maquinna arrived to welcome Fidalgo to the commandant’s house, Fidalgo refused to allow him to enter, and ordered that all natives be kept at a distance and under close observation. The change in treatment was a stinging insult to the Mowachaht chief, who had set aside Callicum’s death and other injuries to his tribe and enjoyed a constant place of honor at Quadra’s table.

  Bad blood between Maquinna and Fidalgo fed an unrest that was already mounting among the tribes. Given the steady onslaught of European transgressions and murders, the native people were no longer content to ask the Spanish when they were leaving. Wickaninish, Hanna, and Tatooch wanted to undertake raids and destroy the Spanish settlement. In the late summer of 1792, Maquinna was believed to have been in discussions with the three chiefs about attacking the Spanish outposts and foreign trading ships. Perhaps at some personal cost, he succeeded in holding them back. His turning point was coming though.

  When Maquinna was questioned, in September 1792, about the killing of a Spanish cabin boy, he resented being treated like an enemy. Quadra was still there at the time, and Maquinna angrily told him: “You would be the first whose life would be in great danger if we were enemies. You well know that Wickaninish has many guns as well as powder and shot; that Captain Hanna [Cleaskinah, the chief at the mouth of Clayoquot] has more than a few, and that they as well as the Nuchimanes [the tribe on the eastern side of Vancouver Island], are my relatives and allies, all of whom united make up a number incomparably greater than the Spanish, English, and Americans together, so that they would not be afraid to enter combat.” The Spanish fort at Neah Bay was abandoned later that month, and Nootka was again made the focus of Spanish efforts. By early 1793, eight months after Maquinnah had made his threat to Quadra, the possibility of some type of armed conflict was very real.

  Kendrick had no idea what he was walking into when he anchored in Friendly Cove. He went ashore, taking Howell with him as his translator. Fidalgo realized that this unpredictable ally of the Mowachaht was most likely bringing them more arms and powder. He attempted to take control of the situation, and the challenge grew starker. When he told Kendrick he was under orders to warn off the Washington from Nootka Sound, Kendrick amplified Maquinna’s threat, telling Fidalgo he “would raise the Indians and drive them from their settlements” if the Spanish gave him any trouble. He left the commandant’s house with that line in the sand.

  Lying in the cove, in addition to the San Carlos, there was an American brig
in terrible shape at anchor—the Amelia out of Providence—whose entire crew except for the captain and supercargo were recovering from severe cases of scurvy. Perhaps after seeing to the Amelia, Kendrick quickly left the cove for the site of his old outpost at Mawina, or Safe Harbor Retreat. It was more of a refuge than he might have thought. Awaiting him was a surprise that would soften the rising tensions for a few weeks.

  A NINETY-TON SCHOONER, the Resolution, lay in the protected harbor flying American colors. Kendrick didn’t know this vessel, but to his great amazement recognized the twenty-two-year-old second mate who came out to greet him—his son Solomon Kendrick.

  It had been four years since the Columbia sailed from Clayoquot,taking Solomon and word of the seizure of the Argonaut to Macao. The blur of events since then seemed a lifetime. Although Kendrick had written home intermittently, it took six months for a letter to travel between Macao and Boston, and letters offered only a glimpse of the arduous twists of the long adventure. The curios and Chinese goods Kendrick sent homeward aboard Boston-bound ships yielded no hint of the trials he had faced, and little of the dream he was pursuing. Solomon’s presence provided a sense of how far that inward journey had been. If there were tears in the weathered captain’s eyes when he left his son John for duty with Estevan Martinez, there must have been more now.