They were driven, flushed out of their homelands, some were losers in war, some were victims
of famine, or injustice, or both. For whatever reason, now they were fleeing their island
home, now they were exiles. In the silence of sacred groves, living trees were felled
for the hulls of their canoes. These were the people of the canoes, and they regarded
a canoe as a living thing. Sails were fashioned from strips of pandanus leaves, ropes of
coconut husks were the lashings. Storage gourds of fresh water were oiled against salt air,
and cuttings of yam, cane, taro, breadfruit, and banana were sealed from the ravages of
seawater. Now, they must find a new home in the unknown. Some twelve, thirteen hundred
years ago, refugees like these from Polynesian islands spread piecemeal over the South Pacific,
without compass, without charts, began sailing northward. One can only guess at how many
canoes were swallowed up, squalls, tempests. But those who survived discovered a chain
of uninhabited islands that since have been named everything from the Sandwich Islands
to Little Java. We know this island chain today as simply Hawaii.
Paradise. A much overused description of the Hawaiian islands.
But for those early exiles who built a new life here, that's what it was. A pristine
but practical paradise. Rich lava soil. Abundant rainfall. Ideal climate, disease free, virtually
pest free, and exuding a kind of magic that they called mana. The essence of all creation,
a circuit to the source, a bristling divine energy. That magic still permeates Hawaii,
though those early Polynesian pioneers might not recognize it as mana. That energetic drive
to build, to create, to live life to the fullest still crackles.
As this island chain grew, literally increasing in size by buildups of lava from volcanic
eruptions, there grew a human history. An intensely human story chanted by kahunas and
recorded on stone by the ancients. A story reflected in the forest ponds in Maui and
from glass and steel high rises in Oahu. On the big island Hawaii, a story prefaced in
a valley of volcanic desolation, footnoted in the rock strata of Kauai's Waimea Canyon,
punctuated by the sheer cliffs of Molokai and underscored by catamarans, cruise ships,
airships, and gracefully retold in the gestures of the Hora. This then is that story.
Where story's beginning takes us southward, downward, deep down, far south of the equator,
in ocean covering half the earth's surface, is a far-flung scattering of islands, the
underbelly of Polynesia. They were settled by a Stone Age people from Asia who built
great canoes, double-hulled seaworthies up to 80 feet in length that held 20 to 40 people.
These migrating Polynesians were skilled and daring navigators. In waves, they set on long,
incredibly dangerous migration voyages to other shores. Size was important to them.
Only the biggest and strongest could man a canoe. As odd as it may seem to us, in an
age obsessed with weight loss, body fat was prized. In a voyage of thousands of miles
in an open canoe on the open sea, body fat is protection from the numbing winds and a
reserve to draw upon when food runs out. When the pharaohs were building their pyramids,
these driven voyagers began reaching their other shores. First the Marianas, then New
Caledonia. Now the other shore was Tonga, where their culture flourished. From Tonga
they rooted in Samoa and then Tahiti. Two hundred years before Christ, the Marquesas
became that other shore. To the southwest, they became the Maori of New Zealand. To the
southeast, the magical other shore was Easter Island. Lastly, they found that other shore
in the islands of Hawaii, completing what is called the Polynesian Triangle of Discovery.
Historically there were many waves of migration to the Hawaiian Islands. The first, more than
a thousand years ago, from the Marquesas. Then it is believed about five hundred years
later immigrants from the island of Tahiti. For those refugees of some thousand years
ago, sailing into the unknown, what was it like? Men, women, with their pigs and dogs
and chickens and their shrinking supplies of food and water. Birds were their compass.
They followed north-flying birds, birds that they knew could not land on water, sailing
from sea to sea in an unimaginable vastness of ocean. They followed in blind faith that
in the north, unknown and unexplored, there would be a green atoll those birds would light
upon. It was their only hope for survival. The night sky arched over an empty, death-like
mall. But as they left the reaches of the South Pacific behind, a star appeared, fixed
and bright. Now the North Star became their compass. More days, weeks, months of bucking
winds and currents, whales were among the few signs of life. It was more than a place
of refuge they were seeking. It was the other shore, a state of being, of life renewed that
humans have always sought. So they followed their star. Then they sighted it, a massive
cloud rising, a cloud the prevailing winds cannot bend or move. The cries of seabirds.
Now they saw that great cloud rising from a mountain spewing fire. Their canoes creaking,
their bodies starved and lashed raw by salty winds, they arrived at a southern shore of
the big island of Hawaii, their other shore. Two thousand miles from North America and
two thousand miles from the nearest neighboring islands, the Hawaiian is the most isolated
archipelago on earth. It was A.D. 750 when the first Polynesian
voyagers had reached the Hawaiian chain. They found the islands of paradise. Flowers, ferns,
foliage found nowhere else on earth. The sacred ohia, exotic birds, the apapane, reefs abounding
in fish. And a blessed absence of reptiles, flies, fleas, lice and gnats.
It appears that Kauai was the first island to be settled and that these first settlers
were commoners, men and women of low status, the dispensable kind often chosen as human
sacrifices for the gods. Legend has it that the Polynesians who first settled in Kauai
were elves, Hawaiian leprechauns. Here they're called menehune. The menehune were workaholics.
They built this fish pond at Alikoko. Hawaiian fish ponds were fenced in underwater. Fish
swam in through openings lured by the algae that was cultivated for them. After feasting,
they were too fat to swim out through the same openings. Now it was the Hawaiians turn
to feast. Menehune get credit for building this ditch carrying water to irrigate fields
for growing taro. It has stonework unlike any other found on the islands. Some believe
the menehune could build a ditch like this in a single night. Elves or not, that first
wave of settlers brought people of courage and accomplishment. The second wave of Polynesians
to make it to these islands began arriving some 500 years ago. Their point of embarkation
was Tahiti, 2100 miles away. They too, following their guide bird and their star to the other
shore. It was these Tahitian immigrants who gave these islands their name, Hawaiki, Hawaii.
Not only did the refugees from Tahiti carry with them their pigs and chickens, their taro
and bread food, they brought their gods. From Tahiti comes womanly Pele. From the holy
island of Bora Bora, from the rising mists of the lagoons, and from the red clouds over
Tahiti. She is the Peleho Naumea, goddess of the sacred land. She eats the land with
her flames. On each of the Hawaiian islands, Pele has left her mark. She came first to
the islands of Niihau and Kauai. We know now that these are the oldest islands in the eight
islands that make up the state of Hawaii. Kauai is unique. The interior opens to a canyon
resembling that great wonder, the Grand Canyon. Then the fiery Pele found a home on a younger
island, Oahu. Diamondhead on that island is the collapsed crater of an extinct volcano.
Now she breathed her fire on a newer island still, Maui. There she dwelled in sacred Haleakala.
This volcano sleeping, but not dead. After a vicious fight with her sister, the goddess
of the sea. She crossed to the newest of all the islands, Hawaii. Where she dwells, eyes
glowing to this day, spewing fire and molten lava with alarming frequency.
Without Pele's volcanism, these islands wouldn't exist.
With them, they brought their sacred genealogies, preserved in ancient chant, committed to memory.
There were nobles among them. Chiefs were the children of chiefs whose bloodlines went
back to the gods. Magic, mana, that godly energy, they were wired with it. Through their
sacred genealogies, they reinstituted the feudalism of the islands they left behind.
Class distinction, the commoner and the noble, the ali'i. And to enforce this social order,
the rigid system of kapu, dabu. This is the warning sign, forbidden on pain of death,
kapu. Even in today's Hawaii, posted warnings read kapu. Whatever a member of the chiefly
caste the ali'i touched became sacred. For a commoner to touch it was kapu. An ali'i's
shadow could not be touched, kapu. For men and women to share food together was kapu.
Food was prepared and served by men. Even the highest born women were forbidden to eat
with men. For a woman to eat coconuts was kapu. For women pork was kapu. Bananas were
kapu. Shark meat was kapu. It was the kapu system that kept the ruling class in power.
But the kapu's pertaining to natural resources make sense to us. There were plants that could
not be cut or fish caught at certain times of the year. Conservation, much like today's
fishing regulations. To break a kapu was to invite the wrath of the gods, famines, earthquakes.
No matter which of the numerous kapus was broken, the penalty was death. But for the
kapu breaker there was an out. If he or she could run fast enough to come here, kapu breakers
were pursued by those who would put them to death. But a kahuna, a priest of the gods,
could rescue them if they succeeded in reaching sanctuary, the pu'uhonua, ohunauna, the most
sacred place of refuge in the islands. It exuded mana of such power that if a kapu breaker
could reach these confines, the curse that hung over him would be lifted. The refuge
is enclosed by an L-shaped wall a thousand feet long, built in the 16th century without
mortar. Masons carefully fitted each stone to the other. A mausoleum held the bones of
many high chiefs, hence the mana. Today pu'uhonua, ohunauna, is a place of refuge for tourists.
These were channels to the gods, priests, physicians, necromancers, and keepers of the
temple. The heiau, the kahuna nui, or high priest, was almost as powerful as a high chief.
This is the great heiau, built by Kamehameha I. Pu'ukohola, the hill of the whale, a huge
structure of thatch over stone platforms, a lele, an offering stand. Here, gifts to
the gods were placed heavenward, from the height of this oracle tower, lananu'u maumau.
It was believed that a kahuna could see into the future. Even today, such temples are kapu.
A heiau was consecrated to the gods by human sacrifice. In the meantime, common folk made
the most of what the islands had to offer. Wood and thatch were used for building houses.
The craft of canoe building was kept up. Indeed, Hawaiians built some of the finest canoes in
all of Polynesia. Bread fruit was cultivated, and taro for the root, which was pounded into
a paste that is the Hawaiian staff of life, poi. Though livestock was bred for meat, the
sea offered protein in abundance. Fish hooks were fashioned, and fish nets. Crabs were
caught with long poles. Along rocky shores, there were octopus. Leaves of the tea plant
were dried and used for sandal making. A gourd became a calabash. Mats were woven of
pandanus leaves. Bark from the wōkei tree was beaten to form tapa cloth. Dyes for the
cloth came from the noni plant. Times of plenty allowed them the leisure to create works of
beauty, of art. Most treasured were feather capes made for the ali'i. High chiefs and
kings wore them with pride. Feathers were gathered from four kinds of birds. Only the
red or yellow feathers were plucked. Then the bird was set free. A cape of length could
take a generation to complete. Helmets worn by kings and warriors were also things of
beauty. They were called mahi'ole. Some were curved to look like a rainbow, a sacred symbol.
Though theirs was a Stone Age culture, the Hawaiians reached the level of refinement
and sophistication unrivaled in Polynesia. And so, the average Hawaiian worked and played.
They even played a board game called konani. We'd call it checkers. They worked and played
and danced to the rhythms of their labors.
Perhaps, it wasn't really paradise. But considering the state of the more civilized world at the
time, it came pretty close. For centuries, Hawaiians were simply unaware of a world outside
their islands. But during those centuries, voyagers in Europe were following their stars,
seeking their other shore. Columbus, who made the first voyage to the Americas. Prince Henry,
the navigator. Magellan, first to sail around the world. Now the star-burned brightest for
Captain Cook of the British Royal Navy. His other shore was the Pacific. Then the Pacific
was a blank map. An ocean of such size that whole groups of islands might be found and lost
again for decades at a time. In his explorations, he encountered the glaciers of New Zealand and
the Polynesian Maori, whom he found unfriendly. Far the south still, he skirted Antarctica. As
fine a cartographer as he was a navigator, Cook began filling in the blanks on the map of
Polynesia. While in Tahiti, which he called the Society Islands, he picked up the Polynesian
language. Then, on a January morning in 1778, Cook's vessels were approaching the Leeward
Coast of the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Chiefs and commoners were baffled by the sight. To them,
the two ships looked like trees moving on the sea. Some were terrified. On that January morning,
Hawaiians were discovering that there was a whole new world beyond their shores. And Captain Cook
was discovering the Hawaiian islands. Things would never be the same. Though his discovery
was unintentional, Cook christened the islands after the Earl of Sandwich, first Lord of the
British Admiralty. Historians would have to wait nearly a half a century for the invention of
photography, so explorers of the day brought artists along to record places and events. Cook's
was named John Webber. His legacy is a priceless record of Hawaiian life two centuries ago.
After sailing away for many months, he returned to winter in what were now called the Sandwich
Islands. In January of 1779, he took Anchorage at Kealakakua Bay off the big island of Hawaii.
This bay was sacred to Lono, a hero god who had left for a distant land but promised to
return. Cook was soon aware that he had arrived just at the time of Makahiki, the feast of Lono.
To the Hawaiians, the ship's mast resembled Lono's image. Surely this must be the god.
Hawaiians came out en masse and Captain Cook was escorted to the island as a god. Cook was intrigued
by the Hawaiians, but he set hard and fast rules against fraternization. His crew hungered for
women. As Captain, he forbade any such contact. Some of the men carried disease. The sailors
restrained resistance to them, made the Hawaiian women only more seductive. Cook's prohibition
became impossible to enforce. After two weeks of hospitality, Cook and his party sailed out of the
bay. A storm arose, a gale, one of Cook's ships was damaged, so the party limped back to Kealakakua
Bay. Now Cook was no longer treated as a divine being. An ugly incident occurred, leading to a
fracas. Then warriors attacked the foreigners, killing 50-year-old Cook and four Marines.
Dutifully, John Weber, the artist, recorded the incident. The death of Captain Cook.
Nearly a hundred years later, some of Cook's countrymen raised this monument to him,
near the place of his death. James Cook turned out not to be a god, but he was among the greatest
of navigators and a forerunner of today's anthropologist, recording information and
collecting artifacts from the lands that he explored. As for the Hawaiians, paradise would
be no more. They had dwelled long in their own cosmos. They had lived with plenty. They were
virtually without disease. Now with Cook's discovery, they braced themselves against more
encroachment by outsiders. Already Cook's sailors had left a legacy, albeit against their captain's
effort to curb them. Venereal disease. More diseases would follow. Captain Cook's discovery
marks the beginning of the end of the Hawaiian people. A patchwork. That is what these overlooked
islands had become. A patchwork of petty kingdoms, scattered, fragmented, vying with each other
jealously. And now they were open to invasion. The British would come again to these sandwich
islands and the French and Americans and Russians. It seemed impossible for these islands to unite
and resist their coming. Then, sometime near the end of the 1750s, on a night filled with portents
for the future, a son was born to a Kohala chief and the daughter of a chief from Kona. His place
of birth was here in Kohala, on the big island of Hawaii. He was given the name Paea. There were
kings and chiefs threatened by his birth who might have slain the newborn. So the infant Paea
was parted from his mother and whisked to this valley, Waipio, where he lived in hiding among
the waterfalls and the black sand beaches for the first five years of his life. Thus the child Paea
was given the new name Kamehameha, meaning the lonely one. When he was 14, he was sent to Ka'u
on the slopes of the volcano Manaloa. Here he was trained in the ways of the stars and planets,
navigation, rituals pleasing to the gods, and the arts of war. He learned to wield war clubs,
serrated with the teeth of sharks, javelins 18 feet long. He gave himself wholeheartedly
to the fierce war god Ku. Young Kamehameha had boarded Cook's vessel when the captain
was mistaken for a god. Kamehameha strove to acquire Cook's mana, a ship like his, guns,
cannon, and white men to teach Hawaiians how to use them. As his Stone Age culture joined in a race
for iron weapons, Kamehameha set sights on his other shore. He was determined to unite all of
the petty kingdoms and chieftains of the eight islands into one kingdom. To this end, he invaded
Maui, driving the island's defenders into the narrow Eo Valley, where they were cornered,
slaughtered. At the same time on the Big Island, a rival king ravaged Kamehameha's territory.
Kamehameha sped back to Hawaii to defend his taro patches and fish ponds. The rival king,
inherently herding his forces back to his territory, edged the volcanic crater Kilauea.
This was the goddess Pele's territory. Fire, ash, rained upon the forward column. When those of the
rear column caught up, they beheld men and women like so much human clay, baked into postures of
death in Pele's kiln. Their footprints still scar the Kau desert. Kamehameha was convinced
that the gods were working in his favor. In 1791, all of the Big Island of Hawaii came under his
undisputed rule. But other shores lay beyond. With cannon, a huge fleet of canoes, and 16,000 men,
he again attacked and ravaged Maui. Then he swept over Molokai. He thundered onto Oahu,
striking down chiefs and warriors. The routed defenders fled to the heights of the new Oahu
Pali. Here they were trapped against sheer cliff. In the dense fog, they jumped, leaped,
or were pushed to their deaths a thousand feet below. Now, without going to war,
Kauai and Niihihau fell into his regal grip. Fallen kings and chiefs were dutifully sacrificed
to the war god. And the lonely one became Kamehameha I, unifier and king of the eight
Hawaiian islands. His was one of the great achievements of Hawaiian history. He made
Honolulu on the island of Oahu his capital. After establishing a special relationship with
Great Britain, he incorporated the Union Jack in the flag of the Hawaiian kingdom. Fiercely,
he had given himself to the arts of war. Now, with like fervor, he gave himself to the arts
of peace and government. But he held fast to the kapu system, the old taboos, the only law his
people knew. Kamehameha died in 1819 at the age of 70. As his subjects chanted in mourning,
his bones were buried in a secret place. They say the morning star alone knows where Kamehameha's
bones still lie. The kingdom was enjoying years of peace. Kamehameha's son and heir was Liholiho,
whose mother was the highest ranking chiefness on the islands. The kingdom was yielding more
and more to foreigners when Liholiho became King Kamehameha II at age 22. Bearing the Kamehameha
name is as close as he came to resembling his father. Liholiho was an alcoholic. Queen Kaahumaru,
the old king's favorite of his 21 wives, was the power behind the throne. Were she alive today,
she'd be a feminist. But this proud, forceful woman, longing for freedom of movement, was so
high born that she was a prisoner of her own sacred mana. The only way for her to break out
was to end the kapu system. So she prevailed upon Liholiho to violate that most stringent of kapus,
segregation of men and women while eating. The woman struck at a banquet, British style, given
by the king. In accordance with the kapus, men were seated at one table, women at another. A place
at the woman's table was unoccupied. Fortified with rum, the king took leave of the men's table,
presented himself at the women's table, and began eating. Ravenously. With this one royal act,
the kapu system was broken. By royal command, the gods were abolished. Their temple set aflame.
Liholiho had not only broken the kapu system, he had rid Queen Kaahumaru of all that constrained
her. This act, however, left the Hawaiian kingdom without a religion. From raw-boned New England,
they were on their way. On 23 October 1819, fourteen missionaries, two ordained ministers
among them, and a physician, set sail for the Hawaiian kingdom. There, on the shore,
where they were prepared to do battle with the forces of heathenism. The voyage was retching,
and lasted six months. They arrived just two centuries after their pilgrim forebearers first
set foot on Plymouth Rock, and just in time to learn of the destruction of the old gods. This
they took as a sign. Liholiho granted them permission to stay in his kingdom for one year,
on a trial basis. The New Englanders were appalled by the shamelessness, the sensuality
of the Hawaiians. Hawaiians had no sense of sin. Indeed, the Hawaiian language was without a word
for religion. For their part, Hawaiians called the missionaries long-necks for their high,
tight collars. Armored with faith and layers of scratchy woolens, the missionaries set out
to fit the Hawaiian lifestyle with a New England conscience. They built tidy houses,
adapted the island's food to their palates, spun their own cloth, and made properly modest
clothes. They learned the Hawaiian language, and committed it to a written form, so that the
Hawaiian people could learn to read and write their own tongue. Now, there were books to be
printed. Tirelessly, they established schools. Just a little over a decade after the arrival
of the first missionaries, some 5,200 people had been enrolled. Because of the missionaries,
by the year 1840, Hawaii was the most literate nation in the world. Most importantly, the
missionary presence helped keep these islands free from being gobbled up by predator nations. There
were high chiefs won over to the church, some from a simple fear of hellfire. Then, six years
after the missionaries' arrival, old Kamehameha's favorite wife and the regent of the realm,
Kahuhumano, accepted Christianity. Others of royal blood would follow. When she was 64,
Kahuhumano retired to a small, thatched hut to die, a royal Hawaiian and a Christian. She
had become a bridge between ancient Hawaii and the 19th century.
Missionaries weren't the only New Englanders who eyed Hawaii as their other shore. As early
as 1819, two ships from New Bedford anchored at these islands. Whalers.
Offshore, they took a whale that yielded a hundred barrels of oil, a bonanza. At the time,
it was whale oil that fueled the lamps of New England. More ships followed. By 1822,
60 whaling ships had called at the islands. By day, their crews preyed upon whales. By night,
they preyed upon women. This is Lahaina, which had been a wide-open port on the island of Maui.
These streets once swarmed with whalers, once rang with drunken brawls. Herman Melville,
author of Moby Dick, jumped ship to spend a couple of nights in Lahaina. Sea-going
foreigners were a weak warning of the real danger. Hawaii's independence was threatened.
These midway islands lay in the path of a historical juggernaut. Expansionism. France.
The United States. Indeed, for about five months in 1843, these islands were ceded to Great Britain.
Holding the kingdom together was now the task of Kamehameha III, second son of Kamehameha the Great.
He had aggressive foreign governments to deal with, so his government was made up of able
foreigners loyal to the crown, many of them Yankees from the U.S. Granting powers to these
foreigners put his people on edge. Even lesser jobs like harbor master and constable were filled
by naturalized foreigners. During his reign, Kamehameha III enacted the Great Mahele,
the three-way partitioning of the island's lands to the crown, the chiefs, and the common folk who
worked those lands, if just claims were presented. In reality, this well-meant land reform reduced
land-working Hawaiians to serfdom. Their very language was without words for private property.
How is it possible to own the land, they'd ask?
Some chiefs sold their shares of land to foreign speculators for the cultivation of sugar cane.
With the sugar industry burgeoning, Hawaii was fast becoming a foreign-controlled, one-crop economy.
Kamehameha III died in 1854 amid the flurry of an annexation movement of Hawaii by the United States.
There were to be no more annexation rumors. In Kauao Church, known as the Westminster Abbey of Hawaii,
a new king was crowned, Kamehameha IV, and he pledged himself to keep Hawaii independent.
In the same historic church, the new king married his childhood sweetheart, Emma Naiea Rook,
a great-grandniece of Kamehameha the Great. She was loved by her people simply as Queen Emma.
This was her summer house, nestled in the hills of Oahu, and gracefully furnished with gifts from
royalty the world over. Today these chambers are serene, but they weren't always. This royal family
was plagued by tragedy. Suspecting that his private secretary, an American named Nielsen,
was carrying on with his queen, the king shot Nielsen at close range. Luckily, the king wasn't
a good shot, and the rumor that had enraged him proved false. Here, here was the future of Hawaii's
kingdom, Prince Albert, the only child and sole heir of Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma,
but the little prince died at the age of four.
After the death of their son, the king and Queen Emma chose this site for a royal mausoleum.
Before construction began, the king himself had died.
The king's strong-willed brother, Lot, ascended the throne as Kamehameha the Fifth.
Lot was a regal Hawaiian. He imposed a new constitution which returned broad powers to
the crown, much to the dismay of resident Americans. This king never married. It is said he
loved his brother's widow, Queen Emma. King Lot died in 1872 without an heir. The last king was
Queen Emma. King Lot died in 1872 without an heir, the last of the Kamehameha heirs.
Steamship travel had arrived. For the first time ever, sea travel was not dependent on the
fickleness of weather. Ships course to Hawaii from America's west coast, from Australia,
from New Zealand. There came more and more visitors and more foreign laborers. Contract labor was
being brought in from China and then Japan to work the cane fields because the Hawaiian labor pool
was dwindling rapidly. They were dying out, these brave people, castoffs of history. Their birth
rate was plunging. Infections left so casually behind by whalers and sailors were taking their
toll. From Europe, America came stowaway germs, cholera, measles, smallpox, to which Hawaiians
had no immunities. In less than a century, from Captain Cook's discovery to the election of
Lunolidu as the new king, the Hawaiian population plunged from 300,000 to 50,000.
Every inch a king. This was the kingdom's second elected king, Kalakaua, descended from the fiercely
independent chiefs of Kona. Though Hawaiian to the core, he created a royal court to vie with those
of Europe. A crown was introduced, a scepter. He commanded the building of the present Iolani Palace,
the only royal palace ever to stand on American soil.
He built an ornate pavilion for coronations.
Musician that he was, he commanded that the royal band play noonday concerts at the pavilion.
It still does.
He revived the hula, which had been banned by the puritanical New Englanders.
This was a king who composed songs, wrote poetry, and played poker. The great Scottish writer,
Robert Louis Stevenson, found Kalakaua to be intelligent with an astounding capacity for alcohol.
Wherever he went in his island kingdom, he urged Hawaiians to increase, increase the race, and he
filled important posts in his government with Hawaiians. To the dismay of the American
businessmen, reformers rammed through a new constitution, which reduced the king to a puppet,
worn, needing rest. In the 17th year of his reign, Kalakaua sailed to San Francisco. There he suffered
a stroke and died. He is remembered warmly as the merry monarch. Now the forces of tragedy that seem
always to have hovered over the Hawaiian coast, and to be remembered by the people of Hawaii,
have gained strength. Now the forces of tragedy that seem always to have hovered over the Hawaiian
royal house, gain strength. Princess Liliuokalani, the king's sister, became queen and sovereign of
the islands. This queen was Royal Ali, royal to the marrow, strong, stubborn, far-seeing.
Despite her Victorian fineries, she was of the stuff that first sought these islands,
of the strength of warriors, and of the great chiefs, and her other shore was Hawaii for Hawaiians.
But she was a feudal queen in an age of fledgling democracies. She was determined to restore full
powers to the throne. Perhaps she should have reigned in a nobler age, but hers was an age of
iron. Her beautiful islands had become a free-for-all for the industrial powers, and the fate of her
30,000 remaining pure Hawaiians was really in the hands of 30 men, most of them Americans.
The monarchy was overthrown. From a provisional government, a republic of Hawaii was created on
July 4th, 1894. The next step would be annexation by the U.S. As for the queen, she was kept here,
under house arrest. She was a prisoner in her own palace. In her brief reign, Liliuokalani
accomplished little of what she had set out to do, yet she left a legacy treasured throughout the
world. It is a song that she composed, for she was an accomplished musician, a gentle, somewhat
sad song that has since become the anthem of these islands. Aloha oi, aloha oi, farewell to thee.
Until we meet again.