The distance between New England and Hawai‘i was not only physical and temporal but cultural as well. The novelty of the king and his new, unified kingdom stirred the hearts and minds of a postrevolutionary generation of the Early Republic. But for Hawaiians, the phenomenon of Kamehameha’s rise to power was an older form of conquest conducted at a much larger scale than in the past. Hawaiian histories (mo‘olelo) remember Kamehameha’s harnessing of spiritual power (mana) with a warrior’s strength and grace. These histories dwell on the unusual circumstances of his birth, prophecies of his rise to power, and his training and prowess as a koa (warrior). They also provide stunning detail about Kamehameha’s campaigns, his individual battles, and the words and chants of ali‘i and their kāhuna (priests, experts).6
These histories of Kamehameha provide extensive genealogical information, revelatory of Kamehameha’s exceptional character and suitability for rule as defined within and against a larger web of male and female chiefs, counselors, and priests. These mo‘olelo thus illustrate Kamehameha’s central position within a dense network of alliance and family connection. His greatness was impossible, according to the mo‘olelo, without many historical actors, members of an extended social and familial network, positioning him for rule. Genealogical connection was present in every encounter ali‘i had with one another. It was the sinew and bone of every story, the calculus that makes evident the inner workings of Hawaiian legitimation, power, and authority—a national politics always in motion. Kamehameha was only as great a man as those around him allowed.7 And his ability to engage in trade of Hawaiian resources with foreign merchants was predicated upon the healthy functioning of systematic chiefly authority and kapu.
Figure 1. Genealogy of Kamehameha.
Hawaiian harvesting of sandalwood from Hawai‘i for trade by American merchants in China marked Hawai‘i’s entry into global trade interactions. When it was begun under Kamehameha I’s rule, he exercised his authority as mō‘ī (king) to regulate through kapu when and where trees could be cut. This had the effect of preventing lesser chiefs around the archipelago from entering into trade with foreigners on their own. But upon Kamehameha’s death in 1819, the kapu that he pronounced—including the kapu on lower chiefs harvesting and trading sandalwood with foreigners—were rescinded.8
This chapter focuses on the development and evolution of the sandalwood trade from the late 1810s and into the 1820s in order to understand how New England merchants navigated the complexities of trade in Hawai‘i and how Hawaiian chiefs regulated sandalwood trade through kapu and an authority structure of obligation. These early economic relations between New England and Hawai‘i through the sandalwood and ship trade became a key enabler of American trading success in China. Previous histories of the sandalwood trade have used merchant and missionary writings to portray this trade as one-sided in Hawaiian life: greedy and avaricious chiefs, hungry to trade with foreigners for luxury goods that end up rotting in their storehouses, tyrannically sent the common people away from their farms and into the upland to cut and haul sandalwood to be traded in China.9 The previous historiography’s emphasis on merchant and missionaries’ portrayal of the social and political structures of Hawaiian life as somehow feudal have obscured a history of how Hawaiian governance and law functioned in nascent global trade.
This chapter gives a fuller history of both New England merchants’ attempts to operate in the Hawaiian sandalwood trade and Hawaiian chiefs’ interests and activities seen as part of Hawaiian governance and social structures. It focuses on the disparate understandings of debt and obligation between chiefs and merchants by supplying nuanced contextual information about Hawaiian sandalwood use and the way mana was maintained through genealogy, which set up relationships of obligation and debt. Rather than avaricious chiefs who are opportunistic or confused about trade, what emerges is the way in which chiefs used their networks of relationship, deliberation in the ‘aha ‘ōlelo, and kapu to achieve the upper hand in negotiations with New England merchants for goods desired. They also used kapu to punish traders who attempted to cheat the ali‘i in a manner that restricted the traders’ access to sandalwood and Hawaiian labor. Finally, what this chapter suggests is that while traders after Kamehameha I’s death sought to assign debt to individual chiefs across the islands, his successors in rule—specifically Kālaimoku—sought a way to have that debt made collective. This debt then becomes the debt of the kingdom that is established in 1840.
‘Iliahi: The Hawaiian Sandalwood Trade
The trade in ‘iliahi, Hawaiian sandalwood, began when the wood was “discovered” by sailors working for the ill-fated captain John Kendrick of the Lady Washington. Kendrick had left several sailors on one of the islands, and they informed him of the presence of sandalwood.10 This would become an important find, since European and American ships had been accustomed to ranging as far east as India, or far to the west and south into the Pacific, to Fiji and the Marquesas, to obtain the much-sought-after wood. The Sandwich Islands could now provide a highly desirable commodity to offer Americans besides provisions, salt, and women.
Trade in ‘iliahi between New England and Hawai‘i began with Kamehameha, who chose to deal only with American ship captains Jonathan and Nathaniel Winship and William Heath Davis, who worked for the Boston firm of J. and T. H. Perkins. These ship captains enjoyed a short-lived monopoly, from 1809 until the War of 1812 slowed New England ship visits to the islands to a trickle. It is also surmised that Kamehameha’s new alliance with Great Britain further put this trade relationship on hold.11 After his death in 1819, the kapu (restriction) forbidding others to cut down trees and therefore to engage in this kind of trade was rescinded, and throughout the islands the most prominent ali‘i began to engage in trade with relish.
‘Iliahi grew and was collected by merchants on all the settled islands in the archipelago. Trees and shrubs could grow in dry areas, and on ridges and slopes in moist or wet forests, at an elevation anywhere from six hundred feet on Kaua‘i, to five thousand feet on the slopes of Mauna Loa on Hawai‘i. There are four species of sandalwood trees on the islands, and they vary in size. The Santalum pyrularium found on Kaua‘i grew from sixteen to forty feet in height, while S. ellipticum could purportedly grow up to eighty feet high, its trunk three feet in diameter. The coveted fragrance of the sandalwood increased with age; its intoxicating scent hides in the heartwood of the tree, which reaches full maturity after thirty years.12
Mustering the labor for the collection of trees was relatively easy for the ali‘i, but long absences took a toll on workers’ families, taro, and sweet potato fields, as well as fishing. Hawaiian ali‘i had been leading designated groups of sandalwood cutters into the mountains since Kamehameha’s reign.13 Sandalwood required intense bouts of labor. Work parties walked and climbed up into the mountains, bringing along their food and supplies. Trees were cut and bundled and hauled back down to portside storehouses. These periodic bursts of effort could be undertaken at any time of the year, except perhaps the rainy season, or ho‘oilo, between November and March.
Historians have argued that the sandalwood trade had devastating effects upon the forests and the people, frequently conflating the collapse of the tree population with the harm it inflicted upon Hawaiian sensibilities or proscriptions about mālama ‘āina, caring for the land. This confusion on the part of historians results in the argument that the collateral damage of the sandalwood trade was the further decline/degeneration of Hawaiian culture and values.14 What this argument misses in nuance and context-based examples it makes up for in sentimentalism—since mālama ‘āina is, in fact, a value rooted as always in practice and, therefore, in the exercise of the practical. The word mālama means to watch over, preserve, or care for—sandalwood, however, did not necessitate any care on the part of Hawaiians, and neither did its disappearance affect any facet of the Hawaiian way of life, save for constricting the ability of individuals and chiefs to engage in further trade.
Sandalwood was not a tree cultivated by Hawaiians; it simply grew in the uplands. Furthermore, it was not a wood much