Perhaps more importantly, perceiving and analyzing chiefly genealogies is essential for understanding the basis for political action and the authoritative (one could almost say legally binding) qualities of chiefly utterances. Mana (authority, power) is rooted in the couplings of chiefs and chiefesses, winding through generations of calculations of physically embodied concentrations of power. But while mo‘okū‘auhau is the basis of Hawaiian chiefly position and politics, mana could also be acquired, lost, or destroyed through a leader’s behavior and actions. Thus the politics of mana—let alone its definition (it is both in the bones and in the behavior of a chief)—is a shifting energy, playing out through dynamic chiefly interactions along family lines. Mana is therefore not just genealogically but also socially constructed.
Perhaps it is not without cause that American merchants, engaging in ventures in the Hawaiian Islands, found themselves lacking in a clear understanding of exactly how politics and economic interrelationships between chiefs might function, given the deep and complex foundation of those chiefly relationships in mo‘okū‘auhau and mana. On top of this incompatibility, merchant agents found themselves also dealing with a more general incompatibility between American businessmen and agents and the entire environment of the Hawaiian Islands. What seemed to be required to establish successful and thriving business in the islands seemed quite undercut by the characters, ignorance, and even ineptitude of the men who came to try their hands at economic ventures in Hawai‘i.
New England Agents in Hawai‘i
I do not know of one man that has a correct idea of the trade in the North Pacific or how to carry it on to advantage—we have got the advantage of the whole and I mean to keep it if possible, I have cut them all this year, most of the agents at the Sandwich Islands divide the 24 hours into three parts, Drinking, Gambling and Sleeping. The one I have discharged is among the number, if we are not capable of selecting better agents than the last we must both have guardians … there is no witchcraft necessary in carrying on the Trade at the Islands all we want is sober, honest, industrious men, if we cannot have our establishment placed on a more respectable footing than it has been I think I shall set fire and burn all together—on my arrival at the Islands.25
Captain Dixey Wildes’ estimation of the chaotic and unpredictable nature of trade in the North Pacific in this letter to business partner Josiah Marshall comes as somewhat of a surprise, as Wildes was no stranger to trade. He had served as a sailor and then captain in the Pacific—sailing between New England, the Northwest Coast, Hawai‘i, and China—for twenty-five years, since 1800. Wildes’ letter comes at the trough of cycles of boom and bust, when merchants employed by rival houses were increasingly anxious about the debts owed to their businesses by Hawaiian chiefs. The merchant’s critique is lodged against his fellow Americans who were inattentive to their work and remiss in looking out for the “establishment” settled in the islands. According to Wildes, agents simply lacked the traits that most men of business in America should have cultivated: “sobriety, honesty and industry,” traits essential to making a profit. Wildes was also probably sick of the bellyaching and complaining that filled the letters of agents and ship captains about the difficulty of conducting their business with Hawaiian chiefs.
In Hawai‘i, sailors and merchants met with unfamiliar rhythms of time discipline. While ships arrived at prescribed seasons during the year, docking, landing goods, staying to obtain provisions, repair ships, and collect sandalwood, the lull that struck after the bustling business of arrival and departure threatened boredom. Pleasure-seeking had not only become an avocation among sailors and captains, but also for some merchants, contributing much to the legend of Hawai‘i as paradise. Men longing for the bustle of home established public institutions and entertainments, and the rhythm of steady employment and diverse social interaction of their homelands were especially susceptible to acting out or, on the contrary, failing to act at all.26
Pleasure-seeking, even in paradise, could not only become tedious—it could seriously harm a business concern’s prospects for trade. Merchant agents and captains were rightly concerned with employees’ inability to adjust to island living, since indolence and a lack of industry were poor generators of profit. The agents tasked with overseeing business were often left to their own devices when trade was not brisk or steady. With no regular work structuring the days, weeks, and months spent waiting for ships or wood to arrive, rival merchants found themselves in common society, which meant that they often swapped stories, while attempting to elicit information from rivals about the current status of their business. “It will be for your interest as well as ours, to be on good terms with as many of the white men at the islands as possible. Your usual deportment will neither invite nor provoke hostility among the agents, & we are confident you possess the address to get on with them without attesting to all your communications. We have no fears of you falling into any of the vices you will find at the Islands, but it may be well to reflect on them, to be better prepared to reside in a society where indolence, intemperance, debauchery and gambling are so fashionable.”27
This warning did not flow from the pen of a missionary, although in its assessment of the degenerative power of society in the Sandwich Islands, its authors had much in common with them. This statement was part of the contractual terms of employment and instruction that the supercargo Charles Hammatt of the ship Champion affixed his signature to, perhaps in the well-ordered and busy offices of merchants Bryant and Sturgis, located at 47 Central Wharf, Boston. Hammatt’s employers had been sending ships out to the Pacific for five years before the first company of missionaries to the Sandwich Islands departed in 1819. Their mercantile concern directed ships trading goods around the world, and like the other oceans it operated in, in the Pacific it employed a cadre of vessels and captains. These floating storehouses routinely plied their wares between the Northwest Coast, the Sandwich Islands, and China, while filling up the ships’ ever-emptying holds with the bounty of Hawaiian and Indian lands and the surrounding seas. However, New England merchants had little enough to tempt Chinese consumers until the discovery of furs on the Northwest Coast and sandalwood in Hawai‘i created greater trading opportunities in Canton, as these goods were both highly sought after.
The primary business of New England traders in the islands in the decade after the death of Kamehameha in 1819 was the collection of debt owed to them by Hawaiian chiefs. Debt collection developed into the number one priority of New England traders and ship captains, and was the source of consternation and constant anxiety that fueled intense, sometimes bitter rivalries between merchant houses based in Honolulu and the ship captains engaged in the business of trade and collecting debt. Before investigating the relationship between Hawaiian chiefs, transient ship captains, and agents from New England settled in the islands, it might be useful to take a closer look at the sandalwood trade to get an idea of the rudiments of this point of commerce.
In order to conduct business on outbound voyages to the Pacific, New England merchant houses employed supercargoes like Charles Hammatt, who not only oversaw the inventory and monies belonging to the voyage, but also haggled with local distributors in South American ports for the lowest priced baubles and goods that could be sold at inflated prices to natives on the Northwest Coast and Hawaiians. In addition to his duties as supercargo, Hammatt was to be left in Honolulu after the Champion’s arrival and was stationed there as Bryant and Sturgis’ agent, charged with the responsibility to sell more goods to the ali‘i and people and to collect debts that were owed by the ali‘i for goods previously delivered, preferably in sandalwood.
When Hammatt arrived in 1823, he was in good company. John Coffin Jones was the resident agent employed by rival concern Marshall and Wildes. The twenty-five-year-old Jones had arrived in the islands two years before, on May 20, 1821, with an additional appointment from President James Monroe to serve as agent for commerce and seamen at O‘ahu.