Kingdom of Hawaii

A prominent actor in the affray

formationDrafted from Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian Race: Its Origin and Migrations, and the Ancient History of the Hawaiian People to the Times of Kamehameha I, Vol. II (1880)

Kamehameha's own name first enters the written record through one of the most famous deaths in the Pacific. When Captain Cook's men tried to bring the aged Hawaii king Kalaniopuu aboard the Resolution at Kealakekua Bay in February 1779, and then opened fire on the canoes gathering in the bay, the affray that followed ended with Cook himself killed on the beach. Fornander, weighing the conflicting testimony available to him, judges that Kalaniopuu was at most a frightened bystander to his own attempted abduction - and that in the absence of his heir Kiwalao, the next-ranking chief of the blood royal present was a young Kamehameha, who by a contemporary trader's own account had "encouraged the natives to the murder of Captain Cook."

Metropolitan Museum of Art · Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian Race: Its Origin and Migrations, and the Ancient History of the Hawaiian People to the Times of Kamehameha I, Vol. II (1880) · Francesco Bartolozzi · CC0

Three untruths told to an English captain

Kamehameha's own later conduct suggests he had something to hide. Years afterward, he told a different British captain, Douglas, that Kalaniopuu had died of poison administered by chiefs who blamed him for Cook's death - a story Fornander shows to be false on every point: Kalaniopuu did not die for three more years, died of natural causes, and no chiefs revolted against him over the affair at all. Fornander's own reading is that Kamehameha, aware the truth might bring retribution down on himself, invented the story to draw suspicion away from his own conduct that day - a young chief's first recorded brush with the foreign power that would later crown him.

Bones returned, and a fleet that sailed on unaware

The ships did not linger. On 21 February, what remained of Cook's own body was returned under a flag of truce and committed to the sea with military honors; the next day the Resolution and Discovery left Kealakekua Bay for the last time, the shore lined with natives waving what one officer called "every mark of affection and good-will." Sailing on toward Oahu, the ships found the men of that island already gone to fight on Molokai - word of Cook's death, and of the young chief who had played some part in it, had outrun the ships themselves across the open channel.

The yellow-backed crab

expansionDrafted from Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian Race: Its Origin and Migrations, and the Ancient History of the Hawaiian People to the Times of Kamehameha I, Vol. II (1880)

Kalaniopuu died three years after Cook, of old age, leaving the kingship of Hawaii to his son Kiwalao and the guardianship of the war god Kukailimoku - the office that carried real religious authority - to his nephew Kamehameha. It was an arrangement built for conflict. When Kiwalao's own redistribution of lands after his father's death favored his mother's Kau relatives at the expense of the Kona chiefs who had backed Kamehameha, several of those chiefs rose in open revolt, urging Kamehameha to join them.

Honolulu Museum of Art · Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian Race: Its Origin and Migrations, and the Ancient History of the Hawaiian People to the Times of Kamehameha I, Vol. II (1880) · Louis Choris · Public domain

A spear that decided a kingdom

The armies met at Keei in 1782, in what became known as the battle of Mokuohai. Early success favored Kiwalao's own forces, until Kamehameha's arrival on the field restored the balance. In the fighting, the rebel chief Keeaumoku fell, entangled by his own spear in the rocky ground; Kiwalao, seeing his enemy down, called out to his men to mind the ivory ornament round Keeaumoku's neck "lest it be spoiled with the blood" - callousness that told Keeaumoku no mercy would follow if he were taken. A relief party reached him first. One of them felled Kiwalao himself with a sling-stone, and Keeaumoku crawled to the stunned king and cut his throat with a shark-tooth blade, while another of his own men mocked the fallen king's own surname with the cry, "the spear has pierced the yellow-backed crab."

One island, three kings

Kiwalao's death broke his army, and with it Hawaii's own unity. Fornander is careful to note that the chroniclers who came after treated Mokuohai too easily as a straightforward usurpation; in fact it split the island into three real, rival claims. Kamehameha held Kona, Kohala and part of Hamakua. Keawemauhili, the highest-ranked survivor of the old royal house, held Hilo and the rest of Hamakua and Puna. Keoua Kuahuula, Kiwalao's own half-brother, held Kau and the remainder of Puna, and considered Kamehameha nothing more than a rebel who had murdered his king. None of the three would yield, and Hawaii remained divided between them for the better part of a decade.

The clouds have an unfavourable flight

peakDrafted from Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian Race: Its Origin and Migrations, and the Ancient History of the Hawaiian People to the Times of Kamehameha I, Vol. II (1880)

Nearly a decade of war between the three rival chiefs of Hawaii ended not on a battlefield but at the dedication of a temple. With a great new heiau built at Puukohola for his war god nearing completion, Kamehameha sent two of his most trusted counsellors, Keaweaheulu and Kamanawa, to Keoua's own court in Kau with an offer: come to Kona and be reconciled, and rule the island together as brothers. Keoua's own chief adviser urged him to kill the two envoys instead and seize the advantage their deaths would hand him. Keoua refused - "they are the brothers of my father, and they shall not die" - and agreed to go.

Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian Race: Its Origin and Migrations, and the Ancient History of the Hawaiian People to the Times of Kamehameha I, Vol. II (1880) · Bamse · CC BY-SA 4.0

A chief who prepared for either outcome

Whatever mixture of trust, fatalism, and weariness with endless war moved him, Keoua traveled toward Kawaihae with a divided mind. On the very morning of his arrival he bathed and dressed himself for a chief's death as carefully as he had accepted the promise of peace, selecting from his own company those who would die with him if it came to that, and sending the rest ahead under the charge of a young relative he judged Kamehameha would spare. As his canoe rounded Puako and the bay of Kawaihae came into view - the great new temple, a semicircle of war canoes mounted with guns, crowds of armed men on the beach - Keoua read the signs plainly. "It looks bad ashore," he told Keaweaheulu, "the clouds are flying unfavourably." Keaweaheulu asked what evil could come on so pleasant a day. Keoua only repeated himself.

Struck down while stepping ashore

As Keoua's canoe reached the landing, Keeaumoku's men surrounded it and cut it off from the envoys who had brought him. Kamehameha called out from the beach for Keoua to come ashore so they might know each other. As Keoua leapt down, Keeaumoku struck him with a spear; Keoua seized the shaft and struggled to wrench it free, but fell and died where he landed. Nearly everyone in his own canoe and escort was killed with him, save a priest who hid himself under the mats of a tabu house and one man who had quietly slipped away earlier at Puako. With Keoua's death and his body's consecration at the newly finished temple, the last rival claim to Hawaii Island's own throne was gone, and for the first time since Mokuohai, Kamehameha ruled the whole island alone.

Driven over the pali

peakDrafted from Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian Race: Its Origin and Migrations, and the Ancient History of the Hawaiian People to the Times of Kamehameha I, Vol. II (1880)

Master of Hawaii Island alone, Kamehameha turned his fleet toward Maui, Molokai and finally Oahu, held by Kalanikupule with the backing of his father Kahekili's old dominion. During the crossing from Molokai, a high chief named Kaiana - who had joined Kamehameha's own ranks but kept close family ties to the Maui royal line - grew convinced, from overheard conversations and evasive answers, that Kamehameha's own council had marked him for secret execution. Rather than wait to find out, Kaiana broke off with his brother and their own followers during the crossing, landed separately on Oahu, and joined Kalanikupule instead - telling his own wife, who chose to stay with Kamehameha's fleet, that he would rather die in battle facing the enemy than be killed quietly among supposed allies.

Cannon on both sides, and a rout down one valley

Kamehameha landed his army between Waialae and Waikiki and marched up the Nuuanu valley, where Kalanikupule had drawn up his own defense across a line of ridges. The two forces met at Puiwa, and the fighting was hotly contested until the superior number and practice of Kamehameha's own artillery began to tell. What began as a defeat became a rout: some of the beaten army scrambled up the valley's steep sides, but a large number were driven over the pali of Nuuanu itself, a cliff several hundred feet high, and died in the fall. Kaiana and his brother were killed early in the fighting. Kalanikupule escaped into the mountains, living as a fugitive for months before he was finally captured, killed, and - like Keoua before him - sacrificed to Kamehameha's own war god.

Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian Race: Its Origin and Migrations, and the Ancient History of the Hawaiian People to the Times of Kamehameha I, Vol. II (1880) · Brother Bertram · Public domain

The closing scene of the old history

Fornander dates the battle to April 1795, and treats it as more than a military victory: it made Kamehameha master of Hawaii, Maui, Kahoolawe, Lanai, Molokai and Oahu outright, and though the submission of Kauai was still years away, he judges that the conquest of Oahu is where the unification of the whole Hawaiian group under one government properly dates from - "the closing scene," in his own words, "in the ancient history of the Hawaiian Islands." Whatever of the old order survived the battle, he writes, was already living on borrowed time in the glare of the new one it had just made possible.

The men are sacred to the king

contractionDrafted from Alexander, A Brief History of the Hawaiian People (1899)

Kauai alone still stood outside Kamehameha's rule after Nu'uanu, and its own king, Kaumuali'i, knew exactly how thin his chances were against it. He had a schooner built in secret, a last resort if he ever needed to flee the islands entirely, and for years he traded messages and gifts with Kamehameha rather than risk a meeting in person - remembering, as Kamehameha's own court well knew he would, the fate of Keoua at Puukohola. It took a sandalwood trader's word as hostage, and Kamehameha's own pledge of safety, to finally bring Kaumuali'i aboard ship to Honolulu in 1810.

The meeting went better than the fears that preceded it. Kaumuali'i offered Kamehameha his islands outright; Kamehameha told him to keep them in fief for his own lifetime, on the single condition that his son Liholiho would inherit them after him. Some of the chiefs urged Kamehameha to have the Kauai king killed once he was in reach - and when that failed, a plot to poison him at a feast very nearly succeeded, foiled only by a warning from Kamehameha's own retainer Isaac Davis, who paid for the warning with his life not long after. Kaumuali'i sailed home unharmed. For the first time, every inhabited island in the chain answered to a single government.

Eighty-two years, and the faith of his ancestors

Kamehameha lived nine years more, settled at Kailua on Hawai'i Island, presiding over a kingdom no longer at war with itself. He died there on the 8th of May, 1819, at eighty-two, in the religion he had been raised in. When his priests proposed sacrificing a number of men to prolong his life, he refused them with a single sentence: "The men are sacred to the king" - meaning Liholiho, his son and heir, for whom he meant to leave a kingdom rather than a debt of blood. His work, as his own people understood it, was done: the islands united, the wars ended, and a son ready to take a throne no rival remained to contest.

Alexander, A Brief History of the Hawaiian People (1899) · Calbear22 · Public domain

The gods are a lie

contractionDrafted from Alexander, A Brief History of the Hawaiian People (1899)

Kamehameha's death left the old religious order in the hands of a son who had never fully believed in it and a regent, the dowager Ka'ahumanu, who had even less patience for it. At her urging, Liholiho

• now Kamehameha II - returned to Kailua and, before an assembled company of chiefs of both sexes, sat down and ate openly with the women of his own court: a direct, public violation of the kapu that had governed Hawaiian eating for as long as anyone could remember.

Honolulu Museum of Art · Alexander, A Brief History of the Hawaiian People (1899) · Louis Choris · Public domain

The common people who watched expected the gods to strike him down. When nothing happened, they raised a shout that carried the news faster than any messenger could have: "The tabus are at an end, and the gods are a lie!" The effect matched the shout. Idol worship and the kapu system collapsed within days across the whole island chain; the high priest himself set fire to the temples and images in his own keeping, and messengers carried word of the abolition as far as Kauai, where Kaumuali'i accepted it without objection.

A defender of the faith

Not everyone accepted it so readily. Kekuaokalani, a popular young chief, retreated to Kaawaloa in open protest, and priests loyal to the old order flocked to him, quoting an old proverb back at him: a religious chief would possess a kingdom, but irreligious chiefs would always be poor. Armed followers rallied to his cause, and when negotiation failed, Kekuaokalani marched on Kailua hoping to catch the royal party by surprise. Ka'ahumanu's general Kalanimoku met him instead at Kuamo'o with muskets Kamehameha had stockpiled in his own final years and a mounted gun carried by canoe. Outnumbered and short of powder, Kekuaokalani fought on after he was wounded, reloading from a seated position until a second shot killed him outright; his wife Manono fought at his side to the end and did not long outlive him. The old religion that had sanctioned every one of Kamehameha's own conquests did not survive its founder by even a single year.

Alexander, A Brief History of the Hawaiian People (1899) · Unknown engraver · Public domain

With him ended the line

contractionDrafted from Alexander, A Brief History of the Hawaiian People (1899)

The house Kamehameha founded ruled Hawaii without interruption for more than half a century after him - through Kamehameha II's own brief reign and death abroad, through Kamehameha III's long tenure, which gave the kingdom its first written constitution in 1840, and through the shorter reigns of Kamehameha IV and V. That succession ended abruptly. Kamehameha V died suddenly of dropsy on the 11th of December, 1872, not yet forty-three and only nine years into his reign, without ever naming an heir. With him, the line that had built the kingdom ended outright.

Alexander, A Brief History of the Hawaiian People (1899) · H. L. Chase · Public domain

An elective throne

The legislature, summoned to choose a successor, elected Prince William Lunalilo the following January - the highest-ranking surviving chief by birth, and a popular one, though his own reign proved brief. When Lunalilo died in turn without naming an heir either, the choice returned to the legislature a second time, and in February 1874 Colonel David Kalakaua was elected king. What had been, for two generations, a hereditary throne secured by conquest had become an office the legislature itself now filled by vote - a change in the kingdom's own foundations that neither Kamehameha nor his sons had ever intended, and one that left the monarchy's legitimacy resting on a legislature's confidence rather than a father's succession from now on. Kalakaua reigned until his own death in San Francisco on the 20th of January, 1891, when the throne passed to his sister, Liliuokalani - the kingdom's first reigning queen, and its last independent monarch.

Hawaii State Archives · Alexander, A Brief History of the Hawaiian People (1899) · Unknown photographer · Public domain

The Committee of Safety

endDrafted from Alexander, A Brief History of the Hawaiian People (1899)

Liliuokalani's own reign, barely two years old, had already been marked by a running contest with the legislature over how much power the crown could reclaim from the constitution that bound it. On the 14th of January, 1893, with a new constitution already drafted in private - one that would strip away the legislature's own checks on the throne and restrict the vote to Hawaiian subjects alone - she moved to proclaim it at the palace immediately after that day's prorogation ceremony, with government troops drawn up and a crowd of supporters gathered around her.

Alexander, A Brief History of the Hawaiian People (1899) · Frederick George Eyton-Walker · Public domain

Her own cabinet refused to sign the document at the decisive moment, and turned instead to leading citizens for support against her. Faced with their refusal, the queen partially yielded, telling the assembled crowd that she would postpone, with deep regret, the constitution's proclamation for a few days. It was not enough to undo what the attempt itself had already set moving.

Yielded to avoid bloodshed

A Committee of Safety, meeting informally among the colony's residents, moved immediately to organize a provisional government and recall the volunteer military companies disbanded three years before. A mass meeting on the 16th ratified the committee's actions; the same morning, the queen published a declaration that any future changes to the constitution would come only by the methods the constitution itself provided - a concession that arrived too late to matter. That evening, the American warship Boston, newly arrived in port, landed a force it described as protection for American lives and property.

On the 17th the Committee of Safety completed its provisional government, took possession of the government building, and proclaimed the monarchy abolished. Liliuokalani did not resist by force, and surrendered her authority the same day under a protest she addressed to the new government itself, trusting that the matter would be referred to Washington for arbitration.

I yielded to avoid bloodshed

endDrafted from Hawaii, Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen (1898)

Liliuokalani wrote her own account of the surrender within five years of it, and was plain about why she chose not to resist an armed force she had no realistic hope of defeating. "I yielded my authority to the forces of the United States," she wrote, "in order to avoid bloodshed, and because I recognized the futility of a contest with so formidable a power." She protested the same day to the men who had just deposed her, and again, later, to the government of the United States directly, on the understanding - never honored - that her case would be referred to Washington for arbitration rather than settled by the men who had benefited from her overthrow.

Hawaii, Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen (1898) · James J. Williams · Public domain

When a treaty of annexation was signed at Washington without her consent or her people's, she sent her own secretaries to the State Department to lodge a formal protest in her own name, declaring the treaty "an act of wrong toward the native and part-native people of Hawaii" and "the perpetuation of the fraud whereby the constitutional government was overthrown." The protest changed nothing. But it stands, in her own words rather than an official's, as the clearest statement of how the kingdom's own last monarch understood what had been done to her - not a peaceful transfer of power freely made, but a surrender extracted under the shadow of a warship she had no means to answer.

The flag is raised

afterlifeDrafted from Alexander, A Brief History of the Hawaiian People (1899)

The provisional government that replaced the monarchy in 1893 gave way, within a year, to a formally declared Republic of Hawaii under President Sanford B. Dole - a government built from the start to negotiate its own absorption into the United States rather than to govern indefinitely on its own account. An 1893 annexation treaty was withdrawn by the incoming President Cleveland, whose own investigator, Commissioner Blount, reported that the revolution had been brought about with the aid of the American minister to Hawaii - a finding that led Cleveland to try, unsuccessfully, to have the queen restored before the matter passed out of his hands entirely. The 1897 treaty signed under his successor met the same fate in the Senate, unable to command the two-thirds vote the Constitution required.

What a treaty could not do, a joint resolution did. Passing the House 209 to 91 and the Senate 42 to 21, the resolution for annexation was signed by President McKinley on the 7th of July, 1898. The news reached Honolulu on the 13th to what the record calls great enthusiasm among the annexationist residents who had engineered the whole process from the Committee of Safety onward. On the 12th of August, 1898, the formal transfer of sovereignty took place, and the flag of the United States was raised over the executive building - the same building the Committee of Safety had occupied five years earlier

• with ceremonies the source calls appropriate and impressive.

Alexander, A Brief History of the Hawaiian People (1899) · Walter B. Townsend · Public domain

From kingdom to territory

The republic's own officers continued to govern, now subject to the President of the United States rather than to any constitution of their own making, until Congress passed an organic act in April 1900 establishing the Territory of Hawaii outright, with its own elected legislature and a governor appointed from Washington. Sanford Dole, who had presided over the Committee of Safety's provisional government in 1893, was appointed the Territory's first governor - continuity of personnel across every stage of a kingdom's dismantling, from the palace steps in January 1893 to the executive building five and a half years later, under a flag that was never Hawaii's own.