The Island Edge of America

Chapter 8 A State Like No Other

Chapter 8 A State Like No Other If the only clue to Hawai‘i’s political culture was a map, the viewer might be struck by the wide dispersal of the islands. They are separated by imposing channels, which are usually wider than the islands themselves. Although the land mass of the archipelago is only a little larger than Connecticut, it is spread across a space the size of Kansas. The islands were formed by an outpouring of lava from a fissure in the earth’s tectonic plates. Over millennia, the fountain of lava has remained in place, but the plates themselves have migrated, carrying islands to the northwest . As a result, the most western inhabited island, Kaua‘i, is many times older than the easternmost island, Hawai‘i. Because of an extreme difference in age, the topography of each island differs, as do soil erosion, coral formation , and differentiation of species. Island by island, nature differs. In varying patterns, islands are subdivided by dramatic mountain ranges, and even adjoining valleys are separated by high, steep ridges. The extent of this diversity resulted in the early settlements of Hawai‘i being highly decentralized. The Hawaiian historian Samuel Kamakau wrote of an idyllic time “when no man was chief over another.” As the population grew, this idyll of a folk culture was displaced by progressively more complex and powerful chiefdoms. At the time of the first Western contact, four supreme chiefs ruled four kingdoms: the Hawai‘i Island kingdom; the Maui kingdom (made of the interrelated islands of Maui, Lana‘i, Moloka‘i, and Kaho‘olawe); the O‘ahu kingdom (which sometimes included Moloka‘i); and the Kaua‘i kingdom, which included the island of Ni‘ihau. Centers of power shifted from Hilo and Waipi‘o on the Big Island to Hana and Wailuku in Maui, Waikiki and Kualoa on O‘ahu, and Waimea and Waialua on Kaua‘i. In the ebb and flow of powerful chiefly lines, island kingdoms alternately attempted to achieve dominance. 160 O‘ahu dominated Moloka‘i. Maui dominated Lana‘i, then Moloka‘i as well. This cluster—of O‘ahu, Moloka‘i, Maui and Lana‘i—formed a central core, which was in some ways best positioned to achieve eventual control of the others. When the British arrived in 1778, they stayed longest on the inner or Kona coast of Hawai‘i Island and would often return to a protected leeward bay, Kealakekua. Contact with the West led to trading for firepower, which accelerated the process of interisland warfare. Hawai‘i Island was bigger than all the other islands combined. Its strategic resources—such as food, weapons, and ocean craft—could be developed to support extended campaigns of warfare . Further, Hawai‘i Island derived a certain protection from the fact that it was upwind. Opposing armies struggled to sail to Hawai‘i, but the Hawaiians could easily swoop downwind on the attack. After several centuries of intermittent warfare, the heavily armed Hawaiians came to dominate the archipelago. The strategically situated island of the periphery had conquered the islands of the center, with remote Kaua‘i eventually but reluctantly pledging its loyalty to the newly centralized kingdom. By 1895, seventeen years after the first sustained Western contact, the supreme chief of the Hawaiian Islands was the man in the golden cloak, Kamehameha. Most important in an agrarian society, he controlled use of the land. Exhibiting a fine understanding of the exercise of power, Kamehameha moved from his original home on the periphery to one of the two islands of the center, O‘ahu. Initially he chose a traditionally Hawaiian place, Waikiki, which was not unlike his home valley, Waipi‘o, on Hawai‘i. It was rich in water, taro, and fish. When he observed that the long keels of western ships could clear the reef and find adequate shelter only at the dry, barren village of Kou, he relocated his royal compound down the coast to dominate what would become known as the harbor of Honolulu. During the reign of the third Kamehameha, the centralized powers of the dynasty were tempered by the establishment of a constitutional monarchy , with executive, legislative, and judicial branches. What had begun as a highly ranked chiefdom more and more resembled the organization of the powerful, seagoing nation-states. With the institution of fee simple land ownership , about 45 percent of the land was still controlled by the crown. Part of these enormous land tracts were for the support of the monarch...