California State University, Sacramento
Euro-American Settler Perspectives of California
Native Hawaiians (1830s-1920s)
Ashlyn Weaver
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Terri Castaneda
Abstract
The intercultural encounters and relationships between Native Hawaiians and
Native Californians began in 1834.William Heath Davis, a part-Hawaiian
exclaimed Hawaiians were like the “Indians.” This study examines discursive
Euro-American cultural representations of Native Hawaiians in comparison
to Morgan’s racial classification, which classified all peoples into a hierarchy of
savagery, barbarism, or civilization (Morgan 1877). Primary source materials,
including photographs and sketches, diaries, newspapers, museum brochures and
scientific publications, were consulted for the periods from 1840 to 1920. Data
reveal that many Euro-American settlers within California depicted Hawaiians
as “middle-level savages” and often mistaken Native Hawaiians for California
Native Americans.
Introduction
Intercultural encounters and relationships between Native Hawaiians and Native
Californians began in 1834, but are rooted in an earlier period, when merchant
ships first began to ply the seas between the Islands and the northwest coast of
North America (Kauanui 2007:139). According to Chang (2011), the earliest
encounters between Native Hawaiians and Native Americans on the west coast
started in the 18th century, in the regions of North America that would later
become California, Oregon, Washington and the Hawaiians Islands. These
encounters were fostered by whaling, fur trade, the gold rush, and seafaring
labor that had been predominantly occupied by Native Hawaiian men, some
Native Hawaiian women, who then traveled to North America. A majority of the
encounters were brief and temporary because they occurred during the early years
of Native Hawaiians working as seamen and laborers on Western ships. Some
Hawaiians embraced the opportunity to see new lands and to participate in the
seafaring economy, while others were pressed into servitude as personal servants
or curiosities to be exploited for profit. Some of these individuals returned, though
many were abandoned on foreign soil once their purpose was served. American
ships entered the first trade in 1781 and presented better economic opportunities
for Native Hawaiians. By continually traveling back and forth to the northwestern
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region, it became common for some Native Hawaiian laborers to move to
California, where a majority of them established families, worked, and lived
amongst the California indigenous people (Chang 2011:875).
As years passed, Native Hawaiians were able to find steady work in Northern
California leading to intermarriage and varying degrees of assimilation within
Native American communities. While some instances of Hawaiian ancestry in
California Indian communities has been forgotten or erased, in others it has been
remembered through oral history, family genealogies, and even through cultural
practice (Weaver 2014). Archaeological research reveals that a significant Native
Hawaiian population was present in California by 1838 (Chan 2000:46). William
Heath Davis, a Native Hawaiian himself, was born in 1822 in Honolulu, O‘ahu,
in the Kingdom of Hawai‘i. Davis was born one-quarter Hawaiian through his
maternal grandmother Mahi Kalaniho‘oulumokuikekai, a high chiefess from
the Ko‘olau district of O‘ahu. As a young boy many people called Davis “Kanaka
(Hawaiian),” because of his Hawaiian bloodline. Davis moved to Yerba Buena, now
San Francisco, to work at his uncle’s store while still a teen. There, Davis met John
Augustus Sutter, who had in his employ eight Native Hawaiian laborers. Churchill
tells us that William Heath Davis exclaimed during his stay in California, “The
Hawaiians on the coast were—like the Indians—the common laborers, often little
better than slaves, and clearly at the bottom of the social and racial hierarchy”
(Churchill 1994:343). Davis’s statement draws our attention to the condition in
which many Hawaiians found themselves during their cross-cultural encounters
with Euro-American and Native American societies within California.
Literature Review
Classic cultural evolutionism is the name given to a theory of cultural change
that emerged in the late 1900s. Its primary proponents were the American
anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) and his British counterpart,
Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917). Morgan and Tylor proposed that all cultures
change in a linear and progressive fashion (Erickson and Murphy 1998:47). This
theory, also called unilinealism, argued that all societies pass through the same
set of stages. Utilizing a wide variety of data gleaned from second-hand cultural
accounts and from archaeological data focused particularly upon modes of
subsistence and technological attributes, Morgan developed an immense cultural
evolution scheme, creating progressive unilineal stages (Erickson and Murphy
1998:47). He labeled these stages savagery, barbarism, and civilization (Morgan
1877:44). Each of Morgan’s stages were then divided into sub-stages of “lower,
middle, and upper” (Erickson and Murphy 1998:47). These were derived from
techniques of food production, which Morgan believed to be the basis for drawing
distinction between human and other forms of animal life (Morgan 1877:44).
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A prominent part of Morgan’s evolutionary hierarchy was based on a “cultural
shift,” which occurred during the transition of the prehistoric stage (barbarism)
leading into the stage of civilization; this involved the ability to write and
construct architecture (Erickson and Murphy 1998:48). Morgan based this
hierarchy of stages on the presence or absence of plant and animal domestication.
Without the domestication of plants and animals, Morgan considered those
societies as “present-day primitive cultures” (Erickson and Murphy 1998:48).
Native Hawaiians were categorized as lower level savages (Figure 1).
Benedict Anderson (1983) highlights the profound role that the popular
press and print media played in forging early nation-states. Invention of the
printing press was especially critical, as it allowed for the rapid dissemination of
nationalist ideology (Erickson and Murphy 1994:146). The role of the popular
press in shaping public settler-society’s understandings of both Native Americans
and Native Hawaiians during the late 1800s is well documented (Chan, 2000,
Chang, 2011, Duncan 1972). Editorials and political cartoons were central to this
process, giving discursive and graphic expression to U.S. political expansionism
and Manifest Destiny. But these were not the only ideological positions furthered
by print media. Missionary societies also deployed the power of the press to
spread Christian ideology (Hawaiian Historical Society 2015).
Figure 1. Ethnical Periods (Morgan 1877, p. 12)
In 1820, one year after Kamehameha I’s death, his successor and son, Liholiho,
allowed the first American Protestant missionaries to step foot in Kawaihae,
Hawai‘ii (Hawaiian Historical Society 2016). They soon established stations,
such as camps and churches, around the Hawaiian Islands. Newly converted
Native Hawaiian chiefs immediately began trying to stabilize Native Hawaiian
society by introducing western education and new laws derivative of Judeo130
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Christian traditions. Many ruling chiefs embraced Protestant Christianity and
vigorously encouraged their subjects to convert. For instance, Kamehameha II
(Liholiho) ordered the destruction of heiaus (pre-Christian temple structures of
worship) and Hawaiian religious idols.
In these early years, Protestant missionaries and newspapers established a strong
presence. The first printing press on the Hawaiian Islands rounded the Cape
Horn in 1819 (Hawaiian Historical Society 2015). The Island’s first periodical
was produced in 1834, in what would be known as the Lāhinaluna School, on the
island of Maui. The building is preserved and promoted as the site of the earliest
newspaper west of the Rocky Mountains (Hawaiian Historical Society 2015).
Reverend Lorrin Andrews, a Protestant missionary, taught Native Hawaiian
male students about the importance of newsgathering and how to operate
the printing press. The paper featured a variety of articles and freely mixed
ideological content with more factual reporting. Such topics as the constitutional
government, Christian teachings, and exotic animals found in other regions of
the world, and Native Americans as racialized, indigenous peoples were common
(Hawaiian Historical Society 2015).
Hawaiian newspapers were largely under the control of white settlers and
clearly served the agenda of Hawaiian missionaries and colonial powers. These
publications, appearing in the 1830s, 40s, and 50s, taught Native Hawaiians
that Native Americans were downgraded and dangerous pagans who were in
need of “civilizations and salvations,” deliverance from which could only come
from Christian conversion and colonization (Chang 2015:866). Missionary
newspapers introduced Native Hawaiians to what Robert F. Berkhofer (1978)
would come to call “the white man’s Indian,” an “invention” and caricature that
served colonial purposes (Chang 2015:866).
Print media was not the only vehicle that interpreted indigenous people to
settler society. World Fairs played a critical role in this colonialist effort.
World expositions and fairs were important education sites at the turn of
the 19th century. The first World's Fair occurred in London in 1852. World
Fairs allowed common people to tour the world in miniature. World Fairs
were forums for Western nations to exhibit their imperial prowess and
industrial progress, and were extremely popular until the early 1900s. Among
the Fairs' highlights were exhibits of colonized peoples, including Native
Americans. These encampments of indigenous peoples, along with “scientific”
exhibits promoted, “elaborate racial fantasies” (Rydell 1984:209). For example,
at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, the concept of racial
progress permeated the Fair Sculptures with titles like, “The Dawn of Life, Natural
Selection, and Survival of the Fittest,” which lined exhibit walls (Rydell 1984:210).
These assured fairgoers of their superiority over the so-called primitive people. 131
California State University, Sacramento
Methods
This study examines visual and textual Euro-American cultural representations
of Native Hawaiians in reference to Morgan’s system of racial classification,
which categorized all peoples into a hierarchy of savagery, barbarism, or
civilization (Morgan 1877). Primary source materials, including photographs and
sketches, diaries, newspapers, museum brochures and scientific publications, were
located and analyzed for the periods from 1830 to 1920. These data revealed that
many Euro-American settlers within California depicted Hawaiians as “middlelevel savages” and often mistaken for California Native Americans. Amateur
ethnographic works that romanticized Native Hawaiian culture and lifestyle and
missionary newspapers produced in California, New York, and Hawai‘i were also
sought and analyzed as sites of popular cultural production and knowledge.
Data were collected using keyword searches of online university and state
library systems. This divulged a rich cross-section of newspapers, popular
scientific magazines, and other cultural publications of the period. This strategy
developed a snowball effect, leading to additional archival data and repositories.
On-site research was conducted at the California State Library, California
Indian Museum, Sutter’s Fort, and the Merriam Library Archives and Special
Collections at Chico State.
This research resulted in a data set equaling 22 images and 25 textual
representations of Native Hawaiians for the period of 1830s-1920s. These
comprise political cartoons, amateur ethnographies, and missionary newspapers
featuring Hawaiians as primitive creatures and exotic peoples. These visual and
discursive representations were subjected to analysis based upon racial, social, and
cultural content.
Findings
Data analysis revealed that William Heath Davis’ comparison and perception
of Native Hawaiians to California Native Americans was mirrored in the wider
corpus of print material consulted. Like Davis, California and U.S. settler society,
more broadly, saw Native Hawaiians through a lens that was filtered by early
encounters with Polynesian immigrants and by the scientific racism promulgated
by the evolutionary hierarchies developed by Morgan and Tylor (Erickson and
Murphy 1994). Three basic stereotypes prevailed: Native Hawaiians as savages,
Native Hawaiians as sensual and sexual figures, and Native Hawaiians as heathens.
Native Hawaiians as Savages
Findings show that many Hawaiians were depicted as primitive people. Political
cartoons and other popular media sources caricatured Native Hawaiians, and
even Hawaiian royalty, with bare feet, animal print attire, distorted faces,
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enlarged lips, untamed hair, and dark complexions signifying that Hawai‘i
was perceived as a primitive society. An image published in an 1887 issue of
San Francisco’s “The Wasp,” portrayed Hawaiian royalty as an overweight king
toppled “by the revolution,” while a barefooted woman rushing back from a
jubilee represents Princess Kapi‘olani (The Wasp 1887). In New York’s magazine,
“Judge,” an image of Hawaiian royalty sits upon bayonets held up by U.S. army
soldiers (Judge 1899). Other images portray Queen Liliu‘okalani with enlarged
lips, a club in her hand, and feathers in her hair (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Anonymous, St. Paul daily globe, 1893
The ideology of Manifest Destiny legitimated U.S. expansion into the North and
South Pacific, bringing with it imperial subjugation, Christianity, and capitalism
(Foner 2011). An image from New York’s Judge magazine depicts a basket full of
small, child-like, and dark complexioned individuals being carried on the back of
Uncle Sam. This political caricature by Victor Gillat, entitled “The White Man’s
Burden,” includes Native Hawaiians, who are represented by a dark-skinned
figure, with grotesque features. Note that Sāmoa and Cuba are carried alongside
Hawai‘i, in Uncle Sam’s imperial burden basket (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Victor Gillam, “The White Man’s Burden,” Judge, 1899
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Why were Hawaiians depicted in such primitive ways? Turning to Morgan's
Ancient Society (1877) to find the answers. Morgan cited the absence of potteryproduction on most of the Pacific Islands—with the exception of Tonga and
Fiji—as evidence of primitive culture (Morgan 1877). Unwilling to recognize
their basket weaving technologies and tapa cloth production as sophisticated
alternatives to a ceramic tradition, Polynesians were deemed inferior. If
Polynesians were incapable of producing pottery, then they were surely incapable
of progressing to a higher evolutionary plane in Morgan’s hierarchy. Without
American colonization, Hawaiians were destined to remain savages.
Hawaiians as Sensual and Sexual Beings
Native Hawaiians and other islanders were romanticized as sensual and sexual
beings in cultural accounts of Euro-American sailors and ship merchants traveling
from the U.S. to the Hawaiian Islands. Many accounts described the “bounteous
kind of handsomeness possessed by Hawaiian women…with the intelligence
and the mildness of temper that make her people the most likeable of all the
Polynesians” (Curle 1923:2589). Photographs and drawings of Native Hawaiians
bolstered these romanticized and discursive representations (Figure 4).
Figure 4. “Hawaii: Pleasure-Loving Islanders of the North Pacific” in Peoples of All Nations: Their
Life Today and Story of Their Past, 1923
Images of topless Native Hawaiian women, wearing grass skirts and positioned in
a hula pose or sitting nonchalantly with large, extravagant lei po‘o (head leis), and
uncrossed legs sexualized Hawaiians for public consumption. Drawings found in
amateur cultural accounts also romanticized Native Hawaiians. Typically they
are depicted on the beach with long flowing hair or well-defined muscles gazing
off into shoreline (Duncan 1955:2). Visual representations of Native Hawaiians
idealized them as fruitful individuals or as god-like figures. These were common
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stereotypes fostered in popular culture, particularly through the paintings of
artists like Gauguin and Van Gogh.
For instance, the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition of 1915 hosted
Pacific Islanders within the Hawaiian Pavilion (Figure 5). Native Americans
and indigenous people from several colonized American territories were also
brought to this fair and “lived” on the Joy Zone—a circus-like area—within
the “ethnic villages” (Performing Arts at San Francisco’s 1915 World’s FairPanama Pacific International Exposition, 2015). Other Pacific Islanders within
these ethnic villages, like Māori and Sāmoans, demonstrated their cultural
dances, ritual traditions, and spoke about their everyday lives to thousands of
visitors (Performing Arts at San Francisco’s 1915 World’s Fair-Panama-Pacific
International Exhibition 2015). The Hawaiian Pavilion was a popular attraction
and as many as 34,000 people passed through it every day (Rydell, 1984:212).
Following this fair, Hawaiian ‘ukulele and Hawaiian music became very popular
throughout the U.S., helping to promote a more romantic, versus “savage,” vision
of Hawaiian peoples (Figure 6).
Figure 5. The Hawaiian Pavilion in San Francisco, Panama-Pacific Fair, 1915
Figure 6. Hawaiian Musicians at the Hawaiian Pavilion, in San Francisco, Panama-Pacific Fair, 1915
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Native Hawaiians as Heathens
The findings show that the discursive representations of Native Hawaiians and
Native Americans published in Hawaiian missionary newspapers depicted Native
Hawaiian societies as more socially and culturally advanced than those of Native
Americans. Hawaiian missionary newspapers evoked such imagery with columns
such as, “Ka nalowale o ka moku "Indian Chief,” which translates as “The
vanishing of the district ‘Indian Chief ’” (Ka Hae Hawai‘i 1857). Here, a clear
contrast is being drawn between Hawaiians and their colonized counterparts
on the mainland. The missionary press also reinforced settler imagery of Native
Americans as “undomesticated hunters, brutish warriors, and unapologetic nonChristians” and labeled them as the “White Man’s Indian or as objects of pity”
(Chang 2011:878). By such means, missionaries simultaneously romanticized and
explained why they sought to save the souls of Native Hawaiians, who like their
“lower status” brethren—Native Americans—still required colonization in order
to be brought to a more advanced evolutionary stage.
Conclusion
Historical evidence reveals that while Native Hawaiians were recognized by
Euro-American settler society as culturally distinct, they did not consider Native
Hawaiians as social equals. According to Chang (2011), settlers failed to take into
account the dramatic social and cultural differences between Native Hawaiians
and the Native American populations alongside whom they lived and worked as
immigrants to California (Chang 2015).
This study examined visual and discursive Euro-American cultural
representations of Native Hawaiians in relation to Morgan’s unilineal system of
racial classification (Morgan 1877). Findings show that many Native Hawaiians
were regularly depicted with primitive features in such contexts as political
cartoon characters and in other genres of popular media, demonstrating
concordance between late 19th century ideas about phenotypic traits and social
evolution. Comparative analysis also showed that while Hawaiian missionary
newspapers reproduced Morgan’s hierarchy by depicting Native Hawaiians as
superior to Native Americans, this was not the case where U.S. publications
were concerned. Native Hawaiians in California were seen as equivalent to
Native Americans. Representations of them were negative and demeaning,
characterizing both their physical form and their culture as primitive. Native
Hawaiians occupied a low rung in Morgan’s racial hierarchy. Thus while Morgan
recognized their culture as distinct, Euro-American sentiment both at home and
in Hawai‘i, was focused on the shared status as “savages,” viewing them—like
William Heath Davis—as equivalent to Native Americans in California.
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