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CHAPTER 1

The Political Economy of Mana

Obligation, Debt, and Trade

Tamaahmaah: King of the Sandwich Islands. This Indian Prince, illustrious for his magnanimity, his love of civilization, and his great abilities, was one of nature’s great men who led the van of the age in which he lived.… He was the hero and conqueror of that cluster of islands in the Pacific Ocean (excepting Onehooi and Atooi,) of which Owhyhee is the principal … the Sandwich Islands from the exuberant fertility of the soil, their situation directly between Asia and America, their native and intelligent population; but above all from the noble character of their king, have become the most important groupe, inhabited merely by savages, in the known world.

On New Years’ Day 1820, readers of American newspapers in Boston, New York, and Connecticut enjoyed a lengthy reflection about the life of Kamehameha soon after news of his death in Kailua, Hawai‘i, reached the United States. The timely essay may have been especially interesting since a group of missionaries sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) had left Boston a few months earlier and were at that moment en route to the islands to plant the first American mission field in the Pacific. Hence, readers in America were recipients of the news of the great chief’s passing before the missionaries themselves, who would not learn of Kamehameha’s death until they arrived in Hawai‘i some three months later.

While lauding the chief’s “love of civilization,” the article also dwelt upon the importance of the Sandwich Islands to American and British commerce. In terms of their geographic situation, the islands provided ships in the China trade with a perfect stopping place between the markets of China and the northwest coast of America. But its placement as way station between ports did not diminish the importance of the islands to beleaguered ships in need of repair, and crews and captains that longed for respite from the regimented discipline of shipboard life. The excellent soil of the islands promised fresh fruit and vegetables aplenty. All long trading voyages depended on water, fresh meat, and salt to cure it, all found in abundance in Hawai‘i. The Sandwich Islands were indispensable to the expansion of Euro-American commerce in the early nineteenth-century Pacific.

In American and British newspapers, Kamehameha was dubbed an “Indian Prince,” another “Bonaparte or Peter the Great conjoined in one.” The image of a savage who could conquer several island kingdoms while engaging in international commerce and employing foreign labor in service of his oceanic empire struck Euro-Americans as impressive.¹ What these articles shared in common was the conviction that Kamehameha had transformed himself from a savage into a civilized ruler by engaging in mutually beneficial trade relations with Euro-Americans, building his own fleet of ships, and employing foreigners as advisers and skilled laborers.

Newspapers from the period (1805–1813) reported with something like wonder that since British captain George Vancouver had built a ship for Kamehameha in 1792, by 1805 the Hawaiian chief had amassed a fleet of twenty vessels of different sizes of “20 or 30 tons,” some with gleaming copper bottoms.² Kamehameha, according to these accounts, also encouraged the settlement of Europeans in his islands, “provided they be industrious,” in a surprising role reversal that bolstered the presumption that Kamehameha had been civilized by way of his newly cultivated value for “industry” and that overseeing foreign labor to manufacture Euro-American goods such as ships made him a noble ruler. His imperial triumphs were also impressive to Euro-Americans. As “proof” that his savage nature had been transformed, Kamehameha brokered a trade monopoly with New England ship captains. As a visionary, Kamehameha built ships of Hawaiian manufacture, such as the brig Kaahumanu (named after one of his wives), stocked it with sandalwood, and sent the cargo to Chinese markets in order to cut out the European middleman.³

Not only was Kamehameha interested in trade and ship building, he also reportedly knew how to drive a hard bargain: “He is not only a great warrior and politician, but a very acute trader, and a match for any European in driving a bargain. He is well acquainted with the different weights and measures, and the value which all articles ought to bear in exchange with each other; and is ever ready to take advantage of the necessities of those who apply to him or his people for supplies.”⁴ Civilization, argued these narratives, was the main product of Euro-American trading interaction with Hawaiians. Euro-American narratives of the emergence of capitalism in the islands cannot be divorced from stories of the ambitious and bold leadership of Kamehameha as he propelled his people toward “civilization.”

The myth of Kamehameha as a “great man” had been enshrined in American narratives about Hawaiians, serving to entice early trade between New England and Hawai‘i.⁵ In addition to his acuity at trade, American narratives portrayed Kamehameha as a visionary leader because he was capable of uniting all the islands under his singular rule. This admiration of his political and military abilities to conquer—like a Bonaparte or Peter the Great—set Kamehameha within a global historical context of leadership, even as such praise ironically lauded a model of governance Americans of the new republic had so recently cast off. Hawai‘i under Kamehameha’s rule became a place of curiosity and potential opportunity for American merchants and missionaries.

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 utilized by Hawaiian people. It had no known ceremonial usage; it was not the kinolau, or sacred body form, of any akua (god or goddess). Hawaiians did not carve akua ki‘i (god images) out of its wood. While the wood of ‘iliahi was worked into a form suitable to scent fine kapa (mulberry cloth) for the ali‘i and may have been used sparsely for medicinal purposes, its conspicuous absence from poetry, song, and legend means that sandalwood was not particularly significant in the everyday lives of Hawaiian people in the 1820s, during the height of the sandalwood mania, the drive to collect wood in exchange for goods delivered.¹⁵ Harvesting sandalwood and turning it over to merchants must have been, for the chiefs, akin to acquiring a lot of something for little or next to nothing.

Politically, this kind of widespread trade by the lesser chiefs was overseen by the chiefs who ruled as Kamehameha’s successors: Liholiho, his son and heir; Ka‘ahumanu, his wife and kuhina nui (the chiefess who shares rule with the mō‘i); and William Pitt Kālaimoku, his chief counselor who held the king’s purse and who inventoried and distributed land to chiefs.¹⁶ In the sandalwood trade, it was Kālaimoku who was the chief whose importance rose as American merchants pursued as many tons of sandalwood from as many chiefs as possible. His management of this merchant free-for-all after Kamehameha I’s death elevated Kālaimoku in the eyes of the merchants as the chief to trust in approving contractual relations with the lower chiefs.

A portrait of Kālaimoku, the chief, was sketched by English artist Robert Dampier on his visit to the islands in 1825. In the sketch, Kālaimoku’s hair appears shorn, handsomely so, and sideburns in European style are cut close to his face, framing his cheekbones. He is wearing a loose-fitting white shirt of European manufacture, finely made, along with a jacket. The chief is older, with a receding hairline and lines etched into his forehead—no doubt a legacy of the many responsibilities he has had to take on over the years. His expression is direct, yet in the moment that has been captured, there is nothing harsh that appears in that gaze, which is measured and wise. According to many foreign accounts, Kālaimoku’s character seems to match what the artist’s hand sought to portray. Charles Hammatt first met Kālaimoku in the house of Liholiho, Kamehameha II, on May 12, 1823, two days after Hammatt’s arrival in Honolulu. That afternoon, the chiefly residence was full, some “fifty or sixty” people in attendance; Kālaimoku stood apart amid the assembled crowd, “a lively intelligent looking old man, & seemed to be full of thought.”¹⁷

Kamakau, the famed Hawaiian historian of the mid-nineteenth century, penned the only obituary for Kālaimoku written in Hawaiian, which began, “I ka make ana o Kalanimoku, ua moku ke kaula hao o keaupuni i paa ai” (At the death of Kalanimoku, the iron cable that held fast the nation was severed).¹⁸ Kālaimoku, Kamehameha’s kuhina nui (high-ranking counselor), was a favorite (punahele) of Kamehameha, and he served as tax collector (pu‘ukū nui) and carver of lands (kālaimoku). He was also an ‘alihikaua, a skilled warrior and general.

The shifting political terrain of chiefly authority was opaque to outsiders who came to the islands seeking bountiful provisions, access to women, or, in the case of missionaries, minds to educate and hearts to convert. Merchants and missionaries came to the islands with their own agendas; they learned enough about chiefly politics and relations of power to achieve their own ends. In the management of mercantile and spiritual economies, the goal was not to understand the intricacies of relation among the ali‘i; instead, it was to locate the individual chief or chiefs who held power at any given time in order to ingratiate oneself so as to get what one needed.

After Kamehameha’s death, Kālaimoku ruled jointly with Ka‘ahumanu and Liholiho, who was acknowledged as the king of the Sandwich Islands—although in truth, his elder relatives seem to have taken on the massive responsibility of dealing with foreign vessels, their personnel, and merchant agents in the islands.¹⁹ When foreign traders opened their showrooms aboard vessels or in portside stores, they dealt with a coterie of chiefs of diverse rank and whose administration of lands and resources portended different levels of purchasing power. Merchant agents were stationed at Kaua‘i and Honolulu, reflecting the still acknowledged and pronounced division of chiefdoms between those ali‘i who served Kamehameha, who ruled over the islands of Hawai‘i, Maui, Lāna‘i, Kaho‘olawe and O‘ahu, while Kaua‘i and Ni‘ihau were still largely left to the rule of Kaumuali‘i. The paramount chiefs of the intertwined families of Ka‘ahumanu and Kamehameha were those who traded most frequently with merchant agents and ship captains. From their reports, it appears that Kālaimoku was instrumental in consolidating the debt of the chiefs and was efficient at mobilizing both ali‘i and maka‘āinana as laborers to collect the massive amounts of sandalwood that were sent to Canton at the end of the season in 1821. As debt collector and administrator of resources, the chief innovated upon his role due to the necessity of having to deal with the influx of foreigners into Hawaiian society, which steadily increased each year after the death of the great chief Kamehameha in May 1819.

The Politics of Mana

Kālaimoku’s abilities and capacity to manage trade and subsequent debt during this period must be examined within a larger understanding of how mana underpinned chiefly authority. Without understanding mana as the basis of chiefly authority, we cannot understand how a chief could mobilize entire populations to harvest sandalwood and engage in trade with American merchants. Hawaiian engagement in this global trade was predicated upon the politics of mana, and these politics evolved and adapted to address what the sandalwood trade brought to the islands.

Simultaneous with the tales of chiefly heroism and rule are stories, far more complex, about relationships set in bone (‘iwi): of mo‘okū‘auhau (genealogy), the carefully manipulated couplings between chiefs, a politics of debt, obligation, and exchange.²⁰ Hawaiian chiefs possessed sophisticated ideas about debt and obligation coincident with, but quite separate from, those brought by New England traders. The most excellent example of the formulation of debt and obligation occurred, however, with respect to the circulation of chiefly bodies (both male and female), kapu, and mana (spiritual power) in an engineered system of genealogical connection, an economy of mana.

Excavating the term mo‘okū‘auhau (genealogy) and uncovering its layers is an excellent starting point for our investigation into Hawaiian conceptualizations of relation, obligation, and connection. The oldest published definition of kū‘auhau is supplied by American missionary lexicographer Lorrin Andrews in his 1865 Dictionary of the Hawaiian Language. Kū, to be set fast, is added to ‘auhau, or tax, hence kū‘auhau, by Andrews’ reckoning, is to “be recorded in genealogy, in history or tradition.”²¹ A later dictionary produced by Samuel Elbert and Mary Kawena Pukui, the most prominent genealogist, ethnographer, lexicographer, and translator of her generation, offered another definition of ‘auhau: “femur and humerous [sic] bones of the human skeleton.” The polysemy of the word ‘auhau furnishes another layer of understanding—genealogical connection as bred into bone. The layered meaning of words leads one to consider the ritualized practice of the ceremonial stripping away of the flesh of a chief after his or her death in order to preserve the bones, which are the repository of mana. Hence, ‘auhau can be an accounting in word; it can point to connection through sexual intercourse, and birth, and is physically manifested in ritual practice and in the careful caring for the bones of the ali‘i. Finally, a third way to parse the word mo‘okū‘auhau is to consider the word as made up of three constitutive parts: mo‘o, kū‘au, meaning stem, shaft, or stalk, and hau (Hibiscus tiliaceus).²² The hau tree is a low-lying tree whose branches form a tangle of impenetrable thickets. The plant “has a highly spreading, near surface, lateral root system, often comprised of only a few main roots.”²³ This perhaps is the closest visual, somatic, and metaphoric inspiration to the genealogies of ali‘i—entangled branchings that spread copiously emergent from a few main roots.²⁴

Plumbing these semiotic depths is important because Hawaiian chiefs of Kamehameha’s time did not think genealogically on paper, but through word, act, engagement, and interpretation. Moving from ruminations over the concept “mo‘okū‘auhau,” it is important to see how these webs of chiefly interrelationship create both stable outcomes, such as arranged “marriages” or sexual couplings, and the opening up of unstable, dynamic multiple possibilities for leadership, counsel, reproduction, and sacrifice. Genealogy as a system of accounting thus also becomes a system of accountability, as relationships between chiefs include measurements of closeness/distance (in sibling groups, in spousal groups, or in generational successions, for example) that are foundational for understanding how the chiefs perceived their distinct yet interlocking ambits of authority, of action, and of responsibility to each other. This genealogical accountability between chiefs is the first place to look to begin to understand what debt was to the chiefs in the early nineteenth century.

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. As US commercial agent, Jones was in charge of keeping a record of American ships arriving and departing from Hawaiian ports. Jones was also responsible for seeing to the care of sick sailors and ship captains and finding them passage home upon recovery or arranging burial in case of death. As agent for Marshall and Wildes, Jones was assisted by Mr. Babcock, who had been in the islands longer than he had and who purportedly had more influence with the ali‘i than did any other trader in the islands.²⁸

These Hawai‘i-based agents would oversee shops and storehouses that contained fancy and mundane trade goods, as well as provisions that were left at the islands by arriving ships, as even space on a ship was a commodity one could sell. Provisions stored in the islands would be retrieved at a later date for use on a ship’s return journey home. Voyages to the North Pacific could last anywhere from three to five years, so the agents, officers, and ship captains involved in the trade were relatively familiar with the people in the ports they frequented if they managed more than one voyage, which many ship captains did.

As agents in the islands, men like Hammatt, Jones, and Babcock were charged not only with selling goods to Hawaiian people and ali‘i, but also with increasing people’s desire for goods. Once merchants had spent time taking orders and drumming up interest in new, more extravagant wares, they would write letters to the home office that included long lists of goods for the Hawaiian market. Trade in the Pacific was about managing risk, since ships could be dispatched from New England before a letter from an agent based in the islands requesting the latest fashion or indispensable new item had arrived. By the time another ship came out with the requested goods, a year might have passed, along with the desire for that item, which had been filled by goods brought ashore by a competitor.

Promised goods long looked for and not delivered could destroy the reputation of the agency conducting trade, and a reputation worthy of trust in the business of credit and debt was important to employers and chiefly clients. John C. Jones had been unable to fulfill his promises to chiefs on numerous occasions. When a Captain Masters failed to show up in May 1821 with ship and cargo that Jones had chatted up to the ali‘i Kaumuali‘i, the king of Kaua‘i, to Jones’ dismay, purchased a ship “of inferior quality” for 3,500 piculs of sandalwood from rival ship captain John Suter, who worked for Bryant and Sturgis. On another occasion, Jones, who had “secured the friendship of several powerful chiefs,” persuaded them not to purchase any ships until the Paragon arrived. A number of chiefs had wood to spend, and Jones projected his hope that an excellent trade could be made across several letters beginning in January and ending in August 1823, when his hopes were finally dashed.

Instead of the very fine elegant goods he had enjoined his employers to send in his letters, the Paragon carried “no merchandise for this place, save a quantity of sour wine, tin pots, lanthorns, frying pans, miserable Spanish brandy, mouldy cherries, cask of honey and last though not least brick bats.”²⁹ These were not even pickings—the dull thud of the motley assortment spoke volumes about Jones’ own deflated hopes, of consumer dreams dashed. The chiefs, including Kālaimoku, were not at all interested in the poor cargo and objected to its landing, which further irritated Jones. Consider Jones’ enthusiasm and optimism for this moment of trade in a letter he had penned two and a half months before the Paragon’s arrival. “A small quantity of superfine broadcloth, a large quantity of cambric prints … also first quality calicoes, white cambrick muslin, Irish linen, ladies shoes large sizes, white stockings, silk and button, black silks hats, women’s bonnets must be different patterns large size and of good 60 or 100 would sell well, ladies dresses large and small sizes made of 1” quality of materials and showy would command a good price.”³⁰ The list has an almost melodic quality to it, veritably singing off the page. The list is illustrative of merchants’ personal investment in setting up the best goods that would bring the highest prices at market.

In this letter Jones also reiterated the belief that like their famous chief Kamehameha, the Hawaiian people were being civilized through their consumption of Euro-American goods:

A cargo should consist of an assortment of every thing no great quantity of any one Article, were I at home myself I could select an outfit that would do well—Ox teams, Light wagons, handcarts, wheelbarrows, carriages, and one or two of those vehicles Called barouches [covered carriages], two or three chaises you might be surprised that such articles Would sell but you would be more surprised to see how fast these people are advancing towards civilization, only two days since Mr. Pitt asked me to send for three carriages And have them adorned with gold, every thing new and elegant will sell and at good Profit, coarse articles are of no use.³¹

Jones here imagines that Hawaiian chiefly consumers demand wheeled vehicles, and he says that “Mr. Pitt,” Kālaimoku himself, has asked him to send three carriages to the islands. He uses this purported desire for vehicles that move faster than walking as a metaphor for his claim that Hawaiians are “fast … advancing towards civilization.”

Distance from the home office, the source of all potential goods desired, made desiring subjects of not only the ali‘i but also of the merchant agents themselves. Though the ali‘i may have wanted these goods, what merchants consumed greedily (or were consumed by) was not only the actual point of sale or trade but the raised expectation of seeing whether or not their orders would be fulfilled by the timely arrival of cargo that they had personally requested. Lulls between seasons of selling, accounting, and ingratiating themselves to chiefs while wheeling and dealing were spent scheming against rivals. Lengthy lists of goods and services, bordering on the obscene, did not originate with the “devouring” or “avaricious” chiefs. Instead, they first originated with the agents who dreamed them up out of their own longing for profits and their desires to beat the competition at the profit-making game.

Moku (Forests) for Moku (Boats)

The most extravagant purchase any ali‘i could make was to buy a ship (moku) in exchange for forests (moku) of sandalwood. Ships were the highest-priced items traded between chiefs and New England merchants and therefore accounted for a disproportionate amount of the debt ascribed to chiefs by individual merchant concerns.³² Rather than fetishizing the detrimental effects of trade upon “Hawaiian tradition,” in this section I ask what effect trade and debt had upon Hawaiian chiefly relations. Far from being the ravenous and idle consumers that fill merchant narratives, Hawaiian chiefs were active participants in commerce, often setting the terms of trade and payment according to scales of value foreign to New England agents and ship captains.³³ The chiefs Kālaimoku, Ke‘eaumoku, and Ka‘a-humanu worked strenuously to organize other ali‘i to pay off debts owed to merchants. Kālaimoku, along with several other chiefs, also sought to curb the buying practices of individuals among them, whose excessive purchases threatened to turn all Hawaiians, including chiefs, into laborers working off the debt.

Providing a better view of the way the business of trade was managed by the ali‘i also casts doubt upon the immensity of the debt American merchants claimed was owed by Hawaiians. While the chiefs and people were enthusiastic consumers, the prices traders set for large items like ships and houses, as well as dry goods like cloth and luxury items like rum and wine, often included a significant markup. Meeting in council, the ali‘i deliberated and deployed kapu restricting the ability of certain ali‘i to purchase ships from certain captains who sold rotten ships.

Merchant concerns Marshall and Wildes and Bryant and Sturgis managed several trading voyages in the China–Northwest Coast–Sandwich Islands trade during any given season. Merchant agents stationed in the islands working for both concerns were routinely given instructions to sell any ship touching at the islands if the ali‘i appeared interested in making a purchase. The cost of ships fluctuated depending on the number of ships ali‘i owned, the state of their wear, and competition between rival merchants and chiefs in any given area.

In the two years preceding Hammatt’s voyage, 1819–1821, the chiefs purchased between four and six ships, one frame house, and several cargoes full of trade goods, accruing new “debt” of 29,760 piculs of sandalwood to Marshall and Wildes and Bryant and Sturgis combined.³⁴ Ali‘i owning ships was also perhaps a matter of scale, as high-ranking ali‘i also had peleleu, single- and double-hull canoes, in their employ in order to pursue war and send messages and goods between the islands. The ability to mobilize a labor force to build canoes and propel them was also a measure of the power of the ali‘i and his wealth. Acquisition and ownership of Euro-American ships differed from Hawaiian canoes in matters of scale, and also because there were neither enough ship carpenters to go around nor large wood suitable enough to build these types of vessels on each island, making the ready-made ships of the merchants a bargain, considering all that they wanted in exchange were useless sandalwood trees. The ali‘i Kamehameha popularized the fashion among chiefs of owning ships purchased from New England merchants a decade earlier. The desire to own ships and the knowledge and materials with which to build, maintain, and sail them was pragmatic, as building a fleet also coincided with Kamehameha’s campaigns to take over different island chiefdoms.

By March of 1821, American missionaries in the island observed that Liholiho had amassed his own fleet of ships, which were employed by all of the ali‘i to sail between the islands. Liholiho’s fleet included Cleopatra’s Barge, Thaddeus, Neo, Columbia, Bordeaux Packet, and the Kaua‘i schooner Eos. Ships afforded the ali‘i a measure of independence, allowing them to come and go as they pleased, to engage with pesky foreign agents or depart for familiar places devoid of foreign presence. They were also very visible signs of the wealth and power of the ali‘i.

The most famous ship to be sold to Hawaiian chiefs also turned out to be the most infamous trade of this Hawaiian age of sail/sale. The Bryant and Sturgis pleasure craft Cleopatra’s Barge had enjoyed an entirely different life, having been built on October 21, 1816, for the wealthy Salem, Massachusetts, merchant George Crowninshield, costing him a reported $50,000.³⁵ Apparently the barge lived up to its name, delighting Hawaiians so much that John Coffin Jones complained that it was “so superior” to any ships offered for sale by Marshall and Wildes that the chiefs would “scarce look at them.” Liholiho had agreed to purchase the eighty-three-foot-long, 191-ton brig that had sailed into Honolulu under the direction of Capt. John Suter on November 16, 1820.³⁶

Bryant and Sturgis agent Charles Bullard returned to the islands on March 24, 1821, expecting to collect payment for the barge and reap the additional benefits that resulted from the king’s continued goodwill toward his concern for selling him such a beautiful ship. After meeting with Liholiho, Bullard found that the best lots of wood had been cut, expecting that these would soon be delivered in payment for the vessel. Unfortunately, Ka‘ahumanu was very sick, so the business was postponed. In the meantime, Liholiho went with Bullard to examine the cargo of goods recently arrived and “appeared much pleased with them.” The cargo was of such quality that according to Bullard, “a taboo was put on the trade in order that he and the Head chiefs might have first choice.”³⁷

The king and chiefs placed kapu setting the terms of buying and selling—who could purchase certain cargo and at what time. April was a busy month for trade on O‘ahu. Ka‘ahumanu’s prolonged illness, the large numbers of whaleships visiting the port (approximately sixty), and two vessels from New Holland, one of which proved to be a present from the king of England to Liholiho, all conspired, to Bullard’s irritation, to “take up so much attention of the ‘court’ ” preventing his making a “prompt” sale. “Until April 18th,” Bullard wrote in his letter, “my business was in the best possible terms,” when to his consternation, carpenters “overhauling the Barge” reported it was “rotten.” This was a charge that Bullard was reluctant to believe, but which upon examination he found was “too true.” In describing the damage to his employers, he spared no words, “from the main chains aft above the water, She was a complete mass of dry rot.” Bullard’s hopes for making a good voyage had moldered along with the barge. The response of the ali‘i to his concern was immediate and harsh. “Their [the chiefs’] disappointment was great in proportion to their previous expectations—When I went to Court where I before received every attention I found nothing but frowns—I saw at once that my voyage was nearly done up, If not quite ruined.”³⁸

To make matters worse, the chiefs in council reportedly told Bullard that his partner, Captain John Suter, had promised them that the barge was a “first rate vessel, nearly new and guaranteed she would wear ten years without repair.”³⁹ As criticism, the ali‘i deployed the words of rival merchant agents to stinging effect; “the concern” they accused, “were a set of liars and villains,” who had sent the barge out “on purpose to deceive them.”⁴⁰

Bullard, his high aspirations dashed, reported that a “grand consultation of chiefs was held,” at which the chiefs decided not to pay any more wood. After three weeks of negotiation with various chiefs, Bullard succeeded in persuading a “majority” in his favor, who allowed the collection of 1,984 piculs on the price owed. Remaining in Honolulu harbor through May 30, Bullard, at the “request of some chiefs,” decided it was best to make a trip around the island to collect more wood. But Bullard had yet to feel the strength of the king’s resentment against him and his concern. “I was aware that opposition would follow me and was not in the least disappointed,” he wrote. “The ship was no sooner under way, than messengers were sent to every part of the island, forbidding (in the name of the King) the sale of any wood—but notwithstanding his Majesty’s taboo, I succeeded in obtaining over 1400 piculs.”⁴¹

* * *

Another detail of trade emerges here in Bullard’s letter. Ships obtaining permission to collect sandalwood in payment were dispatched from port cities to areas on the island that were sandalwood collection sites. If a merchant or captain incurred the displeasure of the high chiefs, messengers would be dispatched and a kapu placed on trading with particular individuals. Bullard was savvy enough to understand that he had to keep his relationship with the chiefs on the best possible terms if he wanted to collect on previous accounts owed and also purchase wood for his concern: “The animosity of the King’s party and some others is so great on account of the Barge, that they are determined if possible that I shall not buy any wood; and I am obliged to keep on as good terms as possible with them on account of old debts.”⁴²

Three months later, Charles Bullard was still attempting to collect sandalwood as payment for the rotten Cleopatra’s Barge, reporting in his letter to his employers that Captain Thomas Meek, who worked for Marshall and Wildes, had been contracted to “bring timber and plank from Norfolk sound” to repair the damage; begrudgingly, he observed that “he (Meek) will probably make a profitable job of it.”⁴³ Bullard had just come from an intimate audience with Liholiho, who offered to show him a “house of wood” provided that Bullard would simply “take the whole”—an incredulous Bullard declined. Liholiho’s offer came with a justification: since the long-awaited barge had been guaranteed for ten years but was rotten, Liholiho was only willing to pay in sandalwood pieces he deemed suitable for the balance of the transaction. The offer provoked from Bullard an early version of a soon-to-be familiar merchant complaint about chiefly authority in the islands: “The fact is, there is no Government here at present—all the chiefs have more [or] less to say, and some of them have used their influence from the first not to pay any thing.”⁴⁴

Charles Bullard’s disenchantment with Captain John Suter’s divergent approach to trade in the islands meant that he was inclined to believe the chief’s claim that the vessel had been guaranteed to “wear ten years without repair.”⁴⁵ While admitting as much in his letters to his employers, Bullard still blamed the chiefs for the dissolution of the once promising transaction. Hammatt and Bullard’s employers, Bryant and Sturgis, were not apprised of the situation regarding Cleopatra’s Barge when they wrote Hammatt’s contract three months later, advising him on the proper way to sell ships to ali‘i. Charles Hammatt’s instructions of 1822 directed him to get as much sandalwood from the chiefs as possible by selling the ship he sailed in on, the Champion. He was also directed to sell the ship Lascar, another of Bryant and Sturgis’ ships working in the Pacific: “To effect the sale of the ships, we should advise you on arrival to avoid making it known that it was contemplated. You will soon perceive it, would they take a fancy to her and should they, then will be the time for making a bargain.”⁴⁶ By the next year, Charles Hammatt was still seeking 480 piculs, the balance of the 2,000 piculs agreed upon as its price, which Liholiho refused to pay since the Cleopatra’s Barge had proved “rotten.” The chiefs, incensed at being sold poor goods, refused to deliver the balance of the wood, sending it instead to rival agent John Coffin Jones.⁴⁷

What is clear from Bullard’s engagement with the chiefs over the course of the Cleopatra’s Barge debacle of 1821–1822 is that although the sale of the ship was to Liholiho, all the chiefs worked together to protect their common interest. When Bullard would not accept the terms they offered him in the midst of an ‘aha ‘ōlelo or chiefly council, they placed kapu barring sales of wood to him, significantly reducing his ability to function and remain competitive in the marketplace. The ali‘i were not simply thoughtless consumers who “devoured all before them,” as the writings of Stephen Reynolds and John C. Jones suggest. Instead, they set the terms for trade and refused to buy from merchants who they felt were trying to cheat them. This example is one among many that illustrate that merchant claims about a lack of governance and authority on the part of chiefs frequently arose from the frustrated aspirations of merchants to make successful sales. Incendiary language about governance masked merchant failures, directing attention and responsibility away from those who managed trade for New England merchant houses in the islands and casting scrutiny upon Hawaiian chiefs.⁴⁸

Debt and Pono

Beyond the issue of merchants’ disparagement of Hawaiian chiefs’ governance and conduct in the sandalwood and ship trades, problems that arose from the differences between New England and Hawaiian conceptions of “debt” and obligation—and the values of good governance and trade—are not to be underestimated. In order to understand how the chiefs of the 1820s navigated their engagement with the merchants, we have to look back at the final kauoha (order) Kamehameha I speaks to his chiefs about his legacy and the possible relationships and responsibilities that the chiefs might have with their islands.

Just before the death of Kamehameha in May of 1819, the chiefs Kālaimoku and Ke‘eaumoku, who were on O‘ahu overseeing the business of cutting sandalwood, were recalled to Hawai‘i to the side of their ali‘i. After all avenues of curing the illness were exhausted, the chiefs arrayed around the body of their dying ali‘i spoke, saying: “Here we all are, your younger siblings, and your chiefs and your foreigners. Leave a word for us.” The ali‘i were asking Kamehameha for his kauoha, a directive or command, which quite possibly would be his last words to them. Kamehameha replied, “For what purpose?” Kaikio‘ewa answered, “As a word for us.”⁴⁹ Kamehameha said, “E ‘oni wale nō ‘oukou i ku‘u pono ‘a‘ole e pau” (Enjoy the good which I have provided, for it is not finished).⁵⁰ Several hours later in the early morning, the mō‘ī Kamehameha would die. This would be his final command to them, and it weighed heavily upon the chiefs who were left behind.

The “good” of any ali‘i was expressed in Hawaiian by the word pono—the pono of the chief encompassed the nature of his rule, his protection of the people, and his ability to maintain healthy balance in the world through the proper administration of lands and resources, through the veneration of the akua (gods). What was the nature of government and governance? Was it peaceful and just, or marked by cruelty and war?

Kamehameha’s rule was novel, as his vision of uniting all the islands under his administration was both ambitious and relatively unheard of in Hawaiian experience; there had been other ali‘i who sought to craft one aupuni—one unified government out of separate islands or district aupuni. Ali‘i had charge of moku, or districts, or entire islands, sometimes two or three in proximity, but no ali‘i had successfully prosecuted a campaign, harnessing resources, and mobilizing mana, men, and munitions to bring all the islands under the rule of one ali‘i nui (high chief) and his circle of chiefs. Kamehameha’s success depended in no small part on his mastery of trade with foreigners, in which he successfully wooed away or captured British and American sailors who provided him with skilled laborers and advice during the years of his conquest of the islands, and after, greatly assisted him in achieving his vision.

Pono also has a moral dimension. Ali‘i were disciplined in their deportment and behavior; in their relations with others, there were agreed-upon norms governed by religio-political and social expectation. Pono, therefore, was not only indicative of the nature of a chief’s rule, but it also referred to his or her moral character. For example, nearly two hundred years after his death, Kamehameha is remembered as a ali‘i pono, one who enacted kānāwai (laws) that protected the welfare of the common people. This designation also bespoke the excellent relations the chief maintained with the ali‘i around him—his supporters as well as his enemies. Within the compass of what Hawaiians considered “right action,” there were definite indicators that showed whether the ali‘i and his approach to the people and land was pono.

But the pono of Kamehameha was not bound by traditional ideas of “right action,” as it also included new indicators of wealth, well-being, and prosperity. While the health of the land and its people were formerly prime indicators of the pono of an ali‘i, during Kamehameha’s time, he and his chiefly supporters were becoming accustomed to a different kind of wealth—namely, fine and fancy goods, new clothing, housing and furnishings, and ships brought to the islands by New England merchants.

The ali‘i of the 1820s, left bereft by the death of Kamehameha, had much to consider. In what ways would they strive to uphold the pono of their chief, Kamehameha? Who would carry the burden of this responsibility, and in what ways would they be able to consolidate their rule against multiple adversaries, Hawaiian and foreign? The chief Kālaimoku—along with Kamehameha’s powerful widow, Ka‘ahumanu—would strive to do as Kamehameha commanded: “E ‘oni wale nō ‘oukou nō i ku‘u pono ‘a‘ole e pau” (Enjoy the pono which I have provided, for it is not finished). And it was this pono established by his rule over this new unified kingdom that they were enjoined to take up and continue.

The Ali‘i and Trade

The traditional roles of the chiefs and the relationships they had to one another were not completely clear to traders. The key to any successful trading venture in the islands was knowledge. Supercargoes like Hammatt, along with most ship captains, were directed in contracts and periodic letters from the merchant house to ascertain the political, economic, and social climate in the Hawaiian Islands as soon as they arrived. Merchants warned agents to be on the lookout for signs of political unrest, change, and transformation that would affect trade. Information about the current state of Hawaiian chiefly politics would give their concern the edge over competing firms who also had agents stationed at Honolulu and ships circulating between Boston and Hawai‘i. This was the first time that Hammatt ventured into the Pacific as supercargo, although he had come out previously as one of the mates on the Thaddeus, Captain Blanchard’s ship, which brought the first missionaries to Hawai‘i. Hammatt’s contract included the following instructions from his employers Bryant and Sturgis:

You must look for information as to the condition of the Islands, their disposition for trade, and in particular their ability to pay, for they have never shown any reluctance to making purchases—You are aware that we have always feared some changes in the Govt. that might endanger property on the islands. Should you find all quiet and business going on as it has done for some years past, it will give encouragement to trade boldly.⁵¹

John C. Jones wrote frequent letters to his employers about the movement of the chiefs and the progress of sandalwood collection, fulfilling his duty to inform his employers of developments which might affect trade positively or adversely. In Jones’ letter to his proprietors in October 1821, he supplied his judgment of the immediate political situation among the chiefs. The letter also revealed Jones’ frustration at trying to figure out the web of power relations and politics in play among the ali‘i.

I was present when Tamoree [Kaumuali‘i] gave everything he possessed to Rheo Rheo [Liholiho] and acknowledged him to be his king…. Rheo Rheo returned a few days since in the Cleopatra’s Barge, and has brought up Tamoree with him, for what purpose we no not, some say he will never return, I do not think so myself. Tamoree is fast growing old, and I think, is not long for this world, should he pass off I tremble for the consequences. Pit [Kalaimoku] is here [O‘ahu], he returned yesterday from the mountains where he has been cutting wood for the last five months, he is almost worn out, Cox has charge of Atooi [Kaua‘i], John Adams [Kuakini] is at Owhyhee, Carhamano [Ka‘ahumanu] is at the leeward part of the island. She and Pit are the only persons we put any dependence on they have some sense of propriety and integrity.⁵²

Both Cox and Adams were brothers of the chiefess Ka‘ahumanu, whose father, Ke‘eaumoku, had warned of Ka‘ahumanu’s desire for and rise to power. But what is clear from Jones’ letter and what troubled him most were the developments between Liholiho and Kaumuali‘i, which he could not make out. Jones considered Kaumuali‘i an honorable trading partner and hardly a credit risk. Kaumuali‘i appears in Jones’ letters, as in the writings of Hawaiian historian Kamakau, as being an excellent provider and welcoming host, having “received” Jones as he had Kamehameha’s emissaries with “every attention and honour.” Clearly Jones was being interpolated into Kaumuali‘i’s circle of allies and associates in ways consonant with Hawaiian chiefly practice, but which perhaps eluded Jones’ awareness as such.⁵³

Jones’ reports show that he considered the ali‘i belonging to the generations preceding Liholiho—that of Kaumuali‘i, Ka‘ahumanu, and Kālaimoku—to be “honest”; these ali‘i had a “sense of propriety” and “integrity.” These character sketches of the chiefs were set in contrast to Jones’ damning view of the highest ruling ali‘i Liholiho Kamehameha II in the same letter: “King Rheo Rheo is only a boy, pleased with the rattle tickled with a straw, rum is his god, scarce have I seen him sober, he is flying from one island to another, devouring all before him.”⁵⁴

Liholiho’s drunkenness was a frequent obstacle to trade that all agents faced. According to Jones, Liholiho’s frequent “frolicks” and “rounds of dissipation” would “put a stop to all business” wherever he was. On this particular occasion, Jones noted bitterly that “every man was recalled from cutting wood.”⁵⁵

In October 1821, as Hammatt was signing his orders in Boston, Liholiho traveled to Kaua‘i on what appeared to outsiders like John C. Jones as yet another one of his “frolicks,” a drunken parade wending its way between the islands that drew all the chiefs along in its train. When this frolick was done, however, the result was that Kaumuali‘i had made public cession of his kingdom of Kaua‘i, Ni‘ihau, and Ka‘ula to Liholiho. He offered his guns, his lands, and the men who served him to Kamehameha II, a gesture which Liholiho gracefully declined while also affirming the superiority of Kaumuali‘i’s rank and age. Kaumuali‘i’s cession to Liholiho was a repetition of an early diplomatic exchange between himself and Liholiho’s father. Through this act, Kaumuali‘i conferred upon Liholiho the deference and honor that he had previously bestowed upon Kamehameha I.

While not publicly proclaiming that he was taking possession of the lands, Liholiho accompanied Kaumuali‘i in a circuit of Kaua‘i, taking powerful symbolic charge of the lands, resources, and people of the island.⁵⁶ Taking over administration of the island for the time being would be Kahekili Ke‘eaumoku, or Gov. Cox as he was called by foreigners, one of Ka‘ahumanu’s brothers, who had been a trusted adviser of Kamehameha I. Kaumuali‘i was taken to O‘ahu for reasons none of the merchants could fathom. Though they were competitors, both Charles Hammatt’s and John C. Jones’ letters to the home office noted that Kaumuali‘i was one of their best chiefly customers, who they felt did not pose a credit risk until his change of situation altered their prospects.

Imagine their surprise when Kaumuali‘i removed from Kaua‘i to O‘ahu and then married Ka‘ahumanu in November. Through this connection, Ka‘ahumanu had achieved what had eluded her former husband Kamehameha—namely, by allying herself directly with Kaumuali‘i through marriage, she had effectively extended her governing reach and that of her circle of chiefs to Kaua‘i and Ni‘ihau, encompassing all of the main islands in the archipelago. Competing circles of ali‘i continued to form alliances in order to solidify and extend particular claims and access to rule. While a male chief could produce social change through rebellion and war, or by taking care of the high-ranking male sons of other ali‘i, the female ali‘i could effect change in the social and political structure through marriage alliance and the birth or adoption of chiefly children. These political processes of genealogical elevation, succession, and alliance fell outside the knowledge of New England merchants, and missionaries as well. What Jones did know was that the political alliance between Ka‘ahumanu and Kaumuali‘i was “bad for business,” as Kaumuali‘i was made virtually a captive on O‘ahu, unable to return to Kaua‘i to organize his people and chiefs to cut and gather the sandalwood for Jones.

But the removal of Kaumuali‘i to O‘ahu and his subsequent important political marriage to Ka‘ahumanu may have hidden another object of other prominent chiefs Kālaimoku, Kuakini, Ke‘eaumoku, Kaikio‘ewa, and Ka‘ahumanu—namely, to prevent Kaumuali‘i from entering deeper into debt with New England merchants. In a very anxious letter to his employers written on October 5, 1821, three days after the return of Liholiho and Kaumuali‘i to Kaua‘i, Jones noted that Kaumuali‘i owed their concern some eight thousand plus piculs, and the forecast only darkened with the pronouncements of others who claimed that “he [Kaumuali‘i] will never return,” to his island. Jones concurred with this assessment, observing that “Tamoree [Kaumuali‘i] is fast growing old, and I think, not long for this world.” According to Jones’ account book, Kaumuali‘i owed Marshall and Wildes eight thousand piculs alone, whereas ten months later, Jones’ catalog of debts owed by other chiefs showed that they owed much less than Kaumuali‘i in comparison. “The King is owing 850, Cox about 800, Pitt about 60, John Adams [Kuakini] 130, these are the principal debts at this island. We have received no wood from Atooi [Kaua‘i] since the ship sailed, Tamoree [Kaumuali‘i] and consort have been at Owhyhee [Hawai‘i Island] all summer … they intend paying about two thousand piculs of debt at this island.”⁵⁷ By bringing Kaumuali‘i to O‘ahu, these chiefs were able to keep a watchful eye on his transactions and separate him from the source of his payment—namely, the labor and forests of Kaua‘i.

At the same time that Kaumuali‘i moved to O‘ahu, Kālaimoku himself had emerged from the uplands of O‘ahu after heading a labor force of two hundred men and women into the mountains five months before, in March 1821. He not only accompanied the people into the uplands, but he also made sure that provisions were made available for their use.⁵⁸ Kālaimoku, like Kamehameha I, saw to it that no important work was undertaken that he did not personally have a hand in.⁵⁹ By October, through the strenuous efforts of the ali‘i and people on different islands, an estimated thirty thousand piculs of sandalwood had shipped to Canton from Hawai‘i, selling poorly due to the miscalculation of rival American agents who had all pressed the ali‘i to pay debts at the same time. Sandalwood that year glutted the market, driving down prices, resulting in significantly lower profits for merchants.⁶⁰

The chiefs were clearly savvy customers who were not confused by trade and not completely given over to self-indulgence. They often worked together to set the terms of trade, deploying kapu in innovative ways. By compelling political alliance through marriage, they also effectively blocked the ability of Kaumuali‘i to plunge himself and the chiefs collectively into deeper debt. They also worked together to organize labor and provisions in an unprecedented attempt to deliver thirty thousand piculs of sandalwood in 1821 to pay down the debt they owed to New England merchants.

On the other hand, in their scramble for trade opportunities and collection of wood for debt, agents and ship captains from rival concerns engaged in vicious competition that threatened everyone’s profits with unforeseen consequences. While worrying about the laziness of chiefs to pay, and foreseeing an eventual surfeit in wood, they had prosecuted their claims successfully with disastrous results. “Every foreigner in this country is ready to cut his neighbor’s throat, truth is a stranger here,” Jones wrote that month, “the sandalwood fever will deprive some of their reason.”⁶¹ And apparently the fever for wood and the competition that fanned its temperature would also cheat them all of their profits.

The boom of 1821, though an anomaly, affected the traders in the same way that hitting a jackpot affects a gambler: they simply wanted more.⁶² The problem lay not only in chiefly consumption or the way in which the well developed tastes of so-called savage rulers were off-putting to agents scrabbling over scraps of paper debt, who themselves could never hope to own such finery. It also lay in the distance between market and marketplace, which stoked, chafed, and inflamed longing and desire on the part of agents for the next cargo of better goods that would secure a “good voyage” and, most importantly, help them to best the competition.

Fair Trade?

Agents and ship captains used their persuasive powers to cajole the chiefs into purchasing more goods. But another way to secure large profit was to inflate prices. Jones, like other agents, had developed a rapport with the chiefs. He had become used to offering gifts and throwing elegant dinners to whet the appetite of his royal clients.⁶³ On one occasion, Jones had attempted to sell a brig and cargo to Kaumuali‘i, but he found to his chagrin that Kaumuali‘i had recently purchased another brig, the Becket, and its cargo from representatives of Bryant and Sturgis.

In order to dispose of his ship and cargo, Jones then turned to Liholiho, on O‘ahu, who rebuffed his initial offer, saying that he wanted to buy no more ships: “I treated him with every attention and honour, made him handsome presents and gave him elegant dinners after much trouble and difficulty I succeeded in selling the Brig and cargo including the house for 7700 piculs of wood payable in one year the boat he has given me an obligation to pay when she will be finished, per twice full.”⁶⁴ Jones regularly inflated in excess the price of goods and ships, a problem enabled by the fact that there was no agreed-upon rate of exchange.⁶⁵ On another occasion, Jones asked his employers to send out a billiard table—“one that you might get for $200 would command at least $1500”—as Liholiho was “quite anxious for one.”⁶⁶

Unfortunately for the merchants, some of the ali‘i were also getting excellent advice from the young Hawaiian men who had lived in New England for many years. “Our worst enemy at Atooi, I found to be Mr. George Tamoree [son of Kaumuali‘i] he endeavored all in his power to prevent the sale of the Brig but fortunately he has no influence with his father, he has become a worthless dissipated fellow, of no advantage to anyone.”⁶⁷ On numerous occasions Jones extended “credit” to Kaumuali‘i in the form of goods delivered in exchange for promise of future pay. He also extended credit to the chief, who he referred to on occasion as “the King,” by building up Kaumuali‘i as a copartner in expediting the business of sandalwood in numerous letters sent to his employers.⁶⁸ This connection between father and long-lost son must have been a blow to Jones, as Kaumuali‘i and he enjoyed a lively trading relationship. Jones must have felt awkward in this position, since he would have a hard time denying the younger Kaumuali‘i’s accusations of inflated prices for goods they both knew cost significantly less back home in New England. The Hawaiian missionary assistants who were educated at the Cornwall Foreign Mission School regularly counseled Liholiho and the chiefs on the costs of goods. Houses, they argued, were bought for $300 in America, and thereafter the chiefs offered only forty piculs for a house that might have fetched, under the trade expectations of New England agents, thousands of piculs earlier in the year.⁶⁹

As trading became more difficult over the years, by 1823 merchants were beginning to direct their anger at the American missionaries who had arrived two years before and who by March were actively awaiting the second company to reinforce them in their labors. Stations had been set up on Kaua‘i, O‘ahu, and Hawai‘i, but the mission had already lost a doctor and his wife, who had been excommunicated from the little church. Jones vented in a letter to his employers that the missionaries “from the Andover mill” were getting in the way of trade, because they “are continually telling the King and chiefs that the white people traders are cheating and imposing on them.”⁷⁰ What really angered Jones was that the missionaries were, in his words, “blood suckers of the community, had much better be in their native country gaining their living by the sweat of their brow, than living like lords in this luxurious land, distracting the minds of these children of nature with the idea that they are to be eternally damned unless they think and act as they do.”⁷¹ Jones was bothered that while he earned an “honest” living working as a trader, his fellow Americans, the missionaries, were living like chiefs in Hawai‘i, “the luxurious land.” Jones was suffering from a class conflict, one that pitted himself against his fellow Americans, most of whom had come from farming backgrounds, but who were more adept apparently in garnering the attention and condescension of the chiefs. Jones even suggested a divine solution to the problem of the missionaries: “O that Providence would put a whip in every honest hand to lash such rascals naked through the world.”⁷²

Intense debates among the chiefs began to surface in the ‘aha ‘ōlelo, or Hawaiian chiefly council, by 1823 regarding large purchases made by individual chiefs. These discussions illustrate Hawaiian negotiations over power and status, and perhaps the recognition among ali‘i that they must consolidate their power as a unified group against the would-be predations of merchant agents. The merchants, for their part, hoped to interject themselves into and sought to manipulate the relations between chiefs in order to promote their business.

Agents desperate to make sales would often seek a meeting with Liholiho, who was often inebriated. Therefore, agents were forced to negotiate with Kālaimoku. In May, just after Charles Hammatt arrived in the islands, he had a meeting with Kālaimoku, who had sent for him to discuss the king’s plan to purchase a ship. Hammatt spotted Kālaimoku “sitting down on the grass before the King’s house.” The elder statesman offered eighty piculs of wood for the boat, but after a half-hour conversation, Hammatt became frustrated, telling the chief, “I would sooner burn her” than agree to this price. But Kalaimoku had made it known to the merchants that for anybody who trades with the king when he is drunk, “the bargain will not stand.” According to Hammatt, Kālaimoku’s say was “potential,” meaning the final most powerful word.⁷³

Hammatt would write with increasing frequency of the wise counsels of Kālaimoku, noting on several occasions that there was a rift developing between Liholiho Kamehameha II and Kālaimoku, Ka‘ahumanu, and the rest of the high chiefs. It was the family of the minister, Hammatt claimed, “who in reality hold the sovereignty of the kingdom, and have rather permitted this man to be called King than considered him as such. They have now abandoned him to his own guidance, and if he does not soon kill himself, they may put him down by force. Under these circumstances I am afraid to trade with him, and certainly shall not do it, to any considerable amount, without the sanction of Krymakoo. The King cannot command a man, or obtain a stick of wood without the assistance of Pitt or some of his clan.”⁷⁴

A few months later, the chief Kaikio‘ewa, who was guardian of Kauikeaouli, the youngest son of Kamehameha and Liholiho’s younger brother, met with Charles Hammatt to discuss his purchase of the schooner Ann. According to the terms of their agreement, Kaikio‘ewa would pay twelve hundred piculs over the course of five months, beginning on June 17, 1823. In August, the chief met with Hammatt again and reported that there had been a meeting of the chiefs and that Kālaimoku, Ka‘ahumanu, Boki (Kālaimoku’s brother), and Cox were all opposed to the purchase, largely because the ship was “old & rotten and good for nothing.” Hammatt coolly played his hand, saying that he would take the ship back if that was what the chief wished. When Kaikio‘ewa replied that he did not want to give the ship back, but pointed out repairs and supplies needed to get the ship under sail, Hammatt lost all patience, accusing the chief of breaking his contract and his word, a serious charge. When the chief remonstrated that Kālaimoku and Ka‘ahumanu were both pressuring him to return the ship, Hammatt asked provocatively if Kaikio‘ewa was the servant of Kālaimoku and the old woman: “are you bound to obey their orders, or are you a chief at liberty to do as you please?” Kaikio‘ewa protested vehemently that “he was a chief, would be a chief,” and “would keep the vessel.”

Hammatt won that round, but in the end, the wishes of Kaikio‘ewa, Kālaimoku, Ka‘ahumanu, and the other ali‘i would prevail. Kaikio‘ewa returned the schooner nineteen days later because it was leaky and needed new coppering, rigging, and planks, things which Hammatt simply could not supply. Though Hammatt fully expected this turn of events, since the Ann was not fitted properly for sail, and it was leaking, he still raged that it would be better to sell the ship on the coast than “to the damned scoundrels here, who are held by no contract, and who regard no promises.”⁷⁵

Hammatt’s hard bargaining and coercive manipulation of Ka‘ikioewa’s sense of his authority in relation to the other ali‘i was no match for the pressure that the high-ranking ali‘i Ka‘ahumanu and Kālaimoku could place upon any individual ali‘i who did not comply with the wishes of the ‘aha ‘ōlelo. Hawaiian structures of power and authority could not be transposed effectively upon the merchant’s ideal individual as consumer; indeed, Hawaiian ali‘i clearly were engaging in trade on their own terms, following their own political agendas. When merchants attempted to cheat them by selling rotten or unfinished boats, chiefs refused to fulfill the agreed-upon terms of exchange by simply returning items they no longer found to their liking. The ali‘i also listened to the advice of Hawaiians whose knowledge of the cost of goods and trade in American markets worked to their advantage. While claiming that they were being treated unfairly in business, merchant agents inflated prices and sold defective goods truly unfit for sale. Much of the anger and wrath of merchants directed at chiefs are also a direct result of their inability to successfully navigate the political intricacies of chiefly relations.

Studying the writings of merchants and agents, one is struck by the detailed descriptions Charles Bullard, John Coffin Jones, and Charles Hammatt generated regarding trade in the islands. Descriptions of the reliability of any ali‘i to trade, “follow through” on transactions, or pay debts provide a view of the anxiety agents struggled with on a daily basis concerning their success and their ability to deliver profits into the hands of their employers.⁷⁶ Present profits also ensured future gains—the reputation they built as successful men of business on Hawaiian shores would lay the foundation for their professional lives when they settled back home in New England. Rather than transparent descriptions of the behavior and shortcomings of ali‘i, the letters, reports, and journals kept by these men also illustrate the agents’ difficulty in ascertaining the shifting loci of Hawaiian political power, whether it be invested in the person of a particular ali‘i, or as it was held by particular groups of chiefs against others. All in all, knowledge of the relationship between chiefs and political power was not an end unto itself; it was the necessary precondition that agents set for themselves in order to carry out successful trade.

Agents’ insistence on pinpointing and projecting New England standards of proper character, deportment, and behavior belonging to “good consumers” or “good leaders” upon individual ali‘i was a vain endeavor. This individualization of the chiefs could not extricate an ali‘i from his or her embeddedness in the web of close genealogical ties, which were the foundation of their governing powers. Though attempting to ensnare individual chiefs in debt, traders consistently met with opposition from groups of chiefs. As happened also with missionaries, New England traders’ assumptions completely missed Hawaiian ideas of debt, obligation, and exchange. Hawaiians had their own ideas about what constituted proper leadership in the form of the ali‘i pono. Yet merchants persisted in assigning debt to individual chiefs in a manner that their economic system required: one simply had to know who to send the bill to.

It is no wonder that the merchants in 1824 began to become more agitated about what was due to them, and when their ability to cheat, flatter, cajole, and insist that the chiefs pay their debts was exhausted, they called upon the United States to intervene on their behalf and collect the debt that was owed not to their employers, they insisted, but rather to the citizens of the United States.⁷⁷

By 1825, Dixey Wildes was calling upon his partner to petition the government to send a US ship of war to the islands to press the ali‘i to pay their debts.⁷⁸ “The Islands are quite out of trade, our prospects are very fair. Lord Byron has been here in a frigate he has not been of any service to the American trade. Our government must send a frigate here. The interest of the United States require it. The Russians and English send ships of war, although their trade is small compared to ours. I think it would be well for you and others to make a strong representation to our government to send a ship here.”⁷⁹

This mode of running the business came screeching to a halt when, beginning in 1825, the merchant agents in the islands began to demand the transformation of individual chiefly debt into a new “national” debt. The steps toward this development, the significance of its occurrence for the groups involved, and how it affected the progress of Hawaiian governance will be the subject of a later chapter. But for now, it is important to emphasize that the emergence of a conception of “national” debt is something that converges complexly with chiefly political and economic reorganizations that come as a consequence of Kamehameha’s unification of the different islands in the archipelago and of the final defeat, through religio-political changes and active suppression, of secessionist chiefs’ ambitions.