state of Molokai before the nineteenth century.
For some years after Cook’s visits, the Hawaiian balance of power was not greatly disturbed. In the late 1780s, what had been a handful of ships became a steadily rising tide, and warring chiefs lost little time in integrating foreign ships, weapons, and personnel into their forces. They engaged in fierce competition to obtain them, sometimes by kidnapping, seizure, or massacre. The next decade and a half saw a violent scramble to consolidate control of larger and larger territories. In 1785, Kahekili had invaded O‘ahu by way of Molokai, taking the whole of it.3 Five years later, Kamehameha, having consolidated his grip on the Big Island, invaded Maui, then ruled by Kalanikupule. He was victorious, but Kalanikupule escaped to O‘ahu; Kamehameha and his army began to pursue him but stopped on Molokai for a year to prepare an attack across the rough Kaiwi Channel that separates the two islands.
According to one account, Kamehameha spent the year living at Kauluwai in Kala‘e, practiced his troops on the plains of Kaiolohia, and grew kalo at the Paikalani patch in Honomuni Valley on the East End.4 All accounts indicate that his stay was very hard on the people and the land. Vancouver observed in March 1792: “The alteration which has taken place in . . . these islands since their first discovery by Captain Cook, has arisen from incessant war, instigated both at home and abroad by ambitious and enterprizing chieftains.“ He called the devastation of “Mowee and Morotoi . . . the principal feats of Tamaahmaah’s wars, and that Rannai [Lana‘i] and Tohowrowa [Kaho‘olawe], which had formerly been considered as fruitful and populous islands, were nearly over-run with weeds, and exhausted of their inhabitants.” He continued: “The troubles . . . had hitherto so humbled and broken the spirit of the people, that little exertion had been made to restore these islands to their accustomed fertility by cultivation.”5
Archibald Menzies, surgeon aboard the HMS Discovery with Vancouver from 1792 to 1794, agreed that Kamehameha had employed a scorched-earth policy through Maui, Lana‘i, and Molokai: “In desolating the country by destroying the fields and plantations of the inhabitants.“ Off the West End, March 18, 1792, he wrote: “We were visited by no natives or canoes of this end of Molokai. The people we had on board told us that Kamehameha’s descent upon it had desolated the country, and that it had not yet recovered its former state of population.”6
Later that year, news of rebellion on Hawai‘i reached the chief on Molokai, prompting him to return there without attacking O‘ahu. In his absence, Kahekili regained Molokai and Maui.7 In 1795, the cycle repeated with a far stronger Kamehameha who, his strength fortified with European sailors, ships, and firearms, encountered little resistance in taking Maui and Molokai again. He went on to secure O‘ahu with a campaign that culminated in his famous victory at the battle of Nu‘uanu.
The cost was particularly high. The conqueror’s army of Hawai‘i men, reported to be ten thousand to fifteen thousand strong, increased O‘ahu’s population by a quarter and ate through the island’s resources like locusts.8 Kamehameha installed himself and his court at Honolulu and focused on preparing a fleet to cross the channel to take Kaua‘i and Ni‘ihau, the last islands not under his control. Visitors universally described a massive shipbuilding effort, with Euro-American and native carpenters toiling on hundreds of vessels and the king’s men bargaining hard with foreign ship captains to obtain weapons and naval stores in exchange for supplies. Various accounts place his armada at dozens of foreign and foreign-type vessels and eight hundred peleleu double-hulled canoes.9
William Broughton, who commanded one of the vessels of George Vancouver’s expedition, described O‘ahu in February 1796: “The situation of the natives was miserable, as they were nearly starving; and, as an additional grievance, universally infected with the itch. No cultivation was to be seen on shore; and, consequently, little prospect of their future subsistence. The attention of Ta-maah-maah was entirely engrossed by the vessel which the English carpenters were constructing for him.”10 Broughton and others reported that Kamehameha projected that after he conquered Kaua‘i, he would move on to an invasion of Bora Bora in the Society Islands, to compel a trans-Pacific Polynesian alliance with the Pomares clan, the rulers of Tahiti. In the meantime, O‘ahu was decimated, its people reduced to starvation or stealing food; those who were caught were killed by the ali‘i or burned alive. Death also claimed many of the occupiers, according to Broughton: “It was computed that Tamaahmaah had lost six thousand of his people by the conquest of this island, and subsequent calamities.”
Once again, while preparing to conquer the next island in his advance up the chain—this time Kaua‘i—rebellion on Hawai‘i drew Kamehameha and most of his forces back to the Big Island, leaving O‘ahu in the hands of governors. When he returned in 1804, he would conduct his occupation differently. He realized that canoes and guns alone made a shallow foundation for controlling distant territory; to make his rule permanent, he would need to make his garrison self-supporting and to make the countryside productive with stone walls and water. He ordered his seven thousand to eight thousand Hawai‘i warriors to become farmers, settling them all over O‘ahu on under- or unused lands, including in the Nu‘uanu and Manoa Valleys and in the upper Anahulu River watershed in Waialua, on the north shore.11 Here, Kirch and Sahlins uncovered evidence of the systematic clearing and terracing of what had been uninhabited, lightly exploited forests and their transformation in a few years into a “newly-created, intensive-settlement landscape.”12
No systematic inventory exists of Kamehameha’s troop resettlements in the Hawaiian Islands, but the king did order a significant settlement in Molokai. When the king returned to Kohala, Hawai‘i, “some years after the battle of Nu‘uanu,” he asked his lieutenant Hoolepanui of Kiholo, North Kona, who had served him well in the conquests, “Where on the island of Hawai‘i would you like to dwell?” The warrior responded: “Nowhere on Hawaii.” The chief again asked, “Where would you like to go and dwell?” Hoolepanui answered, “On Molokai, where the fish is plentiful, at Kalamaula, Piliwale, Hoolehua, Holi and on to the cape.” The Hawai‘i people came, and “the natives of the land were ordered to move inland or on the lands set apart for them on the eastern side.” Along the coast of Hoolehua and Pala‘au, they built brackish water kalo lo‘i and extensive fishponds (see figure 2).13
FIGURE 2. East Molokai.
MOLOKAI PASSED BY
The first accounts of Molokai recorded by foreign sailors describe the island as a passing shore, intriguing but not offering enough inducement to halt between the known havens of the main islands. The scale and speed of Euro-American navigation rendered Molokai, a necessary stop for canoe voyages, little more than a curious sight on the one or two-day passage between Maui and O‘ahu. Along its north shore, sheer cliffs up to three thousand feet high plunge into pounding seas. Along the calm south shore, though it is alee of the trade wind and swell and shadowed by Lana‘i from kona storms and southerly swells, there are few real harbors interrupting the fringing reef and the continuous expanses of shoal waters as shallow as three feet that stretch up to three thousand feet seaward from shore from Kolo to Kumini. Instead of paddling her canoes, “Molokai ko‘ola‘au” (Molokai poles with a stick).14
The lack of extensive tree cover also deterred landing parties. Cook, coasting along the south shore, set the tone: rounding the West End, he saw “a small bay . . . with a fine sandy beach [perhaps Kaumana or Kaupoa]; but seeing no appearance of fresh water” continued to O‘ahu.15
Vancouver described the East End this way: “The face of the country, diversified by eminences and valleys, bore a verdant and fruitful appearance. It seems to be well inhabited, in a high state of cultivation; and presented not only a rich but a romantic aspect.” But the West End “showed a gradual decrease in population, uncultivated,
