BACKGROUND - Maui: Including Molokai and Lanai - page 687

of land, although the Hawaiians could not think in terms of “owning” land. No one could
possess land, one could only use land, and its ownership was a strange foreign concept. As
a result, naive Hawaiians gave up their lands for a song to unscrupulous traders, and land
ownership issues remain a basic and unrectified problem even to this day. In 1847 Kame-
hameha III and his advisers separated the lands of Hawai'i into three groupings: crown
land (belonging to the king), government land (belonging to the chiefs), and the people's
land (the largest parcels). In 1848, 245 ali'i entered their land claims in the Mahele Book,
assuring them ownership. In 1850 the commoners were given title in fee simple to the
lands they cultivated and lived on as tenants, not including house lots in towns. Common-
ers without land could buy small kuleana (farms) from the government at $0.50 per acre.
In 1850, foreigners were also allowed to buy land in fee simple, and the ownership of
Hawai'i from that day forward slipped steadily from the hands of its indigenous people.
THE HAWAIIAN WRITTEN WORD
Prior to the arrival of the missionaries, the Hawaiian language-like all other Polyne-
sian languages-had no written form. All information was passed along orally
through song, chant, or dance. There wasn't even an alphabet upon which to base
the language. The missionaries, however, found it difficult to convert Hawaiians to
Christianity without the ability to read, write, or create a Hawaiian language Bible,
so it was the missionaries themselves who took on the task of creating a Hawaiian
alphabet and establishing a written form of the language. With a 12-letter alphabet
in place (14 if the okina and kahako characters are included), the island's first print-
ing press was shipped from Honolulu and housed here in Hale Pa'i in 1834. Not
long after its arrival, the first printed newspaper west of the Rocky Mountains-a
four-page publication called Ka Lama Hawai'i was printed on Valentine's Day of
the same year. Along with the press came myriad other benefits of written language
such as hymn books, written laws, and a Hawaiian Constitution. In the course of a
single lifetime during the 1800s, the Native Hawaiians went from having no form
of written communication to boasting one of the highest literacy rates in the world.
SUGAR
While the first successful sugar plantation was on Kaua'i, Maui wasn't far behind when it
came to refining the sweet stuff. Many of the successful sugar barons were sons of New
England missionaries, and by the mid-1800s sugar mills were springing up from Hana