Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In April 1820, missionaries bent on converting the “pagans” arrived from New England. The
missionaries clothed the natives, banned them from dancing the hula, and nearly dismantled
their ancient culture. They tried to keep the whalers and sailors out of the bawdy houses,
where a flood of whiskey quenched fleet-size thirsts and the virtue of native women was never
safe. They taught reading and writing, created the 12-letter Hawaiian alphabet, started a print-
ing press, and began recording the islands' history, which until then was only an oral account
in memorized chants.
Children of the missionaries became the islands' business leaders and politicians. They
married Hawaiians and stayed on in the islands, causing one wag to remark that the mission-
aries “came to do good and stayed to do well.” In 1848, King Kamehameha III proclaimed the
Great Mahele (division), which enabled commoners and eventually foreigners to own crown
land. In two generations, more than 80% of all private land was in haole (foreign) hands. Sugar
planters imported waves of immigrants (Chinese starting in 1852, Japanese in 1885, and Por-
tuguese in 1878) to work the fields as contract laborers.
King David Kalakaua was elected to the throne in 1874. This popular “Merrie Monarch”
built Iolani Palace in Honolulu in 1882, threw extravagant parties, and lifted the prohibitions
on the hula and other native arts. For this, he was much loved. He also gave Pearl Harbor to
the United States; it became the westernmost bastion of the U.S. Navy. In 1891, King Kalakaua
visited chilly San Francisco, caught a cold, and died in the royal suite of the Sheraton Palace.
His sister, Queen Liliuokalani, assumed the throne.
Handsome Iolani Palace, built by King Kalakaua.
A Sad Farewell
On January 17, 1893, a group of American sugar planters and missionary descendants, with
the support of U.S. Marines, imprisoned Queen Liliuokalani in her own palace, in Honolulu,
where she later penned the sorrowful lyric “Aloha Oe,” Hawaii's song of farewell. The mon-
archy was dead.
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