The Hawaiian Future

These are some of my rough thoughts about how the lāhui could negotiate the road ahead – not part of the Moʻolelo series

Professor John Learned of the University of Hawaiʻi said during the Mauna Kea controversy that Hawaiians had no role in the future of Hawaiʻi. First of all: Fuck him! Now thatʻs out of the way, we have to dig down and think about how much truth there might be to his “assertion.” Of course, it’s up to us to answer the question with our actions as a lāhui going forward.

First, as a counter-example, I visited New Zealand in 2001 (the first of three such visits), and my friend – a Maori Harvard graduate, who I had met while there – said “welcome to Aotearoa! We Maori occupy a privileged position in New Zealand society.” The government ministry signs, all in Maori with English translation in small print beneath, reinforced this idea of Maori privilege. My point is it doesnʻt have to be this way – itʻs not automatic that the native people are rendered invisible in their own homeland.

Education is an obvious factor in the equation here, as it imparts skill sets that allow involvement in future industries and initiatives. One telling process was that of filling the position of the CEO of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. During the search, there were very, very few Hawaiians with the set of skills and attributes necessary to run a $600 million organization. So this is beyond education – itʻs career development on top of a solid education.

But as far as education goes, I’ve tried as much as possible to publicize the fact that Hawaiians graduating from DOE schools go on to then graduate from college at a rate of 9%! That number means little unless its compared to something – like the US rate of college graduation. 29% of Americans in general have a Bachelor’s degree, so Hawaiians are finishing college at a rate that’s less than a third of the US average. And most professional positions require one degree beyond a Bachelor’s. An acquaintance of mine who is a PhD in science said that one UH department tried to catalog how many Hawaiians were in the pipeline to get a science PhD at UH and found there were none! Like it or not (I don’t) but STEM is where the action is and a PhD is the ticket to play in that field. Iʻve written before of the need for a Hawaiian college.

It may not seem related, but health, a perennial concern for Hawaiians, is another factor here. Why? I’ve noticed that professionals seem to often reach the peak of their careers between 55 and 70! A very successful relative of mine said, at around 70 years old, that he was “calling all the shots” in his career. In 1985 the average life expectancy for Hawaiians was 67! So how can you even get to the peak of your career (much less retire afterward) if you don’t even live to 70? As it happens this relative became nearly obsessed with his health in his early 50s and it still pays dividends. Health also means that you feel better on a daily basis and have more energy to do work for the lāhui.

I want to avoid “blaming the victim” – but to be balanced about it, there are things that Hawaiians will have to do ourselves, and things that government will have to do (and perhaps corporations). Hawaiian Immersion – Kaiapuni – for example, a government program, has taught two generations their ʻōlelo makuahine (including two of my own daughters). But it did so because it was lobbied for by dedicated Hawaiians immersed themselves in the field of language revitalization.

Finally (for now) there’s the matter of Hawaiʻi’s place in the world. I’ve observed that Hawaiians have fought tooth and nail to get to an American middle class status (most havenʻt made it, but some have), but that ship has sailed. Being middle class is actually what’s destroying the ʻāina – and not just in Hawaiʻi. We will need to do things in new ways, or perhaps old ways. As I hinted at on the podcast Culturised with Makani Tabura – maybe we canʻt drive cars anymore? That’s just one idea to open up thinking about alternative ways of living – some, not all but some, will likely be those of our ancestors.

What you might not know about the Overthrow [video]

#173 in the Moʻolelo series – from the Moʻolelo Channel on YouTube in conjunction with the umiverse

“Noho Mana: To Wield Power” – Reexamining the concept of Mana

#172 in the Moʻolelo series

mana: ‘power, might, supernatural power, divine power’, ‘powerful, strong’, and as the verb ho‘omana, ‘to ascribe power, to worship, to render homage’

Lorrin Andrews 1836: 98.

For many years, I had taught that unlike other Hawaiian concepts (for example, pono), mana was a concept whose rendering in English was almost perfect. Mana could merely mean status or a kind of spiritual power – both ways of using the word “power” in English. This was important for my research because I used a methodology called “genealogy,” or, interchangeably, “moʻokūʻauhau.” And as Lilikalā Kameʻeleihiwa notes, the mana lies in the names.

New Mana, edited by Matt Tomlinson and Ty Kāwika Tengan (ANU Press)

But at my dissertation defense, Professor Ty Kāwika Tengan, a member of my dissertation committee, informed me that there was new scholarship on the concept of mana. I preliminarily examine that new scholarship here.

Tengan himself (an anthrologist, the second Hawaiian ever to gain a PhD from the UH Anthro department) along with Matt Tomlinson, assert that while:

discourse about mana thrives in many Oceanic societies. It also circulates outside of traditional Oceanic contexts—sometimes far outside, as in New Age movements, fantasy fiction and online gaming. [One] reason to focus on mana anew is that it can offer scholars fresh insights about relationships between aesthetics, ethics, and power and authority … [Another reason to reexamine mana is that] a new focus on mana has the potential to generate new forms of anthropological practice. By engaging collaboratively with Indigenous communities on this specific topic, anthropologists, Indigenous and otherwise, can actively take part in developing new understandings of mana that have practical consequences—the production of new mana, in effect.

Tomlinson and Tengan, “Mana Anew,” in New Mana.

But mana has another, seemingly unrelated meaning, at least when a kahakō is placed over the first a: to masticate:

māna n. 1. A chewed mass, as of kava for drinking, coconut flakes or kukui nut for medicine. Māna pani (Kam. 76:74), food taken after drinking kava [lit., closing mouthful]. Māna ʻai, food chewed by adult for child; any mouthful of food. 2. Trait believed acquired from those who raise a child.

source: wehewehe.org

Is there a connection between mana and māna? It’s possible: masticated food gives a child strength. What are some other common uses of the term? When a Maori performing troop sings an action song, a common response might be that it has a lot of mana. A colleague of mine has a mana meter by which mana can be measured. He has demonstrated that when people in a room think bad thoughts of a person, their mana decreases according to the mana meter. Tengan and Tomlinson add to these uses of the word, quoting a researcher in the Melanesian context (suggesting that the concept is indeed pan-Pacific):

There is a belief in a force altogether distinct from physical power, which acts in all kinds of ways for good and evil, and which it is of the greatest advantage to possess or control. This is Mana. The word is common, I believe, to the whole Pacific, and people have tried very hard to describe what it is in different regions. I think I know what our people mean by it, and that meaning seems to me to cover all that I hear about it elsewhere. It is a power or influence, not physical, and in a way, supernatural; but it shows itself in physical force, or in any kind of power or excellence which a man possesses. This Mana is not fixed in anything, and can be conveyed in almost anything; but spirits, whether disembodied souls or supernatural beings, have it, and can impart it; and it essentially belongs to personal beings to originate it, though it may act through the medium of water, or a stone, or a bone.

Tomlinson and Tengan, “Mana Anew” in New Mana.

Or as my mother put it: if you kick a stone, you have the mana to do that, but your foot hurts so the stone has some mana as well. The Hawaiian Dictionary gives the following examples of the use of the word mana:

Mana loa, great power; almighty. Noho mana, to wield power, occupy a position of power. Ke kumu … i mana ai ka ʻaoʻao aliʻi, the reason for giving the chief’s side power.

Pīpī holo kaʻao [sprinkled, the tale runs] – to be continued…

Hawaiʻi and Civil Rights

#171 in the Moʻolelo series

On the day that the first African-American and first female Vice President was inaugerated, and on the heels of Martin Luther King Day, it seems an appropriate time to look at the connection between Hawaiʻi and the Civil Rights movement.* Some know about the connection between Hawaiʻi and Martin Luther King: the lei he was wearing at the famous march in Selma Alabama was given to him by the Reverend Abraham Akaka, Kahu of Kawaiahaʻo Church.** In pictures of the march, behind King is a banner that read “Hawaii knows integration works.” Indeed, Hawaiʻi was thought of by some as a near-utopia of racial harmony – hard to believe for some perhaps, but compared to the American South in the 1960s there is some truth to the assertion. As historian John Rosa has put it, race relations in Hawaiʻi “are good but far from perfect” (Rosa in The Value of Hawaiʻi, Howes and Osorio, eds., 2010. See Rosa’s “The Massie-Kahahawai Case” on the umiverse).

In the 1950s, during the drive for Statehood, one of the confounding factors for the pro-Statehood cause was Hawaiʻi’s support for civil rights. It was thought that new members of Congress from Hawaiʻi would tip the balance toward civil rights legislation. (Hawaiʻi was also seen in some quarters as pro-Communist, with its strong unions and after trials like that of the “Hawaiʻi seven”)

Support for civil rights did in fact come about from Hawaiʻi Congressmen. As I wrote in “Spark Matsunaga:”

[Spark] Matsunaga was a staunch advocate for civil rights throughout the 1960s, as well as for the rights of Interred Japanese Americans during World War II (or as he would have called them, AJAs – Americans of Japanese Ancestry).

Senator Spark Matsunaga

Support for civil rights led to the State of Hawaiʻi being at the forefront of equity – it ws the first state to include gender in its non-discrimination policy:

Article I, Section 5 of the Hawaii Constitution provides that “no person shall be denied the enjoyment of civil rights or be discriminated against in the exercise thereof because of race, religion, sex or ancestry.” 

Hawaiʻi Civil Rights Commission

In a related post, Dr. Kawika Liu wrote a review for the umiverse of the film Selma, in which he relates in, in no uncertain terms, to the situation that was then brewing in Hawaiʻi:

More than anything, particularly with the killings of Ferguson and going back to Trayvon Martin, ‘Selma’ reminds us that the struggle for human rights is far from over. Moreover, this struggle is not simply about racism and other forms of discrimination: it is a struggle that is intimately linked with all human rights, including struggles against poverty, inequity, and violence. There is no coincidence between the roles of the military in Hawai’i, the TMT conflict, the shooting of Kollin Elderts, and the lack of affordable housing: occupation and colonization and the children of capitalism and a racist ideology. A failure to understand and link struggles leads to divide and rule and the reproduction of hatred; this was the conclusion that MLK and Malcom X had reached, and certainly contributed to their assassinations. For the biggest threat to the existing system is solidarity; the biggest ally is division.

Kawika Liu in the umiverse, January 19, 2015

*And first South Asian Vice President. It bears mentioning on that note that Barack Obama, the first African-American President, was from, of all unlikely places, Hawaiʻi.

**Abraham was the older brother of Senator Daniel Akaka

“The World we used to Live In:” A Hawaiian Perception of Land

#170 in the Moʻolelo series. When I was writing my PhD dissertation (Kuleana: A Genealogy of Native Tenant Rights, 2013, UH Mānoa), I would at times have to cut sections out because they didnʻt keep with the flow of the work. Rather than deleting them, I kept them in a file called “extras” for later use. Looking into this file, I found it contained 75 pages of material! One such section I post below.

Andrade (2008, 1) begins his book Hāʻena with a passage that evokes a Hawaiian perception of land:

In Hawaiian ways of the perceiving the world, Hāʻena is a place situated below the wind, close to the taproot of the earth, where the sun enters the sea at Haleleʻa (House of Pleasure), Kauaʻi o Manokalanipo (Kauaʻi of the legendary Manokalanipo). One translation of the name Hāʻena is ʻHot breath,ʻ a reference to the sun and to the volatile, voluptuous Pele, whose amorous adventures are recorded on the land there. Hāʻena is also where the mountain Makana calls, as if it were a sweetheart. 

Carlos Andrade, Hāʻena

Haleakalā, Maui

Andrade’s lyrical description focuses on Hawaiian points of reference – orientations of winds, sun, and earth. His invocation of the image of a “sweetheart”  illustrates an affective relationship with land that is not exclusive to Kauaʻi. [Note: since the time this was written, Carlos Andrade has become very controversial in helping Mark Zuckerberg to “quiet” land titles on Kauaʻi]. That it is described as “below the wind” suggests Malo’s (1951, 12) description of concentric circles “used to designate space above and below.” His reference to Pele’s “amourous adventures” shows the inscription of histories on the land, what Andrade (2008, 35) calls the “storied landscape.”  In the Maui chant ʻOni ke Kula o Kamaʻomaʻo (Kanahele, n.d., 66), land is described similarly:

He nani Kuahiwi o Haleakalā

Ua laʻa ia wahi kula Honua ula

Kiʻekʻie ka makemake i ka leo o kaʻu ipo

Beautiful is the mountain of Haleakalā

Dedicated is that little plain, Honuaʻula

High in the estimation, in the praise of my lover

History was inscribed in Hawaiian traditions, which “pinpoint places as landing spots of ancestral navigators, as locations where the people emerged into the world, or as arenas in which they lived, fought battles, engaged in love affairs, and buried the dead. These named places were, and still are, considered sacred…” (Andrade, 2008, 2). 

Oliveira (2006, 22) posits nine senses through which Hawaiians apprehend land and landscape: besides the traditional five senses, na‘au (intuition), kulaiwi (place), au ‘apaʻapaʻa (ancestral time), and moʻo (connection to past, present and future). Thus, place itself is a sense. Hawaiians employed methods of apprehending the physical world that transceded the physical. Such methods included hōʻailona – signs in nature, which alternately were considered direct communication from akua. Desha (2000, 35) notes an instance of the war god Kūkāilimoku being “consulted” on matters of war. The kahuna of Kalaniōpuʻu, Holoʻae, said: “inā wau e kū i ka pule, a i hele auaneʻi nā hulu i luna o ko akua a kolili, a i lele auaneʻi a kau ʻole i luna oʻu, e kuʻu lani aliʻi, e hoʻike mai ana ko akua e hoʻomoe ke kaua a ka lā ʻapōpō, a ʻaʻole hoʻi e neʻe kaua aku i kēia ahiahi”^[1]

Frances Frazier (2000) translates: “when I offer a prayer, if the feathers on top of the god flutter and fly and do not alight upon you, my heavenly one, your god is telling you to lay aside battle until tomorrow and not go to battle this evening.” 

The use of such hōʻailona – “omens,” signs in nature, or as Jung termed these occurances, “synchronicities” – suggests a worldview that transcends the materialist, even the Marxist, conception. Vine Deloria (2006) describes an indigenous world in which spiritual forces, or direct communication from deities are not merely taken seriously, but taken for granted. He calls this “the world we [Native Americans] used to live in.” In their description of the “organic relationship of the people to the land,” Handy and Handy (1972, 42) describe Hawaiian sense of connectedness to place using European notions of nationhood:

The German theory of Geopolitik emphasizes the concept of a mystical or spiritual identification of a nation with the homeland – not just the ʻVaterland’ ideal, but the actual physical land on which they live and from which they draw their sustenance. In these days of transience and displacement, this reality may have become blurred. But the concept has very real relevance to the relationship which existed from very early times between the Hawaiian people, be they chiefs or commoners, and their homeland- perhaps peculiarly so between the commoner (makaʻainana) who was a planter and his land (ʻaina).

This is abundantly exemplified in traditional mele(songs), in pule(prayer chants), and in genealogical records which associate the ancestors, primordial and more recent, with their original homelands, celebrating always the outstanding qualities and features of those lands. But it is equally exemplified by the strong attachments, evident even among the dislocations of today, which the kamaʻāina (“child of the [specific] land,” or native) has for her or his place of origin.

Handy and Handy (1972, 43) note that the reasons for kamaʻāina pride and identification with places of origin “differed from ʻāinato ʻāinaand island to island, but the identification was everywhere an essential reality.” As with Hegelian and Wagnerian pre-unification “German” notions of patriotism and the Vaterland, Hawaiian identification was originally with the specific place but evolved in the ninteenth century to an identification with the nation as a whole. The shift toward a “Hawaiian” national identification was a response to threats against that nationhood. 

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^[1]Desha wrote this article on March 26, 1921 and it was published in He Moʻolelo Kaʻao no Kekūhaupiʻo: Ke Koa Kaulana O Ke Au O Kamehameha Ka Nui in 1996 (ed. Lōkahi Antonio).

KE KUMU KANAWAI: THE CONSTITUTION OF 1840

#169 in the Moʻolelo series

The 1840 Constitution stated that “No law shall be enacted which is at variance with the word of the Lord Jehovah,” in other words,  it established that Hawai’i was a Christian nation at that time. It established three branches of government, a hybrid of American and British branches of government: 1) an executive branch, comprised by the king and his administration, 2) a bicameral legislative branch composed of two houses: a House of Representative and a House of Nobles, and 3) a Judicial branch made up of a Supreme Court. While some similarlity is seen here to the American branches of government, the legislative branch was modelled on the British parliament, with its House of Commons and House of Lords. The House of Representatives was made up of elected makaʻāinana and the House of Nobles was composed of appointed Aliʻi. The Constitution further defined the powers of the king.  It also confirmed that land was held by the king and not alienable.

The 1840 Constitution, not the Principles of the Land Commission, is also the source of Hawaiian makaʻāinana Kuleana land rights, as it provides that Kamehameha I had control of all the landed property, but that “It was not his personal private property.”

Kauikeaouli – Kamehameha III

As I wrote in “The Hawaiian Kingdom Constitution of 1840 – one of the world’s first modern constitutions” in 2016 (long before the Moʻolelo series began):

The first modern constitution (the Magna Carta is not considered an actually constitution, but rather a precursor to constitutions) was the US Constitution of 1788. Fifty-one years later, the Hawaiian Kingdom, having proclaimed a Declaration of Rights in 1839, promulgated the Constitution of 1840, of which the Declaration became a preamble. It always struck me that 50 years, in the slow process of “constitutionalism” was quite a short period of time. Today, constitutions are standard documents, but in the mid-1800s most governments were absolute monarchies, without constitutions. I had my students look up the answer to the question: How many constitutions were made in that 50 year period? The answer, excluding Hawaiʻi, is four! So if my information is correct, the Hawaiian Kingdom’s 1840 Constitution was only the fifth modern constitution in history! The four constitutions that predate Hawaiʻi’s are: the United States (1788), The Kingdom of Norway (1814), the Netherlands (1815), and Belgium (1831). Hawaiʻi followed in 1843 and Denmark was next in 1849. Now this list is of constitutions that are still in effect and only counts independent states, not federated states like New York, etc.

Who wrote it? Received wisdom seems to hold that William Richards wrote the Constitution, but Richards himself wrote that it was “the Lahainaluna scholars” (“scholar” at that time mainly just meant student). Among these scholars of the time was Boaz Mahune, who’s name appears enough in records in the 1830s and 1840s to make one suspect he was particularly gifted – and also underrated as a historical figure as I wrote previously: he was #1 on the list in “Mai Poina: Lost to History.”

William Richards

#168 in the Moʻolelo series

William Richards was born in 1793 in Plainfield, Massachusetts. He attended Williams College (today the #1 ranked liberal arts college in the US) and Andover Seminary. In 1822 he was ordained as a minister, married Clarissa Lyman* and the following year arrived in Hawaiʻi with the second company of missionaries at the age of 30. Stationed in Lahaina, he befriended such luminaries as Governor Hoapili and David Malo. In 1838, Richards left the mission to become an advisor to the chiefs, a government employee – something that was forbidden by the mission board. His knowledge of Hawaiian was among the best of the missionary cohort, and he translated many works into Hawaiian. Chief among these was No ke Kalaiaina a translation of Francis Wayland’s Elements of Political Economy. Wayland was the President of Brown University, a philosopher not an economist, and his work is as curious as it was fitting for Richards’s purpose – to indoctrinate the chiefs in what he viewed as the moral value of capitalism.

Haʻalilio and Richards, ca. 1843

Wayland’s text begins with the surprising assertion that the principles of moral philosophy and “political economy” (i.e., capitalism) were synonymous. No one in these fields today would make this assertion (though they might believe it to be true) and it smacks of the attitude of the amateur. And this is what Richards was: he was tasked to find a teacher of political economy and sent to the US, but returned empty-handed and then offered the position.

Lilikalā Kameʻeleihiwa’s book Native Land and Foreign Desires has a mouthful of a subtitle: “Pehea Lā e Pono Ai?” But this subtitle comes directly from the lessons Richards gave the chiefs. When Richards criticized the Hawaiian way of doing economics, the chiefs asked “Pehea Lā e Pono Ai?” (in my rough translation of rendering this question: “what is the proper way of doing things?”). Richards humbly admits in his journals that he had no ready answer to this penetrating ling of questioning.

This is not to say Richards was worthless to the kingdom, quite the contrary. He accompanied, and later cared for, the Hawaiian ambassador Timoteo Haʻalilio in their successful mission to gain recognition of Hawaiʻi’s sovereignty. And when it came to countering other Western influences, Richards fell squarely on the side of the Hawaiian chiefs, and very nearly paid for it with his life in what came to be called “the outrages.”

Williams was part of the initial Board of Commissioners to Quiet Land Titles (the Land Commission, tasked with executing the Māhele), became Minister of Public Instruction in 1846 and died in 1847 in Honolulu. He is buried in Lahaina at Waiola cemetery.

The 10 Best Books on Hawaiian History (in English or Translation) [video]

#167 in the Moʻolelo series and #11 on the Moʻolelo Channel on YouTube

The 1874 Riots: The Emmaite Storming of the Legislature

#166 in the Moʻolelo series

After the events of January 6th, 2021 – the attempted (and initially successful) insurrection and occupation of the US Capitol – I thought about what similar event may have happened in Hawaiʻi. The 1874 riot of the Emmaites, supporters of Queen Emma against Kalākaua, immediately came to mind. I’d already written about the 1874 events, so here I try to add depth to that account. As I wrote in “The Riot of the Queenites:”

In 1874, the second election for monarch took place, barely more than a year after the first: Lunalilo vs. Kalākaua. This time it was Kalākaua vs. Queen Emma. So why was Queen Emma running in an election to become Queen Emma? Because she was Queen by virtue of having been married to Kamehameha IV, she was called Dowager Queen Emma, that is, widow of the former King (and once a Queen, always a Queen – this is why the statue of Queen Liliʻuokalani has her dates of rule as 1891-1917).

The first political party in Hawaiʻi was comprised of the supporters of Queen Emma: the “Emmaites,” or, as the Advertiser called them, the “Queenites.” 

Dowager Queen Emma Kaleleonālani

Peter Young wrote of the riots in one of his last blog posts:

When the vote was tallied, Kalākaua won by a count of 39 – 6.

Emma’s supporters (referred to as the “Queenites,” “Emmaites” or the “Queen Emma party”) were unhappy with the decision – an angry mob of about 100 of the Queen’s followers gathered.

No outbreak occurred … until the Committee of five representatives, which had been appointed to notify the King of his election, attempted to leave the building and enter a carriage waiting to convey them to the Palace.

“The crowd surrounded the carriage and laid hands on them, and they attempted to defend themselves, as best they could without weapons, two of them were badly wounded before they effected entrance into the building to which they retreated.” (Hawaiian Gazette – March 4, 1874)

A riot ensued and many of the legislators were attacked, with one subsequently dying from his injuries (Mr. Lonoaea, representative from Wailuku, Maui.)

Peter Young, “Election Riot of 1874,” Images of Old Hawaiʻi, Feb. 12, 2020

Image of the riot at the Hawaiʻi Legislature, 1874

Hawaiian legislators who had voted for Kalākaua were targeted, even thrown from the second storey window of the legislature building. Jon Osorio’s book Dismembering Lāhui includes pictures of legislators with bandages around their heads. Queen Emma immediately accepted the outcome of the election.

The blog Hawaiian History Time Machine gives an account of the event immediately following the riot:

After calm had been restored, Emma acknowledged her opponent as the rightful king and retired from public life. The opposing ideologies of the two candidates, however, persisted in the political discourse and the Emmaites, though comparatively few in numbers, unorganized and lacking an effective leader, continued to attract those who espoused Emma’s pro-British and nativist views and resented Kalākaua’s dependence on American industry. They maintained a grudging opposition to the king and were a threat to the stability of his throne for many years to come.

Not long after the 1874 election, a handful of Emmaites circulated a petition to the French consul-commisioner asking for a French warship to help place Emma on the throne. When a new movement was launched in 1874 and 1875 for a reciprocity treaty with the United States, the Emmaite faction declared strongly against it and Kalākaua’s support of the treaty provided new grounds for opposition to him and his administration.

“The Emmaites: Rise and Fall of the Queen’s Party,” Hawaiian History time Machine, by Island Expat

The Defector: Kaʻiana

#166 in the Moʻolelo series. Adam Keawe Manalo-Camp’s post reminded me that Kaʻiana is one of the most fascinating figures in Hawaiian history, and I wondered if I could contribute anything to his article on the chief.

Kaʻiana was a Kauaʻi chief who, as Hawaiian historian Adam Keawe Manalo-Camp notes, was related to “every major chief in the Hawaiian islands,” was an early adventurer traveling to China and other ports. An article in the Hawaiian Journal of History describes Kaʻiana walking down the street in Canton, China, where he refused to remove his ʻahuʻula, his chiefly cloak. Described as over six feet tall, with his helmet he must have towered over the people there. Kaʻiana, who travelled with Captain Meares, was described thus:

Tyanna [Kaʻiana] is tall; being six feet two inches in height and so exceedingly well made, that a more perfect symmetry and just proportion of shape is rarely to be met with … (he) has a pleasing animated countenance (and) a fine piercing eye.

Portlock

Kaʻiana

Manalo-Camp writes:

While in Alaska, a bay was named for him, Tianna, which today is Icy Bay. This was the first place outside of Hawaiʻi named after a Hawaiian.Kaʻiana eventually made it home and became an ally of Kamehameha I supplying him with weapons from China. He eventually had a falling out with Kamehameha (some accounts believed it to be over Kaʻahumanu) and was shot by John Young in battle during the Battle of the Pali. Some accounts claim he was shot near Queen Emma’s Summer Palace while others say on the slopes of Pūowaina further away.

Adam Keawe Manalo-Camp, post on Facebook

Before the Battle of Nuʻuanu Ka‘iana was excluded from a planning meeting at Kaunakakai, Molokaʻi. Taking this as an omen that he was to be killed, he defected with the 3,500 soldiers he commanded and joined Kalanikūpule. This lowered Kamehameha’s army from 16,000 to around 13,000, but they still outnumbered Kalanikūpule’s forces, even with the addition of Kaʻiana’s warriors.