(Instrumental music) Actor: We continue to see birds every day, and we saw several turtles.

All of these are looked upon as signs of the vicinity of land.

We, however, saw none until daybreak in the morning of the 18th, when an island was discovered bearing northeast by east, and soon after we saw more land bearing north, entirely detached from the first.

Narrator: On the beach at Waimea, Kauaʻi, a man named Moapu was fishing.

Hawaiian historian Samuel Kamakau later translated his eyewitness account.

Actor: We were out fishing, and saw a strange thing move by, and lights on board.

We hurried ashore to tell Kāʻeo and the other chiefs of Kauaʻi.

Chiefs and commoners saw the wonderful sight.

Some were terrified and shrieked with fear.

One asked the other, "What are those branching things?” And the other answered, "They are trees moving about on the sea.” Narrator: As the resolution and discovery approached Kauaʻi the isolation that created a uniquely Hawaiian culture came to an end.

This was the moment of cultural collision, the moment of contact.

Actor: We were in some doubt whether or not the land before us was inhabited.

This doubt was soon cleared up by seeing some canoes coming off the shore towards the ship.

We saw men on the ship with white foreheads, sparkling eyes, and long heads, who spoke a strange language and breathed fire from their mouths, and who had much iron lying about on their floating heiau.

As there were some venereal complaints on both ships, I gave orders that no women on any account whatever were to be admitted on board the ships, and I ordered that none who had the venereal upon them should go out of the ships, yet I am much afraid that.

Narrator: Before long island women took to sleeping with foreigners to obtain cloth, iron, and mirrors, and a fateful damage was done.

During Cook's second visit in 1779 at Kealakekua Bay, the lack of understanding between the cultures resulted in tragedy.

In trying to recover a stolen boat, the English became involved in a fight with Chief Kalaniʻōpuʻu and his men.

Cook was killed.

The foreigners soon left, but their influence was just beginning to test the strength of Hawaiʻi's spiritual and cultural uniqueness.

Could Hawaiians withstand the seed sown in Cook's initial year of contact?

Gonorrhea, syphilis, prostitution, alcohol, tobacco, fleas, centipedes, scorpions, mosquitoes, epidemics, and firearms.

First to recognize the advantages foreigners could bring to warfare was the nearly seven-foot-tall favorite nephew of Kalaniʻōpuʻu, Kamehameha of Kohala.

While others prostrated themselves before the foreigners, Kamehameha's quick mind recognized a superior technology which could give him an edge over the other chiefs.

In 1791, using the cannon and rifle, he launched a campaign to unify the islands.

Herb Kawainui Kāne: The success of Kamehameha may be in large part attributed to the fact that he controlled major ports and major sources of provisions, Kealakekua Bay, Kailua Bay, Kawaihae Bay, and so he had access to visiting ships.

He got himself into the provisioning business in a big way, and he was able to get firearms, whereas chiefs of other parts of this island were not so fortunate, they didn't have the harbors.

Narrator: Kamehameha's decisive campaign for the islands ended dramatically on Oʻahu at the Nuʻuanu Pali, where remnants of the defenders either scattered in the hills or fell a thousand feet to their deaths.

14 years would elapse before Kauaʻi would enter the fold, but the conquering of Oʻahu in 1810 marks the unification of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

In peace, as in war, Kamehameha guided his young nation, as he ruled himself with strict adherence to traditional society.

He governed justly according to custom, ruling his kingdom from his taro patches at Kohala.

He died at Kailua, the last of the traditional kings, the last great aliʻi.

Herb Kawainui Kāne: In the early 18th century, many Hawaiians were going out on sailing ships, working on sailing ships all over the world, and coming back to Kamehameha with stories that out there were continents swarming with millions of people.

And the ruling chiefs became very much aware that they were really a very small part of this world and it bothered them.

They knew that they would have to establish parity with Europe and win some recognition from Europe or, if they didn't, they would be devoured by the first European power that decided to make a conquest of these islands.

Narrator: Ultimately, commerce served to undo traditional kingship and traditional society.

In the early 1800s, Pacific fur traders learned of the existence of sandalwood here.

Knowing the high prices the fragrant wood could bring, they descended on the islands.

Dr.

Kekuni Blaisdell: Well, of course, they represented commercial exploitation, or capitalism, that is seeking material goods in order to gain profit, so that one could oneself gain more material possessions, which, of course was very foreign to Hawaiians, and their whole existence was not based on the profit individual motive, but rather group affiliation and sharing.

So, we have cultural clash.

Narrator: A veritable rape of the forest ensued.

The people labored endlessly with no reward, neglecting their crops at the direction of the chiefs.

They were reduced to eating herbs and fern trunks, because there was no food to be had.

There was famine, there was disease, and many died.

Meanwhile, the chiefs lavished themselves with everything from European clothing to billiard tables, payable in sandalwood.

By 1826, Hawaiian chiefs were in debt to the foreign traders.

Dr.

Kekuni Blaisdell: Too many Hawaiians anyway quickly acquired this desire for material possessions and especially the chiefs, and that was a major factor in the erosion of the political and social and economic structure of the old society.

Narrator: Within a few years, sandalwood was gone and Hawaiʻi's economic dependence quickly shifted to whaling.

That industry brought prosperity and revitalized harbor activity in Lahaina, Hilo and Honolulu.

But it brought more foreigners and it took many Hawaiian men away on ships further depleting the population.

It also continued to change the Hawaiian world.

George S. Kanahele: The mana of the white man of Western civilization, that was seen in the form of ships, cannons, iron tools, and so forth, challenged the mana of the Hawaiian.

And the Hawaiians were smart enough to see that there was a great deal more power in some of the technology, some of the new ways that Cook and other visitors brought with them.

Rhoda E.A.

Hackler, Ph.D.

: When the Hawaiians met these people from overseas, they would sit down and talk to them.

They would ask them questions about the world they didn't know, and the foreigners would give them answers, and inevitably these answers were had an influence on the on the eventual behavior of the Hawaiians.

I don't say that they were the predominant influence, they're simply they were taking in a great deal of information.

Narrator: 1819 was a pivotal year.

The great chief Kamehameha died to be succeeded by his son Liholiho.

This marked the end of the old ways.

First to fall to make way for the new ways was the ancient Hawaiian social structure, the kapu system.

Liholiho, at the direction of the Dowager Queen Kaʻahumanu, caused a feast to be prepared at Kailua, where the young king seated himself in the vacant place at the women's table and began to eat.

The kapu was broken.

He ordered heiau destroyed and carved God images burned.

Jim Bartels: Jim Bartels: This destroyed the entire framework of traditional government with nothing to replace it right away.

So, in 1819, a very close-knit society with close-knit rules, a society that was functioning had functioned for a long time, defined the way people thought about themselves was simply destroyed all at once.

Narrator: In a remarkable coincidence of history, as Hawaiian society began to unravel from within, an evangelical revival spread over Europe and America, spurring waves of missionaries whose sole purpose was to save the heathen from himself, the Reverend Hiram Bingham.

Actor: Little did any of the actors in the drama imagine that the measures they attempted were preparing for the introduction of a spiritual and holy religion.

How conspicuous the wisdom and goodness of God to have provided a Christian mission for these islands at this auspicious moment.

Jim Bartels: The European world of, say, the 1820s, 30s, and 40s saw their own way as the only way, and so, native peoples who were not like Europeans should be changed and should be improved.

Narrator: Armed only in the zealous belief that their work was wholly for the good of others and the glory of God, a pioneer company of missionaries, teachers, craftsmen, three American-educated Hawaiians, and one doctor set sail for Hawaiʻi.

March 31, 1820 at Kailua Kona the missionaries encountered the first of their intended converts.

Actor: The appearance of destitution, degradation, and barbarism among the chattering, almost naked savages was appalling.

Some in our number with gushing tears turned away from the spectacle.

Can these be human beings?

Can such beings be civilized?

Can they be Christianized?

Can we throw ourselves upon these rude shores and take up our abode for life among such a people for the purpose of training them for heaven?

Narrator: To Hawaiians, the missionaries provided a humorous spectacle.

White women dressed with puritanical modesty were quickly tagged long necks because of their high collars.

But the missionaries were given a one-year trial by Liholiho, allowing them time to observe Hawaiians.

Dr.

Donald Kilolani Mitchell: The missionaries were horrified when they were here long enough to really get in command of the situation.

Here were grown men out in the surf at 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning.

Now, back in New England, we worked during the day, and in the evening, perhaps we play games.

So, one of the missionaries said to a chief, "Why are you wasting your time and energy on games this time of day?

And the chief looked at him and said, "We build our houses, we cultivate our fields out of necessity.

We play our games because our hearts are in them."

Narrator: Just as wasteful of time to the missionary mind was music and dance.

Actor: In the hula, the dancers are often fantastically decorated with figured or colored kapa, green leaves, fresh flowers, and sometimes on the ankle, hundreds of dog's teeth.

Much of the person is uncovered.

Melody and harmony are scarcely known to them.

The whole arrangement of their hulas were designed to promote lasciviousness.

Narrator: Work of the mission proceeded slowly.

Preaching, or pule attracted some attention, but without a written Hawaiian language, teaching was difficult.

In 1822 the missionary William Ellis arrived from Tahiti, fluent in that language.

He greatly assisted the American mission in reducing the similar Hawaiian language into sounds they themselves could understand.

In the process, irrevocable decisions were made.

Dr.

Kekuni Blaisdell: Well, it changed the pronunciation of the language.

For example, by show of hands, they decided that we were going to have an L and not an R, that we were going to have K but not a T. Narrator: In January 1822 at the mission houses in Honolulu, lead type was set to form the page of a rudimentary speller.

The pull of the hand lever then created the Hawaiian language's earliest imprint.

Within a few years, the Bible too was translated, and it was used to teach Hawaiians their own language in written form.

By the 1840s, Hawaiʻi ranked among the most literate nations in the world.

Letters, writings, and publications from the period are the only written clues to the ancient Hawaiian language.

Dr.

Kekuni Blaisdell: Well, the missionaries, of course, gave us their religion, and they gave us also a new language, because they recorded our language, made certain changes in it, some important, profound changes in our language, and in a sense, therefore gave us a new culture.

We became westernized and progressively de-Hawaiianized.

Narrator: One product of missionary education was a young Hawaiian man born in the 1790s and educated at Lahainaluna School.

Hawaiian historian David Malo saw what was coming and feared for his people during this time of transition.

In a private letter to Kīnaʻu, Premier under Kamehameha the Third, he writes in 1837.

Actor: If a big wave comes in, large fishes will come from the dark ocean, which you never saw before.

And when they see the small fishes, they will eat them up.

The ships of the white men have come, and smart people have arrived from the great countries.

They know our people are few in number, and living in a small country, they will eat us up.

Marion Kelly: In order to deal with the Western governments, who are coming in and pressuring you folks to pay up your bills and do this and do that.

In order to deal with those Western governments, you had to create a government of your own that was Western in shape and form and content, so that you could deal with them.

Herb Kawainui Kāne: There was a tremendous rush on the part of the ruling chiefs, the chiefly families to become as westernized as quickly as possible.

And historians haven't really understood the motive for this.

They have poked fun, perhaps, at the idea of a Hawaiian chief wearing a malo and a top hat.

What they really haven't uncovered was the basic reason for this rush to become westernized, and it was, I believe, an urgent need to establish parity with Europe for Hawaiʻi's own survival.

Narrator: Hawaiʻi's first constitution in 1840 incorporated these western concepts, establishing Kamehameha the Third as the first westernized Hawaiian monarch.

The constitution created a bill of rights, a legislative body chosen by the people, and a Supreme Court.

The running of a Western-style government required experience the king found only in foreign advisers with which he surrounded himself.

Men such as the Minister of the Interior, former American missionary Gerrit P. Judd, Scotsman Robert C. Wyllie, who was appointed Minister of Foreign Relations, and American John Ricord, who served as Attorney General .

In reaching for what seemed good for his people, Kamehameha the Third could not foresee the long-term consequences of his actions.

It was not long before Hawaiian people began expressing concern at the pervasive influence of these foreigners in their government.

Hawaiian historian Samuel Kamakau in 1845 records the apprehensions of some older Hawaiians.

Actor: The king has chosen foreign ministers, foreign agents.

This is wrong.

Hawaiian people will be trodden under foot by the foreigners.

Entertaining foreigners is the beginning, which will lead to the government coming into the hands of the foreigner, and the Hawaiian people becoming their servants to work for them.

Let chiefs fill the vacancies, and do not let all of the government positions go to the hands of the foreigner.

Dr.

Kekuni Blaisdell: See, the excuse given by the monarchs in the early and even the later years was, oh, we don't have people who are trained to become, for example, minister of the interior, or to become minister of education, or to become minister of health, but no serious attempt was made to train and educate people to take these positions.

Narrator: Of greater concern to Hawaiians was the increasing foreign demand for land ownership, a concept basic to the Western mind.

Interestingly, the Hawaiian language did not include a word for the phrase private property ownership.

Abraham Piʻianaiʻa: The people knew that that that they lived under a ruling chief, and the ruling chief had the responsibility of making land available to everybody under his, under his domain, see?

Now land was not a commodity of exchange or sale.

It was a, it was something that some everyone needed to subsist and to survive, you see?

Marion Kelly: No one owned the land privately.

It was not their private domain.

And it's very interesting that you know the reason for this is that the land was set here by the gods, so no one would presume to own anything that the gods had set forth, created.

Narrator: The Constitution of 1840 did little to address the growing land issue, other than to clarify that the land was in the care of the King.

But in the 1830s, he began granting permission to sugar planters to start experimental crops, first to Ladd and Company on Kauaʻi.

This marked the beginning of a new and potentially rich industry, but the planters, unable to buy or lease the land, could not justify the heavy capital investments they were anxious to make.

So, the clamor was on to reform the land system to provide for fee simple ownership.

In a flurry of correspondence with the King during the year 1845 Hawaiian subjects from throughout the kingdom expressed concern over the increasing foreign desire for land.

Historian David Malo translates one petition from Lahaina: Actor: Foreigners come on shore with cash, ready to purchase land, but we have not the means to purchase lands.

The native is disabled, like one who has long been afflicted with a disease on his back.

If you, the chiefs, decide immediately to sell land to foreigners, we shall immediately be overcome.

We, to whom the land has belonged from the beginning, shall all dwindle away.

Narrator: Fueling the movement were the missionaries who believed that the Hawaiian people could not be truly independent and self-supporting unless they were released from the bondage of laboring for the chiefs, and could acquire a vested interest in the property on which they lived and worked.

Jim Bartels: Give the land to the people, let each man have his little farm, owning it, he would improve it and become a good yeoman farmer of the new Hawaiian nation.

That was the king's intent, that was the intent of the policy makers, do good for the people, relieve them of the burdens of feudal service, you know?

Relieve them of their responsibilities to the chiefs.

That was good, but you also relieved them from the protection of the chiefs, and you, you severed the mutually beneficial bonds between elements of society at that point.

Narrator: The Māhele of 1848 or the Great Māhele, as it is often called, was the king's answer to the pressing problem of land reform.

The word māhele means portion or division.

On January 27, 1848 the lands were divided, with 2.5 million acres going to the king, and 1.5 million to the chiefs.

The king declared 1.5 million acres of his land as government lands administered by the legislature, and one million acres he reserved for himself, calling them crown lands.

Awards to the 250 chiefs were registered in this Māhele book and signed by the king.

It was these lands the commoners were allowed to make claims against through the Kuleana Act of 1850.

To get that land, a commoner had to come forward and prove his family had been living on and cultivating that plot.

It sounded simple, an ideal solution in theory, but it was a radical departure from the Hawaiian reality.

Davianna McGregor: The whole concept, the whole notion of owning land was foreign, so many Hawaiians did not even understand why you had to go and get a piece of paper to say that you own that land, because for generations their family had cultivated the land.

And everyone knew that they were the people who lived on that land.

That land was theirs.

Their ancestors were buried in the land, their bones are in the land.

So, what more?

Why do you need a piece of paper when you have your bones in the land to prove your ownership?

Narrator: Narrator: From Nāpōʻopoʻo on the Big Island in 1852 a Hawaiian subject writes to the land commissioners.

Actor: We are those who have kuleanas in the land bought by the foreigner P. Cummings, the one who purchased Waipuna Ula.

The foreigner is saying that the natives have no rights to his land, none whatsoever.

But these people are the ones who have rights granted them by Kamakau and Pili, and have witnesses.

We look anxiously to receiving help, so that we may live on our lands comfortably.

Love to you.

God grant you life.

Davianna McGregor: Many Hawaiians, however, many commoners did not even apply for the land because they had to make their claim against their chief, and they were intimidated in many cases from doing that.

It took a lot of courage to tell the chief who you had lived under and who you believed to be a god, a living god, to say that you had the right to claim some land away from that chief.

Narrator: What followed was a nightmare for the Hawaiian people.

The land had to be surveyed before an award was granted.

That required money, which Hawaiians did not have.

Property was taxed not in goods and services, but in dollars.

To get money for taxes and surveys, many people left their land to get jobs in town or aboard ships.

While they were away, their land was often adversely possessed or simply absorbed by a neighboring owner.

Abraham Piʻianaiʻa: After the Great Māhele, land then became a marketable commodity.

It was never a marketable commodity before that, and as a result of that, many Hawaiians who couldn't, who couldn't survive in the commodity market, eventually didn't have any lands to live on, you see.

I think this is one of the in my mind, it is one of the greatest evils foisted upon that society at that time.

Narrator: Narrator: The chiefs were also selling off their land to foreigners, and the commoners working those lands were turned out, becoming wanderers or contract laborers, passive victims of the new system.

Others were dispossessed through favoritism and interference by chiefs and land agents.

A letter to the Minister of the Interior describes the plight of residents of Kaupō, East Maui.

Actor: We humbly complain to you, dismiss John T. Gower, our land agent.

It is not right that when we offer to buy our own lands that he should sell them to foreigners.

We offered up to three dollars.

A foreigner offered three dollars and got it.

It was a swindle and a lie.

The law states that the residents have first choice, and if it is not taken up, then sell to the outsider.

He is angry, but we are afraid.

Narrator: And so, the great division became the great dispossession.

For in the final analysis of over 4 million acres distributed in the Māhele, less than 29,000 acres actually went to the common people, land equal in size to the smallest Hawaiian island, Kahoʻolawe.

70-percent of the Hawaiian population was left with no land at all.

Dr.

Donald Kilolani Mitchell: They were there, they'd been used to having water rights, used to going up in the mountains, getting timber and thatch, and all that, but when they were given just kuleana, they were more or less fenced in by that, so that system did not work.

It was prompted by the merchants and the would-be plantation owners, and all who wanted lots of land.

So, the Hawaiians found themselves almost landless.

Marion Kelly: One of the reasons why the Westerners said that the Hawaiians should own their own lands and become farmers, independent farmers, was they said, because they were beholden to the chief all the time.

They always had to do what the chief said to do, and they had to pay him taxes.

And, of course, their idea was that if you get and give the farmer his own land, then he's no longer beholden to the chief, but that isn't what really happened, because he got his pasture land taken away from him, and also many of the people didn't get land, and it made them more beholden to the chiefs than ever before.

They had to, in essence, sell themselves as kind of a slavery, really, sell themselves to the chiefs in order to have a place to live.

Davianna McGregor: Most times it meant they had to move away from their families and live in the city in port town, away from their rural areas, but most importantly away from their ʻohana, their family system.

And so, the māhele meant the breaking up of that cohesive family unit that, which was the extended family system.

Actor: The foreigners profited by the arrangement and were well taken care of by the government.

It was the race who owned the government who are not defended.

Of our Hawaiian people, 651 sailed for the east on foreign ships.

Many are unaccounted for.

At Papeete in Tahiti, there were over 400 Hawaiians.

In Oregon, 500.

At Paita in Peru, 50, and many have gone on to Nantucket, New Bedford, Sag Harbor, New London, and other American ports, and lived like wanderers in foreign lands.

What a pity.

Dr.

Donald Kilolani Mitchell: Not only was the physical change, but it was such a change to their lifestyle to their spirit, and we have a feeling that when their spirit was broken by being thrust into a totally different culture, that they were more susceptible to diseases.

Narrator: Illnesses like measles, curable in the Western world had by now ravaged the Hawaiian population, which had no immunity.

Dr.

Donald Kilolani Mitchell: When the diseases came in, not only were the Kahuna Lapaʻau at a loss, but so were the doctors.

The mainland missionary doctors who came in at that time were not able to cure or prevent of eventually smallpox , measles, mumps, and all that.

And some of our fine chiefs, and thousands of people dying from those diseases.

Dr.

Kekuni Blaisdell: Specialists have studied the depopulation of the islands and point out that these epidemics cannot entirely account for the decline in the population.

And we know from individual anecdotal experiences that many Hawaiians chose no longer to live in an environment which they found to be so hostile, which there was no longer hope for a meaningful life.

Narrator: In less than 100 years, the Hawaiian population, estimated at 300,000 when Cook arrived, plunged to less than 60,000 by 1870.

In the years 1850 to 1853 alone, 11,000 Hawaiians died.

This rapid decline in the Hawaiian population came at a time when the need for labor became acute.

Because of the māhele, sugar companies could now buy large tracts of land, and more workers were needed.

Hawaiians did almost all the plantation labor in the early years, but the declining native population couldn't keep up with the industry's growth.

Shiploads of immigrant laborers from China, Japan, and later the Philippines were brought in, forever changing the ethnic makeup of the islands.

These people contributed to an incredible growth in sugar.

The 500,000 pounds produced from 1855 to 1857 multiplied into 19 million pounds from 1870 to 1872 a 37-times increase.

Rhoda E.A.

Hackler, Ph.D.

: When you produce sugar, you have to sell it.

People aren't coming to you to buy it, you have to sell it.

You have to arrange some sort of trade treaty in order to sell it.

So, this was a period of economic transition for Kamehameha the Fourth, and it went on to the to the time of Kamehameha the Fifth, who reigned from 1863 to 1872.

Narrator: Sugar planters were clamoring for a reciprocity treaty with the United States, an agreement that would allow Hawaiian sugar to be sold in America without the heavy duties attached to foreign products.

One Honolulu businessman said the whole plantation system would be ruined without a reciprocity treaty.

Alexander Liholiho, Kamehameha the Fourth, worked to secure an agreement, but all efforts failed.

In 1863, shattered by the death of his infant son, he died without naming an heir, so his elder brother Lot became Kamehameha the Fifth, and more years of negotiation failed at reciprocity.

A bachelor, Kamehameha the Fifth, died in 1872 and the Kamehameha dynasty was gone.

A cousin, William Lunalilo, became Hawaii's first elected monarch.

Immensely popular, the people's king was unable to formulate an acceptable treaty before his untimely death.

Hawaiʻi's kings worked in vain for reciprocity.

Then, David Kalākaua ascended the throne.

Rhoda E.A.

Hackler, Ph.D.

: He went to Washington.

He met the members of Congress.

He was entertained at the White House.

He was a great, he made a great hit.

He and President Grant hit it off beautifully together, and he did what hadn't been able that nobody had been able to do for 25 years.

He got the senate to pass the reciprocity treaty, which produced a boom in sugar here in the islands.

Narrator: Kalākaua's successful negotiation of the treaty and the designation of his sister as heir apparent secured both the well-being of his kingdom's economy and the succession of his line.

Rhoda E.A.

Hackler, Ph.D.

: The next thing he wanted to do was to popularize the monarchy, and not for his own aggrandizement, but to build up the pride of his people, of the Hawaiian people, in their, in the monarchy, in their chiefs, in their way of life, and to do this, he did a number of things.

He brought in new technology.

He also went back to the old myths.

He wrote a book on the myths and legends of Hawaiʻi.

He was a patron of the hula and chants.

He was a collector of Hawaiian artifacts, many of which we hope to have here at the palace later on, on display.

He took a world tour to find out what firsthand what other monarchs were doing, also to look into the possibility of labor from the various sources around the world.

He espoused education, public health, and he built ʻIolani Palace.

Narrator: ʻIolani Palace is the most vivid example of Kalākaua's Victorian optimism, but in so many more ways he was truly a Renaissance man.

As the first reigning monarch to circumnavigate the globe, Kalākaua quickly grasped new technologies and the advantages of alliances with other royal households.

He even sought betrothal of his niece Kaʻiulani to the Crown Prince of Japan.

During his reign, the electric light was introduced.

A streetcar system launched public transportation, and the nation's second telephone system connected ʻIolani Palace with the king's boathouse.

Kalākaua built an opera house, completed Aliʻiōlani Hale, the country's first government building.

He built schools, hospitals, and, without regard to the attitudes of the missionaries, revoked the ban on hula and reinstated the dance to its rightful position as premier among Hawaiian entertainments.

And, for himself and his family, he provided the most elaborate Victorian fashion money could buy.

Jim Bartels: He had been well educated, but more than that, he was ambitious.

He was a self-improver.

He developed himself and throughout his early life, you see him as a reacher, and if it was necessary to learn to be a great public speaker, he would do that.

If it was necessary to speak English beautifully, he would do that.

If it was necessary to develop courtliness to learn the rules of etiquette flawlessly, although all the chiefs were trained in this area, Kalākaua would be brilliant.

A brilliant man, and it is he who puts the finishing touches on the romantic Hawaiian monarchy.

Narrator: But the reign of Kalākaua was beset with criticism from all factions.

Many Hawaiians saw their king and their government increasingly controlled by strangers.

Irritated foreign-born merchants and planters, meanwhile, saw their taxes supporting the king's royal balls, stately dinners, and lavish exchange of gifts between heads of state.

Early in 1887 dissident whites feeling their influence on government policy was restricted, formed a secret organization known as the Hawaiian League, its purpose was to limit the king's powers.

Prominent members included Attorney Lorrin A. Thurston and Judge Sanford B. Dole.

Backed by the Honolulu Rifles, the League threatened Kalākaua with violence.

On July 1, the king accepted a reform cabinet, which five days later presented for his signature the Constitution of 1887.

This document limited voting rights to those who owned property and had a certain income, effectively disenfranchising Native Hawaiians, excluding Asians and shifting the balance of power to the whites.

The king, no longer in command of his military or his veto power, was reduced to a ceremonial figure.

The Bayonet Constitution, as it became known, was implemented while Kalākaua's Queen Kapiʻolani and his sister, Princess Liliʻuokalani, were enroute home from London.

In her autobiography, the heir apparent Liliʻuokalani recalled, Actor: We arrived in Honolulu on the 26th day of July, 1887.

A conspiracy against the peace of the Hawaiian Kingdom had been taking place since spring.

It assumed no less definite shape than the overthrow of the monarchy.

King Kalākaua, my brother, appeared bright and glad to welcome us back, yet we could see in his countenance, traces of the terrible strain through which he had passed.

Although it was only the commencement of the troubles preparing for our family and nation.

Narrator: The power of the monarchy continued to erode.

The reform cabinet renewed the reciprocity treaty and also granted over Kalākaua's objections exclusive right to lease Pearl Harbor to the United States.

Meanwhile, in the US Congress, a bill was being proposed to protect American domestic sugar.

The McKinley tariff threatened to devastate Hawaiʻi's one crop economy.

Against this backdrop, Kalākaua's health began to fail.

He sailed for San Francisco to rest, but in California, Kalākaua weakened and died.

Honolulu Harbor was festively decorated for his return, but on January 29 1891, the USS Charleston rounded Diamond Head, with its American and Hawaiian flags lowered to half mast, its spars draped in black, and the king's body aboard.

As news of the king's death spread throughout Honolulu, the reformed cabinet rushed to ʻIolani Palace to require Liliʻuokalani to swear her allegiance to the Constitution of 1887.

Actor: I was so overcome by the death of my brother that I hardly realized what was going on around me.

I turned to my husband and inquired, what is the object of this meeting?

He said they had come to witness my taking the oath of office.

Then I realized I was compelled to take the oath to the Constitution, which had led to the death of my brother.

Narrator: Although second in line of succession after her younger brother Leleiohoku, who died in 1877, Liliʻuokalani, at the age of 52 and while still in mourning, was proclaimed Queen of the Hawaiian Islands.

Among her first acts, she demanded and received resignations from the Reform Cabinet, entitled her husband, John Owen Dominis, as His Royal Highness the Prince Consort, and as she and her brothers were childless, like the Kamehamehas before them, secured the Kalākaua line by naming her 15-year-old niece Kaʻiulani as heir apparent.

Sadly, the strikingly beautiful daughter of the Queen's sister, Princess Likelike and Scotsman Archibald Cleghorn, on whom the royal line depended, would die unmarried in 1899.

Meanwhile, in April of 1891 the much feared McKinley Tariff went into effect, subsidizing American domestic sugar by two cents a pound, eliminating duty on foreign imports, and giving foreign sugar-producing countries the same advantage Hawaiʻi had enjoyed exclusively.

Lost revenues in the island sugar industry approached $4 million the first year.

Two cents a pound became the rallying cry for those who favored annexation of Hawaiʻi to the United States as the only solution to the sugar crisis.

Rhoda E.A.

Hackler, Ph.D.

: The economy of the islands was tightly tied to the Hawaiian, I mean, to the United States economy, so that politically, economically, in every way, Hawaiʻi had been drawn closer and closer into the U.S.

orbit.

Narrator: The Queen sought to regain the monarchical control lost in the Bayonet Constitution.

To do that, she needed a strong cabinet, but the legislature repeatedly voted down her choices.

Then, in this turmoil, her husband, John Dominis, died, leaving her to face Hawaiʻi's future alone.

Rhoda E.A.

Hackler, Ph.D.

: She also found that she had lack of support from her, the Hawaiian leaders, leaders of the Hawaiian community, who should have backed her up, whom she would assume would back her up, but who didn't.

By the time, by that time, the pressures from the foreign business people were overpowering.

They'd built up to such an extent that there was just no controlling.

The American businessmen felt that they, the only thing that their only solution, the only salvation for their economic lifestyle was to change the government form of government.

Narrator: In response to petitions from her people, Liliʻuokalani worked feverishly to prepare a constitution, which would restore monarchical power, but she was betrayed by her own Attorney General, Arthur Peterson, who made the document known to another secret society, the Annexation Club.

A committee of safety was formed from Annexation Club members with the principal goal of directing the overthrow of the monarchy.

On January 14 1893, in the Blue Room at ʻIolani Palace, Liliʻuokalani presented her constitution to her cabinet.

They refused to sign.

Rhoda E.A.

Hackler, Ph.D.

: The queen tried her best.

She tried to get a new constitution promulgated.

She felt that the Constitution that had been forced on her brother, which is known as the Bayonet Constitution, was took too much power from the monarchy.

Narrator: The Committee of Safety called upon American Minister John Stevens to land marines from the USS Boston, a warship anchored at Pearl Harbor.

As the American forces formed a line across ʻIolani Palace grounds, the infamous committee members entered the palace to ask for Liliʻuokalani's abdication.

Jim Bartels: You have Liliʻuokalani finding herself in a position where, umm, to do right, to do what should have been done, is almost suicidal to herself and to her government.

And you have Liliʻuokalani in a position where compromise is necessary for survival, but where compromise is not possible, and so the monarchy ends.

Dr.

Kekuni Blaisdell: The final act was the invasion of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi by United States naval forces, and which was called properly an act of war by President Grover Cleveland, because it violated treaties between the Hawaiian Kingdom and the United States.

Narrator: The Committee of Safety, members of the annexation club, became the provisional government and chose Sanford B. Dole as president.

Its goal was to secure annexation to the United States, but if that failed, to create a Republic of Hawaiʻi.

January 17, 1893 the day the provisional government was declared, Liliʻuokalani retired to her residence at Washington Place, where she drafted this letter of protest to the provisional government and the President of the United States.

Actor: I, Liliʻuokalani, Queen, by the grace of God, and under the Constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, do here by solemnly protest against any and all acts done against myself and the constitutional government of the Hawaiian Kingdom by certain persons claiming to have established a provisional government of and for this kingdom.

Now to avoid any collision of armed forces and perhaps the loss of life, I do under this protest and impelled by said forces yield my authority until such time as the government of the United States shall upon the facts being presented to it undo the action of its representative and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the constitutional sovereign of these Hawaiian Islands.

Narrator: Narrator: In 1895 the political firebrand opportunist Robert Wilcox launched an undermanned, undersupplied, and unsuccessful counterrevolution.

For Wilcox's act, the deposed queen was arrested and charged with treason.

Tried in this, her own throne room at ʻIolani Palace, she was found guilty and sentenced to five years hard labor, subsequently reduced to imprisonment in a solitary room in the palace that had once been her home.

Liliʻuokalani, a singular woman on whom the tragedy of the Hawaiian race fell, lived 77 years.

At her death in 1917, 139 years after the arrival of Cook, fewer than 40,000 Hawaiians survived, a population decrease of almost 90-percent.

The people were gone, the heroes were gone, the religion was gone, the land was gone, the spoken history of 2,000 years was gone, and with her passing, the last Hawaiian hope was gone too.

(Instrumental music)