Aloha Rodeo

by David Wolman

  And with each culture came new traditions. Portuguese immigrants brought the machête de braça, a small four-stringed instrument that, when it was retuned and its metal strings replaced with gut, became the ukulele. Newcomers from China and Japan introduced new foods and farming techniques, and opened businesses that became cornerstones of commerce in towns like Lahaina, Hilo, and Waimea.*

  Yet racial mixing only went so far. Laborers on sugar plantations lived in separate camps based on ethnicity. On ranches, the first Japanese immigrants were assigned menial work like building fences and nicknamed opae, Hawaiian for shrimp. (Later generations of Japanese in Hawaii became respected cowboys.) The ranch owners were haole, white (Caucasian), as were most of the ranch managers, or luna. There was even a song that satirized the arrogant haole luna astride his white horse, coming to kick the other cowboys.

  Still, life in nineteenth-century Hawaii was hard enough that it forced people to cooperate. In ranching communities, the demands of the work fostered integration with and acceptance of people of different backgrounds. At remote cabins and workstations across Mauna Kea and other up-country areas, paniolo lived under the same roofs as fence crews, cooks, and other workers. A soak in a Japanese-style furo, or wood-heated bath, was the reward for a long day on the mountain. Everyone ate from the same plates of pork, chicken, fish, and pickled vegetables, using chopsticks whittled on the spot from tree branches.

  In the evenings, cowboys and other ranch hands would drink gin or cognac by the light of kerosene lamps. Beneath a nighttime sky almost bright enough to read by, they sat around sharpening tools, braiding lariats, or telling stories. Someone always had a ukulele, and after a few drinks, nobody noticed the smell of fresh animal hides laid out around the camp to dry.

  Waking at two or three A.M. to a breakfast of pancakes, coffee, and the occasional swig of gin, the paniolo would set out for the day. Each man often brought a second horse along to ride when the first mount got too tired. The most common trail grub was strips of fresh beef the paniolo tied to their saddles to dry into jerky in the sun, another trick learned from the vaqueros. They also carried dried mountain oysters—bull testicles, rich in iron—or pounded taro that they would shave into small pieces and eat together with salted beef.

  Paniolo often preferred to work under the stars, when the wild cattle came out of the forests to visit watering spots. Riding quietly along a trail, the cowboys would light matches to look for tracks on the ground. They followed the animals along foggy hillsides or into ravines, making sure to stay downwind. Ears tuned for a rustle of branches or cracking sticks, they waited for the ideal moment to give chase.

  Spoken Hawaiian was the language of the range and the towns that bordered it. Paniolo communicated in their native tongue, often in single-word barks that got the point across instantly in a potentially dangerous situation: lio for horse, pā‘eke for corral, pipi for cow (from the English word beef). Paniolo had to be maka‘ala (careful) when riding around nā pohā (sinkholes), and sometimes had to ‘oki hao (dehorn) an animal before using the hao kuni (branding iron).*

  Living in remote ranch stations meant paniolo were separated from their families and the comforts of town life for weeks at a time. Cowboys sometimes rode downhill on Sundays to visit, covering up to 25 miles and 7,500 vertical feet. Along the way they might try to bag a pua‘a (pig) or two for a special dinner. In the early hours of the next morning, they would ride all the way back up to camp.

  It wasn’t always family members paniolo stopped in to visit. Hilo, the port town on the eastern side of Hawaii, was close to the major sugar plantations and the center of the business boom that followed in the 1860s. (“Except sugar and dollars,” wrote Isabella Bird, “one rarely hears any subject spoken about with general interest.”) Some women in Hilo took cowboys in almost like strays. These wahine manuahi were not prostitutes, nor were they looked down upon for these extramarital relationships. The Hawaiian term roughly translates as “free-giving woman,” carrying the idea of a mistress but without the moral judgment.

  BIRD, AN EXPERIENCED RIDER who covered thousands of miles on horseback during her own travels, could see the paniolo were outstanding riders, as were Hawaiian women. Visiting Oahu in January 1873, she noted that “women seemed perfectly at home in their gay, brass-bossed high peaked saddles, flying along astride, barefooted, with their orange and scarlet riding dresses streaming on each side beyond their horses’ tails, a bright kaleidoscopic flash of bright eyes, white teeth, shining hair, garlands of flowers and many coloured dresses.” In one of Bird’s illustrations, titled “The Pa-u or Hawaiian Ladies’ Holiday Riding Dress,” the rider looks calm while the horse, all four legs off the ground, is clearly running at a gallop.*

  Foreigners like Bird also took note of the paniolo’s skill with the lasso. A Hawaiian cowboy’s life depended on his kaula ‘ili, or lariat. They made their own ropes from a single cowhide, cut into strips and braided together. (Rawhide lasted longer in the humid climate than the manila-fiber ropes used on the mainland.) Paniolo gave their ropes Hawaiian names, for luck, attitude, or both, and as a sign that they treated them with care.

  The paniolo’s other gear was well adapted to the environment. Wide-brimmed lightweight hats woven from pandanus leaves shielded their heads from the rain and their eyes from the unforgiving tropical sun. In the cold fog and wet forests at higher elevation, they wore long ponchos that they rolled up and tied to the saddles when the work brought them down the mountain and into the heat. Over tall lace-up boots they strapped leather chaps for protection from thorny underbrush or the occasional horse or bullock hoof. Thick leather stirrup coverings, called tapaderos, protected their feet from rocks and sharp branches, and added extra heft when a cowboy had to kick an uncooperative animal.

  The process of bringing in a wild bullock started with roping an animal that weighs three-quarters of a ton, from up to fifty feet away. The paniolo in pursuit aimed his lasso at the head, sometimes while riding at top speed. A miss could still be effective if the loop ended up around a limb and tripped the animal. But success with the lasso did not mark the end of the duel. As Yale man Francis Allyn Olmsted observed in 1840: “And now, be wary for thy life bold hunter; for the savage animal is maddened with terror . . . eye-balls glaring with fire and his frame quivering with rage.” Having a well-trained horse was never more essential than when the tormented bullock turned on its pursuer. The rider had to work with his mount to dodge the bullock’s charges and simultaneously bring the animal to the ground. Sometimes the cowboy had to yank the enraged animal off its feet over and over until it became relatively docile.

  If the hide was to be harvested on the spot, the paniolo was off his mount in a flash, brandishing a skinning knife. Stepping around the animal’s head and horns, he hamstrung the bullock with two swift cuts to the hind legs. Then he was back onto his horse to capture more animals. Only at the end of the day did he return to kill the injured bullocks, skin them, and drape the hides over his saddle for the ride back to the ranch cabin.

  More often, though, the paniolo wanted to round up bullocks, and for this they had to lead the lassoed animals to captivity while staying a safe distance from those wicked horns. If the animal refused to submit, the next step was to tie the other end of the lasso to a tree and leave the bullock to thrash itself into exhaustion, sometimes overnight. When the cowboy returned, the animals would be more cooperative and more easily led into captivity. (Another common technique for controlling rogue animals was to tether the captured bullock to a pini, a tame cow or bull that would calm the wild one and help lead it down the mountain.)

  As a precaution, paniolo sometimes sawed a bullock’s horns off; but even a weakened, hornless bullock could still be dangerous. While his horse led the cow or bull through sun-dappled forests and across gritty plains and lava fields, the rider had to stay alert, ready for anything. (An old vaquero saying also applied to paniolo: a man with a lassoed bullock rode “tied to death.”) If the bullock gathere
d enough energy to charge again, the paniolo had to gallop a safe distance away while still connected by the rawhide rope. A paniolo would do anything to avoid the shame of cutting an animal free and losing his lasso, even if it might mean injury or worse. Like sailors reading subtle cues in the wind and waves, paniolo had to be acutely aware of changes in rope tension and adjust accordingly. Pulling too hard on a lassoed animal could snap a lariat; a loop of slack line could trip a horse, throwing or crushing its rider.

  When enough cattle were corralled, paniolo led them down to Waimea in ground-shaking drives that, in the words of one 1859 newspaper account, could be spied first as “a great cloud of dust some three or four miles up the mountain side.” When leading animals, cowboy and horse still had to contend with precarious trails and loose, jagged lava rocks that snapped horses’ ankles and sent riders flying. Camouflaged bullock pits from days past occasionally swallowed up men and mounts, as did hidden holes of collapsed lava tubes, concealed under a mat of greenery. Head injuries from kicks or falls were common and often fatal.

  An early Parker Ranch cowboy described what to do when a horse and rider went down:

  If man and horse are moving, there’s a chance they will come up smiling. If not, they are dead. If the horse is bad hurt you drive your legging-knife into the spinal cord just back of his head. He kicks a couple of times, but he is out of misery. If the man is just hurt, you take him up behind you on your horse, back to the station for help. If he is dead you take him over your horse, your heart sick inside. At the station you lay him out and cover him with his yellow saddle-slicker until someone can take him home to be buried. The drive goes on. The work has to be done.

  Even the vegetation posed a threat: the inch-long thorns of the kiawe (mesquite) tree could blind a horse or leave an unlucky rider with a puncture wound that invited gangrene. And, as in the American West, Hawaiian cowboys always needed to keep the next water source in mind. Many parts of the archipelago are stunningly verdant; the Iao Valley on Maui receives almost 400 inches of rain a year, making it one of the wettest places in the world. But in other areas, especially along Hawaii’s west coast, freshwater sources are scarce. Without careful planning, a long cattle drive in the midday sun could turn into a catastrophe.

  Bullock hunting and working cattle were both dangerous, but at least hunters could shoot an animal as a last resort. Paniolo had to deliver cattle alive, first to the ranches and then to corrals at Kawaihae and other ports on Hawaii’s west coast. The route was downhill, and by now the animals were mostly under control. Still, the journey had many of the same hazards as the upland transfer: thorny brush, little water, sharp rocks underfoot, and blazing temperatures.

  Once they made it to the coast, there remained one more step in the wrangling process, the one that truly put the paniolo in their own category: herding into the surf.

  Because harbors like Kawaihae were too shallow for large ships, the steamships that ferried the cattle to the slaughterhouse in Honolulu or to markets overseas had to anchor out past the reef. So the island’s cattle, after surviving the arduous drive from the highlands to the shore, now had to swim.* One at a time, paniolo roped bullocks around the neck and led them down to the beach. Eyeing the waves like surfers, the riders carefully counted the breakers until the right moment came to plunge forward, cow in tow. Dogs sometimes helped by nipping at the animals’ heels.

  Thinking they were being given one last chance to catch a cowboy, bullocks would usually charge straight toward the waves after the horse and rider. If they refused to step into the sea, a second cowboy had to grab the animal’s tail and pull it sideways until the waves started to knock it over, which usually convinced it to swim.

  Past the breakers, the cowboy had to steer his horse—now shoulder-deep or, more often, swimming—toward a whaleboat approaching the shore. He threw the rope to one of the crewmen, who pulled the animal in, put a halter around its neck, and tied it to the gunwale before tossing the paniolo his rope back. Soaked in sweat and salt water, the cowboys turned to shore to do it all over again.

  For this work, paniolo used specially trained “shipping horses” that were larger and more confident swimmers, and rode saddles that were mostly made of wood, which lasted longer in salt water. Still, no amount of specialized equipment or training guaranteed successful or even safe operations at the shore. Bad timing with a wave or a moment of fumbling by the whaleboat crew could end with a horse upended in the surf, putting both animal and rider in peril.

  And then there were the sharks. The reefs that protected the harbors used for loading cattle were favorite feeding grounds for marine predators. On loading days, sharks sometimes congregated near the whaleboats, nosing for steak tartare. Sailors used rifles to scare them away, even dynamite on occasion.

  One May morning in 1884, Sam Parker, John Palmer Parker’s grandson, was helping load cattle onto a steamship at Kawaihae. The work was going well when, in a blur of teeth and blood, a massive shark suddenly bit a swimming calf in two. This could not stand, and the men in the whaleboat gave chase. They managed to stick a harpoon in the shark, but even then it dragged the boat through the waves like a child’s toy, a Hawaiian version of the “Nantucket sleigh ride” that New England whalers described after harpooning a humpback. Finally, the exhausted shark relented. Parker and the cowboys used their lassos to haul the monster to shore and onto the beach. A quick measurement showed it was eighteen feet long and almost six feet around. Parker cut off the head to keep as a souvenir.

  To load the big ships, paniolo brought animals out to the whaleboat one at a time until it had six or eight attached. The crew then rowed to the steamship, flanked by swimming cattle. To lift them onto the ship, paniolo had to fit each bullock into a crude lifting harness. The process required at least one man to be in the water with the animals, clinging to each one’s back to affix a sling under its belly. (“Anyone who has seen Hawaii cattle knows that there is a good deal of excitement connected with getting on their backs, whether they are in the water or not,” read the Hawaiian Star.)

  Eventually, each cow was lifted straight out of the water, soaked and bellowing, and deposited on the deck of the ship. In extreme cases when a bullock couldn’t be harnessed, mariners in the longboats tied ropes around the animal’s horns and neck and pulled it onto the steamship’s deck.

  Inevitably, cattle were sometimes hurt or drowned. Others would get loose and swim for freedom. On one occasion, a bullock escaped its harness and plunged into the ocean. A witness recalled how a cowboy “stripped down to his britches and started off after that steer.” In rough seas a mile from shore, he swam to the animal, “dived under it to get the sling rope untangled from his forelegs. Then he climbed onto the steer’s back, lay down along its spine, took the horns in his hands and steered that animal ashore by hand pressure on the horns.” The cowboy was Ikua Purdy’s uncle, James.

  HAZARDS ASIDE, THE LIFE of a paniolo also offered unequaled freedom and adventure. For a man who thrived on the satisfaction of doing a difficult job well, on his own terms, there was no better work than running cattle. This was as true in Hawaii as it would soon be in the Wild West of North America.

  Even the moments of greatest danger were balanced by a sublimity that could inspire a cowboy to a kind of poetry. One paniolo described the hyperalert, almost enchanted moment of the hunt when the “mind is calm, ready”:

  You hear the whispered command. You mount up and ride down over the rim. Down, down through the swirling fog and clutching brush. No need for silence now. Just watch which way those wily cattle are going to turn. Away from you, or right at you, head and horns set for the charge. Your pony steps aside, your hand flips a loop over the horns, you take up slack and your pony is turning, watching that rope, and you’re running beside the captive, then ahead of it, that beautiful Wild One.

  These are the words of Eben Low, one of Hawaii’s most famous paniolo, a man who would almost single-handedly introduce island cowboys and ranching to the wi
der world.

  A great-grandson of John Palmer Parker, Eben was born in 1864 and grew up at the Parker Ranch. As a child, he made little or no distinction between the ranch property and the expanse of Mauna Kea. The mountain was his playground, and Eben and his cousins explored and hunted wild pigs, goats, and sheep. Eben knew his way around horses and cattle before he became a teenager, and by the time he was twenty-six, he was already running a team of paniolo.

  His gigantic middle name, Kahekawaipunaokauaamaluihi, meaning the flowing springwater from the rains at Maluihi, suited the man perfectly. He was loud, gregarious, and known for impulsivity, believing he came from “a pirate strain.” His nickname, Rawhide Ben, may very well have been his own invention. He was not a drinker, but once, for no discernible reason, he shot the lights out in a local guesthouse, leaving patrons stunned.

  But Eben was an indisputably gifted rider and roper. A visitor to Waimea once wrote that he could “find and ride through more rough country than any man I ever saw.” To Eben, heaven was a ranch in Hawaii, surrounded by the beauty and bounty of the islands. “The paniolo work in the open,” he once wrote, “in God’s good sunlight and in His refreshing rains and winds.”

  He was also frequently in awe of the men he worked with—none more so than the Purdy family cowboys. One of Eben’s favorite stories was about James Purdy, Ikua’s uncle and the third son of Jack the bullock hunter, who had joined Eben and another paniolo on an excursion. They rode into a forest of koa and mamane, a place Eben described as “full of broken trees hidden by ferns and concealed lava tubes.” It was a hell of a place to ride a horse, and “only fools and daredevils would attempt to ride fast, especially after wild cattle!” At one point the riders came upon about twenty bullocks a short distance up a narrow path. Eben dismounted and began sneaking toward the cattle through the curtain of vegetation. He held his .30-30 Winchester carbine ready, knowing that when the animals were startled, they would beeline for the obvious escape route: back along the same trail where he now stood.