by David Wolman
But there was nothing fancy about life on the range. Paniolo took care of livestock and maintained the ranch, with little or no interest in the social comings and goings at Mānā. Still, the ranch was more than just a place to work. It was an entire community in miniature, with housing, medical care, food, education, and venues for dances and weekend activities like baseball games. Wranglers on Hawaii’s great ranches were family, figuratively and often literally.
The Purdys lived in a five-hundred-square-foot “cowboy cottage” in sight of the main house at Mānā. It had a small veranda, a woodstove, and hitching posts for the horses. Because Ikua was descended from celebrated paniolo, his career may have been preordained. But a cowboy could choose his specialty. Breaking horses, for example, was one of the more brutal jobs of the day, for rider as well as horse. Like the vaqueros, paniolo sometimes tied themselves to wild horses to keep from being thrown. If a horse fell and rolled, it could easily kill a man. Another breaking technique was to ride a horse into the surf along the Kohala Coast until it tired and stopped bucking. The indoor horse-breaking pen at Parker Ranch had dangerously low rafters, and paniolo sometimes smashed their heads against the wooden beams. This was no place for horse whispering: beating an animal with a two-by-four was common.
Ikua, a natural rider, wasn’t interested in breaking horses. Years later, he told one of his sons that the job was something a cowboy’s “whole body would remember”—in the form of injuries to knees, shoulders, and back. For him, the true art was riding and roping.
Ikua was a traditionalist, speaking Hawaiian at home and Pidgin English in public, if he spoke at all. He paid little attention to activities beyond ranch work; he once said that he just couldn’t understand all the fuss people made about sports like football. The only thing outside of being a paniolo that seemed to draw him in was women. He was married twice and had fourteen children, and there were whispers of other women, of romantic rendezvous in hidden volcanic caves.
As a cowboy, Ikua was famous for his speed, not just on a horse, but also with a rope. He seemed to be able to find wild cattle by instinct, and when they bolted, Ikua would, in the words of another Waimea cowboy, “unwind like clockwork, to rope and tie like lightning.” And he never seemed to miss. Despite his small stature, Ikua could throw a giant loop as much as forty-five feet through the air while riding at full speed. To other cowboys, it looked like he was trying to rope an elephant. Yet everything about the way he rode, threw, and worked was smooth, intuitive. As Eben put it, “We never saw a cooler man in action.”
Once, when Ikua’s granddaughter was a child, she and a cousin were sitting on a fence watching hundreds of cattle stampede past. The cousin slipped and fell forward into the herd. Before he could be trampled, Ikua appeared as if out of nowhere, riding at full speed. He leaned down and, without slowing, scooped the boy up and plunked him on the saddle in front of him.
And of course there was his affinity for tangling with wild cattle. One technique he was known for reminded observers of bullfighting with a lasso. When a bullock charged, Ikua kept his horse perfectly still, holding the lariat in a light loop by his side as gently as a bouquet of flowers. At the last second, he spurred the horse out of the way and dropped the loop over the bullock’s head. The horse stood firm, and the shock of the rope’s coming tight jerked the animal off its feet.
If the stunned bullock got up for another charge, Ikua was already moving, angling closer to create enough slack to entangle the animal again. With a roll of his wrist, he sent a loop spiraling down the lasso like a curling wave. The widened lasso wrapped around the furious bullock’s legs. Before it could step out of the loop, Purdy spurred his horse in the opposite direction, leaning far out of the saddle to counterbalance the sudden yank of the animal being thrown off its feet.
He also carried a rifle for hunting, but rarely, if ever, a pistol. He once told a reporter that “only show-off cowboys carry guns.”
For Ikua, running cattle was all he knew and all he ever wanted to do. “Day and night, day and night, I work on the ranch, on the range, in the saddle,” he said. “No time to worry, nobody bothering you about small things. That’s the life.” Sometimes, if he hadn’t gotten his fill by day, Ikua would go out to rope wild cattle in the moonlight, just for sport.
Yet Ikua wasn’t all business. Unlike John Palmer Parker or Eben, who claimed to avoid alcohol, Ikua enjoyed a tot of gin around a campfire. He was known to crack his whip at other cowboys if they happened to be gunning for the same animal. And he had the same quiet sense of humor his father and grandfather were known for. He liked to joke that his hapa haole (mixed ancestry) complexion resulted from a courtship that took place in the moonlight.
In many ways, Ikua was the archetypal cowboy: outwardly humble, inwardly confident, and ultra-competent. Up before dawn, back after dark, he preferred to do the work himself rather than delegate. Aside from their shared love for life on the range, Ikua and Eben were near opposites.
WITHIN AN HOUR OF leaving Eben’s side, Ikua entered a primordial forest. In 1790, Kamehameha I had marched his troops down these same trails during his conquest of the island. Some believed this ancient highway was haunted by spirits traveling to the Lua o Milu, the underground home of the dead, in the nearby Waipio Valley.
Weaving between ridges and jagged rock formations, Ikua passed ‘ōhi‘a trees standing like sentries, adorned with red, yellow, and golden blossoms. The harmonica-like call of the ‘i‘iwi bird echoed through the humid forest.
He emerged onto swaying fields of sugarcane, part of the plantations on the east side of Mauna Kea. Finally he found the path to the cart road that circumscribed much of the island.
Back at the camp, Eben was in agony, yet alert enough to know that if help didn’t come soon, gangrene would.
Ikua arrived in Honokaa near sunset, filthy and exhausted, to find the local doctor was away on a maternity call. But there was a Japanese doctor who lived in the village of Kukuihaele, seven miles farther up the coast. Ikua climbed on his horse and set off again.
He reached Kukuihaele around nine P.M., found the doctor, and hurriedly helped him prepare a horse to ride up the mountain. The forty-five-mile trip took them all night and the better part of the morning. By the time they arrived at Hopuwai, Ikua had been on the move for close to thirty-two hours.
As they approached the cabin, the men could hear cries of pain. The doctor gave Eben a shot of morphine, but he could see that gangrene had set in already. They had to move him to Mānā, thirty miles away, where he could be seen by an experienced surgeon.
After the doctor bandaged Eben’s wrist and what remained of his hand, the group set off again on horseback. The wounded cowboy had trouble staying upright in the saddle. During one rest break, Eben dismounted and nearly fainted in the shade of a tree. A serving of poi (pounded taro paste) helped revive him, and he somehow made it through the rest of the ride to Mānā.
Meanwhile, another cowboy had raced to a ranch that had a telephone to call a doctor named Weddick, a friend of Eben’s. But when Weddick got on the line, it was clear, as one of the paniolo later put it, that he was “drunk as a boiled owl.” Nevertheless, a group of wranglers loaded the man and his medical tools into a horse-drawn wagon and began the thirty-five-mile journey to Mānā. Halfway across the Kohala Mountains, the doctor emerged from his stupor and asked “what in the hell they were trying to do to him.” When the cowboy told him what had happened, he “sobered up double quick” and demanded they go even faster.
By the time Weddick arrived at Mānā, Eben’s hand was too far gone to save. The doctor waited for the morning light to ready his patient for amputation. He anesthetized Eben, most likely with ether, and sterilized his scalpel and bone saw.
A blacksmith and a cowboy volunteer tended to the tools and buckets of boiling water. To remove the damaged hand, the doctor had to cut through the remaining tissue and saw through the bone where the wrist met the forearm. In the next room, Eben’s brother Ja
ck wept.
Considering the tropical climate, the threat of infection, and the ad hoc surgical suite, the procedure went remarkably smoothly. Over the next three weeks, Weddick provided Eben with ample opiates to help counter the intense pain. Weddick later said Eben was as “strong as a steer,” and that a less hearty patient surely would have died.
After his arm healed, Eben learned to ride and rope again with just one hand, eventually outperforming most men who still had two. His method—holding the reins and lariat coils in his left elbow and throwing with his right hand—was remarkably effective; he once roped and tied a steer one-handed in fifty-two seconds. Eben also came to realize that his disability could be an asset, a promotional tool even better than the moniker Rawhide Ben. Being the best one-handed cowboy in the islands meant serious bragging rights.
Even then, Eben knew, as did many of his fellow Waimea Boys, that the best paniolo they’d ever seen was the one who had just saved his life.
9
Cowboy King of the Islands
THE GUARD WITH A sawed-off Winchester across his lap sat on the front seat of the rolling stagecoach, eyes alert for trouble. Even so, the small party of pioneers inside never stood a chance. A group of mounted Indians was lying in ambush, waiting for just the right moment.
With piercing war cries, the braves gave chase, and the sounds of the ensuing gunfight echoed up and down the beach. They soon overtook the coach, disarmed the guard, and bound their captives. The attackers rifled through the victims’ belongings and made preparations to dispatch the God-fearing homesteaders. Then, just when all seemed lost, a group of U.S. cavalrymen arrived to deliver a thunderous counterattack. Clouds of gunpowder smoke filled the tropical air, the Indians fled, and the thankful captives were saved.
The dramatized stagecoach holdup was exemplary Wild West theater, and the spectators gathered that afternoon in December of 1905 at Honolulu’s Kapi‘olani Park ate it up. Early twentieth-century Hawaii, like much of the world, was caught up in frontier fever.
Shows popularized by Buffalo Bill Cody had conquered the Americas and Europe, spreading an image of the West that was so vivid, so specific, that even people living an ocean away had little patience for imitators. A performance in Honolulu a few years earlier received scathing criticism before it even opened. The papers warned that the show would deliver a hippodrome without chariots and a Wild West show without American Indians—little more than “a circus tent and a few shabby costumes.” The inauthenticity reeked. Apparently the event’s organizer “imagines Honolulu people are not aware of this fact—but they are.”
As Isabella Bird had seen during her visit in the 1870s, riding had become enormously popular in the islands, even outside the world of the paniolo. Hawaiians rode for transportation and fun, swinging polo mallets on grassy fields and racing anywhere there was room. On June 11, 1872, horse racing was part of the festivities at the Kamehameha Day holiday celebration. The Hawaiian Jockey Club was established that same year, and soon racetracks, like the one at Kapi‘olani Park on the edge of Waikiki Bay, had been cleared on patches of flat ground throughout the islands.
It was only natural that Hawaiians wanted to see paniolo compete in riding and roping contests. An early example, from 1896, was billed as an “Amusement Carnival,” with ads promising “scenes in the wild west” on a baseball field in Honolulu. Other horse-racing events began to feature “bona fide cowpunchers.” The Jockey Club usually hosted races for club members only, but in 1902 it held a three-mile relay race for cowboys, although “natives” were encouraged to participate. That winter, employees of island ranches competed against one another in contests held on New Year’s Day. (Parker Ranch paniolo had taken up a collection for the prize money.)
Hilo’s 1903 Fourth of July festivities included horse races and a cowboy tournament that was one of the first demonstrations of roping and bronco riding in Hawaii. The controlled setting was a far cry from the rugged slopes of Mauna Kea; the “fretful cows and steers” were enclosed in a corral in the middle of the field. Yet work on the ranches was so unfamiliar to most island residents that even a small demonstration of paniolo skill was real entertainment. The local papers described in detail how each homegrown cowboy, with the “swish of the lariat” and a “clever turn,” had his steer down and tied prostrate in no time.
There was an unavoidable irony to Hawaiians celebrating the Fourth of July so soon after annexation. More than half of Hawaii’s native and mixed-race residents opposed the new government. For many of them, celebrating America’s birthday must have been like throwing a party for your own kidnapper. Adding to the incongruity was the fact that compared with the segregated United States, Hawaii, while hardly a post-racism utopia, was in many ways a more harmonious and progressive place. By 1900, the islands’ population of roughly 154,000 was almost 20 percent Hawaiian, 40 percent Japanese, 7 percent Caucasian, 17 percent Chinese, 11 percent Portuguese, and 5 percent part Hawaiian—far more diverse than the rest of the United States, which was almost 90 percent white, and with far less racial violence and persecution. Hawaii was the melting pot that America, at least on paper, aspired to be.
For paniolo, Fourth of July competitions were a chance to take a break from the relentless work and responsibilities on the ranch. They could test themselves against one another and maybe make a bet or two on the side; as the old cowboy saying went, “Rodeo is borned of brags.” In the eyes of management, such contests were preferable to other diversions. Despite the modest wages of a cowboy, hanging around in Waimea meant tempting trouble. Parker ranch manager A. W. Carter knew that drunkenness was rife in the town—even the deputy sheriff and his officers were often soused. Carter tried to make Waimea a dry town by convincing a judge to revoke the liquor license of at least one establishment and spying on his men to make sure they weren’t getting drunk. He even considered opening a Parker Ranch store and restaurant for the specific purpose of driving other liquor-based operations out of business, but he ultimately decided against it.
FAR FROM ENDING HIS career, losing a hand had boosted Eben’s reputation as one of the toughest riders in the islands. His joie de vivre survived intact. He liked to surprise new acquaintances by tossing his prosthetic hand into their laps, causing more than a few horrified screams. Once, after a bearded cowboy fell asleep on the porch at Eben’s home, Eben collected burs from the tails of horses and delicately entangled them in the man’s beard.
Eben’s wife, Elizabeth Napoleon, grew up in Honolulu, not far from ‘Iolani Palace, but she adjusted well to life in Hawaii’s high country. Lizzie wore her hair in a braid under a Stetson hat and, according to Eben, was “an excellent horsewoman, a crack shot, and a perfect companion all of the time.”
Lizzie’s upbringing and worldview left her at odds with many of her contemporaries. Her mother, Pamaho‘a, was related to the royal family and thus an unabashed supporter of the monarchy. But when Lizzie was about thirteen, she was sent to live with Sanford B. Dole and his wife, who had no children of their own. This arrangement, known as hānai, is an informal form of adoption in Hawaiian culture, meant to help cement interfamily connections and share the joy of caring for children.
Dole, a close friend of Eben’s, would go on to become the point person for the group of American businessmen and pro-U.S. politicians who orchestrated the overthrow of Hawaii’s monarchy, and he served as the newly established territory’s first governor.* Lizzie embraced her adopted parents’ view that Hawaii was better off under the wing of the United States, and this put her at odds with most Hawaiians, including her mother.
In Eben, however, Lizzie had an unwavering ally. They both supported annexation and felt that Hawaiians should focus on the future instead of mourning the past. Lizzie told her daughter, Clorinda, that when it came to schooling and speech: “You are going to live in a haole world. You had better learn how to be [haole].” The Low children were forbidden to speak Hawaiian, even though Eben and Lizzie spoke it fluently. (Clorinda later said
her parents would speak Hawaiian only when they didn’t want the children to know what they were saying.)
On Hawaii, the Lows hosted all-night parties at Pu‘uwa‘awa‘a, the ranch twenty miles southwest of Waimea that Eben co-owned with a business associate. Sanford Dole was a frequent guest, as were many prominent loyalists. It was an interesting mix, and further evidence of the civility that underscored life in the islands, even among political adversaries. Pu‘uwa‘awa‘a was a place where Eben and Lizzie’s wide circle of friends could gather to hunt, drink, and relax.
But financial problems haunted Eben during the first years of the new century. Pinched between creditors and tight margins, he struggled to keep Pu‘uwa‘awa‘a afloat. In 1902 he was finally forced to sell his stake in the ranch.
During this same period, a simmering dispute over control of Parker Ranch intensified. Eben, together with his brother Jack and John Palmer Parker’s grandson Sam, felt they should be running the now-famous spread. They were family, after all. Instead, operations were overseen by A. W. Carter, a Honolulu lawyer with a longtime interest in ranching. Carter had been appointed guardian and trustee of John Palmer Parker’s five-year-old great-great-granddaughter, Thelma. Thelma had inherited half ownership of the estate in 1894, after the sudden death of her father. Carter had moved to Waimea and proved to be a gifted and dedicated steward of the ranch, but Sam Parker and the Lows felt they could do better, and were in fact the rightful heirs to the estate. The quarrel grew ugly, with the Low brothers and Sam Parker trying repeatedly to wrest control of the ranch from Carter.