by Jim Noles
“That’s when I figured out that things weren’t quite going as well as they could be,” he added. “I dropped (not that I ever got further up than about waist high) and curled up on my left side. He was behind me and I heard him bounce in, two big tremors and bam, he bit me hard on the right shoulder. Then he skipped around in front of me and I saw him looking down the trail for my dogs.”
“He went around my feet and then started to go back into the brush, but I saw a gleam in his eye and he spun around like a ballerina and darted in for one last bite, got me on the right butt. ‘Son of a gun, I said, you didn’t need to do that.’ Then he turned and I saw his butt slip back into the brush.”
Bleeding heavily, Mungoven began stumbling the 1,000 yards back to his house. A hundred yards down the trail, he found his two dogs waiting for him.
“They were at the road, waiting for me to come out of the woods,” Mungoven later told a newspaper reporter. “They were just sitting there, like, ‘OK, when you’re done playing with the bear, we’ll be right here waiting for you.’”
Mungoven’s wife, Lisa, was less sanguine when he stumbled through the front door, his left ear dangling from his scalp. Wasting no time, she piled him into their truck and sped him the eighteen miles to Homer and the nearest hospital.
“It’s not the first time I’ve walked in the door and said, ‘Honey, we need to go to the emergency room,’” Mungoven reflected. “I don’t really think she was expecting a bear attack, though.”
Once at the hospital, eleven hours of surgery followed as a surgeon worked to repair bites on the left side of his head, his left shoulder, and both buttocks. Although the bites had come close to his spine and to arteries in his neck and leg, the bear’s attack, incredibly, did not break any bones, sever any nerves, or hit any major arteries.
Mungoven spent three days in the hospital, eventually concluding that he had surprised the bear shortly after it had killed a moose calf.
“I got real lucky, but I saw in that bear’s eyes that he didn’t mean me any particular harm, he was just being a bear,” Mungoven said. “Now the next day he did show up in our driveway, which was a little eerie. I figure he thought I would be laying in a pile somewhere up the trail and he was looking to collect me after he finished his moose. Glad I disappointed him.”
“You’ll have to ask the bear for his version; it’s probably different,” Mungoven added.
Meanwhile, local authorities expressed little interest in hunting down the angry bear.
“We’re not going into the pucker brush chasing a bear that’s already mauled one person,” the head of the local Alaska State Trooper detachment told the Homer Tribune.
In Alaska, it is not surprising that in such cases, discretion proves to be the better part of valor. Too often, bear attacks in Alaska’s backcountry have proven fatal.
In the summer of 2005, for example, a couple was killed by a bear in their tent in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in June. Two years earlier, another couple met a similar fate in Katmai National Park. And in the summer of 2000, another camper’s partially consumed body was found at the unfortunately named Run Amuk campground in Hyder, Alaska.
But before visions of bears “run amok” cause any travel plans to Alaska to be canceled, recognize that anywhere between thirty and 120 people die annually in the United States from bee and wasp stings. Deer seem to be far more dangerous: They claim about 150 lives each year in the United States, mainly in collisions with cars.
Lethal statistics aside, the grizzly—also called the brown bear—remains a powerful symbol in the state known as the “Last Frontier.” A fully grown male can reach 900 pounds, stand nine feet in height, smell prey as far as a mile away, and charge across the ground as fast as a galloping horse. With 30,000 bears ranging throughout Alaska, the state is home to 98 percent of the country’s grizzly population. At some points along Alaska’s southeastern coast, there is approximately one bear per square mile.
Perhaps it was not surprising, therefore, that the mighty grizzly bested a sled dog team, a polar bear, and a miner panning for gold as Governor Sarah Palin’s design choice for Alaska’s state quarter.
“I think nothing could be more Alaskan,” Palin told a crowd gathered in Anchorage on April 23, 2007. “I like to think this is a mama grizzly doing what she does best: Taking care of her young.”
Palin based her decision on input received from the Alaska Commemorative Coin Commission, which reportedly received more than 30,000 votes and comments on the final four designs.
When questioned at the time as to final vote tallies, a government spokesperson could only speak in general terms. “I know it was really close between the grizzly and the musher,” the spokesperson said. “The polar bear was third and the gold panner was way down low, probably fewer than 10 percent.”
Mark Vinsel, executive director of United Fishermen of Alaska and an artist himself, headed the commission. He emphasized the challenge the state faced in choosing an iconic emblem. In all, the commission received 851 suggestions of possible designs before the four finalists were selected.
“Alaska has more beautiful emblems or elements than we could put on the coin,” Vinsel said. “The brown bear is probably the animal that covers the most of our real estate here. The salmon represents our pristine environment and natural resources.”
For his part, Mungoven could not agree more. Bearing no grudge—pardon the pun—against the bear that attacked him, he even voted in favor of the bear design.
“I am no bear expert,” Mungoven admits. “I spend much of my field work time in bear country [working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Resource and Conservation Service], and to be honest I try to avoid them. Alaska is a difficult and complex place to live. It’s hard to get anywhere, and when you do, it’s usually buggy, boggy, or brushy. Doing anything other than staying in your kitchen in this state generally requires a fairly determined effort. You are usually on your own with a thin connection to continued security.”
“The trade-offs,” Mungoven continues, “are the landscapes, the colors, the diversity, the long twilights in spring and fall and the occasional gatherings of wildlife that seem implausible—in general, just the extreme nature of it all.”
“The bear is a difficult animal to see and a complex animal to live and work around,” he adds. “Despite the bucolic views from places like the McNeil River, bears can be remarkably dangerous. They also are stunningly agile and move with a fluidity that is mesmerizing. They are tension, strength, and appropriateness all wrapped up in one focused package. That beauty, remoteness, and danger are what I think overlay both bears and this state.”
If the Alaska state quarter is any indication, thousands of Alaskans think the same way.
50
HAWAII
All the King’s Men
Better late than never. After forty-nine states and forty-nine quarters, a state finally decided to depict a Native American (or a native Hawaiian, to be precise) on one of the 50 State Quarters® Program coins. The native Hawaiian in question is King Kamehameha I, also known as Kamehameha the Great. His may not be a household name in the United States, but then again, neither was Caesar Rodney, forty-nine quarters and nine years ago when he graced Delaware’s quarter.
For its part, Hawaii elected to impose an image of Kamehameha alongside a map of the islands. The state motto “Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono,” or “the life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness,” appears on the lower left side of the coin.
Somewhat ironically—after all, he was a king—Kamehameha owed his appearance to a public online poll through which 26,000 Hawaiians weighed in with their opinions. In his initial foray into the vagaries of modern democracy, the king bested such alternate designs as one that had him sharing the limelight with Diamond Head, one that featured a hula dancer instead of the king, and another that depicted a surfer.
“I am honored to be able to submit a design that emphasizes our pr
oud history, unique geography, diversity, and host culture,” Governor Linda Lingle said in an unveiling ceremony. “I think it says a lot about us, that recognition, again, so that’s what’s important. It’s who we feel we are as a people, not what visitors might feel about us.”
According to legend, Kamehameha was born on the “big island” of Hawaii at the time when Halley’s comet swept past the earth in 1758. As the comet’s journey left a trail of light across the Pacific night sky, the island’s kahunas prophesied that a child would be born who would be the “slayer of kings.” Suitably alarmed, King Alapai ordered the baby killed.
Alapai, however, was too late—the worried parents spirited their baby son away, hid him in a cave, and arranged for him to be raised in secret by an otherwise childless couple. They christened the child Paiea, or “hard-shelled crab.” Later, as he grew to manhood, Paiea would take the name Kamehameha, meaning “the very lonely one” or “the one set apart.”
Alapai eventually learned that Kamehameha survived and, perhaps regretting his earlier unsuccessful foray into infanticide, invited Kamehameha to join him in the royal court. Kamehameha later rose to serve as a trusted aide to his uncle, King Kalaniopuu, and, again according to legend, underscored his promising destiny by pushing over Hilo’s great Naha Stone in a feat of superhuman strength.
Chroniclers remembered him as a tall, strong, fearless warrior who, in the words of one historian, traveled “in an aura of violence.”
When Kalaniopuu died in 1782, his kingdom was divided between Kamehameha and Kalaniopuu’s son, Kiwalao. It was a divide along secular and temporal lines; Kiwalao inherited most of the island, while Kamehameha was entrusted with the care of the Hawaiian war god, Ku. By dividing power in that manner, the stage for political strife seemed set.
Such strife was not long in coming. Local district chiefs, dissatisfied with Kiwalao’s rule, began agitating for revolt. They found a ready ear in Kamehameha, and by that summer, a full-fledged civil war raged across the big island of Hawaii. In July of that year, the two opposing armies took up position in the hostile terrain of Mokuohai, a dry, scrubby field of broken lava rock along Keealakekua Bay. For seven days, the two factions skirmished inconclusively.
But on the eighth day, Kiwalao’s men caught Keeaumoku, one of Kamehameha’s generals, along with a small consort of bodyguards that had gotten too far ahead of the rest of Kamehameha’s forces. Keeaumoku’s men were overwhelmed and the general himself was wounded.
Arriving on the scene, Kiwalao knelt over Keeaumoku’s inert body to strip him of his ceremonial necklace. At that moment, however, Keeaumoku rallied and clutched Kiwalao in a deathly grip. He held him fast until friendly troops arrived on the scene, scattered Kiwalao’s own bodyguards, and stabbed the king to death. His followers, hearing of their leader’s demise, panicked. They fled in canoes or trudged upland into the high country and safety, leaving Kamehameha in possession of a broad swath of the island of Hawaii.
Over the next few years, battles and conflicts with other chiefs ebbed and flowed. Meanwhile, in 1789, Kamehameha found two unlikely instruments of further conquest stranded on Hawaii’s shores—a pair of British sailors, John Young and Isaac Davis.
Through a combination of reward and coercion, Kamehameha groomed the two foreigners into trusted lieutenants.
In return, Young and Davis not only aided in Kamehameha’s relations with the increasing numbers of American and European sailing vessels visiting Hawaii but also trained his soldiers in the use of Western musketry and cannons. To finance his growing arsenal, Kamehameha began capitalizing on the hungry world market for Hawaii’s sandalwood, a high-quality wood that also produces oil in its heartwood and roots that is used in perfume, soap, and medicinal products. The king began imposing port duties on visiting ships as well, further adding to his coffers.
In 1790, Kamehameha invaded Maui, scoring an initial victory so great that slain enemy soldiers dammed a stream with their bodies. But in Kamehameha’s absence from the island of Hawaii during his campaign on Maui, a new enemy, his cousin Keoua, launched his own attacks against Kamehameha’s villages.
After Kamehameha’s return to Hawaii, the armies of the two cousins fought a pair of pitched battles. In the course of one of Keoua’s maneuvers across the island, however, a massive volcanic blast of steam killed a number of his soldiers. For the intensely superstitious Hawaiians, the incident indicated Keoua’s fall from favor with the gods. Perhaps Keoua thought that himself.
Keoua eventually surrendered to Kamehameha in 1791. According to one account, he was sacrificed on the altar of Ku, the war god. Keoua’s demise left Kamehameha in undisputed control of the island of Hawaii. Other rivals threatened him, however—notably Kahekili, the king of Maui who also ruled Oahu and several other islands.
Like Kamehameha, Kahekili had enlisted Western sailors and mercenaries into his army and, with their support, battled his rival Kamehameha into an inter-island stalemate. Kahekili’s death fragmented Kamehameha’s opposition, however, and, as armadas of Western-style warships and Hawaiian war canoes ferried Kame-hameha’s ever-increasing armies among the islands to do battle, the ascendancy of “the slayer of kings” seemed increasingly inevitable. A series of dramatic battles ensued, notably the bloody Battle of Nuuanu on Oahu, which climaxed with hundreds of defeated enemy soldiers either jumping or being pushed off a cliff to their mangled death below.
By 1795, Kamehameha had conquered all of the islands by force of arms except Kauai and Niihau. Even those islands came under his control in 1810. Kamehameha could then boast that for the first time in recorded history, the Hawaiian islands were unified under one ruler. Kamehameha succeeded in establishing a line of kings and queens that managed to preserve the islands’ independence for nearly a century until the United States annexed them in 1898.
During his own reign, Kamehameha wisely relied on a series of governors to rule the various islands, providing them some degree of autonomy. And although he continued to enforce the harsh kapu, or taboo, system of laws and punishment, he outlawed human sacrifice. Kamehameha was particularly known for his so-called law of the splintered paddle, a code of laws intended to protect noncombatants during time of war.
Kamehameha died on May 8, 1819, and in ancient Hawaiian tradition, his remains were buried at a secret location. He still stands, however, in gold-leafed splendor in front of the Hawaii State Supreme Court building. Another statue of the king can be found in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall, and, of course, on Hawaii’s state quarter.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, thank you to my lovely wife, Elizabeth. With her patience and tolerance, she always pays the greatest price for these random writing projects of mine.
Another thank-you goes to John Brackin, who graciously pointed me to his editor, Bob Pigeon, at Da Capo Press. And, of course, thank you to Bob, who fell for this hare-brained scheme of mine—a book about $12.50 worth of change—and his colleagues, Ashley St. Thomas, Trent Knoss, Annie Lenth, Michele Wynn, Julia Hall, Lissa Warren, Jonathan Crowe, and Kevin Hanover.
Thank you, my cadre of volunteer editors and proofreaders (in other words, anyone who made the fatal mistake of expressing the slightest modicum of interest in any of my chapters): Leslie Allen; Beverly Bashor; Keisha Beckham; Steven Burns; Henry Drake; Gail and Katherine Klyce; Kristin Larremore; Elizabeth McCrae; Kate McBride; Shannon Miller; Melissa Robertson; and Charles Youngson. I’m sure I forgot someone—my sincere apologies to whomever you are.
Thank you to the people across the country who were kind enough to respond to random requests for interviews and information, people such as Congressman Mike Castle of Delaware and his gracious staffer Meredith Sullivan; David Biagini; Bart Burnell; Daniel Carr; Captain Paul DeGaeta, skipper of the Victory Chimes; Heather Doughty; Dr. Curtis Freese, of the World Wildlife Fund; David Ganz, a former member of the Federal Commemorative Coin Advisory Committee; Lucy Gnazzo, a former member of Pennsylvania’s Commemorative Coin Commission; Patri
ck Heller, the owner of Liberty Coin Service in Lansing, Michigan, and a former member of Michigan’s gubernatorial coin commission; Paul Jackson; Andy Jones; Rick Marsh, president of the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association; Lennis Moore; Mike Mungoven; Meg Nicolo, of the American Prairie Foundation; Eddy Seger; Catheryn Shaw, former Miss Georgia Peach; Debbie Tinker, the executive director of Georgia’s Dade County Chamber of Commerce; and Louis Waddell, a historian with the State of Pennsylvania. Again, I’m sure I missed someone—if so, my apologies.
And finally, thank you to the great staff of the City of Birmingham’s Linn-Henley Research Library—one of the Southeast’s great treasures and one of the most outstanding public libraries in our country.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY AND RECOMMENDED READING
GENERAL
Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee Web site, at http://www.ccac.gov.
“Fifty State Commemorative Quarters Program,” at http://www.quarterdesigns.com.
Hagenbaugh, Barbara. “State Quarter Program Gets New Push to Include D.C., U.S. Territories.” USA Today, January 11, 2007.
Milner, Clyde A., ed. The Oxford History of the American West. New York: Oxford, 1994.
Public Broadcasting Service. The West, at http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program.
United States Mint. “The United States Mint 50 States Quarter Program,” at http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/index.cfm?action=50_statequarters_program.
United States Commission of Fine Arts Web site, at http://www.cfa.gov.
Wilson, Charles Reagan, et al., eds. The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
Worden, Leon. “‘Canada 125’ and the U.S. 50-State Quarters.” COINage Magazine, November 2005.