Beyond Hawai'i Native Labor in the Pacific World

by Gregory Rosenthal

  Life was not just all work for the men. After pau hana each day, and especially on Sundays as the entire island observed the Christian Sabbath, Hawaiian men were free to explore, to learn about their island’s environment, and to engage in familiar pastimes like fishing, surfing, or just relaxing while reading the latest Ka Hae Hawaii or “talking story” about Hawaiʻi nei (beloved Hawaiʻi). As they began to acquaint themselves with their new island environments, workers developed their first impressions of the land. These were never very enthusiastic: “Concerning the land,” wrote laborer G.W. Kaluahine from Paukeaho in 1859, “it is a very small land; if you were to stand and look out in any other direction, you’d see the breaking waves [all around].”30

  Besides the island’s tiny size, the unusual climate was also a source of discomfort for the workers: “This is a very hot land,” Kaluahine added. Guano worker J. Kuhaloa felt similarly that “the heat of the sun is great,” and you cannot look around for you might “damage the eye.” The Hawaiians also noticed that the islands lacked color. Kaluahine and Kuhaloa both referred to the islands as completely “white.” Kailiopio added that even their work uniforms were “white,” although they were undoubtedly dirtied by the guano; but, the guano, too, was white. As a people racialized as “copper” or “bronze,” in distinction to the “white” haole, and as a people accustomed to environments brimming with colorful birds and flowers back home, anything colorful here provided an important symbol to the men. It is fitting then that they named Baker Island Puakaʻilima, meaning “flower of the ʻilima,” named for “the most abundant thing here.” The little yellow flowers that sprouted along the periphery of the men’s workscape provided color in an otherwise bleak environment.31

  Perhaps the men felt more at home wading in the shallow water of the reef flat, smelling the salt of the familiar ocean that somehow bound together their former and present island worlds. Many luna described the laborers constantly fishing along the reef flat during their free time: at pau hana (after work), and at night along the wharf. One haole even described the men at the break of dawn on a Sunday morning cleaning and skinning fish. J. Kuhaloa assured readers back home that “the fish [at Jarvis] are truly similar with Hawaii’s,” including “Ulua-ulaula [Ulua ʻulaʻula], Mano [Manō], Aholehole [Āholehole],” and many others. Albert Judd noted Hawaiian workers catching “Avai,” “Manini,” and “Ulaula [ʻUlaʻula],” and he himself went fishing one evening with the help of a worker named Kahikelani and they caught “Ulua.”32 Luna were supposed to provide their laborers with proper amounts of food, but this was not always the case. The men therefore regularly supplemented their diet with fish from the reef and nearshore waters. Kailiopio also writes of how he and his friends collected pūleholeho (cowry shells) along the reef flats at low tide. They used the shells as a sort of currency on the island: “[at] the coming of the period of extreme low tide, exposed are the black cowry shells, [with] little spots[,] and little white cowry shells and every kind and variety of shell . . . these little things [bring] good fortune/blessings to the living conditions of kanaka here,” he wrote. This was because the men could “sell them to the haole, [for] obtaining some ragged/worn-out work clothes, tobacco, tobacco pipes, matches, and some other things as well for making pono the living condition of kanaka.”33

  Kailiopio’s concern for having material goods to make life pono (balanced; fair) for himself and his fellow workers was a sentiment echoed by others on Baker and Jarvis Islands. Both the Hawaiian men and their communities back home in Hawaiʻi demonstrated frequent concern for ka pono o ke kino, “the well-being of the body.” One distinct challenge was how to eat a pono diet. There were no natural sources of fresh water on the islands, and furthermore, all attempts at growing food crops in the dry coral sand were a dismal failure. Therefore, guano companies had to import fresh food and water from Hawaiʻi in order to feed their workers. The luna William Chisholm wrote to Honolulu from Howland Island in 1863 pleading that he only had “about 6000 Gal[lons] of water on the Is[land]. I use about 60 Gal per day[;] men requires a good deal of water working in Guano. hoping you will bear this in mind.” Chisholm’s math suggests that he had about one hundred days’ worth of water on hand, but this may have felt like a dangerously low amount if the supply ships visiting the islands came only infrequently. Besides water, Chisholm also needed to feed them. He attempted to do so on a diet comprising mostly poi, salted meats, and salted fish. But these, too, ran low. “I have not got more than six weeks Poi for Kanackas,” he wrote in February 1863. Nine months later, he continued to plead for D.C. Waterman & Company to send more rations: “send by first opportunity water, poi, net, stores.” By Chisholm’s estimate, he had only eighty days’ worth of poi left on the Island. The ever-itinerant Captain Penhallow even chimed in from London, England, to comment on the precarious food situation on Howland Island: “Should not the Kanakas on Howlands have some more Poi sent them by this time?” Of course, Penhallow had no way of knowing how many barrels of poi Chisholm had on hand, but he guessed—quite rightly—that the workers were in need of more. In the spring of 1864, Chisholm wrote again, admitting that he was now forced to put one of his guano miners on fishing duty every day just to procure enough food to feed the workers. It is “very fortunate you sent Beef & fish for natives,” Chisholm wrote. “I keep one man fishing all the time & on an average he gets fish for only one meal per day.” In the same message, he requested Waterman to send down fishing nets; if supplies ran dangerously low, Chisholm reasoned, he might have to put more men on fishing duty, rather than digging guano.34

  The ecology of companies feeding their migrant workers on a remote guano island was actually similar to the ecology of a seabird feeding its chick. For seabirds, newly hatched young were too frail to fly and thus immobile, just as Hawaiian migrant workers dropped off by ships on these islands had nowhere to go and no way to get there. Therefore, both young chicks and migrant men relied upon more mobile actors—whether their biological parents or “parent”-like companies that cared for them—to go out and procure their food, be it squid, fish, poi, or salt beef. The ecology of feeding workers, like the ecology of feeding chicks, linked equatorial islands with the broader oceanic environment stretching out from and surrounding these remote islands. Distant resources were brought in, by wing and by ship, transforming food into energy that powered human and avian bodies and in the end produced waste, some of which became guano. The ecology of the human body and its need to feed was particularly reliant on outside resources in the guano islands. Despite the many challenges of securing abundant, healthy food, however, some laborers sought to paper over all these problems. S.W.B. Kaulainamoku in late 1859 wrote that “we never have problems with the pono of the body, there is a lot of food, and fish, and water, and the kanaka eat the food and leave it unfinished, and the fish is left unfinished, [and they] drink wastefully of the water just as they do here in Honolulu.” His public account contradicted Chisholm’s worried private correspondence in nearly every way possible.35

  Indeed, some laborers like Kaulainamoku tried to paint the guano workscape as one that actually strengthened men’s bodies. Kaulainamoku may have even seen the workscape as fostering the re-embodiment of a uniquely Hawaiian masculinity, one that appeared in peril due to the death of Hawaiian men back home from disease and from the steady flow of emasculating rhetoric emanating from haole merchants and missionaries. On this point, Kaulainamoku stated outright that “the strength of the kanaka was greatly desired for the working of the guano.” As an exemplar of pono masculinity, he described “one little boy” who was able to carry more than his own bodily weight in guano. The young man’s body demonstrated, Kaulainamoku argued, that “the burdensome things here [are] an insignificant matter to the men”; “the weak newcomers curse aloud upon coming here,” he conceded, but naturally, “the strength of the kanaka progressed at the working.” Thus, through their interactions with the guano workscape, these men were building new, strong, male bodies, not
only to maintain ka pono o ke kino (the pono of the body), but for the very preservation of the Hawaiian “race.”36

  Kaulainamoku’s interpretation of this interface among bodies, work, and environment helped to reassure Hawaiian readers back home. Not only did they have fresh water, fish, and food, but the men were restrengthening their bodies and rekindling their masculinity. But six years later, J.M. Kailiopio found a workscape not at all similar to the pono one described by Kaulainamoku. In the summer of 1865, Kailiopio was witness to a worker-led riot on Baker Island—the only known labor disturbance to have occurred on these islands, although everyday resistance was commonplace. The 1865 riot began when a certain luna called for a Hawaiian laborer using the term “kanaka” rather than referencing his given name, Heanu. The laborer was insulted, for “kanaka” was a term sometimes used by haole as a racial slur. From the luna’s tongue, the word “kanaka” essentialized Hawaiian men as workers: as beasts of burden, as servants of capital. So when this luna, angry that Heanu was ignoring his call, came to beat Heanu with a stick, the Hawaiian man began throwing punches in his face. His fellow laborers came to the rescue, whisking Heanu away to a temporary safe place. Meanwhile, the islands’ haole began to arm themselves with rifles and pistols, anticipating a melee. The Hawaiian laborers, in self-defense, brandished the only weapons they had: their shovels. Uncontrolled violence was averted only at the last second when the head luna threatened to shoot one of the guano workers, Imaia, with a pistol at close range. Upon this, the Hawaiian men gave up their fight in order to save their fellow man; they eventually returned to work.37

  Kailiopio was still working on Baker Island one year later when he wrote that many of the Hawaiian men’s bodies were far from pono. The men had resorted to eating seabirds and eggs to quell their hunger. He spoke in direct contradiction to Kaulainamoku when he said that life on Puakailima “does not resemble the living conditions of the homeland . . . here, the living condition is stifling, this land, does not possess periods of pono satisfaction.” He described the working men’s bodies as sick and debilitated. Indeed, sickness was common. William Chisholm recorded many workers falling ill in 1864. “I sent by ship 3 natives which was sick & no use to the Island,” he wrote in April, followed two months later by another comment that “3 men sick out of 6.” D.C. Waterman’s policy regarding sick workers was harsh and unforgiving. The language of one 1868 contract noted that “on arrival at H. [Howland] Island, if any of the within named men are unable to work from disease brought on by their own imprudence previous to leaving Honolulu, their wages will be stopped all the time they are off duty from such disease contracted as above mentioned, and they may be sent back by the first opportunity to Honolulu.” Of course, most sick guano workers probably believed that their illnesses were due to the harsh work environment of the islands, but employers were determined to blame illness on bad “kanaka” behaviors cultivated in Hawaiʻi. Sickness was an excuse for employers to rid their payrolls of unwanted, debilitated bodies. In another instance, a sick guano worker was forced by his employer to pay for his own hospital fees, which at the time of his discharge equaled half of the wages he had earned as an employee. In his letter to Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, Kailiopio described an almost complete lack of medical services available to the men on Baker Island. “Where indeed then the pono care for the kanaka in his time of sickness,” he asked. “For the haole offers castor oil, with salt, and even painkillers,” but then will “discharge some [sick workers] to go [back] to work.”38

  Kailiopio wrote that many guano workers had gone “straight down the path of no return”—straight down the path to death. Indeed, death was all too common in the guano industry. For example, of 218 guano workers listed in the discharge records of the Honolulu Harbormaster for the years 1864–67, at least six died before completing their labor contracts. This put the death rate among guano workers in those years at nearly 3 percent, or, to put it another way, one in every 36 workers was likely to die in the guano islands rather than return home. Perhaps this is why, in concluding his letter, Kailiopio wrote that coming to Baker Island was as good as saying “your life has ended at Honolulu.” Facing hunger, weakness, disease, and even death, Kailiopio saw the workscape, just as Kaulainamoku had, as an interface among work, body, and environment. But for Kailiopio, these elements were out of balance; the workscape was not pono.39

  MEN AND BIRDS

  First came the rats, then came the humans. This was likely how one generation of seabirds witnessed the double invasion. By 1854 on Howland Island, the rats were everywhere, terrorizing chicks and parents alike. A human visitor that year wrote of “armies of rats.” But the seabirds were not passively exterminated. The writer claimed to have witnessed some seabirds—most likely frigatebirds—scooping up rats in their beaks and depositing the rodent-soldiers into the surf. If cleaning out rats was a necessary act of seabird defense, something had to be done about the invading humans, too. “We seemed to be targets for the birds,” this writer stated, now under attack by an altogether different army of animals. Before long, with so many seabirds taking position over his head, “we were completely encased in a thick film of bird manure.” The seabirds had a potent weapon against human invaders: their feces.40

  Perhaps the frigatebirds took greatest advantage of the humans. On Jarvis and Baker Islands around 1860, one frigatebird flew down and “snatched a note-book” away from a luna. He soared high up into the air and then dropped the book down to the ground again. Elsewhere, in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, frigatebirds were having similar interactions with human trespassers. One writer recounts how Japanese laborers, collecting bird feathers and guano on Laysan Island in the 1890s, were targeted by frigatebirds. One particular bird was said to swoop down and steal a laborer’s hat. “It played for quite some time before dropping it.” “The bird repeated this scenario for several days thereafter.” On Jarvis and Baker Islands the frigatebirds closely followed human strangers around the island. They learned how humans inadvertently created new feeding niches for them. Traditionally, frigatebirds waited on the aerial outskirts of islands, forcing returning boobies to vomit up the fish that they had caught at sea. Now these frigatebirds realized that the boobies felt equally threatened by humans. When a human inadvertently approached a booby, the bird, acting in self-defense, vomited up their fish. Then, the ever-watchful frigatebirds—seemingly in concert with the humans’ reign of terror—swooped down and gobbled up the boobies’ mess.41

  Individual taunting frigatebirds and aerial fecal bombers aside, the nesting seabirds of Jarvis and Baker Islands held no advantage against their human counterparts. From the humans’ perspective, while many Euro-American men on these islands claimed to admire the great diversity of birds, they also were greatly annoyed by the quantity of them. They “swarm like the flies of Egypt’s plague,” one uncomfortable visitor remarked. Furthermore, these men knew that to mine the islands’ guano they would necessarily have to destroy much of the birds’ habitat. Perhaps the only benefit they saw in the birds’ existence was that there were so many of them to kill and eat, and so many unhatched eggs to snack on.42 Yet the impact of bird hunting and egg harvesting was negligible when compared to the greater impact that the humans’ domesticated animals had upon the nesting seabirds. To Baker and Jarvis Islands the guano companies brought sheep, goats, rabbits, chickens, mules, and horses. The ungulates grazed on the sparse and salty grass, removing the fragile habitat preferred by tropicbirds, terns, and boobies for nesting. The movements of large mammals like horses and goats across the island meant the trampling of tens of thousands of speckled sooty tern eggs. The livestock also kicked up and scattered what little shrubbery existed, the only nesting habitat preferred by the frigatebirds. Worse, yet, were those animals that preyed directly on chicks and eggs, including rats and the occasional house cat.43

  The Hawaiian laborers who lived and worked on these equatorial islands came with their own set of knowledge about seabirds. They likely already knew m
any of the migratory seabird species in Hawaiʻi, birds that they perhaps often saw nesting in the pali (cliffs) that interfaced the human world and “the dark, invisible beyond of Kāne” where seabirds reign. J. Kuhaloa wrote from Jarvis in 1858 that “the types of birds [here] are quite like some of Hawaii’s birds.” He lists: “the Ao [ʻAʻo], Kolea [Kōlea], Ulili [ʻŪlili], Kioea, and Koae [Koaʻe].” Kailiopio, writing from Puakailima, added that “The land [here] is surrounded by birds.” He singled out “the noisy Nueku always moving around until late at night, that’s the bird that lays the most eggs.” “Nueku” is a term that does not correspond with any known Hawaiian bird. However, one haole from the time helpfully remarked that the bird looked like a plover, its back was brown with gray spots, and its eggs speckled. Kailiopio hints that the “Nueku” birds and their eggs provided food for the Hawaiian men during times of hardship. Interestingly, on Kuhaloa’s list of birds, three of the five he singled out—just like Kailiopio’s “Nueku”—were shorebirds or wading birds, not seabirds: the kōlea (plover), ʻūlili (tattler), and kioea (curlew). He mentions only two seabirds: the ʻaʻo, a shearwater endemic to Hawaiʻi that was probably only seasonally visiting Jarvis Island, and the koaʻe, the tropicbird. Kuhaloa does not tell us if this was a white-tailed or red-tailed tropicbird. He does not mention if the bird had a piece of cloth tied around its ankle; if he had, we might have wondered if this was the same tropicbird that nested on Howland Island and was held captive off of Baker Island during the period from 1859 to 1861. We can see here how close, yet still how far, we are from fully understanding the historical convergences between seabird and human narratives of work and migration in the guano islands.44