The Hawaiian Exploration of the World: Knowledge and Power in the Late 18th Century

This presentation traces the explorations of two early Kanaka (Native Hawaiian) voyagers overseas to demonstrate that from the moment of Captain James Cook’s first arrival in 1778, Kānaka actively sought to understand the contours of the globe and what the outside world might mean for them. In 1787, a Kanaka woman known to us only by the Anglicized name Winee sailed from Hawaiʻi to labor as a lady’s maid to the wife of a British captain. In 1789, Kaʻianaʻahuʻula (also known as Kaʻiana, a highly ranked chief from Kauaʻi) embarked on the ship of the Englishman, John Meares. The paths of these two Kānaka would converge as they travelled separately to Nuu-chah-nulth, on what the English called Vancouver Island, and then to Macao, the Portuguese trade port off the coast of South China. By tracing their stories, we a sense of how Kānaka explored the outside world and how those explorations changed the way they looked at Hawaiʻi and its relations with foreigners. On their travels, they would witness American Indians who were very much in control of the fur trade with Westerners, Chinese who kept the Westerners within sharply delimited boundaries, and (in Kaʻiana’s case) the way that the Sultanate of Magindanao (in present-day Philippines) maintained supremacy over the Spanish foothold there. They witnessed Western racial ideology at a crucial moment in its development, learning that Westerners placed them on the opposite side of a crucial white/non-white divide. Winee died at sea. After Kaʻiana returned to Hawaiʻi, he managed relations with Westerners with care, ensuring that he limited their power and claims on him. In this process, we can see the way that Kānaka used exploration to understand the nature of the world beyond their shores and to determine how best to manage the foreigners landing on their shores.