September 24, 2020 • 50 mins
By longstanding listener request, we look at how Hawaii was basically stolen by the United States in the 19th century. Rather than reverse this bit of geopolitical fraud, the US ended up making Hawaii a state instead.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w. Chuck, Brian over there aloha.
Uh and Jerry's out there somewhere aloha. And um, this
(00:22):
is Stuff you should Know. How Melaka laki laka that's announced. Yeah,
that's actually a little known fact. That's the Hawaiian way
to say Merry Christmas to you. I didn't know the story,
by the way, this is pretty interesting. Um yeah, yeah,
I have to say, Chuck. Before we get started. We
(00:42):
have to give a huge shout out huge to a dude.
I don't know his name, but he's on Instagram as
people Kanaka Kai. Okay, well maybe that's his name, so
what maybe so? Or it could be Kai Kanaka who knows.
He calls himself the Hawaiian Hillbilly, but he had is
every time we post an episode, he goes on and
(01:03):
comments Hawaiian overthrow episode please. He's been doing it for
like years, So Kanaka Kai, this one is for you man,
and that long last and now he doesn't have to
jump into the big woo right. So what I'm hoping though,
is that he's not like super well versed in this
is just going to be inevitably disappointed. Hopefully, it's just
(01:25):
something he wants to know more about, so he's been
asking for it for that one. Well, I'm glad he
trolld us for years because this is a really interesting
and not at all surprising story. No it's not. And um,
basically what we're talking about today is the overthrow of Hawaii.
And it turns out that Hawaii one of the most
beautiful states in the Union, probably the most beautiful state
(01:47):
in the Union, the state where you me and I
got married. In fact, sure, sure, if you're into tropical paradise,
is there's not much better. Somebody for Montana might be like,
you can have it with these mountains. Although I could
see Montana people going to Hawaiian being like, I've been wrong,
so wrong all my life and these boots are really uncomfortable. Right. So, um,
(02:08):
it is a beautiful state. But if you go back
not too very far, you will find that, um, there's
a lot of arguments you could make that it should
not be a state in any way, shape or form. Yeah,
and I'm curious about the about the current temperature of
native Hawaiian people and how they feel about that now. Yeah, yeah,
(02:32):
Well we'll get to that eventually. Do you know, I
don't know about the temperature of the Hawaiian people, but
I know about some some proposals to help kind of
reverse r undo some of the damage. I understood. That's
for the end. Well, I guess we should go back
some many thousands of years and talk about the settling
of the Hawaiian islands by the Polynesian people about you know,
(02:57):
years ago, maybe a thousand years ago, somewhere in there.
And for many, many hundreds of years there were the
control of of Hawaii was by chiefs and then sub chiefs,
and these chiefs claimed that they were divine in origin,
and they said, we have a set of very strict
religious um rules that we should follow, called the cop Who,
(03:22):
And that you know wasn't so popular over the years.
Well it depends. I mean, like if you were born
into that society and that was what you knew, that
was just what you knew. But I get the impression
that over the centuries some chiefs and sub chiefs enforced
the cop Who more than others. And um. One of
the big bases of the cop Who laws, is that
(03:45):
there was a strict separation of men and women, and
men were divine and women were profane, and that they
represented kind of like light and dark and you have
to have you can't have one without the others, so
they need each other. But also men were still definitely
favorite and respect. But then if you also go look
through Hawaiian history, there are also plenty of female rulers
as well, so it's a it's really interesting. Kapu could
(04:07):
probably get its own episode, and I'm sure now we
know what Kanaka Kai will be commenting on all on.
But it was so they had their own like very
strict social um stratification and religious laws for sure. Yeah.
I think if Emily heard that, she would say, Chuck
is not divine, but I am profane, So we're halfway there, right.
(04:30):
Non profane women rarely make history. So speaking of making history,
this is where a man named James Cook enters the picture.
In the late seventeen hundreds, the very famous British explorer.
He was the most notable. Uh, some people say the
first European to visit Hawaii. UM, definitely the most notable
(04:51):
because there is some um. You could make an argument
that the Spanish were there before him at some point. Yeah,
they have maps that appear to be Hawaii from like
the sixteenth country. Yeah, so the Japanese as well. But um,
Cook was the first person to go as an Englishman,
which was a big deal as a colonizer and say,
I'm charting this island or these islands, are going to
(05:14):
name them the Sandwich Islands. Not a great name now,
because well James Cook was well known for loving sandwiches,
so sure he was so crazy actually that it was
named for the Earl of Sandwich, John Montague. It's the
very same Earl of Sandwich though the sandwiches are named for,
So that guy was really he was an influencer in
Hawaii's known for their sandwiches. Yeah, poise sandwiches. So Cook visits, Uh,
(05:40):
he visits a few times, um, and kind of did
a lot of traveling while he was there. So he
he makes one visit and then just starts sort of
exploring the islands around Hawaii. Eventually comes back kind of
on that same trip and gets really aggressive at that point. Um,
not a nice fellow, trying to do sort of the
(06:03):
the colonizer thing here. Let me make a deal with you. Um,
let me trade something that isn't very valuable for something
that is very valuable, which is to say, your land, right, Um,
and yeah, he was just basically doing the standard euro
explorer thing, which trash explorer exploitation, trying to get everybody
(06:25):
into Kraftwick, that whole thing, right. So um, so cook,
I guess he overstepped his bounds finally and he was
actually killed in a major battle, um after some of
his his men kidnapped um a Hawaiian chief. Well, he
he did it personally from what I saw, was that right,
(06:45):
okay said by his own hand. Not a good move,
not a good not a good move, um. Because one
thing about the Hawaiian islands, they were ruled by those
chiefs and sub chiefs, like you said. But I get
the impression that, um, they were, they were united largely
when it came to the kidnapping of any Hawaiian chief
by a European outsider. Yeah. Like, you can fight with
(07:08):
your brother, but if someone else picks on your brother,
then you gotta you gotta join forces. Who would ever
pick on Scott? Well? I was thinking of you and me,
But sure, brother like real brothers too, write well and
bloods I still have that scar on my palm. I
actually mine was a squib. I faked it. I thought
(07:29):
that tasted like a high fruit toast corn. So yeah,
you're like chuck his sweet blood so sweet like Scott.
So yeah, Cook is uh kidnaps this guy. They they
did not respond very kindly to that, so they sent
a faction down there too attack him in his boats.
(07:49):
They were on the beach and that's where he died,
faced down in in shallow water. He was bonked on
the head by one chief I think, and then stabbed
by that chiefs um kind of attendant, right right, So um,
this is a This is a huge battle, a momentous
battle in the history of of Hawaii. It was very important,
and not just because James Cook died, but because there
(08:12):
was a one of the I guess low level warriors
there or middle middle class warriors I guess by the
name of Camea Maya fought quite bravely in that battle,
and Camea Maya actually went on to become the first
genuinely influential Hawaiian chief, maybe the most significant Hawaiian chief
(08:34):
of all time, because while he was there fighting the Europeans,
He's like man, these guns, they they work really well.
And you know, these Europeans are willing to sell him
to you. And he figured out that if he could
amass some European UM support and European weapons, he could
get all of Hawaii basically under himself. And that's what
he said about doing over the course of a couple
(08:56):
of decades. Yeah, reading this stuff, this was the Grabster
that helped us with this one. It seems I'm sorry, No,
it was James Mishner. Oh really, no, you remember James
Mischner would write those thousand page epics about like I
think he wrote went on Hawaii basically. But this this crabs.
So James misterrs this author could write these exhaustive historical fictions, um,
(09:21):
and one of them was why. But they would be
like a thousand pages easily. And I was making a
jokey comment on Grabster's research skills. Yeah, English major over
here flew right over my head. And by the way,
a little quick side note that I wanted to mention,
I am speaking of epic tones. I'm reading the Beatles
biography from Bob Spitz that's like a thousand pages, and uh,
(09:44):
one thing I wish we could have mentioned. I know
you hate the Beatles, but one thing I wish we
could have mentioned in the pirate radio thing was Radio Luxembourg.
There would have been no Beatles without them because independently, Paul,
George and John we're all on their own listening to
Radio Luxembourg and that's what turned them onto that's cool,
turn me on Radio Luxembourg. And uh wow, I did
(10:09):
not see the Beatles making an appeance in this episode.
So where are we now? Oh? I know what I
was gonna say, was um a thread through this I
found is that back then, uh Hawaiians were largely under armed.
In most cases, that's a big thing. And then also,
just like with all other um colonizations from outside European forces,
(10:34):
disease basically paved the way for imperialism. Sure where even
even if they were under armed and they didn't typically
have standing militaries, um, I should say the Hawaiians didn't
even if they had. There was like a plague that
came around in eighteen oh three that killed off half
of the population. They think it was yellow fever. Um.
(10:56):
There was another measles outbreak about fifty years later that
killed off another quarter of the population. So when you're
dying off in like numbers like this, how could you
possibly defend yourself, especially against people who have these superior
weapons like guns, germs, and steel. As Jared Diamond put it, Yeah,
I mean it's the it's the same story as as
(11:18):
America and the native population here. You know, it's like, Hi,
we're outsiders and we have guns, and here's some smallpox.
But but God decreed that this this should be our
land because he killed all of you off with these
small pox right because you have no immunity. It's the
same depressing story over and over again. It is. Um.
(11:40):
So when Kameya was was ruling Hawaii, which was really
he was firmly entrenched by the almost turn of the century,
late seventeen hundreds. Uh, he was pushing and you know,
so much of this boils down to money and class,
and he was really pushing for trade with Europe. Um.
He wanted the elite landholders of Hawaii to kind of
(12:02):
remain in that position. Um. He was traditionally religious with
the Kapu and supported that. But he was very much
you know, like let's let's enrich ourselves as sort of
the ruling class. For for sure, but he also and
he was also very open to the idea of exploiting
(12:23):
European influence for you know, to strengthen his his kingdom,
his house, I guess, is what it's called. He actually
had two advisors, Isaac Davis and John Young, uh englishman
and a Welshman um who were his closest advisors. And
apparently I can't remember which one it was, but when
one of them, whenever they would part company, Kamahomyo would
(12:45):
just begin sobbing because he just knew one day that
they he was going to leave, and he just loved
him that much. Yeah, it is very interesting. It's one
of those things where you know, we were raised as
like Anglo Euro American boys in the eastern seaboard of
the United States, right in the Midwest. So when you
(13:06):
research history like this, it's just like Hawaiian chief did this,
and then this Hawaiian chief came along. But when you
start to look into him as we were older, it's
it's just always so fascinating to me just how complex
and complicated history really is, you know, and just how
boiled down typically is presented as Yeah, totally, that's because
(13:26):
I don't know, I think teachers do a good job
as they can. But when we were in school, the
history we were taught was pretty, uh, pretty simplified. It is.
I mean, there's also like a real um advantage to
dehumanizing the people that you've done wrong to over the centuries,
especially when they live in a state of yours. Still
(13:47):
that's a good point. So, uh, under his rule, he
managed to sort of sort of unify the Kingdom of Hawaii. Um,
it wasn't like everyone was completely on board with what
was going on, especially with the kapu and human sacrifice
and some of that stuff that happened, but they did
live under his rule whether they liked it or not.
He was a very strong king, yeah, because he had
(14:10):
guns finally, and people didn't and so they couldn't rise
up against him. But after he died, as when things
got really complicated, because then you had Hawaiian landowners, you
had white people that owned land, and then you had
this third group, this really large working class. Even though
many were killed off, still a lot of people, and
(14:31):
that really complicated the whole situation. And maybe we should
take a break there. We should all right, we'll take
a break and we'll talk about what complicated that even
more right after this, So, Chuck, we have this this
(15:07):
kind of like a brief sketch of what's going on here.
We have a native group, the native Hawaiians who live here,
and they are autonomous and running their own show. But
then the European explorers have showed up and they are
trying to make headways in exploiting this area as best
they can commercially. Um for agriculture, at first it was
sandal wood, and then it moved on to I think cattle,
(15:28):
and then finally like sugarcane um. And then those European
white landowners in Hawaii started bringing in tons and tons
of migrant workers in basically like slave labor conditions. So
you have these three groups kind of coming together in Hawaii,
only one of which was originally there. Yeah, And another
(15:51):
thing came in, which was missionaries from Europe, Protestant missionaries
for the most part, and they did what missionaries do,
which was say, hey, you should be Christian and not
worship whatever, uh you know, Hawaiian God you worship. And
this was a big deal because there were you know,
Hawaii had a long, rich tradition, um, a very sacred
(16:13):
tradition of religion and this was not that at all,
but like they do, they um were pretty forceful in
making sure Christianity took hold among some of the people,
and it became a pretty big deal in Hawaii by
like the sort of mid eighteen hundreds, Yeah, for sure.
So and just like with other places where the missionaries
(16:36):
were kind of like the leading edge of the spear
as far as imperialism goes. So they just were the
first to kind of brave this and bring Christianity and
a you know, air quote civilization to the area. So
after they started to make headway and started to change
the culture it made, it allowed greater entree for for
(16:56):
more like commercial interest to have definitely to do with religion.
They were just coming to to work the land kind
of thing. Yeah. And forty this is when Kamayama's grandson,
Kamaama the third UM wrote the first real legit Hawaiian constitution.
There would be many more to follow, don't worry, right,
(17:18):
this is just the first one. And this one basically
kind of kicked Kapu law to the side. Was a
little more Christian, a little more western for lack of
a better word, and basically said all right, um, you
can now vote over here, and this is kind of
the first entree of what democracy would look like there. Yeah,
(17:38):
I mean, it created a judicial branch, a legislature like it.
It sounded awfully familiar really as far as constitutions go.
And it was a huge watershed moment because, like you said,
it replaced Kapu with like you said, Western style democracy
basically or some version of at the beginnings of it,
I guess. Yeah. And it also would would establish this
(18:01):
this framework, this foundation for people to point to and
be like, oh no, no, we want to we want
to go further and further towards the constitution, not back
toward the old ways. So it was like a goal
post that was set there that could be pointed to
as we don't want the monarch anymore. Remember, we want
this legislature in the judicial branch and all this this
stuff that Americans and Europeans are accustomed to working within. Yeah.
(18:25):
And also money was a big complicating factor. Um. Like
we said, anytime money is introduced and there's very valuable land,
it's going to get pretty gravy. And that's what happened
when the white Europeans and Americans said, Wow, this soil
over here in the climate of here is great for
growing stuff and we're not there. You know, they don't
have workers uh rights laws here, so we can really
(18:48):
really get cheap cheap labor if not um, like you said,
basically enslaved people essentially uh from Asia to work over
here and not really paying much money, like bring them
over under false pretense, say how great it is, how
much money they're going to make, and then kind of
build them back. Is it's sort of like signing a
record contract and build you back for all the expenses
(19:11):
of getting over there and overcharging for their living quarters,
which were terrible. But it's you know, it's exploitation that
we've seen time and time again. Um yeah, if it's
still going on today, you know, like that it's basically
human trafficking, is what they were doing. Yeah. So, um
one thing about Kamehameha, the House of Kamehameha when the
(19:34):
first Kamayo Maya, which is an awesomely fun word to
say and also just reminds me of Magnum p I
because that was the club that Rick managed, the King
Kamayama Club. Wo remember that? Oh man? Uh So, anyway,
I would just kill to like bee hanging out at
the bar, the beach bar in that club. But anyway,
(19:55):
um Kamayama, despite their being like up people, basically every
time it's successor died, UM he managed to establish a
dynasty that lasted until the eighteen seventies, I believe, UM.
And the problem was that there were no strong succession laws.
So when the monarch died in a few instances, there
(20:18):
were these periods called the interregnums, which is basically like, hey,
you know, the government, it doesn't actually exist technically right now.
It's kind of a free for all while we figure
out what comes intact. We gotta we gotta get this
together and decide how to move forward. And in this case,
they would have the legislature vote for the ruler and UM,
this wasn't super popular. It led to rioting. UM. Hawaiians
(20:42):
were like, no, we we need uh we kind of
didn't mind the monarchy and we need these succession laws
to be kind of ingrained. I think that that's a
real um, a real telling, revealing tell about how the
Hawaiians felt that They were like, no, we don't forget
the legislature, we just need better law is to say
who succeeds who as far as the monarchs are concerned,
(21:04):
because I think that's what they were used to and
that's what they wanted, you know. Yeah, but what this
ended up doing was kind of there was a real
divide here when um, eighteen seventy four, I think was
when uh kala ka oh, calliko call ka I practiced
(21:25):
a million times Kaleika kalika ua. I mean, I love
these words are so much fun to say, um, even
though we're probably butchering them. But no, I'm pretty sure
it's kaleika Ua alright. Kalaika Ua was the new king
voted on in eighteen seventy four, and this was the
first real wedge because he had this faction that supported
(21:49):
Queen Emma and a real like opposition party was in place.
Like people were very, very divided at this point. Yeah.
Queen Emma was the wife of Comma the fourth, so
she had a pretty alid claimer on the throne. But
the legislature said, no, kalika who is definitely our guy.
He's now your your king and your monarch. And he
was an interesting cat too. He was known as the
(22:11):
Merry Monarch. He was a bit of a bomb avant
um hula had been banned by the big buzz killed
missionaries for decades, I mean hula dancing. Yeah, So so
kalika Ua said, hey, it's my birthday, let's bring hula back.
So he was kind of beloved for that. He played
the ukulele, but he was also very corrupt, like he
(22:33):
took a hundred and thirty thousand dollar bribe from some
Chinese businessmen who wanted an opium license, and very importantly
his whole jam was little by little, the power of
the monarch has been eroded to well, now it's finally
my turn, and I'm basically is a figurehead here. I
want the power back, so I'm going to do that.
(22:54):
And instead, there was some white interests that had formed
a group known as the Hawaiian League, and they were
basically made up of landowners, businessmen, people who had but
who were all like white European and American people who said,
we actually don't like that idea, and in fact, we're
going to make you form sign a new constitution into law,
(23:17):
um and where you're gonna do it basically at the
at the at gun point, and it's going to be
called the Bayonet Constitution. Historically speaking, yes, the Hawaiian League.
They were. They had a bunch of different names. Initially
they were the um the Missionary not in the Missionary League,
the Missionary what the Missionary Party. The Missionary thought that
(23:38):
was too sexy, right, So Missionary Party became the Hawaiian League,
eventually became the Reform Party because who doesn't like reform?
And they eventually became because as we'll see, they pushed
more and more towards annexation. Uh. And I don't know
if it was were they officially called the Annexation Party?
Was that sort of like a I I I honestly
(24:00):
don't know the way that they were introduced. I think
I don't know. Well either way, what they did was
they said, all right, we um know that not many
people we were an under armed society, so if we're
gonna do this, we're gonna get um the guns on
our side. And that was where they got the support
of the Hawaiian Rifles, which was a volunteer military unit
(24:24):
um all white people. And like you said in in
July seven is when those Hawaiian Rifles got involved and
said signed this new constitution. They did, and so it
basically said, you know how you thought you were a
figurehead before. Now you are a genuine, bona fide figurehead.
Your power is completely at the um pleasure of the legislature,
(24:47):
which by the way, is no longer appointed by you,
but elected. And also further, by the way, um we
Europeans and Americans now have voting rights because you have
to be a landowner in literate to vote. So not
only do we have voting rights now to elect the
legislature to basically do whatever we want, but we've also
just excluded all of those migrant Asian labors that we
(25:08):
just brought over because they don't own any land and
probably a lot of them can't read. So it's so facto.
You go play some ukulele for a while, kalika uha,
and thank you very much for Hawaii. Yeah, I mean
I got the impression that it was under the guise of, hey,
democracy is great and voting is how things should go,
(25:29):
but like, but we're going to be the ones voting,
by the way, exactly. Yeah, And I mean it definitely
was presented like that, like they were trying to liberalize
the island. But yeah, ultimately it was for their own interests.
When you when you really got down to brass tacks,
which is Cockney rhyming slang for facts as we went.
So I didn't think that was gonna show up either.
(25:52):
So in one that is when he died the aforementioned Kalakaua,
right Cali Kaleikaa, and he was succeeded by someone Keito's
his sister. How are you gonna make me queen Lily
Uoh Kalani? Yeah, man, all right, I think that's right. Yeah,
(26:15):
so yeah, and so she if if Kaleika had a
problem with being a figurehead, Lily Oh Koalani was definitely
um opposed to the idea of just being like Queen Elizabeth,
you know, we're just showing up for um state functions
and that kind of thing. Like she was. She considered
(26:35):
herself the ruler of Hawaii. She was the monarch who
who was meant to succeed um kaleika Ua fair and square,
and had a real problem with this. And but by
the problem was that within the four years that Kaleika
who assigned the Bayonet Constitution, the doors have been thrown
(26:56):
so far open for Western intra business interests in Hawaii
that she basically faced an insurmountable challenge and undoing just
the changes that had come in in the last four years.
It had been slowly creeping up over the decades, but
from that Bay and that constitution forward over those four
(27:17):
years between then and when she took over, the changes
were insurmountable. Basically, Yeah, married to an American too. Incidentally,
Well that that that shows you, like just how how
intermarried American politics in European politics were with Hawaiian politics. Literally. Yeah,
and I don't think we mentioned like this whole time.
(27:37):
There are both American and British warships in Honolulu Harbor. Yeah,
so like they've been there the whole time there the military,
and I didn't get the idea that they were active
at that point. They were just there kind of parked there. Yeah,
I think just more to send a signal, but also
to keep other interlopers out. I think the British and
the Americans basically considered Hawaii There's right, unofficially, but moving
(28:04):
toward officially, because when you said the door was thrown
wide open and change was afoot, it was the Hawaiian
League that was really um you know, they had flirted
with annexation a little bit, but by this point they
were really uh, and this is where they took on
the name the Annexation Club. Like I mentioned earlier, they
were really really headed towards annexation, which is where we
(28:24):
have to kind of go back over to America and
talk about the Terriff Act of eighteen ninety or the
McKinley Tariff, which was basically a very protectionist thing. Um, Hey,
we need US goods to be an industry here to
be ramped up, so we're gonna charge huge tariffs on
goods imported into the US, and that meant Hawaiian goods
(28:46):
and um, landowners in Hawaii said this is not good
for us because this is gonna make us raise prices.
Sales are gonna go down, our profits are gonna go down.
And um, while they were you know, the annexation was
making hay about democracy being a good thing, it really
kind of came down to money. Yeah, that's exactly right
(29:06):
with that. That in that McKinley tariff like really kind
of forced everyone's hand. Um, because like you said, I mean,
Hawaii was a sovereign nation and so there were tariffs
on the import. Didn't matter that they were American companies
and stuff was being produced in Hawaii, so when it
came into America, there was a huge tax slapped on it.
So they started saying, Okay, we need to figure this out,
(29:28):
like we need to we need to get Hawaii and
next and the so I get the impression that the
um the Hawaiian League kind of went from There were
some people in there that have been saying the whole time, annexation, annexation,
it's definitely the way to go to. Where that was
like the point of the Hawaiian League from that moment
forward was getting annexed um fortunately for them. Uh lially
(29:53):
Huo Kalani, whose name just flits in and out of
my capability to pronounce she um. She said, Hey, you
know what, I don't like all this. I don't like
where this is going. I'm going to rewrite the constitution.
I'm going to restore the power of the monarchy. And
you know, your legislature, your legislature can go sit on
(30:14):
it because I'm passing this by royal fiat, just by
me decreeing that it's true. It's true. And when that
came out, that news came out that she was planning
on doing that, the Hawaiian League said it's go time. Yeah,
And as far as the US goes, you know, they um,
they didn't outright say they wanted to annex. It was
kind of a tricky situation for them. They didn't want
(30:36):
anyone else to get in there in front of them,
of course, but they also didn't and they didn't want to.
I feel like they didn't want to be too aggressive
with it, like well, hey, if you're open to it,
we'll talk about it, but we're not gonna ask you
to dance, right, But it wasn't out of any respect
or deference necessarily to Hawaiian. It was because they didn't
(30:57):
want to tick off the British. So um so yeah.
So when Lilio man So, when Lily Uo Kalani said,
um that she was going to to rewrite the constitution
and this came out, the opposition was really strong, and
she actually backed down and she announced, Okay, I'm definitely
(31:18):
not going to do it by royal fiat, but I'm
gonna do it through normal channels and and really kind
of took the any hostility out of the move. But
it was it was too little, too late as far
as the Hawaiian League was concerned. And like I said
they decided it was go time, and Chuck, I say,
it's go time for us to go to commercial. Let's
do it, alright, So it's go to time in Hawaii. Uh,
(32:03):
Queen Lily Okolani has drawn a line in the sand.
H White men in Hawaii were super worried all of
a sudden, and so that annexation club that has now
changed names four times, changed their names again and said
all right, now we're the Committee of Safety. And by
Committee of safety, I mean we're going to lead a
military coup, right, which are typically very safe. Yeah. So, um,
(32:28):
there was a a move basically to collect um arms,
specifically to depose Liliu o'collani. Like that was the point
that that this this um, this this group had I
guess it was pretty if it wasn't like overt Basically
everyone knew about it so much so that uh loyalists
(32:50):
to um Liliuokolani. His name was Charles B. Wilson. Yeah,
he was a loyalist, which we should say, so his
name sounds pretty um America, and that's for good reason,
because he was American. And if you go back a
couple of monarchs, um, you will start to see like
Germans and Americans and British people in their cabinets like
(33:14):
as like foreign minister or Secretary of Finance, like just
just like it's just you know, some normal thing. Um,
that's how intrenched everything was. So. Charles B. Wilson was
to Liliuokalani um the Marshal of Hawaii, which, as ed put,
is kind of like the head of the FBI and
the head of the Department Offense all rolled into one.
But he was in charge of the national police basically,
(33:36):
and he found out about this plot and he wanted
the plotters arrested for treason. Yeah, he called it out
and said arrested the committee or whatever they're calling themselves today,
And the American members of the cabinet said, no, we're
not gonna do that because this could break out in violence,
so let's all chill out. Um. That all changed on
January seventeenth, when there was a shooting. A Native Hawaiian
(33:59):
policeman was shot trying to prevent a delivery of some
weapons to the Annexation Club. Um, he didn't die, but
he was shot, and there wasn't like a lot of
I mean, James Cook obviously died pretty in a grizzly way,
but there wasn't a lot of like actual violence and
bloodshed that was riding and stuff over the years. But
(34:20):
I get the feeling that this shooting was kind of
a big, big thing at the time. It was. I mean,
it was the only shooting in the entire overthrow of Hawaii,
in this entire coup, which makes it significant. But I
get the same impression that you had that Hawaiian society
was generally rather peaceful, and so to shoot somebody was
(34:40):
a very very big deal. Um. So much so that
the cop got two hundred dollars for his his wounds
collected by the local community. Pretty nice, pretty good scratch
back then. Yeah, I don't I didn't look it up
on West Egg. We should have. Uh. So the Committee
of Safety goes to you know, mentioned the warships in
(35:00):
the harbor. Uh They go to our the the USS
Boston that's parked there, and go to Captain Wilts and say, hey,
you know what, um, they're American citizens on the island there. Now,
you guys are having a good time, just kind of
hanging out and playing cards, but there's property that's in danger.
There's American citizens that are in danger and there are
(35:21):
armed troops. UM like, we need you guys in your
guns to come on the island. And he went, well,
all right, uh, come on, guys, let's go. And they
all put down their cards and a hundred and sixty
two soldiers went ashore. And that was sort of the
real turning point as far as an actual American military
(35:42):
presence in their supposedly defending property and American citizens from danger.
But it really ratcheted things up as far as conflict goes. Well, yeah,
and particularly for Liliuokalani. To her, she saw American troops
coming ashore, um establishing a full were like a couple
of hundred yards away from the Imperial Palace and and
(36:05):
basically creating a presence on native sovereign Hawaiian land. And
this was at the same time that the UM the
Committee for Safety, had run up on the steps of
the Capitol building read a proclamation that the queen had
been overthrown, that the monarchy didn't exist any longer, and
(36:26):
that she had been deposed and that UM they were
now in charge. And combine that, from her point of
view with the presence of American troops, She's like, okay,
I guess the Americans just overthrew me. She didn't know
who was working with who. She just knew there were
armed troops. She didn't really have any kind of standing
army or anything like that. So she made a very
wise and in my opinion, very noble decision to say,
(36:48):
you know what, I will. I will surrender for the
moment because I don't want to. I want to avoid
any unnecessary bloodshed, Like anybody who fights for me is
going to get wasted by these American marines, and I
don't want to see that happen. So I will surrender,
but I'm not surrendering my position to the provisional government.
(37:09):
All surrender to the United States of America temporarily until
they can restore my position, because this is b S. Yeah,
And in in her statement, we won't read the whole thing,
but at the end she essentially says I'm doing this
for now, until which time I will be reinstated as
the authority, at which point everyone just kind of patted
(37:30):
her on the head and said, that's that's adorable that
you think that's actually gonna happen. She said, ps B S.
And I don't think we mentioned this new provisional government said,
all right, we have a president now, and his name
is Sanford Dole. Uh if that name sounds familiar, um.
Sandford's brother James founded the Dole Fruit Company in Hawaiian
(37:51):
So really no surprise how how that worked out, right,
So so let's just recap real quick. Okay, So there
was a group of American in Europe in white business interests, landowners,
businessmen who overthrew like during this, during this, a little
melee after a cop was shot, ran up onto the
capital steps read a proclamation that they were in charge.
(38:13):
John John Stevens, who hadn't mentioned he was the American
Minister to Hawaii. He was very much in on this
and in league with the Hawaiian League UM. And he said, I,
as official representative the United States officially recognized you, the
provisional Government, as the true government of Hawaii. I no
longer recognized the monarch. And that was it. All of
(38:34):
a sudden, this island kingdom of Hawaii that had been
around for a thousand or more years and had been
organized since for a couple of hundred years or a
hundred or more years, UM, just didn't exist anymore. Poof
because an American minister recognized a group of other Americans.
We just said, we claim this place basically as our own. Yeah,
(38:57):
and they said, you know, we're voting for this now.
Dole is president, like I said, but the Royalists are
boycotting the elections. So the Annexation Party, which eventually became
the American Union Party, they just were winning the elections
because it was no contest basically, Yeah, which is I mean,
it's a problem. You're in such a pickle with that,
you know, like you're like, I reject that these elections
(39:20):
are even valid on their face. Um, but but then
if they just keep pulling these elections and other people
keep recognizing them as valid, then you're you're s o
l you know it. It was a really sticky, terrible
situation for the Native Hawaiians and their their monarch. Yeah.
So Dole and and the gang are firmly entrenched at
this point, and this is when they can really really
(39:42):
start to go after annexation. Um. So over in America,
you have Grover Cleveland in office and he's like, wait
a minute, this this all sounds very kinky and illegal,
So I'm gonna send an envoy. James Blunt to Hawaii.
You put together a report and and report back to
me and let me know what's going on. Blunt went
(40:03):
over put together as report and he said, yeah, it
was super illegal what happened. And so Cleveland said, all right, queen, um,
if you want, will send troops in there to over
overthrow the republic and UM put you back in in
in a position of queen. But what you have to
do is is you got to offer amnesty to that
(40:24):
Committee of Safety that overthrew you kind of using our
soldiers to begin with. And she probably had whip flash
at this point, but she was like, uh, no, I'm
not going to do that, and actually those guys should
be beheaded, um, if I'm really being completely honest. And
so Cleveland kind of slunk down and said, all right, well,
I guess we uh we're not going to do that. Then, yeah,
(40:45):
he said, beheadings are gonna it's gonna be tough to
get past Congress. So I guess we don't have anything
to say here, but you have to kind of hand
it to Lily uh Kolani that um, I mean, she
stuck to her principles and she could she could have
been restored as monarch maybe even back to like the
pre figurehead version of the monarchy. And she said, nope,
(41:08):
I'm cutting their heads off if if you put me
back as as queen. Yeah. At the same time, the
US Congress gets involved. They said, you know what, we're
the ones who investigate people. So listen to over our guy,
John Tyler Morgan. And Morgan went over and his report said,
you know what, this was not some illegal coup. This
(41:28):
was just Hawaii being Hawaii. This is their politics, this
is how they do things. We didn't really do anything wrong.
No blood on our hands. It's Hawaii. This is what
they do. No big deal. So the Congress is like
good enough for us. UM. By this time, also, UM,
Cleveland had been replaced by who is Cleveland's successor? Mley? Okay,
(41:52):
so the McKinley tariff came before all this, huh there
came after all this. No. I got the idea that
maybe it was as a senator or something. Okay, I'm
completely wrong though, No, but that would make way more sense.
But the point is is that McKinley UM was much
more in favor of annexation, uh than Cleveland was, and
(42:13):
so the the United States officially annexed Hawaii as a
territory in and this was exactly exactly what all of
those American and European landowners wanted, because, especially in America,
no longer were they subject to these high tariffs for
(42:34):
the imported goods because Hawaii was an annexed territory. But Chuck,
they also were in a state, which means that they
weren't subject to US laws like immigration, which meant that
they could continue up their their human trafficking, which meant
that as an annexed territory, their profit margins were as
(42:54):
wide as they've ever been. Basically, yeah, I mean those
were uh, I mean, they were terror doble in reality,
but those were the golden years if you're a plantation
owner in Hawaii, because you're you're basically just making money
hand over fist with no oversight. Right. And by the way,
I just looked at real quick. McKinley was a House
representative when that terrifact came out. Not thank you. That
(43:17):
was a really great in show correction. We usually don't
do this. Uh So, when does statehood come on the scene,
Because Hawa I didn't become a state until nineteen fifty nine,
which was not that long ago. No, it was, and
it was a full sixty plus years after it was annexed.
And because they were just fat cats and they were
loving it. That's that's exactly right. The powerful interests who
(43:41):
basically ran the legislature said, hey, you know, we we
were really like Chuck said, we're making money hand over
fist and somebody said, who's Chuck. They said, just give
it a couple of decades, you'll see it's gonna knock
your socks off. But they had no, no desire to
be a state, because then that meant that they're immigration
laws would be imposed and they'd have to follow a
(44:02):
lot more um, social and cultural more's that America had established, um,
and it was going to be a bad jam for them.
The other thing was here at home, and it was
just straight up like racist xenophobia. Yeah, um, you know,
I think I don't know if we said to put
a pin in it, but we were talking about all
these migrant workers who you know, had kids and stuff,
(44:24):
and those kids were born there eventually became a non
white majority in Hawaii, and they were like, you know
what if we make this place of state, he said,
they're gonna actually these microworkers are gonna gain real voting
power and they have a non white majority, and we
really don't want those people in our congress. In Congress,
that was basically the reason that kept Hawaii from being
(44:46):
a state until nine. People didn't want people of Asian
or Native Hawaiian descent in in d C. And Congress,
I guess. And that nuts. Yeah, So it took until
March eighteenth nine to find become a state, and then
it took until for Congress to pass an apology bill.
(45:06):
And this is hysterical and it's so believable, but it
points out that they were, uh, it was disputed because
they were literally arguing about either the Blunt Report or
the Morgan Report being more accurate, like a hundred years later. Yeah,
can you do Clinton apologizing? Oh what do I have
(45:26):
to apologize for? That was great. So so that bill
actually said that Hawaii or the Native Hawaiians quote, never
directly relinquished to the US their claims to their inherent sovereignty.
The US said, in in some in in so many words,
like the United States stole Hawaii. Hawaii is the state
(45:47):
because we took it basically back in eighteen ninety. That
or the eighteen eighties. Pretty great story. It is so
that you were asking about the pulse of Hawaii today.
There's a bill that was introduced in two thousand by
Senator Daniel k Akaca, and he's since retired, I believe,
but the Acaca Bill is still around, and it basically
(46:08):
would extend sovereignty to Native Hawaiians and virtually the same
way that um Native American tribes in the continental US
have their own tribal nations. They have their own governments
that make decisions for them, and they have their own
laws and all that um and there's it's just never
been passed. There's I don't think there's quite enough support
(46:28):
for it or what the hold up is, but it's
still languishing right now. I haven't been. I gotta go
at some point. Oh dude, I would like to live
there one day. Yeah. That's good. A place where you
you and you meet to retire. It's a it's amazing.
So uh and maybe I'll meet up with Kanaka Kai,
the Hawaiian hillbilly while we're there. I think with your
(46:49):
magnum obsession, you were destined to just while away with
a coconut with a straw on it in your hand.
Who do I have to kill the cu to refill
his coconut? I used to be somebody. How do you
think I got this rainbow helicopter? That's right, oh man,
I've been to the Magnum house before you metok me,
(47:10):
does not surprise me, it's neat Um. Well have you
got anything else about the overthrow of Hawaii? Well, if
you wanted more about the overthrow Hawaii, there's a lot
more out there. It's pretty interesting story in Hawaiian culture
is pretty interesting too, now that we dug into it.
And since I said that it's time for a listener mail,
I'm gonna call this anvils. And by the way, this
(47:33):
um this is from Nolan. Nolan did not point this out,
but we heard from many people who said that the
Smithy was not the Blacksmith, but the place, uh their
workshop is called the Smithy and I can't know that smithy,
Like that's the Blacksmith. Yeah, that's what I thought. I
think they're the smith Okay, not the Smith's. That's Morrissee
(47:53):
and Johnny morn Company. That's right. Hey, guys, love the
episode on Blacksmith thing. I've been to Blacksmith since I
was nineteen when I bought my first anvil. I started
listening stuff you should Know during grad school and my
anvil was sadly packed away. I had no time to
use it, but thankfully it isn't on the shelf any longer,
and I found myself sitting next to it while listening
to your episode. Uh. Seems silly, but these things have
(48:13):
a real personality to them. They're like old friends. I
met mine close to a decade ago, and it's a
one dash, zero dash, sixteen and twenty eight pound Peter Wright.
That means something to Smithy's. I was impressed by the
Peter right. Yeah, he's He's a legendary anvil list Smithie.
(48:34):
So Uh. One thing on the show I thought I
mentioned is about anvil's Josh said, you want to attach
the anvil to a stump to disperse the hammer strike
to the earth, which is partially which is partially correct,
but missed one beautiful thing about a good anvil, which
is it's rebound. Uh. An anvil's quality can be measured
by the rebound. This is how much force pushes back
(48:54):
at you when you strike. Because this is a good anvil.
I'm sorry because of this, a good anvil hits back
when you strike it, and a good blacksmith uses this
to effectively forge both sides of a workpiece at the
same time. I also one thing I also saw somebody
else right in to say that that helps you um
and swinging a ten pound hammer like like working the
(49:17):
rebound to your advantage to totally. He said, you can
tell if you have a good anvil by the rebound
by dropping a ball bearing on it or lightly dropping
a hammerhead and seeing how high it bounces. A dead
anvil will have no bounce and only gives a soft thud.
A good anvil bounces back a lot and leaves a
ringing in the air. And this is actually where the
(49:38):
phrase has a nice ring to it comes from. Oh
really about that? I love that stuff. It was a
blacksmith in phrase. So great job, guys, as always keep
it up. I always love tuning into these shows. Can't
wait hear more. And that is Nolan. Thanks Toland, you
really quenched our thirst for etymology big time. Appreciate Nolan,
(49:58):
Appreciate everybody, all of the smiths who wrote in to
let us know all the stuff we got wrong, but
also say, hey, you generally got it right. So in
Farriors we heard from farriers. Yeah, tons of farriers out there,
So we appreciate all of you and we're fascinated by
the work you do. If you want to get in
touch with us, you can send us an email. Send
it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
(50:24):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios.
How stuff works for more podcasts for my heart Radio
because at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w. Chuck, Brian over there aloha.
Uh and Jerry's out there somewhere aloha. And um, this
(00:22):
is Stuff you should Know. How Melaka laki laka that's announced. Yeah,
that's actually a little known fact. That's the Hawaiian way
to say Merry Christmas to you. I didn't know the story,
by the way, this is pretty interesting. Um yeah, yeah,
I have to say, Chuck. Before we get started. We
(00:42):
have to give a huge shout out huge to a dude.
I don't know his name, but he's on Instagram as
people Kanaka Kai. Okay, well maybe that's his name, so
what maybe so? Or it could be Kai Kanaka who knows.
He calls himself the Hawaiian Hillbilly, but he had is
every time we post an episode, he goes on and
(01:03):
comments Hawaiian overthrow episode please. He's been doing it for
like years, So Kanaka Kai, this one is for you man,
and that long last and now he doesn't have to
jump into the big woo right. So what I'm hoping though,
is that he's not like super well versed in this
is just going to be inevitably disappointed. Hopefully, it's just
(01:25):
something he wants to know more about, so he's been
asking for it for that one. Well, I'm glad he
trolld us for years because this is a really interesting
and not at all surprising story. No it's not. And um,
basically what we're talking about today is the overthrow of Hawaii.
And it turns out that Hawaii one of the most
beautiful states in the Union, probably the most beautiful state
(01:47):
in the Union, the state where you me and I
got married. In fact, sure, sure, if you're into tropical paradise,
is there's not much better. Somebody for Montana might be like,
you can have it with these mountains. Although I could
see Montana people going to Hawaiian being like, I've been wrong,
so wrong all my life and these boots are really uncomfortable. Right. So, um,
(02:08):
it is a beautiful state. But if you go back
not too very far, you will find that, um, there's
a lot of arguments you could make that it should
not be a state in any way, shape or form. Yeah,
and I'm curious about the about the current temperature of
native Hawaiian people and how they feel about that now. Yeah, yeah,
(02:32):
Well we'll get to that eventually. Do you know, I
don't know about the temperature of the Hawaiian people, but
I know about some some proposals to help kind of
reverse r undo some of the damage. I understood. That's
for the end. Well, I guess we should go back
some many thousands of years and talk about the settling
of the Hawaiian islands by the Polynesian people about you know,
(02:57):
years ago, maybe a thousand years ago, somewhere in there.
And for many, many hundreds of years there were the
control of of Hawaii was by chiefs and then sub chiefs,
and these chiefs claimed that they were divine in origin,
and they said, we have a set of very strict
religious um rules that we should follow, called the cop Who,
(03:22):
And that you know wasn't so popular over the years.
Well it depends. I mean, like if you were born
into that society and that was what you knew, that
was just what you knew. But I get the impression
that over the centuries some chiefs and sub chiefs enforced
the cop Who more than others. And um. One of
the big bases of the cop Who laws, is that
(03:45):
there was a strict separation of men and women, and
men were divine and women were profane, and that they
represented kind of like light and dark and you have
to have you can't have one without the others, so
they need each other. But also men were still definitely
favorite and respect. But then if you also go look
through Hawaiian history, there are also plenty of female rulers
as well, so it's a it's really interesting. Kapu could
(04:07):
probably get its own episode, and I'm sure now we
know what Kanaka Kai will be commenting on all on.
But it was so they had their own like very
strict social um stratification and religious laws for sure. Yeah.
I think if Emily heard that, she would say, Chuck
is not divine, but I am profane, So we're halfway there, right.
(04:30):
Non profane women rarely make history. So speaking of making history,
this is where a man named James Cook enters the picture.
In the late seventeen hundreds, the very famous British explorer.
He was the most notable. Uh, some people say the
first European to visit Hawaii. UM, definitely the most notable
(04:51):
because there is some um. You could make an argument
that the Spanish were there before him at some point. Yeah,
they have maps that appear to be Hawaii from like
the sixteenth country. Yeah, so the Japanese as well. But um,
Cook was the first person to go as an Englishman,
which was a big deal as a colonizer and say,
I'm charting this island or these islands, are going to
(05:14):
name them the Sandwich Islands. Not a great name now,
because well James Cook was well known for loving sandwiches,
so sure he was so crazy actually that it was
named for the Earl of Sandwich, John Montague. It's the
very same Earl of Sandwich though the sandwiches are named for,
So that guy was really he was an influencer in
Hawaii's known for their sandwiches. Yeah, poise sandwiches. So Cook visits, Uh,
(05:40):
he visits a few times, um, and kind of did
a lot of traveling while he was there. So he
he makes one visit and then just starts sort of
exploring the islands around Hawaii. Eventually comes back kind of
on that same trip and gets really aggressive at that point. Um,
not a nice fellow, trying to do sort of the
(06:03):
the colonizer thing here. Let me make a deal with you. Um,
let me trade something that isn't very valuable for something
that is very valuable, which is to say, your land, right, Um,
and yeah, he was just basically doing the standard euro
explorer thing, which trash explorer exploitation, trying to get everybody
(06:25):
into Kraftwick, that whole thing, right. So um, so cook,
I guess he overstepped his bounds finally and he was
actually killed in a major battle, um after some of
his his men kidnapped um a Hawaiian chief. Well, he
he did it personally from what I saw, was that right,
(06:45):
okay said by his own hand. Not a good move,
not a good not a good move, um. Because one
thing about the Hawaiian islands, they were ruled by those
chiefs and sub chiefs, like you said. But I get
the impression that, um, they were, they were united largely
when it came to the kidnapping of any Hawaiian chief
by a European outsider. Yeah. Like, you can fight with
(07:08):
your brother, but if someone else picks on your brother,
then you gotta you gotta join forces. Who would ever
pick on Scott? Well? I was thinking of you and me,
But sure, brother like real brothers too, write well and
bloods I still have that scar on my palm. I
actually mine was a squib. I faked it. I thought
(07:29):
that tasted like a high fruit toast corn. So yeah,
you're like chuck his sweet blood so sweet like Scott.
So yeah, Cook is uh kidnaps this guy. They they
did not respond very kindly to that, so they sent
a faction down there too attack him in his boats.
(07:49):
They were on the beach and that's where he died,
faced down in in shallow water. He was bonked on
the head by one chief I think, and then stabbed
by that chiefs um kind of attendant, right right, So um,
this is a This is a huge battle, a momentous
battle in the history of of Hawaii. It was very important,
and not just because James Cook died, but because there
(08:12):
was a one of the I guess low level warriors
there or middle middle class warriors I guess by the
name of Camea Maya fought quite bravely in that battle,
and Camea Maya actually went on to become the first
genuinely influential Hawaiian chief, maybe the most significant Hawaiian chief
(08:34):
of all time, because while he was there fighting the Europeans,
He's like man, these guns, they they work really well.
And you know, these Europeans are willing to sell him
to you. And he figured out that if he could
amass some European UM support and European weapons, he could
get all of Hawaii basically under himself. And that's what
he said about doing over the course of a couple
(08:56):
of decades. Yeah, reading this stuff, this was the Grabster
that helped us with this one. It seems I'm sorry, No,
it was James Mishner. Oh really, no, you remember James
Mischner would write those thousand page epics about like I
think he wrote went on Hawaii basically. But this this crabs.
So James misterrs this author could write these exhaustive historical fictions, um,
(09:21):
and one of them was why. But they would be
like a thousand pages easily. And I was making a
jokey comment on Grabster's research skills. Yeah, English major over
here flew right over my head. And by the way,
a little quick side note that I wanted to mention,
I am speaking of epic tones. I'm reading the Beatles
biography from Bob Spitz that's like a thousand pages, and uh,
(09:44):
one thing I wish we could have mentioned. I know
you hate the Beatles, but one thing I wish we
could have mentioned in the pirate radio thing was Radio Luxembourg.
There would have been no Beatles without them because independently, Paul,
George and John we're all on their own listening to
Radio Luxembourg and that's what turned them onto that's cool,
turn me on Radio Luxembourg. And uh wow, I did
(10:09):
not see the Beatles making an appeance in this episode.
So where are we now? Oh? I know what I
was gonna say, was um a thread through this I
found is that back then, uh Hawaiians were largely under armed.
In most cases, that's a big thing. And then also,
just like with all other um colonizations from outside European forces,
(10:34):
disease basically paved the way for imperialism. Sure where even
even if they were under armed and they didn't typically
have standing militaries, um, I should say the Hawaiians didn't
even if they had. There was like a plague that
came around in eighteen oh three that killed off half
of the population. They think it was yellow fever. Um.
(10:56):
There was another measles outbreak about fifty years later that
killed off another quarter of the population. So when you're
dying off in like numbers like this, how could you
possibly defend yourself, especially against people who have these superior
weapons like guns, germs, and steel. As Jared Diamond put it, Yeah,
I mean it's the it's the same story as as
(11:18):
America and the native population here. You know, it's like, Hi,
we're outsiders and we have guns, and here's some smallpox.
But but God decreed that this this should be our
land because he killed all of you off with these
small pox right because you have no immunity. It's the
same depressing story over and over again. It is. Um.
(11:40):
So when Kameya was was ruling Hawaii, which was really
he was firmly entrenched by the almost turn of the century,
late seventeen hundreds. Uh, he was pushing and you know,
so much of this boils down to money and class,
and he was really pushing for trade with Europe. Um.
He wanted the elite landholders of Hawaii to kind of
(12:02):
remain in that position. Um. He was traditionally religious with
the Kapu and supported that. But he was very much
you know, like let's let's enrich ourselves as sort of
the ruling class. For for sure, but he also and
he was also very open to the idea of exploiting
(12:23):
European influence for you know, to strengthen his his kingdom,
his house, I guess, is what it's called. He actually
had two advisors, Isaac Davis and John Young, uh englishman
and a Welshman um who were his closest advisors. And
apparently I can't remember which one it was, but when
one of them, whenever they would part company, Kamahomyo would
(12:45):
just begin sobbing because he just knew one day that
they he was going to leave, and he just loved
him that much. Yeah, it is very interesting. It's one
of those things where you know, we were raised as
like Anglo Euro American boys in the eastern seaboard of
the United States, right in the Midwest. So when you
(13:06):
research history like this, it's just like Hawaiian chief did this,
and then this Hawaiian chief came along. But when you
start to look into him as we were older, it's
it's just always so fascinating to me just how complex
and complicated history really is, you know, and just how
boiled down typically is presented as Yeah, totally, that's because
(13:26):
I don't know, I think teachers do a good job
as they can. But when we were in school, the
history we were taught was pretty, uh, pretty simplified. It is.
I mean, there's also like a real um advantage to
dehumanizing the people that you've done wrong to over the centuries,
especially when they live in a state of yours. Still
(13:47):
that's a good point. So, uh, under his rule, he
managed to sort of sort of unify the Kingdom of Hawaii. Um,
it wasn't like everyone was completely on board with what
was going on, especially with the kapu and human sacrifice
and some of that stuff that happened, but they did
live under his rule whether they liked it or not.
He was a very strong king, yeah, because he had
(14:10):
guns finally, and people didn't and so they couldn't rise
up against him. But after he died, as when things
got really complicated, because then you had Hawaiian landowners, you
had white people that owned land, and then you had
this third group, this really large working class. Even though
many were killed off, still a lot of people, and
(14:31):
that really complicated the whole situation. And maybe we should
take a break there. We should all right, we'll take
a break and we'll talk about what complicated that even
more right after this, So, Chuck, we have this this
(15:07):
kind of like a brief sketch of what's going on here.
We have a native group, the native Hawaiians who live here,
and they are autonomous and running their own show. But
then the European explorers have showed up and they are
trying to make headways in exploiting this area as best
they can commercially. Um for agriculture, at first it was
sandal wood, and then it moved on to I think cattle,
(15:28):
and then finally like sugarcane um. And then those European
white landowners in Hawaii started bringing in tons and tons
of migrant workers in basically like slave labor conditions. So
you have these three groups kind of coming together in Hawaii,
only one of which was originally there. Yeah, And another
(15:51):
thing came in, which was missionaries from Europe, Protestant missionaries
for the most part, and they did what missionaries do,
which was say, hey, you should be Christian and not
worship whatever, uh you know, Hawaiian God you worship. And
this was a big deal because there were you know,
Hawaii had a long, rich tradition, um, a very sacred
(16:13):
tradition of religion and this was not that at all,
but like they do, they um were pretty forceful in
making sure Christianity took hold among some of the people,
and it became a pretty big deal in Hawaii by
like the sort of mid eighteen hundreds, Yeah, for sure.
So and just like with other places where the missionaries
(16:36):
were kind of like the leading edge of the spear
as far as imperialism goes. So they just were the
first to kind of brave this and bring Christianity and
a you know, air quote civilization to the area. So
after they started to make headway and started to change
the culture it made, it allowed greater entree for for
(16:56):
more like commercial interest to have definitely to do with religion.
They were just coming to to work the land kind
of thing. Yeah. And forty this is when Kamayama's grandson,
Kamaama the third UM wrote the first real legit Hawaiian constitution.
There would be many more to follow, don't worry, right,
(17:18):
this is just the first one. And this one basically
kind of kicked Kapu law to the side. Was a
little more Christian, a little more western for lack of
a better word, and basically said all right, um, you
can now vote over here, and this is kind of
the first entree of what democracy would look like there. Yeah,
(17:38):
I mean, it created a judicial branch, a legislature like it.
It sounded awfully familiar really as far as constitutions go.
And it was a huge watershed moment because, like you said,
it replaced Kapu with like you said, Western style democracy
basically or some version of at the beginnings of it,
I guess. Yeah. And it also would would establish this
(18:01):
this framework, this foundation for people to point to and
be like, oh no, no, we want to we want
to go further and further towards the constitution, not back
toward the old ways. So it was like a goal
post that was set there that could be pointed to
as we don't want the monarch anymore. Remember, we want
this legislature in the judicial branch and all this this
stuff that Americans and Europeans are accustomed to working within. Yeah.
(18:25):
And also money was a big complicating factor. Um. Like
we said, anytime money is introduced and there's very valuable land,
it's going to get pretty gravy. And that's what happened
when the white Europeans and Americans said, Wow, this soil
over here in the climate of here is great for
growing stuff and we're not there. You know, they don't
have workers uh rights laws here, so we can really
(18:48):
really get cheap cheap labor if not um, like you said,
basically enslaved people essentially uh from Asia to work over
here and not really paying much money, like bring them
over under false pretense, say how great it is, how
much money they're going to make, and then kind of
build them back. Is it's sort of like signing a
record contract and build you back for all the expenses
(19:11):
of getting over there and overcharging for their living quarters,
which were terrible. But it's you know, it's exploitation that
we've seen time and time again. Um yeah, if it's
still going on today, you know, like that it's basically
human trafficking, is what they were doing. Yeah. So, um
one thing about Kamehameha, the House of Kamehameha when the
(19:34):
first Kamayo Maya, which is an awesomely fun word to
say and also just reminds me of Magnum p I
because that was the club that Rick managed, the King
Kamayama Club. Wo remember that? Oh man? Uh So, anyway,
I would just kill to like bee hanging out at
the bar, the beach bar in that club. But anyway,
(19:55):
um Kamayama, despite their being like up people, basically every
time it's successor died, UM he managed to establish a
dynasty that lasted until the eighteen seventies, I believe, UM.
And the problem was that there were no strong succession laws.
So when the monarch died in a few instances, there
(20:18):
were these periods called the interregnums, which is basically like, hey,
you know, the government, it doesn't actually exist technically right now.
It's kind of a free for all while we figure
out what comes intact. We gotta we gotta get this
together and decide how to move forward. And in this case,
they would have the legislature vote for the ruler and UM,
this wasn't super popular. It led to rioting. UM. Hawaiians
(20:42):
were like, no, we we need uh we kind of
didn't mind the monarchy and we need these succession laws
to be kind of ingrained. I think that that's a
real um, a real telling, revealing tell about how the
Hawaiians felt that They were like, no, we don't forget
the legislature, we just need better law is to say
who succeeds who as far as the monarchs are concerned,
(21:04):
because I think that's what they were used to and
that's what they wanted, you know. Yeah, but what this
ended up doing was kind of there was a real
divide here when um, eighteen seventy four, I think was
when uh kala ka oh, calliko call ka I practiced
(21:25):
a million times Kaleika kalika ua. I mean, I love
these words are so much fun to say, um, even
though we're probably butchering them. But no, I'm pretty sure
it's kaleika Ua alright. Kalaika Ua was the new king
voted on in eighteen seventy four, and this was the
first real wedge because he had this faction that supported
(21:49):
Queen Emma and a real like opposition party was in place.
Like people were very, very divided at this point. Yeah.
Queen Emma was the wife of Comma the fourth, so
she had a pretty alid claimer on the throne. But
the legislature said, no, kalika who is definitely our guy.
He's now your your king and your monarch. And he
was an interesting cat too. He was known as the
(22:11):
Merry Monarch. He was a bit of a bomb avant
um hula had been banned by the big buzz killed
missionaries for decades, I mean hula dancing. Yeah, So so
kalika Ua said, hey, it's my birthday, let's bring hula back.
So he was kind of beloved for that. He played
the ukulele, but he was also very corrupt, like he
(22:33):
took a hundred and thirty thousand dollar bribe from some
Chinese businessmen who wanted an opium license, and very importantly
his whole jam was little by little, the power of
the monarch has been eroded to well, now it's finally
my turn, and I'm basically is a figurehead here. I
want the power back, so I'm going to do that.
(22:54):
And instead, there was some white interests that had formed
a group known as the Hawaiian League, and they were
basically made up of landowners, businessmen, people who had but
who were all like white European and American people who said,
we actually don't like that idea, and in fact, we're
going to make you form sign a new constitution into law,
(23:17):
um and where you're gonna do it basically at the
at the at gun point, and it's going to be
called the Bayonet Constitution. Historically speaking, yes, the Hawaiian League.
They were. They had a bunch of different names. Initially
they were the um the Missionary not in the Missionary League,
the Missionary what the Missionary Party. The Missionary thought that
(23:38):
was too sexy, right, So Missionary Party became the Hawaiian League,
eventually became the Reform Party because who doesn't like reform?
And they eventually became because as we'll see, they pushed
more and more towards annexation. Uh. And I don't know
if it was were they officially called the Annexation Party?
Was that sort of like a I I I honestly
(24:00):
don't know the way that they were introduced. I think
I don't know. Well either way, what they did was
they said, all right, we um know that not many
people we were an under armed society, so if we're
gonna do this, we're gonna get um the guns on
our side. And that was where they got the support
of the Hawaiian Rifles, which was a volunteer military unit
(24:24):
um all white people. And like you said in in
July seven is when those Hawaiian Rifles got involved and
said signed this new constitution. They did, and so it
basically said, you know how you thought you were a
figurehead before. Now you are a genuine, bona fide figurehead.
Your power is completely at the um pleasure of the legislature,
(24:47):
which by the way, is no longer appointed by you,
but elected. And also further, by the way, um we
Europeans and Americans now have voting rights because you have
to be a landowner in literate to vote. So not
only do we have voting rights now to elect the
legislature to basically do whatever we want, but we've also
just excluded all of those migrant Asian labors that we
(25:08):
just brought over because they don't own any land and
probably a lot of them can't read. So it's so facto.
You go play some ukulele for a while, kalika uha,
and thank you very much for Hawaii. Yeah, I mean
I got the impression that it was under the guise of, hey,
democracy is great and voting is how things should go,
(25:29):
but like, but we're going to be the ones voting,
by the way, exactly. Yeah, And I mean it definitely
was presented like that, like they were trying to liberalize
the island. But yeah, ultimately it was for their own interests.
When you when you really got down to brass tacks,
which is Cockney rhyming slang for facts as we went.
So I didn't think that was gonna show up either.
(25:52):
So in one that is when he died the aforementioned Kalakaua,
right Cali Kaleikaa, and he was succeeded by someone Keito's
his sister. How are you gonna make me queen Lily
Uoh Kalani? Yeah, man, all right, I think that's right. Yeah,
(26:15):
so yeah, and so she if if Kaleika had a
problem with being a figurehead, Lily Oh Koalani was definitely
um opposed to the idea of just being like Queen Elizabeth,
you know, we're just showing up for um state functions
and that kind of thing. Like she was. She considered
(26:35):
herself the ruler of Hawaii. She was the monarch who
who was meant to succeed um kaleika Ua fair and square,
and had a real problem with this. And but by
the problem was that within the four years that Kaleika
who assigned the Bayonet Constitution, the doors have been thrown
(26:56):
so far open for Western intra business interests in Hawaii
that she basically faced an insurmountable challenge and undoing just
the changes that had come in in the last four years.
It had been slowly creeping up over the decades, but
from that Bay and that constitution forward over those four
(27:17):
years between then and when she took over, the changes
were insurmountable. Basically, Yeah, married to an American too. Incidentally,
Well that that that shows you, like just how how
intermarried American politics in European politics were with Hawaiian politics. Literally. Yeah,
and I don't think we mentioned like this whole time.
(27:37):
There are both American and British warships in Honolulu Harbor. Yeah,
so like they've been there the whole time there the military,
and I didn't get the idea that they were active
at that point. They were just there kind of parked there. Yeah,
I think just more to send a signal, but also
to keep other interlopers out. I think the British and
the Americans basically considered Hawaii There's right, unofficially, but moving
(28:04):
toward officially, because when you said the door was thrown
wide open and change was afoot, it was the Hawaiian
League that was really um you know, they had flirted
with annexation a little bit, but by this point they
were really uh, and this is where they took on
the name the Annexation Club. Like I mentioned earlier, they
were really really headed towards annexation, which is where we
(28:24):
have to kind of go back over to America and
talk about the Terriff Act of eighteen ninety or the
McKinley Tariff, which was basically a very protectionist thing. Um, Hey,
we need US goods to be an industry here to
be ramped up, so we're gonna charge huge tariffs on
goods imported into the US, and that meant Hawaiian goods
(28:46):
and um, landowners in Hawaii said this is not good
for us because this is gonna make us raise prices.
Sales are gonna go down, our profits are gonna go down.
And um, while they were you know, the annexation was
making hay about democracy being a good thing, it really
kind of came down to money. Yeah, that's exactly right
(29:06):
with that. That in that McKinley tariff like really kind
of forced everyone's hand. Um, because like you said, I mean,
Hawaii was a sovereign nation and so there were tariffs
on the import. Didn't matter that they were American companies
and stuff was being produced in Hawaii, so when it
came into America, there was a huge tax slapped on it.
So they started saying, Okay, we need to figure this out,
(29:28):
like we need to we need to get Hawaii and
next and the so I get the impression that the
um the Hawaiian League kind of went from There were
some people in there that have been saying the whole time, annexation, annexation,
it's definitely the way to go to. Where that was
like the point of the Hawaiian League from that moment
forward was getting annexed um fortunately for them. Uh lially
(29:53):
Huo Kalani, whose name just flits in and out of
my capability to pronounce she um. She said, Hey, you
know what, I don't like all this. I don't like
where this is going. I'm going to rewrite the constitution.
I'm going to restore the power of the monarchy. And
you know, your legislature, your legislature can go sit on
(30:14):
it because I'm passing this by royal fiat, just by
me decreeing that it's true. It's true. And when that
came out, that news came out that she was planning
on doing that, the Hawaiian League said it's go time. Yeah,
And as far as the US goes, you know, they um,
they didn't outright say they wanted to annex. It was
kind of a tricky situation for them. They didn't want
(30:36):
anyone else to get in there in front of them,
of course, but they also didn't and they didn't want to.
I feel like they didn't want to be too aggressive
with it, like well, hey, if you're open to it,
we'll talk about it, but we're not gonna ask you
to dance, right, But it wasn't out of any respect
or deference necessarily to Hawaiian. It was because they didn't
(30:57):
want to tick off the British. So um so yeah.
So when Lilio man So, when Lily Uo Kalani said,
um that she was going to to rewrite the constitution
and this came out, the opposition was really strong, and
she actually backed down and she announced, Okay, I'm definitely
(31:18):
not going to do it by royal fiat, but I'm
gonna do it through normal channels and and really kind
of took the any hostility out of the move. But
it was it was too little, too late as far
as the Hawaiian League was concerned. And like I said
they decided it was go time, and Chuck, I say,
it's go time for us to go to commercial. Let's
do it, alright, So it's go to time in Hawaii. Uh,
(32:03):
Queen Lily Okolani has drawn a line in the sand.
H White men in Hawaii were super worried all of
a sudden, and so that annexation club that has now
changed names four times, changed their names again and said
all right, now we're the Committee of Safety. And by
Committee of safety, I mean we're going to lead a
military coup, right, which are typically very safe. Yeah. So, um,
(32:28):
there was a a move basically to collect um arms,
specifically to depose Liliu o'collani. Like that was the point
that that this this um, this this group had I
guess it was pretty if it wasn't like overt Basically
everyone knew about it so much so that uh loyalists
(32:50):
to um Liliuokolani. His name was Charles B. Wilson. Yeah,
he was a loyalist, which we should say, so his
name sounds pretty um America, and that's for good reason,
because he was American. And if you go back a
couple of monarchs, um, you will start to see like
Germans and Americans and British people in their cabinets like
(33:14):
as like foreign minister or Secretary of Finance, like just
just like it's just you know, some normal thing. Um,
that's how intrenched everything was. So. Charles B. Wilson was
to Liliuokalani um the Marshal of Hawaii, which, as ed put,
is kind of like the head of the FBI and
the head of the Department Offense all rolled into one.
But he was in charge of the national police basically,
(33:36):
and he found out about this plot and he wanted
the plotters arrested for treason. Yeah, he called it out
and said arrested the committee or whatever they're calling themselves today,
And the American members of the cabinet said, no, we're
not gonna do that because this could break out in violence,
so let's all chill out. Um. That all changed on
January seventeenth, when there was a shooting. A Native Hawaiian
(33:59):
policeman was shot trying to prevent a delivery of some
weapons to the Annexation Club. Um, he didn't die, but
he was shot, and there wasn't like a lot of
I mean, James Cook obviously died pretty in a grizzly way,
but there wasn't a lot of like actual violence and
bloodshed that was riding and stuff over the years. But
(34:20):
I get the feeling that this shooting was kind of
a big, big thing at the time. It was. I mean,
it was the only shooting in the entire overthrow of Hawaii,
in this entire coup, which makes it significant. But I
get the same impression that you had that Hawaiian society
was generally rather peaceful, and so to shoot somebody was
(34:40):
a very very big deal. Um. So much so that
the cop got two hundred dollars for his his wounds
collected by the local community. Pretty nice, pretty good scratch
back then. Yeah, I don't I didn't look it up
on West Egg. We should have. Uh. So the Committee
of Safety goes to you know, mentioned the warships in
(35:00):
the harbor. Uh They go to our the the USS
Boston that's parked there, and go to Captain Wilts and say, hey,
you know what, um, they're American citizens on the island there. Now,
you guys are having a good time, just kind of
hanging out and playing cards, but there's property that's in danger.
There's American citizens that are in danger and there are
(35:21):
armed troops. UM like, we need you guys in your
guns to come on the island. And he went, well,
all right, uh, come on, guys, let's go. And they
all put down their cards and a hundred and sixty
two soldiers went ashore. And that was sort of the
real turning point as far as an actual American military
(35:42):
presence in their supposedly defending property and American citizens from danger.
But it really ratcheted things up as far as conflict goes. Well, yeah,
and particularly for Liliuokalani. To her, she saw American troops
coming ashore, um establishing a full were like a couple
of hundred yards away from the Imperial Palace and and
(36:05):
basically creating a presence on native sovereign Hawaiian land. And
this was at the same time that the UM the
Committee for Safety, had run up on the steps of
the Capitol building read a proclamation that the queen had
been overthrown, that the monarchy didn't exist any longer, and
(36:26):
that she had been deposed and that UM they were
now in charge. And combine that, from her point of
view with the presence of American troops, She's like, okay,
I guess the Americans just overthrew me. She didn't know
who was working with who. She just knew there were
armed troops. She didn't really have any kind of standing
army or anything like that. So she made a very
wise and in my opinion, very noble decision to say,
(36:48):
you know what, I will. I will surrender for the
moment because I don't want to. I want to avoid
any unnecessary bloodshed, Like anybody who fights for me is
going to get wasted by these American marines, and I
don't want to see that happen. So I will surrender,
but I'm not surrendering my position to the provisional government.
(37:09):
All surrender to the United States of America temporarily until
they can restore my position, because this is b S. Yeah,
And in in her statement, we won't read the whole thing,
but at the end she essentially says I'm doing this
for now, until which time I will be reinstated as
the authority, at which point everyone just kind of patted
(37:30):
her on the head and said, that's that's adorable that
you think that's actually gonna happen. She said, ps B S.
And I don't think we mentioned this new provisional government said,
all right, we have a president now, and his name
is Sanford Dole. Uh if that name sounds familiar, um.
Sandford's brother James founded the Dole Fruit Company in Hawaiian
(37:51):
So really no surprise how how that worked out, right,
So so let's just recap real quick. Okay, So there
was a group of American in Europe in white business interests, landowners,
businessmen who overthrew like during this, during this, a little
melee after a cop was shot, ran up onto the
capital steps read a proclamation that they were in charge.
(38:13):
John John Stevens, who hadn't mentioned he was the American
Minister to Hawaii. He was very much in on this
and in league with the Hawaiian League UM. And he said, I,
as official representative the United States officially recognized you, the
provisional Government, as the true government of Hawaii. I no
longer recognized the monarch. And that was it. All of
(38:34):
a sudden, this island kingdom of Hawaii that had been
around for a thousand or more years and had been
organized since for a couple of hundred years or a
hundred or more years, UM, just didn't exist anymore. Poof
because an American minister recognized a group of other Americans.
We just said, we claim this place basically as our own. Yeah,
(38:57):
and they said, you know, we're voting for this now.
Dole is president, like I said, but the Royalists are
boycotting the elections. So the Annexation Party, which eventually became
the American Union Party, they just were winning the elections
because it was no contest basically, Yeah, which is I mean,
it's a problem. You're in such a pickle with that,
you know, like you're like, I reject that these elections
(39:20):
are even valid on their face. Um, but but then
if they just keep pulling these elections and other people
keep recognizing them as valid, then you're you're s o
l you know it. It was a really sticky, terrible
situation for the Native Hawaiians and their their monarch. Yeah.
So Dole and and the gang are firmly entrenched at
this point, and this is when they can really really
(39:42):
start to go after annexation. Um. So over in America,
you have Grover Cleveland in office and he's like, wait
a minute, this this all sounds very kinky and illegal,
So I'm gonna send an envoy. James Blunt to Hawaii.
You put together a report and and report back to
me and let me know what's going on. Blunt went
(40:03):
over put together as report and he said, yeah, it
was super illegal what happened. And so Cleveland said, all right, queen, um,
if you want, will send troops in there to over
overthrow the republic and UM put you back in in
in a position of queen. But what you have to
do is is you got to offer amnesty to that
(40:24):
Committee of Safety that overthrew you kind of using our
soldiers to begin with. And she probably had whip flash
at this point, but she was like, uh, no, I'm
not going to do that, and actually those guys should
be beheaded, um, if I'm really being completely honest. And
so Cleveland kind of slunk down and said, all right, well,
I guess we uh we're not going to do that. Then, yeah,
(40:45):
he said, beheadings are gonna it's gonna be tough to
get past Congress. So I guess we don't have anything
to say here, but you have to kind of hand
it to Lily uh Kolani that um, I mean, she
stuck to her principles and she could she could have
been restored as monarch maybe even back to like the
pre figurehead version of the monarchy. And she said, nope,
(41:08):
I'm cutting their heads off if if you put me
back as as queen. Yeah. At the same time, the
US Congress gets involved. They said, you know what, we're
the ones who investigate people. So listen to over our guy,
John Tyler Morgan. And Morgan went over and his report said,
you know what, this was not some illegal coup. This
(41:28):
was just Hawaii being Hawaii. This is their politics, this
is how they do things. We didn't really do anything wrong.
No blood on our hands. It's Hawaii. This is what
they do. No big deal. So the Congress is like
good enough for us. UM. By this time, also, UM,
Cleveland had been replaced by who is Cleveland's successor? Mley? Okay,
(41:52):
so the McKinley tariff came before all this, huh there
came after all this. No. I got the idea that
maybe it was as a senator or something. Okay, I'm
completely wrong though, No, but that would make way more sense.
But the point is is that McKinley UM was much
more in favor of annexation, uh than Cleveland was, and
(42:13):
so the the United States officially annexed Hawaii as a
territory in and this was exactly exactly what all of
those American and European landowners wanted, because, especially in America,
no longer were they subject to these high tariffs for
(42:34):
the imported goods because Hawaii was an annexed territory. But Chuck,
they also were in a state, which means that they
weren't subject to US laws like immigration, which meant that
they could continue up their their human trafficking, which meant
that as an annexed territory, their profit margins were as
(42:54):
wide as they've ever been. Basically, yeah, I mean those
were uh, I mean, they were terror doble in reality,
but those were the golden years if you're a plantation
owner in Hawaii, because you're you're basically just making money
hand over fist with no oversight. Right. And by the way,
I just looked at real quick. McKinley was a House
representative when that terrifact came out. Not thank you. That
(43:17):
was a really great in show correction. We usually don't
do this. Uh So, when does statehood come on the scene,
Because Hawa I didn't become a state until nineteen fifty nine,
which was not that long ago. No, it was, and
it was a full sixty plus years after it was annexed.
And because they were just fat cats and they were
loving it. That's that's exactly right. The powerful interests who
(43:41):
basically ran the legislature said, hey, you know, we we
were really like Chuck said, we're making money hand over
fist and somebody said, who's Chuck. They said, just give
it a couple of decades, you'll see it's gonna knock
your socks off. But they had no, no desire to
be a state, because then that meant that they're immigration
laws would be imposed and they'd have to follow a
(44:02):
lot more um, social and cultural more's that America had established, um,
and it was going to be a bad jam for them.
The other thing was here at home, and it was
just straight up like racist xenophobia. Yeah, um, you know,
I think I don't know if we said to put
a pin in it, but we were talking about all
these migrant workers who you know, had kids and stuff,
(44:24):
and those kids were born there eventually became a non
white majority in Hawaii, and they were like, you know
what if we make this place of state, he said,
they're gonna actually these microworkers are gonna gain real voting
power and they have a non white majority, and we
really don't want those people in our congress. In Congress,
that was basically the reason that kept Hawaii from being
(44:46):
a state until nine. People didn't want people of Asian
or Native Hawaiian descent in in d C. And Congress,
I guess. And that nuts. Yeah, So it took until
March eighteenth nine to find become a state, and then
it took until for Congress to pass an apology bill.
(45:06):
And this is hysterical and it's so believable, but it
points out that they were, uh, it was disputed because
they were literally arguing about either the Blunt Report or
the Morgan Report being more accurate, like a hundred years later. Yeah,
can you do Clinton apologizing? Oh what do I have
(45:26):
to apologize for? That was great. So so that bill
actually said that Hawaii or the Native Hawaiians quote, never
directly relinquished to the US their claims to their inherent sovereignty.
The US said, in in some in in so many words,
like the United States stole Hawaii. Hawaii is the state
(45:47):
because we took it basically back in eighteen ninety. That
or the eighteen eighties. Pretty great story. It is so
that you were asking about the pulse of Hawaii today.
There's a bill that was introduced in two thousand by
Senator Daniel k Akaca, and he's since retired, I believe,
but the Acaca Bill is still around, and it basically
(46:08):
would extend sovereignty to Native Hawaiians and virtually the same
way that um Native American tribes in the continental US
have their own tribal nations. They have their own governments
that make decisions for them, and they have their own
laws and all that um and there's it's just never
been passed. There's I don't think there's quite enough support
(46:28):
for it or what the hold up is, but it's
still languishing right now. I haven't been. I gotta go
at some point. Oh dude, I would like to live
there one day. Yeah. That's good. A place where you
you and you meet to retire. It's a it's amazing.
So uh and maybe I'll meet up with Kanaka Kai,
the Hawaiian hillbilly while we're there. I think with your
(46:49):
magnum obsession, you were destined to just while away with
a coconut with a straw on it in your hand.
Who do I have to kill the cu to refill
his coconut? I used to be somebody. How do you
think I got this rainbow helicopter? That's right, oh man,
I've been to the Magnum house before you metok me,
(47:10):
does not surprise me, it's neat Um. Well have you
got anything else about the overthrow of Hawaii? Well, if
you wanted more about the overthrow Hawaii, there's a lot
more out there. It's pretty interesting story in Hawaiian culture
is pretty interesting too, now that we dug into it.
And since I said that it's time for a listener mail,
I'm gonna call this anvils. And by the way, this
(47:33):
um this is from Nolan. Nolan did not point this out,
but we heard from many people who said that the
Smithy was not the Blacksmith, but the place, uh their
workshop is called the Smithy and I can't know that smithy,
Like that's the Blacksmith. Yeah, that's what I thought. I
think they're the smith Okay, not the Smith's. That's Morrissee
(47:53):
and Johnny morn Company. That's right. Hey, guys, love the
episode on Blacksmith thing. I've been to Blacksmith since I
was nineteen when I bought my first anvil. I started
listening stuff you should Know during grad school and my
anvil was sadly packed away. I had no time to
use it, but thankfully it isn't on the shelf any longer,
and I found myself sitting next to it while listening
to your episode. Uh. Seems silly, but these things have
(48:13):
a real personality to them. They're like old friends. I
met mine close to a decade ago, and it's a
one dash, zero dash, sixteen and twenty eight pound Peter Wright.
That means something to Smithy's. I was impressed by the
Peter right. Yeah, he's He's a legendary anvil list Smithie.
(48:34):
So Uh. One thing on the show I thought I
mentioned is about anvil's Josh said, you want to attach
the anvil to a stump to disperse the hammer strike
to the earth, which is partially which is partially correct,
but missed one beautiful thing about a good anvil, which
is it's rebound. Uh. An anvil's quality can be measured
by the rebound. This is how much force pushes back
(48:54):
at you when you strike. Because this is a good anvil.
I'm sorry because of this, a good anvil hits back
when you strike it, and a good blacksmith uses this
to effectively forge both sides of a workpiece at the
same time. I also one thing I also saw somebody
else right in to say that that helps you um
and swinging a ten pound hammer like like working the
(49:17):
rebound to your advantage to totally. He said, you can
tell if you have a good anvil by the rebound
by dropping a ball bearing on it or lightly dropping
a hammerhead and seeing how high it bounces. A dead
anvil will have no bounce and only gives a soft thud.
A good anvil bounces back a lot and leaves a
ringing in the air. And this is actually where the
(49:38):
phrase has a nice ring to it comes from. Oh
really about that? I love that stuff. It was a
blacksmith in phrase. So great job, guys, as always keep
it up. I always love tuning into these shows. Can't
wait hear more. And that is Nolan. Thanks Toland, you
really quenched our thirst for etymology big time. Appreciate Nolan,
(49:58):
Appreciate everybody, all of the smiths who wrote in to
let us know all the stuff we got wrong, but
also say, hey, you generally got it right. So in
Farriors we heard from farriers. Yeah, tons of farriers out there,
So we appreciate all of you and we're fascinated by
the work you do. If you want to get in
touch with us, you can send us an email. Send
it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
(50:24):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios.
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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