Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands

by Charles Nordhoff

In fact they have died out pretty fast, though there is reason to believe that the mortality rate has largely decreased in the last three years; and careful observers believe even that in the last year there has been an actual increase, rather than a decrease in the native and half caste population. In 1832 the Islands had a population of 130,315 souls; in 1836 there were but 108,579; in 1840, only 84,165, of whom 1962 were foreigners; in 1850, 69,800, of whom 3216 were foreigners; and in 1860, 62,959, of whom 4194 were foreigners. The native population has decreased over sixty per cent. in forty years.

In the same period the foreigners have increased very slowly, until there are now in all 5366 foreigners and persons born here, but of foreign parentage, on the Islands. You will see that while the Hawaiians have so rapidly decreased that all over the Islands you notice, in waste fields and desolate house places, the marks of this loss, foreigners have not been attracted to fill up their places. And this in spite of the facts that the climate is mild and healthful, the price of living cheap, the Government liberal, the taxes low, and life and property as secure as in any part of the world. One would think that a country which offers all these advantages must be a paradise for poor men; and I do not wonder that in the United States there is frequent talk of "annexing the Islands." But, in fact, they offer no advantages, aside from those I have named, to white settlers, and they have such serious natural disabilities as will always—or, at least, for the next two or three millions of years—repel our American people, and all other white settlers.

In the first place, there is very little of what we call agricultural land on the Islands. They are only mountains rising from the sea, with extremely little alluvial bottom, and that usually cut up by torrents, and water-washed into gulches, until it is difficult in many parts to find a fair field of even fifty acres. From these narrow bottoms, where they exist, you look into deep gorges or valleys, out of which issue the streams which force their way through the lower fields into the sea. These valleys are never extensive, and are always very much broken and contracted. They are useless for common agricultural purposes. In several the culture of coffee has been begun; but they are so inaccessible, the roads into them are so difficult, and the area of arable soil they contain is, after all, so insignificant, that, even for so valuable a product as coffee, transportation is found to be costly.

But it is along and in the streams which rush through the bottoms of these narrow gorges that the Hawaiian is most at home. Go into any of these valleys, and you will see a surprising sight: along the whole narrow bottom, and climbing often in terraces the steep hill-sides, you will see the little taro patches, skillfully laid so as to catch the water, either directly from the main stream, or from canals taking water out above.

Such a taro patch oftenest contains a sixteenth, less frequently an eighth of an acre. It consists of soil painfully brought down from above, and secured by means of substantial stone walls, plastered with mud and covered with grass, strong enough to resist the force of the torrent. Each little patch or flat is so laid that a part of the stream shall flow over it without carrying away the soil; indeed, it is expected to leave some sediment. And as you look up such a valley you see terrace after terrace of taro rising before you, the patches often fifty or sixty feet above the brawling stream, but each receiving its proper proportion of water.

Near by or among these small holdings stand the grass houses of the proprietors, and you may see them and their wives, their clothing tucked up, standing over their knees in water, planting or cultivating the crop. Here the Hawaiian is at home. His horse finds its scanty living on the grass which fringes the taro patches; indeed, you may see horses here standing belly deep in fresh water, and feeding on the grasses which grow on the bottom; and again you find horses raised in the drier parts of the islands that do not know what water is, never having drunk any thing wetter than the dew on the grass. Among the taro patches the house place is as narrow as a fishing schooner's deck—"two steps and overboard." If you want to walk, it must be on the dikes within which the taro land is confined; and if you ride, it must be in the middle of the rapid mountain torrent, or along a narrow bridle-path high up on the precipitous side of the mountain.

Down near the shore are fish ponds, with wicker gates which admit the small fry from the sea, but keep in the large fish. Many of these ponds are hundreds of acres in area, and from them the Hawaiian draws one of his favorite dishes. Then there may be cocoa-nuts; there are sure to be bananas and guavas. Beef costs but a trifle, and hogs fatten on taro. The pandanus furnishes him material for his mats, and of mats he makes his bed, as well as the floor of his house.

In short, such a gorge or valley as I have tried to describe to you furnishes in its various parts, including the sea-shore, all that is needed to make the Hawaiian prosperous; and I have not seen one which had not its neatly kept school-house and church, and half a dozen framed houses scattered among the humbler grass huts, to mark the greater wealth of some—for the Hawaiian holds that the wooden house is a mark of thrift and respectability.

But the same valley which now supports twenty or thirty native families in comfort and happiness, and which, no doubt, once yielded food and all the appliances of life in abundance to one or two hundred, would not tempt any white man of any nation in the world to live in it, and a thousand such gorges would not add materially to the prosperity of any white nation. That is to say, the country is admirably adapted to its native people. It favors, as it doubtless compelled and formed, all their habits and customs. But it would repel any one else, and an American farmer would not give a hundred dollars for the whole Wailuku Valley—if he had to live in it and work it—though it would be worth many thousands to the natives if it were once more populous as of old.

As you examine the works of the old Hawaiians, their fish ponds, their irrigation canals, their long miles of walls inclosing ponds and taro fields, you will not only see the proofs that the Islands were formerly far more populous than now, but you will get a respect for the feudal system of which these works are the remains.