What's up with Chief of War?

I'll be posting about this limited series about the fight to unify the Hawaiian Islands, premiering on August 1, with an eye on its historical accuracy. 

For starters, here are couple of historical "issues," based on what we know about "Chief of War" to date:

First, the By choosing the war chief Ka'iana (played by Jason Momoa) as the series' hero and main character, Momoa and his series co-writer Thomas Pa'a Sibbett have turned history upside down. Ka'iana did not lead the fight to unify the Islands; Kamehameha did. Ka'iana was an instrumental ally of Kamehameha's, but ultimately a disloyal one. Ka'iana's story is a sidebar to the much grander story of Kamehameha's struggle to first unify the island of his birth, Hawai'i Island (the Big Island), and then extend his rule to the rest of the Hawaiian archipelago.

Second, Apple TV+ initially teased "Chief of War" as the story of a "bloody campaign" to unify the Hawaiian Islands in the face of an "imminent threat of colonization." "Chief of War's" publicists rephrased the Islands' peril as an undefined "existential threat." But the "colonization" angle stuck and has become widespread on the internet. A Google search for "Chief of War colonization" quickly turns up more than a dozen such characterizations of the series' storyline. 

In fact, Hawaiians were not threatened with colonization in the late 18th century, when the events of "Chief of War" take place. Increasing numbers of mostly white foreigners, haole, visited Hawaii in the years after Capt. James Cook "discovered" the Islands in 1778-79. But they came as explorers, adventurers, and traders; not colonizers.

Moreover, still isolated from world events near the end of the 18th century, Hawaiians wouldn't have known about European nations' colonization of indigenous peoples halfway around the world, in Africa and on the Indian subcontinent. (Nor would they have known of white Americans' ongoing forcible displacement of native Americans.) 

 

To suggest that the fight to unify the Hawaiian Islands was about staving off threatened colonization is a reflection of a 20th-21st century haole point of view, and not 18th century Hawaiians' point of view.  

"Chief of War's" creators are touting it as a story told from the Hawaiians' viewpoint. It won't be, not entirely, if the word "colonization" comes out of any of its Hawaiian characters' mouths. 

Missing Persons

I have called Once There Was Fire, my historical novel about Kamehameha the Great, who founded the Kingdom of Hawaii, "the story of old Hawaii James Michener never told." Michener's 1,095-page book, Hawaii (Dial Press paperback), is the novel about Hawaii most familiar to U.S. mainland readers. First published in 1959, the novel is still in wide circulation and may be the single-most influential fictional work where U.S. mainlanders' understanding of Hawaiian history is concerned.
Michener's historical sweep is majestic. After recounting the islands' violent emergence from the ocean floor--over millions of years--and their slow, steady population over millions more by migrating seabirds, fish, coral, insects, and plants, Michener turns to the arrival of the first people from distant Bora Bora sometime in the 9th century. He portrays these first immigrants as heroic figures--as indeed they are, having braved thousands of miles of empty ocean with no assurance of finding land. Michener's story then jumps 1,000 years into the future, to 1820 and the arrival of the Congregationalist missionaries from New England. By this time, Kamehameha has founded his kingdom and been dead for the better part of a year.

I don't fault Michener for skipping over Kamehameha's story. He would have needed at least another 500 pages to do it justice. (It took me 562 pages.) Michener set out to tell the story of a latter-day Hawaii, where the descendants of the immigrants from New England, China and Japan who arrived in the 19th century were merging into a multi-ethnic gene pool by time his story comes to a close a century later.

Surprisingly, native Hawaiians barely register in Michener's book. And when they do, they appear as cartoon-like, tragicomic foils for Michener's other characters. One of the first of these Hawaiian characters to enter Michener's narrative--at the time of the first missionaries' arrival in 1820--is named Malama, who is the islands' ali'i nui, or high chiefess. Michener describes Malama as an "enormous woman", six feet four inches tall, whose "massive forearms were larger than the bodies of many men, while her gigantic middle, swathed in many layers of richly patterned tapa seemed more like the trunk of some forest titan than of a human being."

Michener most likely based Malama on Ka'ahumanu, who was the most important of Kamehameha's more-than-20 partners, and who ruled the Hawaiian kingdom in tandem with Kamehameha's  son, Liholiho (King Kamehameha II), when the missionaries landed there. The Hawaiian nobles--the ali'i--were big people, and by all accounts, Ka'ahumanu was a huge woman, weighing hundreds of pounds. She was famous for pulling the much smaller missionary wives into her enormous lap. But that is where the resemblance ends.

In Michener's telling, the missionaries encounter Malama at Lahaina, on Maui, where they make their first landfall. In fact, the first Congregationalist missionaries arrived at Kailua, on the Big Island, where Ka'ahumanu and Liholiho (who never appears in Michener's story) were then in residence. This is a minor quibble, compared to Michener's portrayal of Malama/Ka'ahumanu.

Malama greets the missionaries aboard their ship at Lahaina after the crew raises her from the dock to the deck in a "giant" canvas sling, like a massive piece of cargo. Michener describes the scene:

"... slowly, the gigantic Ali'i Nui was swung aboard the Thetis. As her big dark eyes, ablaze with childish curiosity, reached the top of the railing, while her chin rested on the edge of the canvas and her body sprawled happily behind, she waved her right hand in a grand gesture of welcome and allowed her handsome features to break into a contented smile."

Contrast Michener's description of Malama/Ka'ahumanu with the description of the real-life Ka'ahumanu  by the 19th-century Hawaiian historian Samuel Kamakau (1815-1876):

"Ka'ahumanu was the most beautiful woman in Hawaii in those days .... A handsome woman, six feet tall, straight and well-formed was Ka'ahumanu, without blemish and comely. Her arms were like the inside of a banana stalk, her fingers tapering ... graceful in repose, her cheeks long in shape and pink as the bud of a banana stem ... her nose narrow and straight, in admirable proportion to her cheeks; her arched eyebrows shaped to the breadth of her forehead ..."

Writing in the mid-19th century, Kamakau described a woman whom he had in all probability seen as a youth (Ka'ahumanu died in 1832). Michener, writing in the 1950s, perpetuated a disdainful, mid-20th century stereotype of native Hawaiians.

Michener does a disservice to the kingdom Kamehameha founded, summarily writing off all the Hawaiian monarchs who followed him over the next 74 years as "corrupt." Hawaii's monarchs were no saints, for sure. Nevertheless, they did their best to negotiate their people's passage from a preliterate feudal society to a modern, 19th-century nation. This, while their people were beset by ever-growing haole encroachment and decimated by European diseases to which they had no immunities. The Hawaiians of the 19th century were remarkable people. With their leaders' encouragement, they took to the formal education the missionaries proffered like fish to water, establishing a public school system and implementing universal education by the 1840s. Learning first to read and write in Hawaiian, they achieved the world's highest literacy rate within a single generation.  By the 1840s, they had also transformed Kamehameha's feudal kingdom into a constitutional monarchy.

Eager to join the family of 19th-century western nations, Hawaii's monarchs welcomed newcomers from America, Britain, and Continental Europe, embraced them as fellow citizens, and installed them in the highest councils of their new government. In other words, they did their damnedest to adapt, but by the 19th century's end, the Hawaiian monarchs could no longer withstand the political forces they had unleashed by welcoming and assimilating of so many haole immigrants. It certainly didn't help matters that by that time, diseases like measles, mumps, and chicken pox had reduced Hawaii's native population to a few tens of thousands of people. In fact, if haole diseases had not carried away so many Hawaiians during the 19th century, 20th century Hawaii might have looked very different--and so would Michener's novel.

Finding a narrative voice

My true birth name is Nāmākeha‘okalani—no more and no less. But since 1840, when the legislature required our people to use two names, including a “Christian” name in the manner of the haoles, I have gone by “Benjamin” Nāmākeha‘okalani. It is no matter. What matters is that I am ali‘i; noble blood runs through my veins.
Once There Was Fire, copyright 2016 Stephen R. Shender

When I began writing Once There Was Fire, I wanted to tell the story of Kamehameha's rise to power from a Hawaiian's perspective. For that, I needed a contemporary of Kamehameha's to tell the story. I found one in Benjamin Nāmākeha‘okalani, whom I came across in a genealogy of Big Island ali‘i posted on Ancestry.com. Benjamin was identified in the posting as the son of Kamehameha’s favorite brother. As a nephew of the great Kamehameha, he seemed the ideal candidate for the job -- especially since the real Benjamin (or Bennett) Nāmākeha‘okalani -- who in all probability was not Kamehameha's nephew -- lived until 1859 and would have been familiar with important events that followed Kamehameha's death in 1819.

Choosing Benjamin as Once There Was Fire's narrator was a beginning. But identifying him and his bona fides was not enough. Benjamin would have to embody a Hawaiian sensibility peculiar to his era, and more specifically, the sensibility of an ali'i (Hawaiian noble) of his time. And this required more of him than telling the reader that this or that happened or so-and-so said this or did that. Benjamin would have to sound like a Hawaiian noble of his time. Moreover, because he was telling his story in English from the later perspective of the mid 19th-century, Benjamin would have to sound like an educated ali'i of that time.

As it happened, by the time I found Benjamin, I had already discovered a book that was one of my first and perhaps most influential acquisitions in an ever-lengthening list of Hawaiiana that now numbers more than 25 volumes -- Ruling Chiefs of Hawaii, by S.M. Kamakau (Kamehameha Schools Press, 1992). Kamakau (1815-1876) was 19th century Hawaii's foremost native historian. His work initially appeared as a series of Hawaiian-language newspaper articles that were translated into English 85 years after Kamakau's death. First published in 1961, Ruling Chiefs was compiled from excerpts drawn from Kamakau's newspaper columns. The style of those Hawaiian-language columns has been described as "florid." Translated into "readable," mid-20th century English, Kamakau's writing still comes across as a voice from another time, as in the following passage:

It was during the time of warfare among the chiefs of Hawaii which followed the death of Keawe, chief over the whole island that Kamehameha I was born. Moku was the ruling chief of Hilo, Hamakua, and a part of Puna; Ke'e-au-moku of Kona and Kohala. Alapa'i-nui, son of Ka-uana, was living at the time on Maui .... When Alapa'i heard that the chiefs were stirring up trouble, he went to war on Hawaii against these chiefs, was victorious in battle against them, slew them, and united the island under his own rule.

If Benjamin's narrative sounds somewhat stilted to the modern ear, it's because he's channeling the voice of S.M. Kamakau -- further streamlined for a 21st century readership.

The tangled ali'i web

With his acceptance into Alapa‘i’s household, Kamehameha plunged into a tangled ancestral web woven of generations of “marital” unions and less formal partnerships of both political convenience and amorous opportunity. Genealogy was of paramount importance among the ali‘i, and it was Naeole’s responsibility to tutor the boy about his forebears.
 
“The first thing you must understand, Kameha,” Naeole instructed one day, “is that your great-grandfather was Keawe, who was mō’ī of all Hawai‘i, and one of our greatest rulers.”
Once There Was Fire, A Novel of Old Hawaii, Copyright 2016, Stephen R. Shender

One of the first things I had to understand before I could begin writing my epic Hawaiian historical novel was who the hell was related to whom. Given the obsession of the ali'i -- the Hawaiian nobility -- with consanguinity, this was no easy task. The ali'i believed that the closeness of parents' bloodlines determined the strength their children's mana, or spiritual power. The more closely two people were related, the greater power their offspring would have. Social ranking among the Hawaiian nobility depended on the presumed strength of their mana, which was derived from their bloodlines' purity. Thus among the ali'i, it was acceptable -- preferable in fact -- for brothers to pair with sisters, for half-siblings to partner with each other, first cousins with first cousins, and so on. The ali'i's widespread practice of polygamy, combined with their laissez faire attitude toward affairs of the heart -- or just pure lust -- gave their descendants ample opportunity for such pairings.

For example, look at the top line (first generation) of the genealogical chart accompanying this post. (I spent a ridiculous amount of time working out all this stuff, by the way.) You'll see that Keawe, Kamehameha's great-great grandfather, and king of the Big Island of Hawai'i, took three wives (he probably took more, actually), and had children by all of them. Moreover, at least one of his wives had children by another ali'i. Trace the various lineages to down to the second generation on the next line and you'll find Keawe's sons pairing up with their half-sisters (or vice-versa; Hawaiian women had equal say in such matters in those days). You'll also find half-brothers sharing partners, producing more complexity, and confusion for later genealogists, by the third generation. And this complexity continues to cascade and further complexify -- okay, that's not a real word, but it packs a nice punch -- in succeeding generations. Believe me, it's easy to get lost in this thicket. I did more than once.

By now, you're justified in wondering: What was the point of this exercise? For me as a storyteller, the point was the black lines I drew linking so many of these Big Island ali'i in successive generations to Keawe. And this seemed important to me as a writer, at least, because of the poignancy it lent to the often-violent conflicts between my characters, who were all related. I also thought at first that an understanding of all these family connections would make the story more interesting for readers. So I spilled a lot of virtual ink explaining them in the book. I had originally intended to include the chart in the novel, as a visual aid to readers, but there was no way to make it fit properly in a 6x9 trade paperback, so I scrapped that idea. Later, I hired an editor who persuaded me that I should scrap most of the narrative's genealogical details as well because they were just gumming up the story. So I cut out nearly all the mentions of most of the main characters' progenitors.

Readers who find that the old Hawaiians' multi-polysyllabic names make their heads spin owe my editor a debt of gratitude for that.

Why I wrote Once There Was Fire

"Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it."
-- Russell Lynes (1910-1991), managing editor, Harper's Magazine

I have never blogged before, but—like sex or writing novels—there’s a first time for everything, and since conventional wisdom dictates that all struggling, self-promoting authors should have blogs, and since I’m struggling to promote myself, here goes:

Imagine this blog post as the beginning of a book talk I might give someday at an independent bookstore near you. Imagine also that this nearby independent bookstore is somewhere in Hawaii, which would mean you’d be living in Hawaii and what could be better than that? Can you hear the pounding surf yet?

Where to start? How I came to write Once There Was Fire seems as good a place as any.

As a longtime writing professional (newspaper reporter, speechwriter, marketing-communications writer), I always admired writers who had the discipline and persistence to author books, and especially novels. However, contrary to Russell Lynes’ assertion (above), I never found my inner novel during my thirty-year career—which presumably would have been a relief to the late Mr. Lynes. It wasn’t for lack of trying. I did make a couple of fitful starts on novels over the years, but I wasn’t much good at inventing and sustaining characters, and my plot lines and quickly ran out of gas.

In the summer of 2004 during a weeklong trip to the Big Island of Hawai‘i, the sweeping epic of Kamehameha’s rise to power found me, gripped me by the collar, and would not let me go. Initially, it was just a tug—a brief history of 18th Century Hawaii that I came across in a popular tourist guide. Kamehameha’s name was already familiar to me, but like most mainland haoles, knew little about him. I knew even less about the old Hawaiians’ culture. I soon discovered that Kamehameha’s story had everything a wannabe novelist could want—strong, colorful characters; intrigue; violent conflict, lots of it; clashing cultures; and sex, potentially plenty of sex. Most importantly for me, being historical, Kamehameha’s story had a dramatic beginning, an exciting middle, and a poignant end—elements I had never been able to master or manage on my own.

The begged question was whether another writer had already plowed this literary ground. The saga of Kamehameha’s life was so dramatic that I was sure some author must have already turned it into a novel. I’d never read James Michener’s Hawaii. Surely I thought, Michener must have included Kamehameha’s story in his thousand-page novel. I discovered that he had not. Hawaii begins with the arrival of the first Congregationalist missionaries in 1820, about a year after Kamehameha’s death. Kamehameha figures in Michener’s novel only in passing and only in the narrator’s rear-view mirror. The story of Kamehameha was one that Michener did not tell. Except for a single biography and some novels written for children and young adults, it was there for the taking. I knew I had to tell it.

To be continued …