“Chief of War” takes promiscuous historical liberties in first episodes

 © Copyright Stephen Shender 2025

 (Spoiler alert: You may not want to read this blog post if you haven’t watched the series yet.)

 Anyone familiar with Hawaiian history and hoping to see it well portrayed, however dramatically adapted, is likely to be disappointed by the first two episodes of “Chief of War,” Jason Momoa’s nine-episode series on Apple TV+.   

 Fiction

Episode one finds Ka‘iana, having deserted Kahekili’s army on Maui in disgust over the latter’s bloodlust, living peacefully as a simple, shark-roping fisherman on Kaua‘i. 

Requiring Ka‘iana’s continued service in his quest to conquer O‘ahu, Kahekili sends his warriors to find him and summon him back by the following morning, or else. After somehow crossing 230 to 250 miles of ocean between Kaua‘i and Maui overnight in a sail canoe, Ka‘iana agrees to fight for Kahekili again. Returning to O‘ahu with a fleet, he spearheads a successful invasion amid graphic and copious bloodshed and many bared male butt cheeks. Kahekili arrives in time to gratuitously order the slaughter of unarmed civilians and O‘ahu’s boy king, who are sheltering in a holy place of refuge (a pu‘uhonua in Hawaiian). Ka‘iana is filled with disgust anew. At night, he and his family steal away, this time to Maui.

In episode two, Kahekili’s warriors pursue Ka‘iana to Maui. Ka‘iana hides his family in Maui’s ’Iao Valley and takes off, leading a score of pursuers away from them.

Meanwhile, a group of haole come ashore from their ship to gather provisions for their continued voyage to China. One of Kahekili’s men crosses paths with a crewman, kills him and takes his pistol. Ka‘iana comes upon this fellow, kills him, takes the pistol and, encountering the other haole seamen in the bush, returns the pistol to them, earning their good will.

Ka‘iana continues his flight and is injured in a melee when Kahekili’s warriors overtake him, but he manages crawl away and hide in a cave where he’s subsequently found and nursed back to health by the ali‘i princess Ka‘ahumanu, meeting him for the first time.  

Ka‘ahumanu and Ka‘iana part ways, Ka‘ahumanu to travel to the nearby Big Island where she’s been betrothed by her father to an unnamed chief, against her will, and Ka‘iana to continue leading Kahekili’s warriors away from the ’Iao Valley.

This time Kahekili’s warriors corner Ka‘iana at the edge of steep cliff at the ocean’s edge and in the ensuing fight he disappears over the side with one of his attackers. Ka‘ahumanu and her entourage are about to depart for the Big Island in their double-hulled sail canoe when a crewman from the haole ship staggers up the beach crying he’s lost. Ka‘ahumanu orders her people to take the bedraggled haole with them. Meanwhile Ka‘iana wakes up aboard the haole ship and is last seen staring at Maui as it recedes in the ship’s wake.

Facts

None of the 19th-century Hawaiian sources on which I relied while researching Once There Was Fire, my novel about the life of Hawaii’s Kamehameha, mentioned a connection between Ka‘iana and Kahekili on Maui prior to their alliance on O‘ahu. The pair could have been together on Maui before moving on to O‘ahu. But everything else about Ka‘iana’s whereabouts in “Chief of War’s” first episode is sheer bunkum. 

As detailed in a previous blog post: Ka‘iana fled from O‘ahu to Kaua‘i after picking the wrong side in a rebellion against Kahekili. After Ka‘iana irritated Kaua‘i’s queen-consort, he left Kaua‘i on the Nootka, a British ship captained by John Meares and bound for China. “Chief of War’s” misplacement of Ka‘iana in episode one leads to some serious historical problems in episode two.

In episode two Ka‘ahumanu’s encounter with Ka'iana in a cave on Maui couldn’t have happened because Ka‘iana wasn’t there. Moreover, Ka‘ahumanu was more likely on the Big Island with her mother and father. Ka'iana met Ka‘ahumanu on the Big Island after he’d returned from China several years later, when she was already one of Kamehameha’s wives.

Captain Meares did not fish Ka'iana out of the sea after he fell off a cliff on Maui because neither of them were there. Ka‘iana boarded Meares’s ship under his own power at Kaua'i, where the Nootka had stopped for provisioning.

Meanwhile, who was that lost haole sailor whom Ka'ahumanu took aboard her sail canoe as she left Maui (where she probably wasn’t in the first place) for the Big Island? My bet's on John Young an English seaman who fell into Kamehameha’s hands about the time of Ka‘iana’s return from China. If confirmed in a later episode of “Chief of War,” that’s a historical mashup three or four times over: Ka'ahumanu wasn't on Maui, and John Young did not get left behind on Maui by the Nootka (Meare's ship), because (1) the Nootka stopped at Kaua'i, not Maui, and (2) because Young was left behind on the Big Island, not Maui, by a different vessel, the Eleanora captained by a nasty haole named Simon Metcalfe.

What a tangled history we weave when first we screw up who was where when!

Ka‘iana, the inconsistent hero of “Chief of War”

© Copyright Stephen Shender 2025

“Chief of War” producer/writer/actor Jason Momoa’s upcoming nine-episode historical drama about the late 18^th century struggle to unify Hawaiian Islands (premiering on Apple TV+ August 1) will mark this story’s first introduction to a wide viewing audience. Even if they’re unfamiliar with Hawaiian history, casual visitors to Hawaii likely already know the name of Kamehameha, the warrior chieftain who led the fight to unite the Islands, from the Hawaiian highways and roads named after him. But there are no roads named after “Chief of War’s” hero, Ka‘iana, whose portrayal by Momoa as a leader of the fight to unify the Islands will leave a lasting impression on the series’ audience. Momoa’s Ka‘iana will no doubt come off as a heroic.

 Ka‘iana is an important figure in Hawaii’s unification story and a colorful character in Once There Was Fire, my historical novel about the life of Kamehameha and his unification of the Hawaiian Islands. He fought bravely alongside Kamehameha in battles on the Big Island and Maui. Ka‘iana became the “most famous” Hawaiian of his day, thanks to portraits of him that circulated widely in the world beyond the Hawaiian Islands.

 I drew on stories about Ka‘iana from multiple sources when I was researching and writing my novel and found him to be more an opportunist than a hero. In the sources I consulted he comes off as a conniver whose most consistent loyalty was to himself.

I’ve already sketched the broad outlines of Ka‘iana’s story elsewhere: He sided with Kamehameha’s fiercest enemy, Kahekili, before turning against him. He later sided with Kamehameha and then, on the eve of the final battle for Hawaiian unification on O‘ahu in 1795, turned against him.

There are two chapters to Ka‘iana’s story: what happened before he joined forces with Kamehameha and what happened after. In my novel, I alluded briefly to the first part and wrote extensively about the second.

The first chapter is as important to understanding Ka‘iana as the second. I wrote about it at length in the first draft of Once There Was Fire, but on my editor’s advice I reduced it to a few hundred words. The fuller story is worth exploring for its insight into  Ka‘iana’s character from the Hawaiians’ point of view.

Part I Misadventure on Kaua‘i

Having chosen the wrong side in a struggle between the O‘ahu nobles and Kahekili, the Maui ruler whom he’d earlier helped conquer O‘ahu, Ka‘iana fled for his life to Kaua‘i. Hawaii’s last king, David Kalākaua (1836-1891) tells the story of Ka‘iana’s misadventures on that island in his collection of Hawaiian lore and oral history, Legends and Myths of Hawaii (Mutual Publishing, 1990).

According to Kalākaua, Ka‘iana was welcomed on Kaua‘i by the island’s queen, Kamakahelei, and her consort, Kaeo, a cousin of Ka‘iana and one of Kahekili’s brothers. Writes Kalākaua:

“Ka‘iana was kindly received at the court at Kaua‘i and given lands for his proper maintenance. But he could not remain quiet. While the clash of arms was heard on the other islands, he chafed under the restraints of his exile and attempted to organize a force of warriors for a descent upon O‘ahu. Kaeo prevented the departure of the expedition, however, and a mutual feeling of suspicion and antagonism was soon developed between him and his reckless and restless cousin.”

Ka‘iana could have settled on Kaua‘i as a gentleman farmer and lived peacefully off the sweat of the peasant tenants who would have come with the lands he’d received for “his proper maintenance.” Instead, he tried to organize a military venture that threatened to embroil Kaeo in fight with his own brother.

Blocked by Kaeo from an attempted conquest of O‘ahu, Ka‘iana next tried to displace him as Kaua‘i’s co-ruler. Continues Kalākaua:

As the avenues of advancement through the chances of war seemed to be temporarily closed to him, Ka‘iana donned his best attire, gave entertainments and began vigorously to play the courtier. He first sought to supplant Kaeo in the affections of the queen. Failing that, he next paid court to her daughter…The latter was disposed to regard his suit with favor, but Kaeo…objected to the alliance.

Ka‘iana was fast wearing out his aloha on Kaua‘i. As his luck would have it, about this time the English navigator, explorer, and fur trader John Meares arrived at Kaua‘i. Meares’s vessel, the Nootka, reached Kaua‘i, Kalākaua writes:

…just as the fortunes of Ka‘iana seemed most desperate and Captain Meares was easily prevailed upon to permit the handsome Hawaiian to accompany him to the Asiatic Coast.

As to who “prevailed upon” Meares, surely by this point Kaeo was as eager to get rid of his troublesome cousin as the latter was to leave Kaua‘i.

Kalākaua’s grandfather was a close ally of Kamehameha. Before he became king, Kalākaua published a Hawaiian-language newspaper devoted in part to preserving his people’s oral histories in writing. As an exponent of the Hawaiians’ view of Ka‘iana, Kalākaua is as authentic as they come. And in Kalākaua’s telling, Ka‘iana comes off as a self-aggrandizing troublemaker.

Part II Schemer and troublesome ally

When Ka‘iana returned to the Hawaiian Islands from China (on a different ship) he was no longer welcome on Kaua‘i, for obvious reasons. Ka‘iana prevailed on the ship’s captain to take him to the Big Island where he offered his services—along with muskets, ammunition, and the knowledge of their use he had acquired abroad—to Kamehameha.

The year following Ka‘iana’s arrival, two English seamen, Isasc Davis and John Young, fell into Kamehameha’s hands. Davis was the lone surviving crewman of the Fair American, a ship that was attacked and captured by one of Kamehameha’s allies. Young was the boatswain of the Elenora, a sister ship that arrived some days later. He was taken prisoner by the Hawaiians when he came ashore to hunt game for his ship’s larder. This, after the locals unaccountably failed to paddle out to trade with his ship’s captain as expected, because  Kamehameha had forbidden it.

Kamehameha’s ally thought he had good reason to attack Davis’s ship, and Kamehameha thought he had good reason to bar his people from trading with Young’s ship—and to hold Young despite his desire to return to the Elenora. Kamehameha subsequently barred Young and Davis from trying to leave on any foreign ship, upon pain of death, because he feared retaliation if foreigners (haole) learned what had happened to The Fair American and its crew. (If you want to know more about these goings on, google “Fair American,” “Elenora,” “John Young,” “Isaac Davis,” or “Simon Metcalfe.” Or better yet, read my book.)

Young and Davis settled into life on the Big Island, rendering valuable services to Kamehameha, who treated them well. But the pair did not entirely abandon their desire to leave, given an opportunity to do so. About a year after their arrival, they got their chance.

James Colnett, the captain of a newly arrived haole ship, learned that two Englishmen were being held by Kamehameha and sent them a note offering to aide in their escape. Young accepted the captain’s offer in a note of his own, entrusting a Hawaiian to deliver the note to the ship. But the ship’s captain never got it, because Ka‘iana intercepted it.

Author Emmett Cahill tells what happened next in his well-researched biographical work, The Life and Times of John Young (Island Heritage Publishing, 1999). Relying on a later, second-hand account by the British explorer George Vancouver, who learned of this affair from Young, Cahill writes:

“[Ka‘iana], already jealous of the two white men, took the letter to the king [Kamehameha] and persuaded him he could read it, claiming he had learned to read during a trip to China aboard an American vessel. Ka‘iana’s version to Kamehameha was that Young and Davis ‘desired Captain Colnett to get the king in his possession and to keep him until the schooner [the Fair American] were delivered up to him and many more of the islanders.’ To avoid this trap, Ka‘iana urged the king to kill Young and Davis, ‘after which … no one would know any thing about them but themselves.’”

Young’s note was in English. Ka‘iana had learned to speak English during his travels abord haole ships, but he could not read it.

Having received no reply from Colnett, Young and Davis set off for the shore but were quickly surrounded by Hawaiians and taken to Kamehameha. If Ka‘iana was counting on Kamehameha executing Young and Davis for trying to leave, he was sorely disappointed. Instead, writes Cahill, quoting Vancouver, who was paraphrasing Young: 

“[Kamehameha] very dispassionately advised them to return from whence they had come; and said, that he would do anything they could wish to render their lives more comfortable, but he would not consent that they should leave the island.”

Young and Davis never again sought to leave Hawaii. True to his word, Kamehameha rewarded both men with lands and positions of trust among his advisers. They served him loyally for the rest of his and their lives. (Davis predeceased Kamehameha and Young outlived him. Kamehameha appointed Young, who married one of his nieces and settled at Kawaihae in the Big Island’s Kohala district, governor of the Big Island.)

For his part, Ka‘iana continued to vex Kamehameha. The object of continued discord between them was Kamehameha’s favorite partner (out of his some twenty “wives”) Ka’ahumanu.

Hawaiians had no marriage sacrament and Hawaiian men and women of Kamehameha’s time and before held liberal attitudes about sex. Men could have children with multiple women and women could have children with multiple men with little or no fault found by anyone. Hawaiian culture having no concept of “wedlock,” no Hawaiian child was ever born with the stigma of “illegitimacy.”

Kamehameha was not concerned about the “extra-marital” liaisons of his other “wives,” but he made an exception for Ka‘ahumanu, declaring her kapu (forbidden) to other men because, according to one account, his kahuna nui (high priest) told him to.

According to Stephen L. Desha, an early 20th century Hawaiian-language newspaper columnist and preservationist of Hawaiian oral history, the priest Holo‘ae told Kamehameha:

There is only one rebellion remaining in your kingdom…and that is your wife, Ka‘ahumanu. If the love of your wife turns to another ali‘i (noble) and she rebels against you, then your kingdom will become unstable…

According to the previously mentioned King David Kalākaua, politics had nothing to do with it:

[Kamehameha] loved her as well as he was capable of loving any woman, and she was the only one whose indiscretions were regarded by him with jealousy.

Whether for political reasons or reasons of the heart (or both), Kamehameha would not tolerate any other man paying court to Ka‘ahumanu.

Ka‘ahumanu was a strong-willed woman however, and unwilling to respect a kapu that was intended for men, and not her. Here’s King Kalākaua, again:

 [Ka‘ahumanu] doubtless sought to avail herself of the privileges of the time, but Kamehameha objected with a frown that would have meant death to another, and for years their relations were the reverse of harmonious.

Ka‘iana was likely the main source of the couple’s disharmony. He ignored Kamehameha’s kapu and paid too much attention (and perhaps more than that) to Ka‘ahumanu. The disharmony continued until George Vancouver, who had befriended Kamehameha and Ka‘ahumanu, prevailed on the two of them to, in effect, kiss and make up.

For Kamehameha, there would have been no forgiving Ka‘iana for his approaches to Ka‘ahumanu, but Kamehameha still had uses for the impetuous warrior, and he did not punish him. He did, however, freeze Ka‘iana out of his inner council ahead of a climactic battle on O‘ahu for control of all the islands except Kaua‘i in 1795. This—plus, no doubt, suspicions that Kamehameha’s advisers of longer standing wanted him dead—contributed to Ka‘iana’s insecurity about his status in Kamehameha’s camp and led him to defect to the losing side on the eve of the battle of O‘ahu, at the cost of his life.

Ka‘iana chose further military adventure over a comfortable life as a gentleman farmer on Kaua‘i. When his cousin, the consort of Kaua‘i’s queen, foiled his scheme to invade O ‘ahu, he tried to supplant him in the queen’s affections. When he failed in that, Ka‘iana pursued the queen’s daughter, exhausting his welcome on Kaua‘i. On the Big Island, Ka‘iana schemed against John Young and Isaac Davis, displeasing Kamehameha. He then further alienated Kamehameha by coming between Kamehameha and his kapu partner, Ka‘ahumanu. Despite all this, Ka‘iana had proven his worth to Kamehameha in earlier battles and could have again, to his advantage, on O‘ahu. But his insecurity got the better of him at the end.

Decision by decision and step by step, Ka‘iana the “chief of war” dug his own grave. 

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, 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 …