What’s in a consonant? How missionaries changed Hawaiian

 The language Hawaiians speak today is not their ancestors’ ‘ōlelo 

© Copyright Stephen Shender 2025

Thanks to “Chief of War,” Jason Momoa’s nine-part series streaming on Apple TV+, a wide viewing audience is learning about the Hawaiian Islands’ unification and the founding of the Kingdom of Hawaii for the first time, notably from the Hawaiians’ point of view and in their language. But the series’ Hawaiian characters are not speaking the ‘ōlelo (Hawaiian language) of Hawaiians in the late-18th century, when “Chief of War” takes place.

Hawaiians had a rich oral tradition but no written language prior to 1820, when the first Congregationalist missionaries arrived from Massachusetts. After gaining fluency in Hawaiian and converting influential chiefs and chiefesses to their brand of Protestantism, the missionaries set out to spread the Word to the up-to-then unlettered masses by teaching them to read it in their own language. To this end, the missionaries embarked on a six-year project to develop a Hawaiian-language lexicon for a Hawaiian-language Bible.

They quickly ran into a problem, however. The Hawaiians’ spoken language was too complex for the written language the missionaries wanted to create. First off, the Hawaiians used too many interchangeable and potentially confusing consonants—B and P; L, R, and D; K, T, and D; W and V.

For example, consider the last pair of consonants, W and V. As the missionaries presumably heard them say it, Hawaiians interchanged “v” for “w” in “Hawaii,” pronouncing it “ha-vy-ee," which they still do. Meanwhile, the missionaries would have heard Hawaiian word for woman pronounced as wahine, which does not rhyme with “machine.” Oops, Hawaiian vowels are pesky. The “i” is pronounced “ee” and instead of being silent, the final “e” is pronounced “eh.” And wahine is pronounced wah-hee-neh.

If they’d come up with their own written lexicon, the Hawaiians likely would’ve kept and interchanged the  “v” and “w.” Moreover, the old Hawaiians actually pronounced “Hawaii” “oh-vy-ee.” The consonant-loving missionaries were loath to start any word with a vowel, thus “o” had to go.

To simplify their Hawaiian-language lexicon, and perhaps to reduce the printing costs of Hawaiian Bibles, the missionaries dropped the interchangeable consonants B, R, D, and V, leaving the Hawaiians with P, L, K, and W. Hawaiian as the missionaries wrote it and 19th-century Hawaiians learned to read and write it—becoming the world’s most literate people at the time—is the Hawaiian we mostly hear today.

The British naval explorer Capt. James Cook, who “discovered” (stumbled across) the Hawaiian Islands in 1778-79, heard Hawaiian and wrote it in his journals as Hawaiians spoke it. For example, Cook wrote of a Hawaiian ruler named “Terryaboo” (Teh-ree-ya-boo), and a subchief named “Tamahamaha” (Ta-mah-hah-mah-ha). In the missionaries’ lexicon, “t” becomes “k” and “r” becomes “l”, “Terryaboo” becomes Kalani‘ōpu‘u (Kah-lah-nee-oh-pu-u), and “Tamahamaha” becomes Kamehameha (Ka-meh-ha-meh-ha). Kamehameha is, of course, the Hawaiian who united the Hawaiian Islands and became the Islands’ first king; Kalani‘ōpu‘u was his uncle and ruler of the Big Island when Cook arrived. Turns out, Cook got Hawaiians’ names right—to a T.

I was deep into the first draft of Once There Was Fire, my novel about the life of Kamehameha and the unification of the Hawaiian Islands, before I learned from a park ranger at the Big Island’s Pu‘uhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park that missionaries had altered the Hawaiians’ language. (Hōnaunau is a must-see stop on any Big Island historical tour.) I approached the ranger, told him about my novel, and asked him if I needed to change all the characters’ names. To my relief he assured me that today’s Hawaiian is what it is and not to worry about it.

That said, I’ll leave off with one caveat for viewers of “Chief of War”: The true (pre-missionary) name of the series’ hero wasn’t Ka‘iana; it was Ta‘iana.

Postscript: What’s in a name?

If you’re wondering why the Hawaiians are called “Hawaiians,” speak “Hawaiian,” or why their island chain is named the “Hawaiian Islands,” or America’s 50th state is called “Hawaii,” look for the answer to Kamehameha (AKA, The Conqueror), who united the islands. Kamehameha was born on the island of Hawai‘i (the Big Island) and began his successful campaign to unify (subjugate) all the other islands there. If Kamehameha had hailed from Maui, or if his fiercest enemy—Kahekili, the ruler of Maui—had conquered all the islands instead of  Kamehameha, the chain would likely be identified on today’s maps as the “Maui Islands,” the islanders would be “Mauians,” and their language would be “Mauian.”

Before the Hawaiian Islands were called the Hawaiian Islands, they were known as the “Sandwich Islands,” thanks to their aforesaid “discoverer,” Captain Cook. Cook named the islands after his patron, the Earl of Sandwich, an English nobleman who had the brilliant idea of slapping a piece of meat between two slices of bread. Hawaiians called their islands the Sandwich Islands until 1840, when the preamble to the Kingdom’s first constitution referred to the archipelago as the Hawaiian Islands. And they’ve been the Hawaiian Islands ever since.

“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.