weekend documenting america's story funding for american history tv comes from these companies who support c-span 3 as a public service. next on american history tv james haley author of captive paradise a history of hawaii discusses the life of musician composer and author liliuokalani the last queen of the kingdom of hawaii mr. haley also sketches the story of modern hawaii from the arrival of captain james cook in 1778 through a us marine act overthrow and removal of the queen in 1893 and annexation of the islands in 1898 the university of mary, washington in fredericksburg, virginia hosted this 75 minute illustrated talk as part of their crawley great lives lecture series so thank you dr.

crawley for that two kind introduction. i'm delighted to be back here at mary washington. i threatened when i was here a year ago january that i might not go home. and now i know that when you do this kind of lecture, it's customary to sort of warm the audience up with a few funny stories about your and if i had known 14 months ago that i was coming back. i would not have told you you all my funny stories. so it's probably best that we just move forward with our talk about lily oil kalani. um now i am anglo. well, actually i'm partly native, but that i'm a mainland writer and so my the times that i will have to speak in hawaiian. it's thick and we will talk a bit about the hawaiian language. but the first thing i need to do is make some disclaimer of humility. because captive ice is intended

to explain the essentials of how the united states how we got hands on the place. i've never gotten such good. well, i'm used to getting good reviews, but the reviews that i got from wall street journal all the way to honolulu the magazine. we're just extraordinary really wonderful reviews. which did not prepare me for the anger in vituperation that i saw on the native independence blogs. they hated it and hated me just another -- haley trying to make you know, a bunch of money off our history. apparently they think that people write history for money which tells you something about their understanding of the publishing business. well, there was on one of these hawaii in history and culture blogs a native scholar. who said well, yeah, he's white. he shouldn't have written it. but i was curious and so i bought a copy and i read it. and it's really not bad. don't you think it would help

us? i mean, here's a mainstream american publisher and some what well known writer who agrees with us. don't you think we should be able to use this? well, she was shouted into silence within about 20 minutes. that people like me aren't supposed to poke their nose into their business now. the first thing i need to say in their defense. is that this is not. any political correctness run amok because it's not actually this combat over who gets to talk about the narrative is not new at all. in fact the very first native language history of hawaii kamaole hawaii, which is written by samuel. managamikau. i practiced. in fact when i made this research trip to hawaii, i'll tell you a little bit about that. oh a lot of their research facilities are privately owned and if they don't like you they don't have to help you but i

even memorize the name of that famous fish. it's like the longest fish name in the world the dread whom lucawa it impressed nobody. but when money ikea kamikau published his history of hawaii the reaction was furious our motelo. our story is sacred. this can only come from the kahunas from the priests. you're just telling it out there to everybody the country people in the common people. they don't have a right to know our story. and there is a little some of that i think. still today, this is it's an active war zone. let's put it that way i come from doing texas history for about 40 years and believe me of of the degree to which political correctness has seized texas history and people who are heroes for 120 years or suddenly, you know, these these drunken land-grabbing slave beating colonialists. in hawaii, it's eight times worse because we took their country.

and i understand it example, i before i i went over there i was having lunch with a professor friend of mine. ostensibly on the topic of whether i wanted to come back to his university and finish my phd in history, and he asked me how well how are you doing with the hawaii book? and i said, well, i'm not changing anything finding anything to change my opinion that the overthrow in 1893 was just a nasty piece of work. there's no defending. it was just awful. but i am also becoming really troubled. by the amount of oppression and violence against the common kanakas by their own chiefs and kings before we ever showed up. and i gave him some examples of this. and he said yes, that's very true. but of course if you write your book that way and you don't his word position the natives as victims of american racism. he said that won't help you get back into grad school.

well, i'm marinated in this for a few seconds. and i said yes. well that must be what they mean by academic freedom. so i had the opportunity to go to research and i discovered very quickly the local phenomenon known as stink eye. this is the look you get from natives who find you researching their history or otherwise nosing into their culture. in fact, there was one lady she was a docent at kilauea. my research assistant let it drop that i was writing a book. and she gave me that look. and she said well, of course she realized you're not the person who should write it. but if you insist on it the first thing you should do is submit yourself to the kupuna the elders and if they approve of you then go to the bishop museum and ask their help because they're the ones who know the story the best. and i thought well lady. i've won the spur award twice in

the farenbach award twice in the tallest prize, and i don't really submit myself to anybody. but thank you. well the next day we had lunch with an earth sciences professor who said really in hawaii today to be an anthropologist or historian and be fired from the bishop museum is a badge of honor. active war zone now having i all so thought. if there is a native research and there's a there are increasingly more and more native language resources coming to the surface that need to be explored and when somebody produces that book i will be first in line to buy it. but they've had 120 years. so i my whole take in captive paradise was to explain to a mainland audience. howleys are not how it is. we got our hands on the place. and so tonight we're going to look at the life of i can't really call her lily oil kalani before she was named that she grew up as as lydia.

we'll talk about that but in a larger sense, we're also going to talk about how her culture shaped her and how that should affect our understanding of her and the country. now i know that in a biography series. we really need to spend most of the time on the biography, but we have no hope of understanding liliuokalani without going a bit into the culture. so we just have to do some contexting here or we won't get it. so i have prepared a powerpoint now this is longer than the powerpoint that i did last year for jack lynn, and i'm going to have less than a minute on each. these slides so dr. crawley. where you sitting, where are you? okay when i start getting to 10 minutes you need to give me a sign because i've been accused many times. you stand me up to talk about history. i'll keep you here till next tuesday. and it's entirely true so modern hawaii began with kamehameha the first he was a young alii alii

is a member of the chiefly cast they were about one of the 1000 the precontact population wide estimates, but call it 400,000 and there were about 400 chiefs. he was one. and when catherine cook stopped on the west coast of the big island in calicut bay. and the king colonial puku came aboard with his retinue young kamehameha was with them looking at everybody's trading and oh look at all these interesting things they have he was checking out the cannons. understand there was no iron in hawaii a nail was worth a big pig. you know, they had no iron and he thought man if i had these weapons i could conquer the whole place. and kamehameha the name actually means the loneliness of a god and he was off there by himself thinking about how he might do this. well, he asked the kahunas the priest, how can i go about conquering the place and they said you need to build a great. hey al a temple to the war god healy moku and he built the

poohola. hey yao, which is 100 feet wide 225 feet long up to 20 feet high. the lava blocks were passed by hand from the palolu valley, which is 14 miles away. it was a luakini. hey al which means that was a place where human sacrifices were performed. i hear gasps we a lot of us are unaware that human sacrifice was part of the kapu religion, but it was in fact when captain cook got there at the in 1779. it was at the end of the monkey hiki season, which is there. they fight they war for eight months and they have four months of peace and celebration. that's called monkey. hiki and he got there at the end of that and a lot of the polynesians thought that he was the storm god lonoke the end of machihiki. they had a big ceremony and the end of it was when the priest first ate the eyeball of a tuna. and when that was done, he ate a

human eyeball from a fresh sacrifice. that's just what life was back in those days. so he builds this huge. hay out to the war god who is depicted here. these are two of the key. now. the hawaiian language is a dialect of polynesian. so when what is t in tahiti is k and hawaii. so if if this is in tahiti, these would be tikis like tiki torches. except these are our key. that's two of their images. that's what they were worshiping before. the missionaries came along now. it took him. 30 years to conquer the place. he was kind of a middling successful warrior lots of mayhem lots of butchery tens of thousands of people died some escaped including this fellow opokahiya when he got to new england, they couldn't pronounce that so they called him henry. obukia now he had seen his

family butchered in a raid by some kamehameh soldiers. he jumped into the water swim to an american ship got away went all over the world settled in, connecticut. went to yale. went to congregationalist seminary. and was imbued with the spirit of mission now, we did not send missionaries to hawaii because we're americans and that's what they do. it took him years of yelling at them if you people really believe all this jesus stuff you would send missionaries to my country and end this horror. it took, you know, i think it was seven years and they finally said, okay. okay. all right, so they opened a mission school. and he started translating the bible. and they said well, do you really know english that well who needs english. he went from hebrew to hawaii. because he said there are grammatical and structural similarities that made hebrew very easy for him. to his native language. these are smart people. well, he got typhus and died. he never got to go back to

everybody's very sorry. and so we put together a mission effort left in 1819 got there in 1920. well while he was over here studying and translating the bible. by the way when i was at the hawaii historian historical society in honolulu, i found his workbook where he actually started creating a hawaii english dictionary at the end. it was really quite moving. well while he's over here kamehameha died. and his queen kahumanu, who was the favorite of his 19 wives? she was not the great royal wife. that was calebuilani. she was the favorite recreational wife very sociable. very smart very forceful. well, she got tired of this whole kapu religion for two reasons. the first was she could see it didn't work because all the prohibitions of kapu weren't working women would be thrown off a cliff for eating a banana. so there's one punishment under kapu. that's death. well, she can say all these western sailors coming to

hawaii. they would break cop who left right and center in the volcano didn't blow up. there's no typhoons. and so this isn't working and my people they had started dying of western diseases. so if it's not working, why are we keeping this religion? also after he died she would have gone to the back of the room. she had no intention of going to the back of the room. so she ended kapu. she had the temples burnt. she had the idols pulled down. and there was a spiritual vacuum in hawaii that by the time we sent missionaries and this is hyrum and civil bingham. they were the for the of the first contingent now everybody in america thinks that we sent missionaries and they destroyed the local religion. no, they sailed into the vacuum and the hawaiians are a very spiritual people and they took very readily to christianity. in fact, there are oh there's stories i can tell you but they're there there's no time and it's too polite and audience when they discovered what a wide

open place the south the pacific they were aghast. but the hawaiians took to it. in fact this church that they built the cavalia church. it was built on a spring that belonged to a high chiefest named hotwell, so it's kavai the waters of hao the kalea hao church composed of let's see 14,000 halftime blocks of coral they were cut by hand. the bottom of honolulu harbor by the natives and built lifted up by hand. so kind of like the medieval peasants in europe who built the great cathedrals. well, remember we showed you the whole that they also built by hand so they were kind of used to this anyway, so there was this period of transition between kapu human sacrifice women getting thrown over the cliff reading a banana all that

too american congregationalist. wait, very boston ways of doing things. that is what lydia was born into. these are her birth parents. keokaloale and cesar ikea now unlike most of the elite. they actually had a bunch of children. now the story is that okay americans got there. they gave western diseases to these people and they lost their fertility. actually in the traditional hawaii and culture the best thing you could do was marry your sister and they'd been doing this for centuries. which might have something to do with their fertility anyway, that is her birth parents now she was not. raised by them because among the hawaiian ali you had a baby you gave it to a relative and they raised the kid. they had a kid they gave it to you. it's called hanai adoption. and this is where she grew up at the home of her hanai parents abner paki and konia who were very highly born. they were alienui. they were very high up. she loved this house. she always wrote very fondly of

this house. she became the hanai sister of bernice palawaki who was one of the last two kamehameha direct descendant. she and bernice were very close. we'll talk later about how they married at about the same time different people. but bernice poway is the founder of the bishop foundation museum the crown lands that wind up funding the kamehameha schools and the museum and all this. now one of lydia's, i guess i should explain her name. she was born and i know i wrote this down. this is what you get. forgive me wine at your dinner. she was born as she was baptized as lydia but in those days the kohinoui that's a very high office in the kingdom sort of like a combination of prime

minister and almost co-ruler. the kohinoui was elizabeth keene not who was the half sister the king. and she named this child lily-oo lulu. well, i have to find it. my my hawaii my my hawaii and is too clumsy. but he not who had an eye infection who was very painful. so she named the baby painful tearful sore eyes. as if i want to suffer by god, everybody's going to suffer. here it is. lily smarting little local cheerful. melania burning pain kamaka, aha sore eyes so she was little local walania. come here. but baptized as lydia. right now this guy is one of my heroes forgive me if i start balling. kinahu's half-brother. kamehameh the third he was the

last surviving son of the conqueror. he was born under immense privilege. he had life and death power over everybody, but he was torn between two worlds. he tried to commit suicide when the missionaries prevented him from marrying his sister. now he and anna now to the native people it would have been a brilliant match because their mother calebuilani was the product of a half sister marriage and the granddaughter of another full sister marriage and if he had had if he and i and i had a child it would have been next to the gods. because calebuilani already had the falling down kapu and she was they wouldn't let her be out in the sunlight. she had to stay and say and shade because she was so holy. well, the missionaries is horrified by this and he tried to kill himself. so he settled for high chiefess kalama of maui. and the missionaries by the time well kahumanu his mother became a very dedicated christian his mother calipulani became an even more dedicated christian and

they dragged him kicking and screaming into the church. but by the time he was broken to the traces he gave his people a declaration of human rights. he gave them a constitution he gave them a legislature and he surrendered half of his own lands so that the common people could own land. i mean he was a great great king. very close to lily who now, he was aware of the lack of heirs. in fact, he in kalama were not that closely related. they had two little baby boys, but they both died in infancy. and here was a lesson for young lydia. he executed her grandfather high chief kamenava the second for murder. which was unthinkable for a high chief? her father coming of it grandfather. wanted to get a divorce and the missionaries wouldn't let him get a divorce until he was single again. she said fine and he killed her.

well, he found out that you can't and he signed to death warrant. and so there was a very stark lesson in the numerality for young lydia and her siblings including her older brother calico who became king. so he also realized okay. we're not having kids and the throne has to go somewhere. so he enlarged the circle of succession now lily. ooh and her family. we're not born into the kamala royalty. they were descended from kamehameha's first cousin, so they're kind of like collateral descendants. so he accepted them into the group of people who are eligible for the throne and he founded the royal school to educate them in ways at the western world would expect a royalty it began as a chief's children's school. now, this is a later picture. you see that crowd up there on the balcony. what was up in the attic was what they called the boston parlor.

the missionaries all contributed their very best stuff furniture silver. dishes so that they could learn polite society. and we'll discover later and what good stead that that took them now among their lessons and while i was at the mission houses museum. i looked through some of the workbooks of the students at the royal school and one of the things they did to learn english and i like this there's an exercise on english words ending in t i o n and this is all written out. mary moderations answer to timothy observation sir, i peruse your oration with much deliberation. and with no little consternation at the great infatuation of your weak imagination. to show such veneration on so slight foundation but after examination in serious contemplation, i suppose your

admiration was the fruit of recreation. it went on and on and on it was just hysterical. but another exercise that just floored me was that the students also learned and copied out the louisiana bell. in louisiana, that's the state quarrel nasa ebba dwell. he had a lovely colored gal called. delusiana bell. what on earth? they thought the hawaiian elite children would ever have to do. with the louisiana bell, or they also learned black jupiter. it must have come from the common assumption that the polynesians were african. they discovered to their cost and has a lot to do with why how they came to regard the united states. that's the only explanation i could come up with and here we have lydia at a very young age

at the royal school. she was and bright now she had three brothers two of her two older brothers. were there one died and then kalakawa became king. she was especially gifted in poetry. now you have to understand hawaiian poetry. it is not roses or red violets are blue. the hawaiian culture produced an extraordinarily high standard of chant. that preserved their whole culture their whole story was conveyed in chant. and she mastered this now one thing about the hawaiian language that makes it so difficult is that there's not every word has about three meanings. the exact meaning of what you're talking about. and then there is the kauna the hidden meaning if in public speaking, i would be saying what i'm saying, but i would also be using hidden classical allusions that float somewhere way above that only the hawaiians would get and then somewhere down

below what there's some thoroughly irrelevant irreverent sexual raspberry. because their polynesians and they make sex jokes out of everything. lydia masters now the hawaiian language. there's only by the way, it was the missionaries who gave them the written language and they went from virtually a stone age society the missionaries standardized the language. it's when they changed the letters around and made everything very compact within 10 years. they had a literacy rate that was among the highest in the world. they had native language newspapers. they had native language public. it was amazing. these people were very bright ready for learning lydia mastered this now also had an extraordinary musical talent she became a near concert quality pianist. she composed in her lifetime between 150 and 160 songs one of which you heard during the intro at which was now i've heard for

many years in fact in preparing this lecture. i discovered a new a modern website saying oh poor lily oil kalani after she was toppled from the throne and she's imprisoned in her bedroom in the palace and she's so wistful about what she's lost she writes this song aloha hoy farewell to the, you know, farewell my country. it was wonderful. no actually she wrote this song in 1878 on a horseback riding expedition down to the windward silence side of oahu now if you haven't been to hawaii, there's trade winds that blow. so the northeast side of all the islands is jungle and the mountain squeeze out. the rain and the western slope is like mediterranean. it looks kind of like arizona on a good day. well, she was on this trip and she saw one of their companions jh boyd gave a very affectionate farewell probably to her younger

sister princess miriam likelique and she began humming this kind of popular tune called the lone rock by the sea and he was oh that sounds just like the lone rock by the sea and yeah, it does doesn't it, but she composed aloha oi about this parting between two lovers, but she was an amazing student she was also unlike her brothers very sincere in her profession of christian faith. she was actually a very persuaded churchgoer. in fact when she got bigger. she played the organ at the kalaya hutto church. she led the choir which you know, the king thought was maybe kind of beneath the dignity of the royal princess. but even at cool. she was constantly exposed to these reminders of the old days. and the headmaster amos cook, he was constantly in a dither what to do with these 16 royal progeny. now you have to understand in hawaii an ali was not he did not

grow up to become a chief. he was a chief from birth. so they were powerful even as toddlers when alexander lehigh should i use three years old and he shows up at school the first day with 30 servants. there's one guy to carry his umbrella. there's another guy to carry his spit box because in hawaiian culture men never swallowed saliva. they always spit they spit constantly and if you were high up, you had somebody carry your box to spit in. and cook said no that that won't do. i cannot educate, you know, all these kids when they've got 30 servants each. and he insisted in the king granted him the right for absolute control over their skit over their kids. meanwhile his wife juliet cook. she was the one who was trying their tears because they were weeping the little ones were weeping and screaming from homesickness. and there again the polynesian culture in these kids. she was kept busy trying to keep

them apart. right. in fact princess abigail maheja became pregnant. she was 14. by prince lot capuaiva who later became the fifth who was 12. well to punish he was given a beating she was forced to marry her mother's gardener. and exiled to kauai and told to behavior self. so when we read as we do that there are there were no more kamehameha descendants. no more descendants of the conqueror. that's not true. because abigail mahejos child had progeny and there are direct descendants of kamehameha on kawaii today, but they were ruled out for being a legitimate so they were never considered royal. well things were made even worse by the way. remember queen kalama of maui, who was the wife of kamehameh the third she made things even worse because she showed up one day for a party and a musical

concert and all that and she saw lots older brother prince moses. kekuaiva thought wow. he's kind of cute. so she the queen initiated an affair with her husband's nephew. which caused all kinds of ruckus ethical now it is common in contemporary scholarship to really disparage the royal school these american missionaries get there and they they break up the traditional culture. they ruined their the this paradesical life of theirs and it was all these americans. well, that's not quite true because the vice principle this guy john papa. he had been raised as a kahu a minor a babysitter to kamehameh the second. and he was so persuaded of the values of western life and religion and education that at one point. i guess it was.

lydia's oldest brother james kelly. okolani her grandmother held the kid back from school, and she said i'm told that you have the kids out there watering plants and you're calling it exercise. that is beneath our dignity. well, they had a big fight and papa e put his foot on the high chief of his thigh and pulled the kid away from her that he would have been killed on the spot for doing that. well, she complained to the prime minister who said he has power from the king there we are. you know the times are changing and that's just the way it is. well after a couple of abortive conquests of hawaii one by the british one by the french, they were very ashamed of themsels. they apologize to gave the country back. kamehameh the third decided to send. a delegation around the world to try and win some recognition for hawaiian independence and here is jarrett judd who was his foreign minister. actually, he had several different posts in the foreigners who had missions in honolulu began calling. minister of everything here we

have out on the left is alexander li holo. liho who became kamehameha the fourth is other nephew lot kappa with the guy who got with princess abigail became kamehame of the fifth took them all they were welcomed into the imperial court of france. they were welcome fathead by queen victoria and prince albert. they came to america and they were thrown off a train for being black. do we wonder why in their nine years apiece as king? therefore in policy took a decidedly anglo-centric turn. they kind of saw through our sham of equality and all this. in fact, i looked at alexander's dyer. he was 14 years old and he kept a diary all across america and i found the page after this conductor tried to throw them off the train his handwriting change it became slashes. he was so mad at this. fool who didn't recognize and

these americans need to question themselves about all this freedom talk when they treat people like like dogs. yeah, no, by the way, there's a very interesting memoir written by judge wife laura fish judd a very keen social observer. that's just a little lanyap for you. well alexander grew up. he'd be kamehameha the four had been mentioned as his possible wife because she was the highest-born unmarried young lady in the kingdom. so obviously she should have been queen consort at that time. well, he wasn't that keen on her. he fell deeply in love with high chiefess emma naiah of the big island. and she there was a little bit of racism and all involved there because she was one quarter english. she was granddaughter of one of kameham.

has captive english social i should explain. no, that will be taken entirely wrong. i won't explain. lydia saying something about a famous museum and this is being taped and it'll be on tv and i don't want to deal with that so she got over it. she became lydia became queen emma's lady and waiting and in that court. she sort of performed a function sort of like a minor royal in the british court today. she was sort of a princess alexandra or a duchess of kent. she had lots to do but not really a lot of the the spotlight. well her hennai sister bernice palawahi married an american banker charles reed bishop now, that was one of the good marriages. well, in fact, there's a chapter in my book called useful marriages because at this time that a sugar industry is beginning there were all kinds

of american businessmen who were coming to hawaii and finding available chiefess. to mary who had thousands of acres of land. and the chiefah says we're willing to marry them because they had buckets of money. and anyway bernice married bishop and they were very happy lydia married john owen dominus of schenectady, new york. and it's the first introduction now. liliuokalani lydia wrote a very famous memoir later called hawaii's story by hawaii's queen and you have to read this with a good deal of caution because she really soft pedaled a bunch of stuff in hawaiian culture. it's extremely rude to dispute with somebody you don't criticize somebody who just pray something else. so when she married dominus she wrote well i had hopes for that, but he preferred to socialize elsewhere. actually, it was the marriage from hell. he was the son of a widowed ship a widow of a ship owner who

built a mansion called washington place very famous. many years it was hawaii's governor's governor's mansion. well, he married lydia. gunter on his mother-in-law who was one of the most arent racists of the 19th century? so he left his wife and his mother-in-law to live together and scratch each other's eyeballs out while he went out dating other women by the way in in the spirit of aloha. she you can turn that back like a mirror on people. sometimes she adopted his --. as his hanai mother which was really very embarrassing. i hope that wasn't a 10 minute thing dr. crawley. oh telling me speed it along. oh, yeah. well, she raised funds for the queen's hospital. she helped bernice established the kahumanu society for the benefit of the sick and the elderly she composed a new

national anthem for command may the 5th after he became king. there he is. he was called the last of the great chiefs. he went all the power, but he used it very responsibly. by the way, the next king luna lilo, he's very interesting. he was brilliant. he had excellent liberal sensibilities. he had been betrothed from birth to those two brothers sister, victoria kamala, but he was his highborn as they were in fact, he was the son of a cohinaui kakalulu hawaii who when he was born knew how he was so she lifted him up. she said luna luna o luna lilo high higher disappears and the brother's new that if he and victoria had children those children without rank him, so they forbade her from marrying him. so he began courting lydia and the brothers broke that up and made sure that he was going to end as a lonely alcoholic bachelor, which he did. so it having died without heirs

and command made the third had given them a constitution. there's election for monarch because he's died. there's no heirs so i had this election the legitimate claimant was dowager queen emma the wife of kamehameha the fourth. now she was immensely popular possessed of no blessed bleach people adored her. she had the bloodline. she was the great granddaughter i think of the conquerors brother kalimaikai the good chief so she was usually popular but kalaka had been in the legislature for several terms and he knew about american politics and he about making promises to people that he probably couldn't keep but never mind. and so he won the election and became king. and there he is by the way his family nickname was taffy for his love of sweets. well his brother leilaio hoku became the crown prince now this this gets kind of interesting april of 1877. lydia was made crown princess

because allayohoku died. he was only 23 and that's when she was finally given her established name of liliuokalani among her duties as crown princess, you know, like, you know, the crown prince of england you go around you do good things. she visited the leper colony at calallo papa and she was so moved that she decorated father damian and she convinced the land board to give give them land for some branch hospitals now kalakawa got an urge. he became the first monica for anywhere. he traveled entirely around the world. welcomed into the imperial courts of china and japan austria germany, france england. he was the guest of honor the first state dinner ever in the white house. well while he's gone lily who becomes the reg well, she is kind of mindful of her people. there's an outbreak of smallpox and she closes the port of honolulu to prevent the spread

of smallpox that outraged the american business community because they're importing chinese coolies to work in the sugar plantations and they marked her. from from that moment. she was also one of his hostesses here. we have a luau given by kalaka whether in the center over on the left on the back row is robert lewis stevenson the novelist. and to kalaka was left at stevenson's mother you see what kind of a spread they put this is not in the palace. this is in kalaka was boathouse. well as crown princess she earned a real hard name with the the american business community. this is one of my favorite pictures in 1887 liliuokalani who is standing by the way that diamond butterfly in her hair is on display in the iolani palace today and kalaco's wife queen kapiolani. now the british had long been friends of the hawaiian monarchy and this is where that value of the boston parlor that is so

criticized came in. there's a reception and queen kapiolani who spoke very limited english did not realize that she's the highest lady in the room and nobody could sit down. and when lily who got there a german grand duchess after why does her majesty not sit so we can sit down. well, you know lily who would have known an instant that if you're the queen you sit down and you so other people can sit down, but she didn't know that by the way that dress that copy ilani is wearing they get there. of course every crown head in europe is at queen victoria's jubilee by the way in the procession the life guards the guys in the silver breast plates and the gold helmets with the plumes. they escorted two carriages one was victorious and one was theirs. and they thanked her for it. very profusely in victorious. it was the least i can do when you come so far. but at dinner that night and this is place where you have to read lily whose memoirs with some caution at dinner that night and you know, how carefully they seat everybody.

well the imperial crown prince of prussia who grew up to become kaiser willie the second of world war one and the king of saxony refused to be seated with them because they were black. queen victoria was not amused. she was not amused and she found the prince of wales pulled him out of what he was doing. he became over the seventh and she found her second oldest son prince alfred the duke of edinburgh and had them attend the hawaiian ladies in their stead queen victoria was she doesn't get enough credit. i don't think by the way that dress they didn't have the jewels and you can imagine every queen in europe. is there in these immense power rulers of emeralds and sapphires and lily you said i ever saw such jules in my life because they didn't have those in hawaii that diamond butterfly was the best they did but kathiolani's dress is trimmed and peacock feathers. which are just as pretty in fact when jody and i were visiting the julie. hey pal. call o'connor the dozen showed us a dislocation and this display case was like a jackie kennedy pillbox hat.

well more like the fashion that you would see being worn by empress may referred or if not of russia pillbox hat, but it was all peacock feathers. and she said this is the the hat that she wore to victoria's jubilee. wouldn't you like to see the dress? i said, well, i've got a picture of it right here in my computer. we parted friends, i think. well while they're gone disaster strikes the american community has been getting angrier and angrier at kalaka was spending money. they're scared of her. they waited till she was out of the country to have the bayonet constitution, by the way, that's the the jubilee procession in london 1887. he also built what is now a great tourist attraction in honolulu the iolani palace. it costs the entire annual budget of the kingdom now in european standards. it's a music box. but he was very enamorative technology. he had a telephone before the white house did electricity and running water for the white house did cost about $300,000

and really irritated the the american businessman now here is a hula performance on the grounds of the iolani palace. lydia was lily who was very interested in preserving hawaiian culture as was calakawa because under the missionary influence. hula had been banned now. this is very tame. you see these lungs dress skirts of wearing now originally hulu was something different. they had things. like the hoola mahi, which was the hula in praise of genitals. which was pretty explicit. so the missionaries were not entirely out of line and thinking we need to to reform this what they didn't realize is that hula is the preservation of the hawaiian culture. their entire thing is performed in song and dance their whole story was oral, you know, they didn't have writing before the errors and when they outlawed hula and of course, it was the queens fromanu on who's he out.

we need allah, hula it struck at the heart of their culture, which is one reason why there are hula schools and the whole thing is back on the surface now now very quickly all this westernization. that was not by common consent and this is a very important lady ruth kaley kalani. she was the last surviving direct descendant of the conqueror and kind of a genetic throwback looks very much like him six foot to 440 pounds. never became a christian preserve the old way. she was the royal governor of the big island for 20 years and when calacawa became king. he was so jealous of heritage. he stripped her of her royal titles took away her governorship, which was extremely stupid because she wound up inheriting all of katahumanu's land which is about 10% of the kingdom when and she was also the hanai mother of his younger brother. imprints, so if he had just treated her with respect when lalaya hoku died, he would have

inherited a vast fortune. he could have told the american businessman to go put a sock in it and ruled by decree, but he just had to feel like he was getting her bet getting the better of kealy kalani and just insulted her and slighted her. well one thing she did she knew how deep indeed. he went to build the iolani palace. so she just called somebody and said i'll build a nicer place than that. that is okay. holly what she just paid for in cash because it was you know minor expense to her just to show him that he was no big deal. she remained actually quite close to lily who and to bernice as well and him as she was extremely popular. in fact, there's a great story in hawaii that in 1880 monologue erupted and there was a lava flow coming toward hilo and lily went down there and she was hiring engineers. maybe we can dig a ditch and we'll have prayer services and all that. none of it worked. love is coming toward hil so people went to kaylee kalani and said governor, please come save

us because you never you never bought into this new religion. well, she sacrificed a pig. and through some ohelo berries into the lava and it stopped. some faces launch a thousand chips. some stop the volcano. if i was a volcano, i would not cross her. all right. what's it? oh, okay. well holly and in 1891 after the bayonet constitution when when copy ilani and liliuokalani were in london the businessman struck with what they call the bayonet constitution. they forced the king to sign a new constitution stripping in of almost all his royal powers. they heard about it that catch what their trip went back another four years later. he was ruined he was depressed. he went to california to see doctor and died. she became queen here. she is at her after her accession, but to fix was really

in for her. she was really one of the things she the first thing she did was preside over the opening of the bishop museum because bernice had died she was a christian but like her brother she was she still had deep native superstitions. she went under the influence of a friend of hers freud line get through wolf who became a fortune teller and different lobbies would use freeline wolf to get to her. she poses a fortune teller and one night. she told lily. okay. wait, i see a vision tomorrow a man will come to the palace with 100,000 dollars. you must take it. it was somebody from the lottery lobby. which did her no political help at all. by the way, there's an american journalist. mary crowd who said that she had such a striking present. you would not recognize her if you had seen all the photos of her you still wouldn't recognize because she different from every every angle enter lauren andrews

thurston really nasty piece of work. he was a grandson of two missionary families? he now. let me tell you this all this stuff that we hear today about american missionaries. go to hawaii. they destroy the culture and then they take over the country. no those missionaries taught and doctored and worked himself to the bone. in fact, nobody realizes this the home church in new england disciplined them chastise them and eventually cut them off for staying involved in helping the hawaiian people as you should preach and move on. what are you doing establishing schools and hospitals? that's not your business you just preach and if they don't believe it forget them, they couldn't do that and if they had done it christianity never would have taken root. on the way it didn't away. the missionary grandson he went to law school in columbia and like all these other missionary grandsons came back to hawaii just imbued with 19th century american racism. just plain old get down racism. well, they formed this hawaiian league which as they begin

taking more revolutionarily became the committee of safety trying to make a comparison to the american revolution in 1776. there was at that time warships and honolulu harbor now the japanese all had a big presence in hawaii. in fact kalakawa in his waning years realized hawaii is too too small and two week to ever make it go of it as an independent country. it must one day belong to the united states or belong to japan. and here we have the japanese crews are naniwa which was the largest most powerful cruiser in the world when it was launched and the uss boston next next to it. now. you see the american cruiser still has sailing mass in case the engines failed the japanese were past that boston had eight inch guns none. i had 10 inch guns if they had gotten into a fight. i don't think there's any question who would have won. well, these are tough times in hawaii. the committee of safety is dealing with the benjamin

harrison administration republicans in washington. listen if we have a revolution can we depend on you to like take us in well, basically, yes. and here we have and this is in. this january of 1893 lily eagle kalani who is in the carriage there has finally pro-rogged the legislature they had met for 173 days. the mckinley tariff was ruining the economy. there was a depression in hawaii. she was trying to figure out how to keep things paid for. well, they're she was supporting a an opiate tax. all these chinese laborers could smoke opium they get some tax money and then there was the lottery and the americans were all horrified that legislature met for 173 days and under the bayonet constitution. the only way she could control the politics was by governments rising and falling. so as long as she could pick her ministers until they disfavored her and then she'd have enough legislators vote a no confidence

and she'd get a new government. it's a hell of a way to try and run a government. she finally proroged the legislature dismissed them. and she had secretly been working on a new constitution. that would restore her royal powers. and in fact from this procession she went back to the iolani palace an announced her new constitution and that was the beginning of the overthrow that set the annexation league the committee of safety. they had a militia company called the honolulu rifles they rose up and by not by coincidence the american minister to honolulu john stevens had worked it out with the captain of the uss boston that when this happened marines would come ashore and sort of end any possibility of active resistance. she was toppled now what she did she wouldn't advocate but under all kinds of threats. she seeded her government not to the coup plotters but to the united states because you

remember in england and france tried this 50 years ago. they apologize. they gave us our country back well. harrison had approved a treaty of annexation of hawaii, but he had the bad taste to do this with like days left in his administration. he's replaced by democrat. cleveland now he had hosted kapiolani and lily who on their way to britain in 1887. he's horrified by the whole business and he withdraws the treaty and leaves lauren thurston and his bunch in the lurch. he sends a fact finder to honolulu. to tell him what is really going on now special minister james blunt. he went with paramount power. so people called him paramount blount. thurston and his crowd thought they could rely on him in helping him prove that dark people cannot run their own country because he's a confederate colonel. he's from georgia. he'll understand. he got there everybody tried to buy him off the annexation

league granted him a huge mansion. he said no. thank you lily usa and her personal carriage to take him to his hotel. he said no. thank you managed to really kind of irritate everybody. in fact the navy who he was deeply suspicious was involved in the coup. they offered to put his messages home in code, and he didn't send his messages home through the navy because he expected that those would go back to the rebel government. so he said no. thank you. and his report just savaged the whole revolution thing cleveland disapproved of it. he tried to get lily o'clenny back on her throne and all these americans who've been saying we're americans. ought to be free. i'll just know we're a wines. we're not going to give her thrown back. for president they picked sanford dole another word there weren't pineapples yet. it's a cousin of his who did the pineapple business, but they're not into pineapples yet. he had been a justice on this on the supreme court and he was

given charge of coming up with a constitution now if you're doubting all this racism stuff, i want to read you. when he was trying to decide, how can we put to put together a constitution that will sound very democratic, but we'll keep power in our hands. actually another justice put a lot more succinctly when he said the question is how to drop a document that will look democrat how to preserve an oligarchy with the forms of republican democracy. no, i'm not going to editorialize about that by the way when she when she proroged the legislature there was an american lieutenant from the boston who? he sent over there. to find out what was going on and i want to read you what he wrote about her ceremony and dismissing the legislature first came to chamberlain supporting in front of him a large portfolio containing the queen's message of prorogation. from it we're streaming the ends of white and blue silk.

ribbons. next came forward dusky aids to camp in full uniform. they were stiff and pretentious and exhibiting the air of fully realizing the importance their exalted position. after them were the feathered kahili bears. that's a big bottle brush looking things emblems of royal authority kind of like roman officials had lectures in front of them where the feather kahili barrier bearers supporting the emblems of savage royalty. these were followed by her majesty the queen dressed in a light colored silk, which tended to add somewhat to her dark complexion and negro like features. and more plainly exhibiting in the facial outlines a look of savage determination. next came your homely ladies and waiting dressed in the loud colors so much admired by all dark colored races. then the two royal princes her nephews madison demeanor, but dudeish in appearance and that was the whole motive american thinking about the hawaiian

government how much time have i got left bill none? oh --. okay. enter very quickly abigail hawaii campbell when the united states is going to annex hawaii. there's a treaty she gets up in effort to defeat it with petitions. this is one of the this is almost entirely forgotten by history these petitions which were gotten up in less than three weeks 21,000 native hawaiian signed it that's more than half the surviving population in the united states. it would have been the equivalent of a petition signed by 37 and a half million people at that time. they carried it to washington queen lily who went with them, by the way, this is after she serves term in prison in prison in the palace for a countercu that failed here she is in her traveling traveling get-up going to washington now not all not all senators are horrors, but this one is my favorite. he was a republican from massachusetts. he was any imperialist.

well the hawaiian delegation began taking their petition around trying to get support. the treaty there were 90 senators. they needed 60 votes mckinley as president, but now he's got 58. he needs two more senators. well the delegation took the coolidge petition team. we kind of the whole thing about the revolution from the beginning. he started crying. and he said you bring you give me your petitions you come to the senate tomorrow and watch. but the time he was done that 58 senators had become 46. so no. anec treaty the hawaiian celebrate and then the main blows up in hawaii and honol and havana harbor. well, they celebrated too soon. there's poor mckinley his word about the japanese because the japanese have ships like this that we don't the fuji was in britain because they didn't have a shipyard big enough to do it 12 inch guns 7,000 mile cruising range on 1100 tons of coal. they had just kicked china's -- in the sino-japanese war.

if they had seized hawaii as a cooling station and the ministry of war wanted to do it the foreign ministry was saying well, maybe we shouldn't. those ships could have gone to california and bombarded for a thousand miles and still had fuel enough to get back to hawaii and mckinley told senator --. i don't know what i shall do. i cannot let those islands go to hawaii to japan. so. since the treaty failed mckinley was old enough to remember how we got texas texas the treaty failed, but they annexed by joint resolution, which did not need a 2/3 majority a simple majority would do so they wanted to annexing hawaii. there is the flag the hawaiian flag. coming down, by the way, there were a couple of navy bands and the remains of the royal hawaiian band played hawaii as the flag came down and the native musicians couldn't take it. they dropped their instruments and just left and it was only the american bands that played the star-spangled banner. lily oops closed herself into washington place they had kind

of a morning there during annexation day. there we second from the left is prince david. come on anaku. who is now the heir apparent? kaelani did not live long. he wound up marrying abigail. kawaihilani's daughter. here she is retired at washington place. she lived for almost another 20 years. in fact, she was always kind of a prickly personality jack and charmaine in london met her once when they were in honolulu and charmy and wrote that she shook hands with this been in her eyes. i could tell she'd really rather kill us. she died of a stroke. some very quickly pictures of her life with the different territorial governors and a different ceremonies now during world war i did raise the american flag over washington place when she heard that five hawaiian sailors had been killed in a sinking she died and at least they gave her a state funeral in the palace, which was now the seat of the legislature. her funeral beer is pulled by 200 people pulling 1,200 foot

ropes, and she was buried in the mount allah cemetery with her relatives. and there we have it and i'm sorry how long over i hope i didn't go too long. but that is my take on liliuokalani and why they feel the way they do really okolani. today is regarded as a symbol of their independence which a lot of them really would like to have back. yeah it doug you have off that we have just remind remind you to come back and join us. on tuesday, ron powers will be here to talk about mark twain. all right questions for our speaker his one. so i had a question about a cleveland support for the

restoration of queen leo clooney to the throne like who is the person who first like sort of suggested that idea to him because i know that she hits in a letter to him like after the after the revolution asking hit asking for his support and i was to know that his secretary of state also supported the idea of restoring restoring her to the throne so like where did you sort of come from well they were already acquainted and he was thoroughly against the takeover to begin with so there wasn't a lot of to do for him to do it now one of the things herself in trouble with was he wanted amnesty for the coup plotters because they were not just hawaiian subject. they had dual citizenship. they were also american citizens and there was a story that she had threatened to behead them. she was not going to give them amnesty. that really wasn't true. she said she might execute them, but that whole beheading thing that was just, you know, some colorful, press eventually she

did relent she said, alright, i'll give them amnesty, but she wrote that letter on the very day that cleveland gave up on her and sent the whole business to congress and said you deal with it. i've tried but there was very little convincing to do because cleveland thought the whole thing stank. as the royal family and why still exist i'm sorry does the royal family in hawaii still exists? yes, they are all collateral descendants lily who did not have children of her own what we had been the house of kalaka. i became the house of come on. kawananakawa. there are among the independence movements the different groups. there's about six claimants. so some things never change. each one says well, i would obviously the best be the best queen or king. i'm not sure at this moment how many there are but there are collateral descendants who would be happy to step in and be the monarch today. yes.

you said american businessman came to hawaii and kind of took over the land and brought in chinese coolies and work. why didn't they get to widens to do or in the first place? well if they tried that and they realized that hawaiian like most polynesians don't really recognize much need to work. nature provides and they they were terrible laborers plus the hawaiian population was being rapidly reduced by the time of her reign what had been about 400,000 natives had become 40,000. so they they imported chinese. they imported koreans the japanese not so much because they're they weren't that crazy about the whole idea. they even imported portuguese. they're european, but they're dark so they can labor too. by the way when i was at the honolulu historical society. i was reading the letters that kalakawa wrote home to lily

while she's princess regent. he's going all around the world and there's a story he's out there wasting money and the archivist was that better table giving me stink eye. and i read one of these letters from china and he was trying to work out a treaty to limit chinese immigration. and he was working behind the sugar boys backs. and i took this letter over to the archivist and i asked her to read it and she did i said people don't know this. yeah, we know. and so by god, they're gonna know it now. i'm going to it in my book. so i think we parted friends, but it was the it was it was simply a matter of trying to get more labor. can you talk a little bit about the cohes? ive the islands at that time, it seems like they wouldn't have been quite so cohesive because of the distances between them and the fact that they were basically just ships that would take people from one to another that's a very good question. actually they were very distinct entities before the conqueror. in fact one of the places i

visited on oahu the new one of the valley that goes up from honolulu ends in a 1200 foot cliff down to the eastern shore the new wanapali when kamehameha invaded with his army the local king columbia opposed him. well, they can't losing and losing and going further. rather up to valley until they got to the top and the 400 or so of columbia's soldiers who survived the battle got pushed over the pali. in fact their skeletons were still there when mark twain took a hike down there 70 years later. no heads though. they cut their heads off and put them in the sacrifice at the table when he invaded kawaii. he never succeeded with kawaii. he got beaten on the beaches once normandy that didn't work and there were people in hawaii who kind of chuckled at his pretensions for a long time and he finally negotiated for hawaii. it was only after the establishment of a unified kingdom and it took some years

before they did feel like a unified kingdom. it's quite true. my question goes towards current day and essentially the descendants of those missionaries who are in