Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen/Chapter 51
CHAPTER LI
WASHINGTON—PSEUDO-HAWAIIANS
On Friday, Jan. 22, 1897, I bade adieu to my cousins, Mr. and Mrs. William Lee, and the other friends who had rendered my four weeks’ stay at Boston so interesting and agreeable that I had scarcely noticed the fight of time, and took the evening train for Washington. By my request, Captain Julius A. Palmer accompanied me as my private secretary, and remained as one of my suite from that date to the 7th of August, when he asked and most cheerfully received permission to take a vacation, for he had been most constant and devoted in every official duty. Captain Palmer had been presented to me at Honolulu just as I have met other visitors and correspondents; we had no personal acquaintance until my visit to Boston, but I knew those in my native city who were connected with his family by marriage. Besides which, his interest in the Hawaiian people, and his reputation as a man of unblemished honor and integrity, recommended him to me; and I needed the services of some person more familiar with matters and manners in the United States than could be expected of my Hawaiian secretary, Mr. Joseph Heleluhe, who was now on his first trip abroad.
I have found Captain Palmer to be well informed on all matters relating to Hawaii, whether in those earlier days when he visited the Islands under the monarchy, or since 1893 under the rule of the Provisional Government. Like many others I might mention, he went there soon after the overthrow, and was petted and flattered by the party in power. But all the time he was quietly investigating the situation for himself. The result of his observations was a conclusion that the right of the Hawaiian people to choose their own form of government should be affirmed, and that they should be protected in this choice by the power of the United States, in which event he was fully assured that their queen would be overwhelmingly restored to her constitutional rights.
While in Boston I was constantly asked if there was any political significance in my visit to America, and if I expected to see the President. It seemed wise to say nothing about my purpose at that time, but frankness would now indicate an opposite course. By the first vessel that arrived from Honolulu after I had reached San Francisco, documents were sent to me by the patriotic leagues of the native Hawaiian people, those associations of which I have already spoken in full; and these representative bodies of my own nation prayed me to undertake certain measures for the general good of Hawaii. Further messages of similar purport reached me while I was visiting my Boston friends.
All the communications received, whether personally or in form, from individuals or from the above-mentioned organizations, were in advocacy of one desired end. This was to ask President Cleveland that the former form of government unjustly taken from us by the persons who in 1892 and 1893 represented the United States should be restored, and that this restoration should undo the wrong which had been done to the Hawaiian people, and return to them the queen, to whom constitutionally, and also by their own choice, they had a perfect right.
This was further in the line of the only instructions which to this day have ever been given by the United States to the so-called Republic of Hawaii, and those were that the President acknowledges the right of the Hawaiian people to choose their own form of government. Were that one sentence literally carried out in fact today, and the Hawaiians sustained in the carrying out of the same, it would be all that either my people or myself could ask.
The second package of documents received by me in Boston was addressed to President McKinley, and was similar to the others I already had, only they were addressed to Hon. Grover Cleveland while he was president. Accompanying these papers were other documents, showing that full power was accorded to me, not only as their queen, but individually, to represent the real people of Hawaii, and in so doing to act in any way my judgment should dictate for the good of the Hawaiians, to whom the Creator gave those beautiful islands in the Pacific. Commissions were also issued to Mr. Joseph Heleluhe, empowering him to act with me; he having been chosen by the Hawaiians as the special envoy of those deprived by the Provisional Government, not only of the franchise, but also of any representation at the capital of that American nation to which they have never ceased to look for the redress of national wrongs, brought upon them by the hasty action of United States officers.
When I speak at this time of the Hawaiian people, I refer to the children of the soil,—the native inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands and their descendants. Two delegations claiming to represent Hawaii have visited Washington at intervals during the past four years in the cause of annexation, besides which other individuals have been sent on to assist in this attempt to defraud an aboriginal people of their birthrights,—rights dear to the patriotic hearts of even the weakest nation. Lately these aliens have called themselves Hawaiians.
They are not and never were Hawaiians. Although. some have had positions under the monarchy which they solemnly swore by oath of office to uphold and sustain, they retained their American birthright. When they overthrew my government, and placed themselves under the protectorate established by John L. Stevens,—as he so states in writing,—they designated themselves as Americans; as such they called on him to raise their flag on the building of the Hawaiian Government. When it pleased the Provisional Government to give their control another name, they called it the Republic of Hawaii. To gain the sympathy of the American people, they made the national day of the Independence of the United States their own, and made speeches claiming to be American citizens. Such has been their custom at Honolulu, although in Washington they represent themselves as Hawaiians.
At Honolulu these annexationists made speeches abusing the Senate of the United States for the delay in annexing Hawaii; they further said the most grossly insulting things of President Cleveland because he frustrated their plans, and included Secretary Gresham in their condemnation because he failed to recognize them as Americans. Of these pseudo-Hawatians, Mr. Hatch is a lawyer from New Hampshire. His first exploit in the ring of adventures was not a diplomatic success. He met some of his annexation associates at Canton, Ohio. Mr. McKinley sent word that the state of his health obliged him to decline to receive visitors, so the embassy returned to the national capital. “Minister” Cooper, another alien (less than a year in Hawaii in 1893, when he stood on the steps of Iolani Palace, and read the proclamation against me), has been given office, probably as a reward for the risk he ran. Mr. William A. Kinney has been better acquainted with life at Salt Lake City, as it was in the past, than with simple, amiable—but, alas, no longer happy—Hawaii. Without military experience, he was commissioned a captain, and afterward charged with the duty of Judge Advocate in attacking me, and those of my people who sought liberty from the foreign oppressor. So I could go on multiplying indefinitely recollections of these and other so-called Hawaiians. Those who are not recent arrivals are sons of the missionaries, or allied to the families connected with the American Mission, and claim foreign citizenship to this day. When a political question was under discussion, they would be very active in soliciting the native Hawaiian vote for the side of the missionary party. The true Hawaiian, you see, has no representation in these several commissions.
The number of articles written or inspired by the Commissioners or their allies is enormous; articles skilfully calculated to deceive the American people on most important topics; also articles intended to place me in an awkward or utterly false position in the great and good land where I have been four times a visitor. I can see the inspiration of it all, because I know the character of several of the men so engaged. Allusion to episodes in the career as a monarchical official of one of these men has already been made. Mr. Thurston’s political methods need no mention. His measures with the press are well known; but, unfortunately for him, he rewarded newspaper enterprise once too often. His position as at least a nominal member of the diplomatic corps gave him certain advantages, which he treacherously used to give official correspondence to the press. For this he was promptly rebuked by Secretary Gresham, and recalled to Honolulu as persona non grata. The Dole government was too weak to defend its agent, and Mr. Thurston went home in disgrace. He is again attempting to negotiate a treaty, bartering away his adopted country.
Another without gratitude, and false to the country to which he owes his life, whose letters to the press have frequently appeared, is Sereno E. Bishop of Honolulu, a man who owes his seventy years or more to the vigor given to his infancy from the breasts of Hawaiian women. Broadcast have been his letters reviling my people, and repeating the vilest of falsehoods as to myself, since he failed to have Hawaii annexed by praising the country, its people, and his queen. One has but to peruse Mr. Bishop’s paper in the Review of Reviews for September, 1891, to see how false must be his later statements. I trust those who read these pages will obtain that number of the Review, and read the article.
I cannot impress too strongly upon those who truly desire to know about my country and to do it justice, the importance of reading that “article” of September, 1891. Although it was written not to serve Hawaii, but in the interest of the annexationists, the plea used was that the Hawaiians had shown themselves so capable of self-government, and were so proud of their autonomy in the Pacific, that they would be well qualified to be United States citizens. How vastly opposite and false is the plea that is made by them now for annexation!
Early in their present mission the Annexationists secured the services of Mr. John W. Foster, who succeeded Mr. Blaine as Secretary of State under Mr. Harrison, and employed him to deliver in Washington a lecture on Hawaii. Before this, I had received a letter from an American residing in that city, advising me to lose no time in retaining the services of Mr. Foster in presenting my case to the National government. To this, as to several other offers of legal aid, I returned the reply that I thanked the friendly counsellors, but that I had already in my letters and protest placed my case before the Chief Executive (since my first communication more than one president has occupied that position), and that I would trust in their honor for redress. But if I had not believed in the integrity of the American nation, and its treaty-making representatives, it would have been well to have awaited the delivery of this lecture, before retaining the services of Mr. Foster; because had he shown such a lamentable ignorance of my affairs as he did of those of Hawaii when he tried to speak of that country, her rulers, her people, even her situation geographically and socially, my case as a client would have suffered from his ignorance. Notwithstanding the historical truths, that although the gospel has been preached in Polynesia for a century or more, and that there is no other nation which has made such rapid progress in civilization and Christianity, yet Mr. Foster had the assurance to stand up in Washington, and revile all the native Hawaiian sovereigns. Not content with using bad language about my brother, King Kalakaua, and myself, he had to take up each one of the Kamehamehas, and refuse to them successively even one good quality, or to the Island people one redeeming characteristic.
This is only one of Mr. Foster’s blunders,—truly a serious one. Another blunder savors of the ridiculous; I did not see it, but it was described to me by those who did. It seems that his remarks were to be illustrated by lantern slides; and on opening this series of illustrations, there first appeared on the screen a dark form, which no one in the audience could recognize, yet the lecturer nothing daunted, with pole in hand, began to describe the situation of the Islands; then it suddenly occurred to him that the dots on the Pacific as shown by the slides were placed near enough over to annex, if not to the United States, then to Mexico; so he paused in his remarks while the artist made a second attempt; but he had only fled from one extreme to another, for now the unfortunate group, so far as location was concerned, had every appearance of annexation to Japan. This was going from Scylla to Charybdis. It was not until the third trial, when poor little Hawaii regained that position in the Pacific Ocean in which the hand of the Creator had left her, that the lecturer, after some hesitation in order to be sure that this time he was right, dared to proceed with his discourse. There was not once original idea in his lengthy misrepresentation of my native land, its people, and its sovereigns.
Mr. Foster made one brief trip to Honolulu, in the interest, it is said, of the cable company projected by Mr. Z. S. Spaulding. Whether this was a mere pretence or an original motive ending in failure, cannot be decided now. But the present rulers took charge of him at once, as they do of all new-comers; and he was greeted, feasted, and generally entertained by the members of the government and by their friends. A meeting was held where the cable scheme was discussed, annexation also receiving some notice. A feeble opposition was developed under the leadership of Mr. W. G. Irwin. Mr. Foster immediately replied that unless there was perfect agreement on the part of the planters, nothing could be done, there was no further use for his services; and if the cable scheme was so unpopular he might as well leave, which he did without even warning those friends who had been so attentive to him. Soon after his arrival in Washington, he delivered his lecture, and then had it printed at the public expense, and sent to the Senate by the money of the people, all upon a subject about which he knew nothing save the absurd stories and intentional misrepresentations repeated to him by those who were writing them out continually for American newspapers.
Time would not admit of a particular criticism of each of the individuals who have been working so hard at Washington from the close of the last Republican administration to the present date, with the sole object of bettering a small minority of American ancestry at the cost of forty thousand Hawaiians (not to count those of other nationalities to the number of over sixty thousand), who have no voice in public affairs, either in Hawaii or in the representation of the present government at Washington. And to oppose this project, and represent this down-trodden people, there was in Washington simply the presence of one woman, without legal adviser, without a dollar to spend in subsidies, supported and encouraged in her mission only by three faithful adherents, and such friends as from time to time expressed to her their sympathy.
Amongst the last-named, even in the city of my husband’s family, I could not count the representative of the Hawaiian Republic. Somewhere about the year 1848, possibly earlier, a young man from Boston landed on the shores of our Islands; he was about eighteen years of age, an entire stranger, coming out to those distant fields of labor to seek his fortune. My adopted father, the chief Paki, befriended him, gave him the first helping hand which welcomed him to his new country, and rendered him such assistance as was in fact the means of showing to him the opportunity of making his way in the world; as years passed by he established himself in business, and soon became one of the leading merchants of Lahaina, at that time the port of call in the Islands for the whaleships, ranking second only to Honolulu.
It was then the base of supplies to this fleet of vessels, was a thoroughly thrifty place, and a business city of growing commercial importance. But the oil-wells of the land have thrown into neglect the oil-ships of the sea, and since this decline and decay Lahaina is little more than a city of ruins. Mr. Gilman probably saw the approaching decline of the industry by which the place was supported; for he broke up his business connections there, sundered certain personal ties, and returned to the East with a very handsome fortune, it is said, the result of the accumulation of years of mercantile life on Hawaiian soil and under Hawaiian laws. From Honolulu he returned to Boston, where he has resided ever since, save that once, since the overthrow of the monarchy, he made a brief visit to his Honolulu friends.
In 1887, during my journey with Queen Kapiolani, we met Mr. Gilman, who was at that time very kind and attentive to me. To be sure, he had a point to gain; he wanted a decoration from the king, and did not hesitate to say so. On the return of the queen’s party to the Islands, letters were received from Mr. Gilman, directly applying for the honor to my brother. Chiefly by means of my personal influence his petition was granted, and he was made a Knight Companion of the Order of Kalakaua, and the decoration forwarded to him.
The next thing I heard from Mr. Gilman was that he had espoused with alacrity and fidelity the cause of the revolutionists of the month of January, 1893, and that he avowed his implicit belief in all the absurd and wicked statements circulated by the missionary party against my own character and that of my people. Papers were sent to me where Mr. Gilman had repeated and vouched for the truth of these abominable political slanders; and at first I could scarcely credit it, for this man was often at the house of my adoption, and showed great partiality for my society when I was a young girl and he a young man. He knew Paki and Konia, a couple of the strictest morality, whose household was organized on the basis of the most regular family habits and the most pious Christian customs; and these had taken me from my very birth under their parental care.
He further knew me as the foster-sister and daily companion of Mrs. Bernice Pauahi Bishop, where I was ever under the kind care of her husband, Hon. Charles R. Bishop, a couple whose principles of exalted piety, whose love for all that is good, honorable, and pure, are too well known to need at this moment the least praise from me, and whose protection was ever and always surrounding my earlier life. From their house, when married, I went directly to that of my husband’s mother, with whom I lived to the day of her death, not so very long ago.
Such were the lives of those with whom my own life has been passed; such were the families with whom Mr. Gilman knew I had been in daily association, and where he met me. At the time when he hastened to avow his allegiance to my enemies, and to ask them for the decoration of a consular station, in the year 1893, Iwas fifty-six years of age. Yet the past was reckoned by him as naught; he permitted himself to be instantly prejudiced against his early friend, and to be led away by the base slanders and political falsehoods of her adversaries. He proceeded to vilify me in such articles as those sent to me from his pen, and has been a zealous servant of the men who placed him in office; he has rushed into print not only his own misstatements, but has endeavored to nullify the influence of any article written in my favor, or in defence of the rights of the Hawaiian people.
Such has been the animosity, openly and secretly expressed, toward me, not only as a queen, but as a woman, by those whom all the claims of gratitude should bind to me as friends, and who should rally to my assistance, that, since leaving home and arriving in America, I have constantly received communications from Hawaii, often by special message, begging me to be careful of my life, still regarded as “infinitely precious to the people of the Islands,” reminding me that I was surrounded by enemies, some of whom from home were entirely unscrupulous, and assuring me that great anxiety was felt by all classes, as it was a persistent rumor that evil was intended me.