Hoʻohui ka Lāhui a ke Loli Ana i nā Mahi Kō: The Unification of the Kingdom and the Transformation to Sugar Cane.
The years that followed the terrible battle of Kepaniwai saw peace return to Maui, and once again, Waiheʻe became a land which thrived with abundant food produced in the seemingly countless loʻi kalo which dotted the ahupuaʻa from the coast and into the valleys. However, this time also witnessed the arrival of numerous foreign diseases, illnesses which claimed the lives of tens of thousands, and possibly many more, across ka pae ʻāina o Hawaiʻi. The year 1802 was a seminal year at Waiheʻe, as Kamehameha returned to the ahupuaʻa to reconsecrate the heiau at Kealakaʻihonua before launching his invasion fleet for Kauaʻi in order to conquer the last independent kingdom that lay beyond his grasp. As Samuel Kamakau recounts in his writings, Kamehemeha with “Liholiho, heir to the kingdom, rededicated as dwellings for the gods (hoʻolaʻa aku la i na heiau i mau hale no ke akua) the heiau[]...of Kealakaʻihonua at Waiheʻe” as well as several others in the Wailuku district. With the massive Peleleu fleet of large war canoes just offshore, Liholiho installed his father’s war god, Kūkaʻilimoku, onto the heiau, an act that would secure both the sanctity of Kamehamehaʻs proposed invasion, as well as Kealakaʻihonua heiau.
Of course, Kamehamehaʻs invasion of Kauaʻi was a disaster for the aspiring mōʻī; the single greatest defeat for this otherwise tactical and strategic genius. However, within a decade Kamehameha had abandoned the idea of uniting the islands through warfare, and instead, through an intermediary named Kīhei, invited Kaumualiʻi to Oʻahu to make peace, and abandon warfare forever. Kaumualiʻi accepted, and Hawaiʻi entered into a new era of peace. Sadly, within only a few short years, around 1820, Waiheʻe, and Hawaiʻi, had lost a significant portion of its population. Most of this loss happened as the result of disease, as described above, but also presumably by people simply moving away to more populated areas, such as Lāhaina. For this reason, other than what is preserved in family histories that continue to be told in and about Waiheʻe, we know remarkably little about the first few decades of the 19th century.
However, one (apparently) lone work of art survives, a painting presumably painted before 1819. The painting shows a hale pili from the perspective of the fishpond looking towards the sea, with the slopes of Haleakalā in the distance. This hale belonged to a Waiheʻe ʻohana, who owns the artwork to this day. A careful examination of the work shows Puʻu Kauhikoa (often erroneously called ʻGiggle Hillʻ) and Puʻu o ʻUmi (often erroneously referred to as Haʻikū Hill in the distance). An even more careful examination of the foreground of the painting, however, reveals Kapoho Heiau with all of the kiʻi akua (temple images) still in place. This painting is the only known example of an image from Waiheʻe from the early 19th century.
At some point, probably after the middle of the 19th century, Chinese immigrants moved into Waiheʻe and became an integral part of the community. While some have suggested that they may have used the fishpond to grow rice, they may have also grown taro, perhaps even the Chinese varieties of taro. Again, this is a time we have very little information about. Another crop cultivated in the fishpond, and this one seems more certain, is gotu kola, or Asiatic pennywort (Centella asiatica). In addition to being a popular herb for flavoring, its medicinal uses include everything from treating wounds to improving mental clarity, among numerous others. Its presence around the Kapoho wetlands to this day is a testament to this time period and the durability and persistence of this species.
The next major event in the life of Waiheʻe came with the establishment of Waiheʻe sugar plantation in 1862, which was renamed a short time later to Lewers Plantation. To our great fortune, one of the workers at the Waiheʻe/Lewers Plantation was historian Samuel Kamakau, who captured many of the moʻolelo of this area, presumably from the kamaʻāina of Waiheʻe. Two other notable employees of Lewers plantation included Samuel Alexander and H.P. Baldwin. The friendship they struck up in Waihe’e led to the creation of one of Maui’s most well-known companies, Alexander and Baldwin. In 1866 Lewers plantation, gained a degree of fame, when on September 10th, Samuel Clemens, also known as Mark Twain, published an account of his visit to Waiheʻe and wrote this:
“The sugar works of the Lewers plantation (formerly known as the Waiheʻe plantation) are considered the model in the Islands, in the matter of cost, extent, completeness and efficiency. They make as fine an appearance as any between Baton Rouge and New Orleans and are doubtless as perfect in their appliances. The main building [of the mill] is some 200 feet long and about 40 wide (perhaps more) and proportionately high. Its walls are of stone masonry and very thick. It has a stately chimney that might answer for a shot tower. Being painted snow white, the millbuilding and the tall chimney stand out in strong contrast with the surrounding bright green cane-fields.”
Today, the foundation of the mill building is still visible on the left (Kahakuloa side) of Hale Waiu Road, with several houses built directly onto this foundation.”
Wailuku Sugar Mill and workers ca. 1960-1900
In his writings, Clemens also noted the diminishing population of Hawaiians and the influx of Chinese workers: “The sugar product is rapidly augmenting every year, and day by day the Kanaka race is passing away. Cheap labor had to be procured by some means or other, and so the Government sends to China for Coolies and farms them out to the planters at $5 a month each for five years, the planter to feed them and furnish them with clothing.” Clemens goes on to provide a disparaging description of these Chinese laborers noting that “some of them were cripples, some were lunatics, some afflicted with incurable diseases and nearly all were intractable, full of fight and animated by the spirit of the very devil.”
While we cannot know exactly what Clemens saw to invoke such a disparaging portrait of these workers, it seems as though he was greatly influenced by the ethnic narrative of his time. Nonetheless, Lewers Plantation in Waiheʻe, according to Clemens, produced an average of 10,000 pounds of sugar per acre, with one 11 acre section of the plantation producing an average of 11,000 pounds per acre. The mill produced a total of 200,000 pounds of sugar each month; not a production yield one would expect from ‘crippled’ and ‘lunatic’ workers animated by the ‘spirit of the devil.’
In spite of Clemens’ observation that the Kanakas were ‘passing away,’ many Hawaiians spoke out vociferously about the transformation of the district of Wailuku, which includes Waiheʻe, from extensive loʻi kalo (taro patches) to mahi kō (sugar cane fields). An article in the Hawaiian language newspaper Ka Nupepa Kuʻokoʻa from 1866 captures this sense of loss when Mr. S.D. Hakuʻole wrote “Auwe! Pau Wailuku i ka mahi kō” (Despair! Wailuku is being destroyed by sugar cane). Hakuʻole goes on to point out that the once abundant loʻi kalo were being lost to sugar cane, a situation that caused great distress among the Hawaiian community. These loʻi kalo once stretched from Waiheʻe to Waikapū, making this area, known as the Nā Wai ʻEha the most productive taro growing area in the kingdom. With the rise of the sugar plantations beginning in the mid-19th century, this transformation would become nearly complete, and Hawaiʻi’s reliance on imported food would increase dramatically. Today, as most people know, Hawaiʻi imports over 90% of its food.
While the conversion of land from loʻi kalo to sugar cane plantations was distressing, an even more pernicious loss came from the removal of the once-abundant water resources. Under the Waiheʻe Sugar/Lewers plantation, it appears that cultivation relied on water taken from the ʻauwai system built over the previous centuries. However, between 1905 and 1907, an engineer named James Taylor designed, and Japanese Issei immigrants built, a 10.6-mile ditch which stretched from Waiheʻe to Māʻalaea, collecting water from all of the rivers in Nā Wai ʻEha, and possessing a total capacity of 25 million gallons per day. A second ditch in Waiheʻe was constructed between 1920 and 1921 with capacity to take an additional 17 million to 25 million gallons of water each day.
With both the land transformed to sugar, and the water which once fed the loʻi kalo gone, industrial agriculture had arrived in Waiheʻe and Hawaiʻi as a whole on a large scale. Very few people in Hawaiʻi found employment outside of the plantation, and life revolved around industrial agriculture as defined by the Big Five of Hawaiʻi agriculture, C. Brewer, Theo Davies, AMFAC, Alexander and Baldwin, and Castle and Cooke. A final major transformation occurred in 1894 when Lewers Plantation was purchased by C. Brewer and incorporated into their main Maui plantation, Wailuku Sugar Plantation. While sugar continued to be grown in Waiheʻe, with 4 square miles of Waiheʻe land dedicated to sugar in 1904, by 1919, Waiheʻe underwent its next big transformation with the establishment of the Waiheʻe Dairy. That, however, is a story for next time.
— Dr. Scott Fisher