How about before we even knew there was going to be plantations… Old Plantation Days, August 2010

 The publisher of The Paradise Post asked me a few months back to write articles every other month or so.  The first couple were theme oriented, albeit I always try to mix several angles into the weave of the story, but I thought in this issue I should get back to the basics.  And I mean the real basics…

Old Plantation Days didn’t just start in the 1930’s, 40’s or 50’s, it started much earlier than that and it wasn’t enamored with the grandeur and glory of what some of us have heard from our kupuna or experienced first hand ourselves.  What was sugar cane cultivation like prior to “our” Plantation Days?  I am hoping I could set some groundwork here as to how Hawaii became a state of King Sugar.  Perhaps in these days being 15 or 20 years past the Last Harvest in 1996 we should look back to how it all began!!

Sugarcane or Ko in Hawaiian is one of the “Canoe Plants” brought to Hawaii by the first Polynesian settlers.  There is no way this plant could have gotten here except by the act of man.  Other canoe plants are Ulu, Mai’a, U’ala, Uhi, Kukui, ‘Awa, Ohe, and Kalo. (Breadfruit, Banana, Sweet Potatoe, Yam, Candle Nut, Kava, Bamboo and  Taro, I likely forgot a few but these are from memory).  How was Ko or sugarcane cultivated at the time of western contact with the Hawaiian civilization?,  it was not as a Plantation Crop, it was a small kuleana crop, grow in small patches along the edges of the kuleana boundaries, near the stone walls of the field system.  There was something distinctive about this sugarcane grown in Hawaii that the western visitors remarked. 

In Capt Cook’s journal sugarcane is mentioned on December 6, 1778, he wrote that he had acquired some sugarcane and made from that “a very palatable beer”.  A member of his crew John Ledyard stated: “We saw a few patches of sugarcane interspersed in moist places, which were but small, but the cane(itself) was the largest and as sweet as any we had ever seen…”  The Polynesian settlers to Hawaii did not bring any common riff-raff plants with them, they brought the BEST they had.  The best Ko, the best ‘Awa, the best Taro, etc.etc.  This was the first possible comments and start to what could have been the Hawaiian Sugar Industry.

With more foreigners arriving to Hawaii the processing of cane into refined sugar and thus a manufactured commodity was the next step.  Chief Kuakini was one of the first plantation managers of sorts, he asked some Chinese knowledgeable in cane cultivation and refining to establish a mill near Hilo in Amau’ulu.  There are paintings of Hilo bay by Tavernier dated around 1847 that clearly depict sugarcane fields above Wainaku area…the timing of the painting matches the actions of the men on the ground! 

According to the research by Dorothy Barrere and Marion Kelly, “Hilo Bay, A Chronological History”, March 1981, Bernice P. Bishop Museum; …”one of the persons who worked the a sugar mill near Hilo was a man from China named Aiko…By 1857, Aiko’s Amauulu plantation was joined by two others in the Hilo area: Samsing &Co., and Utai &Co., both owned by Chinese merchants of Honolulu.”

It continues, Lydgate wrote about his visits in the 1860’s to Aiko’s Amauulu Plantation in Puueo.  He states: “ Breaking in new land in those primitive days was the bugbear of the business.  To clear a few acres a year of guava, puhala, amau fern, uluhi, etc. then burn off the refuse and plow the virgin soil..was a great undertaking.”

When the cane was actually brought to Aiko’s mill it was whole other endeavor to crush, boil and refine the sugarcane into a salable commodity.  Lydgate continues to describe this mill as a very primitive affair… ”The crusher was water driven, by means of a large overshot water-wheel, which rattled and groaned and splashed mightily like some Hercules.  The rollers were iron ones, about fifteen inches in diameter.  The cane was fed into the mill by hand, very carefully (lest the man feeding the mill would be become part of the crush).”

“From the mill a scanty stream of juice ran in an open spout to the boiling house…Here was installed the open train a series of four or five pots, five or six feet in diameter, diminishing in size somewhat to a final one.  These pots were shaped like an opihi shell, shallow and wide flaring.  And were coupled, lip to lip by bolts through flanges, the whole forming a range, set in brick walls, within which, and under the pots, a fierce fire was kept going.  The liveliest job on the plantation was that of the ‘stoker’, a poor unfortunate who was always being pai-pai’d or stirred up in language that was forcible as it was sometimes profane!  The fierce fire kept these pots in a state of violent ebullition, while a Hawaiian attendant, nearly nude and sweating like a Turk, stood by with a long sweep to remove the scum from the top of the foaming juice.”

Amauulu Plantation had two of the most up-to-date pieces of machinery at the time, a centrifugal invention of D.M. Weston of Honolulu Iron Works.  It dried 25 pounds of sugar at a time.  From the centrifuges the sugar was packed into wooden kegs for shipment off island.

The above described business was not a large business by any means, but it was the beginnings of what could come and be improved or expanded upon.  Sugarcane did not become a large agronomic crop until the passage of the 1867 Reciprocity Act with the United States.  After this act was passed sugar produced in the Hawaiian Islands could enter the USA without duty or tariff.  It was only after that date where you will note that most of the “PLANTATIONS” we muse and recall with a somewhat lost and romantic aloha were established.  KING SUGAR got it’s beginnings in 1840’s but did not really take off until the late 1860’s.

More on those Hey Days in the months ahead…