The Northwest today hosts 2x as many Hawaiians as were alive on the Islands at the end of the 1800s. “Kanakas” came early as supply ships to the NW (picture a bathtub beating into a facing wind) sailed in a clockwise circle from western Mexico to Hawaii, then north, then west (because of the ocean currents) or for American or English ships, directly from the East if circumnavigating the globe. American ships would stop in the Sandwich Islands to
bring Hawaiians to the Pacific Northwest. The (ad)ventures were voluntary, the Hawaiian King Kamehameha appointed a counsel, Naukane, to look after the interest of the Islands’ laborers. (Naukane was given the name of John Coxe of the Tonquin.) In 1811 the ships: Tonquin (later voluntarily blown up off Vancouver Island, a Quinault interpreter the only survivor), the Beaver and the Albatross brought supplies to Fort Astoria, the first American-owned settlement on the Pacific Coast. The Montreal-based North West Company (“NWC”) purchased Fort Astoria to prevent British takeover during the War of 1812 (Americans did not do well in 1812; English sacked and burnt the “other” Washington, DC). When the NWC was merged into the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821, most French Canadians left NWC/HBC employment as trading posts were reduced to avoid redundancy. This left the native Kanaka as the major non-indigenous labor force in Vancouver. Hundreds remained with their own village and church with a Kanaka chaplain, before spreading out across what is now Oregon … then Russian, English, American, Spanish, even the French (sending but 1 expedition) claimed territory up until the time the Oregon Territory was formed in 1848. In 1847 there were less than 25,000 “foreigners” along the northern Pacific Rim, this counted the Kanakas, with the Indigenous population plummeting to that number in another 50 years. Hawaiians were here and intent upon staying (and working), as were Chinese and Indigenous Peoples (> 30 tribes) from afar, courtesy of North West and Hudson’s Bay Companies employment policies. During the next 15 years, the Pioneer Flood, families’ intent on farming in the Willamette Valley, passed a few laws that tried to reverse the course of history, see the URL below re. marriages (repealed in 1951).
https://www.picawa.org/who-we-are/
https://www.plc215.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Hawaiians.pdf
https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/fort_george/
https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/hawaiians_in_the_oregon_country/
https://www.npr.org/2005/10/18/4963791/crossing-east-hawaiians-in-the-pacific-northwest
https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/leaving-paradise-indigenous-hawaiians-in-the-pacific-northwest-1787-1898/
https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/historical-records/act-to-prohibit-the-intermarriage-of-races-1866/
https://www.nps.gov/articles/hawaiiansatfortvancouver.htm#:~:text=Hawaiians%20played%20an%20important%20part,China%2C%20Europe%20and%20the%20Northwest
https://www.plc215.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Green-Creed.pdf
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