As the forceful Christian queen
goes, so does society

By Richard Borreca
Star-Bulletin

THE same night in March 1812 that Kamehameha learned his favorite wife, Kaahumanu, was sleeping with the young and handsome Kanihonui, he had the popular 19-year-old strangled.

Kanihonui's body was placed on an altar of the heiau at Diamond Head as Kaahumanu, 35, wept and considered overthrowing the young kingdom's first monarch.

But Liholiho, Kamehameha's son and her charge, balked. And in time, the power of the Hawaiian kingdom would come to the proud queen, who traced her lineage to the alii of Maui.

"Of Kamehameha's two possessions, his wife and his kingdom, she was the more beautiful," Samuel Kamakau, a Hawaiian historian who attended Lahainaluna seminary the year Kaahumanu died, wrote in "The Ruling Chiefs of Hawaii."

Kaahumanu was, however, more than a rebel, or a beautiful and enticing queen. As modern-day historian Jane Silverman said: "There was a hunger in her much deeper; the hunger to control."

It was Kaahumanu who, upon Kamehameha's death in 1819, told the young Liholiho that it was time to break the ancient edicts forbidding men and women to eat together.

"If you have the courage of your father, this be a great day for Hawaii," she whispered to the nervous new king as he sat down to eat the once-forbidden fish, meats and fruits with the royal women of the court.

Kaahumanu took on the unique role of kuhina nui, or co-ruler, with Liholiho. He presided over the ceremonies, while she controlled the nation's government.

By marrying the chief of Kauai, Kaumualii, she succeeded in bringing the northern island under firm control of the Hawaiian kingdom, something her first husband had been unable to do through military conquest.

The newly arrived Boston missionaries realized that Kaahumanu's good will would guarantee success for their efforts at Christian conversion. The head of the mission, Hiram Bingham, and his wife, Sybil, took it upon themselves to teach her to read and write, showing her a new book and telling her "it could be made to talk."

She became the Binghams' most valuable convert: As she led, the people followed.

By her own ingenuity, Silverman explained, Kaahumanu placed herself in positions of power in both government and religion that would have been forbidden of other women.

"Her political position as the most influential chief in Hawaiian society induced the missionaries to give her the central role in encouraging Christianity, a role they would never have allowed a woman in their own country," Silverman wrote.

Bingham noted in his diary: "Kaahumanu relied mainly on her own arbitrary will, or royal authority to make the people religious."

The queen also forbade the chiefs from increasing the taxes upon the people, and from making them travel to faraway fields to toil for the chiefs.

On the night before she died in June 1832, Kaahumanu gave her last words: "O my friends, have great patience, stand on the side of the good way."

The next morning, at her home in Manoa Valley, with her missionary friends attending, she died.

Wrote Laura Fish Judd, wife of missionary physician Gerrit Judd, as news of Kaahumanu's passing spread: "The voices of the multitude were lifted up in one doleful wail, that echoed from the hills and mountains' sides with appalling reverberations."

About this Series The Honolulu Star-Bulletin is counting down to year 2000 with this special series. Each month through December, we'll chronicle important eras in Hawaii's history, featuring a timeline of that particular period. Next month's installment: July 12. Series Archive Project Editor: Lucy Young-Oda Chief Photographer: Dean Sensui