Aloha Rodeo

Three Hawaiian Cowboys, the World's Greatest Rodeo, and a Hidden History of the American West

David Wolman, Julian Smith

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780062836014
• eBook ISBN: 9780062836021
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The triumphant true story of the native Hawaiian cowboys who crossed the Pacific to shock America at the 1908 world rodeo championships

Oregon Book Award winner * An NPR Best Book of the Year * Pacific Northwest Book Award finalist * A Reading the West Book Awards finalist

"Groundbreaking. … A must-read. ... An essential addition." —True West

In August 1908, three unknown riders arrived in Cheyenne, Wyoming, their hats adorned with wildflowers, to compete in the world’s greatest rodeo. Steer-roping virtuoso Ikua Purdy and his cousins Jack Low and Archie Ka’au’a had travelled 4,200 miles from Hawaii, of all places, to test themselves against the toughest riders in the West. Dismissed by whites, who considered themselves the only true cowboys, the native Hawaiians would astonish the country, returning home champions—and American legends.

An unforgettable human drama set against the rough-knuckled frontier, David Wolman and Julian Smith’s Aloha Rodeo unspools the fascinating and little-known true story of the Hawaiian cowboys, or paniolo, whose 1908 adventure upended the conventional history of the American West.

What few understood when the three paniolo rode into Cheyenne is that the Hawaiians were no underdogs. They were the product of a deeply engrained cattle culture that was twice as old as that of the Great Plains, for Hawaiians had been chasing cattle over the islands’ rugged volcanic slopes and through thick tropical forests since the late 1700s.

Tracing the life story of Purdy and his cousins, Wolman and Smith delve into the dual histories of ranching and cowboys in the islands, and the meteoric rise and sudden fall of Cheyenne, “Holy City of the Cow.” At the turn of the twentieth century, larger-than-life personalities like “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Theodore Roosevelt capitalized on a national obsession with the Wild West and helped transform Cheyenne’s annual Frontier Days celebration into an unparalleled rodeo spectacle, the “Daddy of ‘em All.”

The hopes of all Hawaii rode on the three riders’ shoulders during those dusty days in August 1908. The U.S. had forcibly annexed the islands just a decade earlier. The young Hawaiians brought the pride of a people struggling to preserve their cultural identity and anxious about their future under the rule of overlords an ocean away. In Cheyenne, they didn’t just astound the locals; they also overturned simplistic thinking about cattle country, the binary narrative of “cowboys versus Indians,” and the very concept of the Wild West. Blending sport and history, while exploring questions of identity, imperialism, and race, Aloha Rodeo spotlights an overlooked and riveting chapter in the saga of the American West.

Part I

1

High Steaks

THE FIRST CATTLE TO set foot in Hawaii didn’t live to see sunset.

It was February 19, 1793, and HMS Discovery had arrived at the island of Hawaii after a month-long journey from what is now Southern California. Captain George Vancouver commanded the ten-gun Royal Navy ship, which was midway through a five-year expedition to explore and map the coast of North America.

Before leaving the mainland, Vancouver and his hundred-man crew had loaded ten black longhorn cattle on board. These beasts crossing the Pacific had transatlantic roots: the Spanish had brought cattle to the New World even before Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztecs in 1521. By the end of the eighteenth century, large-scale sheep and cattle ranching was entrenched throughout the territory of New Spain, especially in Alta California.

Vancouver had been dispatched to the Pacific Coast in the aftermath of a near war between Great Britain and Spain over the ownership of northwestern North America. He had orders to assert British claims and collect compensation from Spain for any seized British assets. When the Discovery arrived in Alta California in late 1792, a Spanish commandant presented Vancouver with the longhorns.

The animals were crammed belowdecks on the Discovery so tightly they could barely move. They lived ankle-deep in their own filth during the voyage, with scant portions of food and water. The wide span of their horns, which for bulls could reach six feet from tip to wicked tip, made the situation only more crowded and dangerous.

When Discovery dropped anchor off the northwest coast of Hawaii, the animals’ situation went from bad to worse. A bull and a cow were dragged up on deck, where they were blasted by the sudden glare and heat of the tropical sun. Sailors strapped them into harnesses and lowered them over the side of the ship into narrow Polynesian canoes that bobbed in the waves.

Hawaiian paddlers pulled rhythmically through the water, ferrying their exotic cargo toward the beach. The cattle were a gift for Kamehameha, the ruler of the archipelago the British called the Sandwich Islands. Yet the animals were more than a novelty present. In the eyes of Europeans, cattle were useful to the point of being indispensable, providing meat, milk, leather, and fertilizer. On these remotest of islands, they would—and should—be welcomed, even coveted.

They were also instruments of imperialism. After the recent loss of its American colonies, mighty Great Britain was more determined than ever to spread its economic and political influence by establishing more overseas colonies. The era of an empire on which “the sun never sets” was still ahead, but British possessions were already spread around the globe. A foothold in the middle of the Pacific would be a handsome addition to the Crown’s portfolio of properties.

Giving gifts to local rulers was just good statecraft. But certain presents also served as cultural and economic tethers. Vancouver calculated that cattle would be as valuable to future British interests in Hawaii as they would be to the locals.

Unfortunately, the shock of it all proved too much for the animals, already emaciated and malnourished from their voyage. The cow died before the canoe even touched the beach, and the bull expired soon after.

It was an ignominious start. Days later, Vancouver would try again. Little did anyone know the profound impact those cattle would have on the fate of the islands, and on a future sport called rodeo.

THE ISLAND OF HAWAII covers approximately 4,000 square miles, roughly the size of Los Angeles County, and accounts for almost two-thirds of the land area of the archipelago. On the southern part of the Big Island, as it is sometimes called, Mount Kilauea continues its steady eruptions, occasionally sending lava to the sea in explosions of steam. The massive twin summits of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea make up the island’s midsection. From its underwater base to its summit, 13,802 feet above sea level, Mauna Kea is Earth’s largest mountain, rising over 33,000 feet. (Everest is 29,029 feet tall.)

The slopes of Hawaii’s volcanoes are not nearly as steep as jagged ranges like the Alps or the Rockies. Yet their incessant rise, lack of water, and wide temperature swings made them just as wild. To outsiders, it was an alien landscape of red-tinged cinder cones, sinuous gullies and ravines, and flows of hardened lava wending down to the sea.

One of the most isolated archipelagoes on Earth, the Hawaiian Islands are nowhere near any of the plate boundaries underlying most of the world’s volcanoes. In geological parlance, Hawaii is a hot spot. Here, an extra-hot body of magma below Earth’s crust pushes against the plate above, not unlike a candle held under a sheet of paper. The bulging magma presses and melts its way up to the surface and eventually breaks through. Lava piles up and gradually creates islands.

The Hawaiian hot spot doesn’t move, but the Pacific Plate grinds three to four inches northwest every year. So the subterranean plume heats and pushes material through the crust at many points, as if a conveyor belt were sliding over it. The result is a chain of islands stretching northwest to southeast. Eruptions are still adding to the island of Hawaii, the youngest in the group, while older, smaller islands, now well past the plume, are eroding back into the sea.

Over time, plants, insects, and eventually animals made their way across the ocean and spread throughout the islands. Some species arrived thanks to exceptional hardiness, like the floating, saltwater-proof seeds of the palm tree. Other seeds arrived in the bellies of birds or stuck to wings and feet. Seals swam, bats flew, and insects rode trade winds. They all arrived to find an ecosystem with virtually no native predators.

As evolution ran its course, an environment emerged unlike anywhere else on the planet. A rainbow of unique species includes the pueo, an owl that nests underground, the happy-face spider, with a grin-shaped red curve on its back, and the naupaka flower, which looks like half of its white petals have been removed. According to Hawaiian legend, it was divided by parting lovers.

Other flora and fauna caught a ride with daring human mariners who set out across the Pacific some eight hundred years ago. These open-ocean voyages were an achievement with few parallels in human history. Larger than all of Earth’s landmasses put together, the Pacific Ocean was the ultimate frontier. Lewis and Clark trekked and paddled over 3,700 miles across North America, roughly the same distance Christopher Columbus sailed from Portugal to the Caribbean. Polynesians, by comparison, managed to explore and colonize minuscule islands separated by as much as 5,000 miles of open ocean—without any navigational aids besides winds, currents, and stars.

Most archaeologists agree that the first people arrived on the island of Hawaii between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries, probably from the Marquesas Islands, 2,300 miles to the south. They fished and grew crops like sweet potato, breadfruit, and taro, a tropical plant that produces an underground stem rich in carbohydrates. The confidence, competence, and accomplishment of early settlers became central to Hawaiian society and identity.

The outside world’s first recorded contact with Hawaii was Captain James Cook’s arrival at Kauai in January 1778, during his third globe-spanning voyage of exploration.* The crews of the ships Resolution and Discovery found a thriving civilization of over 650,000 people. Tattooed natives lived in huts made of pili grass and raised fish in artificial ponds along the shore, cultivated extensive taro fields, and expertly navigated outrigger canoes to cross between islands.

Cook later traveled on to Hawaii. “When we first approached the coast of this island,” he wrote in his journal, “we were astonished at the sight of a mountain of stupendous height, whose head was covered in snow.” The Hawaiians helped the explorer and his crew resupply their ships and traded provisions for European goods. Dutifully following British custom, Cook named the archipelago after his patron John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich.

In the late eighteenth century, the Western world’s major powers—England, France, Spain—were snapping up lands to enrich themselves and gain strategic advantage over one another. Cook’s eleven years of exploration swung the territorial land grab in Britain’s favor and altered the geopolitical fate of much of the globe. At the same time, the tools, animals, and diseases he and his men brought to foreign lands dramatically affected the heath, culture, and ecology of the places he “discovered.”

Just months before first sighting Hawaii, Cook visited Tahiti, where he had been on both of his previous journeys. This time he delivered cattle to the Tahitians and found the natives receptive to the “civilizing influence” of these animals. He warned the local chiefs not to kill them off too fast, and left feeling confident that his gift would be of great benefit to the islanders.

After a side trip to search for the Northwest Passage, Cook returned to Hawaii in the winter of 1778–1779. He didn’t have cattle with him, but even if he had, he probably never would have had an opportunity to present them. When he and his men landed at Kealakekua Bay on the western shore of Hawaii on January 16, 1779, the Hawaiians welcomed them with honors; King Kamehameha himself draped a red cape over Cook’s shoulders. Hundreds of canoes swarmed around the ships and the island’s chiefs held a lavish feast. But cultural misunderstandings of some kind caused relations to sour, and on February 14, Hawaiian warriors bludgeoned Cook to death on the beach at Kealakekua. Vancouver, then a twenty-one-year-old seaman on Cook’s expedition, was part of the group sent to fetch the captain’s body—or at least the parts of it they could find—so that Cook could receive a proper burial at sea.

The British promptly left the islands, but the march of globalization barely slowed. In February 1793, Vancouver, now the head of his own expedition, returned to Hawaii aboard a new HMS Discovery (named after Cook’s ship). He had intended to land at Kealakekua Bay, where Cook had died, but the winds were unfavorable. Instead, Vancouver anchored off a harbor called Kawaihae, forty miles north.

The explorer’s impression of the place was not exactly romantic. “The country, in this point of view, had a very dreary aspect,” he wrote, “perfectly uncultivated and nearly destitute of habitations.” But he had his orders: fill in the blank spaces left in Cook’s charts and restore good relations with the Sandwich Islanders.

Cattle were central to Vancouver’s plan. He agreed with Cook on the economic and civilizing power of “useful” gifts and their value in linking Hawaii to the British empire’s growing web of trade throughout the Pacific. These imports, Vancouver wrote, “could not fail of being highly beneficial, not only to the resident inhabitants, but also to all future visitors”—meaning, of course, Brits like him.

Hawaii was a tough environment for a cow. Temperatures could be hot and humid, and parts of the island had limited freshwater. The landscape alternated between sharp lava rocks covered with thin, nutrient-poor grasses, dry, high-altitude slopes, and muddy, dense forests. Then there were the lava flows: huge black ribbons of recently cooled and deadly sharp rock, not to mention places where fresh lava still flowed. More paved-over than pastoral, much of the terrain was about as hospitable to a grazing animal as a brick oven.

The island did at least have open grassy spaces at middle elevations, and few mammals other than pigs and dogs to compete with, so cattle would have no predators to fear.

VANCOUVER WAS UNSURE HOW he would be received. He had not forgotten how his captain was killed and dismembered fourteen years earlier, and there had been other accounts of hostility toward outsiders since then. On his first visit as expedition leader, two years before, Vancouver had found the Hawaiians uninterested in trading for any British goods except guns and ammunition, which he politely declined. This time, however, the islanders were open to trading goods such as nails and red cloth.

On the day of those first doomed cows, a fleet of canoes paddled out to the ship, led by King Kamehameha’s half brother. As the king’s emissary, he wanted nothing to do with the cattle at first. But after much pleading from Vancouver, he agreed to take the bizarre beasts to shore.

As Vancouver watched his bellowing gifts being lowered into the canoes, he knew the stakes were high. If things went well, the animals might help revive relations between Hawaii and Britain, the first step in drawing Hawaii into the fold of the empire. If they didn’t, he could have a situation on his hands like the one that had left his predecessor dead.

After the death of the first two cattle, Vancouver’s next chance came a few days later, this time at Kealakekua Bay, when he welcomed Kamehameha aboard the ship. The tall, powerful chief, described as a man who “moved in an aura of violence,” wore a resplendent royal cloak covered with bright yellow feathers. Kamehameha had met Cook before he was king, and participated in the battle in which the famous explorer was killed. Now the warrior was well on his way to uniting all the Hawaiian Islands, by diplomacy and force, for the first time in history.

Upon meeting Kamehameha, the British captain was “agreeably surprised in finding that his riper years had softened that stern ferocity.” As a gesture of friendship between them, Vancouver wrote, “we saluted by touching noses.” Then the two men exchanged gifts, including a scarlet cloak the Hawaiian chief clearly treasured. When Kamehameha offered Vancouver hogs, vegetables, and four ceremonial helmets, the captain felt the time was right to give livestock diplomacy another try. He presented the king with two ewes, a ram, and five black cows.

Kamehameha was delighted with the animals, although, as one sailor wrote, “it took some time to quiet his fears lest they should bite him.” Vancouver noted with satisfaction that the king took a rope in hand and helped secure the animals in the canoes himself. Finally free of their cramped quarters, the cattle dashed around the beach like they were calves again. A large crowd gathered to see the strange creatures. Many found them terrifying. “Thousands ran for the Sea and plunged in; every Cocoa Nut Tree was full in a moment; some jumped down precipices, others scrambled up rocks and houses.”

The locals’ reaction was not surprising, wrote Archibald Menzies, the Discovery’s botanist and surgeon, “as they were the first animals of the kind they had ever seen prancing about their country in a state so lively and vigorous.” Hawaiians dubbed the cows pua‘a pipi, or “beef pigs,” since hogs were the only animals they knew that even came close.

Foreigners’ accounts of these events need to be read with a critical eye. Their chronicles inevitably blend an attempt to tell what happened with considerable racial stereotyping and often total ignorance of the culture they were observing. Still, the accounts provide at least a sense of how shocked the Hawaiians were to see longhorns storming up and down the beach.

The moment those four cows hobbled onto the sand at Kealakekua was a turning point in Hawaiian history. After the exchange, Kamehameha opened the islands to the British Navy, no longer demanding payment for safe passage. In the decades to come, cattle and cattle products would tie Hawaii into the global economy as much as other major commodities like sandalwood and sugar. And Spanish longhorns from the West Coast became one of the first links in a chain of commercial, cultural, and political influence drawing Hawaii steadily toward the United States.

Vancouver returned to Hawaii again in 1794 with three more bulls and two cows. He learned that soon after he had left the previous year, one of the animals had given birth. The Hawaiians were so elated that they immediately bund...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• The Island of Hawaii
• The Overland Limited, 1908
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Proving Ground
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Epilogue: On the Mountain
• Acknowledgments
• Select Bibliography
• Index
• Photo Section
• About the Authors
• Copyright
• About the Publisher