Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii Read Online Free Page A

Before the thrones was a kapu stick to create a sacred space. Hawai‘i was now a Christian country, but the principle of kapu had been an element of chiefs’ courts for centuries, and it was retained in deference to tradition. The kapu stick was made of a seven-foot narwhal tusk that a whaling captain had presented to Kamehameha III, and since then it had been mounted on a gold sphere.
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    Lili‘uokalani had come through the 1892 legislature with more wins than losses: she had successfully manipulated no-confidence votes, she had played the Liberal and Reform Parties against each other to obtain two means of income for the kingdom that might see it through until something could be done about the McKinley Tariff Act. Hawai‘i’s leading historian has written that had she been content with that, the coup might have been averted. 12 But she could not let it go, and she would not continue to play the existing system for what good she could get from it. Once again in Hawaiian history, royal overreach led to mayhem. 13
    At the proper moment a procession of natives attired in morning dress entered the throne room. They were members of a patriotic movement, the Hui Kala‘ia‘ina. The first one carried an elegant folio that he presented to the queen, begging her to heed the many petitions of her people and proclaim this new constitution, and liberate them from the alienation they had suffered since 1887. It was impressive, but it was royal stagecraft; in fact the constitution they offered her was the one over which she herself had labored for months.
    The queen decided to have the cabinet also sign the document, as was provided in the Bayonet Constitution anyway. She dispatched her chamberlain to fetch them, and she said that she would receive them in the Blue Room. As the crowd waited in the throne room, she crossed the grand hall and entered the palace’s principal reception chamber, with its yellow-cream walls, royal blue draperies and upholstery, expansive cream-and-blue carpet, and—as throughout the palace—glowing wainscoting and trim of rare, exotic native woods. The room was dominated by the pompous 1848 portrait of Louis-Philippe. Watched over by the king of the French and other European monarchs who had sent their portraits as tokens of friendship, Liliuokalani waited—for three hours.
    When the cabinet finally assembled, freshly coached by Thurston, they declined to sign the document, and urged on her the fatal irregularity of what she was about to do. Lili‘uokalani was furious with them, alleging that she would not have proceeded with the constitution without their having encouraged her; accusing Peterson of playing her falsely in returning the draft after a month with no correction, from which she assumed that he found it acceptable. She raged, but they would not be moved. It was said that she even threatened to tell the restive crowd outside that it was her ministers who prevented her from issuing the new constitution. She hardly needed to remind them that during the riots in support of Queen Emma over Kalakaua, the mob had stormed the Ali’iolani Hale and cast an offending legislator from an upper-story window down to the natives who killed him. Steeling himself to the moment, Attorney General Peterson protested their loyalty but insisted that she stop and realize the danger. The step she was taking was unconstitutional, however defective she found that 1887 document to be. What she proposed to do would give the annexationists the only excuse they needed to arm themselves for revolution. With enormous difficulty Peterson and the others persuaded Lili‘uokalani for her own safety’s sake to postpone promulgating the new constitution.
    It was almost unthinkable for an ali‘i of her station to back down from such a confrontation, and it was four in the afternoon before Lili‘uokalani returned to the throne room. “Princes, Nobles, and Representatives,” she began, “I have listened to