Approximately thirty
years after Christopher Columbus accidently discovered America the Pacific waters were, so to speak, invaded by Portuguese and Spanish vessels. Juan Gaetano (Caetano), to whom historians refer as the discoverer of the Hawaiian Islands in 1555, was probably Portuguese, who like many others in those days placed himself at the disposal of Spain when no chance of navigation was offered them in their own country, Portugal. Examples of these were found with many discoverers, namely, Fernão de
Magalhães (Ferdinand Magellan), and João Rodrigues Cabrilho.
Gaetano, as pilot of a galleon commanded by a captain cruising under the flag of Spain, is believed to have chartered on maps the Hawaiian Islands. These charts were kept on file by the Spanish Crown. Scientists however place that discovery of the Hawaiian Islands, by either Spanish or Portuguese navigators, in doubt, claiming that the little group of islands charted and
named Los Major, Los Menjes, Los Desgraciadas and
others was placed in the wrong latitude. Battles of scientists have raged for decades over this question of discovery, as valiantly waged as battles upon seas. The question of "longitude" has always been the rock upon which their arguments have been wrecked.
Hawaiian traditions tell of the arrival of mysterious foreigners who remained and intermarried, merging into the aboriginal population and to this day several eminent families of Hawaiians claim descent from these early
foreigners.
Further consternation occurred when Captain James Cook, Royal Navy of Britain came upon the islands on January 17, 1778, naming them for the Earl of Sandwich, while cruising southward from the South Seas. However, he had the same fate of Magellan when the navigator touched the Philippine Islands. In January of 1779, Cook anchored in Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii,
where on February 14, he was slain, presumably due to misunderstandings on the part of both English sailors and the
Kanakas.
The call of the seas and the urge to adventure has always been one of the dominant characteristics of the Portuguese. But they have also grown used to seeing much of their deeds of discovery claimed by English and usurped by the Spanish and the Dutch.
Therefore it does not matter which one discovered these islands. What is important is that the Portuguese immigrated in large numbers to Hawaii, as early as 1820, as a result of the whaling vessels' stopovers, giving crew
members open chances to escape. The never-ending sagas they were put through in the long hunting of the mammal trips commenced in most cases, in the Azores Islands.
Many of these men, upon reaching shore, would retire from maritime life, and began to farm. Later, many of these pioneers took up large tracts of land and became cattle ranchers and dairymen. This situation turned out to be similar to California - not only a lucrative business but also providing work for the less
enterprising colonists.
Around 1877, with the arrival of large numbers of Chinese, the Portuguese laborers were the ones who suffered most. They were laid off and forced out of the jobs by unscrupulous bosses and foremen who would impose all kinds of dues and charges against their salaries, leaving those poor and illiterate workers with meager change saved. Things would turn for worse in some
instances when salaries were paid in "Kanaka" currency, as it was known then,
instead of U.S. gold and silver. The local currency, when used by the workers for payments of goods bought from the bosses, would suffer a reduction of twenty per cent in value (800 reis or 80 centavos - Portuguese). Most contracted immigration, however, began only in 1878 to meet the
labor supply demands of the sugar industry, which became evident after the signature of the reciprocity agreement with the United States.
Dr. William Hillebrand, a German botanist who had returned from
Hawaii in 1871 and was residing in Madeira, offered to assist in the recruiting of immigrants from the Azores and the Madeiras, since both areas had a similar climate. Later, in 1877, he was commissioned by the government of Hawaii to carry out the labor contract as set by the Board of Immigration of the
islands, which, according to Norris W. Potter, called for a three-year stay in the sugar plantations, from the date of arrival. The working month consisted of twenty-six working days, ten
hours per day. Men received $10.00 a month and women $6.50, paid in U.S. gold or silver. The contract also included lodging, daily food rations, medical care and free medicine, as well as a
garden ground where Portuguese grew vegetables for their staples, including the Inhames, or taro root, pamt of the Azores culinary still common in Portuguese homes of California. It is usually cooked in salt water, sliced and fried to accompany pork dishes. The daily food rations consisted of: 1 pound
of fresh or salt beef; a half pound of salt or dried fish; one and a half
pounds of rice; one pound of taro roots or other vegetables and one third ounce of tea.
Hillebrand contracted with Hackfeld and Company of Breman, Germany, for the transportation of these immigrants. The fares were paid by the government of Hawaii at $75.00 for each adult. The first group of these immigrants arrived aboard the Priscilla on September 30, 1878, and many followed thereafter originating both in
Madeira and San Miguel in the Azores.
In 1881 King Kalakaua went on a tour around the world, and stopped in Portugal where he was well received. As a result of this visit, more immigrant families were to be sent to Hawaii. This agreement, negotiated with Lisbon by Henry A.P. Carter, Minister-Envoy of the Kingdom of Hawaii, was signed on May 5, 1882.
As thousands of Azoreans made preparations to leave for Hawaii, local newspapers questioned the feasibility of such contracts,
cautioning them by pointing as an example the fate of some of their predecessors, both from the Azores islands and the Continent who ended up in New Orleans, Louisiana, working in the bayous of the Mississippi River and cotton plantations of
Louisiana.
Trips used to take months. The voyage of the Amana lasted 155 days from Funchal, Madeira, to Honolulu. They recorded ten births and four deaths aboard the vessel.
Between 1878 and 1899 approximately 11,937 Portuguese immigrants
landed in Hawaii. In fourteen shiploads of Portuguese, the percentage had been thirty per cent men, twenty-two per cent women and forty-eight per cent children, which turned out to be very valuable for the population of the island, but expensive as a labor supply.
The population census of Hawaii, taken as of December 31, 1884, showed that out of a population of 80,578, 40,104 were natives; 4,218 Mongrels; 17,939 Chinese; 116 Japanese, 9,377 Portuguese (5,239 men and 4,138 women) and
8,914 other nationalities. The Chinese were the only ones who exceeded the Portuguese in number. The same census showed that in
Honolulu there were 580 Portuguese residents (309 males and 271 females) of which 112 were married and only 120 of the total 580 were able to read and write.
It was only in 1882 that Portugal recognized the importance of her subjects in those Pacific islands and decided to commission a qualified Consul by sending A. de Sousa Canavarro, who replaced Jason
(Jacinto) Perry, of Faial, Azores, a local resident who acted on diplomatic matters on behalf of the Portuguese government. Jason was the father of Antonio J. Perry, who later
became an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii.
Payment on the plantation was based on ethnic origin. Lawrence H. Fuchs, in his Hawaii Pono: A Social History, indicates that in 1901, while a Scotch blacksmith averaged $4.16 a day, a Portuguese would average $2.37, followed by the Japanese earning
$1.50 for the same job and skill. The same inequity happened to carpenters. Americans would be paid $3.67 a day,
Scotch $2.90 and Portuguese $1.54.
As late as 1915 Scotch and American overseers were being paid seventy-five per cent more than their Portuguese counterparts. As years passed, these immigrants reached better positions on the plantations such as "Lunas" (overseers), mechanics, teamsters and stone cutters. They built houses wherever they were employed. The
construction was mostly of lava
rock, similar to that found in the home villages of the island of San Miguel, where such rock also abounds. In 1893 and succeeding years many Portuguese left Hawaii as a result of the economic depression affecting those islands and the revolution which followed in the last years of the monarchy, a prelude to the annexation by the United States.
The Portuguese feared political upheaval to the point of requesting protection from Antonio de Souza
Canavarro, then Consul of Portugal in Honolulu. They had a petition signed by 171 people requesting the King of Portugal to send a battleship to the island in case the situation deteriorated as it did in 1895 when political turmoil was caused by those trying to restore Princess Liliuokalani to power.
Many of these immigrants arrived in Oakland in the early part of 1893 causing certain apprehension to the long established Portuguese community. They had sold all of their possessions in
Hawaii to pay the fare to California and, upon arrival in Oakland, found certain difficulties in starting a new life, finally having to seek help from the County Board of Supervisors for clothing, food and furniture. This prompted Manuel Stone, Editor of A Pá tria, to come out publicly denouncing this attitude, going as far as suggesting that the U.S. government, at the time considering annexation of these islands, be encouraged to prohibit the Portuguese immigration from Hawaii to California
just as they were considering doing with the Chinese.
Manuel F.M. Trigueiro, Director of União Portuguesa, criticized Manuel Stone in an editorial published on March 2, 1893,defending the actions of these Portuguese from Hawaii who had suffered enough in the hands of many cruel bosses found in almost all sugar plantations.
In 1897, once again the Portuguese found themselves in difficulty. This situation was due to the landing of thousands of Japanese, demobilized soldiers of the
China-Japan War, who were contracted for the sugar cane fields at much lower salaries than those paid Portuguese workers. This caused some Portuguese to leave for Timor, a Portuguese possession of Indonesia,
while others chose California.
They came and settled around San Leandro and Oakland. In San Leandro they sought the most modest and inexpensive housing available on what is known, even today, as Orchard Avenue (between Davis and Williams). The large influx of these immigrants
from Hawaii caused, again, certain resentment in the Portuguese community, which at that time was beginning to experience the pleasures of acceptance by their Anglo-American hosts, attained after hard work and economic independence.
So the Portuguese in California went on to label their brothers from Hawaii as the "Kanakas" - a name designating the Hawaiian native. This nickname resulted in Orchard Avenue being referred to as "Kanaka Row," due to the large number of
Portuguese immigrants from the Pacific islands who settled there. The name stuck and today is used to tease, jokingly, some of these
people and their descendants.
In the census taken in 1910 of the foreign stock which composed the islands, 11.6 per cent were Portuguese (22,301); followed by the Chinese, 11.2 per cent (21,674); topped only by Hawaiians, 13.5 per cent and Japanese, 41.5 per cent.
By 1930 the Portuguese who stayed in Hawaii had emerged from the labor class, and
only thirty per cent of all males remained in that class. They numbered 29,117 or 8.6 per cent of the whole population. Out of those, only 2,986 were registered voters.
The Portuguese from Hawaii, most of them descendants of those born in Madeira and San Miguel Island in the Azores, are among the most friendly and warm personalities, perhaps as a product of their exposure to Hawaiian paradisaical life . . . if only a paradise for those who did not have to earn the daily bread in the
sugar cane and pineapple fields which made the Spreckels
and the Sanfords rich. In later years many of the Portuguese succeeded in reaching better positions in the professional social and political fields. Their sons have honored the fields of legislature, the judicial, finance and industry. They were present when the Hawaiian flag was lowered and the American flag raised over the former Royal Palace on August 12, 1898 and were
among those who first aligned themselves with the two
dominant political parties of the U.S.A.
Of the Portuguese of Hawaii, one can truly say they were and are proud of their heritage. This is attested to by the simple but important fact that most of them kept their original family names, unlike many of their compatriots in other states of the union who, through the years, had the tendency to anglicize their names. On the other hand, they almost lost their Portuguese language
and touch with the homeland.
Today, save the linguica
sausage and the sweet bread sold in Hawaiian markets, of the few things left by the Portuguese is the Ukelele, produced in Hawaii between 1877 and 1879 by a Portuguese cabinet maker, Manuel Nunes. He patterned it after a small guitar known as cavaquinho, a popular string instrument typical of Madeira Island. Nunes died in 1923. However, it was Arthur Godfrey, through television, who re-introduced this instrument and transformed it into the family instrument of America back in the late 1920s.
Extracted from "Portuguese Immigrants" Copyright 1968 by Carlos
Almeida Reprinted by Permission from the Author .
Copies are available by contacting the U.P.E.C. 1120 E. 14th St. San Leandro CA 94577-Phone: 510-483-7676
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