Remembering Kalakaua

Upon sighting the USS Charleston on January 29, 1891, hundreds of citizens of the Kingdom of Hawai?i rushed to Honolulu Harbor to celebrate the return of King David Kalakaua. Just two months earlier, their beloved mo?i had left the islands on a mission to save Hawai?i from the annexationist intentions of American businessmen and their sympathizers in Washington, DC.However, the king fell ill before he could complete his journey. The people watched in horror as the ship neared with its Hawaiian flag at half-mast: Kalakaua was dead.

Out of this moment of enormous grief and uncertainty emerged Ka Moolelo o ka Mo?i Kalakaua I: Ka Hanau ana, ke Kaapuni Honua, ka Moolelo Piha o kona mau La Hope ma Kaleponi, Amerika Huipu?ia, na Ho?ike a Adimarala Baraunu me na Kauka, Etc., Etc., Etc.: Hoohiwahiwa ia me na Kii (The History of King Kalakaua I: The Birth—The Journey around the World—A Full Record of his Last Days in California, United States of America—The Reports of Admiral Brown and the Doctors, Etc., Etc., Etc.: Illustrated with Pictures). Written in Hawaiian by the esteemed intellectual Joseph Moku?ohai Poepoe, this seventy-four-page publication sold for $1 at the mo?i’s funeral on February 15and provided crucial answers for a citizenry in mourning.

In death as in life, the popular narrative of Kalakaua was largely defined by western conspirators who sought to discredit his leadership to justify an illegal overthrow, as well as by generations of English-only historians who relied on these revisionist accounts. With Remembering Kalakaua, Native Hawaiian scholar Tiffany Lani Ing has produced a complete English translation of Poepoe’s legendary pamphlet. This book restores to public discussion a record of Kalakaua’s endeavors to preserve Hawai?i’s independence and corrects 130 years of misrepresentation.

Presenting Poepoe’s funerary narrative in Hawaiian and in English, this work features a kanikau (mourning chant) by Poepoe, Poepoe’s biography of the king from Kalakaua’s birth through his expansive reign, and a collection of correspondences that detail Kalakaua’s declining health and final days—an in-depth accounting that puts to rest rampant speculation about the nature of his demise.