On the one hand, Hawaiians were helping with the conquest of the West. The presence of Hawaiians helped white settlers dominate a world where they were vastly outnumbered by indigenous tribes. In 1847, Hawaiians made up 10% of San Francisco’s tiny but growing population. The Hawaiians who worked for Sutter are the most well-known Hawaiian laborers to travel to the west coast in the 19th century.īut by the mid-1800s, there were hundreds of Hawaiians in what is now Canada and California. In 1839, a Swiss businessman named John Sutter recruited a small group of Hawaiians to travel with him to what was then the Mexican colony of Alta California. To get an answer, we dug through court records, social media posts, current and historic newspaper articles, and talked to several historians.

So how did the descendants of a group of Hawaiians end up owning a casino in California? But a spokeswoman for the tribe canceled an interview with tribal elders and declined all requests for comment after we asked questions about lawsuits involving the tribe.

We traveled to California last summer to talk to the tribe about its Hawaiian heritage for Offshore, our serialized storytelling podcast. The story of the tribe - whose members have both Native American and Native Hawaiian ancestors - is a fairly well-documented, though often overlooked, part of California and Hawaiian history. The stories running on Civil Beat’s site will accompany - but not mirror - the audio stories, so be sure to check out both. Host Kuʻu Kauanoe takes a hard look at why Hawaiians are leaving the islands today and tells surprising stories from history about Hawaiians who left long ago.įrom now until June 18, we’ll be posting weekly episodes, along with written articles.

Offshore Season 4: Far From Home focuses on the Hawaiian diaspora.

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