A Woman Ahead of Her Time

sepia tinted Portrait of Queen Liliuokalani on her thrown. Handwriting along the right hand edge is a faint, personalized message dated 1916

She was a woman ahead of her time, a strong woman, a woman of color, an author, a songwriter, a social justice advocate, an advocate for her culture, and the last constitutional monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii (modeled on the British system). Queen Lydia Liliʻu Loloku Walania Wewehi Kamakaʻeha of the Kamehameha Dynasty endured a smear campaign, white imperialism, loss not only of her kingdom but of the right to vote, the right to speak her native language, and the right to celebrate her culture. This amazing 19th century woman never stopped trying to get those things back for her people. Never heard the President of the United States give a public apology to the native Hawaiians. 

About Hawaii

Captain James Cook landed at Waimea Bay on the island of Kauaʻi in 1778. He named the small group of islands the “Sandwich Islands” after the Earl of Sandwich. 

In 1790, Kamehameha I of Hawaiʻi and his men from the island, invade Maui and fought what is now known as The Battle of Kepaniwai. It wasn’t until 1795 that Kamehameha I won the Battle of Nuʻuanu.

In 1819, King Kamehameha I formed the islands into a kingdom called Hawaii.

The first missionaries arrived on the islands in 1820. 

In 1835, the first sugar plantation opened on Kauaʻi.

Early Life

Caesar Kapa‘akea of Kapaʻakea of Maui and his wife, Analea Keohokālole of Kailua-Kona, an advisor to King Kameham`eha, had a daughter on September 2, 1838 at their family home in Pūowaina. 

By tradition, a family of higher status raised Hawaiian children. This informal adoption was called hānai. Immediately after her birth, she went to live with Chiefess Laura Kōnia and High Chief Abner Pākī as their hānai child and the hānai sister of Bernice Pauahi. They baptized her into the Christian faith with the name Lydia Kamaka’eha Pākī. Her other siblings included James Kaliokalani, David Kalākaua, Anna Ka’iulani, Ka’mina’auao, Miriam Lifelike and William Pitt Leleiohoku. Her sister Ka’mina’auao was the hānai daughter of King Kamehameha III and Queen Kalama. 

Education

She entered the boarding school for the Royal Chiefs’ children, run by missionary Amos Starr Cooke, when she was four years old. She and all of her classmates were contenders to one day take the throne. 

The missionaries did not allow the children to use their native names, speak their native language, or follow their customs and traditions. They had to speak English, behave like white Americans, and use their baptized Christian names. Often they sent the children to bed with little more than a slice of bread with molasses for supper. 

Six years later, her school closed during a measles epidemic that took the lives of about 10,000 people, mostly Native Hawaiians, including her three-year-old sister, Ka’mina’auao.

black and white photo of a young Liliuokalani in a rattan arm chair, wearing a boatnecked, long sleeve dress.

After that, Princess Lydia traveled with the royal court. 

She also had a passion for learning that continued throughout her life. 

Charity

Part of the inner circle of the royal court, Princess Lydia frequently worked on charity projects with the king and queen. In her 20s, she went door-to-door on behalf of the king and queen, raising money to build Hawaii’s first hospital.

Queens Hospital opened in 1860. They treated many natives who had fallen ill from diseases brought to the islands by foreigners. Diseases like influenza and smallpox killed almost 85% of native Hawaiians within fifty years. 

Marriage

In 1860, the princess got engaged to John Owen Dominis, a white American raised in Honolulu and a commander in the royal court. They planned to be married on her twenty-fourth birthday. Unfortunately, four-year-old Crown Prince of Hawai‘i, Prince Albert Edward Kauikeaouli Kalei‘opapaakamehameha died and King four-year-old Crown Prince of Hawai‘i, Prince Albert Edward Kauikeaouli Kalei‘opapaakamehameha asked her to postpone her wedding. 

They were married on the 16th of September, 1862  and, with his widowed mother, moved into John’s family home, Washington Place. 

They never had children together. She adopted three children.

“Never cease to act because you fear you may fail.”

― Queen Liliuokalani to her adopted daughter | January 1917

Political Challenges

The King of Hawaii, the last of the Kamehameha kings, died in 1872 without naming a successor. Following Hawaiian constitutional law, the legislature elected King Lunalilo to take the throne. He died in 1874, also without naming a successor. 

The Legislature elected Princess Lydia’s brother, David Kalākaua, as the next King of Hawaii and won against the former Queen Emma, widow of King Kamehameha IV. He named his brother William Pitt Leleiohoku as heir to the throne.

By this time, wealthy settlers from the United States owned most of the sugar cane industry, schools, and other institutions and held tremendous economic power in the country. Much to Princess Lydia’s dismay, she discovered corrupt businessmen filled her brother’s cabinet. 

William Pitt Leleiohoku died on April 9, 1877. The king named Princess Lydia Kamaka‘eha, his heir apparent on April 10, and gave her the title Lili’uokalani. 

Regent, Ambassador, and Advocate

She served as regent in 1881 during King Kalakaua’s world tour, the first by any Hawaiian monarch. 

In 1886, she founded the Lili‘uokalani Educational Society, an association of native Hawaiians, ladies with aboriginal blood in their veins, to provide schooling for impoverished Hawaiian girls. Later, they expanded its mandate to include any impoverished girls. 

During a world tour in 1887, she visited with U.S. Pres. Grover Cleveland and with Britain’s Queen Victoria. 

While she was gone, white businessmen forced the King to sign a new constitution that significantly weakened the monarchy and removed the right of native Hawaiians to vote unless they were landowners. The new constitution became known as the bayonet constitution. 

Her brother, the king, died suddenly in January 1891.

Succession and Reign

Liliuokalani became Queen, the first woman to occupy the throne. Seven months into her reign, her husband died.

One of her first orders of business was to restore the monarchy. She fought for the resignation of her brother’s cabinet. When they refused, she took it to the Hawaii Supreme Court, who ruled in her favor. She restored her supporters to positions they’d held prior to the changes brought by the bayonet constitution.  

By 1890, twenty-one international treaties and over 80 embassies around the world recognized the Hawaiian islands. Additionally, Hawaiʻi and its multiethnic society enjoyed universal suffrage in 1840 (a full 120 years before the United States), universal health care, state neutrality (1855), and a 95 percent literacy rate, the second highest in the world. 

In 1892, along with the Legislature of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i she passed an act to protect public lands from privatization. This Highways Act declared existing trails, roads, and bridges, as well as future government-built ones to be public highways. 

Overthrow

American businessmen in Hawaii weren’t happy. Their first response was a racist smear campaign by the American media. 

Then Queen Liliuokalani announced her plans to rewrite the constitution. The “Annexation Club,” formed in 1892, was a group of American business owners who plotted to overthrow the monarchy. They reacted quickly to the Queen’s announcement. 

On January 17, 1893, John L. Stevens, U.S. minister to the Hawaiian Kingdom, directed a battalion of US Marines, armed with a cannon and machine guns, to march through downtown Honolulu. Forty-eight hours later, the overthrow was complete. They established a provisional government. American business owner Sanford Dole (of Dole Food Company) became president.

For the next couple years, Liliuokalani and her supporters fought against the US annexation of Hawaii. They petitioned political parties, the press, and sent delegations to Washington, DC.

Was it Treason?

In 1895, some of her supporters sought to restore the monarchy through an armed revolt in. The provisional government quashed the revolt, arrested many of Liliuokalani’s supporters, and imprisoned Lili‘uokalani. They tried to force her to sign abdication papers. She refused, and they locked her in a bedroom at ‘Iolani Palace for treason by allegedly knowing about the counterrevolutionary attempt made by her supporters. No proof of that was ever given. 

During her incarceration, she kept detailed diaries and wrote songs which were somehow smuggled out of her room and published in Hawaiian newspapers. She translated the Hawaiian creation change “Kumulipo” into English, hoping to let the rest of the world know of Hawaiian heritage. Although she wrote “Aloha ‘Oe” in 1878, she transcribed it during her arrest. It was published and became a popular national song protesting the encroaching cultural and political imperialism. 

Ultimately, they told her that if she signed the abdication papers, all they would release all the supporters they arrested with her. She wrote that she would have chosen her own death rather than sign it. But if she didn’t, her supporters would be executed. She didn’t want them to die because of their love and loyalty to her. 

They released her on parole after eight months. When she received a full pardon, she traveled to Washington D.C. to appeal to President Grover Cleveland for help in restoring her to the throne. President Cleveland agreed she should be reinstated, but Congress rejected the idea.

The Oni Pa’a Movement

Liliuokalani didn’t give up. She became the leader of the Oni Pa’a (stand firm) Movement protesting the impending annexation of Hawaii by the US Government. She wrote a letter to the U.S. House of Representatives and many others.

It was the beginning of the Spanish-American war. That made the strategic location of Hawaii too important to the United States for Lili’uokalani to overcome. In 1898, President William McKinley signed into law a joint resolution of Congress, the Newlands Resolution, that annexed Hawaii. (The legality of that act is still in dispute today.) 

Many loyal subjects visited their beloved queen at Washington Place on her 60th birthday a few weeks later. Many came bearing gifts; some, kneeling in her presence, presented their ho‘okupu and backed out the same way they entered.

Cover of Hawaii's Story By Hawaii's Queen Liliuokalani is plain text over a faint image of a yellowed map of the Hawaiian islands.

The Queen continued to petition Congress and advocate for the restoration of the Hawaiian monarchy. Her autobiography, entitled Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen, ©1898, the only autobiography written by a Hawaiian monarch, protests the annexation and provides a first-person account of the events leading up to her overthrow.

The Organic Act established the Territory of Hawaii in 1900.

Later Years

After 1900, “Liliuokalani of Hawaii,” as she called herself, continued to advocate for the return of the Hawaiian monarchy and for her people’s rights. She kept a record of her daily life and business matters in her diaries. She lived in Washington Place and received thousands of visitors. According to biographer and Historian David W. Forbes, she looked back or reflected on what might have been only occasional. 

In 1909, she sued the US government to return 1.75 million acres of Hawaiian land seized by the US. She was unsuccessful.

Death

Color photo of the vault with gold lettering  that reads "Queen Liliuokalani last sovereign of Hawaii born 1838 died 1917.

On November 11, 1917, 79-year-old Queen Lili‘uokalani had a stroke and died in her bed. 

During a rainstorm, a procession took her body from Washington Place to the Throne Room of ‘Iolani Palace, where she lay in state. When the procession arrived at ‘Iolani Palace, there was a rumble of intermittent thunder that was looked upon as a good hō‘ailona or omen.

At midnight of the following day, the flaming torch (the emblem of the Kalākaua Dynasty) and sacred kahili preceded her body to Kawaiaha‘o Church where she lay in state for the next seven days. 

After that, a final procession traveled along King Street and up Nu‘uanu Avenue and where they placed her remains in the Royal Mausoleum at Mauna ‘Ala.

Legacy

Liliuokalani established a trust that bears her name in 1909. Liliuokalani Trust continues to benefit orphaned and destitute native Hawaiian children today.

Washington Place, the historic residence of Lili’uokalani, is maintained by the State of Hawaii. Get more information and take a virtual tour.  

The 1892 Highways Act was one example of her diligent labor as queen for the welfare of her people. It defined and protected Hawaiian trails and endures as a tool that the state of Hawaii uses to claim public trails and maintain rights of access despite private land ownership.

The Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail is one such trail. Established in 2000, it preserves a network of ancient, historic and modern trails.

Though Queen Emma and King Kamehameha IV founded The Queen’s Hospital in 1859, it grew. In 1967 it they renamed it The Queen’s Medical Center and in 1985 the nonprofit, The Queen’s Health System, was established. Liliuokalani’s fund-raising efforts are a part of that legacy. 

Musician and Composer

Liliuokalani had perfect pitch and mastered several musical instruments. Well-versed in American and European hymns and ballads, as well as traditional Hawaiian chants and prose, she composed over 150 songs. Her most famous song, “Aloha ‘Oe,” remains popular today.

Did you know the story of the Queen of Hawaii or had you only heard a portion of it?

If you want to know more, check out the resource list below.


Resources

Britannica.com

GoHawaii.com

Goodreads.com

Liliuokalani Trust

Image Credits

Top photo, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Second photo, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Final photo, by Sephiroth storm, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

2 comments

    1. You’re welcome, Lisa. Like you, I’d only heard part of this story in the past. There’s a lot more in her autobiography but I’ve hit the high (and low) points here.

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