King Kamehameha: The Hawaiian Hero

King Kamehameha was the original Hawaiian superhero—legend says he was born with a comet lighting up the sky, hinting at his future badassery. He turned his warrior’s spirit into action, unifying Hawaii with clever tactics and serious muscle, like literally pushing his enemies off cliffs. He didn’t just fight with spears; he was all about upgrading to the latest tech—hello, Western firearms! His epic victory at the Battle of Nuʻuanu was the stuff of legends, making him the undisputed boss of the Hawaiian Islands. Kamehameha wasn’t just a king; he was a legend who built a kingdom to last.

 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. A fleet of three hundred war canoes
cuts through the waves, spurred by the beats of Hawaiian drums.
At the prow of the lead warship stands King Kamehamea

(00:20):
the Great. He wears a golden helmet and a cloak
made of red feathers, which he took from the body
of a rival chieftain he defeated in battle. He has
killed his enemies, clogged rivers with their bodies and sacrificed
them to the war god, and possibly even consumed their
hearts as part of the ritual. He fought royal marines,

(00:43):
performed amazing feats of strength, and battled the warriors of Maui,
and now at the head of his army battle hardened
Hawaiian warriors armed with spears, shields, and even a few
muskets and cannons. Kamehamea will fulfill the destiny foretold by
the strange phenomena that have followed him through his life.

(01:05):
He will unify Hawaii and rule it as a single
kingdom for the first time in its history. Hello, and
welcome back to Badass of the week. My name is
Ben Thompson, and with me as always is my co host,

(01:25):
doctor Pat Larish. Pat, how's it going.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
It's going great. Excited to talk about King Kamehameha and
Hawaii today. What about you, Ben, how are things going
with you?

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah? So I have kind of a crazy story that
happened to me a couple of days ago. It was Saturday.
I was sitting in my front office in my house
and I'm working on something. Oh, I was about to
play a game online and I joined up with my
friend Matt, and we logged in and we were about
to start. But then I hear this noise outside and
I look outside and it's this woman yelling help, help,
And she's walking. She's got one dog in her arm,

(01:56):
and she's walking another dog, and there's like two dogs
attacking her, like a big black lab and like a
great pit bull or like jumping at her. They're like
pulling at her clothes. They're trying to bite the dog
that she's holding in her hand. She's yelling like help, help.
So I run to my front door. I'm in my
pajamas right. I run to my front door and I
opened the door. I was like, get in here, hurry up,

(02:17):
because she's like right in my arm, like walking right
past my arm. I was like, hurry, come here, right.
So she comes and gets into my house and I
get the door shut before the dog. The dogs were
trying to come in, right, And I get the door
shut before the dogs get into the house, and I
run over and I closed my window. My office window
was open, and then I was like, I closed it up.
And then I heard like a bang because my cat

(02:39):
had gone. My cat likes to go in and out
through the through that window, and she had gone out,
and these dogs were like chasing her and she was
trying to jump in and she couldn't decide to shut
the window on her, and she bounces off the window
and she takes off and the two dogs take off
after her. And I'm like, oh man, what am I
gonna do? So, I mean, my mom is home and
the baby is home year old, and now I have

(03:01):
this strange woman in my house. She was, you know,
this very pleasant young woman with these two dogs that
I don't know, and they're barking and going crazy because
they're all stressed out because they've just been attacked. Yeah,
and now I got these two wild dogs running around
my yard. I don't know. I've never seen these dogs before.
I don't know what's going on.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
You have no idea where your cat is at the moment.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Right, And so I go out there, I grab this
putting iron, like this golf club, and I run outside
to try to rescue her because I'm like, I don't know.
And so I go outside and I run around the
back of the house and they've got her kind of cornered,
and and so I get up there and they're two

(03:42):
dogs like they're they're kind of aggressive. But so I
try to like poke at them with the with the
golf club, like hey, get a get away, get away, right,
And then that doesn't work. They still kind of going
after her, and so then I bop one of them
on top of the head, not hard, right, just kind
of a little bomb, just like yeah, just like hey,
stop it right, you bad right, don't do that bad.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Dog just to get their attention, Satan, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Like I'm not joking around. I bopped the boundaries, yes,
And they came after me and they start snapping at
me and biting at me and like trying to get
to me. I like jump out of the way. They're
going after the cat. They're going after me, like I
can't get between the cat, and then because they're like
the gress was a giant pit bull and like this
big black d and so I started swinging the golf
club at them. I'm like hitting them pretty hard with

(04:25):
the golf club, but that doesn't stop them. It just
makes them more angry. And so at some point I
grabbed the cat and I got the cat in one arm,
and I'm trying to get back to my front door
and they're like chasing me. So I'm kind of like
walking backwards, and like anytime one of them gets too
close or like kind of bites at me, I hit
it with the club, not hard, but like I kind

(04:46):
of whack it it, give it a good whack right
to kind of keep it away. Yeah, And so then
I have to kind of get back into my front
door and I'm holding the cat and the cat is
freaking out and biting.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
The hell out of me.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Right, So I have bit a bunch of times on
my hand where I was carrying her, but I couldn't
drop her because I'd lose her. She'd take off and
I wouldn't see her. Yeah. Yeah, she's bleeding all over
the place, right, and so I'm fighting these dogs and
I'm I'm just like, I don't know, did you see
Beauty and the Beast. I watched that recently with with
Little Brian, and like, I feel like a beast fighting
all the wolves and stuff in the world. So I

(05:17):
was like, I'm like, I could die if this, if
this football gets his jaws on me, Like I'm in
real serious trouble, right, yeah, And so anyway, I'm backing
up the stairs to my front door and I'm fighting
these dogs and my mom comes out. She's yelling at
them to go away. They're not listening there, like on
a rampage, right, And I finally get inside the house.
Well I get I pushed the cat in through the

(05:38):
window because I'd reopened it, and the dogs started going
the window. So I'm beating on them with the golf club,
trying to keep them away. My mom runs inside, gets
that window closed. I run inside, We get the door shut. Okay, cool,
they're outside. They take off. They run down the hill.
Uh yeah, I call the cops. The animal control comes.
Animal control the actually picks the dogs up, but yeah, like, yeah,

(06:01):
my cat was kind of walking with a limb she
was bleeding all over places because she she broke a
bunch of claws fighting them. It turned out everything is
okay the end story of the say, now everything's okay.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Well, obviously you're here telling us the story. Yes, but
a cat doing how did you get tested for rabies?

Speaker 1 (06:20):
The young girl was a dog walker, so she wasn't
even my neighbor. She was like helping my neighbor out
to walk their dogs while they were out of town.
And she was okay. But I was like, man, welcome
to the neighborhood. This is new for us right in
the suburban Seattle. I really wasn't expecting to be attacked
by a pack of wild dogs in my front yard.

(06:42):
But wow, yeah, so she was okay. When I was
watching that, it looked like she was getting bit, and
it looked like her dogs were getting bit, but there
was no There was nothing, so none of them were
bleeding or herd or anything. So that was great. My
cat was bleeding a bunch. She had a little limb,
but she didn't have any puncture wounds from the dogs. Uh.

(07:07):
And the blood was from she had broken nails trying
to fight them. She had broken a bunch of all
of her front claws were broken and one of her
back claws was had it was bleeding, uh, from trying
to climb up the wall basically to escape them, I think.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Because you're a cat and climbing the walls.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
Right, she was trying. She was trying to jump up,
climb the walls everything she could to get out of
the way. Right. She was fighting really hard. Yeah. Yeah,
a little little cat and these were big dogs and yeah,
and then I had a I had a bunch of
puncture wounds on my hand from getting bit by the
bit by the cat. But luckily I didn't get bit
by the dogs, so that was nice, right, because they

(07:46):
keep the cat up on her shots.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Okay, yeah, yeah, and cats like if your cat, and
you kind of expect to get scratched.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
I mean, these were pretty serious bites because the cat
was like panicky and freaking out. So I didn't really
feel anything as I had all the adrenaline going from
being in the middle of it. But when I picked
her up, and she just was like in a panic, right,
and she bit me real good, and like I didn't
feel it, but I was, like I thought at the moment,
like this that's bad. That was deep. You know, I
thought like, this is gonna this is gonna hurt tomorrow.

(08:16):
It's not hurting right now, but that's gonna That was.
That was a big one. Yeah. And then my my
bites got infected. So my finger got real infected, like yesterday.
This is from two days ago and then yesterday, and
I had to go to the doctor and get to
go to urgent care and get antibiotics and all this
stuff to like deal with the infection.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
Did you tell them the story? Yeah? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
They were like you were like you were like the
hero of the story. I was like, I don't know, man,
I didn't feel very heroic to hit a dog with
a golf club. It felt really awful. Actually, I really
didn't enjoy it.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
Well yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Really was you cat? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (08:52):
Rible? Yeah? But whoa. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
One of these dolls was wearing a collar. It was
wearing a collar with a tags. Was somebody's pet. And
the animal control guy was like, this is the second
time this month these dogs have gotten out of their
their home and attacked the pet. He's like, luckily they
haven't attacked humans yet. I was like, uh, he attacked
me like pretty severe, pretty seriously. And that dog walker
they attacked both of us pretty good, and yeah, craziness.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
This is a This is.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
Irresponsible pet ownership. This is irresponsible pet ownership. I was
not expecting that on a Saturday morning in my pajamas.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, so, I guess, just like I was determined to
rescue my cat, that's a quality that we're going to
see from the person we're talking about today, King Kamehameha,
the Great of Hawaii.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Though I'd say maybe his determination was a little greater
than mine. I was just trying to rescue my cat
and he was trying to unify all of Hawaii under
one kingdom.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
A little different, yes, but both praiseworthy in their own
ways perhaps.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
But also, the most powerful special attack in Dragon Ball
Z is not named after me. So we're going to
talk about Kama Man instead. When we come back from
this quick break, we are going to dive into some
really cool Hawaiian history. So stick with us, all right,

(10:23):
Welcome back to the show. We are going to be
talking about King Kameha Maya and pat His early life
kind of reads like a little bit like mythology.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Huh it does. Yeah? Yeah, his birth name was Pia
and we don't know his birth date for sure, but
there were stories legends linking his birth to storms and
strange lights and maybe a bright star in the sky,
and given what was going on in the sky at

(10:56):
the time, maybe this means he was born in November
of seventeen fifty eight, because that's when Hallie's Comet was
passing through the neighborhood.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yeah, so there's like a range of when he was born.
But yeah, there's all these cool myths about, like, oh,
he was prophesied and there is a yeah, there's bright
lights in the sky to show the coming of the
Unifier f Hawaii, and so yeah, this is what we're
talking about with the mythological stuff. So we'd like to
think his birth month was November seventeen fifty eight because

(11:29):
that would it's a good story.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah, it works poetically, it works spiritually, it works cosmically,
it works. Yes, And he was probably from a minor
branch of the nobility. Various clans were warring with one
another at this point, and he was.

Speaker 1 (11:46):
Tight in with one of them, probably right.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Oh yeah, yeah, So our boy was hidden away for
the first five years of his life to keep him safe,
and he returned to the town of Kyle at age five.
And when he returns, I mean he's five years old,
so he's probably brought back by some grown up or other.
They call him Kamehameha, which means the lonely one, because

(12:12):
he was you know, kept apart, isolated.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Yeah, but that's cool though. That's like what you said
was mythological right. He's born under these auspicious signs, you know,
the prophecy of the Unifier and under this sign and
he's born during Haley's comet, which was not as cool. Yeah,
which is cool, and was just bright streak in the
sky for several nights or however long the commet last.

(12:36):
They didn't, you know, the people there weren't didn't understand.
Oh this is crazy cool. And then he's and then
he's hidden away for five years and returns and this
is Kame. He's the lonely one. And yeah, and so
then he arrives in Kailua, this is the big island
of Hawaii.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, he's not five years old. Forever he grows up.
And when he's big enough, he says, hmm, I'd like
to try my hand at power. I'd like to try
my hand at flipping the nahastone. Now, what is the
Naha Stone? Then? Have you seen the Naha Stone? You've

(13:18):
been to Hawaii. I haven't.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
Okay, I've been to Hawaii a bunch, but I have
never seen the Naha Stone. I'm going to guess it's
a big rock.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
I think you're right.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
If flipping it is a big deal, then this seems
like that's a big Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
This is not a pebble you pick up from the beach.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
This is this is the Gordian Rock.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yes, it's the Gordian Rock. It weighs like three tons.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
Oh god, it's like a truck. It's huge.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
Yeah. And flipping the Naha Stone confers mana, which is
like spiritual power, spiritual authority, you know, and command maya.
He was from maybe a noble family, but he wasn't
from like the royal bloodline and the people who were
born into the Royal bloodline, they were entitled to flip

(14:06):
the Naha Stone and receive mana. But he wanted to
try anyway. And the priestess says, okay, I'm going to
make a prophecy. She says that flipping the Naha Stone
would quote lift off the strands that bind the islands.
I'm trying to figure out what I would think if

(14:28):
I just received this prophecy without any context. What do
you think this image means? Lift off the strands that
bind the islands?

Speaker 1 (14:37):
I mean, okay, so we've got this big rock. I
just googled things that weigh three tons and I got
I got a rhinoceros, like a fully grown adult, male
white rhinoceros, and in a Ford F two fifty pickup truck.
So that's the weight that we are trying to flip
of a rock. And this is not like with the

(14:58):
even within even the F two fifty would be easier
because it's already kind of lifted off the ground a
little bit to get your hands under it. This is
like you gotta get your fingers under the rock.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
So the rhinoceros might have its own opinions.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
Right, you can count tip a rhino maybe, yeah, but yeah,
So flipping the stone would lift off the strands that
bind the islands. It makes me think of like like
a web, you know, like that what I'm picturing is
kind of this this web of energy that's all tied
to this stone that binds out to all of the

(15:30):
other islands. And if you flip it. You break that
all and now you've kind of freed it all to
I don't know, pulling, the pulling, the pulling the stopper
out of a bathtub. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
I guess I have to. I have to confess. I
don't understand this image. But you know what, it's a prophecy,
you know, and become relevant. He flips it, he does. Yeah, yes,
I'm not sure how, but he flips it root force.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
I think this is kind of the sword in the
stone for Hawaiian kings, at least according to the prophecy.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
So yeah, so Kaman, he's got other skills, you know,
he's Yeah, he was hidden away for five years, but
he received a good education. He was trained in various games,
he was trained in warfare, he was trained in oral history.
And I have to say, from reading around what various
scholars have written about Hawaiian culture, the oral history of

(16:27):
Hawaii goes back a long time, and it's very rich
and it's also very coherent. So my guess is that
young kamand Mea would have had a lot of oral
history to learn. He also learned navigation, which is no
small feat. He learned religious ceremonies which were a big deal.

(16:51):
And you know he was educated by his father, by
his uncle, who is the chief of the region. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
Yes, he's kind of this pretty successful guy. He's the
son of a minor chief. He gains the attention to
the chief of the region because he's kind of big strong.
He flips an Aha stone even though he wasn't even
supposed to try. It wasn't high enough station to try,
but he did it, and he flipped it, which is cool.

(17:18):
Things get really interesting in Hawaii in January of seventeen
seventy eight, when Captain James Cook arrives on the Big
Island with his fleet that is the HMS Discovery and
the HMS Resolution. He is abstract concept. Yes, love it.

(17:39):
He being the first person to discover Hawaii. He names
the place the Sandwich Islands after his friend's perspective. At least, yes,
he discovered it and nobody else had been there before him,
except for all of those people that were currently living there. Yeah,
but he claimed naming rights on it, and he named
it the Sandwich Islands after his friend, the Earl of Sandwich. Sandwich,

(18:03):
we don't call it that anymore because it actually turns
out people will already live there, and they already had
a name for the place. They called it Hawaii, and
so that's what that's what we call it now. And
Cammia is he is, like I said, he's kind of
gained the attention of the chief of the region. I
will attempt to pronounce the chief's name. It's colonial and

(18:27):
he is. He's kind of the main chief of the
big island. And he has brought aboard the HMS Discovery
to meet with Captain Cook when Kevin Cook lands there.
Cook's been kind of he's going to circumnavigate the globe.
He's this very famous, very successful British explorer. We'll probably
talk about him on the show at some point. He

(18:47):
probably deserves a full episode. But he's not gonna be
in this story for very long because the boards the
Chief of Hawaii boards the Discovery and Cameme is with him,
so he's invited to be to board that ship. The
crew of the Discovery actually write about him. They describe

(19:08):
him as a young warrior. They say he was brave.
He was scarred from battle already from the little war
the Warren clans you were talking about, or just duels
and stuff like that. He was battle scarred, he was
tall and strong, he was utterly fearless, and he quote
moved in an aura of violence, which I feel like
is extremely descriptive.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
He moved in an aura of violence.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Yes, he was a big, strong Hawaiian dude who walked
with determination.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
So I read that moved in an aura of violence.
Don't mess with the sky.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
Do not mess with this guy, as we will see
as the story progresses.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
So yeah, so what happened in this encounter.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
Well, so you run into this thing that happens occasionally
with British people arriving and their explorers for Europe and
explorers arriving in the New worlds, and it's basically like
space aliens have come down with all this advanced technology, right,
and yeah, they've got stuff that the people of Hawaii
I have never seen before, and they want to trade
for it. So Cook and his guys are trading iron,

(20:17):
especially like just even like nails. Anything they can any
kind of iron is really interesting to the people of Hawaiian.
They can use it for all kinds of different things.
But Cooks guys they kind of they kind of take
advantage of the Hawaiian aloha spirit. They they kind of
try to convince that the Hawaiians that they're gods and

(20:38):
that they're foreign heroes and that you should give us
all the stuff. And they're trading, trading trinkets for really
nice things, and you know, it's just they've kind of
been doing this along the way, and it's yeah, and
at some point the Hawaiians they get sick of it,
and you know, a couple of Cooks guys gets and

(21:00):
die and the Hawaiians are like, you're not gods, you
can die, You're not immortal. What are you talking about.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
You know, they practice critical thinking.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Yes, And so eventually the tide turns against cook and
he's like, I get to get out of here. So
he gets on his boat and he starts to sail away,
but there's this storm that snaps the mass, one of
the mass of discoveries, who's got to turn back and
put back into port. He left and he was gone
for like a couple of days, and he has to
come back and.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
He has to come back to the people he taking
advantage of yeah, okay, yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
And the Hawaiians greet him by throwing rocks at his
boat as he pulls into the harbor.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
I mean, I get where they're coming from.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
I read a thing. I read a journal from one
of the guys that was on the boat, and he
was like, we didn't want to go back there anymore
than they wanted to have us back there, like it
was neutral. And so there's some because they were there
for a year. So Cook's Cook and his guys were
there for a year, and by the end of it
it was like a how guests that You're just like
you gotta go, man, you got to get out of here.

(22:03):
And he finally leaves and he's like, actually, can I
just crash you for another two weeks? No, get out
of here. That was the vibe here in the Hawaiians.
Ye rocks at him. There's a little bit of a
struggle in the Hawaiians. They steal one of Cook's boats,
one of the small boats on Discovery, and Cook and

(22:25):
it is like, I got to get control of the situation.
So he takes a crew of Royal Marines and he
goes ashore at night and he kidnaps one of these
chiefs of the Hawaiians at gunpoint and is like, you
are my hostage. You're coming back to the boat with me.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
And he starts carrying I think this is a good idea. Okay,
I would have made different choices, but I wasn't there,
I you know, Okay.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
You know this is kind of colonial diplomacy here, like
I'm going to kill your chief if you don't do
this thing that I need. Yeah, and so the chief's
wife runs out and wakes everybody up, and the Hawaiians
get together and they go attack Cook before he can
they go to rescue their chief. Right, the British open fire,

(23:09):
but the Hawaiians attack and overpower them. And there are
including some reports believe that Comme was part of this
counter attack. He would have been like a young warrior,
war leader. If there was a fight, he was going
to be there. So there are reports that like there's
there's good indication that he was part of it and
that he was, you know, kind of, if nothing, a

(23:30):
leader of this attack. And yeah, the British open fire,
but the the Hawaiians, you know, they haven't really seen
guns before. They're being shot at with guns. And to
a lot of people who had never seen guns before,
cannon fire musket fire is scary and you run away. Right,
this is a stick that you should.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
Get scary even if you know what it is right exactly.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
You don't see the bullet right, It creates fire, creates
a loud noise, and somebody dies. Right, this is scary, bam.
But that does not happened. They attack these marines, They
kill a bunch of marines. They kill Captain Cook. They
cut him up and they eat his heart. Oh yeah,
Captain cooked too soon?

Speaker 2 (24:16):
I mean, come on, it's two centuries ago.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
So okay, Cook's guys leave and a few years past
Comania rises up through the ranks. The chief colon he dies,
passes power off to his son, who is the natural inheritor.
But Commea is his cousin. He's sort of, I think,

(24:41):
a pretty distant like okay, it's not like his dad's brother.
It's like a distant cousin through some big family, you
know how, you know that was the kind of the
big family. His cousin. He is going to be the
new chief. But Coma, because he's been such a great
warrior and a hero to his people, he is given

(25:03):
a prominent position where he is going to be the
keeper of the idol of war. So it's this religious
position where there's an idol for the war God and
he is the keeper of it. And he's granted the.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
Keeper of the idol of war.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
That sounds pretty important, free badass, right, And he's also
given rule over a smaller district near the area of Kona.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
So wait, I've had coffee from there, right.

Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yes, there's a great brewery there and there is great
coffee there. Okay, Yeah, So committment is kind of this
minor chief. He's gained power, he's got this religious position.
And there's this weird story that I'm not going to get
into too much that the half brother of the new
chief cut down didn't get much, got less than Kamehameha,

(25:52):
and was mad about it. Because this kid was the
direct son of the former chief. He didn't get this
little area or this religious position, but is more distant.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
Did And in Hawaiian tradition, at this point you do
pretty much expect things to pass down to the most direct.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
Descendant rights with as with all you know a lot
of this stuff, right, All all kingdoms kind of operate
like this, right. The when the chief died, his eldest
son became chief. The second son got nothing and kaya
got some stuff. So the second son, his name is Kaoa,

(26:31):
he gets mad. He goes into Kona. He cuts down
some sacred coconut trees, which was a huge offense.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
Don't cut down sacred trees, no bad idea. Like I
get why he's upset, but you don't express it that way.
You don't cut down sacred tea.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
Your words, you know.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah, yeah, cut down like non sacred trees. I don't know,
but yeah he must, yeah he must sput up.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah, he's pretty upset. He goes into kmans Land. He
cuts down some sacred coconut trees, and he kills some
of kaman maas guys, which is actually probably worse than
cutting down the trees. The guys that are are wounded
or captured of ms guys. Uh, he gives them to
his brother as sacrifices and sacrifices them like.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
Not as like prisoners of war, but like human sacrifice.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Yeah, and so sacrifices them. And Comma Maya now has
two enemies, right, Like, Okay, there's one guy got mad
and cut down some coconut trees and messed with a
few of my guys. But like now the big chief
he is gonna sacrifice my guys. I don't think so

(27:46):
so he needs to respond and we have a little
bit of a succession war on our hands here, a
little bit of a civil war happening on the Big Island.
Cameo organizes his guys, he personally leads the attack. The
battle is called the Battle of moku Ohai. During the fight,
he's hit with a sling, knocked down and then has

(28:07):
his throat slit with a shark toothed dagger, which is
a dagger made out of serrated shark steeve, which is funny. Yeah,
bad ass, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah, So sharks are not just killing prey in the ocean,
they're also apparently killing prey on leya.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
Killing chiefs. Yes, and Kimma wins that battle. His rival
is defeated, is has his neck cut with a shark
tooth dagger, and Kimehama takes Kalo's red feather cloak, which
is this big cloak of red feathers. You're going to
see him in it anytime you see any kind of
art of him.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yeah, and this is a big deal. This is the
Ahulah and this cloak confers sacred protection. This cloak is
made from the feathers of the mamo bird, which is
now extinct, which you Okay, So, Ben, as you said,
if you look up kN Kamanamea, you'll see him in

(29:05):
this beautiful, vividly colored cloak. And that's the sort of
thing we're talking about.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
Yeah, so sorry, he's a big giant dude. We're in
this usually wearing gold armor or gold helmet. I'm wearing
this big, giant, red feathered cloak that is made from
this sacred bird that doesn't exist anymore. Okay. So in
seventeen eighty two, Kammanmea becomes the chief of Hawaii, the largest,

(29:33):
the biggest. He doesn't have the whole island. We're going
to get to that in a little bit. But he's
got most of the island under his control and that's
going pretty well for him. But a few years later,
in seventeen ninety, there's going to be another expedition arriving
in Hawaii that is going to change Kammanme's life again. Okay.
So two American ships arrive in on the Big Island

(29:57):
in seventeen ninety. One is called the Fair Mri and
one is called the Eleanora. They're there to trade. They
Captain Cook has or Captain Cook's guys have put Hawaii
on a map, They've charted it. There's people here, They've
got cool stuff to trade. So the Eleanora and the
fair Americans stopped there in seventeen ninety to trade. Things

(30:17):
are going okay, but at some point the captain of
the Eleanora beats up one of these minor Hawaiian chiefs.
It's Camimea's uncle, but again distant.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
Uncle uncle might be to find Yeah, broadly.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
He's trying to trade with the captain of the Eleanora,
and the captain of the Eleanor gets mad about something
and starts hitting him with rope and drives him.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
All. Oh yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
All right, So the chief and his guys they retaliate
by stealing a ship from the Eleanora, which is you'll
remember that's what they did to Captain Cook. Also problem
here is that the ship actually had a guy on it.
They didn't know it when they stole it, but the
ship actually had a crew member from the Eleanora on there,
and they end up killing him. The Eleanora gets angry

(31:06):
and they respond by sailing into the port where they've
been trading with the Hawaiians and they signal the call
for like, hey, come on out in trade. The Hawaiians
come out onto the beach to trade with them, and
they opened fire with cannons and muskets and just massacre
like something like eighty people died. They just just like
baited them right out, and once they were all men, women, children,

(31:28):
and it was horrible. Then they sail away. The other
ship in this flotilla, though, is the Fair American, and
the Fair American puts into port nearby. Not this long
after that, they haven't been communicating with the Ileinori. They
don't really know what's going on, but Commandma his uncle
remembers the people they remember. So when the Fair Americans

(31:49):
shows up, Commandma's uncle and those guys from that town,
they're surviving people from that town. They rode their canoe,
their war canoes out there to the Fair American board
it and kill everybody except for one guy. And the
crew is like ten guys, but they're all dead, right,
and one of them lives. A Kamehamea intervenes and he's like, no, no, no,
don't don't kill this guy, right.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
Okay, why not, Let's see where he's going with him.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
Yes, So the Eleanora has put in somewhere else on
the island. And but just like with Cook, just like
with the Fair American, things are getting a little too hot, right,
So the boatswain of the Eleanor goes on goes ashore
to do something. I'm not sure what. But while he's
on the shore, the Eleanora leaves without him. They're like,

(32:35):
he might get captured before, or he just gets lost,
or he lose track of time. But I think the
Hawaiian might have grabbed him, and the Eleanora wasn't gonna
wait for him to come back, Like we're all going
to dive, we wait for this guy. We got to go.
He's probably already dead anyway, let's leave him. So the
Eleanor takes off. So now at the end of this
whole encounter, Kamma Maya has an American ship. It's a

(32:59):
it's a schooner. It's not a huge shit, but it's
a it's a masted sailing ship. It's called the Fair American.
He's got that, and he's got two prisoners with him.
The captured boatswain from the Eleanora was a British guy
named John Young and the last survivor of the Fair
American was a Welshman named Isaac Davis. And he's got
these two guys.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
As his Young and Isaac Davis and gonna do with them?

Speaker 1 (33:24):
I don't know what would you do with this setup?

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (33:28):
Wow?

Speaker 2 (33:29):
If I were command Maya and I mean, I guess
if I had captured them, what would I do? Would
I try to extract information from them? Would I sacrifice them?
If I'm in a culture that does human.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
Sacrifice and you are they do human sacrifice? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yeah, I don't know. So what did kamand Maya actually do?

Speaker 1 (33:56):
He offered them positions as senior advisors in his realm?
Wait what yeah? Have you seen Showgun? It's great, but
it's basically oh, it's basically Hawaiian Showgun. Okay. He offers
John Young and Isaac Davis' senior positions of power in
his He's like, hey, I need to know everything. I know.

(34:19):
You guys are not God's I know you're not space aliens.
You guys have cool weapons and cool gear and cool stuff.
And if you show me how to make it, I
will make you. I will make you nobility here. And
if you tell me to get lost, I'm going to
sacrifice you. So you got two choices here, hey.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Okay, yeah, I mean, like technically they've got choices, but
this is something that KAMANDMN does. This is his innovation. Yes,
so John Young and Isaac Davis are like, hmm okay
on the one hand, death on the other hand, high
status and a life in some islands that have a

(34:58):
pretty nice climate.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
I gets to live in Paradise and yeah. So yeah,
they're they're completely and immediately on board for all of it.
They they learn the language, they end up marrying Hawaiian women,
they get positions of power in his right and his realm.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
Would where would they meet British or Welsh women anyway? Okay,
I mean like on the one hand, on the other hand,
like okay, yeah, they're you know, assimilating to culture and.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
Yeah, and in return, they teach command man his guys
how to make gunpowder. Because it turns out all of
the components for making gunpowder can be grown or assembled
on the big island of Hawaii. If all the volcanoes,
you have the sulfree of of everything you need to
make gunpowder except for the recipe. So like here's the recipe,
here's they make it, and now you can make gunpowder.

(35:47):
They taught him how to shoot guns. The Fair American
had two cannons on it, so they pull the cannons off.
They're like, here's how you repair them, here's how you
maintain them, here's how to shoot them. And if you
need anything, we can take this ship and take some
Hawaiian crew members and we can sail. We're not that
far from China. We can sail out to China and
trade them for more guns and cannons and stuff. So

(36:09):
they bring their space alien technology to King Kamandmea the Great,
and he begins to formulate a plan that is, hey,
maybe let's unify all of Hawaii. Let's do that. Let's
break those threads. So we're going to take a really
quick break and when we come back, we are going

(36:29):
to talk about how that goes for him.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
So Command Ma didn't invent the idea of unifying Hawaii.
The islands were a common people. They had similar language,
similar customs, and okay, yeah, there was a certain amount
of infighting. You know, we've heard about the King of
Maui blah blah blah. You know, and back in the

(37:02):
twelfth century or maybe thirteenth century, twenty generations ago, the
king Kalau nu Yohua had already attempted to unify the islands.
So this is an idea that's out there. And remember
that when Kamehamea lifted the nahas down, all three tons
of it, the priestess said, she prophesied, whoo, that's the

(37:25):
noise of prophecy. Whoo, lift off the strands that bind
the islands. And at least now that's interpreted to mean.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Reunification, right, because that's like the beauty of prophecies. It's
like a horoscope where you can just it's open to interpretation.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
You can project whatever you want to onto it. Yeah right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So Kamehamea took things that already existed in Hawaiian culture,
including a well developed administrative system, a well developed legal system,
and he had all the pieces. He was well positioned

(38:05):
to recognize an opportunity when he saw one.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
Yes, And so we should kind of define some geography
here quickly, which is that there are there are a
bunch of islands that make up Hawaii, but there are
six big ones. The six major islands are Hawaii, which
is the big island. Then there's Maui, There's le Nai, Molokai, Oahu,

(38:34):
and Kawai, so there are six of them, and Kamama
is in control of most of Hawaii at this point.
His biggest rival while he is attempting to unify all
of these islands, and like you said, they have a
common there's a there's a common threat amongst all their
very similar cultures. They share language, they share trade, and

(38:56):
they have for generations and centuries. So there is kind
of this common idea that we are similar people, but
each island is separate. And when you if you visit
the different islands, they all have a very different vibe
and a very different feel, and you can really get
that impression traveling these places that you could see why
they would think of themselves as being completely different from
the other ones. Commandma has biggest rival when he takes

(39:20):
over is the king of Maui. He's a guy named
ka Haakili. The second he's another guy looking to unify Hawaii,
but for himself instead of for Kamanameya.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
And so unifying Hawaii is a thing that people are trying.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
To do, the thing that people are thinking about and
trying to do. Yes, Kaha Kile is a pretty badass
guy himself. So he is named after the Hawaiian god
of thunder, and in the mythology, the Hawaiian god of thunder,
kane Akili, he is I think of I think of

(39:56):
hell from Norse mythology. She is kind of bisected down
the middle, so one half of her is black and
one half of her is white and not like like
like the color black and the color white, right, like
not so.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
Yeah, kind of like that those characters on that one
Star Trek original series episode anyway.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
Yes, exactly, like a like a like a yin yang, right,
And so he is named after the god of thunder,
the Hawaiian god of thunder kind of Aikili is set
up like that as well. And so the king of
Maui Akili. The second he tattoos half of his body
down the middle, so one half of his body is
completely tattooed black and the other half is his normal

(40:38):
skin color.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
Oh that's a lot of tattooing.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
Yeah, it sounds painful, It sounds intense. I bet it
was crazy looking. This was a hardcore dude. He was serious.
He was in charge of Maui and he had taken
over Oahu, which is the island that has Honolulu on it.
Now it was there was a tower.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
So he has Maui and Honolulu, and he's the first
big obstacle for commands, pushed to be the king of
all Hawaii. So in seventeen ninety, Comea builds a fleet
of warships, war canoes and war canos. Yes, war ca news.

(41:24):
I love the idea of war canws and it's great,
and there's pictures of them, and there's there's models of them,
and war news are awesome. We're going to talk about
them a little bit more later. In seventeen ninety, Kamemea
sails his army over to Maui. The king of Maui
is actually currently in Oahu. He's he's conquered Oahu. He's

(41:46):
setting up stuff there. He's kind of living in Oahu.
Comeme attacks Maui while the king's gone. He has this
big army. He's got twelve hundred guys with him. So
Malui's son, Kalani Kupule, he leads the defense of the
island and while while his father is gone, and they
meet in seventeen ninety at the Battle of Kippai Yui,

(42:07):
which means the Battle of the Damned Waters of Yao.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
Wait a minute, battles, Battle of the Damned.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
The Battle of the damned Waters of Yao. Damned as
in like it has a dam in the water.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
Okay, like we're stopping up the water, right, yeah, like
the water not like a theological concept.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Yeah no, no, no, no, okay, not cursed no okay.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
So okay.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
The Maui troops are defending this valley. They have some
guys on top of the Yo Needle, which is a
Now there's a really awesome park there. They call it
the Yal Needle, but it was also known as the
Phallus of Kanaloa. Kandaloa is the god of sailing in
the ocean. It's a big, big, giant rock that looks

(42:52):
like a phallus, and so it's up into the air
longer than it is wide. Yeah and uh.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
And so they're the soldiers of Malai. There's this big
rock that shape like a dick, and these Malay guys
are going to fight and defend it. No, they put
guys on top of there. But from the top of
the pallace of Kanaloa you can see the entire island.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
Oh yeah, so it's like strategically it's a good place
to be also in addition to just being like an
interesting sight to see.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
Yeah, yeah, it's very pretty. I went there. My father
in law's boat is actually named kind of Loa, so
he was very excited to see the pallace of Kanda Loa.
But yeah, we went to we went there. But it's
like this really cool valley. But you know, it's very beautiful.
It's very you can swim in the water there. It's amazing.
But it also is a good place to defend because

(43:45):
you can get guys up on the hills. You can
get guys to block this kind of choke point. You've
got an awesome lookout to see when the attackers are
coming and and come. He goes right up. He means,
it's the only plate way to attack these guys. You've
got to attack quickly because the King of Maui is
planning on returning with his guys, so you got to
get in here and attack. But Kameamea has a secret weapon,

(44:07):
which is those two cannons that he took off the
Fair American, which are manned one man by John Young,
one man by Isaac Davis with a gun crew of
well trained Hawaiian warriors. The battle numbers are about the same.
But they open with this cannon aide, you know, the
defenders respond with arrows and javelins, and there's a fight

(44:28):
and so you know, these two cannons, they're not they're
not game changing. They get you, they open the door, right,
They they counteract the advantage of the defensive physician. But
at the end of the day, these guys are attacking
each other with war clubs and serrated shark daggers and
whatever other weapons they can get their hands on spears,

(44:50):
and there's a big battle and for two days they
are fighting. And you know how I said those rivers
were damned up and that didn't sound that bad ass
were damned up by the glut of dead bodies that
land in the river ends up damning the river because
there's so many dead bodies the river, what's left of
it on the other side of the dam is just red.
It's just a river of blood literally, because they've damned

(45:12):
the river and all this blood is coming out. So
that's the.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
That's so damned like blocked up, but also kind of
damned like cursed.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
Like yeah, if you would also damned. If I had
been brought up with images of Christian hell, you would
you think you were there? WHOA yes? But Kameo wins
it and he drives off the Prince of Maui. He survives,
but a lot of his soldiers are defeated and Maui
falls under Kamema's control. Returns back to the Big island.

(45:47):
And do you remember the distant cousin who had inherited
and gotten his neck cut? Oh yeah, well he's still
got that second brother, that Kiowa, the guy who went
nuts and the sacred coconut trees down and kills the
Kamamas guys. He's still out there. He didn't get killed
in that first battle, and he is causing trouble while

(46:10):
Come is out of town. So Come has to come
back and deal with this guy, all right, He comes back,
He defeats, He defeats this guy in battle, and so
Kiowa he ends up fleeing into what is nowadays Volcano
National Park, and the volcano blows up on him in
seventeen ninety and kills a bunch of his soldiers, and

(46:34):
his soldiers footprints are still embedded in ash there, so
you can go see them. The footprints of his soldiers
trying to move through the move through this difficult terrain.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
And so these are footprints from over two hundred years ago.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
Yeah yeah, they're still there. Oh yeah, yeah, but it
takes out a lot of his guys and yeah, and
then put those guys down. Comman attacks, captures Kiowa. And
remember how Kioa sacrificed as guys to the gods. Commema
sacrifices him to the gods.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
Bear.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
Yeah, so that's that for that, he is now the
king of all of Hawaii and of Maui, the dude
with half his body tattooed the king of Maui. He's
not just going to be like, oh dang, he took
my home island from me. That sucks.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
So yeah, he's not going to just roll over and
suck it up.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
No, he's not. He shows up in seventeen ninety one
with a fleet, he's got war canos, and meets him
in a naval battle with his war canows, some of
which are now featuring Western style rigging and sails and
things that haven't really been seen before in Hawaii. Yes,

(47:56):
and you know, I really wanted to look up what
a war canoe was I did a lot of research
war canws because it just sounds so awesome. But it
turns out it's kind of like it's like the term warship, right,
Like there are all different shapes and sizes. Generally like
it had guys on it with swords and shields or
spears and shields, But it can mean any number of
Some of them were outriggers, some of them were like dugouts,

(48:16):
some of them were bigger, some of them were humongous.

Speaker 2 (48:19):
So it uh so a canoe that contains warriors who
can do war.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
Any canoe that is being used for war is a
war canoe. Okay, there's not a standardization of them. Okay, Pat,
I'm gonna ask you to take a crack at the
name of this battle.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
Uh kepu waha ulla ulla.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
Okay, I'll do the translation. It's the Battle of the
Red mouthed Guns.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
Oh yes, but the Battle of the Red mouthed Guns.
That's a pretty poetic and intense wave describing guns.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
Yes, Because it's this big naval battle off the coast
of the Big Island Hawaii. Kamehameha and the Fair American
and his work can news sail out and they fight
the King Maui and they defeat him. But it's called
the Battle of the Red mouthed Guns because there are
canons and muskets being fired from both sides.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
Both sides, yes, both sides.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
King of Maui got himself some guns.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
Okay, so he's okay.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
So he got beat by guns and he wasn't gonna
let it happen again.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
Yeah, okay. So Kamana Maya has friends or at least
associates who are providing him guns and cans and cannons
and whatnot. But also the King of Maui has friends
or associates or business contacts or whatever who are providing

(49:52):
him with weaponry. Yes, exactly, And yeah okay, so okay
that escalated fast.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
Yeah, and now we have an arms race.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
Yeah okay, Soame wins the fight. I mean, he's the
one we're doing the podcast episode about.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Right, although I will say that like the more I
learned about the more I learned about Achille, the King
of Maui, the more I liked him.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
Okay, fair, Yeah, yeah, so we've got badass versus Bado.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
So how do you get the guns? How did the
King of Maui get the guns?

Speaker 2 (50:27):
Yeah? So yeah, soo wins the fight. But where does
the King of Maui get these guns? They're both exploiting
or leveraging their contacts with Europeans. So Achille the King
of Maui. He's made a deal with an English merchant

(50:49):
named William Brown, which is like the most generic English
name ever.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
William that's it.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
Okay, yeah, yeah, that's his name, you know. And William
Brown is the captain of the thirty gun frigate Butterworth,
which is that name of a type of syrup for pancakes.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
Anyway, I mean, whatever it being for this being the
most bad ass ship in this entire story, thirty cannons frigate,
I mean he didn't have anything better than Butterworth for
the name, Okay, I.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
Mean, let's be fair. Butter makes a lot of things better.
Butter makes a lot of things more worthy. You know,
you have pancakes, but then you have pancakes with butter.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
Anyway, So Captain Brown h gets into the harbor at Honolulu,
like from his point of view, he discovered it. From
the point of view of the Hawaiians, He's like, okay,
you showed up. And Brown makes an agreement with the
King of Maui with Kayha Kiley and so Kaya Killy.

(51:54):
The King of Maui seated the island of Oahu and
maybe the island of Kawaii to Brown in return from
military aid. Okay, so you seed your island? What does
that mean?

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Very vague?

Speaker 2 (52:11):
Yeah, it's it's kind of vague, and it might have
meant different things to different people. Whatever.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
And you can put your flag here, that's fine. Give
me the cannon.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
Ye yes, okay, yay la la la lah bright colors, yeay, okay,
yeah festive Okay. On the one hand, we've got comman
Man who's getting assistants from George Vancouver, who lands on
the Big Island in seventeen ninety three, and this guy
named John Young interprets.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
Yeah John Young from the from the Boatswain from the
from Yeah, yeah yeah he is there, so Vancouver, yeah,
so yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
Yeah, okay. So Vancouver shows up and he has a
ship and he says, hey, we've got this guy Young,
We've got this guy Davis. We can bring you home.
I've got a ship. You know, I'm heading in that direction.
What do you think they say?

Speaker 1 (53:05):
I think I mean if I'm John Young and Isaac
Davis and George Vancouver shows up and is like, hey, guys,
don't you want to go back to working on a
ship whaling or whatever you're doing being a merchantman from
in England. No way, I think I'll stay here with
the I think I'll stay here and be a prince
in Hawaii. This is actually way better.

Speaker 2 (53:28):
You know, I don't blame him, ye they do, indeed say,
you know, we're staying here.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
George Vancouver is a good, good local history for me.
He's the guy who named Mount Rainier after his buddy
Peter Rainier. He's a a big part of Washington history
because he discovered the town of Vancouver, Washington, and also Vancouver,
British Columbia, and the Puget Sound all that stuff. So
he's a big he's a big Pacific Northwest exploration hero.

(53:57):
In seventeen ninety three, he left, He left the Pacific
Northwest went to Hawaii. Many of us do.

Speaker 2 (54:03):
Yeah, and you know, you know both the Pacific Northwest
and Hawaii are nice places. So yeah, So what does
Kamehamea get out of this? Well, he gets them to
explain Western style shipbuilding technology. They give him plans. You know.
And also while this is going on, Kamehameha and the

(54:27):
Hawaiians are really making it big in the trade of sandalwood.
And this is sandalwood. It's the wood from a particular
type of tree in the Yahi in Hawaiian. And okay,
I have to say as I don't know as me
I know sandalwood as a particular type of incense. It's

(54:48):
got this particular like scent to it. But the Hawaiians
had a lot of sandalwood trees growing on their islands,
and China was really into sandal wood because it's good
for a lot of things. It's good for medicine, it's
good for incense, it's good for carved objects. And Kamehameha

(55:09):
recognizes that, oh hey, this is an opportunity, and he
recognizes the strategic position of Hawaii in Pacific trade routes.
And so they're making it big, you know, yeah, kind of.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
Like they literally were not on any maps fifteen years ago,
and now they're positioned as a really good hub between
the West coast and China and the other islands. Right, Yeah,
they're the only thing within the X number one hundred miles.
You got to stop there. And hey, we've got stuff
to trade.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
And they're using this new technology and this is things
like iron and nails like you know, new to the Hawaiians.
And this improves the lives of Hawaiian people and their
national infrastructure as well.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
Yeah, so it is an arms race, but it is
also Kamanameha and the King of Maui. They're both kind
of leveraging this trade to improve the lives of their people.
And so Hawaii makes a pretty big jump technologically at
this at this point, and but you know, there is

(56:19):
still this idea that at some point we're going to
have to fight it out because one of us is
going to unify this island, which because unifying Hawaii now
is extremely more valuable because there is all this trade
and right now it's being divided. But if you can
unify this, we can you can monopolize this trade. There's
a lot of a lot more money in conquering Owahu
now than there was fifteen years ago. So we're going

(56:40):
to have this epic showdown. We've got kamem on one side,
we've got Kayakili on the other. They're going to fight
it out for full control of the Hawaiian islands. And
you know, I wish I could tell that story. But
in seventeen ninety four, the king of Maui dies without
there being a big showdown. His son, Kalinaikupule, he takes over. Uh,

(57:00):
he's the new king of Maui. But this kid, he's not.
He's the one that got defeated at the Battle of
Canna Lois Fallas. They're the damned up bodies. He is less,
has less foresight, perhaps than his father. That William Brown
guy was hanging around doing kind of what John Young

(57:21):
and Isaac Davis were for command Maya and Kalinakapule. He
decides that, you know, I don't need to work with
these guys. He kills William Brown and tries to force
his crew into service.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
Oh how did that work out?

Speaker 1 (57:37):
Well, they dumped him overboard. That you need and dumped
him overboard. He lives, He swims to shore, but they
dump him overboard and they sail off. And now that
that Imperial start destoryer Butterworth sails off into the sunset
and leaves the story. And that might have been a
nice thing to have if you were going to have
another battle of roaring guns or roaring fire guns. So

(58:00):
sensing weakness a week leadership, they just lost their thirty
gun frigate, Kamme attacks and in May seventeen ninety five,
Comman is like, this is my chance for the showdown.
I've been building up for this. I've been building up
for this. Their king died, their competent king died. They've
got this kid in here. He's he's already making mistakes.
He's never going to be weaker. This is when I
got to go.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
So he's good at sensing opportunities.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
He is, and he is good at the taking advantage
of them too, writ like, what's this story about luck?
Is when opportunity meets preparation, you know, prepare, and then
when the opportunity presents itself, you have to take it.
And that's what Kamanama does. In May of seventeen ninety five,
he loads ten thousand guys into nine hundred and sixty

(58:42):
war canoes that he has been building this entire time
with the help of these traders and George Vancouver and
John Young and Isaac Davis and anybody else who would
come to the island to trade with him. He wants
to know about their ships, and he's building ships and
the Maui troops meet him on the shores, out maneuvers them.

(59:03):
They fall back, and they fall back, and they fall back,
and the defenders the the new King of Maui. He
finds himself suddenly backed up against the Nuanupali, which is
a big cliff. He gets backed up this this mountain
until he reaches this cliff. And you know, nowadays you

(59:25):
can go there and it's this big lookout that kind
of looks out over the windward side of the of Oahu.
It's like a tourist dessination today.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
It's got these big beleeview these.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
Big beautiful green vistas, the beach, the volcanic rock, the waves,
the surfers are out there. Uh, it's cool. But at
the time, you know, the reality, the reality for the
army of Maui was that they were backed up against
a thousand foot sheer cliff face with Maya's army marching

(59:57):
up to fight them. So the King of au he's
got cannons, he's got guns, he's got that stuff. So
he digs in and decide, they decide this is gonna
be the battle. Right, He's gonna put his guns out there,
he's gonna they've got to come up this road. We're
gonna shot him on their way up here. We're gonna
see what happens. And this is when the big battle
takes place. Command as guys. They lead with their cannons,

(01:00:19):
they attack, they've got their they've got rifles. But this
is the old days, right, this is this is you
shoot with your musket and then you run and you
attack with a spear or or you know, you've got
a spear and a shield. And that is how this
battle is fought. There is initial volleys and then there's
a charge and there's a big blood bath. This is

(01:00:40):
this is another battle of the damned bodies. Command is damned?
Which sense of damn? Reader's choice?

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
Okay, okay, and.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
The the battle is no, it does not bode well
and uh kind of ikapul. He's defeated. The Maui troops
are defeated. Kaman his guys press forward. They drive the
attack and drive these guys back to the cliffs. Now
some of the soldiers of Maui leap to their deaths

(01:01:15):
rather because they know the battle is over, and they
leap to their deaths to avoid being subjects of Maui.
The battle is called the Another name for it is
the Battle of the Leaping Aneifish because of all the
people jumping off of this cliff to kill themselves.

Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
Or like mullets that leap, yeah yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
Those that did not leap to their deaths were pushed
to their deaths by command Man and his guys. So
many of them were driven off the mountain and many
of them jumped somewhere around four hundred as the estimation,
somewhere between four hundred and eight hundred people die by
falling off of this cliff into a pile of I
assume dead bodies at the bottom. Colony Ekupule. He's captured

(01:02:01):
and sacrificed to the gods. And probably because like that's
what happened with Chiefs was you know, they sacrificed you
and then they ate your heart like they did with
Captain Cook. I think that's still happening here. And that's it.
The battle's over and the Maui army is destroyed. King
Kamehameha is now the king of all of these islands, right.

(01:02:22):
He takes Molokai, he takes Lunai, he already owns Hawaii.
It makes it a little confusing like the reason it's
a little confusing when you talk about the Hawaiian Islands
they say the Big Island instead of calling it just Hawaii.
But it's because he conquered all of these lands for
Hawaii and they all become Hawaii. So the only holdout

(01:02:42):
is Kawai. There's a minor nope chief there who was
very loyal to the King of Maui. He holds out
for a while. Command builds this big fleet to try
to take him out, but then his army gets wrecked
with typhoid and there's a storm that kind of decimates
his attacking preparations. So in eighteen ten, he's like, you know,

(01:03:03):
in the Battle of on Awahu was seventeen ninety five,
So fifteen years after that, he's still Kawai, still holding out.
Command is like, look, can I make you a deal?
Can we make a deal? You know, can I just
make you an you can keep your post, You'll be
a minor lord, but I'll be the king whatever, And

(01:03:24):
they agree with that and they join in eighteen ten.

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):
Okay, yeah, so like you've still got your realm and
we're just going to be this bigger realm that's over you.

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
Yeah, you join us. We'll cut you in for a
percentage of all this awesome trade that we're doing with
the Europeans and the Chinese, and like it's going to
be better for everybody. We don't have to like you
don't have to lose a bunch of guys and get
sacrificed and have your heart eating. I don't have to
lose a bunch of my guys trying to attack you.
We can just end this war and let's just let's
just call it, let's make peace right now. And that
sounded good to everybody, and that's what they do. So

(01:03:57):
in eighteen ten, he becomes king of all of the
Hawaiian Islands. For his celebration, he takes a tour of
every island and travels around. We have talked about at
a Turk before and you know the attitork drink in
this bar and here was his cup. Kama does a

(01:04:18):
grand tour of all of the Hawaiian islands and you'll
see pictures of him all over the place in Hawaii
because he kind of left his mark everywhere that he went,
and there's that they have that kind of reverence for
him there of like comman I was here and this
is so. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
So he was responsible for creating the nation of Hawaii.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
Yeah, the Hawaii national identity as we know it, right,
because they were all kind of loyal to their individual islands.
And he takes over and and then by traveling there personally,
I think was a great touch to kind of reinforce like, hey,
we are all one people, we are all together. I
think that's really was really effective. He dies in May

(01:05:03):
of eighteen nineteen, so he lives to be an old man.
He dies the ruler of the Unified Kingdom of Hawaii,
and he talked about mana earlier. He is buried in
an unknown location because desecrating bodies or moving bodies was
considered to was was believed to like disrupt your mana.
So he was buried in secret by like three guys

(01:05:25):
who took the secret to their grave. So he's got
a tomb somewhere in the Hawaiian Islands that has never
been discovered.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Wow. Yeah, and an undisclosed location, yes, yeah, and I
mean it could be anywhere.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
So yeah, it's prime prime real estate for an adventure novel,
I suppose.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
So yeah, yeah, And so what's his legacy? Well, starting
with like a I don't know, in a very practical sense,
left behind a whole bunch of kids, maybe as many
as thirty five kids, with a number of different wives.

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
You know, as you do, yes, as you do.

Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
And the royal line continued, and lots of people after
him took the name command Maha as their like royal name.
So you have five more commands by five four anyway,
his line ends with the death of Comanhameha the Fifth
in eighteen seventy two. And Hawaii, okay, so he was

(01:06:38):
always alert to opportunities to collaborate with you know, foreign
partnerships with foreign nations, and well, Hawaii becomes a state
of the United States of America. His Hawaiian Kingdom becomes
a real force in the Pacific, controls shipping routes, maintains

(01:07:01):
relationships with foreign powers and aspires to rival at Guangzhou
in Canton in China, you know, and the Hawaiian Archipelago
as a political unit as a nation, the Hawaiian nation
is respected by other nations and command Man, you know,
he makes decisions that he takes advantage of opportunities and

(01:07:27):
given what he knew at the time were shrewd business
decisions and good for his people and created the nation
of Hawaii.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
Yeah yeah, and Hawaii becomes a US state in nineteen
fifty nine. But even traveling there today in the twenty
first century, there is a very strong identity of the
Hawaiian people as a as a unified people, and there
is a very strong culture there that traces back to

(01:07:59):
these days of Commandmea and his unification of the islands
and his kind of ability to inject this national identity
of we are Hawaiians, and that's very powerful and it
still carries on today, all right. So that is King
Kamana the Great, the unifier of Hawaii. He was badass warrior,

(01:08:22):
a fighter, a strong guy of physically badass, but he
also had a lot of intelligence and foresight to lead
his nation into like he was a great war hero,
but he was also very shrewd and very capable of building.
He is taking advantage of opportunities every time he saw
them and using that to build his kingdom into one

(01:08:44):
of these a very dominant power in the region. And
that is pretty bad ass. So we want to say
thank you so much as always for listening to our show.
We really do appreciate it. If you guys have any
suggestions for people you want to hear about or comments
questions you can You can always email us anytime and

(01:09:07):
you can. We do appreciate it when you guys like
and subscribe to the show, It really does help us out.
So anyway, thank you so much as always for listening
and we will see you on the next episode.

Speaker 2 (01:09:19):
Stay Badass. Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast
produced by High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me,
Pat Larish, and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is
by me and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs
Brandon Phibbs. Mixing and music and sound design is by

(01:09:42):
Jude Brewer. Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart Badass
of the Week is based on the website Badass of
Theweek dot com, where you can read all sorts of
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(01:10:07):
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