Excavating the Hawaiian History of Kauais Russian Fort – Atlas Obscura

Two centuries ago, King Kaumualii was faced with an impossible decision: relinquish his island kingdom or doom his people to slaughter. With savvy diplomacy and a lot of careful maneuvering, Kaumualii was able to avoid either fate. Adored by his people and respected by foreigners, Kaumualii was, by all accounts, a king to rival all kings. But history has largely forgotten the man who would become the last ruler of Kauai. Many children on Kauai today only recognize his name because the islands Highway 50 is named for him. But a local organization, Friends of King Kaumualii, is determined to change that. Almost 200 years after his death, Kaumualii has returned to Kauai once morethis time as an eight-foot bronze statue overlooking the site of his royal compound and an adjacent star-shaped, basalt fort on the Hawaiian island.

There was a lot of rain and lots of rainbows, when the statue was finally installed, says Keao NeSmith, a descendant of Kaumualii who posed for the statue. It was spooky in a good sense. We believe that the elements of nature are blessings in Hawaiian culture, and rain and rainbows are signs of alii, Hawaiian royalty. Asked if he feels like Kaumualii was there for the dedication, NeSmith is quick to respond: Absolutely! We all felt it.

Theres nothing left of Kaumualii royal compound, but just 50 yards from the imposing bronze statue are the crumbling ruins of the fort he had presided over. Precarious piles of red volcanic rocks form the outer, star-shaped wall, and the remains of a few interior structures. If not for the informational panels at a nearby kiosk, it would be hard to tell what youre looking at. Perhaps the most impressive part of the fort today is its location, at the mouth of the Waimea River, looking out toward the smaller islands of Niihau and Lehua. Its immediately clear why a fort was built there.

But since the fort and surrounding grounds became a state park in 1972, there has long been a Kaumualii-sized hole in the history told there. As tourists drive out to hike in 14-mile Waimea Canyon, they might just catch a confusing glimpse of a wooden sign with yellow lettering that reads, Russian Fort Elisabeth: State Historical Park. Confusion, it turns out, has swirled around the forts history since it was built in 1817. It has had many names: Pulaula, Fort Elizabeth, Old Russian Fort, and, finally, Russian Fort Elizabeth. Each tells a different piece of the history. Today park employees, scholars, Russian Americans, and the Kauai community are all reassessing what those worn, yellow letters ought to read, and reckoning with the history that a name can simultaneously tell and erase.

When Kaumualii became king of Kauai and Niihau in 1794, he inherited a precarious situation. The Big Islands ambitious ruler, Kamehameha I, had invaded Maui five years earlier, a conflict so bloody that bodies of the fallen dammed a stream. In 1795, Kamehameha invaded Oahu, where his forces drove 300 warriors off a 1,100-foot cliff to their deaths. As the only major island not under his control, Kauai was clearly next.

In mid-1796, Kamehameha set sail for Kauai with 1,500 canoes filled with 10,000 warriors, half of whom were armed with muskets. Kaumualii, just 18, possibly with the help of his mother, Kamakahelei, were only able to muster a small force, 40 swivel guns, and three cannons. The invasion looked like it would be a disaster for Kauai. But then a big storm swamped all of [Kamehamehas] boats trying to cross the channel, says anthropologist and archaeologist Peter Mills of the University of Hawaii at Hilo, who wrote his dissertation on the fort and cowrote an article detailing much of this history. In 1803, Kamehameha tried again to invade Kauai, only to have an illness descend on him and his warriors. To Kaumualii, it seemed like the gods were protecting the island of Kauai, says Mills. By 1805, Kamehameha began to consider diplomacy as a way to extend his dominion over the Kauai.

In April 1810, a 32-year-old Kaumualii, by then the sole ruler of Kauai, finally met with Kamehameha to negotiate. While dodging assassination attempts from Oahu priest Kaumiumi and several coconspirators (an act not apparently sanctioned by Kamehameha), Kaumualii agreed to a treaty that would see him continue to govern Kauai as a vassal to Kamehameha until his death, after which control of the island would be transferred to Kamehamehas descendants. It wasnt what he wanted, but he realized he was sort of being overpowered, says Mills. Kaumualii saw negotiation as a way to avoid a bloody conquest, but that didnt mean that he intended to abide by the treaty.

Two years after the treaty was signed, the War of 1812 erupted. Kaumualii found a new ally: The Americans turned to Kauai to hide from roving British warships. This emboldened Kaumualii to stop sending tribute to Kamehameha and reassert Kauais independence. But then the Americans left in 1814, exposing Kaumualii to Kamehamehas vengeanceuntil the Russians showed up.

In early 1815, the Russian American Company (RAC) trading vessel Bering shipwrecked on Kaumualiis doorstep. He had just lost all the cannons and munitions that the Americans had had and now a storm picks up and basically pushes this vessel ashore, not anywhere on the island, but right outside his own residential compound, says Mills, at the mouth of the Waimea River, the site of the yet-to-be-built fort. To Kaumualii, the ship seemed another gift from the gods. He claimed all the weapons and cannons on board, while the surviving crew members eventually hitched a ride on another ship up to the RAC headquarters in Sitka, Alaska.

Then along came ambitious German surgeon and RAC agent Georg Anton Schffer, sent by the company to befriend Kamehameha, secure trading rights, and negotiate the return of Berings cargo. Upon reaching Oahu in late 1815, Schffer gained favor with Kamehameha after treating him and one of his wives for a severe illness. But soon he lost patience with the slow pace of trade negotiations and decided to head to Kauai himself.

In summer 1816, he met with Kaumualii, who says essentially, Hey, welcome! If you want to help me to protect my kingdom from Kamehameha, I will sign over my kingdom to Russia, according to Mills. This is where Schffers eyes must have gone all bug-like. He immediately agreed to the proposal, and sent letters to the RAC and the Russian government in St. Petersburg announcing his diplomatic triumph.

Kaumualii gave the RAC land on Kauais North Shore, which Schffer eagerly renamed Schfferthal, or Schffers Valley. There, the RAC, with some help from locals, built Fort Alexander, named after Russian Emperor Alexander I, and the smaller Fort Barclay-de-Tolly.

Today, little remains of these installations. Fort Barclay-de-Tolly was probably not much more than what a lot of people call a redoubt, which is just a small cannon emplacement with some fortification, says Mills. At least the Russians had their priorities straight though; the redoubt was likely set up to defend, among other buildings, a distillery.

On the opposite side of the island, a largely Hawaiian workforce built another fort in Waimeathe fort at the center of the recent brouhaha, as Mills puts it. Unlike the wooden stockade structures of Fort Alexander, Fort Barclay-de-Tolly, and all other RAC installations from this period, this one was made of volcanic rock and earth, traditional Hawaiian building materials. Schffer called the fort Elizavetinskaya krepost, or Fort Elizabeth, a nod to the emperors wife. Hawaiians, meanwhile, called it Pulaula, literally red enclosure. Schffer saw it as his fort [and] Im convinced Kaumualii saw it as his fort, says Mills. And this is where the confusion began.

Because of the agreement with Kaumualii, Schffer considered all the Hawaiians building the Waimea fort Russian citizens, says architectural historian Alexander Molodin, who has studied the site extensively. It is for this reason that Fort Elizabeth can justifiably have the name Russian, he says.

Mills doesnt think it should, believing that Kaumualii built the fort as his own. Schffer was sort of picturing that he had control of the island in some sort of joint alliance and that he was somehow equally important as Kaumualii. I know Kaumualii didnt view that relationship that way, says Mills. If anything, Kaumualii saw Schffer as his subordinate, allowed to be on Kauai only because of the kings benevolence. Regardless of the confusion around the forts ownership, Kaumualiis hospitality was about to run out.

When the RAC and Russian government finally received Schffers letters announcing his opportunistic territorial grab, they too went bug-eyedbut not for the reasons Schffer had. Neither wanted anything to do with Kauai or to get involved in the machinations of rival Hawaiian kingdoms, especially not while the United States secured a firmer toehold in the islands.

As one might expect, this revelation put quite the damper on Kaumualii and Schffers budding relationship. Mills imagines Kaumualii went to Schffer and said, Look, you are more trouble than youre worth. Weve got to cut our losses and kick you off this island and try to work with diplomacy with Kamehameha again. So on May 8, 1817, less than a year after Schffers arrival, Kaumualii, along with thousands of his people, ran Schffer and his men off Kauai. Schffers escape boat, Kadiak, was leaking so badly that the crew ran it aground on Oahu. After several months of waiting, Schffer was finally able to secure passage out on the American ship Panther, leaving behind 64 fellow RAC employees, who wouldnt get off the island until 1818.

Kaumualii would continue to rule Kauai and its surrounding islands for the next seven years, until his death in 1824. He would see Kamehamehas son, the impulsive Kamehameha II, take the throne in 1819. The younger Kamehameha even kidnapped Kaumualii and coerced him into marrying his widowed mother, Kaahumanu, an episode missionary Hiram Bingham recounted in his 1855 A Residence of Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Islands. Whether Kaumualii was regarded as a king or a captive, writes Bingham, it was not easy to decide.

For more than four decades after the departure of the Russians, Kaumualii and his descendants occupied the Waimea fort. Hawaiians garrisoned the fort with their own troops, used it as an administrative center for Kauai, and sometimes used it as a burial ground and a prison, writes Mills in his article. Then, in the 1860s, it was abandoned and the buildings dismantled, leaving behind only the outer walls and a few foundations.

As the fort transitioned from an active Hawaiian military garrison to a historical site, its history started to morph. Russias involvement in the fort was highlighted while its Hawaiian history was largely forgotten or overwritten. Mills says this started happening as early as 1885, when surveyor George Jackson drew a rendering of the site as it stood probably at the time the Doctor [Schffer] was its commandant, writes Mills. Since Schffer hadnt been at the site for almost 70 years, Jackson was taking what might be considered interpretive, Western-centric liberties. Though much of his characterization has been disproven by modern scholarship, the name on his rendering stuck: Plan of Old Russian Fort, Waimea, Kauai.

Almost a century later, the fort became a Hawaii state park with the name Russian Fort Elizabeth. Hawaii State Parks Martha Yent, who worked on the forts interpretive panels back in the 1980s, says the Jackson map is probably a large part of where the name came from when we named [the park] Russian Fort Elizabeth. Back then, Yent was working with the materials available, namely historian Richard Pierces 1976 book Russias Hawaiian Adventure, 18151817.

Both the panels and Pierces book foreground the Russian story on Kauai, only mentioning King Kaumualii offhandedly and completely omitting the forts Hawaiian name, Pulaula. The panels call the fort Russian and say it was built under the direction of Georg Anton Schaeffer. Kaumualiis rationale for the fort is never mentioned, and the signs only state that the Russians wanted it to secure a provisioning station in Hawaii for the Russian-American ships. After the interpretive panels were installed in 1987, the park was largely left alone, with only the occasional tourist stopping by, sometimes just to use the parks public restroom.

In recent years, thanks to Molodin, Russian-Hawaiian Mihail Gilevich, and self-described aging hippie Jay Friedheim, theres been renewed interest in the fort, especially from Russians and Russian Americans. For Gilevich and Friedheim, who work together in maritime law, it all started with a drunken bet. Friedheim, who has a knack for befriending some extraordinarily cool people, as he puts it, bet Gilevich he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin. How? By rebuilding the Waimea fort, which he had recently visited. Our vision was to try to figure out how to get it rebuilt like [Californias Fort Ross] so that it would be a really high-quality tourist destination, says Friedheim. Together the pair traveled the world pitching the project, from San Francisco to Siberia, including a meeting with Russias Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov.

At the same time, Molodin was organizing the 2017 Fort Elizabeth Forum commemorating the forts bicentennial. Yent, Mills, and Molodin were all featured speakers. Gilevich and Friedheim both attended, and Friedheim participated in a roundtable discussion about the future of Russian-Hawaiian cultural heritage.

The forum was the impetus to creating a working group, says Yent, of about 12 to 15 individuals representing different organizations, including Russian-American organizations, as well as representatives from Hawaii and the Waimea community. As this working group got started, says Yent, I think everyone realized one of the first priorities needed to be updating these interpretive signs.

As Hawaii State Parks interpretive program supervisor, I was working with the group, coming up with some drafts, says Yent. People are on vacation in many cases so, you know, they are not there to read all of these paragraphs, she adds, so the challenge becomes condens[ing] it into an easy-to-understand brief history. New temporary panels that highlight the Hawaiian contribution to the fort will be going up before the end of 2021, and more permanent signs will be installed in early 2023. These panels correct past mistakes with statements such as, Kaumualii directed the construction [of the fort]. The panels also talk about what happened after Kaumualii drove the RAC out, and how he continued to build and improve the fort in the decades to come.

Its exciting, says Yent, to see the culmination of four years of work and discussion come together in the new interpretative panels. Along with the statue of King Kaumualii, this is an important step in recognizing the long-standing ties of the Hawaiian people to this special place and the fact that it was a Hawaiian fort constructed by Hawaiian people and garrisoned by Hawaiian soldiers, she says.

The question of what the fort and park should be named remains open. You know, with the presence of the Russians not even spanning an entire year, thats too little to be given the entire name, says NeSmith. You want to compare less than a year to how many centuriesseven, nine centuriesof our presence being there? We have earned that right to give the name the way we see fit. For him, theres only one option: Pulaula.

Many agree. I very much feel that the name Russian Fort has buried the Hawaiian history of that place, says Mills. If youre a tourist and you see the highway sign Russian Fort, you pull in expecting to see something that Russians built and Russians occupied. And neither of those things happened here.

Molodin and Gilevich, on the other hand, would like to see the Russian presence at the fort remain in the name. Taking into account the fact that the name Pulaula appeared chronologically later than the name Fort Elizabeth, the name of the state historical park should reflect this peculiarity and be written only as Russian Fort Elizabeth / Pulaula, writes Molodin. We want to keep the original name so people will not get confused, Gilevich agrees. We are trying to find a compromise to preserve history on both sides.

Ultimately the decision about what to call the site rests with Hawaii State Parks. Administrator Alan Carpenter says that the name change is going to happen. Putting the traditional Hawaiian name first in a place that was Hawaiian both before and after the brief Russian stint there, it just has to happen, says Carpenter, but he says there are still questions around what ought to follow Pulaula. Will it be Pulaula / Fort Elizabeth? Will it be Pulaula / Russian Fort Elizabeth? Will it just be Pulaula? You know, theres no willful intent here to erase any of the Russian story, says Carpenter, but only to have it be put in its proper context in a much greater story.

For now at least, King Kaumualii once again presides over his home, his people, and his story. Having the King Kaumualii statue up like that I think, for me, it helps to correct the very biased narrative of our own history, says NeSmith. As a Hawaiian language scholar and educator, he knows plenty about how the Hawaiian story often is glossed over in schools.

He hopes the statue will begin to change that. [The statue] gives us a reason to celebrate, to be happy knowing that our culture really was as rich and pervasive as it was. It was the only culture of the island at the time. And now that culture seems to be more of a behind-the-scenes sort of a thing. So theres a big shift in paradigm thats happening.

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Excavating the Hawaiian History of Kauais Russian Fort - Atlas Obscura