This is a guest post written by Sarah Tamashiro, a Masterʻs student in the History department at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa.
When the news of the auction of the Rainer Werner Bock Collection was released, it felt as if everyone on social media was talking about these objects. Auctions that headline Pacific material culture are unusual, let alone an auction where the majority of the collection is of Hawaiian origin. Aguttes was aware of the novelty of their auction and advertised the Bock Collection as the largest privately owned collection of Hawaiian material outside of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum (Honolulu, HI.)
The sale of Indigenous cultural material upsets the groups and descendants from which these objects were sourced. Not knowing of the existence of the objects in the Bock Collection was enough to anger many of my Hawaiian friends and colleagues. Private collectors that keep quiet about what is in their possession could potentially leave a whole generation of Natives in the dark about the location of their cultural material. The rarity of the objects available to those only with money is also upsetting, especially because Hawaiians today lack the resources and knowledge to make objects at the level of quality of those in the Bock Collection. The Bock objects left Hawaiʻi at a time when resources and knowledge were abundant and reproducible. Over time, goods that were given during the early period of Hawaiian contact have become priceless, as the landscape and peoplescape of Hawaiʻi has changed drastically over the last few centuries.
Other Hawaiians were perturbed by the lack of provenance of the objects in the official catalog, especially objects of possible sacred origins. Hawaiian activists like Edward Halealoha Ayau asked the auction house to “prove that you had informed consent to collect them, and if you have then you are free to do with them as you please.”[i]
Over time, goods that were given during the early period of Hawaiian contact have become priceless as the landscape and peoplescape of Hawaiʻi has changed drastically over the last few centuries.
The auction house did not present any documentation and the sale went on as planned. The question of provenance that Ayau and other Hawaiians in the community posed regarding the history of the Bock objects reveals the great need for more historical research on objects from the past. We need to reconstruct the historic systems of trade, commerce, and diplomacy that Hawaiians were engaging with to help answer questions of where, how, and under what circumstances did objects enter and exit Hawaii. Failure to understand this history will continue to foreground traumatic stories of illegal and unjust stealing from Native peoples and sacred places rather than bringing attention to the complex global exchange that our ancestors were active participants in.
I was recently reading Reverend Hiram Bingham’s A Residence of Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Islands as side research for my thesis. Historians and academics interested in the history of Christianity in Hawaii-Pacific or American-Hawaiian history are familiar with this text, one of the earliest written histories on the establishment of the Congregationalist Mission in Hawaii.
Bingham was a member of the first group of Christian missionaries to arrive in the Hawaiian Islands through the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. In 1820, he and his cohort sailed on the Thaddeus from Boston to the western coast of Hawaiʻi Island.
This was my first time reading the words of Mr. Bingham and I was immediately struck by his attention to detail. Bingham’s recollections of contact begin in chapter four of his memoir. Shortly after turning into Kohala, the most northern district of Hawaiʻi Island, natives in canoes paddled to meet the Thaddeus. They boarded the boat, ready to trade “their little articles of barter, and to look at the strangers.”[ii] Faced for the first time with the natives that Bingham and company sought to morally save, the missionaries were horrified and began to question whether the Hawaiians were human and even trainable. Yet, the answer was still a hard yes from Bingham.
Women of the Sandwich Islands by Louis Choris, circa 1816-1 (Honolulu Museum of Art).
The next day, the Thaddeus was greeted by another group of Hawaiians, this time by aliʻi (high-ranking chiefs determined by genealogy) and their entourage. Bingham notes that aliʻi were “of a different race from those who had visited the vessel before, or decided superiority of the nobility over the peasantry.”[iii] Whereas the first group was described as “naked savages, whose heads and feet, and much of their sun burnt swarthy skins, were bare,” the aliʻi were clothed in expensive western garments: gingham, silk, plaid, fur, objects not endemic to the middle of the Pacific.[iv]
Tattooed high chief in tailcoat and loincloth, and chiefess by Jacques Arago, 1819 (Honolulu Museum of Art).
These details provided by Bingham in two pages of text are fascinating. In just over 40 years after contact with Captain James Cook, Hawaiʻi was a part of the globalized trade network. By 1820, Hawaiians were no strangers to systems of trade and barter and they exhibited this upon their first contact with Bingham’s group. The presence of western clothing, garments that in the world Bingham had just departed were considered high luxury items, indicates that Hawaiians were engaging with international fashion commerce.
What were Hawaiians reciprocating in exchanges with foreigners? Bingham’s text also reveals what types of goods the Hawaiians were giving. Bingham writes, “As a token of friendship and confidence, he (Kalanimoku) presented us with a spear,” to which the missionary party reciprocated the day following by presenting King Kamehameha II with “an elegant copy of the Bible, furnished by the American Bible Society.”[v]
Woman of the Sandwich Islands by Louis Choris, circa 1816 (Honolulu Museum of Art).
What I like about the Bingham text is that it reveals three different types of exchanges between Hawaiians and foreigners, illustrating how historical sources in both Hawaiian and English (if not other languages of foreigners to Hawaiiʻs shores) can help reconstruct the systems of commodities trade and economy. We have one account of Hawaiians ready to trade at the first sight of foreigners. We also have another account of the giving of a spear by a Hawaiian aristocrat, understood by Bingham as a gift of goodwill. The missionaries reciprocate this by giving an object (although perhaps maybe not as fun as a bolt of gingham) to the King in the hopes of gaining trust. All three transactions were made consciously with intention and purpose, prior to monetary valuing of objects. This brief analysis of a historical moment is not even taking into account what lies outside of this frame. How were Hawaiians exchanging before Bingham arrived and how did those proceedings influence this first interaction between the missionaries and Hawaiians? How does the trade of services (i.e. food, sex) also impact the ways in which Hawaiians and foreigners interacted on Hawaiian shores?
My hope is that in talking about the value of Hawaiian material that we also look more closely at the culture of Hawaiian exchange, if not Native exchange systems around the world.
The Aguttes auction stirred up a lot of feelings and questions for many people. The objects that were auctioned are representative of a Hawaiʻi very different from the colonial reality contemporary Hawaiians inhabit. We have a tendency to look at the past nostalgically, however, often losing the context of history. My hope is that in talking about the value of Hawaiian material that we also look more closely at the culture of Hawaiian exchange, if not Native exchange systems around the world. Although sales of art and artifacts increase with legitimate provenance, auction houses are not obliged to complete provenance to the degree that which Native communities feel comfortable with. Object history is one that Native people have the capability and resources to retell and the seeking of information is up to us collectively.
Sarah Tamashiro is a Masterʻs student in the History department at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Her thesis focuses on the social history of the establishment of the Anglican Church to Hawaiʻi. She received her BA in Art History from Occidental College.
NOTES
[i] “Protest against Native Hawaiian Items up for Auction in Paris,” accessed April 19, 2017, http://www.kitv.com/story/35029893/protest-against-native-hawaiian-items-up-for-auction-in-paris.
[ii] Hiram Bingham, A Residence of Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Islands; Or, The Civil, Religious, and Political History of Those Islands: Comprising a Particular View of the Missionary Operations Connected with the Introduction and Progress of Christianity and Civilization Among the Hawaiian People (H. Huntington, 1847), 81.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid., 81–82.
[v] Ibid., 87.
