Killing Price of Good Drinking Water
1778. Kaua`i now found, Capt. J. Cook wants fresh, sweet water – to replace the awful, brackish stuff his crew’s been drinking. On river-rich Kaua’i that should’ve been easy to get, you’d think.
Not so. Cook sends officer Williamson after H2O. But when that shore party beaches, it’s mobbed by hundreds of curious, “over eager” Hawaiians. While wishing to help, those natives are touching and grabbing the Brits’ things: oars, muskets, “every thing”. To control the mobbing, Williamson’s man fires a shot, killing a native, who’s carried off by the dispersing crowd. Sorry, it’s not recorded what the after-reaction by Hawaiians was.
Curiously, Williamson, who finally gets his casks of water aboard ship, doesn’t tell Cook of the killing. The Capt. only learns about it days after the ships’ company sails from Kaua`i, headed for Alaska. Why not confess? Williamson may have feared that Cook would render him the harshest scolding. That sad incident was thought to have happened at Makaweli landing in the Waimea district. (pgg. 267 & 269)
Incidentally, Maka-weli means “fearful features” – a meaning befitting the murder of that day. Don’t you think? Comes 231-years later and Makaweli is now a thriving tourist town.
VOYAGE OF THE RESOLUTION AND DISCOVERY, 1776-1780, Part I. Edited by J.C. Beaglehole. PLACE NAMES OF HAWAII, by Mary Kawena Pukui, Esther T. Mookini, S. H. Elbert.
Tags: Hawaiian Stories
