The Kānaka of ’49 Story by Michele Bigley. Photo by

I first heard that Hawaiians had played a part in California’s Gold Rush from one of the charismatic historians in the museum at Old Town Sacramento, guys who dress like characters from the era and tell stories of gold fever that never showed up in my history textbooks.

It’s well known in Sacramento that gold was first discovered in California on land owned by John Augustus Sutter, the father of the city’s founder. But less well known is the role of the Kānaka Maoli, or Native Hawaiians. Sutter, who’d gone bankrupt in his native Switzerland, bailed on his family and sailed to Hawai‘i in 1838 hoping to find passage to Yerba Buena (now known as San Francisco) and start a new settlement in what was then Alta California, a territory of Mexico. But there was no passage to be had, and during his four-month wait in Honolulu, the impressive Sutter made some powerful friends, including King Kamehameha III. The king “gave” Sutter ten Hawaiians—including two women—to help him establish his settlement. The Hawaiians would remain with Sutter for three years, each earning $10 a month, after which Sutter would fund their return to the kingdom. But none would come back.

Today there are hints of Hawaiian influence throughout the Sierra foothills: Northeast of Sacramento, Kanaka Creek feeds Kanaka Falls; east of Mendocino are Kanaka Peak and Kanaka Glade; quite a few Kanaka Bars have challenged rafters on Gold Country rivers; up on the Yuba River is Kanaka Dam. Yet no settlements remain, no artifacts or photos. Other than the place-names and stories in Old Town Sacramento, there is little tangible evidence of the Hawaiian side of the story.

But if anyone knows that side, it’s Jared Jones, an education coordinator at Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park, who’s mined letters and diaries for information about Sutter’s kānaka. When Sutter sailed up California’s American River in 1839 with “ten tattooed Hawaiians, three sailors and a big bulldog,” says Jones, most assumed he’d get himself killed by the Native Americans. Records differ about whether Sutter bore gifts for the local Miwok tribe or made a show of force, but either way, the Native Americans allowed Sutter and his crew to live among them. According to California State Park historical documents, the Native Americans saw the similarity between themselves and the Hawaiians, and soon enough a couple of the kānaka had married Miwok women. “The Shingle Springs band of the Miwok tribe today,” says Jones, “recognizes their Hawaiian ancestry.”

Letters suggest that Sutter himself lived with one of the Hawaiians, a woman named Manuiki, while planning his agricultural venture in the soil of the Sierra foothills. But one had to be a Mexican citizen to own land in Alta California, so in 1840 Sutter became just that. He also became a representative of the Mexican government, which saw his settlement as a useful bulwark against the Native Americans, who vastly outnumbered the European colonists, and he was granted land in June 1841.

Sutter named his parcel New Helvetia (the Latin name for Switzerland); it stretched over 150,000 acres north along the Feather River from what is now Sacramento. The kānaka in his employ built grass hale (houses) and helped construct Sutter’s Fort, which stands today in downtown Sacramento; they crewed his schooners and managed Hock Farm, a settlement along the Feather River. Then, in 1848, a carpenter named James Marshall found gold at Sutter’s Mill, sparking the California Gold Rush.

The rest of Sutter’s story is well known: The Gold Rush ruined his lands, and most of his business ventures failed. His son, John Augustus Sutter Jr., fared better and went on to found Sacramento. But the role those ten kānaka played in the largest human migration to California to date exists publicly only on a placard in the orientation room at Sutter’s Fort. Even less is known about the many more kānaka who flowed into California after Marshall’s discovery; prospectors from the Kingdom of Hawai‘i were among the first and largest group of the eventual three hundred thousand forty-niners from around the world who came to capitalize on the bonanza before it was all over by 1855. HH