About Ka Nupepa Kuokoa

Ka Nupepa Kuokoa

Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, whose title translates as The Independent Newspaper—the Hawaiian word kuokoa means "independent"—was a Hawaiian-language newspaper published in Honolulu from October 1861 to December 1927. Running for 66 years, it was the longest-running Hawaiian-language newspaper ever published and, for much of its life, the most popular Hawaiian national journal, with a circulation once unequalled by any other newspaper in Hawai'i. Its 3,316 surviving issues preserve genealogies, traditional narratives, songs, and contemporary news that today form one of the richest archives of Native Hawaiian history and culture in existence.

The paper was founded by Henry Martyn Whitney, the son of American missionaries, to run alongside his English-language Pacific Commercial Advertiser. Whitney's two papers followed a similar political ideology drawn from the missionary establishment of the time, and Whitney himself supported annexation by the United States. Yet the Kuokoa was popular among the Hawaiian people because of the rich history, genealogies, and mele (Hawaiian song) it printed regularly, and because its Hawaiian editors filled its pages with material of lasting importance to Hawaiian history. That tension—an establishment paper whose contents became an indigenous archive—defines the Kuokoa's complicated legacy.

The Kuokoa outlasted the Hawaiian Kingdom itself. It began under King Kamehameha IV, reported the reigns of his successors, the overthrow of Queen Lili'uokalani in 1893, annexation in 1898, and nearly three decades of territorial government, before closing at the end of 1927 as its Hawaiian-reading audience dwindled. Its final editor's tenure ended a publishing line that had absorbed a number of rival newspapers along the way, including Ke Au Okoa and Lahui Hawaii.

The Hawaiian-language press before 1861

Before 1820, Native Hawaiians communicated history orally, through memory-based genealogy chants passed down across generations. Missionaries developed a written Hawaiian language, and by 1836 there were two Hawaiian-language newspapers: Lorrin Andrews's seminary publication Ka Lama Hawaii and Ke Kumu Hawaii. Both were organs of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the New England Calvinist missionary organization, produced by and for students at Lahainaluna School on Maui. Ka Nonanona and Ka Elele Hawaii were edited by the Reverend Richard Armstrong, who later became the Kingdom's minister of public instruction, and Ka Hae Hawaii, the official newspaper of that department under Armstrong, likewise conveyed a Protestant slant. The first Roman Catholic paper, He Mau Hana i Hanaia, appeared irregularly in 1852, followed by Haimanava in 1858.

From 1836 to 1861, newspapers in Hawai'i were printed by Protestant or Catholic publishers or by the Kingdom government. Beginning in 1861, Hawaiian national newspapers began to be printed in the Hawaiian language shaped by Native Hawaiian interests. The immediate trigger was Ka Hoku o ka Pakipika (Star of the Pacific), begun on September 26, 1861, by David Kalakaua, later king, who produced several periodicals in his life and earned the nickname of the "Editor King." The Hoku was the first Hawaiian-language national paper edited by Hawaiians for Hawaiian interests, and the first real resistance to the foreign missionary establishment. Ka Nupepa Kuokoa followed in October 1861, positioned as its rival.

Henry Martyn Whitney and the founding

Henry Martyn Whitney (1824–1904), son of Samuel and Mercy Whitney of the Pioneer Company of American Board missionaries, was born on Kaua'i and educated in Rochester, New York. He worked on the New York Commercial Advertiser and for the publisher Harper and Brothers, then returned to Hawai'i, where he served as head printer at the Hawai'i government printing plant and business manager of the English-language newspaper The Polynesian. On July 2, 1856, he began the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, described as a free press independent of the government and generally recognized as the first independent newspaper in Hawai'i.

Whitney established the Kuokoa in October 1861. It appeared monthly in October, November, and December of 1861, and weekly thereafter until December 29, 1927. Scholars disagree on how to classify the new paper. It has been described as the first independent Hawaiian newspaper, in the sense that it was independent of American Protestants, French Catholics, and the Kingdom government; Rubellite Johnson considered it the successor to Ka Hae Hawaii, noting that its editor announced in October 1861 that the Kuokoa would continue where Ka Hae Hawaii had stopped; Noenoe Silva classified it as an establishment paper, as opposed to Ka Hoku o ka Pakipika, which she described as resistance. All accounts agree that it was owned and run by Whitney, endorsed by the Hawaiian Evangelical Association, and popular because of its rich content despite Whitney's attitude of superiority toward Native Hawaiians.

Whitney's stated objectives

In the first issue, Whitney published a seven-point program for the paper. Paraphrased, the objectives were: to publish important news from foreign lands so Hawaiians could witness developments abroad; to explain foreign ways of life, work, education, and prosperity so Hawaiians could learn from them; to publish proper agricultural instruction and encourage industrious work; to beautify the paper with pictures of foreign people and things once cameras were obtained; to stand loyal to truth and avoid printing the arguments of religious factions; to teach loyalty to the King, the Queen, the chiefs, obedience to the laws, and loyalty to the sovereign; and to publish news of the archipelago that Hawaiians wanted to read, for the educational benefit of Hawaiians.

The program reveals the paper's dual character. It promised Hawaiians news of their own islands in their own language—a genuinely new service—while framing that service within a colonial pedagogy in which Hawaiians were to become more like enlightened foreigners. How the paper's readers and Hawaiian editors used its pages went well beyond that program, as the Kuokoa became a repository for traditional knowledge that its founder's worldview did not prioritize.

Contents: news, mo'olelo, and mele

A typical issue of the Kuokoa in its first year followed a consistent format. A foreign-news section carried news that took about two weeks to arrive in Hawai'i, consisting in the first year largely of news of the American Civil War. A second section presented news of Hawai'i, such as royal marriages and deaths and the retirement of officials. Letters to the editor formed a third category, and announcements and advertisements a fourth. Each issue also featured serialized literature, both European tales and traditional Native Hawaiian stories drawn from manuscripts written by Lahainaluna students. Poetry in the form of mele inoa (name songs) and kanikau (dirges) was often published, as were fillers of Christian or Native Hawaiian maxims and jokes, announcements of births, marriages and deaths, and shipping lists.

The paper published Hawaiian mo'olelo (legends, tales, and history) beginning with Hawaiian-language versions of European fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm and eventually printing the story of Umi-a-Liloa. According to historian Helen Chapin, the Kuokoa's editors published materials of the greatest importance to Hawaiian history: genealogies, tales of gods and goddesses, vivid descriptions of Hawaiian birds, bird catching and fishing practices, instructions on canoe building, summaries of medical practices, accounts of travel through the islands, and guidance on speaking Hawaiian correctly. In its pages first appeared the writings of John Papa 'I'i and Samuel M. Kamakau, later gathered as Fragments of Hawaiian History (1959) and The Ruling Chiefs of Hawaii, two foundational texts of Hawaiian historiography.

Rivalry with Ka Hoku o ka Pakipika

Beginning with their earliest issues, the Kuokoa and Ka Hoku o ka Pakipika conducted intense and eloquent debates through editorials and letters. Silva describes the rivalry as originating when Whitney tried to control the content of the Hoku by raising his quoted prices for printing it at the government press, which he headed; when he was unable to take control, he began the Kuokoa in opposition. The missionary community, in this account, preferred that Whitney control any new so-called independent newspaper, since he was one of their own. Letters arguing the relevance of each paper to Native Hawaiian readers continued through the life of the Hoku, until 1863.

Regardless of the paper's political ideology, scholars note that the mo'olelo the Kuokoa printed demonstrated how these papers were used by the indigenous population to speak of and to their own people—as distinct, of the land, and possessed of rights and justice. The Kuokoa in particular was for a long while, in John Reinecke's assessment, a journal of opinion as well as information, affording an outlet for the literary and didactic ambitions of Hawaiians.

Editors and absorbed papers

Whitney's influence rested in part on his practice of hiring capable Hawaiian editors, such as Joseph Kawainui, S. K. Mahoe, and J. M. Poepoe, who published materials of lasting importance. The paper's first editor, in 1861, was Luther Halsey Gulick, who announced that the Kuokoa would continue where Ka Hae Hawaii had left off in support of the missionary position. Gulick was joined by Joseph Kawainui as co-editor in 1870; Whitney himself edited from 1871 to 1873, again with Kawainui. Later editors included J. Mott-Smith in 1877, the Reverend H. H. Parker with S. K. Mahoe in 1878, Samuel G. Wilder in 1879, Thomas Thrum in 1883, J. M. Poepoe in 1895, and Solomon Hanohano, who served as co-editor from 1907 and as the paper's last editor from 1918 to 1927.

In the course of its history the Kuokoa absorbed a number of rival newspapers. In 1873 it was joined by Ke Au Okoa and styled Ka Nupepa Kuokoa me Ke Au Okoa I Huiia. From April 1891 to December 1896 it was joined by Ko Hawaii Pae Aina, with Whitney and Kawainui as editors, and it also absorbed Lahui Hawaii. The American Antiquarian Society records its absorbed titles as Ke Au Okoa and Lahui Hawaii, and its parallel title as Independent Press.

Peak influence and long decline

For years the Kuokoa had a circulation unequalled by any other newspaper published in Hawai'i, and it was at times more profitable than the Advertiser itself. It became the property of the Advertiser Publishing Company before 1898. Its lengthy publication history enables the modern reader to learn how Native Hawaiians who lived between 1861 and 1927 thought and felt about the important events of the day, from the deaths and successions of monarchs through annexation, the establishment of the Territory of Hawai'i, epidemics, strikes, and world war, while its birth, marriage, and death notices provide genealogical information found nowhere else.

The decline, when it came, was demographic and linguistic. Lorrin A. Thurston, president of the Advertiser Publishing Company, announced the paper's end in 1927, noting that the Kuokoa had passed through many ownerships, that its circulation had gradually declined until for three years it had lost money, and that in 1927 it had lost over four thousand dollars. Thurston framed the closure not as decadence but as progress: the reason for the Kuokoa's falling circulation, he argued, was the same reason Portuguese-language newspapers in Hawai'i had disappeared—the shift of their communities to English. The final issue appeared at the end of December 1927 (the Papakilo database records issues through December 1, 1927, while the University of Hawai'i chronology dates weekly publication to December 29, 1927).

Legacy and digitization

The Kuokoa's afterlife has been extraordinary. The Hawaiian Newspapers Collection at Papakilo Database holds 3,316 issues, comprising 18,039 pages and more than 137,000 articles, searchable online, with additional digital holdings through Ulukau, the Hawaiian Electronic Library, and the University of Hawai'i at Manoa Library, which has documented the paper's historical significance in a dedicated research essay. The Bishop Museum has highlighted the rediscovery of the paper's final issue and Thurston's farewell announcement.

With the resurgence of the Hawaiian Renaissance, these non-English sources are in high demand. Hawaiian-language newspapers present a Native view of historical events in Hawai'i and the world, and a Native Hawaiian perspective on Hawaiian culture, telling today's readers about the concerns of a changing society. Among the more than eighty Hawaiian-language titles preserved at Hamilton Library, the Kuokoa stands first in duration, in circulation, and in the depth of traditional material it preserved—an establishment newspaper that became, almost in spite of its founding purpose, one of the great archives of the people it was meant to instruct.