HAWAIIANS IN EARLY OREGON
By Robert Carlton Clark
Recent newspaper stories concerning the completion of the Owyhee dam and the launching of the Owyhee irrigation project should be a reminder of the early relation of the Hawaiian Islands with the Pacific northwest and the part played by their people in the history of early Oregon. The eastern Oregon river that gives its name to a dam, which at the time of its completion was hailed as the highest in the world,[1] and to an important reclamation project was named in memory of two Hawaiians killed by Indians upon its banks in 1819. "Owyhee" was the form of spelling generally used by all early writers for the Hawaii that came later to be the accepted form. The natives of the islands when found in Oregon were called Sandwich Islanders or Kanakas or Owyhees.
In December, 1777, Captain James Cook, who had been sent into the Pacific on a voyage of exploration by the King of England, discovered several islands which he named in honor of the Earl of Sandwich. He later sailed northward and in March of the next year sighted the American coast in the neighborhood of the present Yaquina Bay. He thus became the first to make a contact between the Oregon country and Hawaii. Cook was followed within a few years by vessels that engaged in trading furs from the Indians along the northwest coast of America which they sold in China. The captains of such ships were quick to learn the value of the Hawaiian Islands as a resting place and provisioning station. Their custom was to stop there on the northward voyage, spend a season in trade, return to the islands for the winter, and afterwards sail back to the American coast to complete their cargo of furs before going to Canton.
Two such traders were captains Portlock and Dixon, who on their outgoing voyage in 1786 anchored their ships in a bay on
- ↑ The dam is 405 feet from foundation to crest, 835 feet long and forms a reservoir 52 miles long with an area of 13,000 acres and a capacity of 1,170,000 acre feet. It was built at a cost of $6,000,000; Reclamation Era, August, 1932.
