A HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY CONTRACT FOR HAWAIIAN LABOR
GEORGE VERNE BLUE, Instructor in History, University of Hawaii
(Translation)
Honolulu, Feb. 11, 1840.
An agreement between M. Kekuanaoa^) and G. Pelly. < b >
Kekuanaoa allows Mr. Pelly to take sixty men to the Columbia River, to dwell there three years and at the end of the said term of three years Mr. Pelly agrees to return them to the island of Oahu. (c >
And if it shall appear that any of the men have died it is well; but if they have deserted by reason of ill-treat- ment, or remain for any other cause, then Mr. Pelly will pay twenty dollars for each man [who may be deficient].
COMMENT
The short agreement here reprinted discovers practice common during the regime of the various fur companies. Nevertheless it is the only document of the sort which has yet come to light in the Hawaiian Archives. 1
The document offers some slight indication of what part the Sandwich Islanders, as they were then commonly called, may have had in the peopling of the Northwest coast or in the reclamation of the Oregon country from savagery. The Hudson's Bay Company drew its servants from widely extended seats of origin. Delaware and
O)Kekuanaoa was Governor of Oahu. He was a chief of the third rank and father of the king, Kamehameha III. The latter derived his- right to the crown through his mother. (*>) George Pelly was the agent of the Hudson's Bay Company in Hon- olulu when a factory was established there in 1834. (c)Oahu, the capital island of the kingdom. .Although the kings orig- inally came from Hawaii, and enjoyed living on Maui, the one good natural harbor in the group determined which island should be both commercial and political center. ^^The Territory of Hawaii posesses an Archives Department housed on the capital grounds in a building specially provided. It dates from 1906, though funds for it were appropriated in 1903, and is the only star/* or territorial building to exist purely for the collection, storing and. preservation of archives.
