Snowy Mountaineers and Soda Waters: Honolulu and Its Age of Ice Importation

Abstract

In 1850, Honolulu received its first shipment of cold, clear ice for public sale. Used to chill cocktails and other refreshments, comestible coldness underwent a process of intense meaning-making that reflected the discourses concerning race and civility that played out across Hawai‘i’s growing urban environment. This article analyzes the political and social dimensions of ice’s introduction to Honolulu in order to show how taste, and particularly the taste for coldness, emerged from, responded to, and pushed back against a burgeoning American settler colonial project. It shows that before coldness became so unremarkably common in Hawai‘i, a place where water freezes only atop its three tallest mountain peaks during the coldest months of the year, the early introduction of ice cut across the deeply moralized and highly politicized foodscape of mid-nineteenth century Hawai‘i.

Keywords:

• ice
• settler colonialism
• Hawai‘i
• taste
• indigenous politics

Acknowledgements

I thank New York University’s Center for the Humanities for their support during the completion of this article, as well as Lisa Gitelman, Krishnendu Ray, Dean Saranillio, David Chang, and the three anonymous reviewers for their indispensable feedback.

Notes

1. “Ice,” Hawaiian Gazette, October 11, 1871.

2. PingSung Leung and Matthew Loke, “Economic Impacts of Increasing Hawai‘i’s Food Self-Sufficiency,” Economic Issues (December 2008): 2.

3. Tara L. Miller and Charles H. Fletcher, “Waikiki: Historical Analysis of an Engineered Shoreline,” Journal of Coastal Research, vol. 19, no. 4 (2003): 1026–43.

4. In 1875, the commodity flow had been formalized with a Treaty of Reciprocity, and American businessmen confidently speculated over the eventual outcome of this intimate economic relationship. Merze Tate, Hawai‘i: Reciprocity or Annexation (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 1968) provides an overview of the ongoing debate of the second half of the nineteenth century.

5. See C. C. Bennett, “Death of King Kamehameha III,” Sketches of Hawaiian History and Honolulu Directory (Honolulu: C.C. Bennett, 1871), 38, and Polynesian, December 30, 1854, 134.

6. Private correspondence from the time connects the King’s death to alcoholism. For example, missionary John S. Emerson wrote in a letter to his son Samuel that, “The King Kamehameha III died a bout [sic] one month since, disease mania potu”—a nineteenth-century term to describe alcoholism. John S. Emerson to Samuel Emerson, letter, January 23, 1855. Bishop Museum Archives.

7. James O’Meara, “Schemes to Annex the Sandwich Islands,” Californian, vol. 4 (1881): 257–8.

8. O’Meara, “Schemes to Annex the Sandwich Islands,” 264.

9. Ibid.

10. Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, vol. 1 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1938), 426. Kamehameha III’s ultimate decision on whether to cease annexation negotiations before his death remains unclear. According to archival evidence referenced in Kuykendall, cabinet members were under the impression that all negotiations had been terminated. Meeting minutes, however, show that the discussion had simply been tabled for further consideration. Certainly, no prepared annexation document had been waiting for signature.

11. On nineteenth-century Hawaiian history, see Noenoe Silva, Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004) and Jonathan Kamakawiwoʻole Osorio, Dismembering Lāhui: A History of the Hawaiian Nation to 1887 (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2002).

12. Thomas G. Thrum, “Honolulu Yesterdays,” Hawaiian Annual for 1931 (Honolulu: Thos. G. Thrum, 1930), 33–4.

13. At this time, the term “hotel” referred to a place for socialization and entertainment more than sleeping accommodations. Laws put into effect in the years 1845–6 determined that places “for the ordinary entertainment of sailors” would be called inns or victualing houses, and that a hotel would be “a house of public entertainment for the higher classes of society.” In 1856 “respectable” retailers, including Cutrell, Bartlett, and Macfarlane, complained that the inadequate enforcement of harsh liquor license laws bred illegal competition with “numerous illicit vendors diffused among all the classes of society.” Richard A. Greer, “Grog Shops and Hotels: Bending the Elbow in Old Honolulu,” Hawaiian Journal of History, vol. 28 (1994): 46–8.

14. Florida physician John Gorrie filed the earliest ice machine patents in the United States and England in 1851, but the machines did not go into production. George D. Howe, “The Father of Modern Refrigeration,” Publications of the Florida Historical Society, vol. 1, no. 4 (1909): 19–23.

15. The notice is specifically directed toward “the gentlemen of Honolulu, Captains of vessels, and strangers visiting Oahu.” “Notice,” Polynesian, August 24, 1850, 59.

16. Ibid. and advertisement, Polynesian, November 16, 1850, 108. The cargo, perplexingly, does not appear in any other records in contemporary publications. This may be simply due to a lack of reporting, or perhaps the cargo did not last long enough for it to make significant news. Polynesian, September 21, 1850, 74 and December 14, 1850, 123.

17. Jonathan Rees reports that Tudor’s largest foreign market, India, peaked in 1856 with 146,000 tons shipped that year, though the ice trade continued to grow domestically in American markets until the end of the nineteenth century. Refrigeration Nation: A History of Ice, Appliances, and Enterprise in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 23–4.

18. Gavin Weightman, The Frozen Water Trade: A True Story (New York: Hyperion, 2003), 173.

19. “How Ice Was Had Here in Old Pioneer Days,” Advertiser, April 19, 1903.

20. Through searches in the archives of University of Hawai‘i’s Hamilton Library, the Hawai‘i State Archives, and the Bishop Museum Library Archives, I have come to the conclusion that there are no known first-hand accounts that exist of this ice shipment.

21. “Ice,” Polynesian, June 26 ,1852. It seems, though, that the mail the Harriet T. Bartlett brought with it excited Honoluluans even more than the ice, which gets no mention in an announcement of the bark’s arrival published in Polynesian, June 19, 1852.

22. The Life and Adventures of a Free Lance (Burlington, VT: Free Press Company, 1914), 64. The Polynesian notes that the bark was captained by “Edward Hereen” (spelled Heeren in The Friend’s “Marine Journal,” July 2, 1852), which could have been a misprint.

23. “Seaborne Commerce of Pacific Coast of North America in Pioneer Days,” Monthly Review Mercantile Trust Company of California, October 15, 1923, 218. The Russian American Commercial Ice Company reportedly sold the ice for $25–$35 per ton (a good deal cheaper than the $75 per ton that could be bought from Boston by way of Cape Horn), and sold to consumers for 5 cents per pound. Sven D. Haakanson and Amy F. Stefiian, Giinaquq Like a Face: Suqpiaq Masks of the Kodiak Archipelago (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2009), 45. One publication reports that San Francisco’s first ice shipment arrived via the Backus on April 11, 1852 along with 800 pounds of halibut at the consignment of the newly formed Pacific Ice Company. Louis J. Rasmussen, San Francisco Ship Passenger Lists: November 7, 1851–June 17, 1852 (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing, 2003), 244.

24. Polynesian, October 14, 1854, and Thomas G. Thrum, Hawaiian Almanac and Annual for 1914 (Honolulu: Thos. G. Thrum, 1913), 52. Additional details of the ice house’s structure cannot be found in the popular press, government documents, or city maps, though it continued to change hands for some time afterward and was eventually occupied as a shipwright’s shop run by George Emmes. Thomas G. Thrum, Hawaiian Almanac and Annual for 1882 (Honolulu: Thos. G. Thrum, 1882), 9.

25. One of their notices claimed that “the Agents will be prepared to furnish Ice at the Houses of all who may desire this indispensable luxury.” Shipments advertised via the American brigs Mallory and Noble. Polynesian, October 28, 1854, November 4, 1854, and February 3, 1855. News of the icehouse built in anticipation of its arrival reached as far as California in “Further from the Sandwich Islands,” Sacramento Daily Union, November 9, 1854, 3.

26. Circular, “Swan & Clifford…” [Honolulu 1855], Hawai‘i State Archives. Also see David W. Forbes, ed., Hawaiian National Bibliography, vol. 3 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001), 156.

27. Kuykendall calls vol. 2 of his Hawaiian Kingdom trilogy “The Critical Years” (1953) and Sally Engle Merry also makes this reference in Colonizing Hawai‘i: The Cultural Power of Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 4.

28. Baker reports that in the year 1853, 110 vessels entered the harbor and Honolulu’s custom receipts numbered over $100,000, with total Kingdom revenue of $234,169. Ray Jerome Baker, Honolulu in 1853 (Honolulu: Ray Jerome Baker, 1950), 5.

29. Ibid., 6.

30. The historical literature on the Māhele is extensive; here I use Stuart Banner, “Preparing to be Colonized: Land Tenure and Legal Strategy in Nineteenth-Century Hawai‘i,” Law & Society Review, vol. 39, no. 2 (2005): 281.

31. Kuykendall, vol. 2, 19–20.

32. Daws explains in footnote 11 that during the period of the Māhele, “the outlines of a town committed to western property practices became visible.” Gavan Daws, “Honolulu in the 19th Century: Notes on the Emergence of Urban Society in Hawai‘i,” Journal of Pacific History, vol. 2 (1967): 80.

33. Banner, “Preparing to be Colonized,” 284.

34. S. S. Hill, Travels in the Sandwich and Society Islands (London: Chapman & Hall, 1856), 96.

35. Don Hibbard, Designing Paradise: The Allure of the Hawaiian Resort (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), 8.

36. Accessed January 23, 2015, “View of Honolulu from the Harbor, No. 1,” Hawaiian Historical Society Historical Photograph Collection, http://www.huapala.net/items/show/4711. Reprinted in Ray Jerome Baker’s Honolulu in 1853 (1950).

37. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact location of the Merchant’s Exchange since coordinates do not appear in newspaper advertisements, and buildings of this time tended to change hands rather rapidly. In Richard Greer’s detailed history of Cunha’s Alley, located between Merchant and King Streets, he traces Cutrell’s ownership of a building that is either the Merchant’s Exchange or the Union Hotel (or both). Richard A. Greer, “Cunha’s Alley: The Anatomy of a Landmark,” Hawaiian Journal of History, vol. 2 (1968): 144.

38. Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Penguin Books, 1985).

39. Polynesian, November 4, 1854. Horace Crabb advertised “Ice Cream!” to be served at 7:30 p.m. on the same date.

40. Jonathan Stainback Wilson, “Health Department,” Godey’s Lady’s Book, vol. 57 (1858): 560.

41. Isabella Mary Beeton, ed., The Book of Household Management (London: S.O. Beeton, 1861), 761.

42. Emphasis added. “A Few Words About Ice,” Pacific Commercial Advertiser, October 21, 1858.

43. This year also saw the opening of an ice cream parlor on the corner of Nu’uanu and Chaplain Streets by Mr. William Huddy, “where pleasant rooms and gentlemanly attendance greet the lady and gentleman visitors.” Pacific Commercial Advertiser, November 11, 1858.

44. I must acknowledge here that although I interpret this passage to be in regards to Native Hawaiians, they are not named as such. Per my conversation with Historian David Change, it is possible that the passage could instead be referring to first- or second-generation haole. For a good analysis of the feminization, sexualization, and infantilization of Hawaiian bodies, see Sally Engle Merry, Colonizing Hawaiʻi: The Cultural Power of Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). Prohibition of alcohol consumption for Kanaka Maoli began almost as soon as foreign rum arrived on the shores of Kailua, O‘ahu in 1791. Kimo Alama Keaulana and Scott Whitney, “Ka wai kau mai o Maleka ‘Water from America’: The Intoxication of the Hawaiian People,” Contemporary Drug Problems (1990): 168.

45. Marilyn Brown, “‘Aina Under the Influence: The Criminalization of Alcohol in 19th-Century Hawai‘i,” Theoretical Criminology, vol. 7, no. 1 (2003): 89–110. Greer, “Grog Shops and Hotels,” 46, and Hawaiian Government, Penal Code of the Hawaiian Islands (Honolulu: Government Press, 1850), 101.

46. Hawai‘i Supreme Court, Annual Report of the Chief Justice (Honolulu: Hawai‘i Administration of Justice), 3.

47. Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha IV, King of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the Nobles and Representatives, at their Session (Honolulu: Hawaiian Government, 1855), 15. A good analysis of what trade agreements did to the Hawaiian economy, and ultimately its political independence, can be found in Sumner J. LaCroix and Christopher Grandy, “The Political Instability of Reciprocal Trade and the Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom,” Journal of Economic History, vol. 57, no. 1 (March 1997): 161–89.

48. Gavan Daws, “Decline of Puritanism at Honolulu in the Nineteenth Century,” Hawaiian Journal of History, vol. 1 (1967): 37.

49. The social landscape of temperance is more complex than I have space to represent here, but can be found illuminated by Jennifer Fish Kashay in, “ʻWe will banish the polluted thing from our houses’: Missionaries, Drinking, and Temperance in the Sandwich Islands,” in The Role of the American Board in the World: Bicentennial Reflections on the Organization’s Missionary Work, 1810–2010, eds. Clifford Putney and Paul T. Burlin (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012), 287–311.

50. Letter, [James J. Jarves] to Robert C. Wyllie, November. 25, 1849, F.O. & Ex., Hawai‘i State Archives. These views undoubtedly stemmed from the negotiation of international treaties with England, France, and the United States that preoccupied kingdom politics for much of the 1840s, and did much to shape alcohol importation. Encouraged by temperance reformers in 1846, the Hawaiian Kingdom proposed amendments to treaty agreements made with France and England in 1839 and 1844, respectively, that included the prohibition of liquor importation. After a wholly unsatisfactory debate with representatives of the two powers, including complaints of favoritism, the Kingdom not only allowed alcohol importation, but eventually lowered the tariffs outlined in their first concession. Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, 1874–1893: The Kalākaua Dynaisty, vol. 3 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1967), 372–3. Also see “The Struggle for Equitable Treaties,” in Kuykendall, Hawaiian Kingdom, vol. 1, 368–82.

51. Thurston, The Liquor Question in Hawai‘i, 8.

52. See Isabella Bird, Six Months in Hawai‘i (New York: Routledge, 2013), 290.

53. Caroline Ralston argues that, “Progressively the interests of chiefs and people had diverged until, by the 1850s, it would appear to a modern-day western analyst that in many senses two classes with opposed interests had emerged.” “Hawai‘i 1778–1854: Some Aspects of Makaʻainana Response to Rapid Cultural Change,” Journal of Pacific History, vol. 19, no. 1 (1984): 36. Daws, “Honolulu in the Nineteenth Century,” 88.

54. Brown, “ʻAina Under the Influence,” 315.

55. Ralston, “Hawai‘i 1778–1854,” 22.

56. For more, see Gerrit P. Judd IV, Dr. Judd: Hawai‘i’s Friend, A Biography of Gerrit Parmele Judd, 1803–1873 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1960).

57. Polynesian, September 15, 1855.

58. S. A. Judd to L. Fish [October 1855]. Bishop Museum Archives.

59. The cargo arrived on the American clipper Yankee, along with letters and dry goods. Polynesian, October 25, 1856, 98–9. Cutrell owned both a liquor retail business and a boarding house called the Union Hotel. The Merchant’s Exchange appears to have operated as a tavern only; however, the Union Hotel and the Merchant’s Exchange may have operated under the same roof. Greer, “Cunha’s Alley,” 144, 149–50.

60. The concoctions would have been familiar to many hollow-legged colonialists; contemporary reports from Australia list beverages of the same name. For example, a “stone fence” contained ginger beer and brandy, and a “smash” comprised ice, brandy, and water. “The Literature of the Bottle,” Titan (January—June 1859): 506.

61. Polynesian, October 25, 1856, 98.

62. Pacific Commercial Advertiser, February 26, 1857, and Pacific Commercial Advertiser, October 30, 1856.

63. An 1856 petition signed by a dozen or so liquor license holders, including Cutrell, complained against the “numerous illicit vendors diffused among all the classes of society” that they believed were negatively affecting the profitability of their business. Greer, Grog Shops and Hotels, 47.

64. American sea captain E. E. Adams wrote in 1850 that, “Wherever I go [in Honolulu], I meet men lying on the floors, in the streets, in the forecastles, perfectly helpless and senseless; but brandy is so CHEAP.” “Honolulu—Cheap versus Dear Spirits,” quoted from the Honolulu Friend in Bristol Temperance Herald (January 1851): 91.

65. “A Few Words About Ice,” Advertiser, October 21, 1858.

66. Cyrus W. Jones and Charles G. Davis, Draft Agreement, 1856, Hawai’i State Archives;

C. W. Jones and C. G. Davis to The Privy Council of his Hawaiian Majesty, Privy Council Petitions, April 17, 1856, Hawai‘i State Archives.

67. Charles E. Peterson, “Pioneer Architects and Builders of Honolulu,” Annual Report of the Hawaiian Historical Society, vol. 72 (1964): 12, and “A Honolulu Hardware Store,” Hardware Dealer’s Magazine, vol. 40 (1913): 1237.

68. Per details indexed in Hawai‘i State Archives card catalog under heading “Ice,” with incomplete reference to article in Honolulu Advertiser, February 1931.

69. Ibid. and Polynesian, October 16, 1858.

70. My translation. “Hau! Hau!,” Ka Hae Hawai‘i, November 3, 1858, 122.

71. “Cool,” Polynesian, March 20, 1858.

72. My translation. Ka Hae Hawai‘i, November 3, 1858, 122.

73. “The Ice, and What Came of It,” Polynesian, May 26, 1860.

74. C. H. Lewers to Hawaiian Minister of the Interior, March 18, 1861, Hawai‘i State Archives.

75. H. Hackfeld and J. C. Pfluger to Hawaiian Minister of the Interior, March 25, 1861, Hawai‘i State Archives. For more on Hackfeld’s business in Hawai‘i, see “History of the House of H. Hackfeld & Co.,” All About Hawai‘i, Thrum’s Hawaiian Almanac and Annual for 1900 (Honolulu: Thos. G. Thrum, 1902), 43.

76. H. Hackfeld and J. C. Pfluger to Hawaiian Minister of the Interior, March 25, 1861, Hawai‘i State Archives.

77. In contrast, a note in Paradise of the Pacific regarding the death of Lewers’ widow in Kansas City, MO mentions that Lewers recalled that his ice cost him ten cents per pound. “The First Ice Importer,” Paradise of the Pacific (November 1909): 23.

78. Cabinet Council Records, vol. 5, 13 April 1861, 217. Hawai‘i State Archives.

79. “Ice,” Saturday Press, April 22, 1882.

80. “Electric Light,” Daily Bulletin, July 22, 1886, 3.

81. The alternate spelling of Kalākaua here reflects the punctuation used in the quoted text. O’Meara, “Schemes,” 265.