Question:
I was browsing a 1965 book on the plants of Hawai’i and found an old magazine clipping inside about the vanishing of sandalwood from the islands. It described native Hawaiians cutting sandalwood trees to fill pits in the earth dug deep as the hold of a ship. Is it true that sandalwood has disappeared from Hawai’i?
Answer: When the first people arrived in Hawai’i by canoe, Sandalwood
(Santalum freycinetianum and other species, or
‘iliahi, the Hawaiian name for the tree) grew abundantly. They found medicinal and other practical uses for the tree, including using the pulverized wood to scent bark cloth used for clothing and bedding.
With the late 18th century arrival of explorers like American sea captain John Kendrick and Captain James Cook of England came the exploitation of the islands’ natural resources. The intensification of trade in sandalwood altered the Hawaiian way of life. Recognizing that there was value in this trade, King Kamehameha I was unwittingly complicit in altering
“the production-for-use economy into a production-for-profit economy.” He sent his subordinates to order common people to collect sandalwood in the hills and, as the article you found describes, they cut trees in a volume large enough to fill a ship. The measuring pits even had a local name: lua na moku ‘iliahi . As a consequence of years of unpaid hard labor, people began to rip out young trees in the hopes that their children might escape enslavement to the sandalwood trade. By 1840, trade dwindled.
From an eyewitness account included in
Journal of Voyages and Travels by the Rev. Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet, Esq. edited by James Montgomery (London: F. Westley & A.H. Davis, 1881), volume 1, page 415:
“On one occasion we saw nearly two thousand persons, laden with fagots of sandalwood, coming down from the mountains to deposit their burthens in the royal store houses, and then depart to their homes–wearied with their unpaid labors, yet unmurmuring in their bondage. In fact, the condition of the common people is that of slaves; they hold nothing which may not be taken from them by the strong hand of arbitrary power, whether exercised by the sovereign or a petty chief.” -April 18, 1822
There have been attempts over the decades to restore the population of sandalwood, but most efforts failed until the 1990s, when
Mark Hanson collected seeds of native sandalwood and other native tree species, and began the Hawaiian Reforestation Program. His efforts are ongoing. The
trees remain vulnerable (due to land-clearing to raise cattle, and harvesting for use in essential oils and incense), and are listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List.
