The Mystery of the Hawaiian Rough Riders
Meet the hog-tying, net-throwing, wave-surfing, calf-roping Native Hawaiian cowboys who are unlike any other cowboys on earth
It all started with a gift. In 1793, the maritime explorer Captain George Vancouver unloaded a few cattle on King Kamehameha, the Native monarch of Hawaii at the time. They were ruddy brown Herefords, but it was the ultimate white elephant present for a people accustomed to eating fish and tubers. The king promptly placed a kapu—a protective edict—on the beasts. Safeguarded by this special status, they were free to graze on the Big Island’s rolling grasslands unmolested, even as they multiplied and marauded their way through gardens, occasionally charging unsuspecting islanders.
In 1832, the cattle population hit the thousands, the kapu was lifted, and Kamehameha’s grandson (also a king) inherited a unique problem: no one on the island knew anything about wrangling cattle. So he recruited three Mexican vaqueros from California to come show some of his fellow Native Hawaiians how to build saddles, braid leather, throw loops, and brand calves. For those of you keeping track, this is still about four years before Texas became a state. Fittingly, the Native Hawaiians who went the cowboy way became known as paniolos—a Hawaiianized pronunciation of español. (The Hawaiian language doesn’t do s sounds.)
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