Colonial epidemic disease in Hawaii

Captain Cook made two voyages to the Hawaiian islands with his ships and crew. On these two voyages, the crew members brought two venereal diseases.[1] While historians do not know for sure what exactly these ailments were, they are assumed to be gonorrhea and syphilis.[1] Captain Cook was aware that the men on his ship were most likely afflicted with these diseases, and despite the fact that epidemiology was not an understood science at this point, Captain Cook knew enough to understand the dangers of bringing his crew ashore.[1] Because of this, Cook decided to keep his men on the boat, and keep all Native women away from the boat so as not to transmit these diseases into the native population.[3][1][8] Despite his efforts, he was unsuccessful. There were instances of Cook's crew having sexual relations with the Native Hawaiian women,[1] transmitting these venereal diseases to them and introducing the illnesses into the population as a whole.

Cook and his crew made their first voyage to Hawaii on January 18, 1778, on the coast of Kauai. On this trip, their contact was contained to this island (mostly the leeward coast) and Niihau.[1] During their time docked near the islands, stormy seas pushed the men onto the shore of Niihau, where they were able to interact with the Native population.[1] Primary accounts from crew members such as the on-board surgeon suggest that many of the shipmates had sexual relationships with the Native women.[1] This was enough to introduce disease, even though they stayed only a few weeks, leaving on the 2nd of February.[1]

After exploring more of the North Pacific seas, Captain Cook returned his crew to the Hawaiian Islands, docking on November 26, 1778.[1] This time they stopped in Maui and were greeted by the Native people complaining of venereal diseases that they were not able to cure.[1] While this was most likely gonorrhea, syphilis is also thought to have arrived on Maui by this point due to inter-island travel.[1] There were also multiple accounts from Cook's shipmates that spoke of accusations by the Native Hawaiians that claim Cook's men brought these diseases.[1] This marked the beginning of a poor relationship between the Hawaiians and Captain Cook, who was eventually killed by Native Hawaiians in 1779.[8]

While these diseases were not tied to large death rates (caused only a small number of deaths), they caused infertility/sterility, and early childhood death. Gonorrhea made a great number of Hawaiians infertile which greatly limited the growth of future populations.[1] Syphilis, on the other hand, was much more debilitating, causing slow and painful deterioration.[1] While this did not lead to infertility as much, it caused higher rates of miscarriages and lower rates of childhood survival which similarly hindered the creation of a new generation[1] Infertility became a huge issue among Native Hawaiians as it was widespread and impactful.[1] Additionally, it is estimated that in the first two years after Cook's arrival on the islands, 1 in 17 Natives died, resulting in a Hawaiian population decline of nearly 50% within the first 20 years.[3]

Measles epidemics have been present in the Pacific islands for many years, and Hawaii is no exception.[11] Before it even hit the islands though, it was deadly to Hawaii's traveling King and Queen. In 1824, King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamāmalu traveled to England in hopes to meet with the King.[11] While there, they quickly contracted measles, and died abroad from complications with the disease.[9][11] Measles was later brought to Hawaii in 1848 with Christian missionaries and other Western crews, and quickly spread through the islands.[9] By the end of the epidemic, it is estimated that between 10% and 33% of the Hawaiian population had died.[11] Since the outbreak of 1848, there have been six other major outbreaks of measles.[11]

The Kalaupapa Leper Settlement

The advent of leprosy (also known as Hansen's Disease) in the Hawaiian Islands brought separation and immense sadness to the Hawaiian people. The disease was brought to the islands in the mid-1800s and was widespread by the 1860s.[12] Leprosy is not always a death sentence, but its degenerative nature, which tends to leave patients deformed, contributes to its status as a stigmatized disease.[12][13] Hawaiians' little disease immunity again played a factor in the leprosy epidemic — leprosy is a disease that many are innately immune to and thus has a slow spread rate, however since most Hawaiians did not have this immunity, it spread more quickly.[13] This allowed colonial onlookers and Western health advisors to blame the spread on Hawaiian culture and way of life, calling them dirty, and heathens, tying it to the ancient falsehood that there is a connection between leprosy and morality.[5]

Beginning at around 1865, residents of Hawaii that were thought to be infected with Hansen's Disease were labeled "lepers" and were forcefully removed to a very remote section of Molokai called Kalaupapa.[12] This "leper colony" was demanded by Western advisors, who stated that this was the only solution.[5] Records have later shown that a number of families living with infected people did not contract the disease themselves (less than 5%).[5]

Kalaupapa Village

People of all ages were sent away to this "leper colony," and were not given the chance to say goodbye to their families nor allowed to return home.[13] As many of these patients were children, they lost track of their families as they grew up, and made new lives within this small community (more than 1000 couples met and got married there).[12][13] About two to three shipments of "lepers" were sent to Kalaupapa per year, adding up to more than 8,000 people between the years of 1866 and 1969, when the quarantine restriction ended (over 100 years).[14] Of these 8,000 people, 97% were Native Hawaiians.[14] As this time period coincided with the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, many scholars note that sending away Native Hawaiians made it easier for Western colonizers to slowly disempower the nation.[14][5]