“It is this swapping and mutation of cultures—Spanish, European, South America, American and Hawaiian—that has led to the unique cowboy culture found in Hawaii today.”

If cowboys (and cowgirls) are associated with frontier lands and the Wild, Wild West, then it should come as no surprise that cowboys still exist in the state farthest west of all, Hawaii. The name for a Hawaiian cowboy is a paniolo. There are fewer of them than there used to be, but they’re still there, riding around the large ranches of Hawaii’s islands and spawning customs and legends of their own. The culture they have spawned now has seeped into the wider culture of the Hawaiian Islands.

The Origin of Paniolos

Kamehameha III, the king of the Kingdom of Hawaii between 1824 and 1854, invited South American cowboys, known as vaqueros (I also have seen it spelled with an “i”, as in vaquieros), to Hawaii to teach Hawaiians how to improve their husbandry of cattle. (It was Kamehameha III who pleaded successfully to the parliament of the United Kingdom to have Hawaii’s independence restored after a British naval captain forced him to give his islands to the British Crown. The French tried to take over the islands a few years later, also during his reign; and, of course, the United States of America was far more successful—although with no less amount of bamboozlement and, by the way, no fewer calls for those Americans present in Hawaii at the time to respect the islands’ sovereignty—in 1898, when Hawaii became part of the United States. It gained statehood in August 1959.) The word paniolo supposedly derives from the word español, which denoted anything that came from Spain (and, presumably, anything South or Central American was lumped under this word, too).

At this time in the islands’ history, Hawaii consisted of little industry, but its sizeable plains proved excellent for raising livestock. Horses, on which paniolos ride—not surprisingly—were introduced to the islands only in the very beginning of the 19th century, and they soon became feral, if not wild. More manageable types of horses were introduced later on as the ranching business expanded. The islands’ cows also were wild, initially.

So, how did vast ranches come to be established on Hawaii? If anyone can name one ranch on the Hawaiian Islands, probably it is the Parker Ranch on Hawaii Island, also known as Big Island. In the Waimea region of the island, it covers 150,000 acres; that is the latest estimate, but probably once it was even bigger than that (a figure of 500,000 acres usually is bandied about; almost 25,000 acres have been leased at various times starting in the 1940s to the U.S. Army, which used the land to train troops preparing for battle). To put its size into perspective, 150,000 acres is equivalent to approximately 240 square miles, or half the size of London, suburbs and all.

The legend goes that John Palmer Parker, who founded the ranch, absconded from a ship, became friends with Kamehameha III and helped him conquer Hawaii—which was then a disparate collection of individually ruled islands or island groups—and become Hawaii’s absolute monarch. There were some other adventures elsewhere, but after some years he came back to Hawaii, was given two acres, married Kamehameha III’s granddaughter, Kipikane, herded thousands of feral cows, expanded his lands and practically reigned over his own “kingdom.” When the ranch grew so large that additional manpower was needed, the call went out for trained cowboys. Perhaps gauchos came from Argentina, huasos from Chile, vaqueros from Colombia, but the word paniolo stuck as the word to label these new immigrants.

Modern Paniolo Culture

Despite their relative small size, the Hawaiian Islands has plenty of untrammeled, reasonably inaccessible land. Folds of lush mountainside cover its volcanic terrain, and getting from the top of one hillside to another often takes a lot of time. The best way to get around is on horseback, although a modern paniolo necessity is a rugged 4WD truck, many of which can be seen on Big Island, especially in the Waimea area.

Diane Quitiquit, vice president of Parker Ranch, says that paniolo culture is very much alive in Hawaii. In fact, Hawaii’s governor made 2008 the Year of the Paniolo, with many events throughout the year honoring the paniolos’ contributions. “Parker Ranch’s principal participation in the Year of the Paniolo is in honoring paniolos of Japanese descent,” Quitiquit says. “The Paniolo Hall of Fame, which despite being on Parker Ranch land run by the Hawaii Cattleman’s Association, will this year induct Parker Ranch’s very own vice president of livestock, Michael C. ‘Corky’ Bryan.” Quitiquit explains that many Japanese were brought to Hawaii to work on sugar plantations and then became cowboys. It is this swapping and mutation of cultures—Spanish, European, South America, American and Hawaiian—that has led to the unique cowboy culture found in Hawaii today.

Another 2008 event that Quitiquit points out is the Great Waiomina Centennial Celebration, organized by the Paniolo Preservation Society (www.paniolopreservation.com). “A century ago this year,” she explains, “a Hawaiian paniolo called Ikua Purdy went to Cheyenne, Wyo., and won a cowboy contest. Purdy was a sensation. The people there had never met a Hawaiian, nor had they realized that they were cowboys, too.” To celebrate this history, paniolos will travel to Wyoming in late July for the Cheyenne Frontiers Days festival, while cowboys from Wyoming will travel to Big Island for the centennial celebrations in August. Notably, paniolos were skilled in ways that mainland cowboys had no experience of, such as in lassoing and leading out cattle to transportation ships anchored out to sea (see the accompanying slide show to this story to see a fascinating photo of this).
In addition to helping out with such events as these, Parker Ranch goes to local schools to teach children about their unique Hawaiian culture. It also organizes two rodeos of its own, one on July 4 competing against other Big Island ranches and a second on Labor Day, for charity, in which anyone can compete. Maybe you? It also looks after 35,000 head of cattle and sends ships containing 3,000 cattle at a time across to the mainland United States.

“Paniolo culture can be seen in the way most Hawaiians on Big Island live,” Quitiquit further explains. “Everyone drives a large trucks, perhaps with feed, equipment or cattle secured on the back, and gets together in extended family groups to eat such dishes as beef stew.” Clothing, flower arrangements and musical instruments and music all have paniolo culture stamped on them, too, she adds.

Keawe’ehu Vredenburg, the Big Island-based director of the Paniolo Preservation Society and program manager of the Waiomina Centennial Celebration, comments that the Hawaiian “ranches used the Hawaiian language as the lingua franca, which preserved parts of the Hawaiian language that never was known by urban (non-paniolo) speakers and is not known today at the classroom level. There are words, phrases and semantics that represent mid-19th century speech and thinking that elude many of today’s Hawaiian speakers. There are songs, chants and dances that use paniolo Hawaiian forms of speech and meaning.”

For further reading on the subject, Vredenburg suggests the book Loyal to the Land: The Legendary Parker Ranch (two volumes: the first, covering the years 750 to 1950; the second, the years 1950 to 1970) by Dr. Billy Bergen. These comprehensive books contain approximately 200 photographs each and explain every aspect of the ranch’s history, as well as that of the paniolos.

The Impact of Hawaiian Ranching

Ranching has changed the landscape on Big Island and other Hawaiian islands. Some of the photos in the Loyal to the Land book, according to Vredenburg, show “many plants, herbs, grasses, that are [now] missing. We can surmise why—climate change, cattle [grazing], [wild] pigs and introduced plants that squeezed the indigenous ones out. Gorse was imported a century ago, probably by a lonesome Scot. When Parker Ranch kept sheep, they kept the gorse down by nibbling the young plants. Now the sheep are gone, the gorse has rendered hundreds of acres unusable.”

Hawaiian fauna also has suffered. There are colorful birds to be seen on the islands, most evident Red-crested cardinals and Common mynahs, which were brought in to control an outbreak of army ants, but the native species—the ones with Hawaiian names—are rare and getting rarer. Some are extinct. The ranches are not the reason for this, although anything that changes the landscape on such a wide scale certainly could have damaging effects on the fauna and flora. More pertinent is the introduction of predators, such as rats, cats and—the biggest evil of all—mongooses, which were brought in to the islands’ sugar-cane plantations (now gone) to keep rat numbers down. Only Kauai has no mongoose, and the customs guards there are daily vigilant that this does not change. It is the mongoose—that on Oahu are not difficult to see—that has had the most detrimental effect on native avian species. Avian malaria also does not help. The most threatened group of birds on Hawaii are its Hawaiian honeycreepers, a genus of birds that have developed on these isolated islands in much the same ways as Charles Darwin’s finches on the Galapagos Islands. Biologists have calculated that 13 species of Hawaiian honeycreepers (found nowhere else) have become extinct in the last 150 years. Another species, the Po’o-uli (they all have cool names like this), which was discovered only in the 1970s, might be the next victim, if it is not already.

Hawaiian species such as the Akioloa, Greater Amakihi, Bishop’s O’o, Black mamo, Greater koa-finch, Hawaiian mamo, Kakawahie, Kona grosbeak, Lanai hookbill, Lesser koa-finch, Nukupu’u and Ula-ai-hawane are all extinct or thought to be. Now, these birds can be seen only in drawings, which still reveal the beauty that has been lost.
If some of these birds remain in isolated pockets of Hawaii, the Alakai Swamp in the middle of Kauai might be one place to look. It is beautiful there, but hiking is not for the timid. It is wet, very wet, with its 5,150-foot-high Mount Wai’ale’ale often winning the title of World’s Wettest Spot.

To reach the swamp, you need to drive along the south of Kauai and up the spectacular Waimea Canyon (the word, waimea, which means “red water” in Hawaiian, is a place both on Kauai and Big Island, and probably on other Hawaiian islands) all the way to its end, which looks down on the Napali coastline. At the final lookout, the tarmac road ends, replaced by a track that continues for 25 miles or more into terrain that is as primeval as can be. No one knows for definite what is in there. Mists fall with speedy regularity. There are sizeable ranches on Kauai—most notably, the Princeville Ranch, which dates back to 1831 and puts on cattle drives that visitors can take part in—so perhaps one of its paniolo can help you organize a trip into it.

Tourism Information:
Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau: www.gohawaii.com.
Paniolo Preservation Society: www.paniolopreservation.com.
Parker Ranch: www.parkerranch.com.