Hawaii’s Cowboys Revive That Aloha Spirit

This wind-swept mountain town where air is conditioned by wood stoves and electric heaters is 15 minutes from the palm tree-lined beaches most tourists associate with Hawaii.

The quick ascent from the northwestern coast of the island of Hawaii brings a visitor to a world of mist-shrouded emerald hills and vast plains dotted with cattle.

Waimea is the heart of Hawaii’s paniolo--or cowboy--country, complete with roundups, rodeos and lonesome trails.

The Western ambience is not a made-up tourism marketing strategy but an outgrowth of a rich ranching tradition dating back to the early days of the Hawaiian monarchy. Local residents say Hawaii’s paniolos predated the cowboys of the American West by more than two decades.

But the cowboy culture is hurting. A weak island economy and a two-year drought have pushed many working horsemen into new fields--or unemployment.

“You always start worrying when you start hoping for a hurricane, but at this point in time we would like anything,” said Robert Hind, livestock manager for Parker Ranch, the state’s largest.

The ranch is shipping young cattle to Mainland feedlots, breeding fewer new animals and cutting its cowboy staff as it faces a multimillion-dollar tax bill on top of the drought.

The challenges have led Waimea residents and state leaders to redouble efforts to preserve the paniolo tradition.

“So much of it is so different than what you’ll find anywhere else: the saddles and the hats and the manner in which they ride,” said Waimea store owner Patti Cook, a member of the Paniolo Preservation Society. “This is such a precious thing.”

The tradition was born in the early 1790s, when British Capt. George Vancouver delivered five cows from California to the island as a gift to Kamehameha I, Hawaii’s first monarch.

As more cattle arrived, the king placed a kapu, or taboo, on the beasts, making it an offense punishable by death to kill them. Within a few years, thousands of cattle were running wild on the foothills of the Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa volcanoes.

In 1832, Kamehameha III recruited Mexican vaqueros from California to teach Hawaiians how to ride horses and rope wild cattle. While “vaquero” gave rise to “buckaroo” in the Wild West, in Hawaii the Mexican cowboys were called paniolos, the Hawaiian word for Espan~ol.

Sandalwood had been the isles’ most important commodity for barter with trade ships until then. But as forests were depleted and cattle multiplied, beef became a new mainstay of the island economy.

In 1847, John Palmer Parker, a former sailor from Massachusetts who married into Hawaiian royalty, started a ranch on two acres sold to him by Kamehameha III for a token payment of $10.

Today, Parker Ranch encompasses 225,000 acres with about 50,000 head of cattle. It has been run by a trust benefiting local schools and medical facilities since the 1992 death of Richard Smart, a direct descendant of Parker.

Smart’s death saddled the ranch with an $18-million estate tax bill that remains unpaid.

Waimea, a town of about 7,000 at the base of the 13,795-foot-high Mauna Kea, grew up with the ranch and is encompassed by it. Hundreds of smaller cattle operations sprinkle the islands, making beef a $14.3-million industry in Hawaii in 1997.

But Parker Ranch has produced the bulk of Hawaii’s famous cowboys.

With a flower lei resting on his Stetson, 74-year-old Jiro Yamaguchi still competes in roping competitions on his favorite palomino, Pilimau.

Yamaguchi recalled long days and “a lot of action” in the 52 years he rode the rugged--and sometimes snow-covered--slopes of Mauna Kea before retiring in 1990.

“Leave home, dark. Come home, dark,” he said. “We used to ride a horse from home to the working place. Not like today. You have trucks and trailers to pull the horses.”

The work was even harder in his father’s day, when cowboys had to swim cattle out to be hoisted onto boats for transport to Oahu, sometimes with sharks sharing the waters. That was before a pier was built at Kawaihae, below Waimea.

Yamaguchi’s father, Matsuichi, was killed in the 1930s when his horse rolled over during a sheep drive.

Jiro Yamaguchi, 9 at the time, said the tragedy never made him hesitant about becoming a cowboy or letting his son, Mark, be one. Mark Yamaguchi now is a foreman for Parker Ranch.

The paniolo work force included Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Filipino and Caucasian men, and some women. But the language of the range remained Hawaiian.

“Long after most other parts of the community had stopped speaking Hawaiian, the paniolo were keeping it alive,” Cook said. “To me, that is an extremely important contribution to all of Hawaiian culture.”

Hawaiian music also was heavily influenced by the songs and storytelling of the cowboys, she said.

Paniolo Pride Surging

At a time when ranching faces an uncertain future in Hawaii, paniolo pride is on the resurgence.

Membership in the Hawaii High School Rodeo Assn. has grown from 25 to 100 in the last 12 years, and 150 students belong to a children’s rodeo association.

This past year, Gov. Ben Cayetano proclaimed the Year of the Paniolo, a CD of paniolo songs was released and a documentary on paniolos was shown in theaters.

A campaign also is underway to have Hawaii’s most legendary paniolo, Ikua Purdy, inducted into the National Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Purdy stunned the American West by winning the 1908 world roping championship in Cheyenne, Wyo., roping a steer in a record 56 seconds.

A working paniolo who lived from 1873 to 1945 in Waimea and Ulupalakua, Maui, Purdy is immortalized in Hawaiian song and hula. But he has missed induction because few Hawaii representatives were among the historical society’s members.

A decision is expected in October.

Induction would give Hawaii’s cowboys national recognition that is long overdue, said Lynda Haller of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City. The center is trying to bridge that knowledge gap by mentioning Parker Ranch in a display--surprising most visitors, she said.

“I don’t think anybody ever thought of Hawaii as having cowboys because they think of Hawaii as sugar and pineapples and a wonderful place to go on a vacation,” Haller said. “I don’t think it ever occurred to them that there are ranches.”