Kirstin Downey: An Unlikely Hero Emerges In New ‘Chief Of War’ Series

“Chief of War,” a visually stunning new series created by heart-throb actor Jason Momoa, with its first two episodes filmed almost entirely in the Hawaiian language, is a fascinating new prism for looking into Hawaiʻi’s past.

The series, with Momoa as its leading man, takes known historical events and tweaks them in provocative and challenging ways to leave the viewer with new perspectives and questions about the era.

When the project was first in discussion some years ago, many people here assumed a star like Momoa would insist on being cast as Kamehameha, the great conqueror of the islands, who is honored in some circles with almost cult-like reverence.

Kamehameha was unquestionably a huge figure in Hawaiian history, and his unification of the islands in 1795 brought peace after decades of vicious civil wars that tore families apart, set siblings against each other, provoked terror and drove the surviving population into starvation.

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But the series, airing now on Apple TV+, instead chose to focus on a historical figure who was equally remarkable in his time but has slipped into relative obscurity. This was Kaʻiana ʻAhuʻula, an aliʻi living on Kauaʻi, closely related to the ruling families on Maui, Oʻahu and Hawaiʻi island, who was himself an eyewitness and participant in many of the formative events that occurred from 1779 to 1795, a 16-year period when new weaponry was introduced and everything in Hawaiʻi was radically transformed.

A good overview of how the series was made can be found in Ka Wai Ola, the newsletter of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, which recounts the interesting and unusual collaboration between Momoa and Thomas Pa’a Sibbett, who was working at Kuoloa Ranch when he began conceiving the idea. It also describes the important roles played by dozens of cultural historians in adding the details that make the series come alive.

Kaʻiana can be said to be the first Hawaiian superstar, comparable to Duke Kahanamoku, as the first world traveler from a people already known for fearlessly traveling long distances in their voyaging canoes. Sailing away as an honored guest and favored companion to a series of British ship captains, he spent months in Asia and also traveled to the Pacific Northwest. He created a sensation wherever he went, attracting friendship and admiration on two continents, wearing his feathered cape and helmet, and carrying his spear in his hand.

‘The Great Stranger’

In the series, which premiered Aug. 1, Kaʻiana is portrayed as a pacifist, a skilled warrior forced to flee from place to place because of his aversion to the murderous tactics used by men determined to rule, namely, in this case, Kahekili, the Maui chief who conquered Oʻahu. It’s not clear that Kaʻiana’s pacifism is entirely accurate, since in his career, according to the historic record, he frequently fought in the middle of the fray and was seen as lobbying hard to secure his own advantages. But the interpretation in the series is also plausible.

Like the actor who plays him, Kaʻiana possessed startlingly good looks.

He was described by British merchant George Mortimer as having an “extraordinary size and majestic appearance, he being nearly six feet four inches and remarkably well made.” Mortimer noted that the Chinese called him “the Great Stranger.”

Jason Momoa as Kaʻiana ʻAhuʻula in “Chief of War.” (Nicola Dove/Apple TV+)

He was first mentioned and memorialized in books, journals and articles by a bevy of European explorers, not just Mortimer, but also captains Nathaniel Portlock, George Dixon, John Meares, William Douglas and George Vancouver and botanist Archibald Menzies. In Meares’s book about his voyages, published in 1790, Meares featured a reproduction of a painted portrait of Kaʻiana and mentions him 103 times in the text, identifying him early in the book as a “chief of illustrious birth” with a “most cultured understanding.”

The book was purchased by subscription by most of the British aristocracy, including the Prince of Wales.

Kaʻiana sailed away, at his own choice, with Meares in the ship Nootka. Historical accounts suggest he had clashed with his Kauaʻi relatives for various reasons and, always adventurous, he seized the opportunity to take a long sea voyage to faraway places. The series instead shows him as a reluctant tourist, scooped up from the waves by the British after he narrowly escaped Maui warriors by jumping off a cliff into the sea. It’s a dramatic sequence that reflects a bit of artistic license by the series’ creators.

It is Kaʻiana that emerges in history as the romantic hero, regardless of who ended up with his statue standing outside Aliʻiʻiolani Hale in downtown Honolulu.

Hawaiian historians, too, including King David Kalākaua, were also captivated by Kaʻiana. In his epic “Legends and Myths of Hawaiʻi,” Kalākaua called Kaʻiana “the last of the Hawaiian Knights.”

Perhaps the most colorful account of Kaʻiana’s life appears in Stephen Desha’s “Kamehameha and His Warrior Kekūhaupiʻo.” Desha, a Hawaiian who was a close friend of Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole, who was actually related to Kaʻiana, wrote his account in a series of articles that ran in the Hawaiian newspaper Ka Hōkū o Hawaiʻi from 1920 to 1924.

Falling To Kamehameha

During his lifetime, Kaʻiana became hugely controversial because he ultimately turned against Kamehameha, and was the last of the great Hawaiian heroes killed by the Hawaiʻi chief in his headlong drive to supremacy. Some viewed Kaʻiana as a traitor to an even greater leader. Others spurned him because it is always tricky when the boss turns against a co-worker.

Others considered Kaʻiana traitorous for another reason, criticizing him for his reputed romance with Kamehameha’s headstrong, beautiful and tempestuous wife Kaʻahumanu, who would become herself the virtual ruler of the island after Kamehameha’s death. By some accounts, Kaʻiana was doomed by this affair, because it provoked Kamehameha to murderous jealousy.

That all led to Kaʻiana’s dramatic death on the rise we now know as the Pali Highway. That occurred  in Laimi in Nuʻuanu, according to historian Samuel Kamakau, who wrote the story in a series of news articles in the 1800s, masterfully translated by M. Puakea Nogelmeier and Hawaiian language students in a 2022 book, “Ke Kumu Aupuni.” The site is located a bit downhill from the Queen Emma Summer Palace. There’s a street there now that bears the name Laimi.

Kaʻiana’s story has been difficult to tell because of who finally won the last battles. History is told by the victors.

Kaina Makua as Kamehameha and Luciane Buchanan as Kaʻahumanu in “Chief of War.” (Nicola Dove/Apple TV)

For the next 100 years after the terrible battle at the Pali, Kamehameha’s heirs and allies drew their power from their association with the Hawaiʻi king, which would have made it hard for even the most capable historians, those most devoted to telling the truth, to be able to tell a story that would praise Kaʻiana or criticize Kamehameha. Only Kalākaua himself could do it, in a book published in 1888, almost a century later.

That similarly complicates telling the story of John Young, a British sailor who aided Kamehameha in his rise to power. In the series thus far, he is presented as a gentle teacher, even oddly endowed with something of a missionary presence, gathering children together to teach them to read and write.

But the truth is darker, because Young’s skill at wielding cannons and other weaponry resulted in many scores of deaths, while transforming him into one of Kamehameha’s right-hand men. His reward was marriage to a chiefess, ultimately the grandmother to Queen Emma, and he is buried amid royalty at Mauna ‘Ala in Nuʻuanu. By some accounts, he delivered the final cannon volley that killed Kaʻiana, something Young later denied.

Kaʻiana’s decision to leave the winning team, on the other hand, cost him his life and also his reputation.

Long Trek Across The Pacific

It will be interesting to see, in this series’ fictional and dramatic interpretation of his story, how and whether this tragic end will be brought to the screen.

The first two episodes are jampacked with details that only people who are immersed in Hawaiʻi history will recognize. When two sets of warriors clash on a beach on Kauaʻi, for example, only the differences in their feathered helmets quickly reveal which were from Kauaʻi and which were from Maui or Hawaiʻi island.

Some other small details are historic. The Hawaiian women of 1787 are depicted with long and lustrous flowing hair, but artists’ depictions suggest instead that the fad at the time was a short gamine cut that looks a bit more French than what we would consider today typically Polynesian.

A painted portrait of Kaʻiana ʻAhuʻula. (State archives)

Some parts of the story are simply a fresh new interpretation of known facts. Kaʻiana’s movements across the islands were viewed at the time, at least by some, as signs of treacherously shifting loyalties as he sought to advance himself. But in the series, his island-hopping is instead interpreted as reasonable efforts of an insider to get out of the most vicious lines of fire as megalomaniacs on various islands jockeyed to gain the upper hand over their foes.

The third episode goes a bit off the rails, when Kaʻiana goes overseas, and the show shifts into something like a clumsy version of the old Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. The tender-hearted woman, who is the first Hawaiian known to have traveled to Asia, is turned into a hard-bitten tavern wench angling to get into the sandalwood trade, arguing that only by engaging in rapacious capitalism can the Hawaiians compete against avaricious encroaching westerners.

A Black character introduced into the script is appropriate because many of the crews that came to the Hawaiian Islands were racially mixed, but the addition of a buffoonish racist who shows up urging voyagers to go to Hawaiʻi to kill Hawaiians and steal their stuff is over the top. Racism is and was real, but even European imperialist attitudes were more nuanced than that and this storyline detracts from the richer story available in the historic accounts.

The European writers all agree that Kaʻiana, rather than being treated as a peon as depicted in the series, was widely beloved on shipboard and in the towns where they landed on his long trek across the Pacific. He returned to Hawaiʻi loaded down with valuable items, including hatchets, carpets and weaponry, so much that it took five canoes to unload and carry to shore. The most valuable of these items eventually ended up in Kamehameha’s hands, according to Hawaiian and European accounts.

Momoa’s decision to star as Kaʻiana rather than Kamehameha was an audacious choice, but in some ways, much more fitting for him.

In retrospect, it is Kaʻiana that emerges in history as the romantic hero, regardless of who ended up with his statue standing outside Aliʻiʻiolani Hale in downtown Honolulu. And it would be wonderful if we could see more great television filmed in Hawaiian, as we seek to expand the language’s reach throughout the islands.