ISLAND HISTORY: Kauai sugar plantation immigrants: the Manihikians, Kilipakis, Vanuatuans and Molokans

ISLAND HISTORY: Kauai sugar plantation immigrants: the Manihikians, Kilipakis, Vanuatuans and Molokans

In 1860, Captain Sinclair of the American schooner “Wamp” recruited four Polynesian men and six Polynesian women at Manihiki Atoll, Cook Islands, and shipped them to Koloa Plantation to labor in the cane fields. Their contracts were for five years, but what became of them remains unknown. Later, during the 1870s and 1880s, approximately 2,500 South Seas Islanders were recruited by Hawaii immigration authorities as laborers for various Hawaiian s…