Indigenous Hawaiians arrived in California well before the gold rush on European and American sailing vessels. In fact, they were essential laborers on these ships—a role that went back to the early 1800s. Diseases introduced by foreigners had decimated the native Hawaiian population, beginning with the earliest “discovery” voyage of Captain James Cook in 1778. The Hawaiian population continued to decline owing to shipboard workers’ death rate on trans-Pacific voyages. For this reason, some elite Hawaiians feared that the California gold rush would only increase the exodus of Hawaiian commoners from the islands. In 1850, King Kamehameha III authored this “Act to Prohibit Natives from Leaving the Islands.” It was largely unenforceable, given the number of foreign ships that arrived and departed from the Hawaiian Islands. But it nonetheless shows a deep concern for the out-migration of Hawaiians during this period of severe native population decline.

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