Hawaiians in the Old West?

How do you say Aloha with a six shooter?

Believe it or not, the Old West had a Hawaiian influence. If you listened to the recent The Wild West Extravaganza episode on Claude Dallas, you’ll probably remember me mentioning the Owyhee Desert. But did you know it was named after Hawaiin scouts attached to a company of fur traders?

The Owyhee Desert

Three such scouts, the names of whom I could not determine, were attached to Donald Mackenie’s Snake Expedition during the winter of 1819-1820. The Scottish-Canadian Mackenzie sent the trio south to explore what’s now known as the Owyhee River.

The Hawaiian scouts never returned, and their fate remains a mystery—however, their legacy lives on in the name of the Owyhee River and the Owyhee Desert.

Of course, Owyhee is the phonetic spelling of Hawaii. Later, American Missionaries created an alphabet for the Hawaiian language, and it was at that point that Owyhee became Hawaii.

There were (and still are) even Hawaiian cowboys. These cowboys would eventually find their way to the American Frontier.

Hawaiian Cowboys, photo courtesy of David Lambert

In the 1830s, Hawaii’s King Kamehameha III invited three vaqueros from California to teach the locals how to handle the over 25,000 wild cattle roaming the islands. These cowboys, known locally as the Paniolo, soon became expert ranch hands.

Decades later, one of them— Ikua Purdy—took home the grand prize at Wyoming’s Cheyenne Frontier Days. That’s Ikua pictured above. Shout out to David Lambert (@davidlambertart) for providing the photo.

Updates & Announcements

If you’re out of the loop, The Wild West Extravaganza is currently running a six-part series on the Lewis & Clark Expedition. The most recent episode, York & Fort Clatsop, went live just a few days ago. This week (4/10/24), we’ll discuss Captain Lewis’ encounter with the Blackfeet, and next week (4/17/24), we’ll finish everything off with the return trip back home and examine the fate of several of the expedition’s members. Here’s part ONE of the series if you want to catch up!

Following this series, we’ll dedicate an entire episode to the adventures of John Colter, who is considered by many to have been the first Mountain Man.

P.S. - Did you know that The Wild West Extravaganza is on YouTube? Yep! And I’d greatly appreciate it if you subscribed and hit that notification bell! With your help, I really think I’ll be able to hit 100k subscribers this year!