Anyone familiar with Kaupo knows of Kaupo Store, a fixture in the community for a century starting in the 1920s, operating as a general store selling food, goods and other items.
But what's less familiar is that Kaupo Store was just the last in a long line of general stores in the village. Americans opened the first stores in Kaupo in the mid-1800s, followed by Hawaiians and then Chinese.
Americans set up shop
In 1847, an American from New York, Albert Coe, arrived in Kaupo. Over the following years, he made the village his home, marrying a Hawaiian woman named Maliikapu. He became a naturalized citizen of the kingdom in 1851.
Coe also set up a store, likely located on a 128-acre parcel at Pukaauhuhu that he purchased in 1857. Tragically, disaster struck in February 1860. The store burned down, killing Coe's mother-in-law. Coe was in Lahaina at the time of the fire.
Coe's retail license expired in August of that year, and it appears that he did not renew the license, although he remained in Kaupo until his death in 1868. He turned his attention to agriculture, purchasing 482 acres of land in the uplands near the current Kaupo Ranch headquarters and obtaining a plantation license.
Around 1860, Thomas Wilmington, another American, opened a store in Kaupo, perhaps taking advantage of the void left when Coe's store burned down. Like Coe, Wilmington was from New York, had become a naturalized Hawaiian citizen, and had married a local Hawaiian woman. In addition to shopkeeping, Wilmington was secretary of Kaupo's Cotton Farmers Association.
Wilmington's store was located directly across the road from St. Joseph Church. In 1865, Wilmington put the store and associated property up for sale with the following ad:
"Country Store for Sale. The subscriber offers for sale a redwood house 22×12, with stone cistern containing 100 barrels, (all new) together with large grass store house, and 24 acres of land in Kaupo, Maui. The premises have been occupied as a store for the last five years. The whole will be sold for $400. A good chance for a man with a few hundred dollars to make a good living, the whole amount can be cleared the first six months. Satisfactory reasons given for selling. Apply for three months to T. C. Wilmington, Kaupo, Maui. Kaupo, Maui. Jan. 3, 1865."
In the ad, Wilmington claimed that the $400 price "can be cleared the first six months", which implies that Wilmington made about $70 per month from the store (about $1,300 in today's dollars). In 1866, a year after the ad, Wilmington had moved to nearby Hana and was operating a store there.
Hawaiians storekeepers
Following the Americans, at least five Hawaiians held retail licenses in Kaupo for two decades starting in the late 1860s. Their names are listed below along with the approximate years of operation.
- Kawaiea (1868-1870)
- Honolulu (1869-1878)
- John W. Kawaakoa (1870-1877)
- D. W. Kamanuwai (1880-1883)
- Joshua Ahulii (1881-1884)
Honolulu, the only woman on the list, was the widow of Albert Coe, having married Coe after the death of his first wife, Maliikapu.
Joshua Ahulii's obituary in 1907 notes that he built multiple shops as well. One of his buildings still stands: the older, eastern wing of the main residence at Kaupo Ranch.
Apart from the individual shopkeepers, Hawaiians also banded together to form cooperative stores, a practice much debated in the press.
On December 9, 1865, Ka Nupepa Kuokoa presented a letter from a Kaupo resident criticizing co-ops. The letter read in part:
Eia ka mea hou ma Maui nei, o ka hui Halekuai ma na apana a pau o keia mokupuni. Hookahi no mea i lohe nui ia, a i kamailio nui ia ai hoi iwaena o na kanaka o keia wa, oia hoi o ka hui o na kanaka a pau ma keia apana, a kukulu i halekuai.
Ua pau ka manao ana o na kanaka i ka mahiai, a me na hana o kela ano keia ano. He luhi ka mahiai wahi a lakou, aole e waiwai koke ana ke kanaka ma ka hana lima, aia no he halekuai, alaila waiwai koke a kuonoono.
[Here is the news from Maui: a cooperative store for every district of the island. Only one thing is being heard and discussed among the people at this time, being the banding together of all people in this district to build a store.
People no longer want to farm or work in this or that way. Farming is hard, they say. A person will not get rich quickly doing manual labor. Rapid wealth and prosperity come by way of a store.]
The letter's author uses the pen name Puniole (undeceived), in contrast to those labeled "puni wale" (gullible).
The following week, an editorial in the same paper supported Puniole's stance. But a few months later, in March 1866, the newspaper Ke Au Okoa published a letter from influential writer Joseph Kanepuu supporting co-ops and challenging Puniole to show how successful farming could be:
Ke makemake nei au i ko Puniole lilo loa ana i ka mahiai, a nui ana na eka aina o Kaupo e pau ia ia i ka mahiai ia, a i oi aku paha mamua o Kekaha me Malaihi, o Makawao, a e oi aku ana paha na tona ko paa mamua o Kapena Ki, o Ulupalakua, a e oi aku ana paha na paona pulupulu mamua o Koa, o Punaluu, Oahu. Eia kekahi mahalo a'u, o ka lilo loa o na kanaka o Kaupo i ka palaualelo, wahi ana, a ke manaolana nei au, e makepono ana kana ai, no ka nui o ka poe nana e kuai mai, o na kanaka o Kaupo, e pii ana paha ke kumukuai o ka uala hookahi i ke dala hookahi, a o ka hua akaakai hookahi, he hapalua dala, a o ka paona hookahi o ke ko paa, he hookahi dala, a pela no paha e makepono ai na waiwai e ae a pau a Puniole i kanu ai, aole paha e hiki mai ana kana mau waiwai i Honolulu nei, i ka mokuahi Ekake (Ajax,) pau e i ka poe palaualelo o Kaupo.
[I would like to see Puniole devote himself completely to farming. He could dedicate a great deal of acreage in Kaupo to agriculture, perhaps more than Kekaha and Malaihi of Makawao, maybe more than the tons of sugar of Captain Makee of Ulupalakua, or possibly even more than the pounds of cotton of Koa of Punaluu, Oahu. Here is something else I would like to see. He says the people of Kaupo are so lazy, so I expect that his crops would be profitable since there are many people in Kaupo who would purchase it. Perhaps one sweet potato would sell for $1, one onion for $0.50, 1 pound of sugar for $1, and so on for all other crops that Puniole could grow. Maybe his goods would not need to come here to Honolulu on the Ajax steamer. It would already be taken by the idle of Kaupo.]
Alongside this rhetorical sparring, there was also tension on the ground among competing retailers. In June 1866, Ka Nupepa Kuokoa reported that a co-op was being built in Kaupo but that a haole store owner had refused to sell the nails the carpenter needed for the co-op's roofing.
Although Hawaiians dominated the retail landscape during this period, they were not the only storekeepers. There were at least two haole shops as well, run by William Dart and Thomas Wills.
Chinese take over
Although Hawaiians dominated the retail landscape of Kaupo into the mid-1880s, Chinese had taken complete control by the end of the decade. Paul Puhalahua, a prolific Kaupo journalist, noted the rise of those from the "land of flowers", as China was known, in an article in Ko Hawaii Pae Aina in October 1889.
He ku i ka hie ka nana ana i ke kulana o Kaupo nei i neia mau la e hele nei. Ekolu halekuai i keia manawa a he mau keiki wale no lakou no ka aina pua. Ua piha hauoli loa ko Kaupo poe, no ka hoomahuahua ia ana o ka halekuai.
[Kaupo is becoming quite dignified these days. There are now three stores, all of them the creation of those from the land of flowers. The people of Kaupo are filled with joy over the increase in stores.]
From a claims case in 1894, when know that one of these Chinese shopkeepers was named Amoe. On the 1910 census, three Chinese listed their occupation as store salesman: Ton Toon, Moy Soon Koon and Ah Iona.
Another Chinese, Soon Ah Look, established the Look Kee Store in the Nuu area of Kaupo. The store later moved to central Kaupo. By 1917, the Look Kee Store was run by Chee Yim (nicknamed Mana-ke or Mon Kee), who was able to manage the store despite having blown off both of his hands while fishing with dynamite.
After Chee Yim's tenure, the Soon family took back management of Look Kee Store through Samuel Soon, nephew of founder Soon Ah Look. Look Kee Store closed in the early 1920s, and Samuel Soon's brother Nicholas established Kaupo Store on the same property.
Although the line of stores would appear to end here, there is a clue that Kaupo Store did have one competitor, at least in its early days. Kaupo cowboy Francis "Tito" Marciel (1911-1984) in a 1977 interview recalled a "hui store" in his youth, a cooperative used to buy clothes and food.