When Westerners made contact with Hawaii in the 1770s, Kaupo was hitting its stride. In the early 1700s, Kekaulike, the ruler of Maui, moved his royal court from Wailuku to Kaupo. Kaupo is just across a channel from Hawaii Island, which was Maui’s nemesis at the time. This strife continued on through Maui’s subsequent rulers Kamehamehanui and Kahekili, and Kaupo was a major battleground. While population estimates are hard to come by for the pre-contact period, it is clear that based on its position as a royal court and its agricultural production that Kaupo was well inhabited.
As archaeologist Alex Baer writes:
“By the arrival of Captain James Cook in 1778, paramount rulers had come to control entire islands, installing their own supporters as the heads of various districts. At this time, Kaupo served as one of the main administrative centres on the island, and was a highly productive agricultural region of political and economic significance.”
Ceremonial Architecture and the Spatial Proscription of Community: Location Versus Form and Function in Kaupo, Maui, Hawaiian Islands, published in the Journal of the Polynesian Society (2016)
Early Census Figures
The first concrete population numbers for Kaupo came in the 1830s. In 1831-1832, Western missionaries conducted a census of the Hawaiian islands. They determined that 3,220 people were living in Kaupo at that time. Undoubtedly, this was less than the pre-contact population.
Two of the main factors that likely reduced the population by the 1830s were (1) the Western illnesses such as smallpox that decimated the population across the islands and (2) a shift away from rural areas such as Kaupo to urban areas such as Wailuku and Honolulu for economic opportunities. These factors continued to diminish the population after the 1830s. The 19th-century historian Samuel Kamakau recalled disease outbreaks in 1848 and 1853. There were outbreaks specifically affecting Kaupo in 1865 and 1877.
As a result of this, when the Thirteenth Census of the United States was conducted in 1910, the population of Kaupo was 350, a tenth of what it was in the 1830s census. This pattern continued in the later decennial census counts. In 1920, there were 259 people. By 1930, it had dropped to 185. The lure of economic opportunities beyond Kaupo only became stronger. In 1937, the first road to Kaupo was completed. Then came World War II. Today, Kaupo’s population is clearly lower than even the 1930 census count.
Pre-Contact Estimates
Returning to the pre-contact population, while there is no way to determine with certainty what the population was for Kaupo at its peak in the 1700s, there are some methods that can hint at the answer.
Extrapolating from the 1830s Census
The first method is to use percentages from the 1831-1832 census to extrapolate the peak population. As noted above, there were 3,220 people living in Kaupo in 1831-1832. That same census counted 130,313 people in all of Hawaii. Thus, approximately 2.5% of the Hawaiian population was living in Kaupo. Population estimates for Hawaii before Western contact vary, but as archaeologist Alex Baer writes in his doctoral thesis, “At the time of European contact in 1778-79, Hawai‘i’s population numbered between 400,000-600,000”. If we take the midpoint of this range, 500,000, and assume that the percentage of Hawaiians living in Kaupo at that time was the same as in the 1830s, then this would lead to a population of roughly 12,500 in Kaupo in the 1770s. Diseases likely affected areas across Hawaii roughly evenly. However the pull of economic opportunities in urban areas was likely a force by 1831, which would have skewed the percentage of the Hawaiian population living in Kaupo lower compared with the 1700s. In other words, more than 2.5% of the Hawaiian population may have been living in Kaupo in the 1770s, and 12,500 should be considered on the low side using this method.
Counting House Sites
A second method of estimating the population of Kaupo prior to Western contact is to use the remains of house sites. Alex Baer used this method in his doctoral thesis:
“Using a house count methodology advocated by Kirch (2007) may also provide some utility, though the nature of residential sites in Hawaiʻi may result in some confusion. I previously noted that ~3.5 km2 of the district were intensively surveyed, and in those areas we found a total of 380 discrete residential structures (a very small number represent multiple features, but only grouped as a single site if spaced less than 2 m apart). If we expand this number out across the ~20 km2 of land assumed to have been populated and under cultivation we would have a total of 2,171 residential features. Various figures from throughout the Pacific have noted an average household population of 5-8 people, but using Cook’s assumption of 6 people to each residence, we would have a total population for Kaupō of 13,026.”
On the Cloak of Kings: Agriculture, Power, and Community in Kaupō, Maui, unpublished (2015)
Analyzing Sweet Potato Fields
Finally, a third and novel method of estimating the population is based on an analysis of Kaupo's agricultural productivity, mainly sweet potato, before Westerners arrived. In 2009, archaeologists Pat Kirch, John Holson and Alex Baer published an article on this subject. By surveying the field remains, they concluded the following:
“If on average the population of Kaupo was to consume 3 kcal of (sweet potato) tubers per day (1095 kcal/yr), a population of between 14,611 and 17,534 persons might, in theory, have been supported. Of course, such calculations make no allowance for spoilage, for tubers fed to domestic animals such as pigs and dogs, or for fluctuations in harvest due to drought or other environmental perturbations, and are almost certainly higher than those that would have been achieved on a continuous basis. Such estimates, however, do suggest that a doubling of the 1831 census figure is not unreasonable, and indeed, a maximum population of up to 8,000-10,000 persons for Kaupo strikes us as not unreasonable.”
Intensive Dryland Agriculture in Kaupo, Maui, Hawaiian Islands, published in Asian Perspectives, Vol. 48 (2009)
Putting the Numbers Together
Using these three methods, then, we arrive at three population estimates for the pre-contact population of Kaupo:
| Population | Methodology |
| 12,500 | population percentage |
| 13,026 | house count |
| 16,073 | agricultural production (midpoint of range) |
The average of these numbers is 13,866.
As a final, sobering note, the graph below depicts the population decline in Kaupo from the 1700s through the 1900s.
1 thought on “The population of Kaupo over time”