Happy Prince Kuhio Day I … and yes, it really is a holiday

This is the first of a two-part series honoring the only royal prince to be elected to the U.S. Congress. His life was unique and his accomplishments were significant — his story deserves to be told. The second part will appear tomorrow. The above picture is a statue of Prince Kūhiō at Kūhiō Beach in Waikiki.

Outside of the State of Hawai’i, very few people have heard of His Royal Highness, Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianiole Pi’ikoi. And that is unfortunate, because he was a remarkable man and his story is simultaneously one of tragedy and triumph. He is also the only royal prince to have been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served for twenty years.

His story goes back to a fateful day in 1778, when the English sea captain, James Cook, sailed into the Hawaiian islands for the first time. Within a few years, a brisk trading relationship had been established between the Hawaiians and the various European powers that were seeking to colonize Asia and the Pacific. Protestant missionaries also arrived from New England, and were soon established on all of the main islands.

The most remote archipelago on earth, Hawaii had only been known to other Polynesians who inhabited the South Pacific — and there apparently had been no contact with them for several centuries. Isolated as they…