st the beginning: wave after wave of infectious disease continued to hit Native Hawaiians. Since Native Hawaiians lacked any exposure to these disease at all, they were even more susceptible to even benign-seeming infections. “An illness that was considered to be relatively mild could cause severe or fatal consequences to the unprotected native population,” write historians Robert C. Schmitt and Eleanor C. Nordyke. Climate, geography, and poor medical treatment exacerbated the outbreaks, they note.
“Hawaiians were an extraordinarily strong and healthy people who lived in a bubble, a kind of bubble that was a paradise in many respects,” historian David Stannard told Honolulu Magazine. “But when that bubble was penetrated by ships laden with people who carried an armada of diseases—diseases that they themselves could live with—it destroyed the Hawaiians who simply had no defenses to diseases like syphilis and tuberculosis, not to mention diseases like mumps and measles that we shrug off as childhood illnesses.” Meanwhile, writes historian R.D.K. Herman, American missionaries wrote off diseases as being the fault of Native Hawaiians’ dress, parenting, religion, or immorality.
Another disease that wreaked havoc among Native Hawaiians was Hansen’s disease. Known as leprosy at the time, it disproportionately affected Native Hawaiians. People with Hansen’s disease were shunned and forced to live in remote leper colonies. Herman notes that public worries about leprosy were used to cast Native Hawaiians and unclean and unhealthy, just as wealthy American interests were trying to cast the Hawaiian monarchy from their country.
These narratives helped white missionaries and plantation owners justify their control of the islands. During the 19th century, they turned Hawaii from a Native stronghold into a missionary-controlled plantation colony. The United States overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893.
By 1920, there were fewer than 24,000 Native Hawaiians left in Hawaii. Today, Native Hawaiians face significant health disparities compared to their white counterparts. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Native Hawaiians have significantly higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and tuberculosis.
Despite those challenges, the Native Hawaiian population is on the rise. By 2060, there are projected to be more than 500,000 Native Hawaiians in Hawaii, in part due to higher fertility rates. But those growing numbers can’t undo the devastating effects of the infectious diseases settlers brought to the Hawaiian islands—diseases that changed the very fabric of Native Hawaiian society forever.