Did the King of Hawaii Recognize Emperor Norton Over the United States Government?
Another Wishful Tale With No Evidence to Back It Up
SOMETIME in mid 1999, a biographical sketch of Emperor Norton appeared on the website of the relatively new Los Angeles-based music label, Emperor Norton Records.
Towards the end of the sketch was a passage stating that the Emperor [emphasis mine]
sent frequent cables to fellow rulers, offering surprisingly well-informed advice, or reflecting on the complex responsibilities of rulership. Many of the responses he got were in fact forgeries, created by his friends to make him happy, but many were not. King Kamehameha of Hawaii (known then as the Sandwich Isles) was so taken with the Emperor's insight and understanding that towards the end of his life he refused to recognize the U.S. State Department, saying he would deal only with representatives of the Empire.
In fact, “the Sandwich Isles” was the name that the British explorer James Cook (1728–1779) gave to the Hawaiian archipelago to honor his patron, John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (1718–1792). Although the name was adopted in the United States and Great Britain and by English-language writers more broadly, it doesn’t appear that the indigenous population used it.
But, what of the claim that Kamehameha V (1830–1872), the King of Hawaii from 1863 until his death in 1872, once “refused to recognize the U. S. State Department, saying he would deal only with representatives of the Empire” of Norton I?
Kamehameha V (1830–1872) in 1865, two years after becoming King of Hawaii. Photograph: Charles Leander Weed (1824–1903). Source: Lyman Museum and Mission House
A little digging suggests that Emperor Norton Records lifted this nugget almost verbatim from a book, Classic Tales in California History, self-published earlier in 1999 by Alton Pryor (1927–2001). Here’s the passage from Pryor’s chapter on Emperor Norton:
Excerpt on Kamehameha V and Emperor Norton from Alton Pryor, Classic Tales in California History (Stagecoach Publishing, 1999), p. 17. Source: Google Books
In 1990, Pryor — a longtime reporter on the California “agriculture and ranch” beat, then in his early 60s — lost his job of 27 years at California Farmer magazine following a corporate buyout.
Seven years later, in 1997 — at 70 years old — Pryor hung out a new shingle as a self-publishing writer of books on the history of the American West.
By 2014, when he was 87, Pryor was touting himself as having cranked out “fifty-plus books since turning 70 in 1997.” A quick review of Pryor’s Amazon profile suggests that he wasn't exaggerating about the quantity of his output.
The quality of Pryor’s work is a different story. A clip of three books per year — usually in the range of 200 pages each — left no time for fact checking or documentation, and he offers none for his claim that Kamehameha V declared a preference for Emperor Norton over the United States government.
No doubt, Alton Pryor was a perfectly nice man. But, as the title of his book of “Classic Tales” suggests, Pryor seems to have been writing mostly as a collector and broadcaster of historical-ish stories that may or may not be true. As with his predecessor the Norton mythologist David Warren Ryder (1892–1975), Pryor’s chapter on Emperor Norton — including the part about Kamehameha — reads as a download of “things I heard one time” about the Emp.
Things that are readily debunked.
:: :: ::
FOLKLORIC accounts of Emperor Norton can harbor grains of truth, if one knows where to look.
Two examples:
1
There doesn’t appear to be any evidence that Kamehameha V ever “refused to recognize the U. S. State Department,” as Alton Pryor claimed.
If anything, Kamehameha V sought the support of State for a number of draft trade and diplomatic treaties that he wanted the United States to sign in the late 1860s. Abraham Lincoln laid the groundwork for the success of these treaties with a 4-page letter he sent to Kamehameha V in response to Kamehameha V’s own letter informing Lincoln of the death of his younger brother, Kamehameha IV.
But, there is evidence that Kamehameha V regarded the United States government with some distrust.
For starters, he was anxious about U.S. ambitions for annexing the Hawaiian islands.
Too: When the future Kamehameha V and his younger brother the future Kamehameha IV — then Princes Lot and Alexander, respectively — visited San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and New York as teenagers in 1849 and 1850, they had personal experience of racism and prejudice that they never forgot. Alexander recorded this in his diaries here.
For an overview of Kamehemeha V’s conflicted attitudes towards the United States, see this article.
2
Pryor suggests that Kamehameha V was one of the “fellow rulers” who responded personally to the Emperor’s “cables.”
Although there is no evidence that Kamehameha V wrote to Emperor Norton, the Emperor did write to him at least once.
The following undated letter to Kamehameha V, written and signed by the Emperor, was found in Kamehameha V’s papers in November 1906 and is preserved in the Hawaii State Archives:
Top and bottom: Undated letter from Emperor Norton to Kamehameha V. Source: Digital Archives of Hawai’i (pages 13 and 14 in document viewer)
My Dear Brother,
I have heard for many years occasionally about An Estate on your Islands belonging to me personally, and as I know nothing regarding the affair, excepting Street Rumours, and an occasional newspaper Remark, you will much oblige by allowing your secretary to give me all particulars thereto. With best respects to Queen Emma & hoping yourself & people are in good health,
I am
Yours Faithfully,
Norton I Emperor U.S.
and protector of Mexico
The American Empire and the interest of Monarchy on this Continent is Flourishing.
Later, in February 1873, Emperor Norton issued a Proclamation congratulating Kamehameha V’s cousin William Charles Lunalilo (1835–1874) on his election as Kamehameha’s successor. (The Emperor misidentifies Lunalilo as “Kamehameha VI.”)
Proclamation of Emperor Norton, Pacific Appeal, 8 February 1873, p. 1. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection
As in his letter to Kamehameha V, Emperor Norton addresses Lunalilo as “My Dear Brother” and closes by sending “respects” to Queen Emma, the widow of Kamehameha IV.
Indeed, when the Emperor died in January 1880, a photograph of Emma was among the hangings found adorning the walls of his apartment at the Eureka Lodgings, on Commercial Street.
So, it’s clear enough that Hawaiian royals were in Emperor Norton’s sights. But, there is nothing to show that he was in theirs — much less, to underwrite Alton Pryor’s claim that Kamehameha V “was so taken with the Emperor's insight and understanding that …he refused to recognize the U.S. State Department” and “would deal only with representatives of the Empire.”
:: :: ::
AND YET. As we’ve seen so often in the “telephone game” of Norton biography, an undocumented claim can prove very sticky and difficult to dislodge — an even can grow in the telling — if it is repeated enough times over enough years. (See “Frisco.”)
Perspectives in History is the newsmagazine of the American Historical Association. A year ago, for the December 2023 issue, the magazine’s editor Renato Grigoli penned a lovely meditation on Emperor Norton titled “The Unselfish Ruler.”
Tucked into the piece is the following sentence [emphasis mine]:
King Kamehameha V of Hawaiʻi recognized him as the sole leader of the United States.
When a claim like this is not just repeated but actually copied and pasted from another source — as in the Emperor Norton Records example — it’s easier to find the smoking gun.
On 27 October 2020, Wikipedia user SirFlemeingtonz added to Wikipedia’s article on Emperor Norton a section on Kamehameha V that has Kamehameha “opting to only recognize Norton as sole leader of the United States."
Grigoli’s verbatim lift of this phrase three years later strongly suggests that Wikipedia is where he got his “information.”
But, Grigoli has company in the academic community. In March 2022, Library Resources & Technical Services, a peer-reviewed professional / scholarly journal of the American Library Association, published an article by New York University librarian Gabriel Mckee — "'He Lied to the People, Saying "I Am Nebuchadnezzar"': Issues in Authority Control for Rebels, Usurpers, Eccentric Nobility, and Dissenting Royalty" — in which Mckee uses Emperor Norton as a case example.
In the brief Norton section, Mckee writes [emphasis mine]:
Kamehameha V, King of Hawaii, recognized him as the ruler of the US.
Although Mckee has “ruler” instead of “sole leader,” he keeps the basic framing and style of the SirFlemeingtonz’ Wikipedia passage. Adding to the likelihood that — like Grigoli — McKee got his “information” from Wikipedia is that he uses one of the two sources that SirFlemeingtonz cited to support the claim about Kamehameha V.
Problem: Neither of these sources makes reference to Kamehameha V recognizing Emperor Norton in any way.
One of the sources is a New York Public Library blog post from 2012 —“The Emperor of the United States” — that includes only two sentences about Kamehemeha:
In 1867 [Norton] wrote a letter to Kamehameha V, King of the Hawaiian Islands, which he signed "Norton I Emperor U.S. and protector of Mexico." A facsimile of the original letter can be seen in the Jewish Division.
The facsimile is a printing of the letter in the Hawaii State Archives (shown above) that is “tipped in” to a 1988 work, Emperor Norton & Hawaii, by David W. Forbes.
The Forbes source is the one Mckee cites — and the one most often used to advance the claim that Kamehemeha V recognized the Emperor.
My guess is that most who see the bare citation of this work assume that it is a book or, at least, an article of some length and substance. In fact, it is a beautiful but brief fine-press pamphlet of 6 pages — only 4 of which are “content” — letterpress-printed in a limited edition of 300.
The Forbes pamphlet is a collector’s item — and my bet is that no one who cites it as evidence for the Kamehameha claim has actually read it. Indeed, the pamphlet rarely becomes available on the market. Recently, I was fortunate to acquire a copy — which I purchased, in large part, because I wanted to know what was inside.
Much of the pamphlet is taken up with a biographical summary of Emperor Norton’s life.
The only documented connection between the Emperor and Kamehameha that is attested in the pamphlet is the Emperor’s undated letter to him.
An interesting sidebar…
In the Forbes pamphlet, Emperor Norton’s postscript in his letter to Kamehameha V is transcribed and printed:
The American Empire and the interest of Monarchy on this Continent is Floundering.
Transcription of handwritten letter of Emperor Norton to Kamehameha V in David W. Forbes, Emperor Norton & Hawaii (Paul Markham Kahn, 1988). Collection of John Lumea.
But, when the letter originally was discovered among Kamehameha’s papers in 1906, Hawaii newspaper reports had that last word as “Flourishing” — a 4-letter difference that conveys the opposite assessment!
Referencing the original manuscript, “Flourishing” looks more accurate — and seems more in keeping with a letter in which the Emperor was seeking to present himself as a fellow successful monarch seeking a favor.
Excerpt from “Norton I to the King,” article on discovery of letter from Emperor Norton to Kamehameha V, Honolulu Star–Advertiser, 14 November 1906, p. 6. Source: Newspapers.com
:: :: ::
OVER the last couple of decades, undocumented claims about Emperor Norton often have been borne on the wings of content farm “articles” in which freelance writers with no deep knowledge or commitment to the subject matter — or, worse, AI bots — ransack Wikipedia and other content-farm pieces to create the latest “biographical” summary of the Emperor’s life that simply rearranges and rehashes the same set of “facts” — all with the goal of maximizing SEO impact, data harvesting, and ad revenue, and doing it as quickly as possible, with little or no consideration for fact checking or documentation.
Tens of thousands of social “likes” and shares keep these low-value articles — the online equivalent of Alton Pryor books — high in search results. As podcasters specializing in “weird history” scoop up this low-hanging fruit, false claims about the Emperor get perpetuated over and over in a vicious cycle of truthiness, to borrow Stephen Colbert’s brilliant coinage. (For Colbert, Wikipedia is a sufficiently egregious truthiness offender to warrant its own term: Wikiality.)
Disappointing as this is, it is hardly surprising. For generations — up to, and including, the present day — most of those who have “stewarded” the Emperor Norton story have done so not as historians but as fans who often have entitled themselves to embellish the story with all manner of decorations that say more about the decorator than the decorated.
But, those who actually are historians and scholars — and who write and speak for institutions and publications allied to the culture of academia and learning — are to be held to a higher standard of care. When they advance undocumented claims and shoddy sourcing, it sends exactly the wrong message to those who already need little encouragement to bend the biography of Emperor Norton to their own whims.
Twice in less than two years in 2022 and 2023, academics who should know better trusted Wikipedia and endorsed the baseless claim that Kamehameha V recognized Emperor Norton over the United States government.
Let this stand as a warning and a challenge to all who understand that the biography of Emperor Norton — or any historical figure — has to begin and end with documentation.
Otherwise, the Kamehameha V claim will become the next anti-”Frisco” proclamation, in which those who just want Emperor Norton to have issued a proclamation against “Frisco” empower themselves to tell historians who point out the absence of any documentation or other contemporaneous evidence of such a proclamation: “That’s just your opinion!”
:: :: ::
For an archive of all of the Trust’s blog posts and a complete listing of search tags, please click here.
Search our blog...