Kapi'olani at the brink: Dilemmas of historical ethnography in 19th-century Hawai'i

Shifting accounts of the confrontation in 1824 between a Christianized Hawaiian chiefess and the priestess of Pele, the deity of the volcano, illustrate the way the same story changes over time. A comparison of these different versions and of the circumstances of their production provides a-way of thinking about how historical ethnographers can use such plural and competing accounts as the basis for writing histories of colonial encounters. It shows-how the choice of one or another version of a story has significant implications for the histories we tell and for the way groups understand their pasts.