Charlie Kahana

Charlie Kahana making music

Quick Facts

Significance:

Noted Musician

Place of Birth:

San Juan Island, WA

Date of Birth:

1865

Place of Death:

Bellingham, WA

Date of Death:

December 31, 1959

Place of Burial:

Lummi Reservation

Cemetery Name:

Lummi Cemetery

Charlie Kahana was a man of Hawaiian and Coast Salish ancestry who grew up on San Juan Island and became a highly celebrated musician.Charley Kahana’s father, John Kahanu, was one of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s many Hawaiian employees on San Juan Island who first came to the Pacific Northwest as a whaling ship hand and his mother was Mary Skqualup, a woman of Lummi and Clallam ancestry who met near Bellingham Bay. Charley was borin in 1865, during the joint occupation of San Juan Island by British and American forces. Kahana’s love of music was sparked by listening to Metis (people of European and Native American ancestry who worked in the fur trade) employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company who were musicians at a San Juan Island barn dance. Kahana’s father moved with other Hawaiian HBC employees to Salt Spring Island after San Juan Island became American territory in 1872 and Hawaiians enjoyed greatly reduced civil rights. Charley Kahana stayed with his mother’s family on San Juan Island, eventually settling with relatives on the Lummi Reservation.

Kahana’s first public performance was at an Orcas Island dance at the age of 13, which began a 60 plus year entertainment career which took him to dance halls and performance venues across the Pacific Northwest. Kahana worked as a farm hand, logger, and eventually became pilot of a schooner owned by the Roche Harbor Lime Company which regularly crossed the new border to the burgeoning city of Victoria, British Columbia. But Kahana’s real love was music and at the age of 65, he won the Washington State Fair fiddling contest, an accomplishment that demonstrated the artistic skill he had mastered since he first fell in love with music during the Joint Occupation of San Juan Island. Want to hear Charley Kahana in action? Check out these recordings of him that are nearly 100 years old on the Charley Kahana section of this page https://www.voyagerrecords.com/nwffrmp3.htm