Starting in the 1830s, they were exiled to the Caucasus region, where Russia had been expanding its empire through conquest. Though they were considered dangerous heretics in Russia itself, in the Muslim-majority borderlands they became indispensable allies of the czar’s government.

Their rejection of alcohol, their strong work ethic and their considerable skill as farmers won the admiration of officials, travelers and scholars. But in the 1880s they were subjected to a military draft for the first time. They objected and in 1900 began a campaign to leave for North America – where, again, they became viewed as ideal settlers, once they started arriving in 1904-1905. The Molokans found a temporary home in Los Angeles.

But then, as I have learned by studying contemporary press accounts and primary sources from the Hawaii State Archives, they caught the attention of the Hawaiian planters.

One of their champions, Peter Demens, a California lumber merchant with Russian roots, described their life in the Caucasus to Hawaiian planters and media audiences as one of unending triumph of industry over nature: “In every place they had to do the work of primitive pioneers; to acclimatize themselves, to acquire the knowledge of local conditions, of local customs, usages, and agricultural methods. From the fertile black earth Steppes of central Russia they were moved into the dry, salty deserts of Crimea, which they quickly transformed into blooming gardens.”

Comparing them to European settlers in early America, Demens further highlighted their moral qualities, such as prohibitions on liquor, tobacco and divorce. He exhorted them as “the only part of the masses who know how to think and who do think.”

In January 1906, the archives reveal, the territorial government and the Molokan leaders signed a land deal. It allowed the Molokans to come to Hawaii to work on a plantation in a land subdivision called Kapa'a on the island of Kauai, learning to cultivate sugar cane and bringing their relatives to join them. When the current plantation company’s lease expired in 1907, the deal pledged that the Molokans could take over, not as wage laborers but as settlers with their own lease rights to 5,000 acres on which to live and work.

Within a few hours of landing in Honolulu in February 1906, the advance party of 39 families of Molokan settlers set out for Kauai. Once there, they began building houses. The archives show the manager of the Kapa'a plantation was hopeful, calling their effort “a good augury.”

But once they began to learn to farm sugar cane, trouble followed. The hundreds of longtime Japanese, Hawaiian and Portuguese employees were angry that these strangers, fresh off the boat, were in line to receive a lease over the whole plantation. The longtime workers began to find employment elsewhere, leaving the plantation short of labor.

For the Japanese workers, in particular, being displaced by Russians stung: They had won the Russo-Japanese War just months before. Some Japanese workers refused to work with the Russians, citing the recent conflict as the reason in conversations with the plantation manager. Others reported being the objects of Russian aggression, even saying they had been told, “You Japs drove us out of Manchuria, but we will now drive you out of Kapa’a.”

As indicated by plantation manager George Fairchild’s letters to the settlement’s chief supporter, James B. Castle, the Russian settlers then started to act as if they already owned the lease to the Kapa’a lands. They even told other laborers that the other laborers would soon be working for the Russians and tried to sublease local rice paddies to small farmers.

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