502
Opinion of the Court
tained in an 1864 opinion of the Supreme Court of the Kingdom of Hawaii. The court, in turn, drew extensively upon an earlier report which recited, in part, as follows:
" 'When the islands were conquered by Kamehameha I., he followed the example of his predecessors, and divided out the lands among his principal warrior chiefs, retaining, however, a portion in his own hands to be cultivated or managed by his own immediate servants or attendants. Each principal chief divided his lands anew and gave them out to an inferior order of chiefs or persons of rank, by whom they were subdivided again and again after (often) passing through the hands of four, five or six persons from the King down to the lowest class of tenants. All these persons were considered to have rights in the lands, or the productions of them, the proportions of which rights were not clearly defined, although universally acknowledged. . . . The same rights which the King possessed over the superior landlords and all under them, the several grades of landlords possessed over their inferiors, so that there was a joint ownership of the land, the King really owning the allodium, and the person in whose hands he placed the land, holding it in trust.' " In re Estate of His Majesty Kamehameha IV, 2 Haw. 715, 718-719 (quoting Principles Adopted by the Board of Commissioners to Quiet Land Titles, 2 Stat. Laws 81-82 (Haw. Kingdom 1847)).
Beginning in 1839 and through the next decade, a successive ruler, Kamehameha III, approved a series of decrees and laws designed to accommodate demands for ownership and security of title. In the words of the Hawaiian Supreme Court, "[t]he subject of rights in land was one of daily increasing importance to the newly formed Government, for it was obvious that the internal resources of the country could not be developed until the system of undivided and undefined ownership in land should be abolished." 2 Haw., at 721.
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