Hawaiʻi - Censuses: Historical Censuses

From DBEDT Hawaii State Data Center web page (now no longer online):

The First Hawaiʻi Censuses

Sometime around A.D. 1500, Umi, king of the Big Island, supposedly conducted a census of his realm. Collecting all his people on a plain near Hualalai, he instructed each person to deposit a stone on a pile representing his district.

The first population census in historical times was undertaken in Wainiha Valley, Kauaʻi, near the beginning of the nineteenth century. A careful census of the valley counted more than 2,000 people, sixty-five of whom were described as menehune. Menehune were the legendary race of small people who worked at night building fish ponds, roads, and temples.

The first full-scale censuses, covering all the Islands, were made under missionary auspices in 1831 and 1832 and in 1835 and 1836. The first of these counts reported a total population of 130,313; the second found only 108,579.

The earliest census conducted by the Hawaiian government to achieve reasonably complete coverage was undertaken in January 1850, when enumerators found only 84,165 persons living in the Kingdom. Depopulation continued until 1876, when the total reached 53,900.

Since 1900, the U.S. Bureau of the Census has made decennial counts. The population numbered 154,001 in 1900, 422,770 in 1940, 964,691 in 1980 and 1,108,229 in 1990.

Source: Schmitt, Robert C. and Ronck, Ronn. Firsts and Almost Firsts in Hawaiʻi. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1995.