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The Molokai Cowboy

by By Barukh Shalev

March 31, 2005

I had to hitchhike to the Molokai Ranch. On the way I was picked up at the gas station by Kamo, a self described “chocolate and banana farmer.” He was curious about me and eventually offered to put me up in his home. I told him I was on my way to interview Jimmy Duvauchelle. I asked him if he could he tell me anything.



“Everyone love Uncle Jimmy,” he said as we drove.







Standing on one of the windswept plateaus of the Molokai Ranch, all the lush growth below seemed to lose dimension. The tall grass looked flat and smooth, as though I were flying high above the Great Plains of the American Midwest. I tried to imagine it covered in livestock. Ten thousand cattle at a time roamed here.



Standing next to me was Jimmy Duvauchelle, “Uncle Jimmy,” as he’s known across the island. He’s the head cowboy for the Molokai Ranch, a sprawling property on the Western side of Molokai. He certainly looks the part, tall and upright with a torso capable of summoning incredible strength. He grew up here, riding and lassoing just as his forefathers did.



Although he is getting old, with a slight paunch growing above his belt, he is still ruggedly handsome, with striking green eyes and an easy smile. Upon meeting him I noticed how much he reminded me of Sam Elliot, the Hollywood actor prone to playing in small screen adaptations of Louis L’Amour novels.



Duvauchelle wears many hats. “I am the uncle to this island, the grandfather to this ranch, the head cowboy and the pastor for the ranch church,” he said.



The E Komo Mai non-denominational congregation meets every Sunday in the barn. “Go in there, sweep it out, put the carpets out, assemble the prayer teams and get to work,” Duvauchelle told me were his responsibilities. “Put the pulpit right in the middle.”



Duvauchelle has a soft voice and is seem



ingly shy, gentle and almost timid. He would always patiently wait until I had stopped writing to continue talking. Perhaps because he is so photogenic, with the Hollywood looks photographers appreciate, he is often featured in promotional literature for Molokai. He deals often with journalists. He knows all the poses for a good headshot.



 “Molokai was very simple then,” he said of the old days growing up. “A simple life is what he had. The cowboy would provide the meat, venison.” Then he paused to look at the notes I was writing. “Better call it the pipi kaula,” he said smiling. “That’s Hawaiian for meat.



“We had a system and everybody had a job, everybody played a part. We cowboys would exchange with the fishermen meat for fish, salt, the farmer would provide the taro for poi. We ate good and were healthy.”



The lifestyle of the cowboy, Hawaiian or otherwise is difficult. Few people would be able to withstand the physical pressures of the work.



“We didn’t know it was hard work, see, it was all we knew,” Duvauchelle said as we ride in his truck. “We had nothing else really, to compare it with. But in retrospect, knowing what I know now, it is hard. Guys would go home with no shirt, no pants. You wear one watch—forget it, braddah. Your watch is gonna be gone by the end of the day, and watches were expensive in Molokai in the old days! Like one luxury item.”



The concern for one’s watch wear was purely aesthetic, I suppose, for cowboy time was on its own orbit.



“Days began early and were long,” Duvauchelle said. “We would wake up at 4 a.m., before the sun rose. The stable boy would bring the horses to the stable and feed them, then the cowboys would come in and begin the drive.



“The drive would start at Kualapu’u, that’s the beginning of Molokai. Then drive the cattle 5,000 acres to the next pasture. We would sleep there, eat there. Next day, getup, keep going, another 5,000 acres then rest. It would take us one week to make the drive from one side to the other.



“In those days we had 10,000 heads,” he continued. “My dad was the rough rider. His job was to break the horses in. They ride the horses out until it can’t buck anymore, then he would hand it over to the cowboys. It was a hard job.



“Back in 1923, the ranch set aside 7,000 acres to make pineapple, that’s when the true lifestyle began to change a little bit,” he said, showing me the land were the pineapple was grown. We passed a small housing settlement on the hill near his house.



“Know who used to live there before?” he asked, grinning. “The Pineapple bosses.”



With the change in infrastructure came a threat to the paniolo way of life, one of many to come.



“They weren’t so dependant on us cowboys anymore,” Duvauchelle told me. “The economy had changed toward fruit production. As they cut back on the land, they cut back on the cattle.



“We would teach the children the lifestyle early, as little keikis they would learn about the lasso, horses. Learn respect. Get one really small calf, like a baby and have a keiki lasso it or wrestle it down. Kids now don’t do that. Someone would say, ‘Hey, be easy on them kids!’ But that’s the only way they are gonna learn. You have to be brave with the animal, familiar with it. You can’t learn that at college, you have to be taught early.



“Those days it wasn’t work, it was life,” he continued. “Now it’s like someone you work for. It’s like that vase, you can make the vase, create it, or you can just take the vase and move it over there. That’s the difference I mean.



“In the days of my grandfather it would take 10 men to do what one man does now. With technology things are so much easier but you also lose something. While the work is hard, you get a connection with what you are doing. What my father did in one week I do in one hour. You would ride and ride and not see another cowboy for six hours. No lunch, keep working. Then eventually there were laws that said a man can’t work for a certain time without getting overtime. Most of us never listened to that. They would just carry on. We would work until we were done. That was our way. But by that time it was the official end of the paniolo lifestyle, as I knew it. Attitudes started to change. It became less of the lifestyle and more a business. Things became more modern.”



I asked him where it was all going.



“Real estate,” he said without hesitation.



“The hardest thing was branding,” Duvauchelle said. “It is really hard but important to the paniolo culture because it’s bonding with the cattle.  People get mad about that now but they don’t understand it.



“You have to subdue the animal, you bond with it. After the brand there is a mutual respect, the animal knows you are in control and you respect the cattle for the fight. Now it is all gone, branding is modernized, mechanized. I wish that we kept the old ways.



“After the branding there was a pai’na, like a party, feast. We would party down. Cook meat, have some fish, take some beer. The beer would relax you, after all that work, the beer would make you relax, wind down.”







Jimmy Duvauchelle is a bridge between worlds. One is disappearing, the other gaining increasing ground. As I surveyed the grounds I noticed neatly arranged paths cutting a swath across the grassy expanse. I asked him what they were.



“It called an alley,” he said. “Instead of taking all the cattle across the whole property, we just rustle them through these channels. Like a cannery, I guess.”



Duvauchelle began working as a full-time cowboy in the late 1960s, a period marked by a rapid social evolution into an industrial economy.



“In those days, you were born in the ranch, you lived on the ranch, and you died on the ranch,” he told me as we walked through a stable. “Now it is more separated, home life and work life. But then everything in your life was provided by the ranch, babysitters, bus would take the kids to school. I miss that. The lifestyle would repeat itself, you raise your kids on the ranch and they take over when you are old. Just like now, my grandson is a rancher, my sons were ranchers and I taught them what I knew, just as my father did for me.”



Duvauchelle himself has several children and grandchildren. His grandson works on the ranch with him, the sixth in a generation of Hawaiian cowboys. Still, the hard work and long hours took their toll.



“Seven years after I started working, I guess because I was an outstanding worker they made me foreman which meant early mornings and late nights,” he said. “Four a.m. to 10, 11 at night. I worked so hard that I couldn’t be as much as a father to my son as I wanted. There became this separation between us in a way. I would spend so much time on the ranch, taking care of the cattle that, in a way I missed my son growing up, missed the things that mattered.



“One day I came home and felt something missing,” he continued. “I knew something was missing, I didn’t know what. I sat and looked at the walls, looked in the mirror and in the drawers and tried to figure it out. It was my kids. They had gone away to college, had lives of their own.



“Eventually, my kids came back to the ranch and I have made up for the lost time, as much as I could. They worked with me, my oldest girl and my youngest girl are still here but my son moved to Maui, to be a construction worker. I was glad for the opportunity I gave him.”



I looked in Ducauchelle’s sea green eyes, and saw a touch of sadness. MTW