The Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians celebrated the grand opening of their Red Hawk Casino last December with native dances – and Hawaiian songs.

Most of the tribe's 478 members trace their roots to Hawaiians and Indians who built Sacramento and married during the Gold Rush.

Now they, like many of the 21,000 area residents with Hawaiian ancestry, are closely following a bill in Congress to grant native Hawaiians sovereignty similar to that enjoyed by California's 106 federally recognized Indian nations.

They hope to play a role in a reborn Hawaiian government, and the bill, by Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, would give them that chance. It has twice stalled in the Senate but now has the backing of President Barack Obama, a Hawaii native.

"The time for this is overdue," said Akaka's press secretary, Jesse Van Broder Dyke.

Sovereignty search unites cultures

The legislation would allow native Hawaiians to set up a government and negotiate with the state of Hawaii and the U.S. government for land rights – but not for gambling, which was removed from the bill to defuse critics.

If it passes, a council would certify voters for the first election. Anyone with native Hawaiian ancestry would be able to participate, Van Broder Dyke said.

Many local Hawaiians, including those on the Shingle Springs rancheria, feel passionately about rights stolen from their ancestors when Hawaii's kingdom was overthrown by U.S. troops in 1893.

"I think they should have the same rights as native Americans – they are native Americans," said Hannah Adams, 23, who serves on Shingle Springs' tribal gaming commission.

The tribe is keenly aware of the power of sovereignty, which has given them access to land, federal health and education money, and the right to make their own laws and establish casinos.

"Sovereignty is very important – we had to fight for ours," added Hannah Adams' father, tribal historian Rick Adams. "Two years ago, this was the Shingle Springs Band of homeless Indians."

If Hawaiian sovereignty is restored, "we'll pack up and just go," declares Adams, 55, who teaches Nisenan – their native Indian language – as well as Hawaiian songs, dances and culture to local tribes.

Members of the Shingle Springs Band say they owe their survival to their Hawaiian ancestors who married Indians and, in doing so, saved them from extermination.

The Adams family, tribal Chairman Nick Fonesca and others proudly claim they're among those descended from Swiss entrepreneur John Sutter's original 10 Hawaiians.

After losing their way in the Sacramento and Feather rivers, the group came ashore near 28th and C streets in 1839 and founded "New Helvetia," which became Sacramento.

Sutter's Indian ambassadors

For nearly a century, Spanish missionaries and American mountain men had failed to settle the wild Sacramento Valley by force, said Steve Beck, director of education at Sutter's Fort State Park.

"Sutter didn't have any force, but he did have 10 Hawaiians, one of whom, Manuiki, was his paramour," Beck said.

"They're tattooed, they're pierced, they're half naked, they're dark-complected," he said, "and they don't look a whole lot different from the Indians in the Central Valley."

That resemblance helped the Hawaiians on Sutter's payroll convince 35 local Indian villages that Sutter was going to pay them to work, not enslave them.

In his memoirs, Sutter recalled the Hawaiians, using a name then common to describe Hawaiian workers, "I could not have settled the country without the aid of these Kanakas."

They also built the first settlers' homes in Sacramento – grass shacks, or hale pili, made with California willow and bamboo, similar to the grass huts at the Maidu Interpretive Center in Roseville where Rick Adams teaches.

Along the way, one of Sutter's Hawaiians, Oka’aina, learned Maidu and married the daughter of a Maidu Indian chief.

Hawaiians save Indian families

Adams said his tribe and hundreds of other California Indians wouldn't be alive today if they hadn't married Hawaiians, who had far more legal rights than California Indians through U.S. diplomatic relations with Hawaii.

Call The Bee's Stephen Magagnini, (916) 321-1072. Bee researcher Pete Basofin contributed to this story.