Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a Pacific Islander, esp. one brought to Australia as an indentured labourer on the Queensland cotton or sugar plantations.

1840		R.H. Dana Two Years before the Mast (1992) 152: The long name of Sandwich Islanders is dropped, and they are called by the whites, all over the Pacific Ocean, Kanakas, from a word in their own language which they apply to themselves.
1854		Soulé, Gihon & Nisbet Annals of S.F. 266: Turn him [Sandwich Islander] out, he is a Kanaka!
1859		C. Abbey diary 30 Jan. in Gosnell Before the Mast (1989) 172: I all at once found myself enclosed by Kanackas. Never having been used to sit in the back seat with the niggers, I left.
1867		G.E. Clark Seven Years of a Sailor’s Life 136: Men from every nation. Dutch, Irish, English, Kanaka, Portuguese.
1872		Schele De Vere Americanisms 73: Even the Sandwich Islanders have given us some assistance in their word Kanaka, which with them means simply a man, but which has, since the intercourse established between their distant home in the Pacific and California, become quite familiar to our ears.
1873		Trollope Aus. and N.Z. 133: Queensland at present is supplying itself with labour from the South Sea Islands, and the men employed are called Polynesians, or canakers, or islanders.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 7 Feb. 4/3: When we see racy, grammatical, well-rounded sentences, combined with spelling that John Davies or a one-armed Kanaka would repudiate, we get our backs up.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 20 May. 1/6: A Queensland sugar-planter [...] remarked the other night — ‘White men are no good. Give me kanakas; I can make plenty of money out of them’.
1896		‘Frederick Benton Williams’ (H.E. Hamblen) On Many Seas 240: The remainder of the crew forward was composed of Kanakas and Western Island Portuguese.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 17 Feb. 11/2: In Queensland it is strictly forbidden by law to supply kanakas with grog.
1909		E. Waltham Life and Labour in Aus. 106: One white man, one Kanaka, or South Sea Islander, one fat Chinaman.
1913		Eve. Star (Wash., DC) 20 July 29/1: A band of big husky Kanakas, half drunk and with cigarettes in their mouths.
1917		‘Banjo’ Paterson ‘Thirsty Island’ Three Elephant Power 75: The Manilamen and Kanakas [...] bring all the money they do not spend on the pearling schooner to the island, and ‘blow it in’, like men.
1920		Marvel 5 June 3: I can’t even get a kanaka to come here. Shale is the only one who will stop.
1930		K.S. Prichard Haxby’s Circus 194: A bloke in one of those pubs down by the wharves started calling me a Kanaka, and a few other things.
1930		R.E. Howard ‘Fist and Fang’ Fight Stories May 🌐 These kanakas made us understand in their pidgin English that the village had been moved back in the jungle a way.
1940		E. Curry Hysterical Hist. of Aus. 237: These natives were known as Kanakas.
1958		L.F. Cooley Run For Home (1959) 353: These dames [...] do all their fun-lovin’ fornication with those wild-looking, double-jointed Kanakas!
1986		R. Fitzgerald Pushed from the Wings (1989) 146: Perhaps he’s got a bit of the tarbrush in him? Maybe Kanaka.
1993		G. Disher Deathdeal [ebook] ‘First [joint] of the day. I’m one cool kanaka’.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1877		Keowee Courier 1 Nov. 4/3: This man was known as Kanaka Tom, from a suspicion that he was from the Sandwich Islands.
1887		Bulletin (Sydney) 15 Oct. 6/2: Your kanaka grievance is painfully local, and as your letter contains no geography, it looks rather a strong order that you are giving us. Can’t your local paper take up the heavy end of the log?
1904		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 13 July 7/2: When a johnny descends to allow himself to be kicked and booted about a cussed Kanaka country [etc].
1942		W.R. Burnett Quick Brown Fox 92: [of a Polynesian] ‘Shut up, Harry [...] Some day I’ll cut that no-good Kanaka throat of yours’.

3. (also kanaky, Kanock) a Hawaiian, sometimes derog.

1838		S. Parker Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains 354: The Sandwich islanders, or kanakas, as the common people are called, have less activity of mind and body than the Indians of our continent .
1850		W. Colton Deck and Port 339: This tree, with a half-naked kanacka climbing its shaft is the most effective picture of poverty.
1872		‘Mark Twain’ Innocents at Home 468: There is no regular livery stable in [...] any part of the Kingdom of Hawaii; therefore [...] you must hire animals of the wretchedest description from the Kanakas. (i.e. natives.).
1878		J.H. Beadle Western Wilds 114: I like San Francisco for its variety. [...] there are French, Italian, and Spanish quarters, and not far off Kanakas, and ever-present Chinese.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 23 May 9/2: But it was well given, and would have been ‘ankored’ had the player taken the precaution to leave his head behind him and borrowed a Kanaka’s.
1899–1900		C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 372: A Kanaka’s bumboat came alongside.
1931		B. Lubbock Bully Hayes 67: We saw them, coming hand over hand through the big rollers with that crawlin’ stroke o’ the Kanaka.
1947		B. DeVoto Across the Wide Missouri 197: They chattered [...] and mingled with the halfbreeds of all tribes and their dear friends the Yankees, Canucks, Mexicans, and Kanakas [DA].
1952		J. Jones From Here to Eternity (1998) 304: We will f-- your black kanaky, / We will drink your goddamned saki, / BUT we wont come back to Wahoo any more.
1981		M. Baker Nam (1982) 25: You’re just going to be fighting with the military police, the civilian police and the big Kanocks there.
1996		R. Laudan Food of Paradise 63: The third person in the group, Keanu, a Hawaiian or kanaka, as the Hawaiians called themselves.
2020		T. Pluck ‘Hula Hula Boys’ in What Pluckery Is This? (28 Jan 2024) 🌐 But he’d always be a haole, a white man, just like she’d always be a kanaka, a native.

4. see Canuck n.