For most Malaysians, July 4 is just another day on the calendar. But while people in the US celebrate their Independence Day, few know that a small group of Americans once raised the flag to celebrate a new colony in what is now Sabah.

For one year, a “Yankee Rajah” ruled over a patch of land near the mouth of the Kimanis river which had been obtained on a 10-year lease from the Sultan of Brunei, then the overlord of much of Borneo.

Kimanis today is a peaceful and idyllic town with a mostly unknown history as the site of a one-time American colony called Ellena.

“Ellena was the starting point for many colonisers who created interest to explore more of North Borneo as it was largely unoccupied,” says Richard Ker, founder of the North Borneo Historical Society.

The foundation of the colony marked a significant time in Sabah’s history, he tells FMT. “It showed the potential of an island that was full of natural resources.”

The story begins with the arrival of Charles Lee Moses, also named Claude Lee Moses in certain documents, in 1865. He was to serve as the American consul-general to Brunei and received a 10-year lease from the Sultan of Brunei for a piece of land near the mouth of the Kimanis River.

Moses sailed to Hong Kong to look for investors and met fellow Americans Joseph William Torrey and Thomas Bradley Harris. Together with a few Chinese backers, they formed the American Trading Company of Borneo.

The ownership of the lease was transferred to Torrey, who would become the first and only “Yankee Rajah” in the history of the region.

Ker says 12 Americans lead by Torrey, as well as 60 Chinese, headed to Ellena and the American flag was raised there in December 1865.

“The colonists started to clear the land and plant crops such as vegetables, fruits, coffee, pepper, sago, areca palm, tobacco, sugarcane and rattan,” he says. “Ellena, however, was never given the opportunity to flourish.”

Ellena went down as quickly as it came into being. Torrey and Harris were not able to get any financial backing from the US government, which believed that funding such a colony was a waste of time.

The British, on the other hand, were concerned as their relationship with the US was frosty due to British backing of the Confederacy during the American Civil War.

The Spaniards in the nearby Philippines were also not happy to be told by Torrey that the islands of Palawan and Balabac belonged to him. They sent a warship to patrol the islands and reinforced their garrisons there to show they had no plans to leave.

Meanwhile, pirates flocked to Ellena but were thoroughly disappointed to find that their target was nothing more than a collection of huts and hungry workers.

And during all this, Torrey had a falling out with Moses, who felt Torrey was not grateful to him for his help. Rumours suggested that Moses had paid the pirates to raid Ellena to collect debt payment.

Eventually some of the Americans gave up and left the colony, while others died from tropical diseases. This included Harris, who died of malaria in 1866.

The Chinese, too, had not received their wages and were being harshly treated, creating conditions for a riot. They eventually returned to Hong Kong or worked in British mines.

Ellena was not even a year old when it fell apart. Despite the poor conditions and lost prospects, Torrey hung around in the region for about two years and managed to make a tidy profit of US$25,000 when he sold the lease to the Austrian Baron von Overbeck.

The Austria-Hungary government actually considered developing Ellena but ultimately decided it was a bad idea, forcing the baron to sell the land to Alfred Dent, a British officer. Under him, the land became part of the British North Borneo Chartered Company.

As for Moses, he died at sea in 1868 a financially broken man. And thus ends the tale.

According to Ker, many have tried to locate the site of the old colony of Ellena but the jungle took over every part of the area. But Harris’ grave was located in 1909 at the top of a hill, and his tomb has become a reminder that an American colony once existed in North Borneo.

Ker laments that many people still do not know about Malaysia’s rich history prior to independence. “Our knowledge about history is limited to what we learn from textbooks,” he says, “when in fact there are more stories that are still undiscovered.”