Puritans in Paradise (episode 220)

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Music

Jake:
[0:04] Welcome to hub history where we go far beyond the freedom trail to share our favorite stories from the history of boston, the hub of the universe.
This is episode 2 20, Puritans in Paradise.
Hi, I’m jake! This week, I’m talking about a group of Christian missionaries dispatched from Boston in the early 1820s.
They left their homes and they were prepared to never return.
They didn’t know much about the land they were going to settle in or the people they were trying to convert, but what little they had heard was frightening.
The missionaries came from a church that was directly descended from the harsh Christianity of the puritans and they were on their way to a land where the people worshiped a pantheon of many gods.
From a society where both men and women were basically always covered from neck to ankles.
They’re going to a land where the people wore tattoos and very little else.
They’d heard rumors of graven idols and human sacrifice and believed they were on their way to do battle with the devil himself.
Many of them believe that they are being sent into the gates of hell, but they are on their way to heaven on earth itself, the Kingdom of Hawaii.

[1:19] But before we talk about boston’s missionaries to the gates of hell, I just want to pause and thank everyone who helps make up history for over four years. Now. We’ve put out regular podcast episodes.
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And now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

[2:39] In 2016, my wife and co host emerita Nikki, took an anniversary trip to Maui.
It seemed like everywhere we went. We bumped into a tiny rustic church in a breathtaking Hawaiian landscape.
First, we stumbled across the Colony Church on our way to snorkel in a place called Makena Landing.
It had walls made of coral blocks that look like limestone and shingles on the eaves roof and slim steeple that look like cedar, but we’re probably some more tropical wood.
It was nestled between coconut palms in a brilliant green lawn with a handful of headstones in the corner of the church yard overlooking a pocket beach.

[3:19] A few days later, all the way on the other side of the island, we’re driving down a very narrow, very rough dirt road,
the kind where you have to pull off to one side when a car comes in the other direction and where you have to beat the horn before going around a tight turn,
down a long lane off that winding dirt road was hui aloha Church, which looked like it was taken out of the same kid as the Colony Church.
Same proportions same slim steeple. But this one had whitewashed walls and dark stained planks clouding the eaves and steeple.
It was on a narrow lava peninsula, with surf breaking right outside the back windows there was a cluster of palm’s and hardwoods around the church building, with a low slope leading down to the rocky beach below.
On the day we visited there were snorkelling, spearfishing in the rough surf behind the church.
On the very last day of our trip, I went out for a run an hour or two before the sun came up and ran past a small stick built church across the street from a waterfront park.

[4:20] Later that day, I passed another church on the northern end of the island that seemed to be the exact same model, but more brightly colored.

[4:28] It was in a narrow valley above a rocky coast with dark green walls, white trim and a bright red roof.
That roof was steeply pitched and it had a tiny porch with a little roof with the same pitch and again a low steeple.
A few hours later still, I passed a third church with the same basic design.
This one painted a bright green and looking across a dune at the beach.
That finally made me curious enough to pay attention. And I realized that not only those three identical churches which I’ll mispronounce as the Oaxaca Koloa kayla who and La Julio Kalanick kaanapali churches,
but also the hui aloha and cosmology and nearly every other church I’d seen on the island,
was a congregational church.

[5:18] I knew that the congregationalists and the Unitarians with a direct descendants of New England puritanism, but I couldn’t quite figure out how they came to be so ubiquitous on Maui.
I put the question away for later, and when I dug into it, it turned out that the traditional Hawaiian religion had been supplanted by congregationalist churches, started by missionaries from Park Street Church beginning in 1819.

[5:43] The story begins when british Captain James Cook went searching for a northwest passage around the north american continent.

[5:51] He stopped briefly at a remote pacific archipelago on his way to north America, then stopped again on his way back to trade, he named the chain, the sandwich islands after the Earl of sandwich.
Although the residents of the island, he stopped at preferred the name Harvey before long, that entire chain would be united into a new kingdom of Hawaii.

[6:15] When Cook visited Hawaii in 1778 and died there in 1779, a local priest in Chieftain named Kamehameha was beginning a military and diplomatic campaign to unite all the neighbouring islands under his rule.
First, he defeated the other chieftains on the island of Hawaii and then as more european and american ships visited the island chain, He traded sandalwood and other natural resources for cannons and gunpowder and hired british military advisers.
In 1795, he launched an army of 10,000 warriors and over 900 canoes against the neighbouring island of Maui, which had fought against Hawaii for generations.
His forces quickly defeated Maui then leapfrog to molokai before moving on and subduing the island of Oahu before the end of the year.
For the next several years, Kamehameha, the great, known later as Comey um er the first, the founder of the House of Chromium area, was occupied by establishing a set of laws negotiating to bring the island of Kawai under his rule,
and putting down rebellions around the islands had already conquered.
One of those rebellions took place in 1896 in the Hello Valley on Kamehameha, his home island of Hawaii today, one of the two major cities on what’s known as the big island.

[7:35] Local chief named Namika formed an alliance with other mid level leaders who resented Kamehameha as dominance and tried to establish a local fiefdom independent of the king’s influence.
The experiment was short lived. The king’s warriors quickly routed the rebels and implemented a form of collective punishment against the warriors have supported the rebel cause.

[7:57] Villages emptied as entire families fled into the hills to try to avoid being put under the knife, but many were unsuccessful.
An independent researcher of Hawaiian history describes how one family took refuge in a cave for days before finally being discovered by Kamehameha as forces.
A survivor, a son, Oh Pakaya was at the age of about 10.
Both his parents were slain before his eyes.
The only surviving member of the family besides himself was an infant brother. He hoped to save from the fate of his parents and carried him on his back and fled from the enemy.
But he was pursued and his little brother while on his back was killed by a spear from the enemy taken prisoner because he was not young enough to give them trouble nor old enough to excite their fears.
Oh pakaya was not killed instead, Open Kaaya was sent to live with an uncle, began training the boy to follow in his footsteps as a priest in the Hawaiian animist religion.
He practiced complex prayers and rituals, which he would repeat daily at the heo or temple that was maintained by his uncle.

[9:09] However, oh pakaya would not grow up to be a Hawaiian priest.
He missed his parents as an orphan. He had very little status in Hawaiian culture.
Perhaps that’s why an 1807 when he was about 15 years old, he swam out into Honolulu Harbor and tried his luck on a ship that was moored there.
He later told a biographer about this time there was a ship.
The triumph come from new york, captain Brenton, all the master of the ship,
as soon as it got into the harbor and the very place where I lived, I thought of no more but to take the best chance I had, and if the captain have no objection to take me as one of his own servants and to obey his word.

[9:54] After supper, the captain made some inquiry to see if we are willing to come to America, and soon I made a motion with my head that I was willing to go.
This man was very agreeable, and his kindness was much delighted in my heart, as if I was his own son, and he was my own father.
Thus I still continue thankful for his kindness toward me.

[10:18] Another native Hawaiian teenager, named Hope, who also enlisted for the voyage.
The triumph had traveled from the U. S. East Coast to the coast of Oregon, which was claimed by Britain Russia France and the US,
There, they purchased valuable furs from the indigenous tribes which they would take to china, which already had a well established for trade.
The intermediate stopping the Hawaiian islands was relatively new, but it would allow captain Caleb brittle of New Haven to augment his cargo with sandalwood and pick up new crew members.
It was also a crucial replenishment stop in the middle of the pacific, far from any other port,
traders like brittle, and soon thereafter whalers from New England and elsewhere would come to cherish their layovers in an island chain where they could stock up on fresh water and provisions and where their crews could be entertained with plentiful booze and prostitution.

[11:14] An article about trade between boston and Hawaii by sc Morrison gives an outline of what a typical trading voyage of that era would have looked like,
a typical voyage is that of the ship Pearl, captained by john Souder, owned by James and thomas, lam, James and thomas H.
Perkins, and russell Sturgis, all of boston.
She sailed thence on July 23 1807. On January 13 1808, she anchored at the Sandwich Islands and Procured Fresh Provisions.
The next 20 months from February 1808 to October 1809 were spent along the Northwest Coast, Procuring Beaver and Sea Otter Skins.
Vince to the island’s stopping a few days in late october and taking on provisions in wood, arrived in china december five, sailed march 11th 18 10, in company with Theodore Lyman ship Vancouver.
The two vessels sailing up boston harbor almost abreast on august 4th 18 10.

[12:18] If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you’ll recognize a lot of those names.
From episode 89, When we interviewed Stephen Yousif Ussa about his book, barons of the sea boston merchants dominated the early china trade using boston built clipper ships.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that the same families also dominated the early trade with the Hawaiian islands.
For hope you and open Kaaya, the two year voyage from Hawaii to china and then back to New England must have seemed never ending.
En route. They had to not only learn how to be sailors but also how to speak english,
After they finally arrived in Connecticut in the fall of 1809 and 1816, Biographical sketch says,
on their arrival in this country, abu Kia, which is how americans tended to pronounce his name, received the additional name of Henry and hope, who that of thomas,
oh pakaya was taken into the family of Captain Britain all and for hope who a suitable place was found in the neighborhood, both of them expecting to return to their native island by the first favorable opportunity.

[13:30] That quick return was not to be. Sometime during their journey, a Yale graduate named Hubbard had begun teaching Henry.
Oh pakaya to read and write in english and now that he found himself in a college town, Henry was eager to continue his education as the sketch continues after his arrival in New Haven.
While residing with the family of Captain Britain Will, he used frequently to visit the colleges in that place at the door of one of the colleges.
He was found one evening weeping on being asked the cause of his tears.
He replied that nobody gave him learning several of the students having learned who he was and where he lived and having obtained the consent of Captain Britain will agreed to instruct him,
and accordingly received them under their care.

[14:21] Opelika here was a quick study. The profile says that as he learned to speak english, he learned to read it just as quickly.
Within a few months he was reading bible verses and in four years he went off to the public school in litchfield.
By 1815 he studied English geography, arithmetic and was teaching himself Hebrew.
One of his tutors wrote as to Henry abu Kia. He is certainly promising.
He is possessed of an amiable disposition and talents capable of being useful.
He has a quick apprehension and good memory and considering all the disadvantages under which he labors from early habits and from the fact that he studies in a strange language.
I think his improvement more than ordinary.

[15:10] That year, he formally converted to Christianity, expressing a desire to return to his native island and spread the gospel there.
To that end, he started working on an alphabet and grammar to create a written version of the Hawaiian language.
1816, he was recruited into the inaugural class of the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall Connecticut.
It had been founded by the american Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which was based out of Park Street Church in boston,
Morrison’s 1921 paper about the links between Boston and Hawaii, traces the boards early focus on the so called Sandwich Islands to a sailor on the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe.

[15:53] Probably the first American vessel to touch at Hawaii was the famous Columbia of Boston Captain by Robert Gray, on August 24 1789.
In the course of her first voyage around the world, She remained 24 days at the island’s salted down five punches of Pork And sailed with 155 live hogs on deck.
A young native called a two who shipped. There’s an ordinary seaman attracted much attention at Boston on the Columbia’s return by his gorgeous feather cloak and helmet,
at two was the first of several young Hawaiians who arriving in New England as semen on merchant vessels, influence the american Board of Foreign Missions to found the mission school,
Cornwell was chosen as the location for the school because the religious fervor of the surrounding community made it an excellent area for fundraising.
The school had the state admission of the education in our own country of heathen youths in such manner as with subsequent professional instruction,
will qualify them to become useful missionaries, physicians, surgeons, schoolmasters or interpreters, and to communicate to the heathen nations.
Such knowledge and agriculture in the arts as may prove the means of promoting Christianity and civilization.

[17:14] The first class at the mission school was made up of 12 students of whom, seven or native Hawaiians,
Henry Oh pakaya helped recruit many of them, including a hereditary prince of the island of kawai who was about a puka years age.
Known to white americans as George prince.
He had been born huma huma and have been sent off to see at a young age.

[17:43] Eventually ending up in the United States. He enlisted in the Marine Corps, served on the USS Wasp during the war of 1812 and was discharged after being wounded in action.
He soon re enlisted with the U. S. Navy serving during the first Barbary war.
Oh Fukaya and the school aggressively recruited him as his military record would help burnish the reputation of the mission school.
The rest of the inaugural class was rounded out by two white americans, a Bengali, a hindu and a native american who might have been Cherokee or choctaw, the two nations most heavily represented at the school throughout the years.

[18:23] Before Henry Opelika, you could complete us written Hawaiian Grammar and before he could return to the nation of his birth as a missionary, he died of yellow fever in Cornwall on February 17 1818.

[18:38] A world away and 15 months later, the death of Kamehameha, the great would lead to a period of upheaval in Hawaiian culture.
That unbeknownst to the Hawaiians, helped pave the way for the New England missionaries who would soon find their way to the islands.
The king’s eldest son assumed the throne as ca Mia Mia the second, but he would share power with his stepmother, Ka human, who was his father’s favorite wife and a member of the traditional royal family of Maui.
Keeping her in power helped bind Maui and the other islands to hawaii. After the great king’s death, the new king also used trade policy to help maintain power.
While his father had ordered a cautious and conservation minded approach to the sandalwood trade, the sun lifted almost all restrictions.
This ensured that local chieftains throughout the islands will get a taste of the trade, as described in the 1938 book about the Hawaiian Kingdom by Ralph S Quick and all.

[19:39] The wide open market in Hawaii therefore proved an irresistible attraction to the new England traders.
They descended upon the islands in a swarm, bringing with them everything from pens, scissors, clothing and kitchen utensils, two carriages, billiard tables, house frames and sailing ships,
and doing their utmost to keep the speculating spirit at fever heat among the Hawaiian chiefs,
and the chiefs were not slow about buying.
If they had no sandalwood at hand to pay for their goods. They gave promissory notes even after sandalwood have become scarce, they still kept buying, led on by a species of salesmanship, at which these Yankee traders were adept.

[20:21] And part to emphasize a sense of unity with the other islands, Kamehameha. The second move, the Kingdom’s capital to the town of Lahaina on Maui in 1820.
There, he and to whom a new moved into what had been the royal residence of Maui before unification.
The Latino is located in a desert in the island’s rain shadow.
A complex system of canals carried fresh water out of the mountains to fill a 17 acre fish pond just feet from the waterfront.
In the middle of this pond was a one acre man made island called moku ula, where the royal palace complex stood from this island, Oahu Manu would challenge beliefs at the very heart of traditional Hawaiian religion and customs.
At the time, the Hawaiian culture was rigidly hierarchical.
People were divided into strict casts that were impossible to transcend and could never mix in public.
These human casts corresponded with a rigid hierarchy within the pantheon of gods and deities.
Religious practice is also required strict separation on gender lines with women forbidden from eating meals alongside men from eating many common foods like banana and pork and from any participation in any mixed gender context.
While menstruating fork, ahu manu. These restrictions were a barrier to her participation as a full partner in the young king’s regency.

[21:51] Together with Kamehameha, the seconds wives, she started a campaign of co eating through the simple act of eating at the table with the king.
The queen regent could both participate more fully in politics and also challenge the ancient hierarchies.
According to religious law, this act should have led to a death sentence, but the young king couldn’t make himself execute his beloved stepmother and co monarch.
The high priests also refused to step in making it clear to the people that the old mores would no longer be enforced.
This launched a period of extreme religious and cultural upheaval.
In the Hawaiian islands, temples were torn down and idols were burned, while the traditional hierarchies evaporated, leaving each family to decide for itself whether to continue worshiping the old gods.

[22:45] So is 1820 dawned, a new king had moved into a new capital city.
The old Gods had fallen and Boston merchants were training the island’s dry of natural resources.
This year of extreme transition was far from over though.
Sc Morrison’s 1921 paper notes, Another event which made the year 1820 memorable in Hawaiian economic history was the arrival of the first Massachusetts whaling vessel.
The ship marrow of Nantucket, Nantucket whalers had rounded the horn as early as 1791, but until this year, their activities had been confined mainly to the south pacific,
Captain Allen’s discovery of the Japanese whaling grounds made hawaii is essential to whalers as to china traders.
Within just a few years, the shallow Anchorage before Lahaina would be transformed into a forest of masts,
In the show notes this week, I’ll include a depiction of Lahaina in the early 1840s by a pair of painters who embarked on a whaling voyage around the world a few years earlier.

[23:50] There are dozens of ships on the water. The Royal Palace at McCullough is visible on one side,
and in the middle is a whitewashed fortress built of coral blocks, which was erected after a dispute between locals and whalers resulted in a whaling ship opening fire on the town with cannons in 1827.
Another catalyst of change would arrive in Hawaiian waters on March 31 1820.
In his 1848 memoir, Congregational Missionary Hiram Bingham described his first glimpse of native Hawaiians soon after making landfall.

[24:25] Their maneuvers in their canoes, some being propelled by short paddles and some by small sales, attracted the attention of our little group and for a moment gratified curiosity,
but the appearance of destitution, degradation and barbarism among the chattering and almost naked savages whose heads and feet and much of the sunburn, swarthy skins were, bear was appalling.
Some of our number with gushing tears turned away from the spectacle.
Others with firmer nerve, continued their gaze, but we’re ready to exclaim.
Can these be human beings? How dark and comfort list their state of mind and heart?
How imminent the danger to the immortal soul shrouded in this deep pagan gloom.
Can such beings be civilized? Can they be christianized?
Can we throw ourselves upon these rude shores and take up our abode for life among such a people for the purpose of training them for heaven?

[25:24] Belgium was one of the two ordained ministers in the first group of boston congregationalists to arrive in Hawaii.
The book by Kuykendall describes the makeup of this group. The first company of missionaries included two ordained ministers, reverend Hiram Bingham and reverend Isa Thurston,
a physician, dr thomas Holman to schoolmasters and Qatar casts, Samuel Whitney and Samuel ruggles, a printer, Alicia Lemus, a farmer, daniel chamberlain,
Their wives and three Hawaiian youths have been attending the foreign mission school at Cornwall Connecticut.
These 17 persons constituted the original Hawaiian Church, whose membership was increased by later editions accompanying them.
On the voyage to Hawaii were five Children of the chamberlain family and a young Hawaiian chief George, Prince camus Ali, son of the King of Kawai.
This prince had been a sailor in the American navy and later a student at the Foreign Mission School, where he made an excellent record as a student, but gave no very satisfactory evidence of being a christian.

[26:32] This so called Pioneer Company of Missionaries departed Boston 163 days earlier,
Just a few days after Bingaman Thurston got ordained, and almost immediately after a solemn ceremony at the Park Street Church on October 15 1819.
On that day, all the members of the pioneer company gathered together, including wives and Children.
They sang hymns, listen to sermons by several fellow missionaries, including the native Hawaiian hope. Ooh!
And they were formally organized into a church for transplantation that was charged with spreading the gospel to Hawaii.

[27:09] In a book about gender In the Hawaiian missionaries, Jennifer think Penn wrote.
On a fall day in 1819, Mercy Whitney gathered with her new mission family at Boston Harbor in preparation for a journey to the Hawaiian Islands.
Mursi was young just 26 and recently married.
In the preceding weeks, Mercy had surprised her family by agreeing not only to wed Samuel Whitney, a virtual stranger, But also to accompany him on a mission to the Pacific for a term of no less than 20 years.

[27:42] Mercy and Samuel were not alone in taking such a leap of faith.
Of the seven missionary couples preparing to board the brig fatty us six and married in preparation for their journey.
The mission’s governing board, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions had clearly articulated it’s marital requirement.
Missionary hopefuls like Samuel understood that if they were missionary hopefuls like Samuel understood that if they were unmarried, they simply would not be assigned to the field.
Similarly, women understood that they would only be allowed to participate in the growing foreign mission movement as wives and help meets to full fledged male missionaries for the small crowd gathered to see the group off.
The mood surely must have been mixed coupled with the dangers associated with a months long sea voyage and the long term of mission service.
It was possible even likely that the group would never be reunited with their families and friends.

[28:46] S. E. Morrison’s paper describes their departure from boston a week later.
On Saturday morning October 23, the final farewell took place at Long Wharf, crowded with sympathetic Spectators.
The reverend doctor was stirred, offered up a prayer, Hope, who delivered another speech, and all united in singing, Blessed be the tie that binds, and when shall we all meet again,
barge from the USs Independence conveyed the missionaries to the vessel charter for the voyage by the american Board, the brig fatty use of boston, which in just a short time weighed anchor and dropped down the stream to boston light.

[29:28] As you might gather from the narrative of the first contacts between Hiram Bingham’s missionary company and the court of Kamehameha.
The missionaries expected the absolute worst when they arrived in Hawaii and they were perhaps disappointed not to find it.
Rufus Anderson’s 1870 history of the Sandwich Islands mission provides an example of what the American missionaries expected to find.

[29:53] The missionaries had expected to find the old king Kamehameha, a ruling the islands with despotic power and zealously upholding idolatry.
They expected to see the temples standing to witness the baleful effects of idolatrous rites to be shocked by day with the sight of human sacrifices and alarmed at night by the outcries of devoted victims,
they expected to encounter a long and dangerous opposition from the powerful priesthood of paganism.
They expected to hear the yells of savage warfare and to witness bloody battles before idolatry would be overthrown and the peaceful religion of jesus christ established,
no anticipations were more reasonable yet not one of them was realized.
Their first information from the shore was that Kamehameha was dead,
and that his successor had renounced the national superstitions, destroyed the idols, burned the temples, abolished the priesthood, put an end to human sacrifices and suppressed a rebellion which arose in consequence of these measures.
And that peace once more prevailed. And the nation without a religion was waiting for the law of Jehovah.

[31:05] Even though the new king it up into the old traditions, there were still plenty of signs of the old religion.
When the pioneer company of missionaries arrived, for example, Hiram Bingham took the time to view a heo or temple on his first day in Hawaii,
he described it as a monument of folly, superstition and madness, which the idolatrous conqueror and his murderous priests and consecrated with human blood to the senseless deities of pagan Hawaii.
As a fortification of satan’s kingdom. Its design was more for war against the human species than the worship of the creator.

[31:43] About half of the first party of missionaries settled at the mission at Kyla, on the big island of Hawaii.
When Bingham arrived at Kylo a few days after making landfall, he described the reception he received as we proceeded to the shore.
The multitudinous shouting and almost naked natives of every age, sex and rank, swimming, floating on surfboards, sailing in canoes, sitting lounging, standing, running like sheep dancing or laboring.
Onshore attracted our earnest attention and exhibited the appalling darkness of the land which we had come to enlighten.

[32:23] The other half of the initial missionaries were split between the big island, Oahu and Kauai,
though they established at least four churches, and though the Hawaiian crown would adopt Christianity as the official state religion, the first mission was broadly considered a failure,
perhaps racist attitudes toward the indigenous people in their cultural practices had something to do with it.
The missionaries thought that the locals would be dazzled by the western dress and demeanour of the three Hawaiian members of the party, but the locals were mostly nonplussed.

[32:59] An official history of the mission school says that those who had returned to their native lands failed to meet the expectations of their friends.
Perhaps the locals sought just another westerner who happened to have darker skin, racist assumptions about what work should look like, also sabotaged the missionaries efforts.
The Hawaiians were expert hunters and master Mariners, and they cultivated breadfruit, banana, tero and other staple crops,
but because their labour didn’t look like the typical new England farm, the missionaries believed that the locals needed instruction on how to feed themselves on their own land.
This did not work out as well as intended as Rufus Anderson recorded in 1870.
Another error naturally committed in the necessary absence of experience. So near the outside of this enterprise was the comparative estimate put on mere civilizing agencies, hence the sending of a farmer as part of the mission to the islands.
It was supposed that the natives will at once profit by improvements in tillage, such as an american farmer would be able to introduce.
But the facts did not correspond with those anticipations, and the farmer returned after three years.

[34:18] Kamehameha the second had his own concerns about the arrival of the missionaries.
He was reportedly skeptical when he heard that the american men took only one wife apiece.
He was also worried about upsetting the balance of power between the british Russian american and other merchants who were operating in the islands.
Eventually, however, he was prevailed upon by his mother, Queen Kapiolani, his stepmother and co regent to whom a new and a high priest named Habla Habla to let the newcomer stay.

[34:51] Unlike the missionary Mercy, Whitney, who has pledged to be a help meet to her new missionary husband, got a human who saw the arrival of these christians as a new avenue to power.
While their efforts at direct conversion through the example posed by their three Hawaiian missionaries failed.
As did the experiment in new England style farming.
The missionaries were soon successful at building ties with the chiefly class in the islands.
Ralph quick candles. History of the Hawaiian kingdom describes the early success from the beginning. The chiefs were friendly to the missionaries for the first few years. Indeed, they practically monopolized the efforts of the new teachers.
The latter have sometimes been criticized for giving so much attention to the chiefs and reality, they had no choice in the matter and if they could not win the chiefs, they had little chance of success with the common people.
Visitors to the islands in 1822 remarked that all seemed to hang on the word of the king.
He said that by and by he would tell his people that they must all learn the good word and worship Jehovah, but that the missionaries must teach him first and themselves get well acquainted with Hawaiian.
They had a head start in getting acquainted with Hawaiian. Not only did thomas hope ooh, William Canoy and john Connolly have native fluency with the language, but a british missionary came to work with them for about a year and a half.

[36:19] Reverend, William Ellis had spent years in Tahiti and learned the local language in Hawaii.
He discovered that he quickly picked up Hawaiian was able to preach to the locals in their own language.

[36:32] Also among the first party where Samuel ruggles, a classmate of Henry, oh pakaya, who continued working on Henry’s Hawaiian grammar after his death.
And Asa Thurston, who had single handedly translate 14 books of the Bible into Hawaiian Quicken. Does history continues.
Before the missionaries were well settled in their thatched houses built for them by the king. At Honolulu, they gathered some of the people into a school.
The same thing was done at Kalu and waimea. In these little schools. English was taught.
It was obvious, however, that while it was desirable for the king and chiefs and their business agents to know english, teaching, such a difficult language to the people as a whole would require an immense expenditure of time and effort.
If the Hawaiians were to be made literate in a reasonable period, it must be in their own language.
If the work of the missionaries was to be effective, it must be carried on in the native tongue.
Their first task was to learn the language and to reduce it to written form.

[37:38] Within two years, enough translation was done to start pressing Alecia Loomis’s print shop into service, 1962.
Article in the Journal of the American Society of Church History describes the moment when the first Hawaiian language printing was struck On Monday January 7 1822.
In the presence of a gathering of missionaries, chiefs and foreign residents, Chief K. Alma, who assisted in taking the first impression of printed matter to come from the press in the Hawaiian islands.
This spelling primer. The first so called book was only a broadside six by four inches headed lesson, one,
containing the alphabet, and some short lessons in spelling and reading, which later appeared on the 2nd and 3rd pages of the completed text,
Before the end of the month.
An elementary spelling book of 16 pages was printed in an edition of 500 copies.
Can compare me to the second, to whom a new boki and other chiefs and numbers of people came to the printing establishment in Honolulu to gaze in awe at the new machine that could turn out pala pala,
or the written word on blank sheets of paper.
From this point onward, the missionaries would use educational texts and gospel tracts just as fast as the press could print them.

[38:57] As the initial failure of the mission began to turn around, the Pioneer Company was joined by a second party of missionaries which had sailed out of new haven and arrived in Hawaii in April of 1823.
This group would be split among the big Island Oahu and for the first time Maui,
a group including William and Claressa, Richards, Charles and Harriet Stewart and Betsy Stockton were stationed in Lahaina starting in May of that year, where Betsy Stockton would be praised for the success of the school.
She founded, the first mission school in Lahaina and the first in the Hawaiian islands that enrolled the Children of commoners, and not just the chiefly class.
Betsy was also notable because she had been enslaved at birth and only Manya minted five years before she volunteered as a missionary.

[39:47] The second company may have sailed from New Haven, but more of its members were from boston than had been in the first company that had sailed from boston,
with their arrival in Lahaina, that town became crowded with boston merchants, whalers and missionaries, all of whom were right on the doorstep of the royal complex at Moca ula S.
E. Morrison described the buddha base of competing new England influences, Hannah wells, jones’s northwest, john doe wolves and another from new york.
The little community of respectable traders and missionaries with a disreputable fringe of deserters from in whalers, was so predominantly bostonian that boston acquired the same connotation in Hawaii as along the northwest coast.
It stood for the whole United States.
Hawaii had in fact become an outpost of New England. The foreign settlement,
with its frame houses shipped around the horn, hair cloth furniture, Orthodox meeting house built of coral blocks in New England sabbath was as Yankee as a suburb of boston.

[40:55] That year. William and Claressa Richard directed the Viola Church immediately abutting the royal complex.
When Nikki and I visited, it was a perfectly clear and sunny day and the manicured cemetery in churchyard fairly gleamed within the enclosing lava stone walls.

[41:13] We wandered among the graves and noted veterans of both world wars, as well as headstones with surnames indicating families of Hawaiian north american, filipino and chinese descent,
immediately facing the church building, a small wrought iron enclosure denotes the royal grave of Queen Kapiolani In 1823.
She was one of the many wives of Maui governor hopefully, but she announced that from that point onward, Hawaiian royalty would adopt the strange christian custom of monogamy.
So she became his only wife.
Unfortunately, she became gravely ill that august and soon lay on her deathbed.
In the weeks before september death, she has to be baptized and to be buried in. The christian custom.

[42:02] Ko put Melanie’s public embrace of Christianity helped accelerate the religions acceptance among the Hawaiian people.
A year and six days after her death, her fellow queen called a public meeting in Lahaina on September 24 1824.
Quick and all describes the meeting, A human who called Forward three young men belonging to her private school,
informed us that she had appointed them teachers for people on the windward side of Maui and desire that they might be supplied with books sufficient for large schools.
She then addressed herself to the headman of that district, who were present, commanding them to have good school houses erected immediately and to order all the people in her name to attend to the palla palla and the pool or education and worship.

[42:53] She didn’t yet know it when she ordered this additional religious education for the island of Maui, but to human whose son and king was already dead,
Commander of the second and his wife, Kamala, you were on a state visit to Great Britain when they both died of measles in July of 1824.
His younger brother would take the throne as commander of the third, but the new king was just 12 years old, investing the Dowager Queen Ka, who manu with ever more power.
In part, she used her influence to promote Christianity and specifically protestant congregational is um.

[43:31] She was publicly baptized in 1824 and she soon gave her stamp of approval to the Kingdom’s first written body of laws based on biblical values.
Within the next few years, she would outlaw Catholicism and banish priests from the kingdom.
She would sign the kingdom’s first foreign treaty, a free trade agreement with the U. S.
And she would ban liquor and prostitution in Lahaina.
This last order led to a violent pushback by the new England whalers who had become accustomed to procuring not only pork, bananas and fresh water, but also booze and women in Lahaina.
In October 1827, a small group of women, one on board the English Whale Ship, John Palmer, which is under the command of an American captain.
Ho appeal. He demanded that the women be returned to shore, and the crew of the Palmer refused.
Things escalated until who appeal? He took the captain hostage and the ship’s mate ordered his men to load their cannons.
Hiram Bingham recalled. The ship commenced firing cannonballs, which, by their horrifying sound as they pass near us and by their plowing the ground behind us and the relative position of the ship.
The house and the striking of the balls appeared with little room for doubt to have been aimed at the house of mr Richards.

[44:53] The captain was eventually returned, the women weren’t and everything went back to Square one To protect against future misunderstandings.
A large coral block fortress was built in downtown Lahaina which is visible on the 1848 panoramic painting I mentioned before.
The other landmark that’s visible in that painting is the Lahaina luna seminary.

[45:18] In 1828, the 3rd company of missionaries came on the ship party in from Boston.
They sailed from boston put. This group was from a wide swath of the country, including members from Kentucky, Vermont, new jersey, new york Missouri, new Hampshire and Connecticut.

[45:37] One of the Kentucky ins Lauren andrews was tasked with starting a seminary now that the Hawaiians had a few years of literacy and religious instruction under their belts.
The church believed that they are ready to start training as clergy themselves considered the first american college west of the rockies lina luna is just a high school today Standing high on a hill above downtown Lahaina.
The campus has changed little since the 19th century, including jalopy.
The printing house, 1834, Alicia Loomis’s old press was moved from Honolulu to Lahaina And the students started printing the 1st Hawaiian newspaper.
By 1837, they were cranking out 18 million printed pages per year.

[46:26] Park Street Church and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions would send nine more companies of missionaries over the next 20 years.
Over the 12 companies that were sent by 1848, seven were sent directly from Boston.
All we’re operating under the auspices of Park Street and most included members from boston.
A fair number of missionaries returned home after a handful of years or moved on to other missionary work in south America Asia, or even among the indigenous nations of the american west.
But some stayed on for 10, 20 or 50 years. Hiram Bingham would live in the islands for 21 years.
The congregational missionaries from Park Street went to civilize Hawaii almost 200 years after their puritan ancestors went to civilize the Massachusetts people.
In both cases, the indigenous culture had already been weakened,
in the case of colonial massachusetts by the great plague that decimated native villages a few years before and in the case of Hawaii, by the religious upheaval that had preceded the arrival of the missionaries.
The outcome for the Hawaiians was very nearly as disastrous as it was for the Massachusetts in Wampanoag and Nip Meck who had called the Massachusetts Bay home prior to 1630.

[47:51] In many cases, the Children of missionaries were among the planters who implemented a brutal, nearly futile plantation system in hawaii,
forcing most native Hawaiians to work in sugarcane fields or pineapple farms on their ancestral homelands for starvation wages.
The grandchildren of the missionaries became the Imperialists, who forced King David Kalakaua to sign the 1887 Bayonet Constitution that stripped Hawaiians of the right to self government and turned over most political power to the white planters.
It only seems appropriate that when the US. Marines came ashore in 1893 to back a coup that deposed and imprisoned Queen Liliuokalani, ended Hawaiian royal rule and forced annexation to the United States.
Those marines were carried aboard the USS boston.

[48:45] However, the tragic history of the missionary system in the Hawaiian islands does not translate to a disdain for the churches that remain there today.

[48:54] Wherever I traveled on Maui, the congregational churches in tiny towns and rural enclaves were meticulously maintained.
The proof is in the evident care given to the lava stone K. And I church embraced between taro fields and coconut palms and a windswept peninsula.
Well, the pala pala home all church where Charles Lindbergh’s buried, wrapped in a colorful tropical garden atop a cliff where the tidy church at the end of the winding road to the tiny village of Donghekou.
The proof is also in the church histories, which proudly note that the congregations refused to deed their church buildings and land over to the missionary society back in Boston when they were asked to in the 1860s.

[49:38] The religious tradition planted by these missionaries was celebrated at Park Street Church on the 200th anniversary of the Pioneer company,
In October 2019, about 100 church members, descendants of missionaries and historic interpreters from the Hawaiian Islands traveled on a commemorative tour of New England.

[49:58] They started a new haven, traveled through the Connecticut Valley where the mission school have been hosted and they wound up in Boston on Sunday October 20, 200 years.
In one day after the Mission Church had been gathered at Park Street, the Hawaiians attended morning services at Park Street Church, one of them wrote in a travel log.
The service was a beautiful blend of Hawaiian language in english. There was a huge contingent of people from Hawaii.
The inside of the church is so contemporary that I had to actually make myself stop and remember that this is where the commissioning happened 200 years ago.
What might it have felt like cold, damp? Joyful.
Not likely to have been filled with flags from around the world like it was today.
What did those who were about to set out feel like on the inside? And what face might they have put on for others to see?
One of the many highlights here was a thurston descendants sister from the East Coast meeting, a thurston descendants sister from Hawaii for the first time.
This was in the same church where their shared great many times over great grandmother and grandfather set out 200 years ago.

[51:12] To learn more about boston’s missionaries to Hawaii. Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 220,
Take a look at my pictures of congregational churches on Maui and see whether you think those missionaries were going into the gates of hell.
I’ll also link to the memoirs, journal articles and other sources I quoted from this week.
There will also be a book of portraits of the missionaries. So you can put faces with many of the names mentioned in the episode.

[51:44] Before I let you go, I have a listener feedback to share.
First up is an email I got from a new sponsor. I’ve been a regular listener for about a year and I’m pleased to make a small donation to support hub history.
I’m a native to the area, having spent my whole life here on the North Shore and I’m fascinated by all the stories that never made it into the history books and I’m fascinated by all the stories that never made it into the history books.
Keep up the good work. Doug.

[52:17] Thanks for that. Doug. You nailed what we’re trying to achieve with this show, highlighting the lesser known aspects of history that we didn’t learn about in school.

[52:27] And speaking of things we didn’t learn about in school, kurt responded on twitter after listening to our show about nazi sympathizers and anti Semitic violence in boston during World War Two.
I wonder if the Rabbi Corfe thanked in the survey of new suppression was the same one who later became famous for supporting Richard Nixon.

[52:47] I have no idea, but that would be amazing if True. And finally, we got an email from a listener named joe,
joseph firefighter who added a few details to recent episodes and who had a family connection to one of our shows from the distant past.

[53:05] I love your show. There’s always so much awesome information to be had listening to you.
Just listen to Busey street. I work at the fire house, up the street from Forest Hills and I’ve always been fascinated by the stone train bridge and the path alongside the arboretum.
It was so cool and sad to hear about what it used to be.
I also recently listen to your bells and whistles episode where you talked about party lines.
The Boston Fire Department still uses a similar one ring 2 ring format to delineate a call from a city phone versus a private line.
One solid ring means it’s coming from the city fire alarm firehouse to firehouse et cetera.
And a quick to ring sequence means that it’s from a private phone number who called directed that firehouse.
Also, I got a real kick out of your episode about the coconut grove fire when you mentioned the firefighters who entered the building, one of them happens to be my grandfather.
Unfortunately, I never had the pleasure of meeting him since he died in the 60s, but it does give me a quick glimpse into the life of an amazing man. I never got to know.
Thanks for all you do, joe.

[54:18] Thanks to the lovely note, joe, I bet your grandfather had a heck of a lot of stories to tell.
I wish I could have heard some of, we love getting listener feedback, whether you have a personal family connection to the episode or just want to tell us you enjoyed it.
We’re happy to hear your episode suggestions, factual corrections and alternate sources that we missed.
If you’d like to leave us some feedback on this episode or any other, you can email us at podcast at hub history dot com,
we’re hub history on twitter facebook and instagram or you can go to hub history dot com and click on the contact us link while you’re on the site, hit the subscribe blank and be sure that you never miss an episode.
If you subscribe on apple podcasts, please consider writing us a brief review.
If you do drop us alive and I’ll send you a history sticker as a token of appreciation.

Music

Jake:
[55:12] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.