In the 1820s, waves of Christian missionaries were dispatched from Boston, believing they might 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 worshipped a pantheon of many gods. From a society where both men and women were basically always covered from neck to ankles, they were going to a land where the people wore tattoos and very little else. They had 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 believed that they were being sent into the gates of hell, but they were on their way to heaven on earth itself… the Kingdom of Hawaii.