Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hale Pili o Nā Mikanele

Most Hawaiian family hale compounds had several special-purpose hale. This collection was called a kauhale. The household complex was the center of the Native Hawaiian family and household production of the necessities of life. Men and women’s activities took place in different areas. (Leineweber)

Hawaiian Mission Houses has plans (and recent HCDA approval) to build William Richard’s hale pili that Boki ordered built for the new missionaries arriving as the Second Company in 1823. The hale represents a bridge between cultures and represents support given to the missionaries by the host culture, and the cooperative relationship that existed between the chiefs and the missionaries.

by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Hale Pa‘i

“Perhaps never since the invention of printing was a printing press employed so extensively as that has been at the Sandwich islands, with so little expense, and so great a certainty that every page of its productions would be read with attention and profit. The language of the islands has been reduced to writing, and in a form so precise, that five vowels and seven consonants, or twelve letters in the whole, represent all the sounds which have yet been discovered in the native tongue. And as each of these letters has a fixed and certain sound, the art of reading, spelling, and writing the language is made far easier than it is with us.”

“On the 7th of January, 1822, a year and eight months from the time of our receiving the governmental permission to enter the field and teach the people, we commenced printing the language in order to give them letters, libraries, and the living oracles in their own tongue, that the nation might read and understand the wonderful works of God.” “Liho-liho was glad to have the chiefs instructed and took 100 copies of the first primer for his friends and attendants. Ka-ahu-manu took 40 for her friends.” Mission Press also printed newspaper, hymnals, schoolbooks, broadsides, fliers, laws, and proclamations. The Mission Presses printed over 113,000,000-sheets of paper in 20-years.

by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives

Hawaiian Mission Houses’ Strategic Plan themes note that the collaboration between Native Hawaiians and American Protestant missionaries resulted in the introduction of Christianity; development of a written Hawaiian language and establishment of schools that resulted in widespread literacy; promulgation of the concept of constitutional government; combination of Hawaiian with Western medicine; and evolution of a new and distinctive musical tradition with harmony and choral singing.

Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives is on an acre of land in the middle of downtown Honolulu. The size and scope of these collections make Hawaiian Mission Houses one of the foremost repositories for nineteenth century Hawaiian history. The Mission Houses collections are critical to understanding the dramatic changes in the 19th-century Kingdom of Hawaiʻi that helped shape contemporary Hawaiʻi. Today, is the annual meeting of the Hawaiian Mission Houses, reminiscent of the annual General Meetings of the early missionaries.

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

General Meeting

Over the course of a little over 40-years (1820-1863 – the “Missionary Period”,) about 180-men and women in twelve Companies served in Hawaiʻi to carry out the mission of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission (ABCFM) in the Hawaiian Islands. One of the earliest efforts of the missionaries, who arrived in 1820, was the identification and selection of important communities (generally near ports and aliʻi residences) as “stations” for the regional church and school centers across the Hawaiian Islands.

By 1850, eighteen mission stations had been established; six on Hawaiʻi, four on Maui, four on Oʻahu, three on Kauai and one on Molokai. Very prominent in the old mission life was the annual “General Meeting” where all of the missionary families from across the Islands gathered at Honolulu from four to six weeks. The primary object of this gathering was to hold a business meeting – but it was also social. The tradition continues … Join us at the FREE Open House, Saturday Afternoon, April 22 at Mission Houses.

by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Tea Party

“On Tuesday of last week (December 11, 1827,) Mrs Bingham & Mrs Richards, undertook to make a ‘tea party’ to bring all the chiefs in the place & the members of the mission family together to join in a friendly & social cup of tea, to shew Christian kindness & civility to our Sandwich Island neighbors and to promote kind feelings among the chiefs themselves now assembled from the different Islands.” Those in attendance included, Ka‘ahumanu, Kalākua, Pi‘ia, Kauikeaouli (Kamehameha III,) Nahienaena, Kuakini, Naihe, Kapi‘olani, Hoapili, Kaikioewa, Keaweamahi, Kapule, Kaiu, Kekāuluohi, Kīna’u, Kekauōnohi, La‘anui, Keli‘iahonui, Kana‘ina, Leleiōhoku and Kamanele.

“But look, for a few moments, at the present group: twenty-one chiefs of the Sandwich islands mingling in friendly, courteous and Christian conversation with seven of the mission family, whom you have employed among them. Contemplate their former and their present habits, their former and their present hopes. They have laid aside their vices and excesses, and their love of noise and war.”