Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Whitman Mission

During the first ten or fifteen years of the nineteenth century, the US was swept by religious revivalism and many people were converted in the wake of the newly born religious fervor.  The Second Great Awakening spread from its origins in Connecticut and led to the establishment of theological seminaries and mission boards.

In the fall of 1819, the brig Thaddeus was chartered to carry the Pioneer Company of missionaries to the Islands.  There were seven American couples sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) to convert the Hawaiians to Christianity.

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 ABCFM in the Hawaiian Islands.

Since work with any non-English speaking people in the US was classified as being foreign missions by most Protestant denominations throughout the nineteenth century, the ABCFM also looked to missions for the American Indians.  The Board began its Indian work in 1816, when a few missionaries were sent to the Cherokee.

Then, on January 12, 1835, “…one of our elders expects shortly to leave us to join the company of Missionaries to go beyond the Rocky Mountains.” (Hotchkin, Report to American Home Missionary Society)  Dr Marcus Whitman had volunteered to go.

Upon return from a short investigative trip, Whitman had observed that it was possible to take women over the Rockies, hence he could return, be married to Narcissa Prentiss to whom he was engaged, and take her with him to Oregon.

Marcus hoped to find another couple to join them in their Oregon venture. He heard of Henry and Eliza Spalding who were to be missionaries among the Osage people; they had already started for their destination, but Marcus caught up to them and convinced them to join the Oregon missions.

The Whitmans and Spaldings formed the forerunners of the ABCFM’s missionary effort in the Pacific Northwest.  In April 1836 Whitman’s party set out from Liberty, Missouri. In May they overtook an American Fur Company caravan near the junction of the Platte River and the Loup Fork, in Nebraska.

Traveling via Fort Laramie, Wyoming, and across South Pass, they arrived at the Green River Rendezvous in July. Escorted by two Hudson’s Bay Company traders, the party then set out on a long journey via Fort Hall to Fort Vancouver, where it arrived in September.  (LegendsOfAmerica)

Whitman chose a spot in southeastern Washington on Mill Creek on the north bank of the Walla Walla River, 22-miles above its junction with the Columbia and the Hudson’s Bay Company post of Fort Walla Walla. The local Indians, the Cayuse, called the spot Waiilatpu (“Place of the Rye Grass.”)  Spalding chose a site 110-miles farther east, where he founded among the Nez Perce Indians what came to be known as the Spalding Mission, Idaho. (LegendsOfAmerica)

The two wives were the first US women to travel across the continent.  The next March, Mrs. Whitman gave birth to a daughter, Alice Clarissa, the first US child born in the Pacific Northwest.  (Two years later the child died in a tragic drowning accident.)

Several Hawaiians lived at the Whitman Mission; a Hawaiian known as “Jack” and another Hawaiian whose name is unknown worked for a fur-trading company called the North West Company and helped Whitman establish the Waiilatpu mission; first they helped to build the Whitman’s home.

When Narcissa first saw it, she wrote home to her parents, “Where are we now, and who are we that we should be thus blessed of the Lord? I can scarcely realize that we are thus comfortably fixed, and keeping house …”

“We arrived here on the tenth-distance, twenty-five miles from Walla Walla. Found a house reared and the lean-to enclosed, a good chimney and fireplace, and the floor laid. … My heart truly leaped for joy as I alighted from my horse, entered and seated myself before a pleasant fire.”  (PBS)

In addition, the Whitmans knew an individual named Mungo Mevway; he was the son of a Hawaiian father and a Native American mother.  (Mevway married a member of the Spokane tribe around October 1842.)

Iosepa Mahi and his wife, Maria Kewau Mahi, were two later arrivals from Hawaiʻi.  “At Waiilatpu they had the pleasure of being waited on by two native Hawaiians, Iosepa Mahi and wife, from Mr. Bingham’s Kawaiahaʻo Church, who had come to Oregon the year previous to assist Dr and Mrs Whitman in their domestic concerns.”  (Edwin Hall Journal, 1839)

The Mahis were two of the charter members of the original Oregon Mission Church, being admitted by letter from the Kawaiahaʻo Church at its organization on August 18, 1838.

When Mahi died, Mrs. Whitman wrote of him in a letter to her mother on October 9, 1840, “Our loss is very great. He was so faithful and kind – always ready to relieve us of every care, so that we might give ourselves to our appropriate missionary work – increasingly so to the last. He died as a faithful Christian missionary dies – happy to die in the field – rejoiced that he was permitted to come and labour for the good of the Indians …” (His wife returned to Hawaiʻi in January 1842.)

There are more ties to Hawaiʻi beyond the help given to build the mission.  After the Oregon missionaries had found that their earliest ideas of instructing the Indians in the Gospel by teaching them English, without reducing their own language to writing,
were not only impracticable but absolutely impossible, they wrote to their brethren of the Sandwich Islands mission asking if it were not possible to have a second-hand printing press given to them.  (The Friend, May 1923)

On April 19, 1839, Hiram Bingham, head of the Hawaiʻi mission wrote, “The church & congregation of which I am pastor has recently sent a small but complete printing and binding establishment by the hand of Brother Hall, to the Oregon mission, which with other substantial supplies amount to 444,00 doll.” (This is not the same press that Bingham brought on their initial voyage to Hawaiʻi.)

“The press was a small hand press presented to this mission but not in use. The expense of the press with one small font of type, was defrayed by about 50 native females including Kīnaʻu or Kaʻahumanu 2d. This was a very pleasing act of Charity. She gave 10 doll. for herself & 4 for her little daughter Victoria Kaʻahumanu 3d.”  (Bingham) (The press remained at Lapwai until 1846, when it was sought to be used for printing a paper in Salem.)

“The Press was located at Lapwai, and used to print portions of Scripture and hymn books in the Nez Perces language, which books were used in all the Missions of the American Board. Visitors to these tribes of Indians, twenty-five years after the Missions had been broken up, and the Indians had been dispersed, found copies of those books still in use and prized as great treasures.”  (Nixon)

The Whitmans at Waiilatpu and the Spaldings at Lapwai carried on their work in their separate stations for about two years with but little outside help beyond that of a few Hawaiians and an occasional wandering mountain man. (Drury)

The Cayuse were a semi-nomadic people who were on a seasonal cycle of hunting, gathering and fishing.   Whitman introduced agriculture in order to keep the Cayuse at the mission and introduce Christianity.

They needed to be self-sufficient and spent a lot of time growing crops and looking after farm animals. These animals included a flock of sheep that were sent to Waiilatpu by some of the ABCFM missionaries in Hawaiʻi (Maki and his wife accompanied these sheep on their long journey to the Whitman Mission.)

In 1843, Whitman accompanied the first major overland immigration from the US to Oregon, successfully guiding the first immigrant wagons to reach the Columbia River; the mission at Waiilatpu was a major stop on the immigrant trail.  Their small expedition was the first to bring families to Oregon by wagon.

In 1847, one of those emigrant wagon trains brought measles to the mission. The white children recovered, but the local Cayuse tribe had no resistance. Half the tribe died.

Marcus was considered to be a te-wat, or medicine man, to the Cayuse people. His medicines did not work when trying to cure Cayuse infected with measles. It was Cayuse tradition that if the patient died after being treated by the medicine man, the family of the patient had the right to kill the medicine man.

On November 29, 1847, eleven Cayuse took part in what is now called the “Whitman Killings” and “Whitman Massacre.” The majority of the tribe was not involved in the deaths of the Whitmans and the eleven others, however, the whole tribe was held responsible until 1850. In that year, five Cayuse were turned over to the authorities in Oregon City and hanged for the crime of killing the Whitmans.

The story of the Whitman mission came to an end, however, the legacy of Dr Whitman lived on. Stories of his 1842 ride east to stop the ABCFM from closing some of the Oregon missions became a legend that “Whitman saved Oregon for the Americans”, making it seem that Whitman promoted a manifest destiny for America.

Cushing Eells, an associate of Whitman, built Whitman Seminary on the grounds of the old mission; it later moved to Walla Walla and became Whitman College. A statue of Dr. Whitman was erected in Statuary Hall in Washington DC.  (My mother, a Hiram Bingham descendant, attended Whitman College.)  (Lots of information here from NPS)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

United in a Song of Praise

The Prudential Committee of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in giving instructions to the pioneer missionaries of 1819 said:

“Your mission is a mission of mercy, and your work is to be wholly a labor of love. … Your views are not to be limited to a low, narrow scale, but you are to open your hearts wide, and set your marks high. You are to aim at nothing short of covering these islands with fruitful fields, and pleasant dwellings and schools and churches, and of Christian civilization.”  (ABCFM)

Their message was simple, “As ambassadors of the King of Heaven, having the most important message to communicate, which he could receive, we made to him the offer of the Gospel of eternal life, and proposed to teach him and his people the written, life-giving Word of the God of Heaven.”  (Bingham)

One of the first things Bingham and his fellow missionaries did was begin to learn the Hawaiian language and create an alphabet for a written format of the language.   Their emphasis was on teaching and preaching.

These missionaries taught their lessons in Hawaiian, rather than English.  In part, the mission did not want to create a separate caste and portion of the community as English-speaking Hawaiians.  In later years, the instruction, ultimately, was in English.

The arrival of the first company of American missionaries in Hawaiʻi marked the beginning of Hawaiʻi’s phenomenal rise to literacy. The chiefs became proponents for education and edicts were enacted by the King and the council of chiefs to stimulate the people to reading and writing.

Within five years of the missionaries’ arrival, a dozen chiefs had sought Christian baptism and church membership, including the king’s regent Kaʻahumanu.  The Hawaiian people followed their native leaders, accepting the missionaries as their new priestly class.  The process culminated in Hawaiian King Kamehameha III’s adoption of Christianity and a Biblically-based constitution in 1840.  (Schulz)

The missionaries left many other lasting legacies in the Islands, including their songs.  Some songs were translations of Western songs into Hawaiian.  Some were original verse and melody.

Oli (chant) and mele (song) were already a part of the Hawaiian tradition.

“As the Hawaiian songs were unwritten, and adapted to chanting rather than metrical music, a line was measured by the breath; their hopuna, answering to our line, was as many words as could be easily cantilated at one breath.”  (Bingham)

Missionaries used songs as a part of the celebration, as well as learning process.  “At this period, the same style of sermons, prayers, songs, interrogations, and exhortations, which proves effectual in promoting revivals of religion, conversion, or growth in grace among a plain people in the United States, was undoubtedly adapted to be useful at the Sandwich Islands. … some of the people who sat in darkness were beginning to turn their eyes to the light”.  (Bingham)

“The king (Kamehameha III) being desirous to use his good voice in singing, we sang together at my house, not war songs, but sacred songs of praise to the God of peace.”  (Bingham)

One of the unique verses (sung to an old melody) was Hoʻonani Hope – Hoʻonani I Ka Makua Mau.  Bingham translated it to Hawaiian and people sang it to a western melody that dates back to the 1600s.

The melody may sound familiar to many – it was originally called ‘Old 100th‘ and is attributed to Louis Bourgeois (he penned the melody in the mid-1500s.)

It was later attached to a verse of Thomas Hen’s ‘All People That On Earth Do Dwell,’ written in about 1674. It had many verses (I have been able to find a version that has 11-verses; some versions had fewer.)

While most people may not recall the initial verses, what appears as his last is likely widely remembered.  Many people suggest that Bingham’s verse is merely a translation of Hen’s last verse.  It appears that is not the case.

I had the opportunity to attend the Hawaiian Mission Houses’ program “Ke Ala O Ka Hua Mele” – a four-part discussion and musical series on the evolution of Hawaiian music.  One part focused on Himeni (Hawaiian Hymns.)

We were in Kawaiahaʻo Church, the Church choir sang several hymns; one was Hoʻonani Hope (Ka Buke Himeni – Bingham’s translation.)  This was waaay cool.

A handout given by the Church shows Hoʻonani Hope – the Hawaiian was Bingham’s translation and the English verse was printed next to it.

Here is Bingham’s Hoʻonani Hope:
Hoʻonani i ka Makua mau
Ke Keiki me ke ka ʻUhane nō
Ke Akua mau, hoʻomaikaʻi pū
Ko kēia ao ko kēlā ao
ʻĀmene

This translates to:
Let us give praise to the eternal Father
To the Son and to the Holy Ghost
To God everlasting, let there ring praise
Both in this world as well as the kingdom beyond
Amen

“In his first efforts at translation, while still groping in the darkness of Polynesian thought patterns so foreign to his own, his mind must have fastened upon one of the shorter forms of the 100th Psalm which cannot have been very different from those used in the Bethel Chapel by the foreign congregation and appearing in 1840 in probably the earliest hymnal printed in English at the American mission press in Honolulu.” (The Friend, May 1935)

Bingham’s Hoʻonani Hope is also referred to as the ‘Hawaiian Doxology.’

Here is a rendition of Hoʻonani Hope – Hoʻonani I Ka Makua Mau, the Hawaiian Doxology:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eUFK03l8MI

(It was the only rehearsal this ‘combined school choir’ had – Aaron Mahi conductor.  They were students from schools associated with the Mission – Punahou, Lahainaluna, Mid-Pacific Institute and Kamehameha Schools.)

The words of the ‘traditional’ Doxology are:
Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise him, all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heav’nly hosts;
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost
Amen

Bingham did not translate the ‘Doxology’ verse we are accustomed to. (He may have even made up some or all of the English verse, in addition to the translation into Hawaiian.) (A second verse written by Haunani Bernadino was added in 2005.

© 2023 Hoʻokuleana LLC

by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Punahou – It Had More Than One Campus

Kapunahou, the site of the present Punahou School campus, was given to Kameʻeiamoku by Kamehameha, after the Battle of Nuʻuanu.  The land transferred to his son Hoapili, who resided there from 1804 to 1811. Hoapili passed the property to his daughter Kuini Liliha.

Sworn testimony before the Land Commission in 1849, and that body’s ultimate decision, noted that the “land was given by Governor Boki about the year 1829 to Hiram Bingham for the use of the Sandwich Islands Mission.”

The decision was made over the objection from Liliha; however Hoapili confirmed the gift. It was considered to be a gift from Kaʻahumanu, Kuhina Nui or Queen Regent at that time.

In Hiram Bingham’s time, the main part of the Kapunahou property was planted with sugarcane by his wife Sybil, with the aid of the female church-members.

Bingham’s idea was to make Kapunahou the parsonage, and to support his family from the profits of this cane field, selling the cane to the sugar mills, one of which was in Honolulu.

The other mill was in Mānoa Valley, owned by an Englishman; but he also made rum, and Queen Kaʻahumanu’s consistent hostility to rum caused his failure, and also the failure of sugar-cane culture at Punahou.  (Punahou Catalogue, 1866)

Founded in 1841, Punahou School (originally called Oʻahu College) was built at Kapunahou to provide a quality education for the children of Congregational missionaries, allowing them to stay in Hawaiʻi with their families, instead of being sent away to school.  The first class had 15 students.

The land area of Kapunahou was significantly larger than the present school campus size.

While many see Punahou today as the college preparatory school in lower Mānoa, over the years, the school, though based at Kapunahou, also had campuses and activities elsewhere.

All students who entered the Boarding department were required to take part in the manual labor of the institution, under the direction of the faculty, not to exceed an average of two hours for each day.  (Punahou Catalogue, 1899)

“We had a dairy, the Punahou dairy, over on the other side of Rocky Hill. That was all pasture. We had beautiful, delicious milk, all the milk you wanted. The cows roamed from there clear over to the stone wall on Manoa hill. There were a few gates and those gates caused me trouble because the bulls wanted to get out or some boys would leave a bar down … Occasionally, just often enough to keep me alert, there would be a bull wandering around across the road and down the hill onto Alexander Field or just where I wanted to go.”  (Shaw, Punahou)

By vote of the trustees, the standard of the school was raised, and the course of study included a thorough drill in elementary algebra, Latin, colloquial and written French, and a careful study of the poems of Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, Bryant and Emerson. There is also regular instruction in freehand drawing and vocal music through the year. Lectures were given with experiments, designed to serve as an introduction to the study of physical science. A brief course in physiology and hygiene was given by the president of the College.  (Punahou Catalogue, 1899)

In 1881, at the fortieth anniversary celebration of the school, a public appeal was made to provide for a professorship of natural science and of new buildings.   President William L Jones in his speech expressed the need for Punahou to meet the changing times.

He said: “The missionaries when they landed here were all cultivated gentlemen, trained in the colleges of the United States, and they were unwilling that their children would suffer from their self exile into this country. … A change has been coming over the aims of college education lately; people desire less Latin and Greek and more Natural Science, more Astronomy, more Chemistry, more modern language … We have to teach Chemistry without laboratory, Astronomy without a telescope, Natural History only from books. More men and machinery is what we want.”  (Soong)

The appeal was so successful that the trustees moved to purchase the Reverend Richard Armstrong premises at the head of Richards Street (at 91 Beretania Street adjoining Washington Place) from the Roman Catholic mission for the Punahou Preparatory School (the property had previously been used by the growing St Louis High school.)

On September 19, 1883, the Punahou Preparatory School was opened for the full term at the Armstrong Home … Three of the trustees were present at the opening exercises, together with many parents of the pupils, of whom there were 85 present, with a prospect of a larger attendance … It is the design of the trustees to have no pupils at Punahou proper, except such as are qualified to proceed with the regular academic course.  (The Friend, October 4, 1883)

By the 1898-1899 school year, there were 247 students in grades 1-8 in the Punahou Preparatory School campus downtown.  Later, in 1902, the Preparatory School was moved to the Kapunahou campus, where it occupied Charles R Bishop Hall.

Near the turn of the last century, the Punahou Board of Trustees decided to subdivide some of the land above Rocky Hill – they called their subdivision “College Hills;” at that time the trolley service was extended into Mānoa, which increased interest in this area.

The College Hills subdivision, the largest subdivision of the time (nearly 100 acres of land separated into parcels of from 10,000- to 20,000-square feet,) opened above Punahou and became a major residential area.

Then, in January 1925, Punahou bought the Honolulu Military Academy property – it had about 90-acres of land and a half-dozen buildings on the back side of Diamond Head.  (The Honolulu Military Academy was originally founded by Col LG Blackman, in 1911.)

It served as the “Punahou Farm” to carry on the school’s work and courses in agriculture.  “We were picked up and taken to the Punahou Farm School, which was also the boarding school for boys. The girls boarded at Castle Hall on campus.”  (Kneubuhl, Punahou)  The farm school was in Kaimuki between 18th and 22nd Avenues.

In addition to offices and living quarters, the Farm School supplied Punahou with most of its food supplies.  The compound included a big pasture for milk cows, a large vegetable garden, pigs, chickens, beehives, and sorghum and alfalfa fields that provided feed for the cows. Hired hands who tended the farm pasteurized the milk in a small dairy, bottled the honey and crated the eggs.  (Kneubuhl, Punahou)

The Punahou dairy herd was cared for by the students as part of their course of studies – the boys boarded there.  However, disciplinary troubles, enrollment concerns (not enough boys signing up for agricultural classes) and financial deficits led to its closure in 1929.

By the mid-1930s, the property was generally idle except for some faculty housing.  In 1939, Punahou sold the property to the government as a site for a public school (it’s now the site of Kaimuki Middle School.)

In addition to these, there belonged in former times, as an appurtenance to the land known as Kapunahou, a valuable tract of salt-ponds, on the sea-side to the eastward of Honolulu Harbor, called Kukuluāeʻo, and including an area of seventy-seven acres (this was just mauka of what is now Kewalo Basin.)  (Punahou Catalogue, 1866)

It’s not clear how/when the makai land “detached” from the other Punahou School pieces, but it did and was given to the ABCFM (for the pastor of Kawaiaha‘o Church.)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

It all happened in about a year …

A lot went on in other parts of the world:

February 17, 1818 – Henry ‘Ōpukaha‘ia died at the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall CT

October 20, 1818 – the 49th parallel was established as the border between US & Canada

November 21, 1818 – Russia’s Czar Alexander I petitioned for a Jewish state in Palestine

December 24, 1818 – ‘Silent Night’ composed by Franz Joseph Gruber and first sung the next day (Austria)

December 25, 1818 – Handel’s Messiah, premiered in the US in Boston

January 2, 1819 – The Panic of 1819 began, the first major financial crisis in the US

January 25, 1819 – Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia

February 6, 1819 – Sir Stamford Raffles entered into a treaty with the deposed Sultan of the area which gave Britain authority over the island of Singapore in return for a pension and recognition of that Sultan’s status as legitimate ruler.  (The event which founded modern Singapore.)

February 15, 1819 – The US House of Representatives agrees to the Tallmadge Amendment barring slaves from the new state of Missouri (the opening vote that led to the Missouri Compromise)

February 22, 1819 – Spain cedes Florida to the US

March 2, 1819 – Arkansas Territory is created

May 22 – June 20, 1819 – The SS Savannah became the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean (Savannah, Georgia to Liverpool, England

July 4, 1819 – Arkansas Territory is effective

August 6, 1819 – Norwich University is founded by Captain Alden Partridge in Vermont as the first private military school in the United States.

August 7, 1819 – Battle of Boyacá: Simón Bolívar was victorious over the Royalist Army in Colombia. Colombia acquired its definitive independence from Spanish monarchy.

August 24, 1819 – Samuel Seymour sketches a Kansa lodge and war dance at the present location of Manhattan, Kansas, while part of Stephen Harriman Long’s exploring party. This work is now the oldest drawing known to be made in the state of Kansas.

October 23, 1819 – led by Hiram Bingham, the Pioneer Company of American Protestant missionaries from the northeast US set sail on the Thaddeus for the Sandwich Islands (now known as Hawai‘i.)  The Mission Prudential Committee in giving instructions to the pioneers of 1819 said:

“Your mission is a mission of mercy, and your work is to be wholly a labor of love. … Your views are not to be limited to a low, narrow scale, but you are to open your hearts wide, and set your marks high. You are to aim at nothing short of covering these islands with fruitful fields, and pleasant dwellings and schools and churches, and of Christian civilization.”  (The Friend)

December 14, 1819 – Alabama is admitted as the 22nd US state

A lot went on in the Islands:

To set a foundation, we are reminded that in 1782 Kamehameha I began a war of conquest, and, by 1795, with his superior use of modern weapons and western advisors, he subdued all other chiefdoms, with the exception of Kauai.  King Kamehameha I launched two invasion attempts on Kauai (1796 and 1804;) both failed.

In 1804, King Kamehameha I moved his capital from Lāhainā, Maui to Honolulu, O‘ahu.  In the face of the threat of a further invasion, in 1810, Kaumuali‘i decided to peacefully unite with Kamehameha and ceded Kauai and Ni‘ihau to Kamehameha and the Hawaiian Islands were unified under a single leader. The agreement with Kaumuali‘i marked the end of war and thoughts of war across the archipelago.  Later, Kamehameha returned to his home, Kamakahonu, in Kailua-Kona on the Island of Hawaiʻi.

Here is some of what happened in Hawaiʻi in that fateful time:

September 11, 1818, Argentine corsair Hipólito (Hypolite) Bouchard (1783–1843,) signed and Kamehameha placed his mark on a Treaty of Commerce, Peace and Friendship with Hipólito Bouchard, that, reputedly, made Hawaiʻi the first country to recognize United Provinces of Rio de la Plata (Argentina) as an independent state.  In recognition of the reported ‘treaty’, there is a street in Buenos Aires, Argentina named Hawai (a bit misspelled.)

April of 1819, Don Francisco de Paula Marin was summoned to Kailua-Kona the Big Island of Hawai‘i to assist Kamehameha, who had become ill.  Although he had no formal medical training, Marin had some basic medical knowledge, but was not able to improve the condition of Kamehameha.

May 8, 1819, King Kamehameha I died.

“Kamehameha was a planner, so he talked to brothers Hoapili and Hoʻolulu about where his iwi (bones) should be hidden,” noting Kamehameha wanted his bones protected from desecration not only from rival chiefs, but from westerners who were sailing into the islands and sacking sacred sites. (Maiʻoho)

Their father, High Chief Kameʻeiamoku, was one of the “royal twins” who helped Kamehameha I come to power – the twins are on the Islands’ coat of arms – Kameʻeiamoku is on the right (bearing a kahili,) his brother, Kamanawa is on the left, holding a spear.

September 19, 1819, Edmond Gardner, captain of the New Bedford whaler Balaena (also called Balena,) and Elisha Folger, captain of the Nantucket whaler Equator, became the first American whalers to visit the Hawaiian Islands

November 1819, Kamehameha I, his son, Liholiho (King Kamehameha II) declared an end to the kapu system.   “An extraordinary event marked the period of Liholiho’s rule, in the breaking down of the ancient tabus (kapu), the doing away with the power of the kahunas to declare tabus and to offer sacrifices, and the abolition of the tabu which forbade eating with women (ʻai noa, or free eating.)”  (Kamakau)

“The custom of the tabu upon free eating was kept up because in old days it was believed that the ruler who did not proclaim the tabu had not long to rule…. The tabu eating was a fixed law for chiefs and commoners, not because they would die by eating tabu things, but in order to keep a distinction between things permissible to all people and those dedicated to the gods”. (Kamakau)

Kekuaokalani, Liholiho’s cousin, opposed the abolition of the kapu system and assumed the responsibility of leading those who opposed its abolition.  Kekuaokalani (who was given Kūkaʻilimoku (the war god) before his death) demanded that Liholiho withdraw his edict on abolition of the kapu system.  (If the kapu fell, the war god would lose its potency.)  (Daws)

The two powerful cousins engaged at the final Hawaiian battle of Kuamoʻo; Liholiho’s forces defeated Kekuaokalani.

December 1819, just seven months after the death of Kamehameha I, the allies of his two opposing heirs met in battle on the jagged lava fields south of Keauhou Bay.  Kekuaokalani (wanting restoration of the kapu) marched up the Kona Coast from Kaʻawaloa and met the warriors under Liholiho (Kamehameha II) at Kuamo‘o, just south of Keauhou.  Liholiho’s forces won.

April 4, 1820 (after 164-days at sea) the Thaddeus arrived and anchored at Kailua-Kona with the Pioneer Company of American Protestant missionaries

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 Missions (ABCFM) in the Hawaiian Islands.)

At the time,

“This village (Honolulu,) which contains about two hundred houses, is situated upon a level plain extending some distance back from the bay part of which forms the harbour, to the foot of the high hills which abound throughout the Island. The little straw-huts clusters of them in the midst of cocoanut groves, look like bee-hives, and the inhabitants swarming about them like bees.”

“In passing through the midst, in our way to the open plain, it was very pleasant to hear their friendly salutation, Alloah (Aloha,) some saying, e-ho-ah, (where going?) We answered, mar-oo, up yonder. Then, as usual, they were pleased that we could num-me-num-me Owhyhee (talk Hawaiian.)”  (Sybil Bingham)

“Passing through the irregular village of some thousands of inhabitants, whose grass thatched habitations were mostly small and mean, while some were more spacious, we walked about a mile northwardly to the opening of the valley of Pauoa, then turning south-easterly, ascended to the top of Punchbowl Hill an extinguished crater, whose base bounds the north-east part of the village or town.”  (Hiram Bingham)

“Below us (below Punchbowl,) on the south and west, spread the plain of Honolulu, having its fish-pond and salt making pools along the sea-shore, the village and fort between us and the harbor, and the valley stretching a few miles north into the interior, which presented its scattered habitation and numerous beds of kalo (taro) in it various stages of growth, with its large green leaves, beautifully embossed on the silvery water, in which it flourishes.”  (Hiram Bingham)

“The soil is of the best kind, producing cocoanuts, bananas, and plantains, bread fruit, papia, ohia, oranges, lemons, limes, grapes, tamarinds, sweet potatoes, taro, yams, watermelons, muskmelons, cucumbers and pineapples, and I doubt not would yield fine grain of any kind.”  (Ruggles, The Friend)

“We were sheltered in three native-built houses, kindly offered us by Messrs. Winship, Lewis and Navarro, somewhat scattered in the midst of an irregular village or town of thatched huts, of 3,000 or 4,000 inhabitants.”  (Hiram Bingham)  “(O)ur little cottage built chiefly of poles, dried grass and mats, being so peculiarly exposed to fire, beside being sufficiently filled with three couples and things for immediate use, consisting only of one room with a little partition and one door.”  (Sybil Bingham)

“In addition to their homes, the missionaries had grass meeting places, and later, churches.  One of the first was on the same site as the present Kawaiahaʻo Church.  On April 28, 1820, the Protestant missionaries held a church service for chiefs, the general population, ship’s officers and sailors in the larger room in Reverend Hiram Bingham’s house.  This room was used as a school room during the weekdays and on Sunday the room was Honolulu’s first church auditorium.”  (Damon)

The image shows Liholiho eating with women (Mark Twain-Roughing It.) 

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James Kahuhu

On October 23, 1819, the Pioneer Company of American Protestant missionaries from the northeast US set sail on the Thaddeus for the Sandwich Islands (now known as Hawai‘i.)  There were seven American couples sent by the ABCFM in this first company.

These included two Ordained Preachers, Hiram Bingham and his wife Sybil and Asa Thurston and his wife Lucy; two Teachers, Mr. Samuel Whitney and his wife Mercy and Samuel Ruggles and his wife Mary; a Doctor, Thomas Holman and his wife Lucia; a Printer, Elisha Loomis and his wife Maria; and a Farmer, Daniel Chamberlain, his wife and five children.

By the time the Pioneer Company arrived, Kamehameha I had died and the centuries-old kapu system had been abolished; through the actions of King Kamehameha II (Liholiho,) with encouragement by former Queens Kaʻahumanu and Keōpūolani (Liholiho’s mother,) the Hawaiian people had already dismantled their heiau and had rejected their religious beliefs.

One of the first things the missionaries did was begin to learn the Hawaiian language and create an alphabet for a written format of the language.   Their emphasis was on teaching and preaching.

The first mission station was at Kailua-Kona, where they first landed in the Islands, then the residence of the King (Liholiho, Kamehameha II;) Asa and Lucy Thurston manned the mission, there.

Liholiho was Asa Thurston’s first pupil. His orders were that “none should be taught to read except those of high rank, those to whom he gave special permission, and the wives and children of white men.”

James Kahuhu and John ʻlʻi were two of his favorite courtiers, whom he placed under Mr. Thurston’s instruction in order that he might judge whether the new learning was going to be of any value.  (Alexander, The Friend, December 1902)

In 1820, Missionary Lucy Thurston noted in her Journal, “The king (Liholiho, Kamehameha II) brought two young men to Mr. Thurston, and said: ‘Teach these, my favorites, (John Papa) Ii and (James) Kahuhu. It will be the same as teaching me. Through them I shall find out what learning is.’”

“To do his part to distinguish and make them respectable scholars, he dressed them in a civilized manner. They daily came forth from the king, entered the presence of their teacher, clad in white, while his majesty and court continued to sit in their girdles.”

“Although thus distinguished from their fellows, in all the beauty and strength of ripening manhood, with what humility they drank in instruction from the lips of their teacher, even as the dry earth drinks in water!”

“After an absence of some months, the king returned, and called at our dwelling to hear the two young men, his favorites, read. He was delighted with their improvement, and shook Mr. Thurston most cordially by the hand – pressed it between both his own – then kissed it.” (Lucy Thurston)

Kahuhu was among the earliest of those associated with the chiefs to learn both spoken and written words. Kahuhu then became a teacher to the chiefs.

In April or May 1821, the King and the chiefs gathered in Honolulu and selected teachers to assist Mr Bingham.  James Kahuhu, John ʻĪʻi, Haʻalilio, Prince Kauikeaouli were among those who learned English.  (Kamakau)

On October 7, 1829, it seems that Kauikeaouli (Kamehameha III) set up a legislative body and council of state when he prepared a definite and authoritative declaration to foreigners and each of them signed it.  (Frear – HHS)  Kahuhu was one of the participants.

King Kamehameha III issued a Proclamation “respecting the treatment of Foreigners within his Territories.”  It was prepared in the name of the King and the Chiefs in Council:  Kauikeaouli, the King; Gov. Boki; Kaʻahumanu; Gov. Adams Kuakini; Manuia; Kekūanāoʻa; Hinau; ʻAikanaka; Paki; Kīnaʻu; John ʻIʻi and James Kahuhu.

In part, he states, “The Laws of my Country prohibit murder, theft, adultery, fornication, retailing ardent spirits at houses for selling spirits, amusements on the Sabbath Day, gambling and betting on the Sabbath Day, and at all times.  If any man shall transgress any of these Laws, he is liable to the penalty, – the same for every Foreigner and for the People of these Islands: whoever shall violate these Laws shall be punished.”

It continues with, “This is our communication to you all, ye parents from the Countries whence originate the winds; have compassion on a Nation of little Children, very small and young, who are yet in mental darkness; and help us to do right and follow with us, that which will be for the best good of this our Country.”

The Hawaiʻi State Archives is the repository of significant historic documents for Hawaiʻi; reportedly, the oldest Hawaiian language document in its possession is a letter written by James Kahuhu.

Writing to Chief John Adams Kuakini, Kahuhu’s letter was partially in English and partially Hawaiian (at that time, Kuakini was learning both English and written Hawaiian.)

Below is a transcription of Kahuhu’s letter.  (HSA)

Oahu. Makaliʻi 12, 1822.
Kawaiahaʻo.
My Dear Chief Mr. John Adams Kuakini. I love you very much. This is my communication to you. Continue praying to Jehovah our God. Keep the Sabbath which is God’s holy day. Persevere in your learning the good Gospel of Jehovah. By and by perhaps we shall know the good word of Jesus Christ. Then we shall know the good word of God.

A few begin to understand the good word of God. I am very pleased with the good word of God which has been brought here to enlighten this dark land. Who will save our souls and take them up to heaven, the place of eternal life. I am presently teaching Nahiʻenaʻena. I am teaching seven of them. Nahienaena, Kauikeaouli, Halekiʻi, Ulumāheihei Waipa, Ulumāheihei a Kapalahaole, Nakapuai and Noaʻawa are the students I am teaching. I may have more in the future. You must obey your good teacher, Hopu. Persevere with him and don’t give up.

Keliʻiahonui has learned to write quite well, he sent a letter to Oahu. Tell Hopu that Keliʻiahonui misses him. The King is learning to write from Mr. Bingham. Kalanimōku, Kīnaʻu and Kekauōnohi are learning to write Hawaiian. Mr. Thurston is their teacher. Here is another word to you, if you see Kalapauwahiole tell him to come to Oahu as I would like very much for him to come to Oahu.
James Kahuhu

(Makaliʻi was the name of a month: December on Hawai‘i, April on Moloka’i, October on Oʻahu.  (Malo))

The image shows the first page of the Kahuhu letter to Kuakini (HSA.) 

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