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The Sandwich Islands Missionaries Create a Literature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
Aside from conversions, the most notable and noble achievements of the Congregational and Presbyterian missionaries, who journeyed to the Sandwich Islands under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, were the systematization of the Hawaiian language, the development of an educational system, and the preparation of literature to be used in the churches and schools. Evangelism was the primary function of the mission, but teaching and printing, although auxiliary to the main function, played a large and significant role in the christianizing process. Through the printed word the missionaries gained access to the hearts and minds of their pupils; religious concepts and ideas were incorporated in the reading material; thus teachers converted as they taught.
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- Copyright © American Society of Church History 1962
References
1 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Instructions of the Prudential Committee of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to the Sandwich Islands Mission, Lahainaluna, 1838, p. 27. Cf. Missionary Herald, XXIII, 1827, 240. Organ of and published by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Boston. Hereafter M. H.
2 M. H., XIX, 1823, 183.
3 Hiram Bingham, Residence of Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands, Hartford and New York, 1848, p. 156.
4 Spaulding, Thomas Marshall, The Adoption of the Hawaiian Alphabet, Hawaiian Historical Society Papers, Honolulu, no. 17, Sept. 30, 1930, p. 30.Google Scholar Here-after HHS.
5 Journal of the missionaries on Oahu, Jan. 1, 1822, M. H., XIX, 1823, 42; William Ellis, Polynesian Researches During a Residence of Nearly Eight Years in the Society and Sandwich Islands, 4 vols., London, 2 ed., 1832–1834, IV, 53–54.
6 Ibid., II, 19–20. The orthography of the French navigator Louis Antoine Bougainville, who visited Tahiti in 1768, about twelve months after its discovery by Captain Samuel Wallis, the missionaries found nearer the native sounds than that which Captain Cook and his companions afterwards followed. For example, the principal island Bougainville called Tahiti, and his designations of other islands closely resembled those given by the people. Ibid., p. 20.
7 Ibid., pp. 220–223.
8 Ibid., pp. 223, 235–236.
9 M. H. XX, 1824, 183. The precarious state of his wife's health required Ellis, in 1825, to return to England where he brought out in 1826 a Narrative of a Tour Through Hawaii or Owhyhee, and in 1829 his Polynesian Researches (2 vols. 1829, 4 vols. 1832). In 1830 he was appointed assistant foreign secretary to the London Missionary Society, and soon thereafter chief secretary. In addition to missionary endeavors, Ellis distinguished himself for his literary productions which, besides the two already named, included A History of the London Missionary Society (1884, vol. I), The American Mission in the Sandwich Islands (1866), Three Visits to Madagascar (1858), Madagascar Revisited (1867), and The Martyr Church of Madagascar (1870), as well as an annual, The Christian Keep-sake, which he edited. In several points Ellis found the aboriginal languages of Madagascar and the South Sea Islands “strikingly analogous, if not identical, though the islands are about 10,000 geographical miles distant from each other.” Narrative of A Tour Through Hawaii, p. 471. Ellis' second wife, Miss Sarah Strickney, whom he married after the death of his first spouse, also acquired considerable literary fame in connection with The Poetry of Life, The Women of England, and numerous other books. Moreover, she instituted and personally superintended Rawdon House, a school for young ladies. Cf. W. G. B., “William Ellis,” Dictionary of National Biography, VI, 714–715.
10 Miscellaneous Papers Relating to Hawaii, pp. 178–179, Stephen Spaulding Collection. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
11 Spaulding, op. cit., p. 33.
12 Ibid., p. 30.
13 M. H., XXIII, 1827, 272.
14 Laura Fish Judd, Honolulu: Sketches of the Life, Social, Political and Religious in the Hawaiian Islands from 1828 to 1861, New York, 1880, p. 25.
15 William Ellis, Narrative of a Tour through Hawaii or Owhyhee, London, 1828, p. 471.
16 Ibid., pp. 471–472.
17 Brown, J. Macmillian, “The Languages of the Pacific,” Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology and Natural History, Occasional Papers, VII, no. 2, Honolulu, 1920, p. 19.Google Scholar
18 Ibid., pp. 18–19. Note. Northern here refers to the northern Polynesian group and not to islands in the North Pacific, or north of the equator. All the islands mentioned, except the Hawaiian, are in the South Pacific.
19 M. H., XXVII, 1831, 115.
20 Ibid., XXII, 1826, 15.
21 Ibid., XXIV, 1828, 210.
22 Ibid., XXVII, 1831, 115.
23 Spaulding, Thomas Marshall, “The First Printing in Hawaii,” Bibliographical Society of America Papers, L, 1956, 325–326Google Scholar, has a brief story of these early mission presses.
24 Allen, Riley H., “Hawaii's Pioneers in Journalism,” HHS Report, 1928, pp. 72–73.Google Scholar
25 HHS Report, 1921, p. 21.
26 Kuykendall, Ralph S., “American Interests and American Influence in Hawaii in 1842,” HHS Report, 1930, p. 54.Google Scholar
27 M. H., XXIII, 1827, 246; Hawaiian Mission Children's Society, Missionary Album, Honolulu, 1937, p. 181. Hereafter Missionary Album.
28 Ibid., p. 131.
29 Ibid., pp. 17, 73, 95; HHS Report, 1919, p. 44; Rufus Anderson, History of the Sandwich Islands Mission, Boston, 1870, pp. 390–391.
30 Ibid., pp. 392, 393, 394–395; Missionary Album, p. 23.
31 Anderson, op. cit., p. 327.
32 Ibid., p. 394; Missionary Album, pp. 79, 111. Cf. Damon, Ethel M., Na Himeni Hawaii: A Record of Hymns in the Hawaiian Language, Honolulu, 1935.Google Scholar
33 Anderson, op. cit., p. 391; Missionary Album, p. 35.
34 Ibid., p. 135.
35 Anderson, op. cit., p. 392.
36 Ibid., pp. 393, 395; Missionary Album, p. 159.
37 Ibid., p. 23. Anderson, op. cit., p. 392.
38 Ibid., pp. 391–392; Missionary Album, p. 69.
39 Ibid., pp. 39, 189; Anderson, op. cit., p. 393.
40 Minutes of the General Meeting of the Sandwich Islands Mission. Honolulu, 1833, 1834, p. 27; Richard Armstrong to Reuben A. Chapman, Feb. 18, 1840. Armstrong-Chapman Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.; Missionary Album, p. 37; Anderson, op. cit., p. 393.
41 Ibid., p. 393.
42 Ibid., p. 393.
43 Ibid., p. 392.
44 Ibid., p. 391.
45 Kuykendall, Ralph S., The Hawaiian Kingdom 1778–1854, Foundation and Transformation, Honolulu, 1947, p. 107.Google Scholar
46 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Report, 1834, Boston, 1845, p. 147.
47 Anderson, op. cit., p. 391.
48 Ibid., p. 394; Missionary Album, p. 39.
49 Ibid., pp. 19, 59; Anderson, op. cit., pp. 393, 394.
50 Ibid., p. 395; Missionary Album, pp. 23, 37, 39, 189.
51 Judd, Gerrit P. IV, Dr. Judd, Friend of Hawaii. A Biography of Gerrit (Parmele Judd (1803–1873), Honolulu, 1960, p. 91Google Scholar; Anderson, op. cit., p. 395. Dr. Judd also prepared handwritten medical instructions in the Hawaiian language for both missionaries and Hawaiians to assist in treating themselves, their families, and their charges. G. P. Judd IV, op. cit., p. 91.
52 Missionary Album, p. 183. In 1839 Tinker took over the editorship of The Hawaiian Spectator. An early publication in Honolulu, which claimed to be the “oldest newspaper west of the Rockies,” was The Temperance Advocate and Seamen's Friend, later called The Friend, initiated in 1843 by Rev. Samuel C. Damon, chaplain of the Seamen's Bethel, appointed by the American Seamen's Friend Society. Although not a member proper of the Sandwich Islands Mission supported by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, both he and his son, Samuel M., were always closely associated with the missionary party. The files of The Friend are a rich repository of Hawaiian history.
53 Anderson, op. cit., pp. 395, 397.
54 Ibid., p. 397.
55 Ibid., p. 395–396; Missionary Album, p. 69; Historical Notes, HHS Report, 1950, p. 19.
56 See Hawaiian History by Hawaiians or Hawaiian Antiquities, Lahainaluna, 1838; Malo, David, Hawaiian Antiquities, translated by DrEmerson, N. B., Museum, B. P. Bishop, Special Publications, 2, Honolulu, 1903.Google Scholar
57 Thrum, Thomas G., “Brief Sketch of the Life and Labors of S. M. Kamakau, Hawaiian Historian,” HHS Report, 1917, pp. 40–53Google Scholar; Samuel H. Elbert, “The Hawaiian Dictionaries, Past and Future,” Ibid., 1953, pp. 5–17.
58 Anderson, op. cit., p. 395.
59 Missionary Album, p. 29.
60 William Richards' Report to the Sandwich Islands Mission on His First Year in Government Service, 1838–1839, Hawaiian Mission Children's Society Library. Printed in HHS Report, 1942, pp. 65–69, note 68. Anderson, op. cit., p. 395.
61 Minutes of the General Meeting, 1834, p. 34; Elbert, “The Hawaiian Dictionaries, Past and Future,” op. cit., p. 11. The manuscript for the first draft of the 1836 dictionary is in the Punahou School Library.
62 J. C. A., “Lorrin Andrews,” Dictionary of American Biography, ed., Allen Johnson, I, 296.
63 Elbert, “The Hawaiian Dictionaries, Past and Future,” op. cit., p. 12.
64 Loc. cit.
65 M. H., XXXVIII, 1841, 145.
66 Laura Fish Judd, op. cit., p. 68.
67 Anderson, op. cit., p. 327, 396; see his catalog of publications, pp. 390–397; Rufus Anderson, The Hawaiian Islands: Their Progress and Condition Under Missionary Labors, Bost on and New York, 1864, pp. 262–268.