Hawai'ian History

Some scholars refer to what happened beginning in 1819 as the "Hawai'ian cultural revolution."  Here is a brief chronicling of what life was like just before and during those critical years and what forces were driving the change.
 
Not until 1810 was there a single king over all of the "Sandwich Islands," as they were once called by outsiders.  Kamehameha was this first great king.  There were a number of lesser kingdoms and in each of these small dominions, the king headed the social pyramid, assisted by a chief minister and a high priest.  The majority of Hawaii's people were commoners, subjects of the chief upon whose land they lived.  Here was a highly stratified and strict caste system. 

The Kapu System is what cemented the ancient social structure.  The word, known in English as "taboo" meant sacred or prohibited.  The Hawai'ian religious system demanded death for the breaking of a kapu.  Violators were swiftly punished by being strangled or clubbed to death.  If men and women ate together, the penalty was death. If a woman ate pork or certain fish or bananas the penalty was death. If the shadow of a commoner fell on a priest or chief the penalty was death. The Hawai'ian gods were hard taskmasters demanding all manner of sacrifice and offerings. In some temples, human sacrifices took place.  In fact, death was a common penalty for disregard of custom and for disrespect toward gods or rulers. 

In 1778 when Captain Cook arrived at the Hawai'ian Islands, it was a time when the chiefs were constantly fighting for power. Kamehameha, the Great King, used British weaponry to control trade and by 1810 had become a very powerful and wealthy Hawai'ian ruler.  He understood the power of kapu to ensure control over all social classes, land and resources, thus, he was extremely strict in adhering to ancient laws and traditions.

King Kamehameha ruled the islands like a British Crown Colony and many Hawai'ians were killed due to forced unification of the Islands.  Whole villages were pushed off of the cliff of Pali in Oahu to their death. In one of these battles for power between two warring chiefs, Henry Obo'okiah, at the age of about twelve, helplessly watched as his parents were butchered before his eyes.  Henry was then forced to live as a slave with the man who killed his mother and father. Some of his fellow prisoners were thrown over a cliff as sacrifice to a god and so it appeared to Henry that the same would be his fate.  Being alert to the peril, he took a chance and escaped. When he saw a tall ship in Kealakekua Bay, he swam out to it and got away. Henry was about fifteen years old when he signed on as a cabin boy. Here he met Thomas Hopu another Hawai'ian boy in search of adventure. Providentially they both ended up in New England where, it so happened that Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale, took Henry into his home and taught him the Bible and other secular subjects. During these days the Lord changed his heart and he became a Christian. Unfortunately at the age of 26 in Cornwall Connecticut, Henry would succumb to typhus fever. His Christian testimony was published and became a best seller. It is interesting that the profits from the book, Memoirs of Henry Obo'okiah, were used to finance the missionary journeys to Hawai'i as well as to other lands. Inspired and encouraged by this dramatic testimony, the first missionaries sailed for Hawai'i on October 23rd, 1819, aboard the Thaddeus.

The Sandwich Islands Mission

This “First Company” of missionaries was made up of two ministers, a doctor, a farmer, a printer, two teachers, the wives of these men, and five children. The year was 1820.  They were accompanied by four young Hawai'ians, three of whom were Christian converts who had been educated at the Foreign Mission School.

The long journey down the east coast of America and around Cape Horn was an arduous one. The Hawai'ians onboard took to the task of teaching their language to the missionary couples to prepare them for what lay ahead. When the Thaddeus landed at Kailua-Kona in 1820, news was received that the great king, Kamehameha I had died and that his son and successor had abolished the cruel kapu system and had the temples destroyed. This prompted Samuel Ruggles, a member of that First Company, to note in his journal that the Hawai'ian people “...now have no worship but seem to be waiting for the law of Christ.”

When the missionaries arrived, they found a people that showed no pity to the aged, the sick or the insane; but instead, they taunted them and drove them away, left them to starve or buried them alive. The Hawai'ians mated so casually, killed their unwanted infants so calmly, gave away their children so readily that the missionaries at first thought that they had no hearts at all.

The missionaries were nicknamed “longnecks,” and were misunderstood for a time, but gradually the people began to see meaning in their quiet, friendly ways and soon learned to trust them.  The newcomers started schools wherever they went, and soon they were printing primers, hymn books and catechisms.  Rulers and chiefs were asking for teachers of their own.  One day Ka‘ahu manu, the favorite wife of the former king, came to the missionaries and asked to be baptized.  When it became known that the great queen had become a Christian, the first Hawai'ian convert, the missionaries’ teaching took hold in the  
Hawai'ian Kingdom. 
 
In later years Hewahewa, the highest priest (and the first to set fire to a temple), admitted: "I knew the wooden images of deities, carved by our own hands, could not supply our wants, but worshiped them because it was a custom of our fathers. My thought has always been, there is only one great God, dwelling in the heavens."  Only the creator of the universe, Jehovah, could have scripted these timely events. In the midst of this chaos, the stage was divinely set for the entrance of the missionaries with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The missionaries brought a message of peace, tranquility, and Aloha.

”I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images....Sing unto the Lord a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein; the isles, and the inhabitants thereof...Let them give glory unto the Lord, and declare his praise in the islands.”  
                                                                                                                                     Isaiah 42:8‑12

From 1827 to 1840, nearly 20,000 Hawai'ians chose to accept Christianity as the true way.  The missionaries had reduced the Hawai'ian language to written form, which enabled the Hawaiian people to read and write in their own language.  Schools were quickly established throughout the islands.  By 1831, only 11 years after the missionaries' arrival, some 52,000 pupils had been enrolled.  The missionaries introduced western medicine and undertook the Kingdom's first modern census.  The humble but diligent efforts of these first missionaries are credited with helping Hawai'i become and remain an independent nation at a time when Hawai'i was ripe for colonization.

In 1843 Kamehameha III spoke the words at Kawaiahao Church that have become the motto of Hawai'i: “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.”
 

The history of the Sandwich Islands Mission reflects the strong commitment by a small corps of individuals who worked diligently to provide education, medical health, but most of all, they brought the good news about how God's Son came to earth and died, thus taking the punishment for man's sins. Mission efforts played a significant role in setting the stage for the social, political and economic transformation of Hawai‘i, the effects of which are still felt today. 

                    
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              If you are on the island of Hawai'i on a Sunday, we would recommend that you visit Berean Bible
              Church, a branch from the early mission group.  For more information go to www.hilobereans.com

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