Christian benevolence paid for the education that hastened their conversions. The mission published stories to convince the public that once the transformation was initiated, through their financial intervention, the Hawaiian men would take it upon themselves to convert the other Hawaiians in their midst. Rev. William S. Vaill, who had taken in at least three Hawaiian students as boarders at his home in 1815, wrote to the editor of the Religious Intelligencer about Thomas Hopu’s visit to John Honoli‘i, his benighted countryman who had arrived in the country in December 1815. Hopu reportedly came sixty miles on foot to visit Honoli‘i, who was at Rev. Vaill’s home in North Guilford, Connecticut. Honoli‘i was joining William Kanui, who was already engaged as Vaill’s pupil. Honoli‘i was “buried in all the senseless ignorance of a devotee to a block of wood,”34 wrote Rev. Vaill. “Whatever ideas the more enlightened of his countrymen may have of God, or of the soul of man,” Honoli‘i “had none.” Honoli‘i’s ignorance was placed in stark contrast to the newly acquired enlightenment of ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia and Hopu. “He could mutter over his unmeaning prayers; and previous to leaving his native place, had sacrificed a hog, as a preparatory step to becoming a priest in their filthy temples.”35 These scenes were constructed to shock the American public, to stoke their curiosity about the Hawaiian men, and to engage their imaginations by allowing individuals to place themselves as witnesses to such dreaded scenes. Relief at finding oneself, after these brief “imagination vacations,” within the safety of the home or church, reinforced the distance between the civilized self and heathen Others. But while the imagination and actual encounter with Hawaiian men reinforced the distance between Owhyhees and Americans, plays like the Pantomime of Captain Cook offered audiences a secure space in which to experience the exotic, extending the viewer’s comfort zone and slowly transforming the unknown exotic into the familiar. Thus imagination labored under a double process: one of confirming distance, while another supplied a comforting sense of superiority and condescension that grew out of the conviction of authentic knowledge of the savage. Cultivating the public’s desire for authentic natives—as the theaters, waxworks, and museums promised—contributed to a cultivated and progressive knowing that inspired a spirit of generous giving that would in turn support the “spirit of missions.”36
The difference between “heathen” beliefs and logic and those of the civilized ministers was exemplified in the discussion between Rev. Vaill and Honoli‘i about where the soul went after death. When asked by Rev. Vaill where he thought his dead mother had gone, Honoli‘i “pointed to the earth, and said, ‘there.’ ” When asked if he thought she had gone to heaven, Honoli‘i shook his head and replied, “No heaven, Owhyhee.”37
Conversion was supposed to be a painful experience for all Christians as the renunciation of one’s past ignorance and sin for new birth. But cross-cultural conversion was painful for other reasons, as it was frequently impeded and by turns spurred on by the conviction of the American missionaries that they were possessed of Christian cultural superiority. Rev. Vaill had never been to the Sandwich Islands, nor was he ever likely to make the long voyage. Instead, he crafted a Hawaiian imaginary out of what he knew to be common characteristics of idolatrous heathens throughout the ages. Honoli‘i was taught a bit about God and came to see, according to Rev. Vaill, “that our religion was better than theirs.” One day, Honoli‘i described Hawaiian “idols” as having hands and feet in a conversation with the minister. “I said, your God has hands, but he no work. He replied, with a smile of contempt, No. Your God has eyes; but he no see. He replied again, shaking his head in disdain, No.”38 “Communication” between Rev. Vaill and Honoli‘i lay in Vaill’s assumptions about what Honoli‘i meant when he gestured, smiled, shook his head—in perhaps Vaill’s broken knowledge of Hawaiian language. To the reading audience, however, who would not pick up on Vaill’s inadequate knowledge of Hawaiian, it was his staged pidgin English that spoke volumes. The responsibility (kuleana) lay upon Kanui, a Hawaiian man better skilled at English, to be the translator and conveyor of meaning between the minister and his new charge. And yet, in all the accounts provided by missionary writers and the mission board themselves, there is no question about the missionaries’ ability to authoritatively interpret the words, meanings, gestures—the hearts of Hawaiians—for a benevolent Christian public.
Hopu’s approach to instruction was shown to be less painful, and yielded more progress: “He [Hopu] labored and prayed in their own tongue, and observed, that if his brethren had taught him in this way, he might have found Christ in one day.”39 The alienation of Hopu’s individual soul from other Christians was made more acute because the words of God could not be expressed to him in a familiar tongue. Hawaiians far from home also found solace in each other’s presence and shared memories from home as they lived a temporary life in the diaspora. Language may have facilitated bouts of homecoming reminiscence. Of those Hawaiians that were in New England, Hopu, ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia, and especially Honoli‘i, were noted to have retained their native language.40 Rev. Vaill hoped to persuade potential donors that the best thing for the conversion of Hawaiians would be to educate more of them and place them in the mission field. Why wouldn’t this work in the Sandwich Islands? The experiment was already working in North Guilford.
George Prince Tamoree (Kaumuali‘i)
“I have the pleasure seen [sic] the young prince, at Charlestown,” wrote Benjamin Carhoooa (Kalua), a Hawaiian man living in Boston, to Henry ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia on May 30, 1816. As vast as the land occupied by Americans was in 1816, Hawaiian men who arrived in the fledgling nation were possessed of an uncanny ability to find one another. Working and living far from home, Hawaiian men went to great lengths to keep in contact once they had become acquainted. The task of finding other displaced countrymen would have been aided by the newspapers, which carried information regarding the arrival of Hawaiian youth in the country on particular ships arriving at specific ports. Some of these men were passably literate and wrote to one another, sharing news from their area. “The Prince,” Kalua wrote, was working in the purser’s office at the Boston Navy Yard in Charlestown. He had forgotten how to speak Hawaiian, and he said that his father was the king of Attoi (Kaua‘i). When asked his father’s name, the young man’s reply to Kalua was “Tamaahmaah.”41 Of course, Kamehameha was not the ancestral ruling chief of Kaua‘i; indeed, he had been the opponent of this young Hawaiian man’s father. Kamehameha was certainly not this young man’s father, but since “the Prince” had been in America since he was about six years of age, it was understandable that his memories of home and family were blurred by the years he had spent in America and at sea.
Perhaps it was Kalua’s letter that alerted the ABCFM to the presence of a Hawaiian of “royal” lineage living nearby in Charlestown. Four months later, the ABCFM held their seventh annual meeting in Hartford, Connecticut, where the petition to establish the school for heathen youth was presented, and the subject of educating the Sandwich Islands men, including the newly discovered “son of a king in one of the islands,” was enthusiastically discussed.42 Soon all of America would learn about Prince Tamoree (Kaumuali‘i), heir of the king of Atowy (Kaua‘i). The board had taken steps to get Kaumuali‘i discharged from the US Navy so that “he may be placed under advantage similar to those which his four countrymen enjoy.”43
The school which Prince Kaumuali‘i, Henry ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia, and the other students would call “home” was settled in the town of Cornwall, Litchfield County, Connecticut. While revivals in religion led to the creation of the ABCFM in Boston, several towns in Litchfield exercised their religious fervor by supporting the Hawaiians and then petitioning the board for the education of heathen youth in America. The Cornwall Foreign Mission School was built on land good for farming. Farmers grew primarily wheat, but also raised oats, rye, and hay. Butter, and especially cheese, was manufactured for export, as well as beef, pork, and wool.
While