Hiram and Sybil Bingham

Kauaʻi A History – My new book from Mutual Publishing

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Kauaʻi A History from Mutual Publishing is becoming a popular book here in Kauaʻi. Over December I signed copies at Talk Story Bookstore in Hanapepe and interacted with visitors from across the mainland fielding questions about Kauaʻiʻs colorful past. About fifty images of Kauaʻiʻs history appear in the book, which I selected to both be new to kamaʻaina readers and informative to malihini readers are included, many in full color. The cover features an image new to me of Waimea folks sitting on a rock wall in front of either a thatched western style store or home alongside a traditional style thatched hale. Featured in the book are overviews of Kauaʻiʻs sugar plantations, town histories, and a look at WWII on the island.

Here’s the back cover blurb for the book:

Kaua’i A History paints a portrait of Old Kaua‘i in words and images, bringing back to life the rich heritage and independence of an island portrayed as the Separate Kingdom by historian Edward Joesting.
The narrative and images concisely offer informed accounts of Kaua‘i’s history, both island-wide and individual towns.

This image of a Boston engravers impression of missionary adventurer Hiram Binghamʻs drawing of his campsite at Nuʻalolo Kai along the Nā Pali Coast of Kauaʻi. This image is published in Kauaʻi A History for the first time since serving as a frontispiece to a rhetorical Sunday school book titled Conversations on the Sandwich Island Mission, First Edition 1829.

The Bingham engraving of Nuʻalolo camping appeared as a frontispiece to the first edition of Conversations on the Sandwich Island Mission…By A Lady, published in Boston in 1829 for the Massachusetts Sabbath Schools. Only a handful of the first edition of this book are known to exist. Unfortunately this copy of Conversations on the Sandwich Islands lacked its cover and frontispiece. I was able to copy the drawing from another copy. Surprisingly, this question and answer children’s book has a good description of surfing in the Hawaiian Islands taken from the journals of American missionaries to Hawaiʻi.

Here’s a description of surfing from Conversations on the Sandwich Island. The author – Sarah Tuttle – rewrote Hiram Binghamʻs description of surfing at Waimea, Kauaʻi in the company of Kaumualiʻi, the last independant Native Hawaiian ruler of Kauaʻi, excerpted from the journal of the missionaryʻs 1821 tour around the island.

Christmas 1819 As Celebrated Aboard the brig Thaddeus from Sybil Bingham’s Journal

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Sybil: Early on the morning of the 25th we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn and entered the southern temperate zone. The northern, the region of our birth, we shall probably never enter again.

But, distant climates need not look strange to us, for if we are the children of GOD, and live near to Him, we can never be far from home. [Christmas] was noticed by us as the Anniversary of the blessed Saviour’s birth. Mr. B preached from Luke 2, 14th. [Glory to God in the Highest] …It was peculiarly adapted both to the day and the circum- stances of most of the hearers,—on our way, as we are, with the glorious news of this most glorious event, to heathen sinners.


A CHRISTMAS HYMN By W. G. Conan [Sailor aboard the Thaddeus]
Sung at Sea by the Mission family – Tune – “The Hermit”

May Religion’s blest Star, as we traverse the Ocean,
Illumine our way, and its comforts impart,
While our fond lingering thoughts, we back with emotion,
To the country that holds the dear friends of each heart.
JEHOVAH— assist, in the soul-trying hour,
The Mission of Peace, to a far distant land,
By them, may the Priests of Idolatry learn,
That their Morais and Taboos and offerings are vain,
Let the Nation, from Idols and violence turn,
And the joy of Salvation perpetual reign.
Now swell the loud anthems of praise to the Lord,
From whom streams of Mercy incessantly flow,
Be the Father, the Son, and the Spirit adored,
By all nations, and kindreds, and realms here below.

January 11th, 1820 – What can I say to my sisters, this morning?
I can tell them, could the eye glance across the great waters and catch the little bark, ascending and descending the mountainous waves, which contains their dear sister, their hands would be involuntarily extended for her relief, and their cry would be save her! The sea runs very high, while the wind roars through the naked riggings as you may have heard it, in a November’s day, through the leafless trees of a majestic forest. The dashing of the waves on deck, the frequent fall of some thing below, the violent motion of the vessel, going up and then down, would seem to conspire to terrify and distress; yet I feel my mind calm as if by a winter’s fire in my own happy land. Is it not of the mercy of GOD? I feel it is. But, O, the poor returns I make ! We are approaching Cape Horn. What terrific scenes await us there, we know not.

“Sufficient for us, our Pilot is divinely wise, divinely good.”

Jubilee look at the Hawaiian church in 1870

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Rufus Anderson Portrait Wikimedia

Engraving by J. C. Buttre from a daguerreotype taken from “Discourse Commemorative of Rev. Rufus Anderson,” ABCFM publication, 1880. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The recently-released documentary A Witness To Aloha, created for the bicentennial of the landmark Kawaiaha‘o Church in Honolulu, has received great acclaim in Hawai‘i and wherever the 60-minute film has been viewed. A Witness to Aloha, directed by premier Hawai‘i filmmaker Dennis Lee, aired in April 2020 on KITV during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

To compliment the fine portrait of Kawaiaha‘o presented in A Witness To Aloha, I am posting an excerpt from the annual report of the Amerian Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions for 1870. In this report is an account of a visit to Kawaiaha‘o and Hawai‘i made in 1870 by Rufus Anderson the Secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission (ABCFM).

The overview offers an enlightening overview of the state of the Protestant church in the Hawaiian Islands some fifty years after the arrival of the pioneer mission company.

Anderson sailed to Honolulu from the West Coast to attend the Jubilee commemoration held in 1870 of the introduction of Christianity to the Hawaiian Islands. He found a flourishing native church in Hawai‘i in the years soon after the closing the ABCFM’s mission to Hawai‘i in 1863.

In 1820 the first group of Christians with plans to open a permanent mission station arrived, sent from Boston as the American Board’s Sandwich Islands Mission. The pioneer company of American Protestant missionaries was sent to Hawai‘i in 1819 from Boston  and arrived at Kailua, Kona on April 4, 1820.

In his report, Anderson wrote, “The very shore on which I first set my foot bore evidence of the great change. The first object to greet the eye was the great stone church, whose foundations were laid by the veteran Bingham. The barren waste of a few years ago, where was neither tree, shrub, nor flower, to relieve the eye, had been changed as into a garden of the Lord. The very shore on which I first set my foot bore evidence of the great change. The first object to greet the eye was the great stone church, whose foundations were laid by the veteran Bingham. The barren waste of a few years ago, where was neither tree, shrub, nor flower to relieve the eye, had been changed as into a garden of the Lord.”

Click below to download PDF of Rufus Anderson’s Mission Jubilee report from Hawai‘i

Jubilee Overview of Kawaiahao

 

The Phenomenal Rise to Literacy in Hawai‘i 1820-1832

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An abandoned rock walled Hawaiian language school site just mauka of the coast in Nīnole in Kā‘u, Hawai‘i Island is where speaker Kalei Laimana’s ancestors studied prior to the school being closed down and students moved to an English standard school about 10 miles away in Pāhala. The removal of the native Hawaiian language in such schools helped inspire Kalei in his study of the remarkable rise in literacy in Hawai‘i that began with the arrival of the Sandwich Islands Mission in late March-early April 1820.

John Kalei Laimana, Hawaiian Studies Instructor at Leeward Community College, told of his remarkable findings on the rapid spread of literacy in Hawai‘i from 1820 into 1832 at a talk held at Kaua‘i Community College’s Hawaiian Studies classroom on Tuesday, April 11, 2017. The talk was sponsored by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the Kaua‘i Historical Society and Kaua‘i Community College.

Kalei in 2011 submitted his “The Phenomenal Rise to Literacy in Hawai‘i – Hawaiian Society in the Early Nineteenth Century” as his thesis for his Master of Arts degree at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

In his thesis introduction he writes: “…according to my research of missionary accounts, (Hawaiians as a society) appears to have achieved a minimum of ninty-one percent literacy rate in just thirteen years—an achievement that is unparalled in the world.”

Kalei went beyond the historic statistics to primary sources, most notably the journals and letters of American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission missionaries stationed in Hawai‘i. He combed for years such materials in the Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society library located in Honolulu near Kawaiaha‘o Church.

The speaker said he found the lives of Calvinist-leaning Sandwich Islands Mission leader Hiram Bingham and his wife Sybil Bingham to grow in aloha towards Hawaiians over their 21 years stationed in Honolulu. He said New England editors of Hiram Bingham’s classic Sandwich Islands Mission account A Residence of Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Island chose to focus on the stern and controlling character of Hiram, overshadowing the genuine love of Hiram for Hawaiians.

Sybil Bingham, an experienced New England-upstate New York school teacher, used her teaching talent in Honolulu at the outset of the mission’s education work just weeks following her arrival in spring 1820 in Honolulu. An extract from “Mrs. Bingham’s Journal” published in the American Board’s Missionary Herald monthly revival-missions periodical shows she and John Honoli‘i employed the Memoirs of Obookiah in spreading literacy in Hawaii.

July 31, 1820 – In the afternoon about 20 (scholars) were collected, when I read to them in the memoir of Obookiah, having it interpreted by J. Honoree and Sally J. I endeavored also to convey to their dark minds a few simple truths, which the Bible contains. Two hours passed in a most interesting manner. It seemed like being on missionary grounds. There was fixed attention on the part of most. I thought of a remark in a letter from our friend S. Taylor, soon after the death of Obookiah, to this effect, after speaking of the darkness of the providence, which snatched him away :– “but how much good may be done by his memoirs, should they be written, in the hands of missionaries among his countrymen.” Little did I then think that I should be the first to read a page of these memoirs to them. But so, in the mysterious providence of God, it was ordered.