Maui Christian History

Articles from the Christian history of Maui island in Hawai‘i.

Maui’s Christian History Complex Second Only to Honolulu

edwindwight Christian History of Hawai‘i, Maui Christian History, News

“Maui Fires Burn Site Where Hawaiian Queen First Brought Christianity to the Island”

Christianity Today August 14, 2023
The wooden Wainee Church in late nineteenth century from E. J. Monsarrat Collection, Hawai‘i State Archives. Fires and strong winds have in the past destroyed the Wainee/Waiola churches.

Christianity Today asked me to contribute background information to a recent article posted at Christianity Today.com focusing on the Christian history and missionary sites located in Lahaina, Maui.

Morgan Lee of Christianity Today wrote an excellent deadline piece on the Christian response on Maui to the tragic, devastating fire which broke out on August 8.

Morgan quoted me: “After Honolulu, ‘Lahaina is home to the second-most complete complex of historic Hawaiian Christian sites in one place to be found in all of Hawaii,’ said Chris Cook, an expert on Hawaiian missionary history. ‘The loss of all but the Lahainaluna sites leaves a major gap in the statewide census of intact Hawaii missionary-era (1820–1863) structures.’”

I was told by Ka‘eo Decoite of Mo‘olelo Kū‘i‘o ministries that Samaritan’s Purse and other off-island disaster-scene ministries are on the ground on Maui providing material and spiritual help.

Lahaina Banyan Tree’s Kaua‘i Roots

edwindwight Christian History of Hawai‘i, Kaua‘i Church History, Maui Christian History, News

The literal roots of the Lahaina Banyan tree which survived the tragic Lahaina fire and is now the symbol of recovery over there, go back to the Koloa, Kaua‘i Sandwich Islands Mission Station. An account of how an 8-foot banyan tree cutting taken in Koloa became the Lahaina Banyan Tree appear in the pages of my late wife Evelyn Cook’s Smith-Waterhouse family book 100 years of Healing – The Legacy of a Kauai Missionary Doctor published in 2003. Evelyn was joined in publishing the book by Lori Dill of Kaua‘i and the late Uncle Bob Watts from Kailua.

I may be biased, but Evelyn’s account is 10 x better than the history of the Lahaina Banyan Tree being given in the news around the globe. Here is Evelyn’s carefully documented account describing the motive of Koloa missionary son William Owen Smith in planting the Lahaina Banyan in 1873.

William Owen Smith photo courtesy Bobbie McCord

Sugar cane cultivation did not assume major importance until after 1876 when reciprocity treaty was signed with the U.S. which allowed Hawaiian sugar to enter the U.S. duty free. The treaty transformed the island sugar business into a highly profitable industry, not just for the haoles, but also for the alii who leased land to the plantations and invested directly in the business themselves.

In 1873, the whaling boom was over but the sugar industry had not yet boomed. Lahaina was a sleepy little town without much crime to keep its sole lawman busy. Sheriff Smith often whiled away slow days sitting on a bench outside the courthouse watching ships in the harbor while trading stories with the elderly Hawaiian men who stopped by to chat. The old men loved it that a haole could speak Hawaiian so fluently, with all its subtle layerings, hidden meanings, and poetic flourishes. Smith could even tell jokes in the native tongue, which delighted them, and his sly sense of humor seemed very Hawaiian to them.

Historic Lahaina in the 1970s. Lahaina Banyan Tree is mauka of Lahaina small boat harbor. Hawai‘i State Archives photo

Lahaina‘s weather is sunny much of the time, and since in Smith’s day no trees grew near the courthouse, it could become unbearably hot. So when the sheriff visited his parents on Kauai and they offered to give him a young sapling to plant as a shade tree on the courthouse grounds, he willingly accepted. The tree was an Indian banyan, and Smith planted it in the courthouse square on April 24, 1873, with the help of the old Hawaiian men who liked his jokes. Although it was planted as part of a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the first Christian mission in Lahaina, many of Smith’s descendants believe that his original motive had simply been to provide some welcome shade around the courthouse for his Hawaiian friends. And to this day, the Hawaiians of Lahaina still speak with affection of W.O. Smith.

“My great-grandfather, Mr. Mona Kawenaole, who died of leprosy in Kalaupapa, was the konohiki [land steward] for Lahaina in the mid to late 1800s. He was a friend to W.O. Smith and helped plant that tree,” explained Sissa Kaumeheiwa Reynolds, a Native Hawaiian whose family has lived on Maui for generations.

“It was a friendship tree planted for their friendship and their love for the land-to watch it grow over the generations. Sheriff Smith asked this bunch of old kanaka maoli to plant it with him. They used to hang out by the water and talk story. This was told to me by my grandma and Uncle Frank Kahahani and Uncle Willieama Waiohu sitting around the table talking story, eating saloon pilot crackers and drinking hot cocoa. W.O. Smith was a friend of the Hawaiians. They wouldn’t have been hanging with him if he was no good. I don’t care what people say today. He was a friend,“ Sissa said.

The banyan tree her great-grandfather Kawenaole helped Smith plant 130 years ago is today the largest Indian banyan in Hawaii and shades nearly an acre of the old courthouse grounds. Sissa believes it symbolizes an enduring friendship between hole and Hawaiian that is far stronger than the animosity which sometimes flares up between the two peoples.

Mahalo to the Smith-Waterhouse family for permission to post this passage from 100 Years of Healing : The Legacy of a Kauai Missionary Doctor by Evelyn Simpson Cook, published by Halewai Publishing, Koloa, Kauai 2003.

Lahaina Banyan Tree Minature by Opala Art

A Lahaina Banyan Tree minature made from a piece of non-recyclable fishing net is being sold as a Lahaina fund-raiser by Kaua‘i-based Opala Art. For more details go to opala_art on Instagram.

Thanksgiving Day at the Sandwich Islands in 1858

edwindwight Christian History of Hawai‘i, Digging for Treasure in Old Books, Kahu, Maui Christian History
New England Farmer Newspaper

In 1858 the Rev. Jonathan Green, Kahu of the Po‘okela Church in Makawao, Maui, a native Hawaiian church he organized, wrote a letter back to his homeland in New England describing the celebration of Thanksgiving in Hawai‘i. The letter appeared in the July, 1859 issue of the New England Farmer magazine.

EDITORS FARMER:-Gentlemen, Reminded by the closing year of my delinquency in writing you, I hasten to devote a part of this day of public thankagiving to this purpose. The occasion will suggest a subject of interest to you and your readers, as Thanksgiving day, though at a distance, will remind them of scenes in which they all delight to participate.

“Hawaiian Thanksgiving !” do I hear you exclaim? with the remark, “You can be as thankful, certainly, as any of us, and God, who is no respecter of persons, will accept your gratitude. But as for the Thanksgiving supper, with tables groaning with New England luxuries, around which gather hosts of friends, this, of course, you know nothing about. A dish of poi and a baked dog or raw fish spread on a clean mat, or on some fresh ferns, will doubtless constitute your Thankgiving repast.” Well, friends, I mean to take in good part this specimen of banter which I have supposed you might employ when hearing that the king and chiefs of Hawaii are so far adopt ing the customs of New England, as to appoint a day of thanksgiving and prayer to God, for His kindness to the nation during the past year. Nor will I deny that both chiefs and people are calculating somewhat largely on thrusting their fingers into the poi dish, and thence to their mouths, ere the day closes; nor do I doubt that many a fat and sleek animal of the canine species is now in an oven of hot stones remunerating in part the expense of feeding. I am not horrified in relating, and I hope you will not be in hearing, that dogs are often strangled and eaten by chiefs and people. Foreigners, generally, universally perhaps, cry out, shame, shame, at the practice. I know not that any of them, knowingly, eat of this dish, though I shrewdly guess that more than one gentleman from en lightened lands when dining with the chiefs of Hawaii, have eaten with a gusto from a creature! whose vernacular was bow-wow, instead of baa, as they supposed. I know not as I have ever tasted dogs’ flesh. I have no particular desire to do so. Still, I see no moral wrong about it, nor do I feel like dissuading my people from such a practice. De gustibus non disputandum est, or, let there be no disputing about tastes, is a maxim which is worthy of consideration. Most heartily do I wish that the men from our country would do nothing worse than eat dogs’ flesh.

But to return to the subject of Thanksgiving supper, which seems to be a sine qua non in the idea of a Puritan Thanksgiving. I am glad that you feel a doubt of our ability to get up a supper on this occasion, which will at all compare with yours, as in laboring to remove this doubt, shall be able to tell you of the change in our circumstances since March, 1828, when, as one of the second reinforcement, some eight years after the establishment of the mission, I landed at Honolulu.

At that time there were no Thanksgiving days appointed by the government, and had there been we could not have got up much of a supper. Our four was very poor, sour, and often musty. Butter and cheese, fresh beef and mutton we rarely tasted. Salmon from Oregon we could obtain, but without Irish potatoes and butter, this scarcely relished. Molasses we used for our tea and coffee. We had an occasional fowl, but as we bought them of the natives, they were lean and unsavory. Of vegetables we had kalo and sweet potatoes-of fruit, bananas or plantains-also, melons. These were our facilities in 1828 for getting up a Thanksgiving supper. In 1829 no flour having arrived from Boston, there was much suffering in the Mission families at Honolulu, and the health of not few individuals was greatly affected. Since that time there has been a gradual improvement in the means of living so that to-day, we can have a Thanksgiving supper purely Hawaiian, composed of the following dishes, viz.: Baked beef and lamb, both beautifully fat and tender, and good enough for John Bull himself; fine large and fat turkey and baked fowl; excellent mullet from fresh water ponds; roasted pig fed on milk, ten der and savory; potatoes, both Irish and sweet ; kalo, of which the poi is made, but which boiled or roasted is excellent; bananas or plantains cooked in almost as many ways as your apple, and, on the whole, an excellent substitute; bread fruit, onions, beans and lettuce, Indian corn, tomatoes and cabbage. To these vegetables, there can be added at some of our stations, turnips, beets and carrots. Bread, of course, at Makawao, must not be forgotten. This we have plentifully, made of coarse meal ground in our hand mills or fine bolted at our steam mill at Honolulu. With these ingredients we can have chicken pie; also, custards, as sugar, eggs and milk are abundant; pumpkin and banana pies like wise. Butter and cheese, with fig, guava and olelo-Hawaiian whortleberry-preserves. Pia or arrow-root puddings, Hawaiian coffee with cream and sugar. A part or all of these we can furnish for our supper this evening also melons, oranges, guavas and figs. Or if our friend, Dr. Alcott, will sup with us, be shall have good baked potatoes and bread, pia, also, with figs and oranges. Please recollect, gentlemen, that I did not spread this table to cause a surfeit, but to show you what a change the blessing of God on industry has wrought in our circumstances of living since 1828.

Evening.-I have just returned from the house of God, where I addressed our people on the goodness of their heavenly Benefactor during the year which is near its close. It has been, on the whole, a year of prosperity to the Hawaiian nation. Health has prevailed as a general thing. Peace has blessed the nation with its balmy influence. The earth has yielded her usual increase, so that to-day we may justly speak of the watchful care of a benignant Providence, and of the loving kindness of God to us all. In addition to the products of the earth purely Hawaiian, there have been sown and reaped a larger number of acres of wheat in this district than ever before, and though a good deal of this was destroyed by the caterpillar, still some 16,000 bushels were secured and sold, besides a good deal reserved for seed. Considerably many oats were raised, also corn and beans. Besides these essentials, the islands are fast developing their capabilities of producing fruit. Oranges are becoming increasingly plenty. Peaches, also, will soon become abundant. Figs have long been so, also guavas and custard apple. I have not doubt that Hawaii will become famous as a fruit growing country. In this prospect I greatly rejoice, and I am exhorting the people to turn their attention more to fruit-growing. Oranges and figs eaten freely would conduce much to the physical health and enjoyment of all classes among us. Some of them are beginning to think more favorably of this department of labor and enterprise. The growing of wheat, however, at present secures most of their attention. Though It is not a very profitable branch of enterprise still multitudes wish to try their hands at it, and as the Hawaiian Steam Flouring Company pay cash for wheat, an increasing number are thrusting in the plow, and scattering the seed over the furrowed fields. One benefit the people are certainly deriving from the introduction of wheat into their country,-they are forming habits of industry. In this I greatly rejoice. Of the success of their labors I will tell you in my next communication.

Yours with respect, J. S. GREEN