Home > Islands > 1850's
Mission Complex
The
Polynesian Cultural Center added an 1850s-era Hawaiian Mission Settlement
to its array
of island "villages" and exhibits for two reasons:
Learn
more the advent of Christianity in the Polynesian islands
The
1850s Hawaiian Mission Settlement is comprised of:
- a small non-denominational
chapel,
complete with a pulpit and foot-pump organ. For example, missionaries
introduced choral singing and European-style harmony, which has
been heartily adapted into island cultures, each adding distinctive
touches,
of course.
- The
open-sided Polynesian-style school house represents the considerable
contributions of early Christian missionaries in western-style
educational
programs throughout the islands.
Initially
led by their desire to translate The Bible,
missionaries devised Roman alphabet-based writing systems for
each major island group. Fortunately,
most of the early Christian
missionaries
were very well educated for their day, and the alphabets they
devised have basically survived into modern times.
Once books began to be printed in the various Polynesian languages,
almost all islanders learned to read, becoming perhaps the
most literate
race of people
on the planet in the 19th century. For example, there are more
Hawaiian-language newspapers and publications still in existence
than publications in all other U.S. indigenous languages combined.
Creating
Polynesian alphabets was not without its challenges, however. In
Hawaii, for example, missionary linguists had to decide between using
the letters 'l' or 'r' to represent the way Hawaiians pronounced
the sound, say, in the word Honolulu. As you can tell from modern
spelling, the 'l' won out, and today we're conditioned when we see
that...but the early missionaries had no such advantage, and
some of them
thought Hawaii's capital should have been spelled Honoruru.
Similar
decisions had to be made between the 'k' and 't' which in
some Polynesian
dialects
do
not make a "meaningful
difference" in pronunciation, as they do in English. For
example, in Samoan you can say tala or kala,
and they both mean 'story'; but "till" and "kill" in
English mean very different things. A similar question arose
over whether
the letter 'w' or 'v' more correctly represented Hawaiian pronunciation,
which is why some Hawaiians say Havai'i instead of Hawai'i. In
a few cases, other letter-sounds have survived in certain words. For
example, everyone says the Hawaiian word for 'grandparent' as tutu [pronounce
both syllables: "too-too"], even though the Hawaiian
alphabet uses 'k'
instead of
't'.
The
missionaries who devised the Maori alphabet in Aotearoa (New
Zealand) obviously
felt the 'wh' spelling more correctly represented the sound that
other Polynesian alphabets represent with an 'f'; for example, the
Maori whare and the Tahitian fare [both meaning
'house'] are pronounced the same. In Samoa it's said missionary linguists
elected to use only the letter 'g' to represent the 'ng' sound, as
in the English word 'singer'...because their printing type cases
didn't have enough of the letter 'n'. Missionaries in Tonga, by the
way, did use the 'ng' combination to represent the same sound; so
the word for 'foreigner' in Samoan is palagi and its Tongan
counterpart is palangi, and both are pronounced exactly
the same.
- The
rock-walled missionary home with its wide lanai or shaded
verandas demonstrates adaptations early missionaries eventually
made in their own homes:
For example, thatched roofs keep the house dry but cooler than
shingled roofs. Cooking outside or in another house in the Polynesian
style also keeps the residence much cooler. And, of course, it's
well known that New England missionaries introduced quilting to
the islands — a craft to which Polynesian women quickly added
their own touches. Today in the missionary home, LDS service missionaries
and Cultural Center islanders demonstrate Hawaiian quilting methods
and display beautiful samples of their work.
- There's
also a small Iosepa memorial behind
the chapel dedicated to the Hawaiians, Samoans and other Polynesians
who left the islands in 1889 to join Polynesians in Utah in
forming an old west, high desert colony.
- The
niu kapakahi or "crooked coconut tree" is another
Polynesian Cultural Center attraction in the Missionary Settlement. This
tree, which is about 80 feet long, only rises about 15 feet high
because of its serpentine twists and hula turns. Elvis Presley
used the
PCC's niu kapakahi as a backdrop when he partially filmed
his 1966 movie, Paradise
Hawaiian Style, at the Polynesian Cultural Center.
| Christianity
washes over the Pacific Islands |
|
Starting
in the late 1700s and early 1800s, Christian missionaries from various
denominations and evangelical organizations began proselyting in
the Polynesian islands. A typical pattern soon emerged: After
missionaries overcame initial hardships and resistance, learned
languages and converted paramount chiefs or hereditary leaders, whole
villages and islands would forsake their ancient religious beliefs
and practices and become Christians within a relatively short period.
In
some cases, such as in Hawaii, King
Kamehameha II and Queen Kaahumanu overthrew the ancient pantheistic
religion and its rigid kapu or taboo system in 1819, the
year before the first Christian missionaries landed in Kailua-Kona.
In many cases, early missionaries also got involved in local
political
struggles
and
government,
as
did
their island-born children.
The
first known Christian missionaries in Polynesia came from the London
Missionary Society (LMS), an ecumenical Protestant organization,
that first reached Tahiti in 1796, left some members of their group
there, and sailed on to the Marquesas, then Tongatapu in Tonga where
three of their numbers were killed in a civil war.
Back
in Tahiti, within a few years after King Pomare II converted to Christianity
in 1812, the number of Christian Tahitians had grown dramatically.
The relatively few European and American missionaries relied heavily
on early converts to help them spread "The Word" in the coming years
when LMS missionaries extended their efforts throughout the Pacific.
John Williams, who had labored in Tahiti, for example, was instrumental
in bringing
Christianity to Samoa in 1830 with the help of Tahitian and Rarotongan
lay ministers. Consequently, even to this day some Samoans call the
modern version of what used to be called the LMS Church, the lotu Tahiti or "Tahitian
church."
The
story of the first Christian missionaries to arrive in Hawaii in
1820, which has been popularized in novels and movies, is noteworthy
because of the role Henry Opukaha'ia played. This young Hawaiian,
also originally known as Obookiah, was born in Napo'opo'o on the Big Island
in 1792 and eventually sailed to New England, where he became
a Christian
and ended up begging
his teachers to send missionaries back to the Sandwich Islands. Unfortunately,
he died in 1818, but the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions — an ecumenical Protestant group somewhat similar
to the London Missionary Society — followed through and sent
their first party of missionaries who arrived at Kailua-Kona in 1820.
French
Catholic missionaries established themselves in the 1830s and 40s,
but also with several interesting twists. In Tahiti, for example,
the British initially expelled the French missionaries, only to have
them return later with French gunboats. This eventually led to France taking over all of what is now French Polynesia. A similar
situation occurred to Catholic missionaries in Hawaii, before the
Catholic church firmly established itself. Of course, Father
Damien de
Veuster,
is one
of the most famous
of the Catholic missionaries in Hawaii for his work at the
Kalaupapa Hansen's Disease (leprosy) colony.
The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' first entrance into
Polynesia started after a young man, who had served aboard whaling
ships in Hawaii, told LDS Church founder Joseph Smith Jr. about his
South Seas adventures. Smith called missionaries in 1843 from
the Mormon headquarters at
Nauvoo, Illinois, to go to the Sandwich Islands (as the Kingdom of
Hawaii was then called). After taking nine months to get as far
as Tubua'i near Tahiti, the
first Mormon
missionary group
decided to remain in that region — making Tahiti one of the
first foreign-language missions of the LDS Church.
Mormon
missionaries finally arrived in Hawaii on December 12, 1850. By 1865
they had purchased a 6,000-plus acre plantation at Laie, Oahu, which
has been an important regional center ever since. Today, in addition
to the Polynesian Cultural Center, Laie is also home to Brigham Young
University Hawaii and the Laie Hawaii Temple. In other words, Laie is
a cultural, educational and spiritual center for the LDS Church in
Polynesia.
| The
founding of Iosepa Colony |
|
The
founding of Iosepa Colony in 1889 is one of the more fascinating
chapters of Mormon pioneers settling the Intermountain West, and
an intriguing reversal of missionaries coming to the Pacific:
That
year a group of Hawaiians and Samoans joined other Latter-day
Saint Polynesians already living in Salt Lake City, Utah, to found a
colony in
Skull Valley, about 60 miles to the west. Among other reasons,
they wanted to be closer to the LDS temples which had been built
in Utah. They named their colony Iosepa after Joseph (Iosepa)F. Smith,
the nephew of Church founder Joseph Smith Jr., who served as
a missionary in Hawaii
starting in 1854 and who later became president of the Church.
Joseph F. Smith, for example, dedicated the site for the Laie
Hawaii Temple
in 1915 and authorized its construction.
Though
some have felt it incongruous for Polynesians from the tropics to
settle in the high Utah desert, according to journals and family
traditions the 200-plus of them who lived there at its peak apparently
loved Iosepa.
They built an extensive irrigation
system to bring water from the mountains for their crops, and adjusted
their traditional diets to include poi made from locally grown
produce. They were also famous throughout the region for playing
island music, feasting and hula.
Soon
after
work started on the LDS temple in Laie, Hawaii, in 1915, most Iosepa colonists
moved back to the islands. Some o
