Missionaries to Hawaii: Shapers of the Islands' Government

• DOI: 10.1177/106591295801100403
• Published date: 01 December 1958
• Date: 01 December 1958
• Subject Matter: Articles

MISSIONARIES TO HAWAII: SHAPERS OF THE
ISLANDS’ GOVERNMENT*
NORMAN MELLER
University of Hawaii
HROUGH
DIRECT ASSISTANCE, through example, and through
their offspring, the Protestant missionaries who came to Hawaii in
JL the nineteenth century materially helped to~ shape the evolving
government of the Islands to what it is today. They profoundly influenced
Hawaii’s relationship with the United States and transplanted the latter’s
political concepts and practices basic to the establishment of democratic
government. Initially, their counsel and services strengthened the mon-
archy, shoring it up against the debilitating effects of cultural clash. Later,
some of their descendants, still popularly identified as of the missionary
group, aided in the overthrow of that government and its replacement by
the Republic and, thereafter, by the Territory. Both governments evidence
by their structure the extreme centripetal tendencies prevailing in the
Islands, which the organization of the mission itself had reinforced by serv-
ing as a model for the erection of a highly centralized administration.
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions despatched
twelve companies of missionaries to the Hawaiian Islands between the years
1819 and 1847. Individual missionaries, also, arrived in the Islands both
during this period and subsequent to the last of the companies. By 1894,
184 missionaries -
84 men and 100 women - had come to Hawaii. Among
the men were ordained ministers of the Gospel, physicians, teachers, secular
agents, printers, a bookbinder, and a farmer. Specialization was impossible;
both laymen and ordained ministers were called to serve in many roles,
while the womenfolk also ministered to the needs of the congregations of
their missionary husbands.’
THROUGH ASSISTANCE
In 1820 when the first company of missionaries landed in Hawaii, they
found a people who had just broken the taboos of a pantheistic religion
which had served to sanctify the native political order. &dquo;The affinity of the
moral code of the missionaries with the ancient taboo system of Hawaii ...
impressed the natives generally....&dquo; 2 They were ripe for conversion to
Material in this article is partially extracted from a manuscript on government in Hawaii
now
in process of completion.
1
Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society, Missionary Album (rev. ed.; Honolulu: Honolulu
Star-Bulletin, 1937), pp. 3 ff. For other listings see Jean Hobbs, Hawaii, a Pageant of
the Soil (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1935), pp. 78, 79, 143-56; Sidney L.
Gulick, Mixing the Races in Hawaii (Honolulu: Porter Printing Co., 1937), p. 117;
Francis J. Halford, 9 Doctors and God (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1954).
2
Andrew W. Lind, "Modifications of Hawaiian Character," in E. B. Reuter (ed.), Race and
Culture Contacts (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1934), p. 235.
788

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789
Christianity. &dquo;Realizing that religion alone was not sufficient, ... [the mis-
sionaries] introduced the school and the press, as well as the Church, estab,
lished manual training schools, the first of their kind, taught new industries,
mechanical and agricultural, [reduced the oral Hawaiian language to writ-
ing and] incessantly inculcated the rights of the common people....&dquo; 3
The initial step taken by the missionaries was to institute schools. So
successful were they in this endeavor, that a decade later, two-fifths of the
entire population - with adults more numerous than children - were
attending school.4
4
Significantly, Liholiho, the second king of Hawaii, his
two queens, his brother, and two court retainers composed the first class
conducted.5
5
Gospel seed-sowing was inferentially ordered to begin in the ranks of
the chiefs by Liholiho who at the outset forbade the education of the com-
mon
people on the ground they would know more than he.° The mission-
aries were not adverse to this, for in the words of unfriendly critics, their
Puritan faith in the law as an instrument of grace emphasized the need of
authority, &dquo;and authority was in the hands of the chiefs. The missionaries
saw clearly their duty. It was to gain an ascendency over the rulers and
then work through them upon the masses.&dquo; 7
Unquestionably, the &dquo;royal favor ... gave to the new order the added
prestige of the old&dquo; 8 as well as eased the physical burden of the missionaries
in establishing their missions. Although they taught the separation of
religion and government, Hawaiians so long had been used to a theocratic
state that the religion of their chiefs had a powerful effect on their actions.9
To a subject, the ruling chief had been the living incarnation of a deity
and was accorded the same respect.1° With the conversion of the chiefs
to Christianity, the common folk of the Islands could be expected to follow
3
Walter F. Frear, Anti-Missionary Criticism with Reference to Hawaii (Honolulu: Adver-
tiser Pub. Co., 1935), p. 10.
4
Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, 1778-1854 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1938), pp. 106-7.
5
Benjamin O. Wist, "American Foundations of Public Education in Hawaii" (Ph.D. thesis,
Yale University, 1937), pp. 42, 43.
6
Thomas G. Thrum, "The Native Leaders of Hawaii," in The Centennial Book, 1820-1920,
a symposium published by the Central Committee of the Hawaiian Mission Centennial
(Honolulu, 1920), p. 18.
7
L. B. Wright and M. I. Fry, Puritans in the South Seas (New York: Holt, 1936), p. 283.
For a work considering the political role of the missionary in all of the Pacific Islands,
including Hawaii, see Aarne A. Koskinen, Missionary Influence as a Political Factor in
the Pacific Islands (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran Kirjapainon Oy.,
1953).
8
Lind, op. cit., pp. 235-36.
9
James J. Jarves, History of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands (London: Edward Moxon,
Dover Street, 1843), p. 228; Gulick, op. cit., p. 141.
10
However, a ruling chief was not necessarily the most divine, for political power depended
upon success in war. William H. Davenport, "The Religion of Pre-European Hawaii,"
Social Process in Hawaii, XVI (1952), 21.

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790
suit. The chiefs were also called upon to protect the missionaries against
the wrath of the lay foreigners who, notwithstanding their piety at home,
were incensed by interference with their pleasures while in the tropical isles
of Hawaii
The missionaries arrived at a critical juncture in Hawaiian history and
their teachings furnished a strong support for the Hawaiian political order.
In addition to enabling the government to withstand the shock of contact
with Western culture, they shored up its internal prestige with the Hawai-
ians by not countenancing dissidents. The resolutions adopted by the mis-
sion in 1838, entitled &dquo;Duties of the Mission to Rulers and Subjects as
Such,&dquo; in part provide:
teachers of
...
religion ought carefully to guard the subjects against contempt for the
authority of their rulers, or any evasion or resistance of government orders.
that it is
...
a Christian duty to render honor, obedience, fear, custom, and tribute to
whom they are due, as taught in the 13th of Romans; and that the sin of disloyalty, which
tends to confusion, anarchy, and ruin, deserves reproof as really [sic] and as promptly as
that of injustice on the part of rulers, or any other violation of the commands of God.&dquo;
Ultimately, the espousing of the rights of the individual was to prove
incompatible with a continuation of the absolutist form of government the
missionaries found when they landed in Hawaii. Meanwhile, both the
proselytizing and the instruction of the island people in the ways of civili-
zation were undertaken with the full cooperation and assistance of the
...