Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii (9 page)

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By 1818 there were perhaps as many as two hundred foreigners resident in the Sandwich Islands,
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English and predominantly American, including Anthony Allen, a free Negro who was the first of several African-Americans to discover the fresh air of living in a country unmarred by any feeling of racial inferiority. This blending of English and American influence was perfectly symbolized in the new nation’s flag: with red, white, and blue American-like stripes, but the superimposed crosses of Saint George and Saint Andrew in the upper left corner where American stars would have been.

Leaving administration to able minions, Kamehameha retired to his favorite residence, Kailua Kona, living out his days on the quiet beaches at the foot of Hualalai volcano. His decline was gradual enough that there was time to send for
kahunas
to chant over him; they prescribed human sacrifices until he should recover, but the dying king, almost as though he anticipated his country’s massive pending change, forbade it. Even Don Francisco de Marín was sent for to try to doctor him, but all to no avail. He died on May 8, 1819, having ruled for thirty-seven years, only nine of which were over the unified kingdom he created. But the twenty-eight years of war, terror, and human sacrifice that it took to create his nation bore consequences that echoed even to the other side of the globe, consequences that were about to return to Hawai‘i and change it forever.

3.
The Suicide of
Kapu

It was probably in 1783, during Kamehameha’s conquest of the Big Island, that he at one stage had repaired to Laupahoehoe, north of Hilo, to regroup. With no major battles imminent, he took one canoe and its crew on a pillaging sortie down the coast. Like those of Vikings in a longboat, such lightning raids could gain supplies and spread terror very effectively among the defenseless coastal
kanaka
population. Spying two or three fishermen on the shore, Kamehameha had the canoe beached, and they pursued the frightened locals on foot. During this hot chase the king’s foot became wedged fast in a lava crevice. One terrified fisherman, named Kaleleiki, turned and hit the Conqueror over the head with his paddle as hard as he could, shattering it. Kamehameha was knocked unconscious, but rather than finish him off, Kaleleiki fled. Once he came to, Kamehameha found his way back to his warriors; reflecting upon his fortunate escape, he proclaimed thenceforth a
kapu
against attacking noncombatants. “See to it,” he intoned, “that our aged, our women, and our children, lie down to sleep by the roadside without fear of harm.” In the formality of
kapu
, he added, “Hewa no, make” (Disobey, and die). It became known as
Kanawai Mamalahoe
, the Law of the Splintered Paddle, which later became enshrined in the Hawaiian constitution. Kaleleiki, later cast before Kamehameha to face his justice, was pardoned.
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It was the first crack in a social system that, for the
kanakas
since time immemorial, had been rooted in terror.

Word of the protective
kapu
spread, but also the knowledge that it was virtually unenforceable. It was ancient to Hawaiian culture that in their ubiquitous warfare, if an enemy force was defeated, they would fall upon their families, hacking and pillaging to the point of gory surfeit, even as warriors in all times and in all cultures, when their blood is up and the killing has started, press an attack without discrimination. Such was the case when Kamehameha’s warriors overran a settlement in the Kau District. A young boy of about twelve named Opukaha‘ia escaped with his parents and baby brother, and the family hid in a cave until thirst drove them to water at a nearby spring. “Here,” Opukaha‘ia recalled, “they were surprised by a party of the enemy while in the act of quenching their thirst.” The man fled, but “the enemy, seeing the affection of the father for his family, put them to the torture in order to decoy him from his retreat.… Unable to bear the piercing cries of his family, he fell into their hands, and with his wife was cut in pieces.”
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Attempting his own escape, the boy swung his three-month-old brother onto his back and fled. The spear flung after them skewered the infant to Opukaha‘ia’s body, killing the baby but only wounding the youth. He was too old to require care and too young to cause trouble, so his life was spared, and he was taken in by the warrior who killed his family. Later it was discovered that Opukaha‘ia was the nephew of a
kahuna
of Lono. The boy had worked his way into the affections of his new family, and his “keeper,” as he called him, vowed that if he could not keep the boy he would kill him, but he was powerless to defy a priest of Lono. Now perhaps fourteen, he was sent to the god’s Hikiau
heiau
at Kealakekua Bay to study to become a
kahuna
as well, learning the precision of the chants and the protocol of sacrifices. In 1809, while visiting his one surviving aunt, he hid in terror as men invaded the dwelling and dragged her away. She was accused of violating a
kapu
and thrown from a cliff to her death.

“While I was with my uncle,” Opukaha‘ia later wrote, “I began to think about leaving that country.… I did not care where I shall go to. I thought to myself that if I should get away … I may find some comfort.” From Lono’s
heiau
the youth of now about sixteen swam out to a newly arrived American trading ship, the
Triumph
, Capt. Caleb Brintnall commanding, out of New Haven, Connecticut. One man aboard spoke enough Hawaiian to relay the boy’s intentions. Unwilling to cause an incident, Brintnall fed him supper and invited him to stay the night, but required the priest’s permission before taking him away. Opukaha‘ia rowed ashore in the morning; his uncle was furious at the development and locked the boy in his room, although since it was a traditional grass house, he was able to work his way through the wall and escape back to the ship. The
kahuna
was eventually placated at the price of a pig, and the
Triumph
weighed anchor with Opukaha‘ia on board.
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Also sailing away with Captain Brintnall was another refugee, a few years younger than Opukaha‘ia, named Hopu, called Thomas by the crew, whom he served as cabin boy. Born on Hawai‘i, he narrowly escaped death on the day of his birth. His mother, dispirited by the incessant raiding and terror, opined that it would be better for him had he not been born, and expressed the intent to kill him. Her sister overheard her and stole away with the baby to raise him in her husband’s household. They returned him to his parents when he was four, but when he was eight raiders looted the family of all they possessed; the father relocated to Kealakekua Bay to start over, the mother died the next year, and Hopu availed himself of the
Triumph
’s presence to search for a better life.
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Hopu and Opukaha‘ia were not unusual in fleeing their homeland; word spread quickly in maritime circles that the Sandwich Islands were a good place to bring depleted crews back up to strength. Once at sea, though, the boys learned that life to these new people was more precious than they were accustomed to. The
Triumph
, which touched at America for furs and then returned to Hawai‘i before continuing to China, one day was making about nine knots before a stiff wind in a rolling sea. Hopu tending his duties as cabin boy, “stood by the main chains, outside of the ship, drawing up a bucket of water to wash my dishes, I fell overboard.” There was just time to cry for help before the ship was beyond earshot, and then beyond sight. Hopu was a good swimmer and stripped off his clothes so they would not drag him under as he vacillated between despair and determination. Brintnall had been asleep in his cabin but was quickly alerted. “The Captain calls all hands upon the deck, and ordered to have all the sails pulled down in order to let about.… We turned our ship and went back after him, we found him almost dead. He was in the water during the space of two and a half hours.”

Aboard the
Triumph
Opukaha‘ia was befriended by Russell Hubbard of New Haven, who had been to Yale. “He was very kind to me on our passage, and taught me the letters in English spelling-book.”
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After a lengthy voyage, Brintnall docked in New York, a city that was a shock to the Hawaiian youths, although of all the strange new sights and sounds, nothing caused more consternation than seeing men and women eating together, which was a capital offense in their homeland, a keystone of the entire
kapu
system. They continued to New Haven, where Opukaha‘ia lived with the Brintnall family, and Hopu with a doctor named Hotchkiss for a time before becoming a sailor. He disappeared for years, more than once shipwrecked, and captured and imprisoned during the War of 1812, before making his way back.

Opukaha‘ia made a start at an education but became frustrated with others’ lack of interest in him. One day “Obookiah,” which was as close as the Americans could come to pronouncing his real name, was found sitting on the steps of one of Yale University’s buildings, weeping. A solicitous student stopped to inquire what was wrong, and Obookiah said, “No one will give me learning.” The young man to whom Obookiah complained happened to be Edwin Dwight, nephew of Timothy Dwight, president of the college. “His appearance was unpromising,” Dwight wrote of the meeting. “He was clothed in a rough sailor’s suit, was of a clumsy form, and his countenance dull and heavy.” Dwight almost passed him by without speaking, “as one whom it would be in vain to notice and attempt to instruct. But when the question was put him, ‘Do you wish to learn?’ his countenance began to brighten and … he served it with great eagerness.”
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After but little religious instruction, Opukaha‘ia’s universe inverted. “Owhyhee gods,” he exclaimed, “they wood!
Burn
! Me go home, put ’em in a fire, burn ’em up. They no
see
, no
hear
, no
any thing
. We
make
’em.
Our God
”
—
he looked up in awe—“
He
make
us
.”
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Nothing was the same for Opukaha‘ia, or Hawai‘i, ever again.

It would be difficult to imagine drier tinder to receive such a spark.

The voyages of Captain Cook had a devoted follower in the person of William Carey, a prominent English Baptist preacher who puzzled over why, amidst the discovery of heathen nations utterly new to Western conscience, no effort was being made to obey the Great Commandment and preach salvation among them. Carey wrote a famous book, formed the Baptist Missionary Society, and then himself sailed to India to spread the gospel for four decades. The movement took root, and soon British missionaries fanned out across the Pacific, except for the one glaring exception of the Sandwich Islands. Carey’s zeal spread to the United States, where one Samuel Mills, Jr., was inspired in 1806 to hold the famous Haystack Prayer Meeting, in Williamstown, Massachusetts, which led the American Congregationalist Church to form the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (universally referred to by its acronym, ABCFM). After taking an affectionate leave of Captain Brintnall, with whom he had lived for some months, Opukaha‘ia lived with the family of Samuel Mills, Sr., while studying religion.
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As a student he won universal affection, as much for his ability to convulse other students with his dead-on mimicry of them and their teachers as for his scholarship. While residing with the Mills family in Torrington, Connecticut, he often paid visits to a friend (discreetly not named in Dwight’s memoir) at Litchfield. That person was then studying for a doctorate in divinity and enjoying his immersion in the abstractions of theology, but Obookiah broached to him a soul sickness and desire that discomfited him greatly. “It was his object to converse with him upon the subject of accompanying him to Owhyhee. He plead [
sic
] with great earnestness that he would go and preach the Gospel to his poor countrymen. Not receiving so much encouragement as he desired, [Obookiah] suspected that his friend might be influenced by the fear of the consequences of introducing a new religion among the heathens.” Upon which, though Opukaha‘ia was still very new to the language of the scriptures, he demanded, “You ’fraid? You know our Savior say, He that will save his life shall lose it; and he that will lose his life for my sake, same shall find it?”
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Thenceforward it was a subject that would give Opukaha‘ia no rest. His demonstrated zeal for spreading the faith came just at the time that the Second Great Awakening was kindling missionary fever throughout New England. As word spread of his determination to introduce the gospel to his native land, one elderly minister drew him aside to press on him the danger of martyrdom if he did so. “Suppose,” he asked, “your countrymen should tell you that preaching Jesus Christ was blaspheming their gods, and put you to death?” Opukaha‘ia was adamant: “If that be the will of God,
I am ready. I am ready
.” After being accepted into the church in Torrington, he agitated the question until he was finally taken in by the ABCFM for the purpose—to his unbounded joy—of returning to his home as a missionary.
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In his study of Christianity, Opukaha‘ia discovered to his surprise that one of the easiest subjects for him to learn was Hebrew, because to his mind it bore surprising structural similarities to his own language. He began a massive undertaking: to translate the Bible into Hawaiian, and he began with Genesis, bypassing English to transcribe from Hebrew straight into his native language. “I want to see you about our Grammar,” he wrote a teacher friend. “I want to get through with it. I have been translating a few chapters of the Bible into the Owhyhee language. I found I could do it very correctly.”
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In 1815 Thomas Hopu returned to New Haven, to learn when Brintnall might again sail for the South Seas—he was homesick and wished to return. “My friend Thomas come to me with a sad countenance,” Opukaha‘ia wrote in his diary on March 23, 1816. Hopu was already drawn into the new religion, but he was confused. He “wished that we might pray together in our own language.… We offered up two prayers in our tongue—the first time that we ever prayed in this manner.”
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Hopu threw in with the missionary effort, and then they discovered that there were still more of them in this strange and invigorating world. One was not just a countryman, but an
ali‘i
of high
kapu
. Going by the name George Tamoree, he was in fact the son and heir of Kaumuali‘i, the vassal king of Kaua‘i. Entrusted to Americans to get an education, he had instead been used as a common laborer, served on an American frigate, and been wounded in the War of 1812. He was living in company with yet another Hawaiian, John Honoli‘i, one of many
kanakas
who had shipped out on foreign vessels. And then there was William Kanui, who like Hopu and Opukaha‘ia had had a narrow escape from death; his father was one of the few O‘ahu chiefs to survive the massacre at Nu‘uanu Pali during Kamehameha’s conquest of the island in 1795. He fled to Kaua‘i with his family in tow, where he became a vassal of Kaumuali‘i. With war threatening again, the chief’s two sons signed aboard the brig
Elizabeth
and joined the Hawaiian diaspora; the brother died in New York before Kanui was taken into the missionary circle.
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