Alone and unsure of what was happening to her, she feared illness and anxiously rose from her bed, searching for the comfort of her Bible. The sensation continued to well up inside her, forcing its way out, yielding a voice that spoke as clearly as if its source was standing in front of her. She heard five words: “He wants to come home.”

The “he” in Debbie’s spiritual visitation was her seventh-generation cousin, Henry ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia, who was the first Native Hawaiian to become Christianized. Born in 1792, his parents were brutally slain before his childhood eyes by Kamehameha I’s warriors, and he contemplated leaving the Big Island in the first decade of the 19th century rather than remaining there as an orphan. While training to become a kahuna, a Hawaiian spiritual leader, at the Hikiau Heiau, a traditional place of worship in Nāpo‘opo‘o at Kealakekua Bay, ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia secured passage onboard an American merchant ship, sailing halfway around the world hoping to replace pain and memory, attempting to outrun his survivor’s guilt, and seeking peace from the violence he experienced in his youth.

Portrait of Henry “Obookiah,” undated frontispiece in Memoirs of Henry Obookiah. Courtesy of Eleanor C. Nordyke/Wikimedia Commons.

Fatefully, his journey took him to Connecticut, where he was introduced to Christianity and experienced a revelation that led to him accepting Jesus as his personal savior. He studied the Bible in hopes of returning home as a missionary to convert his fellow Hawaiians to the Gospel, but he never fulfilled his wish. He died of typhus fever in 1818 and was buried under the frozen New England sod.

And there his journey stalled, far from his homeland, until 174 years later when Debbie Lee heard of his desire in the still of the night. Soon, she launched the effort to bring cousin Henry home.

As the Connecticut State Archaeologist, a position I held for almost 30 years, I had the responsibility of supervising the disinterment and forensic identification of the surviving physical remains of Henry ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia per the request of his genealogical descendants. We worked closely with the Lee family and a team of funeral directors, forensic scientists, archaeologists, historians, and church officials to conduct the exhumation and prepare ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia’s remains for the final leg of his repatriation to the Big Island of Hawai‘i, the isle of his birthplace.

To fulfill my duties in a professional and appropriately respectful manner, I learned more about ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia from reading his Memoirs, published posthumously in New England by his tutor Edwin Dwight. He descended from a family of Hilo chiefs on his mother’s side, distant kin to Kamehameha I. He developed into a resilient, intelligent boy with a sense of humor and the ability to mimic village members. He eventually made his flight by swimming out to the Triumph, an American merchant ship anchored in Kealakekua Bay and was taken aboard as a sailor. Captain Caleb Brintnall wrote the Anglo appellation “Henry Obookiah” into the ship’s logbook, which would remain the name he would be known by during his sojourn in New England.

Arriving in New Haven in 1809, “Henry Obookiah” was introduced to Christianity by the educators and religious families with whom he resided, including the Rev. Timothy Dwight, then president of Yale College and a leading light in the Second Great Awakening. At first, Henry did not accept the new religion into his heart; he only accepted it in an intellectual sense in his great desire to learn. His full conversion came about when he had a revelation in a woodlot while working for the Rev. Samuel Mills and his family in Torringford, Connecticut.

Once converted, “Obookiah” immersed himself in the Gospels, memorizing every story and miracle, while absorbing his English spelling book so he could write and read the Bible more proficiently. He made rapid progress in his religious training, translating Hebrew chapters of the Bible into a phonetic Hawaiian alphabet he had developed. His new purpose in life was to bring his learning and the Gospel home with him to Hawai‘i. The intellectual and spiritual example of ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia led the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to develop the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut, to prepare young indigenous men to return to their homelands with the Christian Gospel in hand. Henry was their first and leading student.

In the midst of this time of great intellectual energy, ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia contracted typhus fever in the winter of 1818 and was soon in critical condition. According to Edwin Dwight’s moving account of ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia’s death, when Henry was asked if he was afraid to die, he cried, “No, I am not. Let God do as he pleases.” Then again, he so desperately wanted to live. Live to be a powerful witness to the one, true God. Live to bring salvation to his people. Raising his hands heavenward, Henry lamented, “Oh, how I want to see Owhyhee!” His approaching death was peaceful, and he seemed free of pain for the first time in weeks. With his compatriots beside his bed, he spoke in his native language, “Aloha oe,” “My love be with you.”

Henry ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia died on February 17, 1818, and was buried under a table-topped granite monument, which was the largest and most elaborate shrine in Cornwall Cemetery at that time, demonstrating the love the New Englanders of the Foreign Mission School had for this young Hawaiian man.

As Henry “Obookiah’s” mortal remains reposed beneath a hilltop cemetery in Connecticut, a ship christened the Thaddeus set sail from Boston harbor on October 23, 1819, en route to Hawai‘i. In fulfillment of ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia’s missionary promise, the brig carried a company of two ministers, two teachers, a doctor, printer, farmer, all of their wives and children, and four Hawaiians.

When the ship arrived in Kailua-Kona on April 4, 1820, Hawaiian society was undergoing great changes, and many native people had died since the arrival of Captain James Cook in 1778. By 1853, 90 percent of all Kanaka Maoli had perished of Old World diseases for which they had had no exposure and no immunity. Within four years of the arrival of the Thaddeus, over 18,000 Hawaiians, 20 percent of the native population at the time, had converted to Christianity. While ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia’s corporeal journey home would take another 175 years, his formidable influence had transformed Hawai‘i forever.

After she was awoken that night in 1992, Debbie Lee spent ten months polling family members until she gained their consent to exhume Henry’s remains from Cornwall Cemetery and bring him home to Hawai‘i. She resolved to give Henry’s life contemporary spiritual meaning by returning his physical remains, his iwi, back to Hawai‘i in fulfillment of his deathbed wish.

Our mandate as the state archaeologists was to remove for repatriation the physical remains of ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia, so we commenced excavations below his granite stone monument in Cornwall Cemetery. While moving my trowel gently over the soil, leveling the head region of the coffin at a depth of five feet, I heard a dulled tone.

Immediately thinking I had encountered a small stone or coffin nail, I put my trowel aside and grasped a small, fine-haired paintbrush. The material encountered felt hard, too hard for bone that had been in Connecticut’s acidic soil for almost two centuries, but as my brush swept the granular sand aside, uncovering a one-inch diameter circle, I recognized the rounded structure of the forehead and realized his skeletal remains were firm, unusually well-preserved for a grave of this time period. In fact, ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia’s skeleton continues to be the best organically preserved we have ever encountered in a historic New England cemetery. I remember thinking to myself, “Henry will return home.”

Debbie Lee, wanting the very best for ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia’s return to Hawai‘i, arranged an itinerary that would be a lasting tribute. The two-week, two-island journey began with a farewell ceremony at the United Church of Christ Congregational in Cornwall, where I, along with our archaeological team, were honored to serve as pallbearers. This was followed by services on O‘ahu at Honolulu’s Kawaiaha‘o Church, the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Memorial Chapel, and Kaumakapili Church.

Then ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia’s remains were flown to the Big Island of Hawai‘i. There, Henry’s casket was lashed between two outrigger canoes at Pu‘uhonua o Hōnaunau, “the Place of Refuge.” Among the canoeists paddling northward to Kealakekua Bay, was Henry Ho‘omanawanui, first cousin to Debbie Lee and namesake of the Christian martyr he was accompanying home. When the outrigger rounded the southern point into Kealakekua Bay, Ho‘omanawanui searched the wooded hills above the harbor for the white spire of Kahikolu Congregational Church, soon to be the site of ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia’s final resting place. Debbie had instructed Ho‘omanuawanui to swim toward the shore once the steeple came within sight. Spying the church, he dove into the cool waters, recreating in reverse ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia’s outward swim to the anchored Triumph, metaphorically completing Henry’s return home.

The final segment of the welcoming home tour brought Henry to Kahikolu Congregational Church and Cemetery in Napo‘opo‘o. After church services attended by over 200 family and friends on the afternoon of August 15, 1993, Henry ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia’s casket was lowered by ropes beneath a beautiful, black volcanic stone monument overlooking the harbor from where he had set out on his journey to find peace and self-fulfillment. This was part of a ceremony called “kao he olahou,” “the bamboo lives again.”

Bringing Henry home grew beyond immediate family interest, extending across the entire Hawaiian community, and emphasizing the significance of repatriation. Facilitating the completion of his long journey developed into something beyond the return of an individual ancestor.

The “Island Boy” who had left Hawai‘i searching for peace and purpose; who came to Connecticut and received a scholar’s education and converted to Christianity; who had found love in God and translated the Book of Genesis into his phonetic Hawaiian alphabet; whose martyrdom inspired Protestant missions throughout the world, had finally come home.

The post The Spiritual Visitation That Brought the Remains of Hawai‘i’s First Christian Convert Back Home appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I wasn’t interested in the history of our 50th state at the time, yet on Oahu something important happened to me. Walking through shops and outdoor malls in downtown Honolulu, I saw for the first time a multiethnic society very different from my own Midwestern home. Up until that day my conception of America was of a place filled with people just like me. Hawaii changed me. I wanted to know its story, and I knew it would be different from my own.

The long history of the Hawaiian people does not get much attention on the mainland of the United States. Most historical accounts begin after British Captain James Cook became the first European to explore the archipelago in 1778. The people Cook met in the islands had occupied the ’āina (land) for nearly 1500 years. By the 19th century, European and American explorers, merchants, and naval officers routinely disembarked on Hawaiian shores. Native Hawaiians welcomed them. For Hawaiians, the Pacific Ocean (ka moana) was part of their home, and the haole (foreigners) arriving on it were guests.

In 1820, 14 American missionaries—seven married couples—arrived. They were New England Protestants hoping to influence the mysterious, pagan people of the islands. The missionaries had sold all their possessions and intended to stay for life. They had no intentions of returning to the United States.

Other American missionary couples followed, and their children, born in the islands, multiplied. By the 1850s children of American missionaries numbered over 250.

Calling themselves “Anglo-Hawaiians,” the white children roamed freely across the islands. They considered themselves loyal subjects of the indigenous Hawaiian monarchy, whose sovereignty and independence the United States, Britain, and France tacitly agreed to defend.

But missionary parents worried that, in the islands, their children would not receive the benefits of American citizenship—such as education, apprenticeships, land, and wage employment. Missionary parents never considered their children anything other than American in citizenship, ethnicity, and social belonging. So the parents created an all-white boarding school in Honolulu—Punahou School—to prepare their children to enter colleges in the United States.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, missionary children felt differently than their parents. Those that attended U.S. colleges wrote home to friends about their experiences. Americans, it seemed, did not consider the missionary children fully white. Darkly tanned, poorly dressed, and speaking a heathen tongue (in addition to English, Greek, and Latin), the missionary children were born in a tropical climate which, Americans believed, caused slothfulness and delayed industrial progress. Missionary children discovered that, in the United States, they were considered little better than Native Hawaiians. Many Americans regarded the white students from Hawaii as the missionaries regarded the indigenous people of the islands: morally suspect and racially subordinate. Almost without exception, the missionary children hated living in the United States. They did not belong in America.

Hawaiian Girl Wearing Lei. Photo courtesy of Mission Houses Museum.

Instead, missionary children returned to the islands to build their future atop the high status their parents enjoyed as spiritual and political advisors to the Hawaiian government. While teaching Hawaiian royalty the English language and international law, American missionaries also advised Hawaiian rulers on land division, agricultural production, and private property—all of which both the Hawaiian king and legislature (itself a missionary-inspired creation) saw as ways to be economically competitive and to survive the colonial impulses of Europeans and Americans.

Americans know the Hawaiian Islands as the inspiration for James Michener’s fiction, the site of Pearl Harbor, and one of the most beautiful vacation destinations in the United States. If knowledgeable about history, Americans may also repeat the oft-cited maxim, “Missionaries came to do good but ended up doing well.”

This overstates the missionaries’ acquired wealth and understates the missionary children’s goal of benefiting from their parents’ reputations. While the missionaries used their power to secure opportunities for their children to purchase land cheaply, missionary children returned to the islands as college graduates to gain wealth and access to government appointments and new professions, including law, surveying, engineering, and, of course, sugar planting.

The power of these children would grow. As Hawaiian cultural traditions—such as communal taro planting—died out, so did Native Hawaiians, devastated by foreign diseases, including smallpox, measles, syphilis, and tuberculosis. Between 1832 and 1853 the Native Hawaiian population dropped from 130,000 to 70,000. By 1900 that number had again been cut in half.

Remaining natives watched their king and legislature divest government lands to arriving foreigners hoping to take advantage of economic growth. The era of the plantations had arrived. Sugar planters contracted laborers (little more than slaves) from Japan, China, South America, and Portugal to supplement the declining native population.

Native Hawaiians were not ignorant of their declining position. In petitions to the king and in Hawaiian-language newspapers, Hawaiians begged their government not to sell land to foreigners. Missionary children initially stood outside this debate. They were Hawaiian subjects by their birth in the islands, not haole (foreigners), a word used to describe the white immigrants from the United States and Europe.

Native Hawaiians eventually found a different epithet for the missionary children who supported the radical transformation of the islands. They simply called the children “missionary.” As American missionary parents aged, retired, returned to the United States, and even died, the term was clearly meant for the children who had not chosen to follow their parents into ministry yet remained in the islands to benefit from their parents’ success.

The insults did not stop the changes. Nor did attempts by successive Hawaiian kings in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s to bridle “missionary” influence.

In the 1890s, adult missionary children decided that U.S. citizenship was the only means to protect their political status in the islands. They also desired to cement Hawaii’s close trade partnership with the United States.

When Queen Liliʻuokalani attempted to abrogate the constitution in order to strengthen her own power and increase the political rights of indigenous Hawaiians, the missionary children violently reacted. In 1893 a group led by Sanford Ballard Dole, Hawaiian-born son of American missionaries, overthrew the queen. The group established a republic that tied voting rights to wealth and land ownership, effectively giving Anglo-Hawaiians and haole absolute political control. In 1898 the U.S. Congress granted this group’s wishes and annexed the islands.

Annexation gave Native Hawaiians American citizenship under the protections of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. But Native Hawaiians did not want the citizenship. Those who witnessed the raising of the U.S. flag above ‘Iolani Palace—the U.S. territorial statehouse which had once been the home of the queen—wept.

Both Native Hawaiians and missionary children won—and lost—from this transition. The missionary children gained the economic benefits accompanying U.S. citizenship—but lost their social belonging among the Hawaiian people. Native Hawaiians gained an American identity and citizenship—but lost their land, language, government, and culture.

Who wouldn’t want to be an American? In the heart of the Midwest, where I grew up, it is a rhetorical question. If pressed, the answer is usually circular. The freedom and prosperity we enjoy as Americans is because we are Americans. Yet the Hawaiian people lost much in becoming part of our nation.

Some Native Hawaiians today argue for the return of national sovereignty. In 2016 the last sugar plantation closed, and young Hawaiians now seek to revive the traditional, communal taro planting on its fallow grounds. The Hawaiian state government is leading an initiative to grow more food and reduce the state’s dependency on costly imports. Hawaiian scholars and their students have resurrected the Hawaiian language.

While such efforts are historically and economically vital, Hawaiian residents—of all ethnicities—also take pride in another narrative: Hawaii is the first U.S. state in which there is no ethnic majority. When I first visited the islands 25 years ago, I walked among Asian Americans—now the largest ethnic group living in the islands—as well as Hawaiian Americans, white Americans, and visitors from all over the world.

And, just as in the 19th century, Hawaii’s residents, the maka‘āinana (“people who work the land”), welcomed me. Some argue that Hawaii’s tourist industry furthers a false narrative about the history of the islands, but I don’t see it that way. To welcome others to one’s home, to treat someone well—regardless of wealth, status, ethnicity, color, or the costs of such hospitality—is truly Hawaiian.

Despite the devastating losses to their population and culture, Native Hawaiians today continue to show hospitality and generosity to their fellow island residents and to those who continually visit their shores. They provide a living example of how to be an American.

The post What Hawaii Taught This Midwesterner About Her Own Identity appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.