Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia | |
|---|---|
.jpg) | |
| Born | c. 1793 |
| Died | February 17, 1818 |
| Burial place | Napoʻopoʻo |
| Parent(s) | Keau and Kamohoula |
| Signature | |
 | |
Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia (c. 1792 – 1818) was one of the firstNative Hawaiians to become aChristian, inspiring AmericanProtestant missionaries to come to the islands during the 19th century. He is credited with starting Hawaii's conversion to Christianity. His name was usually spelledObookiah during his lifetime. His name Henry is sometimesHawaiianized asHeneri.
ʻŌpūkahaʻia was born atKaʻū on theisland of Hawaiʻi in 1792. When he was 10, his family was murdered by the warriors ofKamehameha I during the rebellion ofNāmakehā.[1][2] The 1866 Hawaiian biography by Reverend S. W. Papaula would state that ʻŌpūkahaʻia was born in 1787 instead.[3]
In 1807, when Captain Caleb Britnall took him aboard theTriumph, the teenage boy had his first English lessons en route toNew Haven, Connecticut, along with fellow Hawaiiancabin boy Thomas Hopu. As a student in the New Haven area, he was looked after in a succession of homes, and worked summers to help earn his keep. The future Reverend Edwin W. Dwight, a senior inYale College at the time, met him in 1809 when he discovered ʻŌpūkahaʻia sitting on the steps of the college. When ʻŌpūkahaʻia lamented: "No one give me learning", Dwight agreed to help him find tutoring.[4] ʻŌpūkahaʻia took up residence with one of Dwight's relatives, Yale presidentTimothy Dwight IV, a founder of theAmerican Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, who instructed him in Christian and secular subjects.[4] He had studiedEnglish grammar and the usual curriculum in public schools by the time he converted to Christianity in 1815, during theSecond Great Awakening.[5]
He and otherPolynesians andNative Americans requested training to spreadthe Gospel back home. This inspired the founding of theForeign Mission School in 1816, administered from Boston by theAmerican Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). It had broad support from the residents ofCornwall, Connecticut, where it moved in 1817, and from donors elsewhere in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York. During its ten years, about 100 students attended: "43 Native Americans, 13 Americans (white), and 20 Hawaiians, and other natives of the Pacific. including 2 Chinese".[6]
Even before this school opened, Edwin Dwight wrote in 1818, ʻŌpūkahaʻia had begun "'reducing to system his own native tongue. As it was not a written language, but lay in its chaotic state, every thing was to be done [...] he had made some progress towards completing a Grammar, a Dictionary, and a Spelling-book.'"[7] However, these books no longer exist.Samuel B. Ruggles, one of the First Company of missionaries to Hawaii and a fellow student of ʻŌpūkahaʻia at Cornwall, mentions in an 1819 letter that his own grammar was "much assisted by one which ʻŌpūkahaʻia attempted to form."Elisha Loomis, who was to be the printer for the first mission, was inspired to join it by reading ʻŌpūkahaʻia's memoirs, edited by Dwight in the year of his death from typhus fever, over a year before the First Company set sail fromBoston.
ʻŌpūkahaʻia planned to return to Hawaii himself to preach, but contractedtyphus fever and died in 1818 in Cornwall at the age of 26.
Between 1824 and 1826, two young white women from Cornwall families married Cherokee students at the Foreign Mission School. Although some locals supported the young couples, the interracial marriages stoked great outrage among many townspeople, and in the ensuing controversy, the school was shuttered. However, both the school and ʻŌpūkahaʻia were a catalyst for theSandwich Island Mission and for the first concentrated efforts to analyze the language.
In 1993, some descendants of ʻŌpūkahaʻia's family decided to return his body from his grave in Connecticut to Hawaii.[8] On Aug. 15, 1993, his remains were laid in a vault facing the sea atKahikolu Church near the town ofNapoʻopoʻo, Kona, on the Island of Hawaii. It was the third church established in Hawaii by missionaries inspired by Opukahaʻia. Hawaii's churches observe the third Sunday in February as a day of commemoration in honor of its first Christian. A plaque at the Cornwall gravesite reads: "In July of 1993, the family of Henry Opukahaia took him home to Hawaii for interment at Kahikolu Congregational Church Cemetery, Napo'opo'o, Kona, Island of Hawaii. Henry's family expresses gratitude, appreciation, and love to all who cared for and loved him throughout the past years. Ahahui O Opukahaia".
Besides translating theBook of Genesis into Hawaiian, ʻŌpūkahaʻia nearly completed aHawaiian dictionary, grammar, and spelling book. TheMemoirs of Henry Obookiah were published inNew York City in 1818 and have been republished by the Woman's Board of Missions for the Pacific Islands several times since the 1960s. They have recently republished the 195-year-old book with a new epilogue of how his body was returned to the Big Island of Hawaii, along with new photographs.[9]
In a civil war, his father and mother had been slain before his eyes; and when he fled with his infant brother on his back, the child was killed with a spear, he was then taken and raised by the very person who slaughtered his family.
The First Great Awakening [in the mid-18th century] [...] produced a conflict, often intense, between conservative Protestants—Old Lights—and the revivalistic reformers –New Lights.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
Lyons, J. K. (2004). Memoirs of Henry Obookiah: A Rhetorical History.Hawaiian Journal of History, 38, 35-57.
