Vacation Rental in Princeville Kauai
and Kauai Travel Guide
©B.Pruitt 2009
History of Kauai and Hawaii
All God’s Children Must Go to Heaven
The attention of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was drawn to Hawaii by a young Hawaiian visitor they called Henry Obookiah. The young Christian convert expressed anguish for his unredeemed countrymen before he died of typhus. This inspired the American Board to organize a missionary company to go to Hawaii. Six months and 18,000 miles later, the Protestant missionaries landed on the island of Hawaii and presented themselves to Liholiho. After some deliberation, Liholiho granted permission to the missionaries to stay in his kingdom for one year. Two couples stayed on Hawaii while the rest of the contingent sailed on to Honolulu where they would set up the headquarters of the mission.
In May 1820 the missionaries Samuel Whitney and Samuel Ruggles and their wives arrived in Waimea, Kauai. They escorted the son of King Kaumuali‘i, Prince George Humehume, who had been in America for nine years. The overjoyed king showered the missionaries with gifts and invited them to stay and teach his people. Such large crowds attended their services that branch stations were set up in Hanalei and Koloa. On October 19, 1820, Mercy Whitney bore a daughter, the first white baby born in Hawaii.
Liholiho set forth on a voyage from Honolulu to Kauai on July 21, 1821. Kaumuali‘i greeted the unexpected guest with kindness. When the subject of the sovereignty of Kauai arose Liholiho averred, "Kaumuali‘i, I have not come to take from you your island. I wish not to place any one over it: keep it yourself; take care of it as you have done; and do with the vessels and all your possessions as you please!"
The two kings took a tour of Kauai on their respective brigs that lasted 42 days. On September 16 Liholiho invited Kaumuali‘i aboard his luxurious vessel the Pride of Hawaii while they were anchored at Waimea Bay. At 9:00 p.m. Liholiho secretly ordered the captain to raise anchor and sail for Oahu. The Reverend Hiram Bingham, who was visiting Waimea at the time, reported that the people of the village were left greatly confused and troubled by the event, fearing they would never see their king again.
Evidently, Liholiho perpetrated the kidnapping according to the wishes of Ka‘ahumanu, who then entrusted the guardianship of Kauai to her brother, Kahekili Ke‘eaumoku. Kaumuali‘i's downfall may have been triggered by his overtly friendly reception of the missionaries. Liholiho and Ka‘ahumanu no doubt remembered when Kaumuali‘i aligned himself with Russia several years earlier and feared that he was about to form an alliance with the American missionaries. The politically astute Ka‘ahumanu must have surprised the unsuspecting king from Kauai when she made him her husband just four days after he landed in Oahu. Just to bond Kauai even more firmly to the windward islands, Ka‘ahumanu then married Kaumuali‘i's son as well.
Queen Regent Ka‘ahumanu treated the missionaries with regal haughtiness before she fell gravely ill. Hiram Bingham’s wife, Sybil, nursed her back to health, and Ka‘ahumanu emerged the unfailing friend of the missionaries, much more receptive to Christian teachings. In April 1824, she publicly announced her conversion to Christianity. Soon many prominent chiefs converted and thousands of commoners listened to the missionaries’ preachings.
Wanting the Hawaiians to read the gospel for themselves, the missionaries decided they must reduce the Hawaiian language to written form. Again, they focused on the leaders. By first teaching the chiefs to read and write, the mass of Hawaiians eagerly followed.
In 1841, Father Robert Walsh established the first Roman Catholic mission on Kauai at Koloa. Liholiho had to issue the "Edict of Toleration" in order to end the resistance of some of the Protestant missionaries to Catholic competition. Father Walsh built the landmark St. Raphael's church in 1856, which is still in use today.