Hawaiian Mission Houses: Language, Faith, and Cultural Exchange

Our group of 7 attended the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives on a sunny Saturday morning in Downtown Honolulu. This visit commenced our day full of cultural education, so the anticipation was high. We quickly met our tour guide, Mike Smola, who also serves as the Museum's Director of Education, and went on our way around the property. We toured mission homes, one of them being Ka Hale Lāʻau (The Wooden House), Hawaiʻi's oldest Western-style house built in 1821.

Going into some of the oldest standing buildings in Hawaiʻi helped us envision what life was like for missionaries. One of the most notable parts of the tour was visiting a reconstruction of the Hale Pili o Nā Mikanele on the property. This structure is a house in the missionary style, and replicas the home initially occupied by Reverend William and Clarissa Richards. It is the newest addition to the Hawaiian Mission Houses' educational programs and site, having been planned and built over ten years. It was interesting to see how missionaries altered a traditional Hale to accommodate western culture. For example, the Hale Pili o Nā Mikanele had windows, which are not usually a trait the traditional Hawaiian Hale has.

In addition to learning about the history of the architecture of these homes, we learned about the people who existed during the time the homes were built. One person in particular, named Betsey Stockton, hit close to home. Stockton was the first African-American woman to reach Hawaiʻi and the first American woman without a spouse to travel abroad as a missionary. She was enslaved as a child and raised in the home of Princeton University President Ashbel Green. She was a distinguished and well-respected school teacher in Princeton, Philadelphia, and the Sandwich Islands (modern-day Hawaiʻi). Learning about her story was very interesting, and emphasized the connection between Hawaii and Western history.

I absolutely loved visiting Ka Hale Paʻi (The Printing House), which, mirroring the other historic houses, featured a carved coral block entry and stark white exterior. Mike Smola, the Hawaiian Mission Houses Museum's Director of Education and our tour guide for the morning, delved into a brief history of translating the bible into Native Hawaiian. As he explained, this process proved especially challenging due to the fact that prior to the 1820s, the Hawaiian language was solely passed down orally from one generation to the next.

A collaborative effort between American missionaries and Native Hawaiian scholars, the first complete translation 'Palapala Hemolele' took over 15 years. Mike held up a brown casebound copy of the translated bible, commenting on its large size and weight. I was shocked to learn that the bible was tediously translated from the original Greek and Hebrew texts rather than the English version. He explained that the adaptation of a Native Hawaiian alphabet from English was integral to the creation of 'Palapala Hemolele.'

The alphabet, Ka Pīʻāpā Hawaiʻi, was eventually reduced to only 13 letters with the removal of consonants B, C, D, F, G, J, Q, R, S, T, X, Y, and Z. Beyond a written alphabet, the missionaries also worked to create a written system of punctuation to more accurately capture the proper pronunciation and sounds of the Hawaiian language. Mike held up a detailed chart for us to see, which featured the koma (resembling the english comma), kikokoma (;), kikoninau (?), and the kolona (:). On the bottom right of the chart read limakuhi and featured the image of a pointing hand. Mike explained that, as a part of the Hawaiian language, the limakuhi is used to emphasize or call attention to a note in printing.

Mike's broad recounting of the interactions between missionaries and Native Hawaiians provided ample context for the elaborate machine before us, a working replica of the Ramage Printing Press carried by missionaries in 1820 as the first printing press of the Hawaiian Islands. Originally constructed of American white oak, Honduran mahogany, and American beech, the printing press was used to stamp the first Hawaiian language materials. Large pages printed with stark black ink covered the elaborately constructed rich brown exterior and neighboring shelves.

As an artist interested in printmaking and pen, I especially enjoyed being able to view a case filled with carved printing blocks. I found the intricacy and detail of this room astounding and enjoyed looking at each small part of the printing press that made the surrounding stamped pages possible. This room proved especially memorable in providing a visual representation of the standardization and creation of a written Hawaiian language, as well as the ultimate spread of Christianity across the Hawaiian Islands. I only wish that we could have been able to see the press in action.