In 1853, the Hawaiian Missionary Society sent missionaries to the Marquesas, an island chain about 2,400 miles away. American and English missionaries had already attempted and ultimately failed to succeed in the realm made famous within the West by writer Herman Melville’s 1840s novels Typee and Omoo.
The ordination of the primary Native Hawaiian pastor, James Kekela, catalyzed the start of this mission.
“Several Hawaiians had been licensed to evangelise, but Kekela was the primary to receive ordination, becoming the primary pastor of a church,” later wrote Rufus Anderson, the foreign secretary for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM).
Sending Native Hawaiian missionaries to faraway Pacific Islands on independent missions was seen as a significant step in preparing for the top of the oversight and support of the ABCFM. By 1864 the Hawaiian Evangelical Association had replaced ABCFM’s Sandwich Islands Mission.
In 1853, Matunui, the high chief of the Marquesan island Fatu-hiva, accompanied by his son-in-law Pu‘u, a native Hawaiian, arrived in Lahaina, Maui, where Pu‘u was born and raised.
“It soon became apparent that Matunui got here to Hawaii for the precise purpose of soliciting missionaries,” wrote Dwight Baldwin, a missionary physician at Lahaina. “In reply to [a] query about his request for missionaries, Matunui replied, ‘… we now have nothing but war, fear, trouble, poverty. We don’t have anything good, we’re bored with living so, and want to be as you might be here.’”
The Hawaiian Missionary Society chosen 4 Hawaiian ministers and schoolteachers, who were accompanied by their wives. This included Kekela, “a modest, persevering man,” Maui kahu [pastor] Samuel Kauwealoha, and deacons and teachers Lot Kuaihelani and Isaia Kaiwi.
But the rosy vision for the Marquesan mission soon waned, and a harsh reality set in. Matunui’s missionary fervency cooled, wars continued, and the Marquesans struggled to offer material support for Kekela and the opposite missionaries. Yet the Hawaiian mission persevered, with Kekela deciding on the island of Hiva Oa.
In time, the Marquesans adopted a more Western demeanor and culture. Missionary James Bicknell, who had joined the Hawaiians, noted the change positively in an 1862 Hawaiian Missionary Society report:
In general appearance the persons are much improved, their manners are softening, they’re higher clothed, and in some the sense of shame is starting to present itself. … In general intelligence, the people have made considerable advances. … Their knowledge of foreign countries is increasing, and there’s a thirst for more. The people have learned also to tell apart between missionary and other foreigners. The distinction may be very marked, and holds good in parts distant from direct missionary influence.
In 1864, Kekela and others rescued an American whaler named Jonathan Whalon, who had been trading on Hiva Oa. The community had gone after Whalon, furious at a Peruvian slaver that had kidnapped Hiva Oa men. As they were preparing to cook and eat him, Kekela got here to the rescue and sacrificially traded his prized six-oar whale boat for the lifetime of the whaler.
For his brave rescue, President Abraham Lincoln rewarded Kekela with a big gold watch and sent gifts to the others who had helped rescue the whaler. Kekela’s watch bears this inscription: “From the President of the United States to Rev. J. Kekela For His Noble Conduct in Rescuing An American Citizen from Death On the Island of Hiva Oa January 14, 1864.”
Seventeen years later, foreign secretary Anderson reported that, despite years of hardship, Kekela, Kauwealoha, and Kaiwi still persevered on the Marquesan mission field. In 1899, the Marquesan mission finally folded when the elderly, infirmed, and nearly blind Kekela returned home to Hawai‘i for a much-deserved retirement.
Back within the Marquesas, the Kekela Hawaiian-Marquesan family continues to minister within the Protestant churches of the distant Polynesian island chain. Like the Hawaiian Islands, the realm is undergoing a cultural revival and becoming a society well connected to the Twenty first-century world outside their distant islands.
Christopher “Chris” Cook is a Kauaʻi, Hawaiʻi-based writer and researcher into the monarchy-missionary era of Hawai’i’s history. He is a graduate of the University of Hawaiʻi and writer of a biography of Opukahaia-Henry Obookiah, the primary baptized native Hawaiian Christian. He blogs at www.obookiah.com
