Missionary Children in Hawai'i and the Birth of U.S. Colonialism in the Pacific, 1820-1898
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University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Dissertations, Theses, & Student Research, Department of History History, Department of 5-2011 Empire of the Young: Missionary Children in Hawai'i and the Birth of U.S. Colonialism in the Pacific, 1820-1898 Joy Schulz University of Nebraska Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss Part of the Cultural History Commons, Diplomatic History Commons, and the United States History Commons Schulz, Joy, "Empire of the Young: Missionary Children in Hawai'i and the Birth of U.S. Colonialism in the Pacific, 1820-1898" (2011). Dissertations, Theses, & Student Research, Department of History. 35. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/35 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the History, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, & Student Research, Department of History by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. EMPIRE OF THE YOUNG Missionary Children in Hawai‘i and the Birth of U.S. Colonialism in the Pacific, 1820-1898 by Joy Schulz A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Major: History Under the Supervision of Professor Thomas Borstelmann Lincoln, Nebraska May 2011 EMPIRE OF THE YOUNG: MISSIONARY CHILDREN IN HAWAI‘I AND THE BIRTH OF U.S. COLONIALISM IN THE PACIFIC, 1820-1898 Joy Schulz, Ph.D. University of Nebraska, 2011 Advisor: Thomas Borstelmann Hawaiian by birth, white by race, and American by parental and educational design, the children of nineteenth-century American missionaries in Hawai‘i occupied an ambiguous place in Hawaiian culture. More tenuous was the relationship between these children and the United States where many attended college before returning to the Hawaiian Islands. The supposed acculturation of white missionary children in Hawai‘i to American cultural, political and religious institutions was never complete, nor was their membership in Hawaiian society uncontested. The tenuous roles these children played in both societies influenced the trajectories of each nation in surprising ways. Similarly, the children’s cultural experiences shaped their views of religion, race and world affairs. This complicated, bicultural childhood inspired the missionary children to participate in revolution in Hawai‘i and accept U.S. annexation of the islands, even while attempting to keep the Hawaiian nation free from outside influence. This dissertation examines the competing parental, cultural and educational interests affecting the hundreds of white children born and raised in the Hawaiian Islands during the nineteenth century and assesses the children’s impact upon nineteenth-century U.S. foreign policy, including the particular influences of missionary sons Samuel Chapman Armstrong, Sanford Ballard Dole and John Thomas Gulick. iii Copyright 2011. Joy Schulz. iv For Jaden, Jett, Ava and Alea v Acknowledgements The colonization of children often was an uncomfortable topic for me. Numerous times I squirmed in my seat as I read nineteenth-century manuscripts and thought of my own two children and what messages I was transmitting to them through daily cultural practice--meanings of complex topics such as love, security, God, and fear. My interest in the missionary children from Hawai‘i arose after close friends, in order to conduct humanitarian work, moved with their three, preschool-age children into the heart of a war zone. Living on an enclosed city block and guarded by men with machine guns, the children spent much of their time inside a small apartment. I wondered the potential impact of this upbringing, just as I speculated how their view of the world would evolve differently from their American-born and raised parents. More painful was researching the devastation wrought upon the Hawaiian people through foreign contact. The loss of native lives, land, and a beloved monarchy was tragic and unjustified. The parts missionaries and their children played in this process were significant. While I had hoped to find white missionary children, enlightened by a bicultural upbringing, adamantly anti-imperialist, I found the sinister evidence of racism instead. Key religious differences between indigenous leadership and missionary descendants drew the white settlers increasingly closer to the United States. Yet in the nineteenth-century colonial context of the Hawaiian Islands, racism was complicated, making this particular story interesting and worth reading. Never did any of the children view themselves as racist or imperialist, even when writing about the “dirty kanaka” to their peers. A history of imperialism from children’s perspectives perhaps will lend an vi aura of unfiltered emotion to the historical record, while also pinpointing the route nineteenth-century children took toward adult attitudes of race, class and culture. The opportunity to travel to Hawai‘i and New England to conduct research, I admit, were highlights of this project, as were the numerous people I met who encouraged and aided me. I would not have been able to complete this project without the unreserved archival aid of Carol White, David Forbes, Kylee Omo, Sara Lloyd, Patricia Albright, Linda Hall, Carrie Hintz, Ben Brick and Kathy Walter. Additional direction was generously given by Gary Okihiro, Geri Shomo, Andrew Graybill and Cari Costanzo Kapur. Neither would I have been able to ask the right questions without the excellent and insightful instruction I received from my committee: James Le Sueur, Margaret Jacobs, Lloyd Ambrosius and Loukia Sarroub. Most importantly, I would like to thank my advisor Tim Borstelmann for his patient, forthright and dedicated teaching. Under his guidance I became a better student, scholar and writer. Lastly, I acknowledge my husband Marc for whose support I am always grateful. Regarding the use of nineteenth-century American missionary and missionary children’s manuscripts, I have corrected minor spelling and punctuation discrepancies to conform to modern usage and make the children and their parents’ writings more accessible to a contemporary audience. I have also included biographical dates after the names of all missionary children to differentiate them from other persons mentioned in the text. vii Table of Contents Introduction Imperial Childhood: Children and Empire Formation in the Nineteenth Century 1 1 Birthing Empire: Economies of Childrearing and the Formation of American Colonialism in Hawai‘i 19 2 Playing with Fire: White Childhood in the Islands 63 3 Schooling Power: Parents, Punahou and the Process of Teaching Colonialism in the Islands 109 4 Cannibals in America: U.S. Acculturation and the Formation of National Identity 153 5 Crossing the Pali: Bicultural Identity and the Racial Divide 203 6 Wise Men of Gotham: Hawaiian Mission Children in the World 225 Conclusion The Pali Revisited: Nineteenth-Century Hawaiian Mission Children in Comparative Perspective 295 Images 303 Works Cited 308 viii List of Images Figure 1. Map of the Western Hemisphere 303 Figure 2. The whaleship Averick 303 Figure 3. Sophia Moseley Bingham 304 Figure 4. Amos and Juliette Cooke and family, c. 1860 305 Figure 5. Hawaiian man carrying calabashes 305 Figure 6. Kealoha, Hawaiian nurse 306 Figure 7. Punahou School 306 Figure 8. Natives crossing Pali 307 1 Introduction: Imperial Childhood Children and Empire Formation in the Nineteenth Century “Kauhua Ku, ka Lani, i-loli ka moku; Hookohi ke kua-koko o ka Lani; He kua-koko, pu-koko I ka honua; He kua-koko kapu no ka Lani.” – Ancient Hawaiian Mele “Big with child is the Princess Ku; the whole island suffers her whimsies; the pangs of labor are on her; labor that stains the land with blood.” (Translation)1 The first white child born in the Hawaiian Islands entered a culture engulfed by internal transformation and embattled by foreign pressures. Neither she nor her American missionary parents could have anticipated in 1820 the critical role missionary children would play in this international drama. Not only did the hundreds of missionary children born to American parents in the Hawaiian Islands propel the Hawaiian and U.S. governments towards their 1898 conflagration, the children themselves became subjects of the imperial process, their formative childhoods the site upon which a colonial agenda was transmitted and developed. Colonial childhood developed into a critical yet contested battlefield upon which U.S. empire was built. Missionary children could not have predicted the lasting outrage their actions would illicit from descendants of native Hawaiians. Dispossessed of land by foreign laws and strange concepts of private ownership, and stripped of the government they preferred through revolutionary means, indigenous Hawaiians retained pride in their culture and passed on to their children the will to fight colonial power. Their fight continues into the twenty-first century. In this respect the Hawaiian story fits well within the broader history of empire and decolonization. As Albert Memmi first pointedly argued, colonial 1 Hawaiian and English translations found in Nathaniel Bright Emerson, Unwritten Literature of Hawaii: The Sacred Songs of the Hula, ed. Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology, vol. 38 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909), 80-81. 2 settlers were the