by John Demos
Many scholars responded helpfully to my requests for comment on specific issues and questions, among them, John Harley Warner, Jean O’Brien, Theda Perdue, Bill Hutchison, Peter Wood, Tom McCarthy, Gary Nash, Emily Conroy-Krutz, and Harry Stout.
This long list must particularly include the readers of my various written drafts, friends and colleagues without whose help the book would have been a much lesser thing. Aaron Sachs and Jane Kamensky, two of the finest writers I know, provided exhaustive, page-by-page responses to the whole manuscript version; their advice was crucial throughout. Other readers of the whole included Wendy Warren, my editor Andrew Miller, and members of the Historians and Writers group at Cornell University; all made valuable suggestions. Individual chapters were read and critiqued by Dawn Peterson, Richard D. Brown, Jill Lepore, Peter Silver, Daniel Mandell, Ann Marie Plane, Robert Johnston, Jim Sleeper, Maura Fitzgerald, and workshop gatherings at Rutgers, Princeton, and Yale Universities and the Huntington Library.
Editorial staff at Alfred A. Knopf skillfully steered the book toward publication, especially Andrew Miller and Mark Chiusano. Carol Edwards did remarkable, and much-needed, work as copy editor. Closer to home, Gary Harrington smoothed my sometimes troubled relations with my word processor. And closest of all to home, Virginia Demos endured the many years of the project’s life, and offered repeated infusions of comment, suggestion, and hope.
I offer great thanks to all these people and institutions, while at the same time clearing them of responsibility for any of the book’s inevitable shortcomings.
Notes
There are two archives in particular that are cited repeatedly in the notes. These are identified by call number or folder number, but the repositories listed below are not repeated in individual notes.
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions ms. archive, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. There are four record sets, each with its own call number:
ABC 1.01
ABC 11
ABC 12.1
ABC 18.3.1
Foreign Mission School Archive (FMS), Cornwall Historical Society, Cornwall, CT. The records are filed in sixty-one folders.
Prologue
1. At the time of deciding to pursue this topic, previous writing about it included the following: Edward C. Starr, A History of Cornwall, Connecticut: A Typical New England Town (New Haven, CT, 1926), 136–57; Paul H. Chamberlain, “The Foreign Mission School” (typescript pamphlet, Cornwall, CT, 1968); John Andrew, “Educating the Heathen: the Foreign Mission School Controversy and American Ideals,” Journal of American Studies 12 (1978): 331–42; John Andrew, Rebuilding the Christian Commonwealth: New England Congregationalists and Foreign Missions (Lexington, KY, 1976), chapter 9; Ralph Gabriel, Elias Boudinot, Cherokee, and His America (Norman, OK, 1941), part 2; Thurman Wilkins, Cherokee Tragedy: The Ridge Family and the Decimation of a People (Norman, OK, 1970), chapter 6. In the years since, the Foreign Mission School and, in particular, its two leading members, Elias Boudinot and John Ridge, have drawn attention from literature scholars. See, for example, Theresa Strouth Gaul, ed., To Marry an Indian: The Marriage of Harriett Gold & Elias Boudinot in Letters, 1823–1839 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2005); Karen Woods Weierman, One Nation, One Blood: Interracial Marriage in American Fiction, Scandal, and Law, 1820–1870 (Amherst, MA, 2005), chapter 1; Maureen Konkle, Writing Indian Nations: Native Intellectuals and the Politics of Historiography, 1827–1863 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004), chapter 1; Hilary E. Wyss, English Letters and Indian Literacies: Reading, Writing, and New England Missionary Schools, 1750–1830 (Philadelphia, 2012), chapter 4.
2. Recent discussions of the theme of American exceptionalism include, for example, Ted Widmer, Ark of the Liberties: America and the World (New York, 2007), and Godfrey Hodgson, The Myth of American Exceptionalism (New Haven, CT, 2009). See also Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s Millennial Role (Chicago, 1968).
3. Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America, trans. Richard Howard (New York, 1984), 3.
4. Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho (New York, 1983), 7. I am grateful to Adrienne Miesmer for calling this comment to my attention.
CHAPTER ONE American Outreach: The China Trade
1. James R. Gibson, Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods: The Maritime Fur Trade of the Northwest Coast, 1785–1841 (Montreal, 1992), 12–35.
2. Ibid., 36–61, 292–95. The literature on the China Trade is vast. The most recent book-length account is Eric Jay Dolan, When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail (New York, 2012). For a good short introduction, see James Kirker, Adventures to China: Americans in the Southern Ocean (New York, 1970). Perhaps the fullest account of the Chinese end of the trade is Jacques Downs, The Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community of Canton and the Shaping of American China Policy, 1784–1844 (Bethlehem, PA, 1997). A somewhat older book, Foster Rhea Dulles, The Old China Trade (New York, 1970), is still useful. See also Henry Trubner and William Jay Rathbun, China’s Influence on American Culture in the 18th and 19th Centuries (New York, 1976); Philip Chadwick Foster, The Empress of China (Philadelphia, 1984); Margaret Christman, Adventurous Pursuits: Americans and the China Trade, 1784–1844 (Washington, D.C., 1984); John Rogers Haddad, The Romance of China: Excursions to China in U.S. Culture, 1778–1876 (New York, 2008), especially chapters 1–3. For more specialized studies, see David Sanctuary Howard, New York and the China Trade (New York, 1984); Jean Gordon Lee, Philadelphians and the China Trade (Philadelphia, 1984). On the economic importance of transpacific trade (including trade with China), see James R. Fichter, So Great a Profit: How the East India Trade Transformed American Capitalism (Cambridge, MA, 2010). On the material side of the trade, see the handsome exhibition catalog by Thomas Vaughan and Bill Holm, Soft Gold: The Fur Trade and Cultural Exchange on the Northwest Coast of America, rev. ed. (Portland, OR, 1989); Carl L. Crossman, The Decorative Arts of the China Trade: Paintings, Furnishings, and Exotic Curiosities (Woodbridge, CT, 1991); China Trade Issue, Historic Deerfield 6 (2005).
3. On the Boston Exchange Coffee House, see the superb work by Jane Kamensky, The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America’s First Banking Collapse (New York, 2008).
4. Gibson, Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods, 32–35, 41–42; Kirker, Adventures to China, 24–34.
5. Kirker, Adventures to China, 20–23, 35–49. See also Briton Cooper Busch, The War Against the Seals: A History of the North American Seal Fishery (Kingston, ON, 1985), chapters 1–2.
6. Kirker, Adventures to China, 65–81.
7. Ibid., 118–43; Gibson, Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods, 253–54.
8. Gibson, Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods, 6–11, 57–60, 110–36, 176–77.
9. Ibid., 50–56, 84–104, 188–203, 294–95; Kirker, Adventures to China, 161–75; Crossman, The Decorative Arts of the China Trade; Howard, New York and the China Trade; Lee, Philadelphians and the China Trade.
10. Downs, The Golden Ghetto, 67–72; Gibson, Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods, 92–93, 99–100.
11. John Meares, Voyages Made in the Years 1788 and 1789, from China to the Northwest Coast of America (London, 1790), quoted in Gibson, Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods, 44; “Shadows of Destiny: A French Navigator’s View of the Hawaiian Kingdom and Its Government in 1828,” Hawaiian Journal of History 17 (1983): 28, quoted ibid.; J. C. Beaglehole, ed., The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, 5 vols. (Cambridge, 1955–1974), vol. 3, 1083–85, quoted ibid., 48.
12. Amasa Delano, A Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres (Boston, 1817), 542, quoted in Kirker, Adventures to China, 4.
13. Kirker, Adventures to China, 150–54. See also Gibson, Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods, 51–52, 151–52, 279–80, 289–91.
14. See David A. Chappell, Double Ghosts: Oceanian Voyagers on Euroamerican Ships (Armonk, NY, 1
997). By some estimates, Pacific Islanders—especially Hawaiians—would eventually compose a quarter of the crew members on ships involved in this transoceanic trade.
CHAPTER TWO “Providence unquestionably cast them on our shores”
1. See A Narrative of Five Youth from the Sandwich Islands, Now Receiving an Education in This Country (New York, 1816), 9.
2. Ibid. See also E. W. Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, a Native of the Sandwich Islands, Who Died at Cornwall, Connecticut, February 17, 1818, Aged 26 (New Haven, CT, 1818), 22–23. For a later account of these same events, see Thomas C. Richards, Samuel J. Mills: Missionary, Pathfinder, Pioneer, and Promoter (Boston, 1906), 16, quoted in Thomas E. French, The Missionary Whaleship (New York, 1961), 20.
3. Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 17.
4. Ibid., 21, 25.
5. On the life and career of Timothy Dwight, see Kenneth Silverman, Timothy Dwight (New York, 1969); John R. Fitzmeir, New England’s Moral Legislator: Timothy Dwight, 1752–1817 (Bloomington, IN, 1998); Stephen E. Berk, Calvinism Versus Democracy: Timothy Dwight and the Origins of American Evangelical Orthodoxy (Hamden, CT, 1974). For photographs of the president’s house (long since destroyed), see the Dana Scrapbook Collection, vol. 13, 106, 108, Whitney Library, New Haven Museum, New Haven, CT.
6. Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 4–5, 8.
7. On the place and year of Obookiah’s birth, see Albert S. Baker to Librarian, Public Library, Cornwall, CT, July 23, 1941, in FMS Archive, folder 31. See also Baker to Emily Marsh, September 11, 1941, in FMS Archive, folder 31. Until the excellent work of Baker, a missionary and careful genealogist, the generally accepted year for Obookiah’s birth was 1792.
8. There are numerous histories in which these events are described. See, for example, Ralph S. Kuykendall and A. Grove Day, Hawaii: A History from Polynesian Kingdom to American State (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1976), chapter 3.
9. Ibid., 5–8. See also Baker to Librarian, July 23, 1941. The identity of Obookiah’s uncle has been clearly established: one of his mother’s older brothers, named Pahua. This man was indeed a kahuna (high priest) at the famous heiau (temple) known as Hikiau, near Napo’opo’o, on the shore of Kealakekua Bay. He remained active for many years after Obookiah’s departure, and was visited in the 1820s by several members of the newly founded Protestant mission.
10. Kuykendall and Day, Hawaii, 9.
11. The fullest account of the plan for Obookiah and Hopoo to chaperone the prince on a voyage to America appears in “Memoirs of Thomas Hopoo,” reprinted in Hawaiian Journal of History 2 (1968): 42–54. (The manuscript original of this document is at the Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Center, MA.) See also A Narrative of Five Youth, 7; Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 10–12.
12. Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 12.
13. Ibid., 15, 14; A Narrative of Five Youth, 19.
14. Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 16. On April 8, 1809, the Connecticut Herald carried the following notice: “The ship Triumph (Captain Caleb Brintnall), belonging to this port, has arrived at New York City, in 5 months from Canton.”
15. Gardner J. Spring, Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel J. Mills (New York, 1820), 47; Samuel J. Mills to Gordon Hall, December 20, 1809, ibid., 49; Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 23; Daily Herald (West Winsted, CT), October 25, 1894.
16. Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 23; Letter from the Rev. Mr. Mills, quoted ibid., 24.
17. Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 25, 27, 28. See also The Religious Intelligencer, vol. 1 (1816–17), 13.
18. Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 32.
19. Ibid., 36–37.
20. A Narrative of Five Youth, 10.
21. Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 39, 90–91, 37.
22. On Eleazer Williams, see John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (New York, 1994), epilogue. Samuel J. Mills to the Prudential Committee, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, March 14, 1814, ABC 12.1, vol. 2, no. 2; William Bartlett, S. Spring, and Samuel Worcester to the Prudential Committee, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, March 18, 1814, ABC 12.1, vol. 2, no. 1
23. Lyman Beecher, A Sermon Delivered at the Funeral of Henry Obookiah (New Haven, CT, 1818), reprinted in Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 29, at back of volume.
24. Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 38, 23.
25. Ibid., 43.
26. Ibid., 44.
27. For numerous examples of letters by Obookiah and other scholars, see Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, and The Religious Intelligencer, vols. 1–3. The quoted passages in this paragraph are found in Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 46, 52, 49, 66, 62, 66–67, 55, 26.
28. Henry Obookiah to A Christian Friend, December 15, 1812, in A Narrative of Five Youth, 13; Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 40.
29. Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 91, 42, 48, 93.
30. Ibid., 32; Cyrus Franklin Burge to E. C. Starr, February 22, 1899, in FMS Archive, folder 31.
31. Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 89; letter of J. P. Stone, quoted in A. C. Thompson, A Commemorative Address … at the Semi-Centenary of the Ordination of the First Missionaries to the Sandwich Islands (Boston, 1869), 15n.
32. Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 89–93.
33. Ibid., 41, 96.
34. A Narrative of Five Youth, 19, 26, 29. On Honoree’s experience, in particular, see also The Panoplist and Missionary Magazine, vol. 13 (1817), 43.
35. A Narrative of Five Youth, 30–35; The Religious Intelligencer, vol. 1 (1816–17), 446–47. See The Religious Intelligencer, vol. 1 (1816–17), 142, 334–35, 414; The Panoplist and Missionary Magazine, vol. 13 (1817), 44.
36. A Narrative of Five Youth, 32, 38, 28.
37. W. Safford to Jeremiah Evarts, May 13, 1816, ABC 12.1, vol. 2, no. 3.
38. The Religious Intelligencer, vol. 1 (1816–17), 14, 174.
39. Charles Prentice, James Harvey, and James Morris to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, August 20, 1816, ABC 12.1, vol. 2, no. 8.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. The Religious Intelligencer, vol. 1 (1816–17), 439–40. Leaders of the American Bible Society announced similar ambitions with a similar time line. In 1833, the Society’s Virginia chapter resolved “that the world shall be supplied with the Holy Scriptures within twenty years.” See American Bible Society, Resolutions of the American Bible Society, and an Address to the Christian Public, on the Subject of Supplying the Whole World with the Sacred Scriptures, Within a Definite Period (New York, 1833), vol. 1, 5, quoted in Richard D. Brown, The Strength of a People: The Idea of an Informed Citizenry in America, 1650–1870 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1996), 112.
43. The School’s constitution is published in A Narrative of Five Youth, 41–42.
44. Ibid., 42.
45. Ibid., 43–44.
46. Ibid., 44.
47. Edwin W. Dwight to Abigail Welles Dwight, April 1, 1817, Dwight Collection, vol. 11, 43, Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA; The Religious Intelligencer, vol. 1 (1816–17), 14; James Morris to Jedediah Morse, November 25, 1816, ABC 12.1, vol. 2, no. 40. In midwinter, the American Board reimbursed Pettingill for charges incurred in “boarding and instructing the Owhyhean youths to Jan. 31st [1817]”; see Charlestown to Rev. Amos Pettingill, February 24, 1817, ABC 1.01, vol. 2, no. 63. See also A Narrative of Five Youth, 30; “Recollections of Mrs. Cowles of Morris,” ms. notes, FMS Archive, folder 10.
48. George Prince Tamoree to unidentified correspondent, November 20, 1816, in The Religious Intelligencer, vol. 1 (1816–17), 335.
49. Lyman Beecher to Elias Cornelius, December 5, 1816, Morse Family Papers, folder 006-0176, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT.
50. The Religious Intelligencer, vol. 1 (1816–17), 487; A Narrative of Five Youth, 5. On the rise in annual donations to the ABCFM, see John A. Andrew, Rebuilding the Christian Commonwea
lth: New England Congregationalists and Foreign Missions, 1800–1830 (Lexington, KY, 1976), 91. I am indebted also to Gretchen Heefner’s unpublished essay “Salvable Savages: The Nineteenth-Century Missionary Construction of Hawaii” (Yale University, 2003).
51. Joseph Harvey to Samuel Worcester, October 12, 1817, ABC 12.1, vol. 2, no. 10; Prudential Committee, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to James Morris et al., November 15, 1816, ABC 1.01, vol. 2, nos. 17–19; Dwight, Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, 91; N. Perkins, Jr., to unidentified recipient, January 21, 1817, in Memoirs of Henry Obookiah, edition published by the Women’s Board of Missions for the Pacific Islands (Honolulu, 1990), 106.
52. Memoirs of Henry Obookiah (1990 edition), 84, 80–81.
53. Ibid., 85.
54. James Harvey to Samuel Worcester, October 30, 1816, ABC 12.1, vol. 2, no. 12; James Morris to Jedediah Morse, November 20, 1816, ABC 12.1, vol. 2, no. 40. On details of the buildings, see Morris to Worcester, December 9, 1816, ABC 12.1, vol. 2, no. 41; James Morris, Report of the Visiting Committee to the Foreign Mission School, September 2, 1817, ABC 12.1, vol. 2, no. 44. See also The Panoplist and Missionary Magazine, vol. 13 (1817), 324, 344. Copies of the deeds transferring land “with an academy standing on the premises” are in FMS Archive, folder 18. The grant was to last “so long as the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions shall want the same for said school.”
55. James Morris to Samuel Worcester, December 9, 1816, ABC 12.1, vol. 2, no. 41. For the school’s petition to the General Assembly, together with the latter’s response, see Connecticut Archives, Ecclesiastical Affairs, 2d series, vol. 6 (Missions: Miscellaneous), 1a–5b, Connecticut State Library, Hartford, CT.
56. Jonathan Miller to Dr. Ebenezer Porter, November 15, 1816, ABC 12.1, vol. 2, no. 177.
57. George Prince Tamoree to Kummoree, October 19, 1816, in The Religious Intelligencer, vol. 1 (1816–17), 446–47; George Prince Tamoree to Capt. Cotting, January 2, 1817, ABC 12.1, vol. 2, no. 168.
