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for the young Hawaiian’s education.⁶ Henry ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia was born around 1792 on the island of Hawai‘i and arrived in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1810 along with another Hawaiian man, Thomas Hopu. ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia had been living initially with Captain Brintnall, whose ship he had arrived on, and when the opportunity to obtain an education presented itself, he moved in with the family of Yale president Timothy Dwight, with whom he lived until he met Samuel Mills. ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia went to live with Mills and his family in Torringford, Connecticut. He then moved with Mills in late 1810 to Andover, Massachusetts, when Mills went to undertake his studies at the recently opened Theological Seminary. Henry then went to nearby Branford Academy to pursue his own course of study for a few months. In all, Henry spent two years at Andover with Mills. However, between 1810 and 1816, Henry changed residences frequently, living in Torringford, Andover, Goshen, Litchfield, and Canaan, Connecticut, either following Mills or removing to other situations in order to pursue an erratic course of study with local ministers and deacons, or hiring himself out to work in order to pay for his subsistence.⁷

      It seems that nothing formal had been undertaken by the Boston-based board for the financial support of these men through May 1816, as can be seen by ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia’s frequent movement between households. By this time, however, there were several youths from the Sandwich Islands who were also in Connecticut and whose educations, religious and otherwise, were being supported by the same circle of ministers, educators, and their families who had been helping to provide for ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia. That month, another letter to the board requested “provision for their support,” asking whether or not a school was to be established for these men.⁸ From the necessity of providing financially and spiritually for the five Hawaiians within their community, a larger vision for a Foreign Mission School to train native missionaries was born.

      A meeting dedicated to the subject of patronizing the Hawaiian men had been held at New Haven in June of that year, wherein agents and trustees were appointed to “superintend the particular concerns of these young men.”⁹ The next month, the newly elected Board of Trust composed of Rev. Charles Prentice, Rev. Joseph Harvey, and James Morris met in Goshen to deliberate the “best method of conducting the education of these and other heathen youths.” The young men from the Sandwich Islands, noted the trustees in a letter to the board, were sent to them by the hand of Providence in order to “draw the attention of the Christian public to those Islands, as an important missionary field; and also to point out the method of facilitating the introduction of missions to other parts of the heathen world.”¹⁰

      Hawaiians, with their frequently remarked-upon amiable dispositions and desire for knowledge, were not only the impetus behind the establishment of a school; their presence in New England spurred discussion and thought about the role “heathens” should play in spreading the gospel in foreign mission fields. Hawaiian men would be invaluable as assistants to missionaries, as “interpreters, schoolmasters, catechists and translators.”¹¹ It was felt that if “properly trained,” the natives would be more successful in discharging the “duties of these subordinate stations” with “much greater success than missionaries from foreign countries.”¹² This developing American missionary theory about the place of natives in foreign mission fields held out the possibility that “natives” would do important work in their homes once educated properly.¹³ Mission letters and pamphlets spoke of the desire of the Hawaiians to “carry the gospel to their perishing country men,”¹⁴ and certainly, over the course of their studies, Hawaiian and other native men cultivated the expectation that they would bear some of the responsibility and pleasure of preaching among and converting their own people.

      Discussion about the necessity of building a foreign mission school also engendered thinking about the best system for preparing New England missionaries for foreign mission fields. Missionaries sent to “heathen lands” usually had to spend precious time learning the local language, and once they become relatively accomplished, they would train “assistants,” very often from among the people who taught them the language, to serve as translators and teachers. But the Connecticut trustees proposed that it would be best to establish a school in America, where “youths from different heathen countries may be collected and taught the rudiments of science, the necessary arts of civilized life, and the great principles of Christianity.”¹⁵ They argued for the comparative advantages of this model, since “heathen youths brought to this country and placed in a school, are at once under a regular government, and have their business systematized. They will of course be inured to habits of industry and regularity, they will learn the art of government and subordination.”¹⁶ The school would also benefit American missionaries by affording them the opportunity to study “heathen languages” with their foreign classmates, spending a sufficient enough period that they would be prepared and “furnished with every facility to enter immediately on their work.”¹⁷

      Students from around the world had been provided to the mission free of charge, and the Connecticut trustees assured the board that as “commercial relations and enterprise increase, the number of these visitants will also increase.” The trustees clearly had some knowledge of the commercial interests of the nation, since their vision of collecting students followed the Northwest Coast–Hawai‘i–China merchant routes, “We suppose that young men of talents and influence might with little difficulty be obtained from China … from the islands of the sea, from Nootka Sound and the various tribes on the Western Coast of America, from South America.”¹⁸ While builders of missions depended upon merchant shipping to supply students to their schools, they would also find allies in commerce who would carry missionaries to foreign mission fields and facilitate the mission’s progress by carrying letters, journals, and reports back to Boston, where they could be published in newspapers and religious magazines, reaching a large American readership. The trade routes that brought curiosities to American museums would supply students, who would also be placed on display and whose stories circulated through the Christian community. The men would eventually serve as examples of Christian progress—their newly civilized persons made a deeper impression when compared to the already established savage Hawaiian imaginary of print, and the museum.

      As a cohort, the Sandwich Islanders embodied a lesson on the spectrum from “savage” to “civilized,” since ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia was by all accounts the furthest along in his education, followed by Thomas Hopu and William Kanui, whereas John Honoli‘i could barely speak any English. The presence of the men in school, at public examinations, in community churches, and on fund-raising tours would, according to the committee, “bring heathen manners, as a living and impressive spectacle. It would afford a constant fund of interesting facts rendered weighty by their proximity, by which we may rouse the attention and call forth the resources of our country in the cause of missions.”¹⁹ While raising awareness, the students would also “call forth” funds for the school and foreign mission cause from the “resources” of the country. The mission school would generate more revenue than “many sermons,” the trustees argued, if annual reports of the progress of the students were made public.²⁰ These observations, they said, came from their own experience with the Hawaiians: “Since the youths from the Sandwich Islands have been under our care, we have found the public greatly interested in their state and concerns. Many generous donations have, unsolicited, poured in upon us, and many have expressed a willingness and even a desire to aid, when their aid is needed.”²¹

      In their petitions to the American Board for assistance for the education of these Hawaiian men, the Connecticut group of ministers and community leaders developed ideas about how the mission should be structured both at home and abroad. Instead of focusing on the education of heathen youth in foreign lands, they would concentrate their energies and direct efforts in educating heathen youth in America.

      The men from the Sandwich Islands were the impetus behind the establishment of the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut. The Hawaiians were the largest group of pupils hailing from one place in attendance in the school when it unofficially opened on May 1, 1816. By 1817, just one year later, the school housed seven pupils from the Sandwich Islands. As the agents for the school and the General Association of Connecticut were to find, their observations about cultivating the public’s interest in the state, activities, and

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