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of the school, and the rest within a mile’s walking distance. The townspeople gave generously for the cause, subscribing in money and clothing “a considerable sum” of approximately “eleven to thirteen hundred dollars.”⁴⁴

      The public’s imagination had been ensnared by stories of the Hawaiian youth, more so than for the mission spirit in general. Hoping to capitalize on their newest charge, the ABCFM’s writers emphasized Kaumuali‘i’s royal connections and his service in the navy on behalf of Americans. With these stories, the ABCFM inaugurated another phase of their promotion of the Hawaiian men for the Foreign Mission School. The mission also solidified their claim upon the Sandwich Islands as an American mission field. The ABCFM began to promote stories about Kaumuali‘i that appeared first in religious newspapers and quickly spread to the secular press. Numerous newspaper notices about the life of Kaumuali‘i were published from September 1816 through April 1817, appearing in newspapers in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Two Philadelphia-based German-language newspapers also republished articles that had already appeared previously in English-language newspapers.

      From the first, notices about Kaumuali‘i were engineered to persuade the Christian public to be more liberal with their donations by publishing them alongside notices of the names of those who had already donated to the cause. Kaumuali‘i’s letter to a female benefactor, dated October 1, 1816, accomplished both these aims. The letter also revealed much about the lives of the young Hawaiian students in America and gave some glimpse into how the young “prince” related to home. Far from embodying the exemplary kinds of reports the American Board produced about the accomplished ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia, George’s letter, published on October 29, 1816, in the Boston Recorder, appeared “not from any particular merit there is in it; but as the first essay of a child in knowledge.”⁴⁵ By placing before the public the written production of their royal pupil, the ABCFM writers challenged readers to “judge for themselves, whether their charities bestowed on these interesting young men, will be lost or not.”⁴⁶

      The young Kaumuali‘i thanked his benefactor and related his progress in his studies with Rev. Vaill. Learning also occurred outside the confines of missionary prescribed subjects. For example, George wrote about living with John Honoli‘i, who was teaching him how to speak Hawaiian, while George taught Honoli‘i some English. The younger Kaumuali‘i did not forget that education was the reason his father sent him to America, although it seems strange to think of the young “prince” as just having embarked on an educational path, considering the number of years he had spent in America and in the naval service abroad. Although he left home at a young age, Kaumuali‘i remembered his father’s imperative that he should acquire a good education, though opportunities had since arisen for him to return home. “I think it better for me and for my father to stay here and receive a good education than to go back in the situation I was going in,” he wrote to his patron.⁴⁷ Reflecting on his island home at so far a distance probably made thinking in Christian terms of this life and “the next” readily accessible. The distance from God, as well as from home and family, weighed heavily upon the Hawaiian men, as they considered their own aspirations and kuleana they would bear when they finally returned home as part of the American mission. “I hope I shall be a benefit to my father if I should ever return. I hope it will be provided so that I may return again, but I must seek after God. He will help me through this world. I hope I may be prepared for another.”⁴⁸

      No other symbol of the divide between this world, “America,” and another, “Hawai‘i,” was so palpable as that which arose with the question of what Kaumuali‘i should be called, now that he had been “called” to the mission. “Mr. Vaill has put an addition to my name, it is George Prince Kummooree that is my father’s name, so I thought it would be proper enough. Obookiah thought it would be better for me to have the name of my father Kummooree and we thought if ever I should return back again it would be better for me to have my father’s than to have an English name.”⁴⁹ Renaming was a practice that missions frequently engaged in with their native converts. Giving a person a new name stripped them of their past associations and their familial contexts, but it also afforded missionary benefactors power over the newly named soul by dint of a name that was easily pronounced by them—and not necessarily easily pronounced by the one who was so named.⁵⁰ Mr. Vaill, Kaumuali‘i’s teacher, sought to improve on a name that struck New England tongues dumb (“Kummoorree” or “Tamoree”) through the addition of “George” and “Prince.” But while Mr. Vaill made his additions, Henry ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia, in conversation with Kaumuali‘i, reminded him about the importance of keeping close ties of identification with one’s ali‘i lineage. Besides learning how to speak Hawaiian from the other men, Kaumuali‘i must have spent many hours listening to them describe Hawai‘i to him and the expectations that would be placed upon him as the returning son of the ali‘i of Kaua‘i.

      News of Kaumuali‘i’s father also appeared in the papers at the same time. The Boston Recorder published an account by Captain Edes, who had recently arrived in Boston from a visit to the Pacific. While at “Atooi” (Kaua‘i), Kaumuali‘i asked Captain Edes if he had any news of his son. Unfortunately, the captain had no information to give to the concerned chief. However, Edes was able to relate an “anecdote” about the ali‘i’s treatment of Captain Ebbets that made it into the pages of the Boston Recorder. Ebbets, of the ship Enterprise of New York, was at Kaua‘i in February 1815 and had lost all but one of his anchors in a “violent gale.” The ship had been spared only by the intervention of “King Tamoree,” who sent a boat “at the height of the gale” to supply Ebbets with a large anchor that enabled the ship to withstand the storm.⁵¹

      The story might have simply made the circuit between captains and sailors of ships in the China trade (through word of mouth, good news passed between ships about friendly chiefs and safe ports of call), but this story had gotten into the ears of someone at the ABCFM and was then published and mobilized in service of the mission. Occurrences oceans away were relevant to those at home, argued the writer, because “an American ship, and the lives of American seamen have thus been preserved by the humane exertions of King Tamoree. Let every American remember that Tamoree has a son in this country, that for several years past he has been enduring all the hardships attendant upon a life of a common sailor on board our frigates; that he fought in several of our battles during the late war, and was badly wounded.”⁵² Those unfamiliar with the recent developments of the mission were then told that Kaumuali‘i was under the “protection” of the ABCFM. Americans were called upon to do their duty by assisting a patriot, to honor the desire of a noble father, as well as the years lost to the wandering prince, who had been searching for an education in his adopted home in America for years. “We trust that when our countrymen are called upon to contribute for the education of Heathen Youth, these facts will not be forgotten.”⁵³

      The mission plan was twofold: persuade the American public of the importance of supporting the school for heathen youth in America, and persuade them that these youth were indispensable to the opening of a mission in the Sandwich Islands. That there were so many men from Hawai‘i being taught at the Connecticut Foreign Mission School was a seeming sign of Providence that an American mission belonged in Hawai‘i. The American mission had successfully produced Kaumuali‘i as an object of desire for public consumption, much like the curiosities and pantomimes displayed and performed on both sides of the Atlantic. This production enabled their quite successful fund-raising efforts to build their school. But Kaumuali‘i, especially, offered the ABCFM an opportunity to light New England imaginary fires with the possibility of funding this young, now-Christian chief’s triumphant return home to Hawai‘i as a bringer of new values and new leadership. The envisioned tableau of reuniting a chiefly son with his chiefly father, the king who had had enough foresight to send his son away for schooling, supplied another strong reason for the ABCFM’s strenuous effort to go to the Hawaiian Islands. “How can we better manifest our gratitude to the father, than by restoring to him under such circumstances his long lost son?” they wrote.⁵⁴ It would be in the ABCFM’s best interest to oversee Kaumuali‘i’s education in order to reap the benefits of returning him home.

      In the ensuing months, biographical notices about the

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