Missionaries and Outriggers

The American Protestant Mission:  Hiram Bingham was the explorer and re-discoverer of Machu Picchu who inspired the tales of Indiana Jones.  That was Hiram III.  Today, I visited the house his grandfather (Hiram I) built in Honolulu, the same house his father (Hiram II) knew well when he came to the Pacific. Hiram I led the first party of missionaries to Hawaii in 1821, sailing directly from Boston around Cape Horn.  On Hawaiian soil he planted New England Calvinism and established a settlement that made his missionaries feel as if they were back in Connecticut.  The house he built was of wood frame construction, possible only because he brought the wood with him from Connecticut.  It still stands and is now part of the Mission Houses Museum.  The Chamberlain house was the next one built.  It provided needed storage space for supplies destined for the five islands where missionaries were in residence.   With the Chamberlain house, you can already see responses to the island’s physical geography.  The design is “New England Large,” but this is the dry side of Oahu, so no wood was readily available.  What was?  Coral, cut from the reefs offshore, but then stuccoed over to disguise its origins.  Moreover, its axis was chosen to better capture the Northeast Trade Winds.  The frame house was simply aligned with what is today east-west King Street.  The north wind (i.e., heading towards the equator) had difficulty blowing through, something compounded by the small windows typical of cold New England.  The church next door, Kawaiahao Church, is built in New England style, but of coral blocks.  On either side there are windows that open to the Trade Winds, providing a cooling breeze during services.  Around the church is the cemetery, where only the descendants of the original missionaries may be buried.  Added to the assembly of buildings was a print shop, which also became the place where the Hawaiian language took to the printed page and came to be preserved.  Of course, while the language was being recorded for posterity, the native Hawaiian population was dying from diseases brought by the colonists.  Sound familiar?

To give you a time perspective on all of this:  the native Hawaiians came to the islands from Polynesia around 500 AD; Captain Cook became the first westerner to land on the islands in 1778; the American Protestant Missionaries arrived in 1821; the islands were united in 1795; the monarchy was overthrown in 1893; Hawaii  became a state in 1959.

Outrigger Canoes:  They are popular for racing now, but they are also the technology that permitted settlement of the remote islands of the Pacific.  As I watched teams training in their colorful outriggers today, I realized they were also preserving an art form that tied them to the earliest settlement of the islands 1500 years ago.   On the shores of Ala Wai harbor, the wisdom of the ages was being transferred to a new generation of young people anxious to learn an ancient art because it is challenging and fun, not because it is necessary to find new places to live and new resources to sustain life.  These crews would row way out of the harbor to the coral reef, and then back in again, catching the shoaling waves.  It looked like hard work.  Why isn’t outrigger canoeing an Olympic sport?  It looks far more athletic than golf, which will return to the games in 2016!  It’s probably because not enough countries participate, so let’s promote the diffusion of outrigger canoeing!

Geographically yours,

D.J.Z.