User:KAVEBEAR/John Honolii

Life
 "Recalled forever, in this eventful year, was faithful John Honolii who had come out from the United States with the pioneers after a schooling at Cornwall, and who like Thomas Hopu had remained good and faithful servant, having "walked irreproachably with this church" as Titus Coan noted in the church record at Hilo. Though he died in February, before the great influx of July, John had lived long enough to see the groundswell of the oncoming wave of repentance and salvation which made 1838 a peak as high as Mauna Loa in the annals of the Hawaiian mission - in Hiram Bingham's phrase "a year of the right hand of the Most High." Yankees In Paradise The New England Impact On Hawaii (1956)

-- John Honolii --

John Honolii had shipped from Hawaii as a sailor to take the place of one who had died. After arriving in Boston in 1815, he found admiring and interested friends who offered to help him acquire an education. The ship company agreed to release him and generously added $ 100 toward his expenses. When he later joined the others at the Foreign Mission School, he became a valuable Hawaiian language instructor because, having come at a later age, he still had good comand of his native tongue. He also won praise for his considerable vigor and intellect and his discreet and stately deportment.

Honolii proved an important assistant at Kailua, Honolulu, and briefly at Kauai, during those early days while the missionaries were still acquiring their later expertness in the Hawiaan tongue and faithful to the Christian training, he walked irreproachably with his church. He died in February 1838.

+++++++++++

THOMAS HOPU

On board the Thaddeus when it arrived off the island of Hawai'i in 1820 were three young men of Hawai'ian birth who had attended the mission school at Cornwell, Connecticut. They were Thomas Hopu, John Honolii, and William Kanui ( a fourth Hawai'ian, George P. Kaumualii, was listed as a passenger on the ship ) An engraving of all four of them, taken from portraits painted by Professor Samuel F.B. Morse, had been sold for the benefit of the mission.

Hopu had left the islands on the same ship that took Henry Opukahaia. Hopu shipped on several privateering expeditions in the War of 1812, was shipwrecked in the West Indies, and became a prisoner of the British. He returned to New Haven destitute, and there found his island friend Opukahaia. Converted to Christianity, Hopu walked sixty miles to find another Hawai'ian, Honolii, in order to convert him. Other Hawai'ians were sought to attend the school, among them William Kanui, who had reached Boston with his brother around 1809. They had both served on privateers but when the brother died, William went to New Haven to become a barber. Discovered by Yale College students, he also went to Cornwall.

Aboard ship and later in the Islands, the three Hawai'ians gave invaluable aid as teachers of the language and translaters, and smoothed the way for the peaceful reception of the American mission during the first weeks. Hopu later was assistant to Rev. Asa Thurston at Kailua, Hawai'i, along with John Honolii, who died in 1838. Honolii served as a guide to David Douglas during an ascent of Mauna Kea in 1834. Hopu left to join the California gold rush with William Kanui; the Rev. S.C. Damon encountered both of them at Sacramento. Kanui, who had served in the United States Navy and seen action against the Tripoli pirates in the Mediterranean, lst hs gains fom the gold fields in a bank failure and drifted about California, teaching the bible and attending church. He lived for a while at Indian Creek, a colony of devout Hawai'ian gold seekers, before returning to Honolulu to teach school. He died in 1864.

Honolii Park in Wailuku is named after him.

Guide to David Douglas

 * https://books.google.com/books?id=qc5cAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA171&dq=%22Honori,+my+guide%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwianIbrr4zSAhXIx4MKHbJMChU4ChDoAQgeMAE#v=onepage&q=Honori&f=false
 * https://books.google.com/books?id=qc5cAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA171&dq=%22Honori,+my+guide%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwianIbrr4zSAhXIx4MKHbJMChU4ChDoAQgeMAE#v=onepage&q=Honori&f=false
 * https://books.google.com/books?id=qc5cAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA171&dq=%22Honori,+my+guide%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwianIbrr4zSAhXIx4MKHbJMChU4ChDoAQgeMAE#v=onepage&q=Honori&f=false