Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia
| Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia | |
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| Born | c. 1792 Nīnole, Hawaii |
| Died | February 17, 1818 Cornwall, Connecticut |
| Parent(s) | Keau and Kamohoula |
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Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia (circa 1792–1818) was one of the first native Hawaiians to become a Christian, inspiring American Protestant missionaries to come to the island during the 19th century. He is credited with starting Hawaii's conversion to Christianity. His name was usually spelled Obookiah during his lifetime. His name Henry is sometimes Hawaiianized as Heneri. Last name: Opukaha’ia
`Ōpūkaha`ia was born at Ka`ū on the island of Hawai`i in 1792. When he was 10, his family was murdered by Hawaiian warriors. In 1807, when Captain Caleb Britnall took him aboard the Triumph, the teenage boy had his first English lessons en route to New Haven, Connecticut, along with fellow Hawaiian cabin boy Thomas Hopu. As a student in the New Haven area, he was looked after in a succession of homes, and worked summers to help earn his keep. The future Reverend Edwin W. Dwight, a senior in Yale College at the time, met him in 1809, when he discovered`Ōpūkaha`ia sitting on the steps of the college. When `Ōpūkaha`ia lamented that "No one give me learning," Dwight agreed to help him find tutoring. `Ōpūkaha`ia took up residence with one of Dwight's relatives, Yale president Timothy Dwight IV, a founder of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, who instructed him in Christian and secular subjects. He had studied English grammar and the usual curriculum in public schools by the time he converted to Christianity in 1815, during the Second Great Awakening.
He and other Polynesians and Native Americans requested training to spread the Gospel back home. This inspired the founding of the Foreign Mission School in 1816, administered from Boston by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). It had broad support from the residents of Cornwall, Connecticut, where it moved in 1817, and from donors elsewhere in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York. During its ten years, about 100 students attended: "43 Native Americans, 13 Americans (white), and 20 Hawaiians, and other natives of the Pacific. including 2 Chinese".
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