with leafless branches of yardarms jutting out from the shore. More ships, more buildings, and more people than Henry and Thomas could ever have imagined: New York overwhelmed them with culture shock and bewilderment, awed silence and mutterings in their Native language.
The timing of the Triumph’s departure and arrival could not have been more fortuitous. The ship left port prior to President Thomas Jefferson’s Embargo of 1807, designed to keep America out of the Napoleonic Wars by instigating economic hardships against England and France and as punishment to Britain for impressing U. S. sailors into the Royal Navy. The embargo halted all commercial sailing vessels going to and coming from the United Kingdom. The Triumph was able to obtain highly desired trade goods in China and return in time to be one of the first ships re-entering the port after the unpopular embargo was lifted. Needless to say, Brintnall found buyers to be plentiful in New York and received especially high prices for their cargo.
Once the Triumph docked and unloaded its valued goods, with the paid crew dispersed, the two young Hawaiians remained with Capt. Brintnall, accompanying him to his hometown of New Haven, Connecticut. Prior to setting out via Hell’s Gate and Long Island Sound, the boys were entertained in the city by two local merchants who invited them to attend a performance at one of the playhouses with its candlelit stage, proscenium, and celebrated orchestra. Henry and Thomas knew little of the English language and had difficulty understanding the show’s content other than interpreting the physical movements, facial expressions, and tone of the actor’s voices. Probably attending the newly-built Bowery Theater, they had never seen so many people in one “hut.”5
Their first real exposure to American culture outside life aboard the ship was overwhelming, loading them with so much information to decipher, “it seemed sometimes that it would make one almost sick.”6 The effects of culture shock heightened when the gentlemen brought the boys home for dinner. They had never seen so many rooms in one house and were especially shocked to see men and women eating at the same dinner table together,7 a behavior that never would have gone unpunished back on the islands.
Henry and Thomas’s acculturation persisted in the strangeness of New Haven where they were introduced to many new people, including young students from Yale College. They were readily accepted into Brintnall’s household as servants and were treated with utmost kindness. However, as men of color, they were considered “heathens,” socially defined as worshipers of pagan gods, possessors of limited intellectual potential, and containing the inherent possibility of becoming slaves. As servants, Henry and Thomas labored side-by-side with enslaved and free people of African descent, adding to their own curiosity of human biological variability. British-American New Haven society was relatively unfamiliar with Polynesians and remained challenged as where to place Hawaiians within their social hierarchy. Eventually, Thomas and Henry separated when Hopu was sent to live with the family of physician Dr. Obadiah Hotchkiss, Brintnall’s neighbor, while “Obookiah” remained within the captain’s household.
It was during these early days in New Haven that Henry once again heard the Christian Word of God, recalling his initial teaching by Russell Hubbard aboard the Triumph. At first, his English-language skills improved slowly, but the bright and inquisitive “Obookiah” longed for more formal learning. Hopu had begun to receive instruction, attending school with other students, but ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia had yet to be present at these tutorials. He was obliged to sit through Sunday service, understanding little of what the minister said, no matter how much he longed to comprehend. Was the congregation listening to the memorized verses of their traditional stories, as he had learned at the Heiau Hikiau? If so, where were the ki‘i, the wooden idols, and why didn’t the kahunas conduct their rituals privately behind wooden enclosures? Strange as the behavior appeared to him, his inquisitiveness sought knowledge and understanding of the peculiar behaviors of the haole.
An account from Thomas Hopu’s journal relates the story of young Henry weeping on the steps of Yale College. Approached by Edwin W. Dwight, a Yale divinity student and a relative of college president Rev. Timothy Dwight, concerning the cause of his distress, Henry cries, “No one will teach me.”8 The Memoirs of Henry Obookiah do not mention this crucial meeting in quite the same emotional manner, though ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia does state that Edwin approached him, inquired if he was the friend of Thomas Hopu, and asked if he also wished to learn how to read and write.9 Henry was eager, and Dwight assumed the role of his personal tutor.
At this junction in Henry’s emerging American cultural experience, Brintnall informed the boys of a ship preparing to sail out of New Haven for the Pacific Ocean, stopping at the Sandwich Islands. The captain assured both Henry and Thomas that should they wish to return home, he would provide for them to take the voyage. However, neither Hawaiian took the offer, desiring to continue in America longer to complete their education before returning home to their families. Moreover, ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia’s personal journey, though he travelled thousands of miles, was scarcely underway.
Henry took to his studies immediately, and once again proved a hard-working and intelligent apprentice. The New Haven community slowly began to realize that this young “heathen,” who in their cultural bias seemed at first so backward and uninspiring, had a huge thirst for knowledge and a heightened capacity to comprehend his teachings. He learned quickly, duplicating the arduous effort placed at the heiau, though many aspects of his training did not come easily.
Since there is no “R” sound in the Hawaiian language, Henry had difficulty pronouncing syllables containing the letter, which often came out like the sound of “L” when spoken in English. Edwin Dwight would repeatedly beseech him, “Try, Obookiah, it is very easy!” Henry took secretive delight whenever Dwight said this and eventually would turn the tables when Henry began teaching his mentor some of the habits and practices of his Native culture, specifically demonstrating to Edwin how to hold water and drink by cupping his hands. Adjusting the thumbs, clasping and bending the fingers together, ‘Opūkaha‘ia made an effective and natural drinking vessel with his hands. When his instructor attempted the maneuver, water dripped through his fingers onto the floor, frustrating the effort. Henry smiled, “Try, Mr. Dwight, it is very easy!”10
Edwin Dwight and others within the Yale community were becoming aware of Henry’s singular ability to entertainingly mimic the mannerisms of people around him. He would challenge, “Who dis?” and start to walk in a distinct style that imitated one of his new-found friends. With gales of laughter, his fellow students knew all the intended victims of Henry’s impersonations. When the New Englanders mimicked ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia’s gait, he fell to the floor laughing, “Me walk so?”11 He was becoming a favorite; his personality, humor, intelligence, and educational zeal endeared him to all he met in New Haven. His friends started to see him not simply as a curiosity from the pagan world, but an entrancing and unique individual with delightful personality characteristics previously unappreciated.
Henry’s intellectual training soon advanced to the point where he requested leave of Brintnall’s family to reside fulltime with the Dwight clan, accelerating his education and improving his chances of getting into an established school. The captain readily gave permission, and Henry moved into the home of the president of Yale College as a servant, continuing his secular and religious training. In Rev. Timothy Dwight’s household, he would be exposed for the first time to a true “praying family morning and evening.”12 It would mark the start of ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia’s sojourn throughout three New England states residing within many Christian households.
The Rev. Timothy Dwight IV had succeeded Ezra Stiles as the eighth president of Yale in 1795, born into a family with many ties to the college. Jonathan Edwards, credited with flowering the First Great Awakening, was his uncle on his mother’s side. Rev. Dwight was an enormous authoritarian figure in the church and college, at times derogatorily referred to as “Pope Dwight.”13 Teaching and the ministry were his vocations with ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia taking on the role of a rather special
