understand all of the Dwight family’s Christian prayers, he could sense that they were at times praying for him and his salvation. They mentioned God to him often in daily conversation though Henry believed “but little.”14 After all, he had been training to become a kahuna, the spiritual conduit of his people where preparation had been intense and instilled with the knowledge of appeasement toward the many gods that controlled existence on the islands and possibly the world, including the lives of his American friends, though they seemed not to realize it. Instead, they prayed to their all-powerful, monotheistic God, strikingly different from the pantheon of Hawaiian akua, who had their own individual sources of authority.
Residing among the Dwight clan, the young “Obookiah” would learn of the “Great Awakenings,” religious revitalization movements that initially appeared in the American colonies during the 1730s. The “First Awakening” shook New England by storm. Powerful preachers like Jonathan Edwards convinced parishioners of their private guilt and the need to seek salvation through personal actions. To experience God in their own way required them to take responsibility for their own spiritual failures and acknowledge them through public penitence. This reduced the need for rituals, replacing the old theology with individual religious conviction.15 The First Great Awakening split the Congregational Church between Old-Lights, who strived to maintain the traditional orthodoxy, and New-Light revivalists attempting to return the church to its “original” orthodoxy.
Then, around the year 1800, an added wave of religious revival took form. While the earlier crusade concentrated doctrine exclusively toward church adherents, the “Second Great Awakening” sought to revitalize declining church memberships by accepting those outside the congregation into the fold, bringing thousands of new parishioners together in anticipation of the Second Coming of Christ, which they believed eminent. Church membership soared throughout New England, creating new denominations and sects. Significantly to Henry, the Rev. Timothy Dwight played an enormous role in helping to create and spread the spiritual resurgence.
The sky opened, cascading a powerful deluge. Lightning pierced the humid afternoon air, sending five young men running for the shelter of a nearby barn. The thunderstorm had disrupted their twice-weekly outdoor prayer vigil by a maple grove. Samuel John Mills, Jr., Harvey Loomis, Byram Green, Frances Robbins, and James Richards sprinted for the protection of the farm building to continue their invocation. Once sheltered from the torrential rain at the lee side of a large haystack, Samuel Mills, namesake and son of a leading Connecticut clergyman and a student at Williams College in Massachusetts, confided to his colleagues his maturing thoughts on spreading the Word of Christ to foreign countries.16
True to the concepts of the Second Great Awakening, Mills saw the necessity for missions to exotic lands: the call to arms to save the souls of the “heathen,” who would burn in hell simply for their lack of knowing the one true God. His companions instantly recognized the “truth” in Mills’ words and decided to band together as “The Brethren,” a secret society devoted to the promotion of the Protestant American foreign missions. Led by Samuel Mills, Jr., the “Haystack Prayer Meeting” participants would commit themselves to sharing their passion and evangelism for spreading the Word of Christ around the world.
While studying with Edwin Dwight, “Obookiah” met Samuel Mills, Jr., soon after the Haystack Prayer Meeting. On completion of his undergraduate work at Williams College, Samuel ventured to New Haven in pursuit of theological studies at Yale and, as a friend of Edwin, was poised to meet the young Hawaiian. Samuel, like many other students, became enchanted by ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia’s charm, envisioning in Henry’s intellect and resolve to learn, the validation of his emerging missionary reasoning. If this “heathen” had the mental capacity to comprehend the Bible, so could other Indigenous Peoples around the world. To Mills, this happenstance introduction to ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia was nothing short of Divine Intervention. If instructed and inspired properly, Mills reasoned, “Henry Obookiah” could serve as the foundation of the missions to his homeland. Samuel’s dreams and aspirations were now collected in the persona of this young Native Hawaiian. To further his ambitions and oversee Obookiah’s conversion, he proposed that Henry reside at his father’s farm in Torringford, Connecticut, to live within the context of a loving Christian home and receive personal instruction directly from the famed Rev. Samuel Mills, Sr.17
Henry’s friends thought the idea wise since they shared concerns that his continual presence in New Haven held the chance of his being kidnapped into the slave trade.18 With consent from Timothy Dwight, Henry willingly moved to the rural northwestern hills of the state in 1810. In Torringford, he would no longer be a personal house servant but instead was taught the work of the farm: cutting wood, pulling flax, and mowing hay for the Rev. Mills and his family, who found ‘Opūkaha‘ia “a remarkable youth.”19 He immediately felt welcomed and loved within the Mills’ household—“It seemed to me as my own home.”20
The physical journey of ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia extended over three quarters of the globe, westward from Hawai‘i to Connecticut. The spiritual journey seemed to be travelling as great a distance but remained far more uncertain. He had been exposed to a new cultural dimension, enduring some of the strange customs of these English Americans. Their clothing and food were relatively easy to adopt, yet their beliefs and worldview were alien to his kahuna training and were more difficult to accept. He wanted to please his new companions who treated him so warmly and took such great care of his physical needs. He certainly did not wish to disappoint them in his learning and acceptance of their ways. Rev. Timothy Dwight and Samuel Mills, Jr., seemed to have high expectations for him, making it clear that he had been purposely sent by their God to serve as the foundation for delivering the Gospel to his Hawaiian brethren. But he remained silently apprehensive and doubtful.
For a long while, ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia did not desire for ministers to approach him and talk about God. He hated to hear it.21 He had a deep desire to learn intellectually, not emotionally. He left the islands to remove a stigma, to set his mind with separate thoughts and pursue an education in the haole world. All the same, the pain remained. The cruel and violent deaths of his family, the captivity to the warrior who murdered his parents, the heartbreak and the loneliness even after he was reunited with his uncle, and the murder of his aunt had taken a toll. He recalled his hard days devoted to kahuna teaching and his uncle and grandmother’s disappointment at his sudden desertion. He had had enough of gods needing to be appeased.
John O’Donnell preceded our arrival at the cemetery the first morning of Henry’s disinterment. He had roped off a large area around the grave to keep anticipated spectators and reporters from getting too close to the edges of the burial excavation. The Cornwall Cemetery Association and the United Church of Christ brought a beautiful, decorative wreath set on an easel at the foot of the monument and placed flowers around its borders out of respect to ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia and his journey home. The American national and the Hawaiian state flags were placed in the ground at the head of the memorial. The tableau was lovely and tranquil.
Laying our hand-tools on the ground, the first order of business was the careful removal of shrine offerings and the inscribed marble headstone resting on the granite table. Flowers and flags were collected and all the offerings safeguarded. We slid the dry-laid tombstone gently forward off the stone table, securing its borders as if pallbearers, carrying the heavy marble down the hill to the cemetery’s storage vault to await restoration.22
The task of disassembling the granite table proved to be the most strenuous and time-consuming phase of the preparation. Dave Cooke had reviewed the monument the day before to determine the necessary field tools for dismantling. He arrived prepared with crowbars, wooden rollers, sledgehammers, four lengths of heavy chains, ropes, and a come-a-long.23 Careful use of a hammer and chisel by Will Trowbridge, our mason, loosened the mortar that bound the large granite blocks together. Placing the edge of the chisel against a seam, Trowbridge gently tapped the grout, crumbling enough space for a crowbar to be inserted into
