Misson Complex

The Polynesian Cultural Center added an 1850s-era Mission Complex to its array of island "villages" and exhibits for two reasons:

One, Christianity was a powerful force that swept all the Polynesian islands, and in a relatively short time span replaced ancient religious beliefs and systems.

Two, the Polynesian Cultural Center shares a unique symbiotic relationship with Brigham Young University Hawaii, both of which are sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes popularly called the Mormons, Latter-day Saints, or the LDS). The LDS Church opened its first mission in Polynesian in 1844.

Learn more the advent of Christianity in the Polynesian islands

• Introduction

• Interesting Factoid

• The founding of Iosepa Colony

• More Info

The 1850s Missionary Complex is comprised of a small non-denominational chapel, complete with a pulpit and foot-pump organ. For example, missionaries introduced choral singing and European-style harmony, which has been heartily adapted into island cultures, each adding distinctive touches, of course.

The open-sided Polynesian-style school house represents the considerable contributions of early Christian missionaries in western-style educational programs throughout the islands.

Initially led by their desire to translate The Bible, missionaries devised roman alphabet-based writing systems for each major island group. Fortunately, most of the early Christian missionaries were very well educated for their day, and the alphabets they devised have basically survived into modern times. Once books began to be printed in the various Polynesian languages, almost all islanders learned to read, becoming perhaps the most literate race of people on the planet in the 19th century. For example, there are more Hawaiian-language newspapers and publications still in existence than publications in all other U.S. indigenous languages combined.

Creating Polynesian alphabets was not without its challenges, however. In Hawaii, for example, missionary linguists had to decide between using the letters 'l' or 'r' to represent the way Hawaiians pronounced the sound, say, in the word Honolulu. As you can tell from modern spelling, the 'l' won out, and today we're conditioned when we see that...but the early missionaries had no such advantage, and some of them thought Hawaii's capital should have been spelled Honoruru.

Similar decisions had to be made between the 'k' and 't' which in some Polynesian dialects do not make a "meaningful difference" in pronunciation, as they do in English. For example, in Samoan you can say tala or kala, and they both mean 'story'; but "till" and "kill" in English mean very different things. A similar question arose over whether the letter 'w' or 'v' more correctly represented Hawaiian pronunciation, which is why some Hawaiians say Havai'i instead of Hawai'i. In a few cases, other letters have survived in certain words. For example, the Hawaiian word for 'grandparent' is always tutu [pronounce both syllables, as in "too-too"], even though the Hawaiian alphabet uses 'k' instead of 't'.

The missionaries who devised the Maori alphabet in Aotearoa (New Zealand) obviously felt the 'wh' spelling more correctly represented the sound that other Polynesian alphabets represent with an 'f'; for example, the Maori whare and the Tahitian fare [both meaning 'house'] are pronounced the same. In Samoa it's said missionary linguists elected to use only the letter 'g' to represent the 'ng' sound, as in the English word 'singer'...because their printing type cases didn't have enough of the letter 'n'. Missionaries in Tonga, by the way, did use the 'ng' combination to represent the same sound; so the word for 'foreigner' in Samoan is palagi and its Tongan counterpart is palangi, and both are pronounced exactly the same.

The rock-walled missionary home with its wide lanai or shaded verandas demonstrates adaptations early missionaries eventually made in their own homes: For example, thatched roofs keep the house dry but cooler than shingled roofs. Cooking outside or in another house in the Polynesian style also keeps the residence much cooler. And, of course, it's well known that New England missionaries introduced quilting to the islands — a craft to which Polynesian women quickly added their own touches. Today in the missionary home, LDS service missionaries and Cultural Center islanders demonstrate Hawaiian quilting methods and display beautiful samples of their work.

There's also a small Iosepa memorial behind the chapel dedicated to the Hawaiians, Samoans and other Polynesians who left the islands in 1889 to join Polynesians in Utah in forming an old west, high desert colony.

The niu kapakahi or "crooked coconut tree" is another Polynesian Cultural Center attraction in the Mission Complex. This tree, which is about 80 feet long, only rises about 15 feet high because of its serpentine twists and hula turns. Elvis Presley used the PCC's niu kapakahi as a backdrop when he partially filmed his 1966 movie, Paradise Hawaiian Style, at the Polynesian Cultural Center.

Christianity washes over the Pacific Islands

Starting in the late 1700s and early 1800s, Christian missionaries from various denominations and evangelical organizations began proselyting in the Polynesian islands. A typical pattern soon emerged: After missionaries overcame initial hardships and resistance, learned languages and converted paramount chiefs or hereditary leaders, whole villages and islands would forsake their ancient religious beliefs and practices and become Christians within a relatively short period.

In some cases, such as in Hawaii, King Kamehameha II and Queen Kaahumanu overthrew the ancient pantheistic religion and its rigid kapu or taboo system in 1819, the year before the first Christian missionaries landed in Kailua-Kona. In many cases, early missionaries also got involved in local political struggles and government, as did their island-born children.

The first known Christian missionaries in Polynesia came from the London Missionary Society (LMS), an ecumenical Protestant organization, that first reached Tahiti in 1796, left some members of their group there, and sailed on to the Marquesas, then Tongatapu in Tonga where three of their numbers were killed in a civil war.

Back in Tahiti, within a few years after King Pomare II converted to Christianity in 1812, the number of Christian Tahitians had grown dramatically. The relatively few European and American missionaries relied heavily on early converts to help them spread the Word in the coming years when LMS missionaries extended their efforts throughout the Pacific. John Williams, who had labored in Tahiti, for example, was instrumental in bringing Christianity to Samoa in 1830 with the help of Tahitian and Rarotongan lay ministers. Consequently, even to this day some Samoans call the modern version of the LMS Church the lotu Tahiti or "Tahitian church."

The story of the first Christian missionaries to arrive in Hawaii in 1820, which has been popularized in novels and movies, is noteworthy because of the role Henry Opukahaia played. This young Hawaiian, also originally known as Obookiah, was born on the Big Island in 1792 and eventually sailed to New England, where he became a Christian and ended up begging his teachers to send missionaries back to the Sandwich Islands. Unfortunately, he died in 1818, but the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions — an ecumenical Protestant group somewhat similar to the London Missionary Society — followed through and sent their first party of missionaries who arrived at Kailua-Kona in 1820.

French Catholic missionaries established themselves in the 1830s and 40s, but also with several interesting twists. In Tahiti, for example, the British initially expelled the French missionaries, only to have them return later with French gunboats. This eventually led to the French taking over all of what is now French Polynesia. A similar situation occurred to Catholic missionaries in Hawaii, before the Catholic church firmly established itself. Of course, Father Damien de Veuster, is one of the most famous of the Catholic missionaries in Hawaii for his work at the Kalaupapa Hansen's Disease (leprosy) colony.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' first entrance into Polynesia started after a young man, who had served aboard whaling ships in Hawaii, told LDS Church founder Joseph Smith Jr. about his South Seas adventures. Smith called missionaries in 1843 from the Mormon headquarters at Nauvoo, Illinois, to go to the Sandwich Islands (as the Kingdom of Hawaii was then called). After taking nine months to get as far as Tubua'i near Tahiti, the first Mormon missionary group decided to remain in that region — making Tahiti one of the first foreign-language missions of the LDS Church.

Mormon missionaries finally arrived in Hawaii on December 12, 1850. By 1865 they had purchased a 6,000-plus acre plantation at Laie, Oahu, which has been an important regional center ever since. Today, in addition to the Polynesian Cultural Center, Laie is also home to Brigham Young University Hawaii and the Hawaii Temple. In other words, Laie is a cultural, educational and spiritual center for the LDS Church in Polynesia.

The founding of Iosepa Colony

The founding of Iosepa Colony in 1889 is one of the more fascinating chapters of Mormon pioneers settling the Intermountain West, and an intriguing reversal of missionaries coming to the Pacific:

That year a group of Hawaiians and Samoans joined other Latter-day Saint Polynesians already living in Salt Lake City to found a colony in Skull Valley, Utah, about 60 miles to the west. Among other reasons, they wanted to be closer to the LDS temples which had been built in Utah. They named their colony Iosepa after Joseph F. Iosepa Smith, the nephew of Church founder Joseph Smith Jr., who served as a missionary in Hawaii starting in 1854 and who later became president of the Church. Joseph F. Smith, for example, dedicated the site for the Laie Hawaii Temple in 1915 and authorized its construction.

Though some have felt it incongruous for Polynesians from the tropics to settle in the high Utah desert, according to journals and family traditions the 200-plus of them who lived there at its peak apparently loved Iosepa. They built an extensive irrigation system to bring water from the mountains for their crops, and adjusted their traditional diets to include poi made from locally grown produce. They were also famous throughout the region for playing island music, feasting and hula.

Soon after work started on the LDS temple in Laie, Hawaii, in 1915, most Iosepa colonists moved back to the islands. Some of their descendants still live in Laie and the surrounding area, and work at the Polynesian Cultural Center. There is a Iosepa Street in Laie, and the BYU-Hawaii Hawaiian Studies program's 57-foot traditional twin-hulled sailing canoe is also named Iosepa.

Interesting Factoid:

At the February 12, 1955, groundbreaking for the Church College of Hawaii, which became BYU-Hawaii in 1974, LDS Church president David O. McKay foretold that millions of people would come to Laie "to see what this town was all about." At that time the annual visitor count to all of Hawaii was only about 110,000, and Laie was just a rural community surrounded by sugar cane fields.

Over the past 40 years, the Polynesian Cultural Center and BYU-Hawaii have established a unique relationship where the University provides the Center with about 700 employees a year, and the Center helps the students finance their education as well as makes significant monetary contributions to the University. Since its founding in 1963, over 30 million people have come to Laie to experience the Polynesian Cultural Center, and over 13,000 BYU-Hawaii students have worked — and danced, and demonstrated, and served — their way through school by working at the PCC. Mahalo to all who have visited.

For more information:

http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/poly/geness.html