You have been very thoughtful today: The significance of gratitude and reciprocity in missionary-Hawaiian gift exchange

Pacific Historical Review

Volumn 79, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 545-572

  Thigpen, Jennifer ^a  

^a WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CIVILIZATION; COLONIALISM; CULTURAL HISTORY; CULTURAL TRADITION;

HAWAIIAN ISLANDS;

EID: 78049444197     PISSN: 00308684     EISSN: 15338584     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/phr.2010.79.4.545     Document Type: Article

References (120)

1. Heman Humphrey, The Promised Land. A sermon, delivered at Goshen, (Conn.) at the Ordination of the Rev. Messrs. Hiram Bingham & Asa Thurston, as Missionaries to the Sandwich Islands, Sept. 29, 1819 (Boston, 1819), 28, xiv.
2. My interpretation of women's work differs slightly from the one offered in Patricia Grimshaw's earlier, foundational work on the subject. Grimshaw argued that missionary wives experienced a conflict between their domestic role and the duties they were obligated to fulfill as missionary wives. Although wives were eager to par- ticipate fully in the mission, an ideology that "valorized women's moral qualities, but insisted that these qualities, once a woman had children, be exercised primarily in the home," prevented such activity and in fact served to undermine their efficacy in the mission field. Mission wives, moreover, expressed frustration that the weight of domes- tic duties fell upon them, making a considerable draw on their time and effectively limiting their active work on behalf of the Hawaiians whom they had come to save. Yet, as Grimshaw noted: "women's engagement in the mission was described in sex-specific terms." Approved female labor, I argue, far from preventing women's participation in mission work, created a venue for mission wives' engagement in the kinds of meaning- ful work they envisioned for themselves. See Patricia Grimshaw, "'Christian Woman, Pious Wife, Faithful Mother, Devoted Missionary': Conflict in Roles of American Missionary Women in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii," Feminist Studies, 9 (1983), 491;
3. Grimshaw,Paths of Duty: American Missionary Wives in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii (Honolulu, 1989), xii;
4. and Mary Zwiep, Pilgrim Path: The First Company of Women Missionaries to Hawaii (Madison, Wisc., 1991), xvii.
5. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (London, 1970).
6. Aafke E. Komter, Social Solidarity and the Gift (Cambridge, U.K., 2004);
7. Helmuth Berking, Sociology of Giving (London, 1995).
8. I refer here both to missionary and royal Hawaiian women. Where previous histories have considered royal women's political power in this period and the participation of mission wives in the mission project, only rarely have they connected "women's work" with the kind of political and cultural negotiations that took place in this period.
9. The First Ten Annual Reports of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, with Other Documents of the Board (Boston, 1834), 304.
10. Gavan Daws argued that Ka'ahumanu created this new role for herself, thus placing herself at the "center of political affairs." See Gavan Daws, Shoal of Time: A Historyof the Hawaiian Islands (Honolulu, 1968), 55,
11. and Jane L. Silverman, Kaahumanu: Molder of Change (Honolulu, 1987), 62.
12. Brian B. C. Young, "The Hawaiians," in John F. McDermott, Jr., Wen-Shing Tseng, and Thomas W. Maretzki, eds., People and Cultures of Hawaii: A Psychocultural Profile (Honolulu, 1980), 6.
13. Sybil Moseley Bingham, journal, March 30, 1820, Journals Collection, Hawaiian Mission Children's Society Archives, Honolulu (hereafter Mission Archives); emphasis in original.
14. Hiram Bingham, A Residence of Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Islands (Hartford, Conn., 1847), 70.
15. Mercy Partridge Whitney, diary, April 5, 1820, Journals Collection, Mission Archives.
16. Samuel and Nancy Ruggles, journal, April 5, 1820, Journals Collection, Mission Archives.
17. Samuel and Nancy Ruggles, journal, 1820, Ibid.
18. Elisha Loomis's journal, dated March 31, 1820, as referenced in the Reverend and Mrs. Orramel Hinckley Gulick, Pilgrims of Hawaii (New York, 1918), 74; her full name was Ann Eliza Gulick.
19. Bingham, A Residence, 62.
20. Whitney, diary, April 6, 1820.
21. This understanding is similar to Capt. James Cook's interpretation of his treatment by Hawaiians nearly half a century earlier. Daws argued that "Cook had been welcomed with honors usually reserved for high-ranking aliis or chiefs." Cook, moreover, recognized his treatment as "only right. . . . It was a sensible primitive who bowed before a superior civilization." Daws, Shoal of Time, 5, 2.
22. See also Ralph Kuykendall and A. Grove Day, Hawaii: A History from Polynesian Kingdom to American Commonwealth (New York, 1948), 13. Anthropologists and historians have engaged in an extended and vigorous debate over whether or not Hawaiians in the eighteenth century received Cook as the returning god Lono. It is not my purpose to engage the specifics of this fascinating debate here.
23. Rather, the concerns raised in these discussions remind historians of the importance of attending to cultural structures in an effort to apprehend and interpret the activities of our historical subjects accurately. Where Marshall Sahlins rightly insisted that scholars ground historical interpretation in the "culture-specific qualities" that may have motivated our subjects, Gananath Obeyesekere urged historians to examine rigorously the secondary sources upon which we have long relied to reveal and explore "the distorted lens through which Westerners see Hawaiians." Robert Borofsky, "Cook, Lono, Obeyesekere, and Sahlins," Current Anthropology, 9 (1997), 256, 257.
24. I proceed in this discussion cautioned against accepting-and repeating-missionaries' interpretation of Hawaiian behavior. At the same time, I accept Sahlins's premise that "one cannot do good history . . . without regard for ideas, actions, and ontologies that are not and never were our own." Marshall Sahlins, How "Natives" Think: About Captain Cook, for Example (Chicago, 1995), 14.
25. See also Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago, 1985),
26. and Gananath Obeyesekere, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: Mythmaking in the Pacific (Princeton, N.J., 1992).
27. Samuel and Nancy Ruggles, journal, April 5, 10, 1820.
28. Whitney, diary, May 31, 1820.
29. This is not to suggest that the missionaries were not thankful for the gifts they received or that they did not express gratitude to their hosts; rather, I argue that they ultimately credited God for the "supply of their wants." See Samuel and Nancy Ruggles, journal, July 25, 1820.
30. Here the missionaries offered gratitude to the king but attributed his behavior to the exercise of God's will. Sarah Joiner Lyman expressed like sentiments in 1834, noting: "the Lord opens the hearts of the people" to satisfy missionary needs. See Margaret Greer Martin, Sarah Joiner Lyman of Hawaii: Her Own Story (Hilo, 1970), 72.
31. Whitney, diary, April 5, July 7, 1820. On Kaua'i, where the situation was somewhat different, the king there, Kaumuali'i, provided the Ruggles with housing and a taro patch. These gifts might be interpreted as repayment for the return of his son who had accompanied the missionaries to the islands on board the Thaddeus. Nevertheless, the Ruggles family appears to have understood the reciprocal nature of the relationship they established with the king in accepting his gifts. In July 1820 the Ruggles family acknowledged gifts of "mats and tappers," as well as bananas and pineapples, noting: "Never before were our obligations of gratitude so great as they now are."
32. Samuel and Nancy Ruggles, journal, July 25, 1820.
33. Noenoe Silva, Aloha Betrayed: Native Resistance to American Colonialism (Durham,N.C., 2004), 18.
34. Elizabeth Buck, Paradise Remade: The Politics of Culture and History in Hawai'i (Philadelphia, 1993), 13-14.
35. Kuykendall and Day, Hawaii, 37.
36. See also Valerio Valeri, Kingship and Sacrifice (Chicago, 1985), xviii.
37. Kuykendall and Day, Hawaii, 30;
38. Daws, Shoal of Time, 44-55.
39. Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa, Native Land and Foreign Desires: Pehea La- E Pono Ai? How Shall We Live in Harmony? (Honolulu, 1992), 10.
40. Silva, Aloha Betrayed, 40. While some historians have used such exchanges as evidence that the relationship between commoners and chiefs was a feudalistic one, Noenoe Silva has insisted that such exchanges, "if not excessive . . . [were] not usually resented by the maka'ainana." Before the introduction of a cash economy, Hawaiian society might be understood as "stratified but interdependent."
41. Silva, Aloha Betrayed, 40, 39.
42. See also Kame'eleihiwa, Native Lands, 11,
43. and Buck, Paradise Remade, 37-39.
44. For a discussion of mana, see ibid., 35.
45. Kame'eleihiwa, Native Lands, 13;
46. see also Buck, Paradise Remade, 16-17.
47. Silva, Aloha Betrayed, 26.
48. See also Buck, Paradise Remade, 17-18, 61-62. Although Elizabeth Buck argued that disease was "more culturally devastating than capitalism and the incompatible culture of the West," she agreed with Silva regarding the long-term, devastating consequences of contact. Silva and Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa both linked the loss of Hawaiian sovereignty to the early economic changes initiated by contact with Westerners.
49. See also Sally Engle Merry, Colonizing Hawai'i: The Cultural Power of Law (Princeton, N.J., 2000), 43-44,
50. and Noel J. Kent, Hawaii: Islands Under the Influence (New York, 1983), 20.
51. For figures relating to the decline of the native population in the islands, see David Stannard, Before the Horror: The Population of Hawai'i on the Eve of Western Contact (Honolulu, 1989), 50-56.
52. Daws, Shoal of Time, 55.
53. Helen Wong and Ann Rayson, Hawaii's Royal History (Honolulu, 1987), 67.
54. One does not have to look far for historical precedent or parallel. Describing Anglo-Algonquian contact and the "struggle to dominate rather than to be dominated," Kathleen Brown has argued that "Indian men and women initially refused to acknowledge" Anglo claims to superiority, "treating the foreigners as they would subject peoples." The context is historically distinct, but the principle holds: In their interaction with American missionaries, ali'i sought to rearticulate their position of autonomy and authority in the distribution of gifts. See Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996), 45.
55. See Maurice Godelier, The Enigma of the Gift (Chicago, 1999), 12.
56. Maurice Godelier described the manner in which giving can "establish a difference and an inequality of status between donor and recipient."
57. Samuel and Nancy Ruggles, journal, April 2, 1820.
58. See also Lucy Thurston, Life and Times of Mrs. Lucy G. Thurston (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1882), article 15. M. Thomas Hopu served as an assistant to the missionaries in their journey to the Hawaiian Islands.
59. Esther T. Mookini, "Keopuolani, Sacred Wife, Queen Mother, 1778-1832," Hawaiian Journal of History, 32 (1998), 1-2;
60. Grimshaw, "New England Missionary Wives, Hawaiian Women, and the 'Cult of True Womanhood,'" Hawaiian Journal of History, 19 (1985), 76;
61. Silverman, Kaahumanu: Molder of Change.
62. See Mauss, The Gift, 72.
63. For a fuller discussion of exchange as a means by which to cancel debt, see Edith Wyschgrod, Jean-Joseph Goux, and Eric Boynton, eds., The Enigma of the Gift and Sacrifice (New York, 2002).
64. S. M. Bingham, journal, March 11 182(2) (undated pages).
65. S. M. Bingham, journal, 182(2), Ibid.
66. This story of autonomy and cultural persistence was widespread. "Hawaiian culture," Mary Zwiep has noted, "though weakened and changed by Western contact, still defined the laws and mores of the land." Zwiep, Pilgrim Path, 144.
67. Similarly, Grimshaw has observed: "the transformation of Hawaiians into Americans, which alone would satisfy mission wives, was a mirage to be sought in vain." Grimshaw, Paths of Duty, 156.
68. Grimshaw, "New England Missionary Wives," 80.
69. Missionaries condemned the habit of card playing. Presenting a problem for successful conversion, it also confirmed missionary beliefs about the supposed sloth and idleness of Hawaiians.
70. S. M. Bingham, journal, March 11, 182(2) (undated pages).
71. Ibid., March 14, 182(2) (undated pages).
72. See also Rufus Anderson, History of the Sandwich Islands (London, 1872), 32.
73. S. M. Bingham, transcribed journal, 1819-1820, p. 3, Mission Archives.
74. Laura Fish Judd, Honolulu: Sketches of Life Social, Political, and Religious in the Hawaiian Islands 1828-1861 (New York, 1880), 12.
75. This is particularly significant when judged in comparison to the missionaries' relatively sparse cache of clothing. Missionaries often complained that they were "destitute" of adequate clothing.
76. See "Outfit for the Sandwich Islands," reprinted in The Missionary Album, Sesquicentennial Edition, 1820-1970 (Honolulu, 1969), 2.
77. Judd, Honolulu, 13.
78. Given the dates, it is likely that the "Mrs. B" of Laura Fish Judd's description refers to Sybil Moseley Bingham.
79. Both Sybil Moseley Bingham's diary and Hiram Bingham's memoir corroborate the extent of Bingham's engagement in such labor for Hawaiian royalty.
80. Grimshaw, "New England Missionary Wives," 84.
81. Bingham, A Residence, 109.
82. Brown, Good Wives, 45.
83. Brown argued that the construction of an "other" helped to "crystallize self-conscious articulations of one's own group identity," a process that also appears to have been at work in the islands.
84. Kent, Hawaii, 26;
85. Bingham, A Residence, 101;
86. S. M. Bingham, journal, March 14, 1822.
87. S. M. Bingham, journal, 1822, Ibid.
88. S. M. Bingham, journal, Oct 4, 182(2) (undated pages)
89. Zwiep, Pilgrim Path, xv
90. Annette Weiner noted that in ancient Hawai'i, the production and distribution of bark cloth was "organized by class," with common people engaged in its production as tribute to ali'i. High-ranking women, too, produced bark cloth, but "the highest veneration surrounded these fabrics." Missionaries complained about the "tappers" the Hawaiian women wore, decrying their style and their failure to function as a mechanism of modesty.
91. Yet, according to Weiner, "such skirts were replicas of those worn by goddesses which were thought to have magical properties." The conflict over "tappers" takes on a new meaning in this context.
92. Annette B. Weiner, Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving (Berkeley, 1992), 83-84, 175.
93. S. M. Bingham journal, Oct 4, 182(2) (undated pages).
94. Judd recounted an exchange with Ka'ahumanu regarding distinctions between proper missionary clothing and those the royal women preferred. Judd, Honolulu, 40
95. Clarissa Lyman Richards, journal, April 23, 1823, Journals Collection, Mission Archives
96. S. M. Bingham, journal, March 31, 1820.
97. Grimshaw, "New England Missionary Wives," 78, 79.
98. Judd, Honolulu, 5.
99. Grimshaw, "New England Missionary Wives," 85.
100. See the journal of Betsey Curtis Lyons, Sept. 19, 1832, Journals Collection, Mission Archives. In this passage, Lyons recalled: "some people we met with no clothing except the malo for the men and the pau for the women. Thought I to myself shall I ever see them informed and converted?"
101. Margaret Greer Martin, The Lymans of Hilo (Hilo, 1979), 57.
102. Dale Morgan, ed., Honolulu: Sketches of Life in the Hawaiian Islands from 1828-1861 (Chicago, 1966), 9.
103. Grimshaw, "New England Missionary Wives," 84-85.
104. Martin, Sarah Joiner Lyman of Hawaii, 73-75, 57.
105. Morgan, Honolulu, 9.
106. Bingham, A Residence, 148-149
107. William Ellis, Memoir of Mrs. Mary Mercy Ellis, Wife of Rev. William Ellis (Boston, 1836).
108. Humphrey, The Promised Land, xiv.
109. Bingham, A Residence, 149.
110. Grimshaw, Paths of Duty, 48.
111. Patrick V. Kirch and Marshall Sahlins, Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii (Chicago, 1992), 57. Keopuolani and Kapi'olani joined Ka'ahumanu in her public support of the mission.
112. Daws, Shoal of Time, 72.
113. Merry, Colonizing Hawai'i, 45.
114. H. R. Hays, The Kingdom of Hawaii (Greenwich, Conn., 1964), 73.
115. Daws, Shoal of Time, 83.
116. Merry, Colonizing Hawai'i, 48, 40
117. Kuykendall and Day, Hawaii, 50.
118. Silva, Aloha Betrayed, 9-10
119. Marshall Sahlins, "Hawai'i in the Early Nineteenth Century: The Kingdom and the Kingship," in Robert Borofsky, ed., Remembrance of Pacific Pasts: An Invitation to Remake History (Honolulu, 2000), 190.
120. Grimshaw, "New England Missionary Wives," 96.