The first page of The Alphabet, Oahu, Hawaii : Mission Press, 1822. Catalog record
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The Hawaiian language had been an oral tradition extending back millennia and a handwritten tradition going back decades. Native Hawaiians had also been developing the written form of their language after initial contact with Europeans in the late 1700s. One of the first Native Hawaiians to live for a time in New England, ʻŌpūkahaʻia is credited with starting the first Hawaiian language dictionary, translating parts of the Bible into Hawaiian, and sparking the Protestant mission that would bring the first printing press to the Islands. For more see the discussion and theatrical performance “My Name is ʻŌpūkahaʻia.”
The first printing in the Hawaiian Islands took place one morning in early January 1822 when a Native Hawaiian, a young printer's apprentice-turned-missionary from New York, and a sailor from Massachusetts gathered around a second-hand Ramage printing press. The missionary, sailor, and the press had all arrived in Hawai’i in 1820 aboard the same ship sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in Boston. They set up the press in a hale pili (grass thatched house), built by the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi for the newly established "Sandwich Islands Mission" in Honolulu.
Taking turns pulling the bar of the press, the three men produced the first printed impressions ever made in the Hawaiian Islands. In the following decades, missionaries estimated over thirty million pages written in the Hawaiian language were printed. The earliest surviving publication is The Alphabet (1822).
Lahainaluna Seminary
Lahainaluna Seminary, located just above Lahaina on the island of Maui, is central to the history of Hawaiian language printing. Also known as the High School or Kulanui o Hawaii nei, ma Lahainaluna i Maui, the ABCFM missionaries established the school in 1831. After the first adult class graduated in 1835, Lahainaluna became a boarding school for boys as young as ten. In 1849 the Hawaiian government took charge of the school and it is still a high school today.
The original Ramage press, brought to the Islands in 1820, was moved to the Lahainaluna campus in 1833 after a second press arrived in Honolulu. Later the Seminary established a makeshift engraving setup and press. These presses produced not only textbooks but also the first newspapers and engravings in Hawaii.
Native Hawaiian students or local Hawaiians translated or co-authored works and performed almost all the labor involved in printing and engraving in the 1830s and 1840s. Lorrin Andrews, the US missionary who supervised printing and engraving at Lahainaluna in these early decades, claimed he only pulled the press for physical exercise. One of the most skilled Native Hawaiian engravers, Kepohani, confirmed this in an 1847 letter, writing: "It was I who did the tasks Andrews held in his hands from the years 1836 to 1844." (Hawaiʻi State Archives cited in Forbes, D.W. Engraved at Lahainaluna, 2021, p. 23.)
Related catalog records for Lahainaluna Seminary printing
Engravings
Students at Lahainaluna Seminary, along with local Hawaiians and missionaries, largely taught themselves copperplate engraving and printing. Between 1834 and 1844 they created dozens of engravings. Some of the most striking and technically skilled examples of Hawaiian printing, these engravings include maps, landscape views, portraits, and depictions of native floral as both book illustrations and as separately published prints.
For more information, see David W. Forbes. Engraved at Lahainaluna: A History of Printmaking by Hawaiians at the Lahainaluna Seminary, 1834 to 1844, with a descriptive catalogue of all known views, maps, and portraits. (Honolulu, Hawaii, 2012).
Newspapers
The first newspaper printed on the Islands, Ka Lama Hawaii, (not held at AAS) was printed by students at Lahainaluna Seminary beginning on February 14, 1834. Later that year on November 12, missionaries in Honolulu began publishing Ke Kumu Hawaii, which may be described as the first regular newspaper intended for broader readership. Hawaiian newspapers initially served as educational tools for students and later evolved into communication outlets for the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi (see the Polynesian), and English-speaking foreign missionaries (see the Pacific Commercial Advertiser).
For more information, see The Story of Hawai‘i’s First ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i Newspapers by Noelle Fujii-Oride. For a detailed history of Hawaiian journalism, visit Extra! A Brief Chronicle of the Newspapers and Newspeople ... produced by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
For additional digital content, including Ka Lama Hawaii, see the Hawaiian Newspapers Collection on Papakilo.