| Arts & Culture
Lahainaluna High School
The missionaries who came from New England to the Islands met with a remarkable success in educating the people of Hawaii. One of the first things the missionaries did was to develop an alphabet for the Hawaiian language and formalize the grammar and structure into written form. The chiefs could see the value of having such a tool, of course, and they demanded to be taught how to read and write. Soon the common people were clamoring for "palapala," book-learning, for themselves and for their children.
By 1826, two years after Betsey Stockton organized the first school for commoners at Lahaina, there were over 8,000 students attending almost 200 island schools. Many of these "schools" met outdoors or in thatched huts and the numbers continued to grow until the demand for instruction outstripped the availability of teachers.
Lahainaluna High School, "the first high school west of the Rockies," was founded in 1831 as a teacher-training center. The land, over 1,000 acres, was granted to the mission by Chief Hoapili with the approval of king. Its first students were Hawaiian, and all instruction and textbooks were in Hawaiian. The school was also the first boarding school for boys in Hawaii as well as the first industrial school of its kind in the United States. It is still unique today in being the only public boarding school in the nation.
It's interesting to note, as Cummins E. Speakman points out in his book, "Mowee," that around this time, "the United States consisted of 23 states, there were only nine high schools and book learning for all the people was frowned upon in America and Europe."
Reverend Lorrin Andrews was the school's principal and sole instructor in its early years. His sixty adult students were "men of piety and promising talents" whose first job was to build their school on the hills above Lahaina. Logs were dragged from the forests of East Maui over a distance of 35 miles to Maalaea where they were placed in canoes and brought to Lahaina. The haole missionaries marveled at the industriousness and capacity for hard work exhibited by the Hawaiians.
There is an old saying, "Ka la koi hana o Lahainaluna (the sun of Lahainaluna urges one to work)." It seems particularly appropriate for, in addition to studying, pupils were kept busy constructing school buildings and landscaping the school grounds, farming, phoneticizing the Hawaiian language and compiling Hawaiian dictionaries, and operating Maui's first printing press.
The press was installed in 1833 to remedy the problem of a serious lack of reading material in the Hawaiian language. Within a year, the first Hawaiian-language newspaper, "Ka Lama Hawaii (The Torch of Hawaii)," was published on February 14, 1834. It was the first newspaper west of the Rockies. Bibles, textbooks, maps, dictionaries, and even Hawaii's first engraved paper money were printed on that press.
By 1850, the report of the Minister of Public Instruction stated that Lahainaluna "has sent out over 400 educated Hawaiians...they are now the leading men of the native population all over the islands." From the 1830's to the 1860's Lahainaluna was probably the most influential school in the Kingdom of Hawaii, producing many of Hawaii's leaders, including a governor, and numerous ministers, teachers, lawyers, and government officials. The fact that the majority of the Hawaiian leaders and other influential men of that era were educated by missionaries had a major impact on the history of the Islands.
From the beginning, Hawaiian culture and history was emphasized at the school as Reverend Sheldon Dibble taught the native scholars how to record the ways of their people and preserve them for posterity. These scholars had the printing presses to make this material widely available to the general public. It is likely that their distinctly Christian outlook on "the old days and old ways" had a major effect on the thinking of the people of the time.
Respected historians Samuel Kamakau and David Malo were both students of the school who later became teachers there. At his request, David Malo was buried on Mount Ball, the hill above his beloved school, and each year the school celebrates "David Malo Day" in his honor.
It is interesting to note that the original name for Mount Ball, which rises to an elevation of 2,254 feet, was Pa'upa'u. According to Fornander, the hill was named "Needless Weariness" because it was such a lot of trouble for the parents and servants of a young chief to go up and down the hill to a stream far below to get water to bathe the child.
At the top of the hill, there was a large heiau reputedly built by chief Kamohomoho, "one of the noted chiefs of olden times." This heiau was the first one built and dedicated to a lizard-god of great strength named Mo'oinanea. Worship of this lizard-god was widespread on the islands of Maui, Molokai and Lanai. It was said that the god made its home in the pond of Mokuhinia in Lahaina. (Mokuhinia is the site of today's Malu-ulu-o-Lele Park behind Waiola church.)
On the eastern side of the hill there was a place of refuge where those fleeing from battle or from other troubles could find sanctuary. David Malo's grave is on the western side of the hill.
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Spreckelsville -
Spreckelsville is named for an enterprising young Californian, Claus Spreckels, who arrived in the islands just as the Reciprocity Act of 1875 was being enacted. This Act exempted Hawaiian sugar from American import duties in exchange for American access to Pearl Harbor (among other things).
Spreckels recognized the opportunity this presented and, in 1876, after learning about the sugar business from Henry Baldwin and Samuel T. Alexander, and playing on the friendships he had developed with King Kalakaua and other members of the Hawaiian royalty, he began buying large tracts of land for sugar farming before anyone else knew about them and secured the water rights he needed to irrigate the dry central plains, cutting through "red tape" with help from his influential friends. He started planting sugar cane in 1878.
Spreckels went on to invest more than $4 million in the Hawaiian economy. He developed an irrigation system that brought water to the fertile but dry central plains, turned Kahului into the island's principal port as his steam ships carried sugar and other products to and from the mainland and moved the focus of Maui's economy from Lahaina to the Upcountry area. He introduced controlled irrigation, the use of the steam plow and an extensive railroad system as well.
Despite all of this, Spreckels was always considered an "outsider" and deeply resented for his acumen in promoting his own interests and maintaining his empire. By 1898, his era on Maui had ended, and the only reminder of the man is the name of the area where the center of his extensive sugar plantation once stood.
While there is no plantation at Spreckelsville any more, there is money. Expensive beachfront homes and the Maui Country Club line the beach. Willy Nelson has a home here.
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