E62: Mission to Hawaii

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:10)
We're only a few episodes into season three, and I already need a vacation. In fact, I think we all need a vacation, which is why. Got you a surprise, Lindsay. In fact, you got us all a surprise.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:21)
Oh, thanks, I hate surprises.

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:23)
You know, I just think you work really hard. You all work really hard.
I'm going to get ready, I'm going to get ready.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:34)
What should I pack?

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:35)
For anything like the subjects of the story today, you should bring your scriptures and some decent beef jerky and maybe some extra Diet Coke. Just please, for once, leave your smallpox at home.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:45)
Or your COVID Mormon missionaries in Fiji.

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:49)
Thanks, Dr. Nelson, MD.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:51)
Today, we're taking a little church HQ detour to talk about the first mission to Hawaii. As we try to cover the spread of Mormonism throughout the globe, we are reminded that, guess what? Not everything is about American Mormonism.
Mormonism actually has a pretty expansive history in the Pacific Islands, and we hope to bring all of that into this podcast.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:13)
Well, lucky for you and all our listeners, we're gonna beat the cold weather and travel to the Sandwich Islands for a little Mormon history.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:26)
Hi, this is Lindsay Hansen Park.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:28)
And this is Bryan Buchanan.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:30)
Bringing you the story of Mormonism from the shadow of the Everlasting Hills, straight out of Zion, this isn't your grandpa's Mormon history.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:57)
This is the tale of Mormon saints and sinners from our roots until present day.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:02)
Gird your loins, lock your hearts, and pay your tithing, because we're bringing you the story of Mormonism in all its paradisiacal glory.

**Bryan Buchanan** (2:10)
It's the Sunstone History Podcast.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:34)
Before we get to the Mormon part of the Mormon History Podcast, I feel like we need to back up a little bit and do some groundwork about the history of white encroachment on the islands now known as Hawaii. And this matters because Mormons are some of the early colonizers of the Pacific Island. Mormons get a lot of credit for Utah, but I don't think people realize just how much they invaded the West and settled so many other places and impacted the culture, ecology, politics of so many places. It's kind of astounding.

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:03)
We brought this up in our last episode where we talked about Joseph F. Smith's mission to Hawaii in the 1850s, but actually Mormon involvement in the Polynesian islands started in 1843 Mormons definitely weren't the first missionaries to descend on the islands, and they certainly weren't the first outsiders.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:18)
That's right. The islands were occupied by Polynesians as early as 124 AD. And for at least 500 years before Spanish explorers passed by, the islands had remained isolated from the rest of the world. The isolation is something we need to talk about because it shows how more than just the gospel is spread when missionaries visit isolated areas.
Isolation means no immunity to diseases brought by invaders.
It means a delicate ecology. And I just interviewed Virginia Kearns for the Year of Polygamy podcast, and we're going to have her back on here too. But she talks about this in her biography of Sally Kenosh. Virginia mentions that Mormons brought to the Uinta Basin more than just disease and conflict. They brought outside plants, seeds, animals, and other things that hadn't been introduced to the area that they were settling. And so this idea of coming in and settling the West means changing the landscape, getting rid of native plants, and installing your own. And that's what civilization is to Mormons. But that kind of living, that kind of approach, isn't only hard on the wildlife, but it impacts the people who have been living off the untouched ecosystem for hundreds of years. So it's fascinating to consider how not just ideas are spread and how genocide doesn't always mean outright violence. When Christian missionaries arrived in the islands, they brought smallpox with them, but unfortunately, it was the Mormons that really brought the smallpox.
We'll get there.

**Bryan Buchanan** (4:50)
It's said the Spanish captain Ruy Lobo de Villalobos passed by the island in 1542, and then the famous British explorer Captain James Cook arrived on the shores there in 1778 And Cook's involvement, that's a whole thing.
He helped arm Kamehameha with European weapons to create a civil war and then usurp and unify the other islands and become the first ruler of the Kingdom of Hawaii. Basically, they just show him how to make gunpowder and then he uses it to take over all the other islands in a bloody massacre. You don't get a highway named after you for sitting on your butt. After that, he starts trading with Europeans and the Americas. So from the 1800s and ever after, white settlement and exchange starts happening on the islands.