American Girl in the Sandwich Islands
When an old house in California, passed from one generation to the next in 2008, it needed a new roof. That project uncovered five old trunks in the attic that had been forgotten for a century. They contained a treasure-trove of correspondence, photograph albums with RARE photos, old newspapers, books, century old student essays by Hawaiian school girls, a botany collection, scientific research records, etc., The man of the house, Dr. Charles Kofoid was an internationally known biologist and oceanographer so the collection was actively sought by UCSD for its scholarly value to the history of science and particularly Scripps Institution of Oceanography, as he was one of the founders.
Many people do not know that the Coronado Boathouse was the first San Diego home for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which Kofoid, along with Ritter helped found in 1903. William Ritter and his colleague Charles Kofoid were zoologists at the University of California, Berkeley when they offered a series of marine biology field trips to different parts of the California coast. They decided after great success of the field parties, that they wanted to found a permanent marine station in California. This was the time that many biologists, inspired by Darwin and other scientists, wanted to work with marine specimens, so many marine stations were established first in Europe, and later in America and other places.
After a long search for financial backing, they decided to spend a summer season in San Diego. William Ritter met a San Diego physician, Fred Baker, who was also an ardent shell collector, when he was staying with his wife at Hotel del Coronado. Fred Baker befriended him and, with connections at the Chamber of Commerce in San Diego, tried to convince him to start his permanent marine station in San Diego. As Ritter looked about for a place, he discussed the matter with E.S. Babcock, who was then the manager of the Hotel Del. The President of the University of California asked Babcock to help the scientists. So a deal was made, and in the summer of 1903, a group of scientists, including Ritter & Kofoid, were given the use of the Hotel Del Coronado for a summer, and again the following year, 1904.
Baker introduced Ritter & Kofoid to Mr. E.W. Scripps and his sister, Ellen Browning Scripps, who, with other members of the family, visited the summer laboratory at the Del. They became interested, and eventually provided the capitol necessary to establish a permanent laboratory — in La Jolla, which is where Miss Scripps lived.
Back to the story ..
However, one of the four trunks contained an unexpected gift, an extraordinary surprise.
The surprise was a young woman’s handwritten love letters to her fiancé along with rare Hawaiian artifacts. Deborah Day, Scripps archivist, began unfolding these aged letters and once she started reading them, she was instantly fascinated and began the personal task of transcribing them. All letters and enclosures were found in their original postmarked envelopes and they were painstakingly transcribed by and the project yielded over four hundred word processed pages. She then recruited professor Sandra Bonura, and the two year task of bringing this collection to life took on an energy if its own.
For the past two years, Deborah and Sandra have been researching the lives of every person mentioned in the letters, the people behind the photographs, and have edited the letters into a wonderful book which they hope to publish some day.
The letters were postmarked from 1890-1893, when 23-year-old Carrie Prudence Winter was a missionary teacher at Kawaiahao Seminary for girls in Honolulu. Primary sources written by teachers are rare. So the discovery of a group over a hundred letters (both sides of the correspondence) dated 1890-1893 was noteworthy. Carrie wrote these letters to her beloved “Charlie” and we get a private view into a 19th century love relationship that transcends time. Carrie described teaching Hawaiian girls, the harsh discipline imposed, struggles with fellow teachers, meetings with royalty and important figures, leprosy and malaria that impacted the Hawaiian people. She described Hawaiian folklore, turbulent politics as well as the ordinary men and women she encountered in Hawaii.
Charlie found her letters so riveting that he suggested she publish stories on Hawaii in her hometown Connecticut newspaper. Impressed by her writing ability, the Hartford Courant wrote Carrie directly in 1893 to request articles. Besides charming articles on all things Hawaii, or the Sandwich Islands…Carrie would became the eyes and ears for America during Hawaii’s most turbulent time-The Revolution. Carrie did not know when she stepped off the steam ship in Honolulu that she would witness this pivotal time in Hawaiian history, the end of the monarchy, the period of the revolution. The editor of the Hartford Courant wrote on January 18, 1893, referring to her article on the revolution, “It is, we believe, the first letter of the sort published in the East from an American who actually witnessed the Honolulu revolutions.”
Carrie wrote not only about the fall of the Hawaiian monarchy and the rise of a new foreign ruling class, but as it turned out, she witnessed these experiences for an American audience. She was in the very midst of the Missionary Party that advocated annexation but lived amongst Hawaiian girls who were adamantly loyal to their Queen. She was not a neutral party, but rather an outright proponent of annexation, and her articles in the Hartford Courant reflect the propaganda of the annexationists.
Carrie and her fellow teachers disciplined the girls at Kawaiahao Seminary by placing them in closets and corners sometimes for extended periods of time, and sometimes withholding food, as was school policy. Seminary discipline included corporal punishment, and Carrie applied it on several occasions, once with a cane but using a whip on another occasion. The infractions that were disciplined included insubordination, theft of food, failure to do tasks, speaking Hawaiian, or dancing the hula. Her letters confirm the accounts by Hawaiians and historians of the islands of harsh discipline in the missionary schools.
The letters are fascinating. On the surface, they reveal a love story, a young woman separated from her fiancé, saving money for her marriage. Carrie was an intelligent woman, a product of her time, with a rational mind. Her letters were written with love, humor & insights that are charming, but she was also a woman with 19th century racist views. At a deeper level, the letters tell a dark tale of revolution, the fall from power of a Queen and her people, and the rise of a new ruling class in Hawaii.
Oct. 26, 1890
Sunday, August 29, 1890
My dear Charlie,
My first day’s teaching was not a brilliant success. We have about 100 girls to begin on and new ones coming in all the time.
In the afternoon, I went down to Waikiki and took my first ocean bath. It was very invigorating and it seems to me now that I shall go there as often as I get a chance. All the girls sat in a row on the beach holding hands and then when the big waves came in such fun!! They would turn us right over a somersault almost and then on the way back drag us into the water again. You should have heard the screaming and laughing. I just thought of you and what fun if you were only there. Let love attend my letter over the sea to my darling.
Sept. 9, 1890
My dormitory has about 30 in it and they are all the older girls from 15 to 20 yrs. old. They have little iron beds with a mosquito netting over it. After the praying I read or have one of my girls read till the next bell at 6:30. Then all leave the dormitory except four girls whose work I superintend, two sweep out the dormitory, one tends to lavatory and stairs and one to the attic. These girls do their work pretty well but need coaxing up once in a while. At 7 comes breakfast and at about 7:30 I go to my dormitory again and see if the girls have made their beds well which each girl is supposed to do right after her breakfast.
The chief things to look out for here is the tendency of every girl to pick up and destroy everything that comes in their way. I have rescued a pillow-case and some handkerchiefs from the dust-pan so far. Then again they are fond of making up their beds with but one sheet on, or if they have two they put the blanket on before the top sheet. At night they like to sleep in anything but the proper garment and are fond of other beds than their own. I get this work all seen to and have an eye too on the girl who does my room work by 8:30 can go to my school-room and look over my work there.
Sept. 21, 1890
I am full of joy and peace today. I am really happy. Your letters have done much for making me so.
I will be brave and good and loving for your sake. Then too, I find the work interesting, the girls interesting. I hope I can keep the same feeling right along
I think some of the teachers are rather disposed to worry over everything and to consider the girls and themselves natural enemies. It has secretly grieved me to notice how some of them never speak to the girls except in a scolding or fretful way. I am really trying, darling, not to do so. A number of times already I have had to speak sternly and even severely, but inwardly I have not lost control of myself at all.
The discipline is very strict things that we would not mind at all in a family or even in our schools are here “taboo” but the days of constant whipping seem to be in the past now the punishments consist standing girls up in corners or putting them in closets to reflect or taking them to your own room for that purpose or depriving them of some pleasure, or, most common all setting them at some extra task. Work seems to be the greatest evil that can befall these girls. I am surprised at the docility with which these big girls will submit to punishment. Only Friday two girls almost as large as myself and who had been half annoying me for some time added positive disobedience and I gave them the big flight of stairs belonging to my dormitory to scrub and they did it as meekly as I could desire.
Oct. 26, 1890
Well it is nine o’clock now and I am through with my study hour and my evening gymnastics which my girls are all abed and quiet except one little sinner who persisted in talking aloud after talking had been forbidden. She is standing in a corner with the mosquitoes for company to her bare legs. I feel sadly discouraged about discipline, Charlie, all the nice little theories about kindness and patience and gentleness don’t work with these girls. They take advantage everywhere and insult and ride over a teacher rough-shod.
Last Sunday afternoon I had to have five girls in my room and three of them were here till supper time before they would learn their Bible verses. Since I wrote you last I have given my severest punishments. It is quite a come down to my vanity but I thought I should be a good disciplinarian at once when in reality I have to learn how to govern like most ordinary people I suppose. The girls got a strong impression that I was kind and never punished and three or four got so they would not obey and were noisy in school and troublesome generally so to disabuse them of their idea I have kept three girls all day long in a dark closet, with nothing to eat but bread and water. It has had some effect but I shouldn’t wonder if I had to repeat it in one case at least to convince the girls that I can punish every day if necessary.
Nov. 27, 1890
Sunday It is warm showery day, dear, with the sun shining at intervals. I wonder how it is with you today. I am well and happy. I think I can say all goes well and I hope I can say truthfully that each day I get a trifle better hold.
The king decided to go up to the coast with them. From what I heard I do not think he was over welcome. Friday was Independence day for the Hawaiians. The anniversary of their freedom from England. The Hawaiians are quite touchy now days about foreign interference.
There was a service at their church and I took all the girls who cared to go to that. I was glad I went. I was the only white person there and all was in Hawaiian but I could easily see what an earnest meeting it was so many prayers by both men and women such earnestness and the frequency of the word “Hawaii.” One old white headed man made a very earnest talk and at one time all the people began to cry. Most of the girls with me wiped their eyes many times.
Dec.6, 1890
O Charlie dear, Charlie dear. I am so discouraged and as blue as indigo and with pretty good reason. I haven’t heart to write except about what is in my heart so it will all have to come out to you. Here I have been “going on four months” and I seem to be almost a failure in the way of discipline. Perhaps that seems a little thing but it means real suffering to me and I have about resolved that if things don’t straighten out before the year is over I shall give up and go home. Sometimes I think it grows out of an entirely weary system of governing and yet everyone seems to think it is the only way to govern these native girls to have them in complete subjection and punish every slight deviation.
1891
Mch. 12, 1891
This morning we have the news of the death of a girl who left here last June. After being in this school for a good many years and behaving well she went out and went right wrong, one man living with herself and mother although married to neither. If she had done as she knew she ought to she would be living today probably. It is very sad and discouraging to the teacher. As Mr. Cook said to me the other night the chief requisite in a teacher for this school was that she be a Christian for there are so many disappointments in the work that it is too much for anyone to carry it on in their own strength.
May 23, 1891
Its infinitely better for me though to be among these young girls than out in any business life, like a type-writer for instance, I love them and sympathize with them and its well known that my attitude is not that of a hard task-mistress but of a friend.
Sept. 13, 1891
I feel a great deal of encouragement about my room. To begin with I know the girls now and their characters. I know to their capacity and can give them enough to keep them busy. They seem interested in their work and they are so much better prepared to take up the work that has to be done in my room than ever they were before. I know too how better to govern them and I have begun by being very strict. Don’t be frightened, Carl. Last year they made me at times suffer untold agonies because they said I was “kind” and so they said they could do as they pleased. Experience has taught me that I may as well go if that is going to be the way and I am really gaining the power of keeping them down. I don’t think Carl, you will ever know what that means till you have worked among a people so few years removed from barbarism as these are. You will be anxious for the effect of this upon my own character and I sincerely hope that I have not lost in real gentleness, while I have gained in strength. Try, dearie, not to distrust me about this thing but to help me with your loving sympathy.
I think one of the hardest things we have to bear is the attitude strangers sometimes take toward us. They see the beautiful and poetic side of the girls nature and it seems to them that we are hard and cruel and all their sympathy is for the girls which it really ought to be the other way.
Another week has come and gone and again I turn to my lover. I am delighted with my girls in class & every seat is taken but everyone seems interested in the studying and I am sure were you to step into my room at any time you would be pleased with my order.
Oct. 5, 1891
The Queen visited us one morning this week. It was an entirely unexpected visit but we understand she was pleased with all she saw. She was present at devotions in the chapel and spoke to the girls and afterward spent some time in the school-rooms. I had a class in fractions and two or three examples were analyzed well, as the girls could not have done them a year ago.
1892
Jan. 6, 1892
I think we are fairly under way. My school room work is very interesting. The girls are very good. They work like little beavers. There is nobody to say whether my girls have done well or not or to say whether I have accomplished anything or not but I am just as proud as a peacock over them and you may always expect to hear me boasting of them. I shall be glad enough to drop all the other work but I do hate to have those girls have another teacher. Please may I bring them home with me? There are only 32.
Mch. 13, 189
