by John Demos
The actual process of closure must be managed by “orderly” means; in this, as in so much else, they were nothing if not orderly. Thus during the fall of 1825, the board appointed a special committee to consider “whether a school designed for the education of youths collected from heathen nations can be permanently supported with advantage to the cause of missions.” Indeed, there were reasons to “doubt whether a sufficient number of promising youths can be obtained, and … restored to their respective countries greatly improved, civilized, and guarded against evil.” The language here was chosen with great delicacy, but its meaning was obvious—and ominous for the school’s future.5
In due course, the committee members “visited Cornwall & there met the Agents & very carefully investigated the condition of the Institution.… The question of discontinuing the School was largely discussed.” Their subsequent report was a mix of temporizing and short-term compromise. They began by affirming that the school had “already answered very important purposes in promoting the interests of Christ’s kingdom”; thus its numerous supporters had “no cause to regret their pious exertions & liberalities” on its behalf. At the same time, “it was evident that the relative circumstances of the Christian & heathen parts of the world have materially changed in the course of the few years … since the school was established…[and] there does not now appear … the same reasons for…[its] continuance.” The committee was not yet “prepared … to express a decided opinion” on the matter of closure; for that, additional “inquiry & deliberation” would be needed. In the meantime, “instruction & discipline [should] be continued as formerly … but…[with] no additional pupils … sought for admission.” If all went well, “before or during the next summer the indications of divine Providence will render the path of duty … clear”; the Almighty Himself would weigh in.6
At winter’s end, the committee undertook a second round of work. The school’s principal, Rev. Bassett, was asked to supply “an account of all the present members,” including length of stay, academic and spiritual accomplishments to date, and likely “contribution” in the years ahead. This took until the fall; by then, a decision for “discontinuance” was widely rumored. The agents, meanwhile, scrambled to form an alternative plan: Perhaps the school might be kept open as a “mixed institution,” with the training of local schoolteachers and “foreign youths” joined together? But, in fact, it was too late; as Evarts would subsequently admit, the board had made up its mind in June (but had postponed a public announcement). According to one much later account, Lyman Beecher argued vigorously for “continuance” but was outvoted by Evarts and other colleagues.7
In November, Evarts wrote Bassett with what amounted to a death sentence: A new committee would meet soon “to bring the concerns of the institution to a close.” The idea of its continuing in “mixed” form he waved aside with a vague reference to “many obvious difficulties.” His letter concluded with a brisk expression of gratitude for “the fidelity and paternal solicitude with which you [Bassett] have taught the pupils and watched over their interests,” and of regret if “your private affairs have been injured & your prospects of a useful & agreeable employment interrupted.” The decision was final; there would be no going back.8
By this time the board’s overall view of missionary work had swung completely around, as evidenced (yet again) by Evarts’s correspondence with colleagues and supporters. To one, he wrote that the “original design” of the school, while “most laudable” and though successful “to some extent,” could henceforth “be more easily & effectually accomplished in other ways.” With a second, he was more emphatic: “The fact is, the F.M. School is not answering the end of its institution.… We cannot be justified in keeping it up, while all the ends which it was designed to accomplish can be secured in other ways at less expense & with less hazzard [sic] than has attended the experiment.” He reported the opinion of Rev. James Ellis, a recent visitor to Hawaii, “whom we regard as … very wise and judicious,” that the “young men from the Sandwich Islands, had much better…[go] thither for an education than stay in this country.” Ellis was referring to several of the scholars still enrolled at Cornwall, whose return to the islands would put them in the hands of the missionaries already at work there.9
As time passed, this way of thinking would come to embrace the entire missionary movement. Instead of bringing them, the heathen—here to us, in America—for conversion and schooling, we must seek them out in their own homelands. The point applied especially to places where missions were already ongoing. As one commentator noted, “[E]xperience seems to indicate, that youths educated upon missionary ground are more apt to be fitted for the various circumstances of a residence among their countrymen, than those who have been accustomed to a different manner of life.” Put simply: Experience of America would likely reduce—not increase—their effectiveness after returning home. Here, they inevitably encountered “temptations”; here, too, a taste of “privilege” would compromise their “original hardihood,” and thus unfit them for the “privations, which they must bear among their uncivilized countrymen.” Better, then, to send them back, where they “can be so instructed at missionary stations as to be very useful to their countrymen.” Nothing could have been more contrary to the founding principles of the Mission School.10
In sum: The underlying goal of worldwide “salvation” remained as before; the “ends” would be the same, but the means very different. Within that calculus, the Mission School figured as an exemplary case—a key “experiment” that had failed.
Do any of them think now of the school’s beginning, when its future seemed so uniformly bright? When they could, without hesitation, “look forward…[to] the most encouraging prospects”? When they expected, one and all, “to see this small stream become a river which shall make glad the city of God?” When, at their annual exhibition days, “a great concourse of people” would gather to witness a special program designed to present “the most gratifying … evidence of success in the attainments of the youth from various heathen lands?” When the martyred Obookiah set a standard of piety that would challenge the faithful across the entire region?
And what of the midpoint, at which they could still feel enraptured by the way “these wild men come to our shores, and our firesides…[and] enquire for the Babe of Bethlehem…[and] weep for His cross”—all in a process so “animating … that the mind has almost lost the power of astonishment.”
And, finally, what about their bedrock conviction—their fount of inspiration, day after day, year after year—that the school “stands alone in the Christian world, an original essay for doing good…[with] not its like in Europe or America…[such that] few institutions promise more extensive benefit to the Church of God.”
All gone now?
Perhaps it is hard, perhaps as their “infant institution” approaches its end point, they do feel a stinging disappointment. But, true to form, they will not acknowledge as much. Instead, they hold heads high, keep voices firm, and make ready to proceed as best they can “in other ways.”
The school’s enrollment had begun to decline as early as the winter of 1824–25. After holding steady for several years at a level of roughly thirty-five, the total declined to twenty-seven in February, twenty-six in May, seventeen in October, and fifteen the following June (1826). Those who remained would now become a source of pressing concern; Evarts, from his vantage point at the American Board, took charge of arranging their departure. Letters went out to ministers, college presidents, school principals, missionary leaders—anyone who might help with developing plans “to dispose of the young men now at Cornwall.”11
One especially promising Indian (Oneida) scholar was accepted at Dartmouth College. Evarts sent him on his way with a comforting assurance that Rev. Tyler, the college president, “will always act the part of a kind father to you.” He remained for two years, but left without receiving a degree.12
Five “Osage boys,” apparently quite recent a
rrivals, would set out for the West as soon as “a careful, prudent, economical man” could be found to accompany them. The group would go “on the [Erie] Canal, to Buffalo, thence by water to Cleaveland [sic]”; if all went well, they might then be placed at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Indeed, their arrival was noted by officials of that university in the summer of 1827. None would graduate, but four of them did apparently remain enrolled for periods of up to three years.13
Several remaining Hawaiians were to travel home in the fall with a new contingent of missionaries. (This would be “much safer, & better for you, in all respects, than to go with the whalers.”) In the meantime—as Evarts wrote to one of them, by way of a pep talk—they should read, study, pray, “learn to be industrious,” find ways of “conversing with intelligent & good people,” and generally make the most of “your privileges in this Christian land.” As it happened, their departure was further delayed; hence in the following spring, they were parceled out, on a temporary basis, to the households of various missionary supporters. They didn’t finally embark until early November 1827.14
Another of the scholars, “a Portuguese young man, hopefully pious,” was “desirous of studying Medicine.” Evarts wrote on his behalf to a minister in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, inquiring “whether there is not some respectable Physician at Pittsfield, who would instruct him gratuitously & whether some of your good people would not give him his board.” With suitable training, “he might become very useful, as a Physician, in some Catholic country.” Apparently, this came to nothing; a year later, however, Evarts succeeded in arranging his admission to Dartmouth.15
By March 1827, “all the boys, except six…[were]…provided for.” This group was still in Cornwall, housed with the last of the school’s stewards, a church deacon named Lorrain Loomis. Evarts requested of Loomis that they “remain … in your family, & under your care” for another few weeks. Clearly, the “disposing” process was dragging on longer than anyone had expected.16
Four of the remaining six left, by routes unknown, in the spring of 1828. Some may well have been placed with families in nearby towns (Goshen, Milford, Winchester); in such cases, Loomis was a likely intermediary. That July, Evarts wrote to Rev. Daggett, “dissatisfied” about the two who “were not yet sent home.” One was Choctaw; as for the other, “I do not recollect to what tribe…[he] belongs.” Evarts was concerned about their prospects and hoped that the former principal might “send for them both, & give them your best counsels in regard to their leaving christian society, & commencing a residence in the wilderness.” A few months later, he succeeded in arranging their departure, in the company of missionaries bound for “Buffaloe” and “thence to the Choctaw nation.” They would travel through the town of Richmond, Massachusetts, where Edwin Dwight, the school’s first principal, now served as minister. Evarts alerted Dwight to their arrival, noting that they were “but poorly prepared…[and] may need clothing & other necessaries.” This was, for certain, a turning point. It had taken a good two years, but now all those who had remained after the school’s closure were fully and finally “provided for.”17
There were still some loose ends involving school properties. The schoolhouse itself reverted to town ownership and was used thereafter as a conference hall. (It would be taken down in 1873.) The steward’s house was put up for sale; the board hoped it would bring “at least $750.” Some of the books in the library were donated to Dartmouth “for the Indian charity school there”; others went back to a particular donor. Rev. and Mrs. Stone received “some articles … from the clothing &c. on hand, as a compensation for expenses incurred by them for the pupils of the school.” And money previously donated “to aid in a contemplated new building” would be fully refunded.18
Of course, board leaders could not immediately cease thinking about the school, or about their decision for closure. At the least, they needed to reassure themselves (and one another) that they had acted correctly. Perhaps Evarts had Cornwall in mind when, during the summer of 1828, he advised a minister in North Carolina against sending a particular Indian boy away for schooling. “So far as we have had experience on the subject,” he wrote, “it is not generally expedient for Indian youth to be educated in the white settlements. The notions & feelings which they acquire are not such as to fit them for usefulness among their people afterwards. The Board have educated many in this [way], & with very few exceptions they have returned to their friends & exerted a bad influence, or become wholly inefficient.” Two years later, David Greene, Evarts’s successor as board secretary, was even more pessimistic. “This experiment of educating unevangelized foreigners in this country, with the hope that they would return to their respective countries, and act the part of enlightened & Christian men is one among others in which much hope was placed in the earlier stages of missionary exertions, but which have been, to a greavous [sic] extent, failures.” He noted especially that board leaders “were much discouraged by the attempts they made at the Cornwall School.”19
These downside conclusions were based, at least in part, on reports coming in from the missionary “field”—from Hawaii, first of all. The “defection” of William Tennooe, which was noted almost immediately after the founding of the mission there, would come to seem prophetic; as time passed, concerns were raised about several others. In 1830, missionary Gerrit P. Judd wrote from Honolulu to his friend and mentor Edwin Dwight with a full account of “a number of individuals” educated at the Mission School and since returned to their homeland. The picture he gave was mixed, at best. One of the returnees had “dwindled into insignificance. We seldom see him.” Another “possesses many negative qualities,” and “is not depended on … in any important Missionary work.” A third was “employed in making purchases for the chiefs … is quite a man of business … and has much money & other property in his hands.… We are very much in fear he may be tempted to embezzle.… He needs our prayer and counsel.” A fourth had become “a favorite with the Gov. [of Hawaii], attends him wherever he goes, eats with him, brushes off flies while he sleeps &c &c.”; as a result, he was “fast sinking into the lazy habits of a Sandwich Islander.”20
Most distressing of all was the story of Thomas Hopoo, once a star pupil and bosom friend of the “martyred” Obookiah. According to Judd, Hopoo had begun well: “[H]e … spent much of his time in instructing the people” and thus became “an instrument of good.” He married a native woman—his was the first wedding “ever celebrated at these islands in the manner of the christians”—and began to raise a family. But then he received a large gift of money from the Baron de Campagne (the Swiss nobleman who had previously emerged as an important benefactor of the school); unfortunately, this “wrought much evil in the heart of Thomas.” Meanwhile, too, he began “to speculate & trade, got into debt & fell … almost to his original state of poverty & unimportance.” After a year or two, he seemed to rescue himself and to behave “more in the character of a disciple of Christ.” Soon, however, “our hearts were much wounded & grieved by a discovery that he was guilty of violating the 7th commandment [against adultery]”; as a result, he was “suspended from the church, put in irons, & fined according to the laws of the land.” This left him “ready to sink with shame & remorse,” and, after promises to repent, “he was about to be restored to the church.” Then came the final act of his zigzag saga—as described, again, in Judd’s own sorrowful words: “O, my Dear Sir, my heart bleeds while I relate it—the next information I had of Thomas was that he has been in the habitual practice of this sin [adultery] ever since he arrived at the islands. Mr Bishop & Thurston have heard of 20 instances or more in which either by his own confession or of others, he has been guilty.” Edwin Dwight, the recipient of Judd’s report, knew these “individuals” well enough; indeed, as the school’s first principal, he had welcomed them to Cornwall. About Hopoo, an important figure in the famed Obookiah Memoirs that Dwight had ghostwritten, he must have felt especially disappointed.21
To be sur
e, the news from Hawaii was not entirely bad. Several others in the returning group had maintained a reasonably “good standing”; two, in particular, appeared to be “industrious, sober-minded young men, whose example will no doubt prove a benefit to the nation.” Moreover, the fact that many of “the youths educated at the Foreign Mission School” had fallen far short of expectation “cannot … be attributed to any fault in that school.” Instead, the problem lay with “the improper policy of the chiefs in fostering & claiming…[their] services”—as secretaries, linguists, business managers, and the like. (In short, these newly educated islanders possessed skills readily adapted to use by the native elite.) Judd ended with the following unhappy thought: “The change from the condition of a poor wanderer in a strange land, picked up & sent to school, to that of a favorite at court in their own native country, was too great & too sudden for them well to bear, and instead of improving on their previous advantages, they have almost without exception gradually retrograded.” A year later Hiram Bingham reached the same bleak conclusion, without looking for ways to excuse those involved. In a letter to a fellow missionary, he wrote of feeling “shocked and grieved at the history of falls” of several of their Hawaiian associates, and, more generally, “at what is becoming more and more apparent of the irregularity of all the native members who were admitted in America.”22