1868: Kamehameha V calls for written record of traditional practice

In Hawai‘i, King Kamehameha V requests that traditional healers’ knowledge, be documented in writing, to preserve it at a time when many Native Hawaiians are dying in epidemics. For Hawaiians, who sought literacy in English early and were taught by missionaries, the request to preserve knowledge in written form instead of oral history is not as foreign as it might be for some American Indian tribes in the 1800s.

Theme

Medicine Ways

Region

Hawai‘i